For July 8-14, 2026

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. With the ongoing outbreak of cyclospora (aka “the parasite that makes you have explosive diarrhea”), we thought this would be a good time for a little reminder about health and safety when handling newsletters: Always peel off the outer layers of newsletters and rinse well before consuming—and if you want to be extra safe, you can also heat your newsletter to a temperature of 158 degrees. (This newsletter is pasteurized, so you can dig right in.) Stay safe out there, folks!

What We Enjoyed This Week

Enjoy Our Beach House, but Please Don’t Open the Beguiling Door of Mystery by Patrick Coyne (McSweeney’s) Fans of “Widow’s Bay” will definitely want to check out this piece. It has so many wonderful turns of phrase, starting right in the title: “Beguiling door of mystery” rolls off the tongue in such a satisfying way. We also love the juxtaposition of rental house details with spooky eldritch specifics, and how Patrick builds out the horror element of the piece without ever getting too plotty or losing sight of the jokes.

Transcript from the Annual Meeting of the Global Children’s Shoe-Sizing Consortium by Aliza Zelin Neidich (McSweeney’s) Lots of great details in this piece, including this particularly terrific run: “I suggest we introduce additional categories including: extra wide, slim wide, athletic wide, heritage wide, and wide in spirit.” This piece also has a great example of what we like to call a “here we go again” ending.

Tom Waits White Noise Sound Options by Brian Barker and Nicky Beer (McSweeney’s) It came as no surprise to learn, after reading this piece, that Brian and Nicky are also poets. We really appreciate the specificity and economy of each line. The placement of (spoiler alert) the single word “Time” is also really interesting. We imagine it might have been tempting to use that as the button to the piece, but it’s deployed to great effect right in the middle.

-- ADS --

---

Have a phone? Dial 765-633-8226 right now. Let it ring. Become a character. Wait for the beep. Leave a message. Felt good? Call again.

765-ODD-TACO is a new collaborative, experimental audio theatre micropodcast publication feeding hungry humor heads since a few months ago.

Submissions always welcome 24x7. DM for credit.
Please, no AI. Only HOETECC*.

Together, we're creating a universe of people in situations, living moments, having ideas, making decisions, experiencing emotions, uttering recollections.

So many telephonic possibilities.

Call 765-ODD-TACO today. That's 765-633-8226.

*Human-only-end-to-end-creativity-chain

---

NYC Writers! The editors of The Belladonna are meeting up at The Four-Faced Liar in the West Village on Wednesday, July 29th at 6 PM. Please join us! We would love to see you. (Even boys allowed!)

---

(Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!)

An Old Favorite

Banned Books in the Year 2191 by Brendon Lloyd (McSweeney’s) A short-but-sweet list piece that does a great job letting us infer a story via nothing but the titles of (fictional) banned books. This piece is now over 20 years old, and when it was first published we never would have guessed that we’d actually be having to deal with so many of that the subjects it touches on (artificial intelligence, book bans, Supreme Court reform).

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

Nothing from us this week! We’ve been too busy… well, let’s just say that it seems like we maybe didn’t do a good enough job washing one of the other newsletters we’re subscribed to.