Readers Digest thread

I always used to like the Drama in Real Life feature, which would be entitled something along the lines of "Help! My baby's down a well!"

"The government has a program that directs a portion of your paycheck to a national account that pays old people an income using your salary. THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS!"

"One day I was picking up my child from daycare when I noticed some of the workers looking at me a bit funny. As I led my child to the parking lot, the primary daycare worker stopped me and said, 'Were you aware that your penis was hanging out of your pants?' Boy was I surprised!"
- D. Greenway, Camdenton, Mo.

"Darren and June Pillsbury [not their real names] were planning on a relaxing vacation in Puerto Rico. Little did they know that Darren's unusual habit of wearing nylon stockings would cause a very unfortunate incident late one night..."

i once submitted an anecdote to "life in these united states." i don't remember the specifics, but it involved a bit of old people humor i overheard when attending a NARFE (national associaton of retired federal employees) buffet lunch in ripley, miss., with my grandfather. i was in 6th or 7th grade. i thought that shit would be right up their alley, but i never heard back from the digest. i was hoping for that $300!

just checked their web site to see what the going payscale is for submitted jokes and anecdotes. they have obviously not adjusted for cost of living increases. it's the same as 20 years ago. $100-300.

I had big plans as a kid to get a joke in there.

Also I understand now that it's partly just the sorting mechanism -- narrower topic, less submissions, less good submissions -- but the dismal quality of "Humor in Uniform" helped cement my notion that the armed forces were exactly as humorless as they seemed.

Hahahaha I am going to send "Humor in Uniform" a Lynndie Endland JPEG.

In this busy world we live in today, what could be better than having the good folks at Reader's Digest do all your reading for you, by finding just those articles you need to read in order to be the well-rounded and well-informed person God wants you to be, and then presenting them all in one, easy-to-read format? They even remove all the difficult words so you can assimilate digest them more easily. So, subscribe to Reader's Digest today. It's pre-chewed!

I remember my grandparents had a subscription and I loved to look at the "20 vocabulary words" or whatever that section was. I was hopelessly geeky, even in grade school.

I was always intrigued by how even the Jokes paid big $$$. Nothing interesting may ever happen to qualify me for "Life In These United States", but I held on to hope that I could discover a decent enough joke somewhere.