Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to e...
I am the Overtourist. I’m here to overtour your picturesque town or world-class city. Shooting water pistols at me only hydrates and emboldens me. I have no idea how anything works here. I will pause in the middle of crowded sidewalks, amble in rushing zones, and fail to pos...
The rumors are true: I’m overjoyed and not at all ashamed to share that I’ll be joining the HBO Max Harry Potter family as Stickles the Gender-Policing Elf, a character created exclusively for this series to, in author J. K. Rowling’s words, “address the crumbling morals of ...
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I’m flanked by them in most pictures. Perched atop a yellow parking curb in swimsuits and sneakers, we squint and smile for the camera, a mix of frizzy curls and stray hairs haloing our faces. It’s Memorial Day Weekend 1986, and we’re minutes away from learning that H...
Don’t judge my book by its cover. For the cover art of my debut novel, I envisioned a mysterious, foggy background with two shadowy figures grasping for each other but remaining barely out of reach. Instead, the publisher insisted on a pink background with an illustration o...
“President Donald Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the city’s police department, an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation’s capital.” – Reuters - - -
A tourist standing to the left...
“President Trump announced that he’s placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploying National Guard troops to the nation’s capital.” – CNN - - -
The family and I visited Colonial Williamsburg just last summer. We had a great time. My wife an...
Are you looking for sweet, melty chocolate that makes you feel comforted—or are you a fucking adult? Are you grown up enough to appreciate that everything that once brought you joy is only really worthwhile if it punishes you? Then strap in, because it’s time to invest in RE...
Q: You were laid off from the National Weather Service amidst all the DOGE cuts, correct? A: Yes. And they haven’t hired anyone new to do my job. Q: Which was? A: The National Weather Service’s Director of “Feels Like.” You know how when there’s a heatwave, you hear that the...
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday ordered the civil arrest of Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to block a vote on a Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan, escalating a standoff that has stalled the legislative session.” — CBS News - - -
President Trump ha...
Dear Marge, You might have forgotten about the time your husband jeered at you on stage, as you spoke through a miniature wooden version of yourself. It happened in 1996, almost thirty years ago. Let me remind you of the circumstances. Your son, Bart, started working at a lo...
“In this human-made paradise, entertainment reigned supreme, and all forms of leisure had their whispered, rum-breathed price.” - - -
A semi-regular guest column about regularly ignored places - - -
Each year, as many as twenty-five million people visit the sacrificial land...
Many don’t realize that The Gilded Age, the very grand and expensive HBO/Max/HBOMaxAgain show, was actually devised for a very specific audience: quirky early millennial women who studied theater in college and briefly tried their hand at acting before ultimately becoming wr...
I’m going to keep this brief. Tomorrow I will shed my nymphal skin and exoskeleton and burst forth in all of my winged adult mayfly glory. I’ll have a tiny, vulnerable body and no functioning mouth parts, so if a fish doesn’t eat me within a few minutes, I’ll starve to death...
Remember Ecto Cooler? IT remembers you. IT remembers every dark day you spent hiding in your room. All the hours listening to NSYNC while you carved the names of dead gods into your Trapper Keeper. IT knows your flesh, your sins, your AOL user ID. No, not that one. The one y...
Dear Marge, You might have forgotten about the time your husband jeered at you on stage, as you spoke through a miniature wooden version of yourself. It happened in 1996, almost thirty years ago. Let me remind you of the circumstances. Your son, Bart, started working at a lo...
After the tragic 2023 passing of Gabe Hudon, a longtime McSweeney’s writer, editor, and friend, Hudson’s mother, Sanchia Semere, endowed a new award in his honor. Annually, McSweeney’s convenes a panel of jurors to select a writer’s second book-length work of fiction that em...
Kasey — From the moment I first saw you, I knew my life was about to change. You were beautiful—also intelligent, funny, and kind. Not long after we met, I knew I wanted to spend my life with you. Let me know if you’d like these opening lines to be warmer or more emotional. ...
We didn’t always have a straightforward strategy for peacekeeping. Our top brass spent day and night working it out. We ordered lunch for the office and called to say we’d be home late or not at all. We assumed the remedy we were searching for would be full of complexities—m...
Some hyper-sensitive Americans love to cry buckets of liberal tears over every minor provocation, like the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad or how the policy of separating immigrant asylum seekers from their children has been revived. Why are they so scandalized by a woman being sexy...
Art by Matt Smith - - -
In 2019, an abandoned smartphone was found partially buried beneath layers of sediment and urine in a South Boston alleyway. This forgotten relic was soon revealed to contain a remarkable audio-text describing in great detail the religious beliefs of...
Several months ago, in the lead-up to the most recent Most Important Election of Our Lifetime, I wondered out loud whether we should choose the uncertain wish for hope and joy or the very real promise of bleak despair. These were the options that were being presented to us, ...
More daycare options at a variety of price points, all of them unaffordable. A super accessible subway station with an elevator that will get you all the way down to the mezzanine! The tracks are just two flights of stairs below that. Playgrounds that are so packed you’ll wa...
When the police arrived, they also advised Dershowitz to use non-gendered pronouns. Dershowitz was hesitant. “I’ll use whatever language I choose to use,” he told the police. “That’s a matter between me and my grammarian — not anything the police should have anything to say ...
Do you eat enough protein in a day? Don’t even bother answering, because I know the answer is no. But don’t worry, I’m kind of a protein guy. I can give you all the guidance you need so you can stop being such a weak little bitch. I eat three hundred times my recommended dai...
It’s supposed to be gorgeous out, and we can’t spend such a gorgeous weekend trapped in the house by the bathroom. It’s supposed to be gross out, and it will be hard enough having our toddler stuck inside all weekend without adding potty training into the mix. I mean, did yo...
A quarterly column, steady as ever - - -
“What do twenty-first-century people have an appetite for? I’m leaving myself out of this. I’m a twentieth-century person, I suspect.” - - -
Books read:
Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses—Peter W...
Have you thought to yourself, “I wonder what’s at the bottom of that huge fucking pit?” Probably not, considering we’re located twenty-seven miles down a dirt road. Welcome to Serenity Oasis Quarry and Mineral Mine. Straddling the border of Kansas and Missouri, this natural ...
Well Hiya!! Oh shucks! Is that not how y’all greet each other here in the big city? Shoot! Gosh darn it! Dagnabit and some Kraft on a Cracker. I’m sorry. Let’s start over. Hi. I’m Kayley. I could also have been Jenny or Kelly or Lindsey, but I am Kayley. My middle name is Ma...
I used AI to make a video that sucks. It is bad. It is boring. But I made it in under an hour. And now it is my entire personality. To some, my AI-made video that sucks is only that: a video that sucks. A two-minute-long, barely coherent amalgam of regurgitated stock photo t...
