Jesus Does Stand-Up
The Apostles all kept telling him he needed to lighten up, he was running off potential converts with the heavy sermonizing, so he decided to try stand-up. Once the crowd was sitting around the top […]
Author: Bill Spencer
Bill Spencer is author of the book Uranus Is Always Funny: Short Essays to Make You Laugh (Humor Outcasts Press 2020). His humor writing has been published by Funny Times, Narrative magazine, Reader's Digest, The Sun, The Inconsequential, Clever magazine, Defenestration, The Short Humour Site, Hobo Pancakes, and Nuthouse. He has also published scholarly articles on the novels of Cormac McCarthy and is co-author of an unproduced screenplay, "Angel Pays a Visit." He lives in a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with his wife, artist-poet Carolyn Elkins.
Ghosts of Christmas Past
(This piece previously appeared in Clever magazine.) My wife refuses to let me be the one to put lights on our Christmas tree each year. She says I’m still too haunted by my father’s traditions […]
Thanksgiving Fare Is Fowl
Thanksgiving is a time for family. Not just your familiar family but also your spouse’s family. Your spouse’s strange, weird family. One Thanksgiving that we spent at my in-laws’ is one I won’t forget. Soon […]
Writing Humor (with Visual Aids)
(Some content stolen, with permission, from Debra A. Daniel) For the uninitiated or unfunny, writing a humor piece can seem almost impossible, but I assure you it is possible—barely. Because the technical jargon of comedy […]
Garden & Gun
When my sister-in-law visited recently, she brought the latest issue of the magazine Garden & Gun. Yes, that’s what I said—Garden & Gun. And while this pairing might at first seem the teeniest bit unlikely, […]
My Bewitching Wife
I can’t say for certain whether my wife is a witch or not, but I do know she charmed me when I first saw her and she does have a “weird sister.” (Sorry, Sissy. That’s […]
Please Give Me a Sign
“God/Universe, please make it clear to me whether I should take this position; please give me an unmistakeable sign,” I thought as I headed to a job interview at what I will call Putrescence University […]
Am I Priority Male? (or How to Express Your Self)
The just-released October/November issue of AARP magazine contains this helpful item—#45 in a list of “50 Ways to Stay Healthy” (p. 46): “Stamp out erection issues: Worry about impotency can cause . . . impotency. […]
The VW Bug and Rocket Science
In 1972, the same year that the final Apollo mission flew, I found myself without a ride to high school. Yes, we could get to the moon, but could I get to school? I lived […]
Being Ricardo Montalban
A funny thing about our personal identity is that although we work so hard and long to find it, we often delight in hiding or abandoning it. Who hasn’t had fun wearing a costume, assuming […]