Timothy McSweeney's Country Is Actually a Fine Country for Old Men
Hello and welcome to the third edition of McSweeney’s Internet Substackency, the substack of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a humor and satire website run by McSweeney’s Publishing.
Hardcore McSweeney’s heads may have noticed we have resurrected our subtitle banners to use as titles of our newsletters. For the first fifteen-ish years of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, we featured these subtitles under the main banner on our homepage. They were swapped out every few weeks and written by several staffers and a few readers. Here is a horribly low-res example of one that we screenshotted from the Wayback Machine:
We will spare you the details of the process that went into creating and editing these subtitles, just know that when they make the award-winning documentary on the history of the Tendency, there will be a riveting 32 seconds about it.
Anyway, it’s nice to bring the subtitles back and promote them to main titles. Now, on with the links, which we, as always, hope you will share with your favorite and the not-so-favorite-but-perfectly-adequate people in your life.
Monday, July 15
9:00 p.m.
The Banshees of the Bottomless Abyss wail the national anthem.
9:05 p.m.
Axuloth, Slayer of Mortals, lays out his plan to stop the Great Replacement.
9:20 p.m.
Arizona Senate candidate and election truther Kari Lake explains that Joe Biden couldn’t have won Wisconsin in 2020 because “Wisconsin” isn’t a real place.
9:40 p.m.
The Goblins of Mount Agony on why student loan forgiveness is unfair to goblins who have already paid their blood debts to their chieftains.
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Please read all of this one, too—it’s terrifyingly funny.
A WORD OR TWO FROM OUR STORE…
When it comes to grief, there’s no room for second best. Sure, there are other guidebooks aimed at helping you cope with the emotional and practical challenges of losing a loved one. None, however, have been written by a comedy writer whose “therapeutic training” went no further than an undergraduate degree in psychology, and who lived through this terrible experience and emerged intact enough to write a bunch of jokes about it. What The Daily Show’s America (The Book) was to civics and The Onion’s Our Dumb Century was to the history of the twentieth century, Jason Roeder’s hilarious (and often moving) Griefstrike! (named a best comedy book of 2023 by Vulture!) is to death, mourning, and somehow getting on with your life.
And while we’re here, subscribe to Jason’s Substack, Bad Advice, for more hilarious and helpful tips on life.
Buy Griefstrike! at our our store.
I stare at Linoleum Snopes across the net, hating him. “It don’t bounce proper,” I say. “It don’t hardly bounce at all.”
He studies the service line at his feet, furious. The sun is hot.
It don’t bounce proper. It just.
“Eight-three-one,” he says. “You best back up some.”
I don’t budge. I look back at Varse, my partner, daring him to boss me. He don’t.
Lin swings hard, like he’s beating a carpet, like he’s angry but can’t say nothing. The ball gets bigger coming at me. I stick the paddle up thoughtless and the ball skips back across the net and catches Rayleen Butters in her pink soft gut, just below the knot she’s tied in her blouse to show off her tummy.
And here’s this week’s BLAST FROM THE PAST, a classic Tendency piece from our archives…
Other water parks were not giving Uncle Rick the fix he needed with their SAFETY REGULATIONS AND DEARTH OF COCAINE-FUELED WATER RIDES, so the big man set out to DISRUPT BOTH THE WATER SLIDE AND COCAINE INDUSTRIES following a particularly awesome time he had breaking into Six Flags after a DURAN DURAN CONCERT. Although it took several years and failed rehab stints to actually execute that plan, the end result is your ONE-STOP SHOP FOR SUMMER SPLASH-MAZEMENT AND NARCOTICS FUN.
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