A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #405
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For August 6-12, 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 recently found out that rats seem to be able to laugh. We’ve reached out to the scientists to see if they have looked into whether rats like short humor, but haven’t gotten any replies yet. In the meantime, we’re going to be out by the garbage annex of Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ) with our McSweeney’s collections, doing our own research.
And don't forget we're hosting a hang out on September 3rd!More details below!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Woman Only Dating Man for His Intelligence, Personality, Depth of Character by Malia Simon (The Hard Times) Talking about a healthy relationship as if it were unhealthy is a very fun premise, and Malia takes it to the next level with lots of fun specifics. There are particularly great lists and runs here, like "How do we know she’s not gonna just up and leave him for someone who’s more honest, more kind? More willing to give her the love that she deserves?" It's a great way to draw attention to how breathlessly good this relationship is.
Honey, I Have No Clue What You’re Talking About—I Did NOT Use AI to Write My Wedding Vows by Michael Pershan (McSweeney’s) AI is simply terrible, but what Michael's piece does a great job of illustrating is that the people who use it are pretty lame too. By mining the biography of this disappointing groom for humor instead of focusing on AI, Michael avoids low-hanging and overdone jokes.
You Didn’t Really Think You Could Complete Your Domino’s Order That Easily, Did You? by Ryan Weber (Slackjaw) Parody succeeds best when it's attentive to the small details, and Ryan's care with the design of his send-ups of this genre of lame and aggressive pop-up really helps sell the joke. The visuals are also not the focus, which is smart—they’re there to enhance Ryan's writing by giving it a fun frame.
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An Old Favorite
The Results of Our Public-Opinion Poll Are In by Ali Ruth (The New Yorker) The writer John Ganz recently published a smart post called "Against Polling" on his "Unpopular Front" newsletter, and it reminded me of this great Shout. Ali treats the public like a single individual, a simple premise that she explores very thoroughly. And opting to couch this exploration within polling results puts the main idea at just enough of a remove to be continually surprising — very smart.
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
Luke’s got a new batch of short humor writing workshops coming up in September and October! One is already sold out, but he’s still got spots in his advanced workshops starting on September 10th and September 13th and in his intro class starting October 11th.
And don’t forget we’re having a little meet-up and hangout on September 3rd, 6 PM, at Peculier Pub in NYC! See you there!
Also the rats haven’t taken to short humor, but somehow we still got roped into helping them put together an improv team.
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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