funny

Joey Chin 11-17-2021
Illustration of a bar graph with the gates of heaven sitting above the tallest bar

Illustration by Melanie Lambrick

AS WE APPROACH the new year, the more fortunate among us will be taking time to organize their lives by rebalancing their financial portfolios and considering new investments. While taking care of your cash, it’s important to remember that a wise teacher once said, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy.” I still don’t know what vermin is (it’s probably bad because it’s in the same sentence as moths), but I think the teacher might have been telling us that in additionto tending to our finances, we should also tend to our spiritual portfolios.

If you’re wondering about how exactly to do this, here are three rules to spiritual wealth that I think will prove helpful.

the Web Editors 2-03-2016

Jimmy Kimmel recently hosted Jesus on his late show. Not real Jesus, of course. (Don’t worry, this isn’t the apocalypse. You haven’t been left behind). It’s just pretend white Jesus.

Kimmel’s team took real quotes from various presidential candidates and let an actor pretending to be Jesus read them as if he were running for president. And yes, they did happen to include quotes from Donald Trump.

“We want[ed] to get an idea of what [these statements] would actually sound like from the mouth of Jesus,” said Kimmel.

It’s quite disturbing, really. 

the Web Editors 2-02-2016

Screenshot via Politie/Youtube

The bald eagle has been the symbol of the U.S. for over 200 years.

But we’ve never put an eagle to as good of a use as the Dutch are now: taking down drones. 

In order to remove drones hovering above unauthorized areas, such as airports or political events, Dutch police are training eagles to snatch them out of the air.

We've put a man on the moon. Why haven't we done this yet?

the Web Editors 1-20-2016

Screenshot via The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/Youtube

“Are you challenging me to a Catholic throwdown?”

Thus commenced Stephen Colbert and Patricia Heaton’s Catholic-off on the Jan. 18 episode of the Late Show. The famously Catholic TV host wanted to give his guest a fighting chance though. So, he produced a family photo of Heaton’s family with approximately enough people to fill a village.

the Web Editors 1-12-2016

Screenshot via skynewsofficial56/Youtube

Apparently, Bigfoot wears glass slippers. And he lost one in Taiwan.

That may be the conclusion passers-by would come to when seeing this new church in Taiwan’s Jaiyi County, but in reality, the intention is to attract women worshippers.

Ed Spivey Jr. 2-11-2013

AS WE MOVE along in 2013, more initiatives will be coming on line from Obamacare (technically the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, although if you rearrange the letters it spells "death panels"). Starting next year, insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for anyone with pre-existing conditions, which is good news for Mitch McConnell, who might want to have his permanent frown removed. Additionally, the law requires that all tea party members take a spoonful of castor oil before bedtime and wear coarse undergarments close to the skin. (Hey, it was a big bill, with lots of fine print.)

What won't change, however, is our relationship to the pharmaceutical industry, known as "Big Pharma"—which is not, as you may have thought, the nickname of a linebacker from one of our agricultural-state colleges, but rather shorthand for "companies that combine ground-breaking science with the business model of a crack dealer." No offense to crack dealers.

I recently had a personal experience with Big Pharma, after two weeks with a projectile cough that filled the middle distance with an alluring prismatic mist. Office colleagues did not appreciate my little air rainbows, so I contacted my doctor for advice, using the convenience of email rather than driving over and changing into a disposable paper gown which—and I feel strongly about this—does not adequately flatter the body of a mature man.

I described my symptoms with a level of detail that only a professional writer can do, using the lushness of the English language to create a memorable narrative of my condition and symptoms. Naturally, I expected my doctor to reply in kind. But she didn't: "You're sick. Here's a prescription." (Science geek.)

Ed Spivey Jr. 1-08-2013

(trekandshoot / Shutterstock)

SO HOW WAS your fall off the fiscal cliff? Did you drop straight to the bottom or bounce several times off jagged rocks on the way down, land in a bramble bush, and then stare back up at that annoying roadrunner? Ouch. (And why didn't the roadrunner jump off the cliff? Did he have a more reasonable approach to spending and taxation? Is he naturally more conciliatory with his opponents? Nah. He's just smarter about sudden dropoffs.)

I'm just asking because, as I write this, we're still heading toward that cliff, so I won't know if we drove off it, braked just short of it, or maybe stopped to ask directions from an old guy sitting by the side of the road in a tattered beach chair. "Yup, you keep going straight for a couple miles, then look for the coyote tracks."

There is no question that our nation is facing major fiscal imbalances—although, to be fair, our low wages are more than offset by high cholesterol. But hopefully the president—Barack "Whew!ssein" Obama—will have avoided the impending crisis by reaching a compromise with Republican leaders, although at press time it seemed he was drawing a clear line in the sand. Of course, that's easy to change because, you know, it's just sand.

But I've never cared for the cliff analogy. I think of a cliff as something you throw things off, like a stick you found, or a rock, or a Fox News pundit who is now talking positively about immigration reform. (Don't forget to make a wish before you make the toss.)

The Editors 12-05-2012

Watch what happens when stink bugs invade the Sojourners editorial retreat.

Ed Spivey Jr. 11-27-2012

(Christine Wainwright / Shutterstock)

I DON'T WANT to keep harping about this climate change thing, but someone has to have the singular courage to stand up for the future of our globe. Someone, I mean, besides 98 percent of the world's climate scientists, the governments of every other industrialized nation, and millions of people around the world. Not counting those, I am that man.

Because I have seen the future of a warming planet, and it's not just fraught with melting glaciers and rising oceans. It's also got stink bugs.

Twice a year, Sojourners' editors and its highly esteemed art director drive to a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia to plan future issues. (I will pause briefly for Colorado readers to stop laughing convulsively at the suggestion that hilltops a few hundred feet above sea level can be called "mountains." But if I get carsick on the drive up, I'm calling it a mountain.)

After we arrived this fall—and my stomach finally calmed down—we settled into our usual method of magazine planning: a rapid-fire brainstorming of ideas both provocative and ground-breaking, but not so much that it keeps me awake. Then came the first telltale tapping sounds from the window.

A half-dozen stink bugs had gathered on the inside of the pane, with a dozen more on the outside, all of them repeatedly bumping into the window, unable to decide on one plan of action. But enough about Mitt Romney.

Brandon Hook 10-31-2012

New Andrew Bird, a little Reformation polka, a concert film from Mumford and Sons, an app that hides all those pesky political Facebook updates, an awesome Halloween costume, a Hobbit-themed airline safety video, The Buddhist Rapper, and, of course, the top ten ways to smash a pumpking.

I know, that's a lot to take in.

Christian Piatt 10-08-2012

So yeah, it’s my birthday, and that really doesn’t have anything to do with church signs. But hey, I gotta call it something, right???