A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #338
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For April 24-30, 2024
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them.
As we mentioned last week, we’re going to start offering some bonus newsletters every two or three weeks as a thank you to people who help us offset our expenses by signing up for our new subscription tier! We’re going to be sending out our first subscription edition on Sunday, May 12th, so hop on board before then! And thanks so much to everyone for supporting the newsletter.
What We Enjoyed This Week
Horoscopes Written by My Mother by Bess Kalb (The New Yorker) A very fun dual portrait of both the mother and the daughter—even though the details about the daughter are filtered through the mom’s POV, a character comes through quite clearly—all nicely held together by the horoscope form.
Acknowledgments Page for the Email I Put Off for Seven Weeks and Finally Sent by Simon Henriques (McSweeney’s) An all-too-relatable premise for anyone who has ever developed overblown anxiety about responding to an email. The idea of an acknowledgements page that is even longer than the text that the acknowledgements page is for is also extremely funny.
Shazam to Add Feature That Tells User Whether It’s Okay to Like That Song by Arielle Andreano (Hard Times) We particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the traditional arbiters of whether songs are cool or not: “[A] friend’s cool burnout older brother,” “your drug connect,” “your unemployed cousin [who tells] you what’s going on at shows in the alleys behind dive bars.”
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An Old Favorite
This week's Old Favorite is a Brian Agler Selection (TM)--a piece whose accompanying note was written by Brian--from Newsletter #69.
The Old Spaghetti Factory Briefly Considers a Branding Overhaul by Tom Ellison (Slackjaw) "There are many potential names for a large, affordable, family-friendly pasta restaurant that not only avoid implying the flagship dish is decomposing or produced alongside automotive parts, but actually highlight the positive."
Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.
Updates From Your Editors and Friends of the Newsletter
ICYMI: Luke did an interview about the process of translating Masters of the Nefarious with the great Evan Allgood! Huge thanks again to those of you who have already purchased the book—and one request: If you enjoyed the book, leave a review somewhere! It makes a really big difference.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
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