My fantasy funeral is better than yours

By Sarah Yule

So here’s the deal. You want to pretend that you’re invincible. I get it, we’ve all been there. But
you need to get with the times. 2020 has ushered in a pandemic, and with it came an elevated
awareness of our mortality. And if you’re anything like me, Covid-19 isn’t the only thing
tarnishing your perfect picture of human health; there’s an empty package of Oreo cookies on
your desk that is doing that just as well. (Pro tip: If you wear a mask in your own home, you
can’t eat oreos with nearly as much efficiency. It’s basically free weight loss, so mask up!) So
now is the time to sack up and start planning your funeral!
Think about it, nobody knows you like you do, and the funeral is basically the only party that you
are guaranteed an invitation to. With BonBon cracking down on large gatherings, your
post-mortem plans are all you have left.
I got my start in the fantasy funeral biz when I was seven. This sounds odd, I am aware. But
mind you, I was a strange kid with even stranger parents. My dad and I would pass the time on
road trips imagining our dream memorial services. (sidenote: Hello father, I hope you opened
the link that I sent you to this article. Tuition well spent, don’t you think?) Here are some of the
highlights of what we came up with over the years.

1. My service will take place in a funeral home that doubles as a crematorium. This is
   crucial.
2. As soon as I perish, I have notified all who are close to me to begin preparing a set.
   About 10 minutes in length, each friend and family member will stand at the front of the
   room and address the large portrait of me, which will be propped up ahead of time. They
   will make jokes about me with no holds barred: nose jokes, fat jokes, mentioning that
   one time I was caught in the act of trying to stuff a family-sized container of uncooked
   pillsbury halloween cookies under my bed sheet to “save for later”, all the good stuff.
   Nothing will be off-limits at the Grand Roast of Sarah Yule, and I have already warned
   those speaking that I will haunt them for eternity if they go easy on me. They will get the
   crowd going with increasing numbers of knee-slappers.
3. By the time friend number 3 takes the stage, there won’t be a dry pair of pants in the
   viewing room. And if you are peeing, you probably aren’t crying, and this is the plan. It’s
   a celebration of life, after all!
4. At the end of the roast, a creepy older gentleman will materialize from the back room.
   More specifically, the man will be carrying me in an urn, fresh with my ashes, which were
   being prepared during the first half of the service. At this point, the man will take the
   microphone and announce that I was being roasted, while I was being roasted. This is
   why it is of the utmost importance that I am memorialized in a space that includes a
   crematory. If you thought the crowd was laughing before, now they’re really going.
   People are wheezing, falling to the ground. A few might even die from the lack of
   oxygen brought on by such a whacky turn of events; I mean COME ON, it’s a double
   roast. You don’t see those everyday.
5. After Party at Denny’s, need I say more?
6. As guests walk out of Denny’s, they will receive a t-shirt that reads: “Sarah died, and all I
   got was this lousy t-shirt”. Very much tourist, very “I survived the Bermuda Triangle.”
   With these amazing plans for my funeral, it is hard not to look forward to doom. Fearing death?
   Plan your funeral! You’ll barely be able to wait.

The Raddest New Hobbies You Should Try This Week

By – Sonya Acharya, Tyler Sikov, Abby Stoudt, and Savannah Teman

1. Play the guitar 
2. Read self insert One Direction fanfiction (reader × all members) 
3. Watch The Great British Bake-Off and try not to cry this time 
4. Kiss the homies in your close friend circle goodnight 

5. Learn to juggle 

6. Meet juggalos… no, gigolos 

7. Realize you can’t leave the house to meet gigolos 

8. Resize your fucking fonts 
9. Light fires :) 
10. Learn Morse code to communicate with the neighbors 
11. Try not to confuse jacuzzi and yakuza, (you’d be in hot water with the Japanese mafia) 
12. Stress-bake bread and perfect your sourdough until it’s maybe near good enough for Paul Hollywood to possibly shake your hand (just not right now) 
13. Kick the party rockers out of your house tonight, no matter how small the group 
14. Wash! Your hands! Correctly! 
15. Watch your friends play Animal Crossing from your Switch™ friend’s list 
16. Realize that the two bros in the hot tub were five feet apart not cuz they were not gay, but because they were practicing social distancing 
17. Organize your collection of toilet paper 
18. Pretend to try to make a Roots bowl in your house because you miss Pitt :( 
19. Not the 20th thing
20. Cut your own bangs

The Breadth of Life

By Eric Brinling

You awake with a start. You were dreaming again, the same dream as always: you were meat, and everybody around you was also meat. This time, you made it all the way to college, even if you weren’t doing very well. But now you are awake, and you have to face reality. You aren’t meat at all. You’re bread.

You stretch out your loafy limbs and get bready for another day at the University of Pitaburg. You check your bread phone (which is a phone made of bread), to find that you overslept your alarm. You albready missed your first class (unless you wanted to be at yeast an hour late), and you would have to run to your second one. Serves you right for dreaming about being meat agrain! You don’t have time for breadfast, or for breadshing your teeth (which, it should be noted, are made of bread). You put on a dirty crust and rush out the door, breadpack in hand.

Your class is nearby, in the Cathedral of Loafing, the tallest edoughcational stack of bread in the western breadisphere. You arrive just in time to hear your breadfessor begin a particularly interesting lecture on the Hapsbread dynasty. After many centuries of intermarrying with the various royal families of Europe, you muse, it’s no wonder that they became inbread.

After class, you find yourself hungrain. You suddenly remember that you forgot to eat breadfast, but now it’s too late: it’s already loaf past twelve. You decide to roll right to lunch, so you go to your favorite spot on campus: Panera Bread.

When you arrive, your bread heart (which is a heart made of bread) skips a breadt. It’s her, the wobread you have been admiring from afar for months. You take a deep breadth. You can do this. You’re good looking. You’re funny. You’re bready to ask her out.

“I have a breadfriend,” she says, before you even get the chance to speak.

“Whaaat,” you say, trying to play it off, “you’re banana bread…”

But alas, she was having naan of it. You slink off in shame, and order your bread sandwich (which is a sandwich made of bread) for only a doughler and a few pumpernickels. You think back to your dream. You were meat then, and if you were meat now, this wouldn’t have happened. Meat doesn’t have feelings. Meat is lifeless and cold, until you grill it, at which point it becomes lifeless and hot. But meat cannot be hurt, meat cannot be rejected by more beautiful meat.

In your hubris, you had forgotten: bread is pain.