I left The Babylon Bee at the end of 2021. I decided to do a round-up of my favorite articles I wrote for them, but I had written many more than I thought — approximately 666 of them. So what I thought would be one post ended up being thirteen posts long and together highlighted 141 of my articles I thought were particularly good.

So let’s get to the brass tacks: What are the absolute best articles I wrote? So, I went through and picked out what I consider my ten best articles. These aren’t necessarily the most popular articles I wrote; they’re my favorite. The ones I think back to the most.

My Top Ten The Babylon Bee Articles

10. Study: Average American Now Complains More In A Week Than People Living Through The Black Plague Did Their Entire Lives

There are a few articles where I realized I was constantly repitching the same thing, and this is one of them. People are constantly complaining — acting like they live in the worst time in history despite having advantages and luxuries the richest kings from hundreds of years ago couldn’t dream of. A little more gratitude would change the world, but that’s asking for the moon.

9. Study: Hate Clicks Are A Major Source Of Web Traffic And Also 'The Princess Bride' Is A Trash Movie That Only Stupid People Like

One of my favorite things is arguing two disparate things simultaneously — it’s a fun little juggling act. I did that also in an early successful Bee article Report: Millennials More Open To Socialism, Touching Hot Stove, Sticking Face In Sack Full Of Badgers. This is my favorite instance, though, because it was actually fun trashing one of my all-time favorite movies, and I think this article keeps being timely as even “respectable” news sites seem to now constantly be putting out purposely terrible articles to get traffic by everyone dunking on them.

8. Trump Holds Press Conference To Announce He Got Cool New Calculator Watch

I had a lot of fun with Trump, and a few different articles represented a sort of apolitical approach to him that I think was best where you’re just joking with his personality but not trying to make a political point. Some of my favorites were Anti-Wall Extremist The Kool-Aid Man Leads Campaign Against Trump, Trump Secures Unlimited Chips And Salsa In Mexican Trade Deal, and Trump Proves He's Not A Racist By Showing His Rejection Letter From The KKK. This one was not super popular, but it’s one of my favorites that I actually had to fight a little to get published because it was going to take a photoshop, and no one thought it would do well. But it’s a fun article about Trump trying to keep a press conference focused on his new ability to do math anywhere. Plus, Trump is right: a calculator watch is pretty amazing.

7. Report: The Squirrels Are Up To Something

What I like about this one is how simple and silly it is. And it feels like it’s based on truth, too, as the way squirrels behave, it really does seem like they’re up to something.

6. Man On Right Side Of History Surprised To Find He Still Went To Hell

I’ve always found the people talking about the “right side of history” particularly loathsome. Usually, they’re trying to justify their terrible behavior, thinking it doesn’t matter because they’ll be seen as the heroes in the long run. The history books are seen as salvation for the secular, but in the actual long run, what the history books say about you doesn’t matter.

My favorite thing to write is dialog, and this one ended up being written more like a sketch of a sympathetic devil being frustrated alongside the man who ended up in hell despite history speaking up for him.

5. Meow Mix Sued For False Advertising After Study Shows Cats Were Just Making Standard Cat Noises And Not Asking For A Particular Brand Of Food

Not much to say about this one except it’s just pure dumb and has nothing political to it — often my favorite type of article. “Dumb” is often one of my favorite compliments for an article; it’s the dumb ones that make me laugh the most consistently when revisiting them.

4. Report: Mansplaining Down But Woman Confusion Up

Nice, concise headlines were not my best specialty, but here is a good one with a really funny article to go with it. For some reason, this got sat on for a while which I can’t remember why, as it seemed pretty certain this would be a hit to me. Thinking back on it, the only way it could be better is if I came up with a good condensed word like “mansplaining” for woman confusion.

3. Prodigal Son Kicked Back Out After Old Tweets Surface

A lot of what initially distinguished The Babylon Bee early on was its Christian-specific humor that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. This was never as popular, though, as the political humor, which was what tended to go viral. So it was nice to occasionally have a religious joke that combined with politics, and this is probably the best example of mine that did really well. It does well to illustrate where progressive politics conflict most directly with Christianity: the concept of forgiveness.

2. Least Masculine Society In Human History Decides Masculinity Is A Growing Threat

This is the ultimate example of the article I constantly wanted to rewrite, as we’re constantly getting bombarded with screeds on the problems of “toxic masculinity,” which seems crazy when we are the least masculine society in human history. Our problems — with young men not taking responsibility and the crisis of fatherlessness — are much more lack of masculinity than too much. I also think this is a hilarious article, and I especially like the part about Duke Miller the marine at the end.

1. Dumb AOC Accidentally Strangles Herself Tying Her Shoes (Because She Is So Stupid)

Early on, we got criticism from the left for all our “AOC is so dumb” articles, and for some reason, it popped into my head, “I’ll show them! I’ll write the worst possible AOC is dumb article!” I’m not sure how that would show them, but I couldn’t let go of the idea. And here we are.

And it is dumb. It’s my favorite article because it’s so stupid that it’s still funny to me every time I read it (I especially love the phrase “brain-dumb”). And it confused so many people. Some on the right thought it was just a regular “AOC is stupid" article, while many more on the left didn’t catch that it was satire of ourselves. It worked well for The Babylon Bee because when people on the left wanted to show the site wasn’t funny, they’d use this one and then look like an idiot when everyone pointed out this one was obviously satire of satire.

But none of that was intentional. It was just an idea that sounded so dumb it tickled me.

So that’s my top ten. There are a few I’m upset didn’t make the list, and maybe on a different day they would, but I’ll stick by this.

So what are your favorite The Babylon Bee articles?

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I can’t believe my original idea was to have just one Substack article on my favorite posts I did for The Babylon Bee. But I had no idea how many I wrote (approximately 666 by my file count), and here we are on the 13th and final round-up of my favorite articles, covering my last three months — October to December of 2021 — and also including my final post for The Babylon Bee.

Ships Arrive From The Orient Laden With Pumpkin Spice

I think I had something similar to this idea for a while — treating pumpkin spice like some actual spice — but finally did it in October 2021. In the end, I think I always appreciated my non-political satire more.

Concerning Growth In Number Of Giant Flies As Adventurers Keep Slaying All The Giant Spiders

I always like exploring the logic of video games, and so many tend to include giant spiders who live for nothing but to attack you and then drop gold for some reason (I explore that part a bit in my Fun Short The Merchant). One of my favorite things is to take something ridiculous and then explain it as logically as possible, so I tried to imagine the ecosystem of these giant spiders.

Making It Worse: Buttigieg Just Crashed A Train Into A Cargo Ship

Buttigieg was made the Secretary of Transportation, but he was gone a few months, and no one noticed until the cargo ship crisis at the ports. After that, people kept urging him to do something, but he seemed a rather useless individual, and this was my imagining of what would happen if he took a hands-on approach to fixing the situation while being the ultimate screw-up.

AOC’s Rant Against Capitalism Undercut By Her Having Pringles Canisters Stuck On Each Hand

I did countless “AOC is dumb” posts over my time at the Bee, and this was my last and one of my most favorite. I don’t know how to explain this any further: She’s ranting against capitalism but has Pringles canisters stuck on her hands.

Whistleblower Fired From Facebook For Constantly Blowing Whistle While Everyone Was Trying To Program

My favorite posts are the really, really dumb ones, and this is pretty dumb. What if a Facebook whistleblower was just someone standing around blowing a whistle? People wouldn’t like that. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about it because of whistleblower laws.

Conservatives Stop Saying ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ After Realizing It Makes Liberals Sad

The left really freaked out about the “Let’s Go Brandon” thing for a while, which of course, just fed it. What did they think would happen if they scrunched their faces in anger and screamed about it? If you don’t want cons to own the libs, the libs need to stop being so easily owned.

Oscar The Grouch Refuses The Vaccine, Stocks Up On Ivermectin

Sesame Street decided to promote the COVID vaccine, and I got to thinking, “But what if the other muppets remained in character?”

Progress: U.S. Military Introduces Very First Gender-Neutral Bomb

The military’s purpose is to kill people and break things, so it always seems weird when they promote their “inclusiveness.”

Do you get it, though? All bombs are gender-neutral. They blow up everyone equally.

The fun part of this was imagining the conservatives’ argument in getting angry about all this.

Embarrassing: British Realize They’ve Been Using The Wrong Words For Hundreds Of Things

This isn’t satire; this is just straight reporting.

Op-Ed: Die Hard Is NOT A Christmas Movie

Here it is: the final article I wrote for The Babylon Bee. I had pitched this one in previous years but hadn’t been asked to write it. And what’s weird about this one is I purposely wrote this one not to be funny; the more seriously Hitler argued that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, the funnier the premise was to me. I kind of wanted to do a series like this: Hitler arguing non-political positions I didn’t care for. That concept ended up in my short story, Godwin’s Law, though.

There you go; the last of my The Babylon Bee articles. I’m proud of my writing, but also happy to have moved on.

What is your favorite article of mine of all time? Mine might be “Dumb AOC Accidentally Strangles Herself Tying Her Shoes (Because She Is So Stupid)”. That article still makes me laugh every time I read it (because it’s so stupid). It also confounded so many people.

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It’s what should be the second to last of these, covering July 2021 to September 2021. Here’s more of the best of the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee.

Sissy Democrats Criticize Republican Plan To Put Polling Place In A Labyrinth Guarded By A Minotaur

The Democrats are always criticizing the Republicans for making it harder to vote, so I thought I’d take that to the extreme. But I also thought it was funny to write the article from the perspective that the Democrats are obviously dumb and wrong about this.

Also, I’m from a certain age where if anyone says anything whiny, I’m tempted to add, “Snarf snarf,” to the end of it, and this time I gave into temptation.

Scientists Warn That Within 6 Months Humanity Will Run Out Of Things To Call Racist

When I was a kid, if you said “white supremacy,” I’d say, “Oh, like the Ku Klux Klan.” Today, when someone says “white supremacy,” I say, “Oh, like breakfast cereal.”

It seemed like every day, people were coming up with some new random thing to be racist that no one in a million years would think is racist. I feel it’s died down a little bit, but maybe that’s because it’s getting harder to find anything that hasn’t already been declared racist.

AOC Says How She Accidentally Glued Her Face To Her Coffee Table Is A Clear Failure Of Capitalism

Will I tire of AOC is dumb jokes? No. No, I will not. I also like combining that with her arrogance and blaming others for everything. The fun thing in this one was coming up with a scenario in which she would accidentally glue her face to a coffee table, and I think I nailed it.

Progressive Christian Offers New, More Open, Less Judgmental Christianity — No, Wait, It’s Just Satan Again

Why can’t Christianity just lighten up and be more popular?

Biden’s Guest Hosting Of ‘Jeopardy!’ A Disaster As He Flees Every Time A Contestant Puts An Answer In Form Of A Question

Biden really got a reputation for a while of never taking questions because he’s old and his brain doesn’t work to do anything other than read off a teleprompter. They did a video of this one.

Secret Service Investigating Credible Threat From The Grim Reaper

Biden is old.

Cocomelon Review: A Thrilling Masterpiece Combining Both Style And Substance

I was always looking for an opportunity to get more clever with the writing, and little Winchester had recently become obsessed with the show Cocomelon which I found insipid. So, I tried to understand things from his perspective. This led to a series of toddler review articles which I all had fun with though I don’t think were very popular.

Boy, Winchester better like the shows I’m working on more than Cocomelon or that’s going to be a blow.

Kamala Harris Instructed To Stop Answering All Her Phone Calls With ‘Did He Die?’

Kamala Harris has to figure she has a better chance than most Vice Presidents to become president, and it’s not because she has the charisma to win an election herself. I really don’t know the purpose of her as Vice President other than to… wait.

Oh No! Girl James Bond Is Foiled When Villain Places Details Of His Evil Plans In Pickle Jar

This was basically an excuse to make every woman stereotype joke I could think of because I’m sexist and bad. But I do not apologize.

Man Who Said ‘Amen’ To Prayer Said In Spanish Not Sure What He Signed On To

This one is autobiographical. I was at a birthday party where about half the people were native Spanish speakers, and they said a prayer in English and Spanish. It still felt like I should say, “Amen” after the Spanish prayer, but it also felt a little irresponsible.

Leftists Deeply Afraid Things Could Go Back To Normal

Control of a crisis is power. Who wants to give up power?

That’s it for now. One more of these to go, which will include my very last article for The Babylon Bee.

So which were your favorite?

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It’s time once again for the best of the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee. This group covers April to June of 2021, now into the Biden presidency.

Return To Normal: Texas Announces They Will Go Back To Shooting People Wearing Masks On The Assumption They’re Stagecoach Robbers

Different states approached the pandemic differently. Texas (where I live) was mostly over it by the time the first wave ended in 2020, and masks were a rarity into 2021. The thing that fascinated me about masks is how they’re usually associated with bad guys, but then people made them all about virtue signaling. I did a few jokes along that vein.

In this article, I use the joke that everyone in Texas is nicknamed “Tex,” which I think I’ve used in a few other Texas articles.

Man Can’t Wait To Get Vaccine So He Can Go Back To Isolating While Wearing A Mask But Now Doing So While Vaccinated

We’re more than a year past this one, but it’s still the case that some people are clinging to the pandemic. It’s unclear when they’d ever feel safe again and what exactly they thought the point of vaccines was.

Meow Mix Sued For False Advertising After Study Shows Cats Were Just Making Standard Cat Noises And Not Asking For A Particular Brand Of Food

I love this one. It’s just pure dumb. Some of the most fun I have is taking a ridiculous position and arguing it as seriously as possible. I love how this article really runs with that everyone thought those cats really were asking for Meow Mix.

Report: People Have Been Thinking All White Men Are Terrible But It Turns Out It’s Just Steve

Grr! Steve!

You might notice over the years I have a particular humorous fascination with extremely common names like Bob, Steve, and Gary.

‘I’m Perfectly Healthy,’ Says Joe Biden Through A Medium At A Séance

It’s not always easy to come up with new jokes about Biden being old and feeble, but I take my job seriously.

Whimsical Father Pretends To Mishear Son Saying His Name Is ‘Hungry’, Spreading Good Cheer To All

An alternate world where my dad jokes are properly appreciated. I also just love the concept of someone responding, “Oh. How droll,” to a joke.

Republicans Propose Cheaper’ Medicare For Al’

What can I say? I like a good pun. I also liked really running with this and comparing the costs of Medicare for All to providing it for just one guy.

Schools To Get Around CRT Bans By Just Beating White Kids With Sticks

I mean, this does get to the core of CRT teaching, right? I also somehow snuck some Texas jokes in here. I just love making fun of Texas with how I live there and my wife is a native Texan.

Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine Hailed As Breakthrough In Getting Small Children To Eat

Another one I just love. It came from an actual thought: How did people entice small children to open their mouths for a spoon before the airplane was invented? It’s just uniquely analogous for that. Thankfully it came along to help out parents.

Emperor Palpatine Urges Citizens To Give Up Their Blasters Since They’d Need A Death Star To Beat The Empire

This is about what I consider the absolute worst anti-gun argument — one I’m pretty sure has never once convinced anyone else to become anti-gun and has most likely pushed people the other way. That’s the argument that there’s no point to having guns to defend against a tyrannical government because if your government decides to go full Nazi, their weaponry is way too powerful for you to stop them. I think this article was responding specifically to someone saying you would need F15s to fight back against the government.

Biden Says Latinx Aren’t Getting Vaccinated Because Their Giant Sombreros Make It Impossible To Enter Pharmacies

I can’t remember what this was specifically responding to — most likely yet another incident of Biden being casually racist — but I like how stupid it is where Biden tries to solve the problem without ever suggesting one maybe take off the sombrero.

New Variant Found To Be Twice As Virulent And Blah Blah Blah Whatever Who Cares At This Point

They’re still doing this, trying to hype up a new variant that’s emerging, but most people were already beyond caring over a year ago. First, it was “two weeks to slow the spread” where we were just trying to keep hospitals from being inundated, then we all had to shut down until a vaccine was available, and then after the vaccine was available… well, I still don’t understand where they think things end now. They kept moving the goalposts, and most people just stopped playing the game.

That’s it until next time! What was your favorite Bee article of mine?

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It’s the beginning of the end as we now go into my last year with The Babylon Bee. Here are my favorite articles I wrote from January to March of 2021.

Biden Suspected Of Wearing Earpiece After He Screams 'THERE IS A MAN SPEAKING INSIDE MY HEAD!!'

Biden humor is tougher than Trump humor. Trump has just a lot of fun mannerisms to play off of, but Biden is just old and a bit of a creep. Here’s me playing with some of the puppet accusations against him.

AOC Claims She Was Killed In The Capitol Riots And Is Now A Ghost

I’ll never tire of AOC is dumb jokes. Never. She was going on about her harrowing experience on January 6th despite being far from the action, and here is me leaning into that exaggeration. I love the recognizable crazy eyes in the image.

Op-Ed: Today's Youth Simply Don’t Have The Work Ethic To Build The Gulags Needed For Their Communist Ideals

I liked my Frank T. Rutherford op-eds where I got to play the cranky old conservative, but none of them did very well except for this one. I think gulags were just a hot topic, and everyone loves making fun of how lazy and dumb the younger generations are.

Bernie Sanders Comes Out Against $15 Minimum Wage After Finding Out It Requires At Least An Hour’s Work

I remember The Onion did a Bernie headline “Bernie Sanders Fills In For Factory Worker Unable To Take Time Off To Vote” and I was like, “Is this funny because he’s never worked an actual job in his entire life?” I think if Bernie Sanders ever had to do something useful, he would die instantly.

Rookie Mistake: Man Becomes Transgender After Holding Wife’s Purse For More Than 10 Seconds

I will grab my wife’s purse for her to hand it to her, but there is a limit in my head of how long I’ll take possession of it. Sorry, I love you, but I will not stand around holding your purse.

I notice it’s a very different attitude with daughters. I will wear their pink unicorn backpacks for them because they got tired without a second thought.

Tragedy: Texas Man So Focused On Staying Warm He Has Forgotten The Alamo

Anyone remember the big Texas freeze of 2021? I had intermittent power for days with my whole family crowded around our gas fireplace as it was the only source of heat.

Anyway, I always love making fun of my wife (a native Texan) by doing dumb stereotypes of Texans like them always yelling, “Yee-haw!” and this article reflects that.

Is Your Cat Actually Satan? 9 Things To Look For

The problem with The Babylon Bee was that I would write all these great articles but most people would only ever read the headline and look at the picture, and at the end of the day, I’m a writer, not a headline maker.

Also, The Babylon Bee doesn’t get money from shares on social media; they need people to click on the articles. This was my attempt to make an article people would want to click on, and it was fairly successful. Not a great writing feat for it (none of the asides in the article are things I wrote; I wrote just the list).

Sad: This Christian Got Offended By 100 Different Things Today And Nobody Cares

That the whole world comes to a standstill when you’re offended is news to a Christian, as usually people even like offending us. Eventually, you just learn to shrug; would be nice if everyone else learned that about offense. This was me writing about the phenomenon.

Christian Dutifully Prays For Her Enemies, But If God Wants To Smite Them, That’s Okay Too

I know you’re supposed to pray for your enemies, but it’s hard. Sometimes you want the other side of God for your enemies.

Colorado Baker Faces Long Line Of People Outside Waiting To Be Oppressed

It’s so bizarre all the people targeting that one Colorado baker to get “oppressed” by him. I heard he read this article and enjoyed it! That’s me, bringing comfort to the actually oppressed.

Hollywood Screenwriter Unsure How To Inject Woke Politics Into Movie About A Giant Monkey Punching A Giant Lizard

Woke politics popping up in stuff is supremely annoying, so it’s nice to have a few dumb action flicks where it’s almost impossible to put woke into it. I mean, how can you ruin a giant monkey punching a giant lizard? You can’t.

BTW, I have a great idea how to follow up King Kong vs Godzilla: Have the two team up to fight Cthulhu. There’s a free one for you. No, wait, if you use that idea, you have to pay me a million dollars.

That’s it for now. Later we’ll go through more of my best articles from my last year writing for the Bee. Which were your favorite?

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It’s time once again to go over the best of the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee. This time we go from September 2020 to the end of that year.

I’m compiling these by going through my drafts folder for all my Bee articles, and there was one I wanted to include but couldn’t find — “New Voter Registration Waiting Period Makes Sure People Don’t Vote in the Heat of Passion”. That must have not been published. I actually have a decent number of articles I wrote but never got published for one reason or another; maybe later I can do a post of my articles that never got used.

So Close: Biden Gives Speech Denouncing Violins

I don’t have much to say about this one except it’s a funny pun, and I always liked it for its simplicity. Biden’s senility is about the best source of humor for him; he’s not this overflowing well like Trump.

Trump Accused Of Fomenting Violence By Hovering Over Cities In A Hot Air Balloon Chanting’ Fight! Fight! Fight!’

Trump was always getting accused of inciting violence, so of course my mind goes, “What’s the most obvious way to do that that it would be ridiculous to deny that’s what he’s doing?” Why, floating over a city in a balloon chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” of course!

New Constitutional Amendment Grants Winner Of Popular Vote A Free Framed Certificate

Some people make a big deal that Hillary got the popular vote like that’s worth something in an electoral contest. It doesn’t even mean she’d necessarily have won the election if it were to be determined by popular votes since then campaigning and voting patterns would be completely different. Still, I guess she can get something for that. I do like the stinger at the end of this article.

Nation’s Old Fogies Recall The Good Old Days When A Next-Gen Game System Meant A Noticeable Difference In Graphics

Autobiographical. When I was a kid, a next-gen system was a mind-blowing thing as the graphics were unbelievable — doing things the previous system could never imagine. But I honestly can’t tell a screenshot of a PS3 game from a PS5 game. You really have to stare hard and squint to see the next-gen improvements, and my eyes are getting old.

New VidAngel Bible App Removes The Sex And Violence To Make It Appropriate For Christians

Another somewhat autobiographical one. I teach Bible to my kids in the morning, and for a while, I was just reading straight through the old testament until I hit sections where I was like, “This isn’t appropriate for kids.”

“I’ll read you more of God’s word when you’re older.”

Trump Tries To Win Suburban Women By Starring In Series Of Romance Novels

I don’t have much to say on this one other than I think it was a really funny idea for how Trump — being in character — might try to improve his polling with suburban women.

Journalists Switch From Offense To Defense

I love this one; I think it illustrates the modern press pretty well. It’s pretty much true that if you want the press to hold power accountable, you better elect Republicans. Otherwise, they’re the interference you have to work through to find out what’s going on.

Senate Grills Big Tech On How To Get Their Printer Working

I often like writing ones that are basically radio plays, and this is a good example. And it’s always funny to me the Senators grilling tech people when they’re so old and know nothing about it.

Trump Plans To Upstage Biden Inauguration By Jumping The Grand Canyon In A Rocket Car

This includes one of my all-time favorite jokes — Cookie Monster Milwaukee — though a lot of people didn’t get it. My wife, the lovely and talented SarahK, who edited nearly all my articles, got it, but the Bee editors didn’t but left it in anyway.

The joke tells a whole story. The way it’s supposed to work is when Trump references the president who served two non-consecutive terms and says, “Cookie Monster Milwaukee,” you’re supposed to go, “That’s not right. That’s Grover Cleavland.” And then you go, “Oh, he must have just stored the name in his head as ‘Sesame Street Character + Midwest City’ and then got confused.”

For some people, it worked.

Old, Failed Idea Repackaged As New, Progressive Idea

That’s the way it always is. We have a whole century of their economic ideas failing — but even their libertine attitudes on sex are also things tried by collapsed societies. The only real new ideas not fully tried are liberty. That’s why I’m a classical liberal — pushing tried and true radical ideas.

That’s it for now! Next time, into my final year at The Babylon Bee.

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It’s time once again to go over the absolute best from the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee. I was writing every day for the Bee at this point and was apparently really good at it now, as I was trying to focus on only my best articles, but I ended up with 13 covering just June through August of 2020. At this rate, it will take forever to get to the end (December 2021), but whatevs. We’re in no rush.

Trump Claims He’s Developed Faith The Size Of A Peach Pit — Enough To Destroy The Entire Planet

I did like it when I had an actual religious article for the Bee, but it was the political ones that got the most traffic. So it was great when I got one that combined the two. This is how I think Trump would react if he read the Bible verse about faith the size of a mustard seed being enough to move a mountain, and I think I nailed it.

McGruff The Crime Dog Put Down

There was a big anti-police sentiment after George Floyd (which led to the idiotic “defund the police” movement). Here was me taking it to the logical extreme. This article actually made me sad with the line, “Defenders of McGruff argued that McGruff could just be retired and live on a farm working as a P.I. instead of being put down -- or that at least they didn’t need to tell McGruff he was a ‘bad, bad dog’ before the injection, but activists wouldn’t relent, and the euthanization happened as planned.” Poor McGruff; you’re not a bad dog! You’re a good, good dog!

Trump Holds Press Conference To Announce He Got Cool New Calculator Watch

This one actually got published in October 2020, but I apparently wrote it in June and it sat around that long until I publicly badgered the Bee to publish one of my best articles ever finally. Read it and tell me if you agree. It’s just dumb fun with no point, and I love it (but yeah, it was never going to do much traffic).

Report: The Squirrels Are Up To Something

I loved this one. Simple intriguing headline with no political angle. And it was decently popular and became a bit of a running gag for the Bee. Once, when one article got a lot of heat, I convinced them to put out an apology — but apologize for this article instead.

Gavin Newsom Alerted To Illegal Activity By The Sound Of Children’s Laughter

The way the left took out all their anxieties about COVID on kids is pretty reprehensible. They basically settled on as long as no one is having fun and everyone is miserable, then we’re safe — except if you yourself want to go with a few pals to the French Laundry. Anyway, this one didn’t feel that far off from reality, with people in California filling a skate park with sand for unfathomable reasons.

Man On Right Side Of History Surprised To Find He Still Went To Hell

I always really wanted to write for TV and movies, so my favorite posts were the ones that read more like a sketch. This is a good example; I just love the dialog between the protagonist and the sympathetic Satan.

Trump Drives Around Playing Mailbox Baseball In Latest Voter Suppression Scheme

Things got pretty crazy getting near the 2020 election. Apparently, people were convinced Trump was putting locks on mailboxes to somehow stop people from voting against him. I’m not really sure how that would prevent only votes against himself, but don’t try to reason with hysteria.

Good News: Vaccine Shows Promise In Clinical Trials. Bad News: It Also Resurrected Hitler As A Zombie

When working with experimental vaccines, do your best to keep them away from the corpse of Adolf Hitler.

Believer Who Didn’t Grow Up In Christian Culture Knows Nothing About Christianity Except What’s In The Bible

This one was autobiographical. After joining the Bee, they had all these references to Christian culture I didn’t understand (I still can’t quite convince myself DC Talk is something other than a Washington D.C. AM station) and used all these terms to debate Calvinism that were foreign to me. I just know what’s in the Bible, dudes.

Gen Xers Decide To Split Off From Rest Of Society And Form A Utopia That’s All Relaxed And Cool And, You Know, Whatever

Man, if only everyone could be as chill as us Gen Xers. We never had some big challenge in our life like WWII — other than dealing with all the other generations who are terrible.

Op-Ed: Everything Went Downhill After Men Stopped Wearing Hats

I always wanted to do op-eds from a parody conservative, and a cranky old man is who I finally settled on. These were never that popular, but I always enjoyed them.

After Having To Open With ‘Be Not Afraid’ For The Hundredth Time, Angel Wonders If He Should Turn It Down A Notch

This is a running gag with my kids when I’m doing Bible study with them.

“An angel appeared, and guess what he said?”

“BE NOT AFRAID!”

If angels don’t want people to be afraid, maybe turn it down a notch.

Large Turnout At Memorial For Hans Gruber Who Was Thrown From A Building By A Police Officer

People can’t seem to understand that something can be police abuse but that doesn’t mean the guy who was abused was a hero. Here’s my take on that.

That’s it for now. Which was your favorite?

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It’s time once again to go over more of my favorite articles from the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee. And I think I solved my image issue. This time we’re well into the pandemic going from April and May of 2020. That’s a lot of ones I liked from just two months; I guess COVID-19 inspired me.

Liberal Treated With Hydroxychloroquine Hopes He Still Dies Of COVID-19 To Prove Trump Is Stupid

COVID-19 got political pretty quickly, which meant anything Trump said about it had to be dumb and bad. I actually don’t know where in the end things came down on Hydroxychloroquine; it was impossible to know through the haze of partisanship.

Man, I had to Google how to spell that so many times.

Mysterious Masked Man Fights Off Masked Men To Save Masked Man

What a weird world where everyone is wearing masks. This was my attempt to have some fun with it, but I’m glad we’re done with that… unless you’re in one of those places still doing masks (I’m in Texas, which was done with the pandemic by June 2020).

De Blasio Announces System For Reporting Social Distancing Violations: Knowledgeable Actors Reporting Edict Noncompliance (KAREN)

The Karen joke got overplayed pretty quickly, but this was right during its height as the pandemic was a renaissance for Karens. I don’t have much to say, except I was proud to come up with the acronym.

Bill Of Rights Was Hidden Away For Safekeeping During Lockdown And Now No One Can Find It

Way too many people seemed to be under the impression that if there was a “crisis”, the government could do whatever it felt necessary. I’m one of those sticklers who was always going, “Where does it say the government can do that in the Constitution?” But people thought they could just give the government free reign, and whenever the crisis was over, all that power would go away. Unfortunately, there is not a great history of that.

Supreme Court Overturns The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

The thing I most want the Supreme Court to overturn after Roe v Wade. And yes, I will never tire of making fun of The Last Jedi, though in this article I focused on some problems I had with the whole new trilogy.

Engineer Frustrated At Inability To Tell Responsible Citizens From Train Robbers

Again, it’s a weird world when everyone is wearing masks. I just loved this take on this because it was so dumb.

Trump Refuses To Wear Mask At Michigan Plant Since They Got Him The Wrong Ninja Turtle

I really had a lot of fun with Trump, and I feel like in this article, I was pretty accurate on who would be his favorite ninja turtle and who would be his least favorite. And I loved the logic of why they just couldn’t paint the mask. “It would then just be Donatello wearing an orange mask.”

SpaceX Launch Scrubbed After Local Karen Calls The Cops

Again, this was the peak Karen era. This one is notable for being dumb (and I always mean that in the best way) and having the phrase “Cheese it! It’s the po-po!”

Oh No! The Scientist Gavin Newsom Has Been Listening To Is Actually A Bunch Of Raccoons Stuffed In A Lab Coat

And speaking of dumb, nothing dumber than Newsom being tricked by a bunch of raccoons pretending to be scientists to get people inside and not guarding their trashcans. Man, I love the stupid articles like this, but they were rarely the big hits.

Well, that’s it for now. I can’t believe originally I was going to do only one post of my favorites; at this rate, this is going to be like a dozen parts before I reach the end.

Well, what’s your favorite?

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Once again, here are some more of my favorite The Babylon Bee posts of the approximately 666 I wrote. So now we’re getting into March 2020 — the beginning of the pandemic and the start of headlines being dominated by that (until they’re once again dominated by the presidential election).

Substack has been giving me image trouble where I was just screen capturing from The Babylon Bee, so I had to do something different this time and cut it short. I quit being an engineer to be a writer because I don’t want to debug things.

Disney To Introduce New LGBTQ Superhero Whose Superpower Is Turning Invisible In International Markets

It’s been Disney’s trick to add some LGBTQ reference that’s not plot important so they could get some praise in the States while then removing it for international release to places like China. I’m not sure what their new direction will mean for this, but they still love China.

Op-Ed: What If Trump Refuses To Leave Office And Also What If He Grows Fifty Feet Tall And Shoots Lasers Out Of His Eyes?

It was a habit of the left long before the election to just come up with crazy scenarios to worry about instead of a candidate that could beat Trump. Ends up they had nothing to worry about, because they nominated Biden — who probably had the best shot against Trump — and all that happened was whatever January 6th was.

Demonstrating Christlike Forgiveness, Man Watches Next Rian Johnson Movie

Autobiographical.

Trump Cancels 2020 Election Over Coronavirus Concerns

Is voting worth dying over? Maybe. I knew this had the potential to be spread as fake news which is the explanation for that first line.

God To Ignore Quarantine And Continue Being Everywhere

I guess not every post has to be funny. This was right at the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdown when no one knew what exactly was going on or how bad things would be. So it seemed some time for some moral support.

Man Almost Certain There Wasn’t A Book Of Nahum Last Time He Read The Bible

Again, autobiographical. There are these minor prophets who don’t get quoted much, and I’m almost certain sometimes I’ve never even heard of them before.

Disaster: Trump's Been Binge-Watching Netflix And He Just Bought 17 Tigers

Remember Tiger King? It’s always fun to write for Trump. I miss him.

Well, that’s it for now unless I can figure out the Substack image issue that is making these a pain. So which of these is your favorite?

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I was thinking we’d get into COVID jokes in this one since we’re starting in 2020, but I had enough good articles before the pandemic overtook everything that we’ll put that off until the next one. So anyway, here’s is more of the best of the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee, including maybe the very best article ever written for The Babylon Bee.

Dumb AOC Accidentally Strangles Herself Tying Her Shoes (Because She Is So Stupid)

I’ve heard it argued this is The Babylon Bee’s very best article, and I won’t argue against that too vociferously. This article makes me laugh no matter how many times I read it. Because it’s so stupid.

I think the Bee was getting criticized about writing too many “AOC is dumb” articles, so I was like, “I will write the most braindead AOC is dumb article ever. No one will know what to think of it. It will be hilarious.” At this point, I think I was writing an article for the Bee every day, so they gave me a bit more leeway that I’d come up with one that was really out there every once in a while. And luckily, they published this one because it was legendary.

It really confused people. Is it making fun of AOC? Is it making fun of the Bee’s audience because they like AOC is dumb articles so much? I can’t say there was any other major purpose to it, though, than just to write something super dumb because I found that amusing. I mean, it has the phrase “brain-dumb”; I love that.

It became a bit of a honey pot for people trying to prove the Bee is lame because they’d pull this up and say, “See! They don’t even know how to do satire!” And then eventually, they’d figure out it’s a parody of satire and get angry and confused. And that’s just part of the fun.

CNN Unveils New Format Where Hosts Just Watch Fox News And Yell At It

This really does seem like the main job of Brian Stelter and especially Oliver Darcy. I don’t know how to put this delicately, but how do they not swallow a gun? I mean, their whole job is to watch a more popular news station and get angry at it. How do they wake up each morning and face that as their occupation? Are they really that desperate for money? Get a real job doing something useful for someone.

There’s No Such Thing As ‘Cancel Culture’ - Op-Ed By Adolf Hitler

Maybe it’s childish, but I think it’s funny that if I don’t like an argument, I just have Hitler argue it. I actually did this in my final Bee article (I guess we’ll get to that later). Also, I’ve just noticed that any arguments that disagree with me all just sound like things Hitler would say. I guess I’m special that way.

Dad Who Just Sat Down Pretty Sure Kid’s Scream Wasn’t Anything Serious

I have four kids, and they scream a lot. And my first reaction is never, “Oh no! What happened?” It’s more of a sigh and, “What is it now?” Every once in a while, I find out they really did hurt themselves, and then I guess I have to show some sympathy, but even then I’m just annoyed. Stop running into stuff, kids; I just want some peace and quiet.

’80s Movie Night Gets Awkward As Bernie Sanders Keeps Rooting For All The Villains

Yeah, 80s movies have to be tough for Bernie Sanders since all the people who share his economic beliefs get blown up by Rambo with a grenade-tipped arrow. We knew how to deal with Communists in the 80s (the “good old days”). Now, how often do you get to see movies with Communists being killed by the hero? Not often enough.

Disheveled And Covered In $100 Bills, Bernie Sanders Claims He Was Attacked By A Group Of Billionaires

This was combining that Jussie Smollett story with how there are these whiny people constantly complaining about billionaires even though billionaires never actually do anything to anyone. Well, Bernie Sanders decided to fake a hate crime where a bunch of billionaires beat him up for being a meager millionaire. Mean old billionaires.

Bernie Sanders Supporters Defend How He Always Wears A Top Hat And Monocle And Carries Around Bags With Dollar Signs On Them

Hey, this is three Bernie Sanders posts in a row, but for a while, it looked like he was going to win the primary until Biden finally napped his way to the lead. Anyway, I found it hilarious that the people who like to pretend Sanders is some working-class hero acted like it was nothing that he had three houses. “Everyone his age has three houses.” So I tried to contrive something even funnier to be dismissive of, which is Sanders going around in a top hat and monocle carrying around a bag with a dollar sign on it while saying, “Get away from me, poors!”

“That’s not uncommon for someone of his age and income level.”

Report: Mansplaining Down But Woman Confusion Up

Here’s one where I feel like I nailed the snappy headline. I remember this one sat around for a while, but I’m glad it finally got run because it ended up being pretty popular (the Bee even did a video from it). I think the article is really funny too, especially with the confused female scientists looking into the phenomenon and the male scientists too sheepish to help them out. I’m sorry; misogyny is funny. I didn’t make the rules.

That’s it for now! Next time, we’ll finally get into all those pandemic jokes.

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It’s time to continue going over the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee. Here are my favorites I wrote from the end of 2019 — the last of the pre-COVID articles before all our jokes by necessity were about the CDC and masks.

Scientists: Climate Change Killed Us Years Ago And The Trump Presidency Is Some Sort Of ‘Lost’ Final Season Situation

The Trump presidency was always kind of bizarre to me. I saw him as this 90s obnoxious billionaire novelty act, so him becoming president was a bit like if Pee-Wee Herman became president. And, can you imagine just ten years ago pitching a movie idea about Trump becoming president and saying it would be a drama and not a comedy? They’d think you were insane. Anyway, scientists have for decades been giving these dire predictions about how far off destruction from climate change is that we’ve passed the point multiple times now, so this is how I came up with a way to square that circle. And if climate scientists did say we’re all dead and the events lately are some bizarre test before we proceed to the afterlife, I’d give that more consideration than what they usually say.

BTW, the way Lost fumbled its great start and had a terrible finale is just one of those things I’m never going to get over.

Netflix Moves All Comedy Specials To Horror Category

This one keeps being relevant as I wrote it two Dave Chappelle comedy specials ago, his last one getting even more controversy. It’s really like the left is scared of comedy these days, treating it like some dangerous weapon to only be wielded very carefully and with many, many rules in mind. Anyway, I like my writing of the left treating comedy like horror; that was fun. “Oh no! He’s going to punch down! I can’t watch!”

Also, someone should tell Dave Chappelle he doesn’t need to use so many naughty words to be funny.

Nation’s Murderous Psychopaths Undecided On Whether They’ll Follow New Gun Laws

Ah. The fatal flaw of gun control. It’s laws that you’re not allowed to have a gun, but murderers don’t usually follow laws. How do people keep missing that? The fun part of this one was writing the casual conversation of deranged murderers, such as Murdering Steve, discussing the situation. I mean, do you really want to break gun laws and get a fine on top of all those murder charges?

The Bee turned this one into a video a little bit after I left.

Pennywise Now Frightening Children With Presentation On Climate Change

A lot of people find it a virtue to scare children. Right now, they scare kids about COVID and masks, but it was all about how we’re all doomed from climate change in the long, long ago. Since Pennywise feeds on children’s fear, it just seems like a great gig for him, and a lot of adults wouldn’t want to criticize him for it.

“You’re gonna die, Georgie! Just look at this hockey stick graph! Nothing is going to stop the warming! You’re doomed!”

I also love my joke at the end of the older fears that are now forgotten from when I was a kid.

Elizabeth Warren Recalls How She Lost Her Teaching Job When Her Fake Mustache Fell Off Revealing She’s A Woman

I love this one, though I had to look up what it was in reaction to. Apparently, while campaigning in 2019, Warren claimed she lost a teaching job because she was pregnant, but the story was suspect. So I decided to turn that into the dumbest sexism imaginable. And with my sense of humor, the dumber things are, the funnier. “She’s a woman! Jobs are for men!”

Texas Luring Jobs Away From California With Promises Of Electricity

California has some of the highest taxes in the nation and has trouble with providing its citizens with basic utilities — which ain’t a great combo. So no wonder there’s a huge outflux to Texas (though, of course, everyone there is suspicious of Californians).

I got my comeuppance on this article, though, when in February 2021, we had this giant freeze in which the power was out for days. All six in my family ended up sleeping on our big couch in front of our gas fireplace. Fun times.

After Accumulating $999,999,999, Man Stops Earning Money So People Won’t Get Mad At Him

The obsession of people with billionaires has always been bizarre to me. I mean, someone else having a lot of money doesn’t affect me (I wrote a short story, The Demon Capitalism, which I’ll probably later put on this Substack). And while a billion is a lot for an individual to have, the federal government is regularly passing bills spending way more than Elon Musk’s net worth — and that, unlike with billionaires, is our money — so it seems that should get more of our concern. Anyway, here is someone’s quest to avoid having an “evil amount of money.”

Wise Man Who Brought Myrrh Thought They All Agreed On A Spending Limit

While I wrote many articles for the Bee, what I’ve always wanted to do is write TV shows or movies, and so I’d often write articles more like a sketch with a lot of dialogue, as happened with this one. I love the back and force as the guy who brought gold tries to act all innocent about it.

“She seemed to like the myrrh once you explained it to her,” Balthazar said.

“Yes, she was very polite about it,” Caspar responded. “But do you know what you don’t have to explain to people? Gold!”

It ends up Family Guy had a similar sketch, though I don’t think I saw it before this.

Superman Criticized As Unrealistic For Portraying A Journalist As Heroic

It does seem like the main job of journalists these days is to find random people and destroy them, suppress certain information, or lobby to get some people kicked off social media. The heroic Superman doesn’t fit that mold.

Really, the idea of Superman being a journalist is more outdated and dumb than the glasses disguise. In the earliest comics, it was a device so Superman could know what was going on to find out who to save, but that makes no sense now, so they have to portray it like he enjoys being a journalist. But why would a guy who can do stuff — like punch out meteors — waste time writing about other people doing stuff?

Trump: ‘I Have Done More For Christianity Than Jesus’

This may be the most viewed article I wrote, but it didn’t do well at first. Articles making fun of Trump tended not to do great, but it was satire malpractice not to do it. This article was in reaction to Trump saying he did more for religion than any other president, and I just tweaked that a little. But not enough, because how this one took off was the left picked it up thinking it was a serious article, and it got spread far and wide. Despite the charges that the Bee was misinforming people on the right, many of the articles that got the most spread as “fake news” were spread by people on the left.

Anyway, I love just taking a ridiculous position and arguing it seriously, so it was fun to write Trump’s argument that he was more important to Christianity than Jesus in Trump’s voice. I thought I nailed it.

That’s it for now. Next time, we’ll start to see my COVID jokes. Exciting!

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This is the beginning of the Senior Writer era, where basically on the same day I turned 40, I saw that The Babylon Bee now listed me on the website as their “senior” writer. I guess being a Senior Writer really lit a fire under me, because I was going to highlight my favorites from June 2019 until the end of the year, but there were too many and I had to break it up. Whatever. We’re in no rush.

Study: Hate Clicks Are A Major Source Of Web Traffic And Also 'The Princess Bride' Is A Trash Movie That Only Stupid People Like

This is another example of arguing two different things at the same time — seamlessly moving between the two — which I always enjoy. I remember I had pitched this one a while before, but we had a The Princess Bride article recently on the Bee. I tried to come up with some trollish bait to use in place of insulting The Princess Bride, but failed to think of anything that seemed as funny. A lot of people didn’t seem to get the point of this one, though, and argued with the slur against The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies, though; still, for some reason I had fun coming up with ways to insult it.

Ocasio-Cortez Gets Head Stuck In Bucket, Journalists Rush To Explain Why It Was Actually A Genius Move

I remember this one primarily as the later inspiration for the AOC shoelaces article (which I’ll get to eventually). Someone on Twitter or something was going on about how it’s unfair to AOC, but AOC wasn’t even the target of this one. The target was journalists who would twist themselves in knots trying to explain away AOC’s stupid behavior. This was inspired by when she compared migrant detention facilities to concentration camps and the left were split in responding by saying she wasn’t actually comparing them to Nazi concentration camps and that comparing them to Nazi concentration camps was a smart comparison.

Trump Enraged As Immigrant Child Asks Him For More Gruel

This one makes me think of this one tweet that said Trump looks like the villain in the movie where the hero is a dog. The less humorous way to say that is he’s like a villain in a movie or show aimed at little kids — that’s to say he’s more like Team Rocket than the Hitler he often got portrayed as. Well, here was Trump embracing that villainy. I just loved his bragging about how thin the gruel is. “It’s practically water.”

Antifa Shatters Mirror In Attempt To Punch Nazi

I don’t know what to say about this except here is me nailing a short headline. I was never really that good at headlines, so it was nice when I had a good pithy one. But since I really nailed the headline, there just wasn’t much to the article and thus not much to discuss here. Anyway, the fascists anti-fascists are dumb.

New Atheist Chick-fil-A Competitor Only Open On Sundays

The inspiration for this is how often my family has wanted to eat at Chick-fil-A for lunch on Sundays — since we always eat out on Sundays after church. That also made me realize that if an atheist made his only open on Sundays Chick-fil-A competitor, most of the clientele would be churchgoers having lunch after church. Irony.

I love the fedora addition to the logo. I think Ethan Nicolle made this graphic.

Pay Gap Between Men's And Women's Teams Reveals Shocking Truth That People Are Paid To Play Soccer

I just love the baffled to frightened reactions to the shocking idea that somehow soccer in America is making money enough to pay people salaries. There are presented some theories to how soccer is making money which to me all sound more plausible than people enjoying watching soccer.

Know what’s fun, though? That show Ted Lasso.

Trump Proves He's Not A Racist By Showing His Rejection Letter From The KKK

This might be one of my all-time favorites. I just love the logic of it. It’s also a gag on the whole concept of how there’s no way to prove you’re not a racist when you get that charge. Well, Trump figured out how.

Of course, part of the humor of the article is Democrats reacting to this revelation with no one asking the obvious question.

Trump Claims Crowd Was Generously Offering To Mail Omar Some Classical Music With Chant Of 'Send Her Bach!'

I’m a dad. Stupid puns make me laugh. I especially love the one in the article I added about Hillary because it is so so dumb I felt the need to add the apology at the end.

Innovative New Process Converts Vegetables Into Meat By Feeding Them To Cows

I mean, people keep trying to figure out how to make vegetables tasty, and God already gave us the solution. One thing I like in this article is the dumb, jock scientists which I had used in a couple of different articles.

Why Can't We Return To How Peaceful The World Was Before Guns?

This is a historically significant article as it is the first appearance of where the inventor of [x] is named Bob [x]. This is a big reoccurring gag from me in the articles, though I mainly later deployed it out of laziness because I could do this stupid joke instead of googling who the actual CEO is (e.g., Bob Netflix is the founder and CEO of Netflix). I don’t know how many readers latched onto that joke, but it was big to us internally at the Bee.

My other favorite part of this article is the name of all the World Wars like it’s a movie series.

Six-Year-Old Saying, 'Why Don't We Just Give Everything Away For Free?' Surges To Top Of Democratic Polls

My frustration with the left is arguing economics with them is like explaining to a four-year-old why you can’t eat ice cream for breakfast every day. If a child entered the debates and said, “Let’s just make everything free!” another Democratic candidate couldn’t rebut that without angering the loudest portion of the online left.

Prodigal Son Kicked Back Out After Old Tweets Surface

This is perhaps one of my best articles considering The Babylon Bee brand. It’s a great combination of a Biblical story and modern political reference. Despite the church humor being what made The Babylon Bee unique, it was always hard to get much momentum with that online (shares, retweets, etc.). It was always the political stuff that took off, but when you can relate modern political issues back to the Bible, sweet.

Well, that’s enough for now. I’ll later have much more Bee greatness to share before I assume I eventually became bloated, uninspired, and burnt-out.

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Let’s continue our adventure into my favorite The Babylon Bee articles from the approximately 666 articles I wrote. To keep this manageable, today let’s just cover from the beginning of 2019 until June. I was still writing usually about three articles a week at this point, and they pretty never mentioned viruses. Simpler days.

Opinion: Trump Is Doing The Right Thing, But He’s Doing It As Trump, Which Means It’s Still Bad

There were a lot of things you could legitimately criticize Trump about, but it still seemed like 90% or more of criticisms of Trump were still stupid, hypocritical, partisan nonsense. Nonsense criticisms are just too shiny for a partisan to not focus on.

Again, I miss Trump. He was fun for satire if you knew how to not be tired about it.

Anti-Wall Extremist The Kool-Aid Man Leads Campaign Against Trump

This is one of my favorite examples of the political articles because it’s just so stupid and you can’t really tell who it’s making fun of. Plus, I just love Trump claiming his steel slat wall is too strong for the Kool-Aid Man to bust through. “He will shatter and die. SHATTER AND DIE!”

Least Masculine Society In Human History Decides Masculinity Is A Growing Threat

This is one of those articles I kept wanting to write and then realized I already wrote it because it’s just a recurring thing these days. People are really down on masculinity all the time now, so they should be happy we don’t have much of it left. And the final paragraph with Duke Miller the Marine sergeant is one of my favorite things.

Being Outraged By Stupid Nonsense Replaces Baseball As National Pastime

This one just seems true. I mean, how many people follow baseball these days versus how many people scream about people online about some issue they’re going to forget by next week? I can’t even name a current professional baseball player right now, but I know a lot of legendary internet trolls.

Confronted With Details Of Green New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez Claims Not To Speak English

I kind of got the Bee in a little trouble with this one as we didn’t think of any potentially racist implications. This was when AOC put out here New Green Deal FAQ and it had so much stupid stuff in it like guarantees of money for people who just don’t feel like working and made it obvious she didn’t take climate change seriously either. She kept avoiding questions on it, so I came up with this idea of her dodging things by pretending she doesn’t know English which was funny to me because she talks like a valley girl. In the article, though, the language she speaks is Huttese.

500-Year-Old Socialist Key To Youth Vote In 2020

The love of college kids for Bernie Sanders is kind of baffling. The youth are just excited for really old, really failed ideas. What was fun about this one, though, was it was an excuse to cram an article with every old joke I could think of.

Trump Attempts To Discredit Damning Testimony Of Detective Pikachu

This was a pretty niche one that I don’t think did very well, but I loved it. As we all know, the only thing Pokemon can say is their own name which was fun to play with and led to one of my favorite lines when Trump is refuting the testimony against him: “Everything he says is a lie, from ‘pika’ to ‘chu.’”

Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support From Bill To Save The Earth After Learning That’s Where Israel Is

This one I just loved as an illustration of the cut off your nose to spite your face logic of antisemitism. The Bee got a lot of criticism for how much they went after the Squad, but they’re all pretty terrible and I don’t think we went after them enough.

Stopped Clock Named CNN's Most Accurate Reporter

I don’t know what to say about this other than it’s just a solid burn. CNN has been a common punching bag for The Babylon Bee (no one thinks it’s worth it going after MSNBC). This article also demonstrates my common habit where, to not feel like a partisan hack, if I had an article going after the left, I’d throw in an end paragraph with a joke about Trump.

Constitutional Crisis: Trump Is Visiting The National Archives While Eating A Meatball Sub

I love this one, but there’s not much to explain. It’s a Constitutional crisis, and the crisis is that Trump is about to get marina sauce all over the Constitution. That’s funny. I think this is also another Ethan Nicolle photoshop.

The Lengths People Go To In Order To Avoid Spoilers: This Guy Refused To Finish Writing The Books His Favorite TV Show Was Based On So He Could Be Surprised

George R.R. Martin is particularly frustrating to me. I don’t know if you all know this, but I’m a part-time writer. I get up at 5 AM every morning and write before my regular job. And that time is divided between writing my novels and other regular writing (that used to be The Babylon Bee but is now this Substack). Despite only having a couple of hours each day to divide between multiple writing projects, I can still write a novel in about a year. So I’m just baffled what exactly does George R.R. Martin, as a full-time writer, does all day. If I had nothing to do but write all day, I’d put out multiple novels per year, but his are now taking more than a decade. Well, if you ever all make me a super-famous writer one day, I’ll be much more responsible with that power.

After Being Told To Go Find His Shoes, Local Boy Miraculously Struck With Blindness Like Saul On The Road To Damascus

I’m one of those who first became a fan of the Bee because of its inside baseball church humor you couldn’t find anywhere else, but I’m bad at coming up with those articles. I mainly wrote political articles because it’s what my mind tended to come up with. Still, I was happy when I came up with the occasional religious or family article, which this is sort of a combination of the two. Ah, kids, they are so frustrating.

That’s all the wistful looking back for now. We’ll cover the rest of my favorite articles I wrote from 2019 — the pre-COVID era — sometime later.

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Huh.

Few caveats: Not all those articles got published (rejected The Babylon Bee articles might be a good post for another day), and I think that count included a couple folders. But anyway, I wrote somewhere in the vicinity of six hundred and sixty-six articles.

And that’s way more than I was thinking. I thought I’d do a quick scan for my favorite articles, but then I had this big list of ones I wanted to highlight and I hadn’t even gone a fraction of the way through them all. So instead, I’m going to do this in parts. Today, I’m going to talk about just the ones I did in 2018 — so my first six months or so.

I should note that in the beginning, I was writing maybe two or three articles for the Bee a week. I was also writing anonymously at the time — I didn’t make it public I was writing for the Bee. I’ve always worried about getting too big a head, and I thought it would be neat to see a reaction to my writing without my name attached.

Anyway, here are my favorites from 2018:

Having Solved All Earthly Problems, Trump Announces Space Force

This is my very first article I wrote for the Bee. I don’t have much to say except that I kept finding Space Force an endlessly amusing topic. It makes me laugh every time I hear the name, but at the same time it’s like super cool. I want to be able to tell my kids things like, “Hey! No whining. They don’t let whiners in Space Force.”

Senate Democrats Demand Supreme Court Nominee Not Be Unduly Influenced By U.S. Constitution

This one is notable in that I think it was my first one that ended up on Snopes as a meme got distributed using the fake quotes from it. Fake news!

Report: Millennials More Open To Socialism, Touching Hot Stove, Sticking Face In Sack Full Of Badgers

I just find it hilarious when you argue disparate things at once, seamlessly moving between them (like this classic clip from Community). Also, who can’t love the phrase “democratic sticking your face in a sack full of badgers”?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Encased In Carbonite Until Next Court Session

Classic Frank and Ethan mess-around! This was my first article that got an Ethan Nicolle photoshop. Ethan usually took a long time at his photoshops as he has no concept of “good enough.” Later, they brought on AJ Powers as Ethan got too busy with other projects to be on call for photoshops. Also, Kyle Mann got pretty good at them himself. Still, nothing beats an elaborate Ethan Nicolle fabricated image.

Study: Average American Now Complains More In A Week Than People Living Through The Black Plague Did Their Entire Lives

This is just one of those that I kept wanting to re-pitch as it always seemed so relevant. We have the most advantages of anyone in all of human history, but man do we whine a lot.

In Major Social Faux Pas, Trump Body Slams Queen Of England

Another Frank headline with Ethan photoshop. I just loved the portrayal as of body slamming the queen as this faux pas/cultural misunderstanding. This is also a good example of my ideal political article where it’s just dumb with no clear political point.

Murder Rate Finally Plateaus In Chicago As Even Murderers Too Scared To Go Out At Night

This is just me being logical. At a certain murder rate, murderers would have to be murdering each other causing murder to plateau. I also love the frank discussion of the problem by frustrated murderers who now fear for their lives and the phrase “regular, salt-of-the-earth murderers.”

Trump Secures Unlimited Chips And Salsa In Mexican Trade Deal

This one did really well, and I think it shows the ideal for a Trump article: It’s unclear if you’re laughing with him or at him.

Trump Wins 44th Consecutive 'Employee Of The Month' Award At White House

Trump thought very highly of himself, and it was a fun thing to play with (man, I miss him). What I love in this one is the specifics of his competition for the award with other White House employees like the janitor and tour guide.

The Bee Explains: Common Racist Hand Signals

I don’t remember how many of these I wrote, but I include because it has one of my all time favorite jokes which is explaining why holding up all five fingers is racist because “five being approximately the number of letters in Hitler.”

Tomahawk-Wielding Elizabeth Warren Vows To Take Land Back From The Pale Faces

It almost feels tired making an Elizabeth Warren pretends to be Native American joke, but this was right after she thought she vindicated herself by revealing she was 1/1024th Native American. This leads to my favorite part of the article: the math for a “literal microaggression.”

Opinion: We Tried Republican, Then We Tried Democrat, Then We Tried Republican, Then We Tried Democrat, Then We Tried Republican. Is It Time We Try Democrat?

Who doesn’t love the two-party system? Now, though, I think the opinion is “maybe it’s time to try Republican and see if that fixes everything.”

Study: 60% Of Parenting Is Locating Children's Shoes

This one is close to my heart because I have a son who is especially creative at losing his shoes. Once when we were trying to leave grandma’s, we could only find one of his shoes and spent an hour trying to find the other. Ends up, the second shoe was in our car. The day before, he had walked in with one shoe and apparently not noticed. That’s out-of-the-box thinking.

Christians Face Clear Choice Between Party That's A Hypocritical Mockery Of Their Faith And One That's Openly Hostile To It

This does not seem to be changing anytime soon. I also like this one because I finally fit in a joke I had for a while which is Trump referring to the second epistle to the Corinthians as “Corinthians 2: Corinthians Harder.”

Broward County Brings In Expert Consultant To Speed Up Ballot Count

This is one of my all-time top articles based on shares and views… even though I can’t remember what the incident is this is parodying. Such is the nature of these things. This is also a good example of a simple but effective Kyle Mann photoshop. My only regret in this is I think I misspelled the Count’s laugh which should be “ah ah ah” not “eh eh eh.”

Hallmark Christmas Movie Hailed As 'Trite, Predictable'

I don’t think it’s possible for a man not to make fun of these Christmas movies our wives enjoy. I’ve thought of what interesting things I would do if I were tasked to write the script of a Christmas romance, but then I realized you can’t do anything interesting or the audience would protest.

If I can criticize one thing here, the font on that movie title is all wrong.

Wow. That’s a lot for the first six months… and I didn’t even write as often then. It’s going to take a while to get through all my favorites. But whatever; we’re in no rush.

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