"Hey, I sent you something three weeks ago and you never published it! Why not?"

There are several reasons why I might not use your material right away, or at all:

• First of all, I may very well have used it already. Internet humor tends to make the rounds, die out, and then get resurrected some months or years later and make the rounds again. I try not to use stuff more than once except in unusual cases. See Editorial Policy for more information.


• Secondly, sometimes we have a series of related pieces - holiday items, "gender wars" pieces around Valentine's Day, regional humor, parrot jokes, etc. So I may really like your submission but be saving it for when we are doing the appropriate series.


• Thirdly, I may not think your piece is appropriate for Humour-Net. Again, see Editorial Policy for more information. Please do go ahead and send it though. You will not offend me! (Well, probably not.) I really enjoy a lot of stuff that I don't necessarily send out.

"I thought you were a guy called Vince Sabio…?"

• No, I'm not Vince; sorry for any confusion! In fact, I had not heard of Vince (nor had he heard of me) until it came to his attention that I was doing an email newsletter called HumourNet. This was a problem for him because he was, too - and his had been around longer and had many more subscribers. We agreed that I would add a hyphen to mine, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, Vince's HumourNet has not been active for a while, as he's been busy, but you can see his archives on his site.

"I don't like all that commentary at the beginning of the Humour-Net emails. I'd rather just go right to the humor."

• That's quite understandable. Generally I will, at a minimum, introduce the piece, say who sent it to me or where I found it, and give an attribution of authorship if at all possible. Often I will include comments from readers about a recent Humour-Net. You can always skip over this material by searching (try Ctrl-F) for "====" (several equal signs in a row - I usually try to use 10 of them); that should take you right to the beginning of today's item.

"How many countries are represented on the Humour-Net mailing list?"

• Last time I counted, it was an even 50 (not including the .mil addresses, meaning people in the military who might be stationed anywhere). The countries are Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue (aka "The Rock of Polynesia!"), Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vietnam, Venezuela and of course the United States. What with Hotmail addresses and all that, it's entirely possible that I have not included your country; if that's the case, please drop me a line and let me know.

"I've tried to subscribe/unsubscribe/change my subscription address several times. It's not working!"

• The best thing is just to write me an email, and tell me any email address(es) that might be on my list and what you want to do. I can generally do what needs to be done unassisted, but if there is something exotic going on, I can get some help from our gracious host, Carl Wagar.