Each year friends give us a subscription to Funny Times for Christmas, and we get 12 months of laughs from it. And also sanity, I have to say, because when I read it I often think: only here (never in the newspaper) do I regularly find people puncturing the jumbo-sized blimps of jargon and pretense that take up so much space in news and politics. Reading the newspaper, I want to say “Are you all crazy?” Reading the cartoons and columns in Funny Times, I know someone else agrees with that.

But don’t think the humor is all political; the latest issue has a column about the new combo camera/Barbie Doll, by Lenore Skenazy; Dave Barry on severance gifts from Wal-Mart, Garrison Keillor on Christmas; and cartoons that skewer pretensions, make visual puns, and are just plain silly. Sylvia always makes an appearance, so do Tom the Dancing Bug, the always-askew Piraro, Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man), the K Chronicles, Lynda Barry, and about 50 others .

As if all that—24 tabloid-size pages full—weren’t enough, there’s a whole page of what we all really want from our newspapers: News of the Weird. You know, the reports of actual events, too stupid or bizarre to believe, in categories such as “Bright Ideas” and “Least Competent Criminals”. If you hold your brain just right while you read these they can make you feel better about the level of idiocy in your own locale, a real morale-builder!

But wait, there’s more! Harper’s Index! Winokur’s Curmudgeon! And if you call now, well, then you won’t procrastinate, what else can I say.

I wanted to include a sample of cartoons but I’m too lazy to scan them from our issue so here are some by the same great cartoonists, that I just got off that internet thing. In Funny Times they are mostly in black and white but just as funny.

Oh, and a full year’s subscription is only $25 at http://www.funnytimes.com/ or 1-888-386-6984.

It’s the perfect gift for friends and family, anyone with a sense of humor. So I guess you just have to shop for your relatives now. Because why would you have friends who don’t have a sense of humor?

I like this one because whenever I see that a movie contains “adult themes” my mind always has a flicker of literalism, “Oh, a discussion of the limits of rationality, or what it means to lead a good life, or…”.
Dan Piraro, Bizarro.