A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #404
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For July 30 - August 5, 2025
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. We’re doing another Hangout of Humorous Writing next month! Join us on September 3rd at Peculier Pub in NYC (145 Bleecker Street)! Bring fellow writers, humor fans, and pals! We’ll probably get there around 6:00 PM, can’t wait to see you!
What We Enjoyed This Week
In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen by Colin Cornaby (colincornaby.me) One way to think about mapping is in terms of distance. How far is your target from the thing you’re mapping onto? Oftentimes people reach for something that will yield the widest gap, but sometimes the more fun choice is finding mapping that is a little closer to your target. This piece by Colin finds the perfect distance for mapping AI hype. This idea could very easily have been an essay making the point that marketing for AI is similar to how appliance companies hyped microwaves decades ago. But choosing to frame this as a humor piece makes the point just as effectively, and in a livelier and more catchy way. And if you’re interested in mapping, you can subscribe and check out our Premium Edition on the sibject for more. And hat tip to our pal Chris Shea for sharing this one with us.
Welcome to Our Quarry Pit by Bobbie Armstrong and Madeline Goetz (McSweeney’s) Bobbie and Madeline make the fun choice to use an authoritative voice for their narrator, which makes their great absurd details land with a lot of weight. It’s a fun juxtaposition. Plus quarries are just plain funny (see below!).
I Have Designated Myself as the Chief Operating Officer of This Fun Weekend Trip by Chandler Dean and Sarah Gruen (Points in Case) A great character piece that makes some subtle choices. This character is very confident and bossy, naturally, but there’s a streak of desperation and people pleasing that makes them even more interesting. (“Celia, I made your letterhead purple because I know you like purple.”) And of course with Sarah and Chandler, you know you’re in good hands jokes-wise. We especially loved, “The trip will be impossible if any single one of us does not download The App,” which is such a delightfully strange and broken little sentence.
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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 #87.
Back In My Day, Kids Didn’t Watch TV… No, They Played Outdoors Because They Heard A Rumor That A Dead Body Was Out By The Quarry by Dan Caprera (Weekly Humorist) Along with creepy manors, misty bogs, and creaky ships, old quarries are consistently reliable settings for humor pieces.
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 Hosts and Friends of the Show
And one more reminder that we’re hosting another Hangout in a few weeks. Mark your calendars: September 3rd, 6 PM, Peculier Pub (145 Bleecker Street New York, NY)!
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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