For August 19-25, 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. We had a little too much coffeee today, so apologies if the newsletter is shaking a liittle bit in your inboz! Whoa!

What We Enjoyed This Week

Your Dad's Itinerary for This Relaxing Family Vacation, Dammit by Aarushi Ahuja (Points in Case) The character that Aarushi has created here is just fantastic. The dad details and the voice of the character are both extremely funny, and will likely ring true (perhaps a little too true) to many of you. We also love the Miguel runner: “I will be handling business, meaning meeting our host Miguel at the front desk. Did you know Miguel fixed the ice machine himself? Corporate wanted to fly someone in. What a guy. Anyway.”

The Least-Wanted Items at My Parents’ Estate Sale by Brian Braiker (The New Yorker) A very fun joke bucket piece. It’s got a nice specific focus, and is packed with lots of great details, runners, and callbacks—just what you want from a joke bucket!

How Many University Vice-Chancellors Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb? by Ben Steere (McSweeney’s) You could imagine a version of this piece with a whole bunch of different “university vice-chancellor” jokes, but we really admire the simplicity, clarity, and formal rigor of keeping it to just the one lightbulb joke. We often talk about how the title of a piece generally has to do a lot of work to set up the piece’s premise and jokes, so it’s quite interesting that the title of this piece is the setup to a joke in the most literal possible way.

-- AD --

Head on over to Flag Division to buy the most efficient band shirt on the market!

Twice the bands in half the number of shirts! The deal of the century!

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

An Old Favorite

Four Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny” by Annie Zaleski (The AV Club) A collection of amazing anecdotes, packed with great details, about a bygone era of the music industry. The commentary is both funny and insightful: “It was an amazing combination of ‘We are ripping you off like no one has ever ripped anyone off as a per-unit basis,’ but ‘We are also building a time bomb that’s going to flatten us forever.’”

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 just TWO spots left in his intro to short humor workshop starting in September! (Also he’s got a few spots left in his other September workshops! [Also also you can still pick up that well-reviewed graphic novel he translated that came out last week!])