From: “Sarah M. Balcomb”
Subject: The Whitney Saga, Part 8.654
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Things may have gotten a little out of hand.
I was going to send the following message to Whitney Pastorek in response to her very nice letter of 18 May:
“Whitney, I’m glad you’re finally taking an interest in your health. Bryce Newhart does not work in the Broadway-Lafayette area, although sometimes he flies down from midtown for a slice of Two Boots (actually this is a lie; Bryce hates Two Boots and their cardboard-flavored crust). With or without Bryce, I’d love to take you out to lunch, show you the ropes of healthy living. I’d set a date for us to meet, but since McSweeney’s posts these letters so infrequently (that’s right M.R., I’m talking to you man), it would be difficult to coordinate. So . from now on, every day at lunchtime, I will stand on the northwest corner of Houston and Broadway and wait for you. I will be the thin young woman with the healthy inner glow. My nose is a large carrot, so you can’t miss me. We can start your new diet with my nose. You’ll chew on it while I explain the differences between good and bad cholesterol.”
That’s a nice note, isn’t it? I’m doing my part to keep the peace, right?
But then I caught wind of her recent comments on Salon (thanks for the heads-up, Sothoth). It appears that Ms. Pastorek has been talking shit about me, as well as the innocent Bryce Newhart, behind our backs. Nasty, spiteful, petty words she wrote about us, saying she could kick my ass in any sport (ho ho, did you consider Blood Sport, hee hee, I got you there Whitney). Not sure where Chubs got her information, but she seems to think that Bryce and I are aspiring playwrights and she made a plea to her “pals” at Salon to compose a play about our “untimely death/dismemberment, ideally at the hand of something pathetically weak and scrawny, like a puppy or a kitten or Rick Lazio. AND, one last thing: Me, standing over their bent and broken bodies, cheeseburger in hand, laughing maniacally.”
So I decided to take up the challenge myself, using her formula.
BUSHWHACKED, A Play for McSweeney’s by Sarah M. Balcomb
Characters:
SMB
BCN
Puppy
Kitten
Rick Lazio
Whitney Pastorak
Setting: Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a beautiful Saturday afternoon in early June. SMB and BCN are taking a break from their busy playwriting schedules for a nice, romantic walk. SMB chain-smokes Parliament Lights. BCN is complaining about the second-hand smoke. Snot drips down his face because he forgot to bring his usual wad of neatly folded Scott tissue. SMB rips a sleeve off her T-shirt for blowing purposes. Although touched by this gesture, BCN refuses it. SMB slips the sleeve over her torso as a belt. They enter a trail leading into the woods.
SMB: What a day.
BCN: Whatever, smoky. What the hell happened to quitting?
SMB: I’m no quitter. But look, a puppy and a kitten. They’re fighting.
BCN: Wha?
SMB: (gestures with cigarette) There, beneath that tree. Aren’t they cute?
BCN: They’re trying to kill each other.
SMB: No, just playing.
BCN: The kitten is going for the puppy’s jugular. Oh my god, I’ve never seen so much blood!
SMB: Should we do something? The poor puppy is defenseless.
BCN: Survival of the fittest, sweetie.
SMB: Shit, I wanted to say that line.
BCN: Well, you gave it to me. Sorry.
SMB: (pulls out another cigarette, pauses, forgets to light it) You say something?
BCN: Forget it. I think the puppy and the kitty are dead now.
SMB: Yeah, guess so. Hey, isn’t that Rick Lazio over there?
BCN: Who dat?
SMB: Some scumbag. Look, here he comes.
BCN: Is that a gun in the scumbag’s hand?
(As Lazio approaches, BCN trips him.)
SMB: Good one, lover. You saved us.
(SMB and BCN embrace.)
SMB: Lazio is dead now, I think. You better hit his head with that sharp rock to make sure.
BCN: OK. Wait. That gun in his hand is a book of matches. He just wanted to light your cigarette.
SMB: (grabs matches, lights cigarette) I hope we can prove it was self-defense.Uh oh, something moving in the bushes!
BCN: It’s a fat lady, huh?
SMB: She’s not fat, just not heroin chic thin like me.
BCN: You’re not heroin chic, you’re a junkie.
SMB: Oh yeah.
(Whitney Pastorek leaps out from behind a bush, looking svelte and athletic as always in her capri pants. They didn’t make her manager of the Gap for nothing. In one hand she holds a Panasonic video camera; in the other, a bucket of KFC.)
Whitney: (laughing manically) Ha, you murdered Lazio. You’re gonna hang for this.
SMB: (trips, stubs toe) Fuck, that hurt.
BCN: I told you not to wear flip-flops. That’s gonna need a couple stitches.
(Sirens are heard in the distance. The cops arrive and handcuff BCN and SMB. They seem to enjoy this. Whitney laughs her way back to Wendy’s for a bucket of burgers. SMB and BCN shake the murder rap on a technicality. Later, on another walk in Prospect Park, they’re killed by a stray kite.)
FINIS.
Whitney, I hope you enjoyed this. My offer for lunch still stands.
Kindly,
Sarah M. Balcomb
(with help from Snot-Nose)
From: “luke o’neil”
Subject: leoneil47
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
In response to all the letters of concern, an update on my whereabouts:
I wrote a little while ago about losing my job at a silly web site. Well, since then, I have given up my apartment in new york, turned my back on all the friends i had made there, and have decided to move home with my parents in kingston, ma. I am there now. It is raining out. I have no car. I am 23 years old. I have asked my sister amanda, who is a junior in high school, to give me a ride to the gym, where i will ride a bike and read time magazine (if they have it.) i might also try to finish mrs dalloway — but you know how that one goes down when you’re sweating.
I am allergic to the cat at home that i grew up with, but my bedroom is at least 3 times as big as the one in new york.
This just sort of peters out now…
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2000
From: Jeff Martin
Subject: Ridding the world of stupid people
Dear McSweeney’s,
OK, so here’s how it works:
You get a fairly large cylinder and cut a hole in it big enough for somebody to stick their head through. On the inside of the cylinder you set up a guillotine blade arrangement.
On the outside of the hole you set up a coin slot, and make up a nice little sign to go above it, “Get your head cut off -$1.00”
Dimwit inserts coin, followed by not so bright head. CHOP!
Not only do you rid the world of those who are common sense challenged, but also make a tidy bit of coin on the side. It is a win-win situation. I figure we test pilot them in a few of the larger urban centres first to see what kind of success we have.
Franchises, anyone?
Jeff Martin
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000
From: benjamin gilton
Subject: Letter to the Editors, Part 1 of (1,253)
Dear McSweeney’s,
First of all, let me describe to you a typical Monday morning at my place of employment: I’m sitting in the upstairs office of a machine shop that manufactures wooden jewelry boxes and other desirable trinkets made from exotic trees; i.e. pirate’s treasure chests, peg-leg components, hand-carved parrots, and barrels primarily used for the containment of black, explosive, cannon powder.
The saws and sanders are mighty downstairs. Their aggressive noise rattles a thin glass window separating me from a heavy gray-brown cloud of sawdust. Earplugs and eye-goggles come highly recommended, although I’ve recently begun to abstain from all generally accepted precautions.
There’s a skylight above my desk that allows sunrays to enter, warming the top of my head and practically blinding any view of the computer screen. I’m drinking out of a white coffee mug that boasts: Playwright’s Kitchen Ensemble.
Not that I’ve ever written an entire play, but I did pay a woman to escort me to the Theater one time, when my girlfriend was out of town on business. This beautiful stand-in’s raffle ticket number was chosen during the intermission lottery, whereas she won a matching T-shirt/coffee mug set. She gave both prizes to me because, at the time, she fancied herself to be an aspiring bikini model, plus she didn’t drink coffee all that often. She saw little use for either a T-shirt or a coffee mug. However, from the preliminary interview with her service, she knew that I occasionally wore T-shirts and drank coffee so frequently that the glands of my armpits often became clogged.
The escort, with limited use for such dismal prizes, passed them right along to me. Which I thought was only practical, after all, was it not I who was behaving mischievously by entering into a ‘date’ with an escort? Was it not I who was taking the highest degree of risk of being discovered and discarded by a suspicious girlfriend? (I ended up moving in to the escort’s apartment for the next 2 * years; mostly because my ex-girlfriend was having me trailed that night by a sinister-looking man in a black hat who took excellent notes and snapshots; not to mention the fact that the escort and I had far more compatible fetishes.)
So I drink hot coffee from this mug, and reflect fondly upon days past. I stir powdered creamer and grains of sugar, but the creamer doesn’t dissolve well. Clumps of white still travel in circles around the rim of the mug. Tastes rather pasty. And I’m considering writing a three-act play about a humiliating love affair with a beautiful woman plus two enormous false breasts, which had originally accepted a personal check in order to accompany me into the Theater one fateful eve.
So I guess what I’m trying to get at this morning (through thick, thick metaphor) is that I’m reading Timothy McSweeney’s web page. I have no internal conflict about doing so, even while on the job, because my boss is a late sleeper and my job description is relatively undefined. Let me say this much about your publication: “I like it fairly well (except for a few pieces that I like far less)”. As literary magazines go, you folks are right on the money!
Question: does getting published in a literary magazine (sometimes loosely termed as a “rag”) get anything accomplished besides having one’s material read by a slew of other bookish, disillusioned, angry, tired, desperate writer’s (with and without a spark of talent/potential); those of whom are reading—not for artistic style, credible context, or simply for pleasure, but rather skimming—to decipher whether or not this publication would feature his/her “voice”? Whatever the case may be, I like to believe Timothy McSweeney’s to be a publication that brings the academic together with the garbage man, the scholar together with the gas station attendant, so that we may embrace our subtle differences; that we may understand each other’s views; that we can have fun with these words that occasionally form decent sentences.
Benjamin J. Gilton
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000
Subject: The Skateboard Chronicles, Parts III, IV, V
Dear McSweeney’s,
The continuing story of a girl gone to the dogs…
PART III: I can ride all the way to Dunkin’ Donuts! And all the way back! Carrying a full cup of coff- oh, crap.
PART IV: Convinced I am “doing it wrong,” I begin to desperately search the streets for skateboarders with whom to consult. But like a good Taco Bell, there’s never a skateboarder around when you need one. So I begin to stop vaguely scruffy-looking individuals in the street and ask them if they’re skaters and can they help me. Responses range from flat-out avoidance to offers of private lessons. Frightened, I scamper away.
PART V: “Hmmm. I wonder if I can jump this curb” = first attempt at broken wrist. Attempt unsuccessful.
That’s all.
whitney pastorek
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: HAVE YOU SEEN LUCKY?
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s-
My job is gone. Not just my tending to it, but the actual job, along with the actual company, is now gone. I have purchased the following items in order to feel now somewhat prepared for these times:
-14 bottles of popular iced coffee drink.
-Wide assortment (18 count) of top selling nutrition bars.
-Two black shirts that seem to say “For the last year or so, I’ve worn tee-shirts…but since I am meeting you, I have dressed in something a little more special than a tee-shirt, but not so special that if our meeting yields zero personal gain I am left feeling like I sold myself in a very desperate way that will leave a weird mark on me.”
-Tube of ground sausage.
-Individually wrapped hand towels (Anti-bacterial.)
-National Geographic magazines. Used for maintaining perspective. (“Look at him. He wears a mask on his head to look like a bird. He isn’t embarrassed. He hunts. He is sustained. He does not mope.” And so on…)
Now there will be a new job of some kind. One I can’t even picture, even though it will most likely end up being very, very similar to all of the others I’ve had. I think. One friend asked if I would be interested in going to Hong Kong to hang out with a man named Dr. Ho in order to write a story about him, but something tells me I won’t be going to Hong Kong to write about a man named Dr. anything. Another friend/colleague said his magazine would keep me in mind for “Short humorous pieces” and the note he sent to me was short, and extremely funny…which makes me assume he’s got it covered.
My days are open if anybody wants to drop by for iced coffee and a nutrition bar-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York.
From: “Marissa D. Madrigal”
Subject: Barbara
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Occasionally, the receptionist at my office will engage me in conversation. Our receptionist, a dear and sweet grandmotherly type, typically wears a long string of pearls, avonesque earrings, and giant heavy blue glasses that go all the way up to the edge of her bangs and all the way across her face from hairline to hairline. This particular conversation occurred as I was reading your publication.
“Damn it” (her)
“What?” (me)
“There’s no money in the postage machine, I checked, there were only two dollars left. I asked Stacey. She knows I do the mail at four.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s past four. So I asked Sam and Sam said he thought she had already done it. But I told him, no, she hadn’t. I just want to make sure I get out of here on time. My soap is getting reaallly good. I can’t wait to get home and eat my dinner and watch my soap. It’s getting really exciting. Somebody got shot.” (pause)
“Really”
“Yes. and no one knows who did it. AND someone is pregnant, by the killer, even though no one knows who he is.”
“Hmmm…”
“I have some old People magazine’s in the front. You can take some home if you want. No Sports Illustrated. I gave those to Jeff and Warren.”
“No, my mom gave me her People”
“Your mom is so nice. Every time she calls she says, ‘ooh this is Elizabeth is Marissa available?’ She sounds so professional. Michelle’s Brian always says,’ Hello Barbara, this is Brian’ and I send him right through. He tells Michelle to be nice to me. Such a nice man.”
“Yes, he is.”
“I’m going to do lawn work this weekend. I’ve got a few flats of daisies, some marigolds, a few geraniums, I love geraniums and some color spots. Ohhh! I got a new gardening outfit, like the one I showed you in the catalogue. It’s terry cloth. I love terry cloth. I just wear it in the yard or around the house, I would never wear it to the store. "
“Why don’t you wear a bathing suit underneath, then you could go”
“I don’t own one, I sunbathe nude, always have.”
The End.
Marissa D. Madrigal
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2000
From: BRiDGETTE
Subject: elves, cups and non-cartoon people
Dear McSweeney’s,
Setting: Forest Scene. Large Beautiful trees, singing birds, deer and squirrels playing next to a small babbling stream. Something one might see in a Disney movie, especially since it’s all a cartoon.
Enter 2 people (if you can call them that): male and female. One Bryce Newhart and one Sarah M. Balcomb, neither of which are cartoon characters because they don’t deserve to be. They are dressed in black GAP from head to toe carrying Starbucks cups containing their daily dose of Mocha Cappuccinos. As they enter the singing birds go silent, the squirrels scurry up to hide in their nests, the deer run away through the trees. Even the babbling stream stops altogether. There is a sense of fear and trepidation in the air.
As they walk they comment on how they got into the forest.
SARAH: I told you we shouldn’t have driven down that road.
BRYCE: I’m sorry!! I thought I saw a Banana Republic!
SARAH: Men! I swear.
BRYCE: If we ever get out of this disgusting dirty forest filled w/ animals, I’ll make it up to you by cooking dinner. One that is healthy, no calories, and will help us on our way to starvation.
SARAH: Ok. I’ll accept that offer. But first let’s get out of here, b/c i can’t stand it any longer here. All these green plants and flowers are making my naseaus. I’ve never in any way liked nature.
BRYCE: Neither have I. It’s so primitive here. There’s not a Starbucks within 20 miles of here! How could anyone survive!!!!
Little did they know they were walking towards a huge encampment of wood elves, the guardians of the forest. They were an amiable group, lively and always ready for a party. The animals loved them, the trees loved them, the stream loved them. At this very moment they were celebrating the first day of summer in honor of their goddess Whitney, who was to make her entrance any minute. Both parties were very much surprised when Sarah and Bryce walked into the middle of the celebration. They finished their Mocha Cappuccinos and dropped the empty cups on the ground, contaminating the forest. The elves all became very uneasy seeing these hideous and smelly people at their sacred party. Albert, the elf in charge of the party stepped forward.
ALBERT: You two are definitely lost, and you do not belong in the woods. We would be pleased to provide you an escort to see you out of our forest. Besides you’re ruining our party because you reek so badly. And if you would please pick up your cups— we do not want the remnants of Starbucks here in our wonderful forest.
BRYCE: Look pal, I don’t know who you think you are, but we can walk where we want, we don’t need your permission.
SARAH: And we do not smell! This is a very expensive perfume you’re smelling, it just goes to show you have no taste.
A group of elves gathered around the 2 and tried to peacefully remove them from the premises, but they would have none of that. Bryce threw one elf into another causing both to fall on the forest floor.
BRYCE: I am not going to be pushed around by dwarves! I shoved one of you in my roommate’s bed once! You’re so puny and small, I could step on you.
SARAH: Ewwwwww!!!! Stop touching me you little dwarves, w/ your small hands!!
ALBERT: Shows how much you know, we’re not dwarves we’re elves, very angry elves at that. You’re ruining our celebration, and our goddess Whitney has no tolerance for people like you. Guards! You may take any action to dispose of these two disgusting creatures.
And at that a hundred dwarves jumped on the 2 New Yorkers and started beating them w/ their cups. Soon the 2 were reduced to a bloody pulp. They lay there beaten and dead.
At that moment the Goddess Whitney arived in her golden chariot, she gracefully stepped down in her flowing white dress, her hair, beautifully pinned on her head, adorned w/ small white forest flowers. The elves parted and humbly bowed in her awesome presence.
WHITNEY: Albert, what has happened here, why are you not merry and enjoying the first day of summer?
ALBERT: These 2 hideous people barged in on us, insulted us, pushed some of us down, and they littered.
Albert pointed to the Starbucks cups. Whitney stared in disgust first at the cups and then at what was left of Sarah and Bryce, the only non cartoon characters of the whole play.
WHITNEY: You did well my children, you did as you should. These 2 did not deserve to live. They were followers, they had no lives, and no brains. You are to be commended, and to show you my appreciation you will all feast on Wendy’s tonight! Today will truly be a day of celebrations
The elves cheered and all praised the goddess Whitney for her wise ways, and because she brought with her their favorive food. The celebration was one to remember, and everyone had an amazing time. Sarah and Bryce’s bodies were carted far far away, and dumped in the Hudson River, where they sank to the bottom and rotted w/ all the other people who had been knocked off. No one cared that they were missing, in fact no one even knew they were gone.
Hope you enjoyed.
BRiDGETTE J STEFFEN
Date: 07 Jun 00
From: Thomas Gibbon
Subject: Biological Destruction?
Dear McSweeney’s,
as a fan of scientific progress I was pleased to see the first of Joshua Bearman’s piece on RIHC. Even better than seeing a good science yarn was a good science yarn with a point, reversing the gains made by scientific naysayers over the past years. Those chuckleheads who have managed to get all sorts of genetic testing and experimentation banned in several countries, resetting government’s relationship to science to that of the medieval church.
While Bearman’s purpose is noble he must be careful not to concede unnecessary ground to his flat-earth opponents (these luddites don’t want you in space, they don’t want dogs who can speak, and they mispronounce words with abandon). Specifically I question his claim that genetic science “carries the threat of biological destruction.” At its best this claim is banal, at worst, loopy. What, exactly, is the nature of this threat? Is he buying into their fear of a race of genetically designed Ur-CHUD who will break us puny humans on the anvil of biology like an otter with an oyster? Or is he voicing the fears of the One-Blood purists who figure any tampering with our bodies is in violation of God’s will for a perfect human race? That, technically, any change in our genes makes us not human, and thus “humanity” (as the collection of homo sapiens) is gone? In the former case I would suggest he ignore their comic book antics and concentrate on the fact that there has been no reason whatsoever to believe that we are in danger from hordes of genetic monsters. Microbes and biological weapons, perhaps, but any government making such weapons, indeed even any mad scientist with an island lair, would also manufacture antidote, countermeasures or vaccines for their, or his or her, own use.
The latter argument is squabby as well. If we were to seize the reigns of genetic mutation, in essence to jump evolution ahead, say by turning off or eliminating genes which cause disease, or adding ones from dogs which will make us cooler, so be it. If homo sapiens is replaced with something better, what’s the problem? Evolution would retire us in a few mil. anyway, and I don’t suppose anyone’s got any serious misgivings about that. If you say it’s unnatural then show me the natural. If it is wrong to tamper with our genes why is it right to tamper with scalpels, or sewing machines, or seeds? One imagines the first farmer coming under fire for subverting nature by planting corn where he thought it would do best. Guff. Nothing wrong with farming, nothing wrong with genetically enhanced super-smell. Sure, Prince Charles may have great taste in architecture, but when it comes to science, yeesh, the man’s the rawniest sadogue to ever bostoon.
I am sure Bearman does not mean to support these glauvauning oonshicks and I look forward to the rest of his article, but we must be ever-vigilant. Let’s not give them a break. Concede nothing. Demand proof. Ignore. Mock. Threaten.
It’s just I feel very strongly about this.
Best wishes,
TGGibbon
ps – Newfies! Like ace skatesman Hubie Hutton. God love ‘em. Look into it you gowdy gideroy or as a gamogue I’ll replace your gumbeens with gurry, that’ll be hard to glutch and you’ll feel quite the gommil.
From: “Andrei Sinioukov”
Subject: dining
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Last night, just like the night before, I went out to a restaurant. The salad was nice and the lettuce crisp, as they were the day before as well, albeit at a different place. It took us no time, as usual, to forget that we were supposed to review the food and not ourselves, since the readers of this major newspaper that is readily available (daily) to all had always seemed to want to know more about trivial things like food, service, and dŽcor, rather than the intellectually stimulating and disarmingly engaging information about our past, current, and future lives and those who surround us or have a potential to surround us soon. Our poignant commentary, incredibly insightful observations, and overall undeniable inside and outside beauty concern them little, if at all. However, they read these thought-provoking columns obsessively, they laugh, they cry, they discuss them into the wee hours, thus reducing their productivity at work the next day, and, finally, they clip and laminate the articles for the benefit of future generations.
During this particular outing the following topics were covered: religion, comparative religion, religion and dress code in the Western world, ducks, neurosurgeons, official “Hello Kitty” merchandise, love, fiction writing and its relation to reality (none, some, it is reality), non-fiction writing (more money), linen pants, “The Golden Bough” by Sir John Frazier, more ducks, cycling (Australian), UN in Congo, UN in Ethiopia and Eritrea (quickly switched to injera), US foreign assistance, the cuteness of the waitress serving the table next to ours (my left shin was discreetly but firmly kicked by my dining companion for this), leather-soled shoes, and the much anticipated whiskey-tasting party at my house.
Rating: three stars.
Seeing the light,
Andrei.
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
From: Bobo the Wonder Chicken
Subject: Well, I like it
Dear McSweeney’s,
I didn’t expect such a harsh reaction from people about my letter. Mind you, I never really expected you to print it.
I like my country, maybe a little more than most of the rest of the citizens, but hey, a little patriotism won’t kill me. Or will it? I am nothing but a sensible, quiet, polite Canadian.
It always amazes me how we typify ourselves. We are a quiet people, enjoying life in our little quiet country (not a single civil war, yet). Every once in a while, reports come out about surveys the federal government has done, researching how much Americans actually know about us. One came out a little while ago stating that many Americans think we’re loggers and trappers and we play hockey. It doesn’t surprise me – but what will continue to surprise me is how oblivious people in our own country are to other regions.
See, in Canada, we have 10 provinces, 3 territories (pre-provinces, I guess). But when you watch the news, it’s very Toronto-centric. I’ve been to Toronto a number of times, I don’t like it. I grew up in the prairies where the skies were not clouded up all the time with pollution. The mosquitoes, however, were another story. But it’s been a major complaint for years that Toronto is the centre of the universe, and the rest of the country just kind of exists.
This is not just a Toronto problem, either. I see this all the time in my home province – Manitoba. The province’s population is roughly 1.1 million – most of which (650,000) is in the capital city, Winnipeg. I live in Brandon, the second largest city in the province (45,000). The media has developed a term for Winnipeg and it’s ‘problem’ – Perimiteritis. Anything that exists outside of the perimiter doesn’t matter. It’s true.
And then there’s Quebec (I feel a political rant coming on – perhaps I should stop). I was living there during the last referendum, and let me tell you it wasn’t pretty. Coming from the west (evil) and not speaking much French (I was the devil), I managed to survive by hanging out with a group of mainly rich English-speaking kids from Montreal. But it was tough – especially listening to the politicians rant about how little the province got from the rest of the country. Sigh, those were the days. It’s died down quiet a lot since then, thankfully, but every once in a while, the referendum and Quebec independence rear their ugly heads. We’re used to it by now.
But thank you for printing my letter. I am a quasi-student journalist here and this was the first piece of my written material that was printed outside of our city. I’m overjoyed and humiliated at the same time. Feel free not to print this one… I just felt I had to justify myself.
Thank you,
Stacey Brown
Brandon MB Canada
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000
Subject: hey bryce newhart!
From: pr9000
Dear McSweeney’s,
You been peeking in my windows again?
Paul
Chicago
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000
From: “Libbey White”
Subject: What to Avoid
Dear McSweeney’s,
For about two weeks now I’ve been thinking of certain things as small shiny solid droplets. Do not think of dot candy. Dot candies are smaller, drier, brightly colored and they cannot move of their own accord. These droplets are dark colors, like mahogany and carving knife. To move, they spin. You can think of the motion of a Frisbee, but remember these are about the size of an M&M, and, also like an M&M, slightly convex on both top and bottom. Do not think I am thinking of M&Ms. These things are droplets. They shimmer like liquid and I sense they could change shape at any moment. The certain things that I think of as these small acid drops are things that I do not like. My recommending a deli to someone who began to sense I had never been there and so asked, and my lying and saying yes, I got coffee- that, for instance. There was nothing good about that interaction. What’s more, I picture these droplets as sliding across a page of paper that has writing on it and is contained in a book; they spin like little golden flower fireworks and burn holes in the page. I think to myself, it would be good to avoid these droplets. I do not need any more incentive. I will try to avoid the spinning droplets.
Best regards,
Libbey White
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
From: Sunny Stalter
Subject: Not stealing but drowning
Dear Jeff Johnson and other McSweeney’s representatives:
The trend continues in as venerable a source as the New Yorker. Bruce McCall’s humor piece, “Still a Few Openings, but Hurry,” in the June 12, 2000 issue which I received yesterday, seems eerily similar to Jeff Johnson’s first and second installments of summer camp previews. What is the turnaround time for a humor piece in the New Yorker? Is this possibly some zeitgeist tapped by both men simultaneously? Or do you guys just have some kind of short-term time machine so your writers can write about things just days before everyone else does?
For any similarities — intentional or not — between the two takes on summer camp, I find the difference between the worldviews they represent to be quite striking. Of Mr. McCall’s seven imaginary camps, three poke fun at modern life and its trappings (respectively: sweatshops, overly earnest leftist health-nuts, and the stock market). The other four find their humor solely in imagining how badly the kids will be treated while there. Mr. Johnson’s pieces, on the other hand, seem to find their humor more in the carrying out of one very specific idea to its logical conclusion; there are neither attempts at “timeliness” nor cruel, cheap laughs. The only camp that hints of cruelty as such is number three, and I feel that this is merely the extension of the persona speaking in the brochure. The New Critics would have enjoyed these pieces, which have present in every part the humorous theme of the whole. Needless to say, I prefer Mr. Johnson’s take on the world of summer camps, and eagerly await previews five through ten.
Sincerely,
Sunny Stalter
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
From: Sharon Merli
Subject: Now available in five flavors
Dear McSweeney’s,
The latest delivery man was just here. He rang the doorbell and from where I was in the house I shouted “Just a second!” and then proceeded to hide near a window where I could observe him. I have been doing this a lot lately. My mother would be frantic if she knew. They are in the process of redecorating the house and the delivery guys bring many items they have purchased to this end. Anyway the driver is wearing his FedEx hat on backwards, which suggests to me that he thinks he’s got mad flava. I think he is maybe thirty, chubby, and he really ought to shave. He has the package on one hip, a bulky thing he has to shift around while he waits for me to come to the door. He has slouched his navy blue socks (this I can see because he wears sensible walking shorts) and something about the way the socks drape around the ankles makes me think of Richard Simmons. If Richard Simmons were to come to my door I would do the exact same thing to him that I am doing now to the FedEx guy.
Though Richard Simmons would be loud. The Fed Ex homeboy sighs, fidgets on my front step. He lifts his foot in the air once, twice, as though he were revving a motorbike, or perhaps he is having a fantasy about being a superhero, wishing he could kick off the ground with all the ease a body has while swimming, and fly away. Actually that is my fantasy, I realize as he rings the doorbell again.
This time I do not answer because I’d give away my vantagepoint, my cozy postman hunting blind. He turns and looks suspiciously from side to side. He can feel my eyes upon him. This is the part I like best, waiting for them to snap and walk away, leaving my mother’s LL Bean goodies on the front step in a huff. As an added gesture this guy spits stringily on the door before setting the box down. He stalks down the path. Brilliant.
When he is gone I retire to the kitchen. I mix myself a Virgin Jonestown Kool-Aid, which does have alcohol but will not kill you. It sends you to the hereafter in other ways. More I cannot say. Then I go on-line, and order some CDs next-day air. Come Friday I shall have another opportunity like today’s.
Having told you all this, I would like to know: do you think it is fair for the local Wal-Mart to flagrantly display graham crackers and Hershey Bars, but no marshmallows? I felt teased and dejected. I kicked morosely around the garden center display, and then went back to a home without s’mores. How dare they.
Meshelemiah had sons and brothers: eighteen brave men.
Greet each other with the kiss of peace—
Rose Morrison
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
From: Chuck Easterling
Subject: Heartfelt R&B
Dear McSweeney’s,
I guess my best birthday was the one where my father became “Love, Dad” and left behind the macho days of signing “and Dad” in my mother’s handwriting.
Sincerely,
Chuck Easterling
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
Subject: She
Dear McSweeney’s,
She is is excused from work for an entire week because of a raging flare up of adult acne. She doesn’t leave her apartment for an entire three-day period due to an enormous colony/cluster of zits smack dead-center on her upper left cheek that protrude three-quarters of an inch from her face and is highly visible to pedestrians standing two miles away. After steaming her face with boiling water a scab the color of eggplant screams for attention.
On a Sunday night, she sits with a co-worker who exclaims: “Thank God it’s Sunday. I only have to drink for six hours.”
On a Saturday night, she is offered both Crystal Meth and Special K.
Visiting a new gynocologist, she is somewhat embarrassed by having to explain she has implants during the breast examination—and feels downright silly when exposing her ridiculously-shaved vagina.
When asked by a patron ‘what she likes to do in her spare time,’ she replies:
“I like to clean the house in the nude, especially scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees. Then I sometimes parasail in the nude, horseback-ride in the nude, play Checkers by myself in the nude…and oh yeah, I watch the X-files. As a matter of fact on Memorial Day I lay in bed and watched the entire eleven-hour marathon with all the shades down, eating very bad food the whole time.”
Patron’s response: “X-Files? I hate that fucking show.”
She: “That’s because you don’t understand all the big words.”
She leaves him standing there wearing his Serial Killer Frown and she guffaws away.
She Is Not Alone,
Yours Truly,
Her Friend.
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
From: Juan Martinez
Subject: Dog w/ Lightbulb, Angry King
Dear McSweeney’s,
I hope you’re all doing well. All is well here.
OK. So I don’t have a comic strip about cooks or anything. But I once drew a picture of a mechanical dog — it has a lightbulb and there is a cup of coffee by his side. It’s at
[url]
I also drew an angry king. He’s at
[url]
Feel free to use a virtual magnet to put them on an imaginary refrigerator. But do not name the dog. It’s a dog with no name.
Cheers,
Juan
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: I THINK ‘THE BOSS’ BOUGHT ‘THE COMPANY’
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
After this past weekend, I’m beginning to believe that everything Mr. Springsteen sings about, you know, ‘oooohhh, my life is hard like yours’ and ‘ooooohhhh, I really hate punching the clock, too.’ is a complete LIE. Last weekend I found myself visiting friends in Rumson, New Jersey and walking right past Mr. LIAR’S mansion.
Born in the USA but not YESTERDAY, thank you very much-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: Peshpeeeeesh! (sound of camera in photo shoot)
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Recently I’ve found a way to get famous models to appear in my photographs even though I am constrained by shoe string budgets, a cheap Polaroid ‘land camera’ and only have small, self-financed shows as a means of showing my work.
1) Find a picture of a famous model.
2) Take a picture of that picture.
Next show is in August-
Dan Kennedy
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: Cohen at Budokan: You can Negotiate Tokyo
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
The following “coincidences” occur when reading Herb Cohen’s YOU CAN NEGOTIATE ANYTHING from page one while at the same moment starting Cheap Trick’s LIVE AT BUDOKAN, on track one, side one:
p1
BOOK: Your real world is a giant negotiating table, and like it or not, you’re a participant.
RECORD: “All right Tokyo! Are you ready!?”
p15
BOOK: How you handle encounters can determine not only whether you prosper, but whether you can enjoy a full, responsible life.
RECORD: Hello there ladies and gentlemen/hello there ladies and gents/Are you ready to rock?/Are you ready or not?
p17
BOOK: I perceived that there might be a problem. “I’ve had a rough day,” She murmured.
RECORD: Oooh, baby feels so good/ Don’t you go ruin it tonight, tonight/been so long/since I don’t know when
p25
BOOK: Don’t act as though your experience represents universal truths
RECORD: There is some place/one place in the world/where I wanna take you/lookout/lookout
I wasn’t too impressed with the last one, either-
Dan Kennedy
From: “Gregory Purcell”
Subject: Things come together while somewhere others are having fun
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 PDT
Dear McSweeney’s,
Hi.
I am in Portland now, instead of Seattle. I am like a broke rubberband which goes careening in all different directions until suddenly there is an eye put out.
Earlier I insinuated that I was fat. I am stout, gainly. I am. But once, I was thin and handsome, just like you. And nothing bothers me as far as this goes. I would kiss myself (this is something I have insinuated likewise).
Hi, Thomas Gibbon. There are many machines which could destroy the Earth or little parts on the Earth, such as people. There are a lot of people who say that the Death Ray technology is locked deep within the ex-Soviet Machine, since the Tesla archive was sent en masse back to Tesla’s birthplace, Yugoslavia, after he died. In fact, some say that there was no death ray, that one day when Tesla was hard on his luck he simply traded in a black box for rent payment, telling the landlord that the contents of the box held an extremly valuable invention, and further warning the landlord never to open the box, because the resultant effect would be the reduction to ash of everything within a mile radius. A very good trick. No one can prove anything. Many people think many things, and those few who think the most things have clammy, sweaty hands and breathe hard through their noses. They have expressions on thier faces as if they were wondering who is watching them.
Hi, Karl. Karl is my friend.
Yesterday I went to see a medical student for a throat condition. How did I know that he was a medical student, and not a real doctor? By his laugh, contextualized in the following exchange:
GREG: My throat hurts.
MEDICAL STUDENT: Are you taking any medication for it?
GREG: Well, I just had some Thera-Flu.
M.S.: How did that work?
GREG: Well, it stopped the pain. Or, at least, it disguised the pain, or did whatever it is that Thera-Flu does when the pain stops.
M.S. (Sweating) What?
(Pause. Then, semi-knowingly…)
Oh, ha! Oh, ha ha! Oh, ha ha ha ha! (And continuing nervously) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Then he told me to take some ibuprofen.
With Movement and Dischord, Lightly,
Greg Purcell
From: “Steven Tomsik”
Subject: reese ponce
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Beebe: No, it wasn’t me both times, just the second time, with the wiping, the wiping.
Plus, there are things that are vexing me so much! right now. They are:
Stupid haircut. Why am I even calling this a haircut. That Charlie Brown special, the motorcross one, “It’s the Motorcross, Charlie Brown!” or whatever, he had that watermelon helmet? Me too, only it’s hair. With these little bizarre, wispy wings right over my ears. Sort of a fuller Rik Smits tribute, very prone to creating a supernatural-type aura in even the lightest breeze.
Two. Why do I lack the motor skills necessary to not stain myself at every meal? So far today, my outfit will tell you, I have had ketchup and coffee. Then, outfits.
I cannot seem to wear proper work clothes. If the style is flat front with no cuff, invariably, I have EXTREME, painful pleats and yes, cuffs. No matter what, I look prepared for my eighth-grade band concert.
It’s just… I don’t know, I’m probably better off.
Thanks again,
Steve.
From: “Timothy McWeeney”
Subject: Timothy McWeeney is now hiring
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 GMT
Dear McSweeney’s,
This Italian chick was so hot she was literally on fire. “Perfect for the noodle shop,” I thought. When she opened her burning lips in the traditional Italian manner, even her stick of chewing gum was flaming. Strictly speaking, it no longer resembled a stick, but so what? When there’s a spectacle to be seen, people know about it. That’s probably why the city hired this tramp to sit in the snow or something. Melt it with her blazing tushy. Can you believe all this snow in June? This happened around lunchtime in front of a few Siberian tourists drinking Pennzoil, a business woman with severe knuckle disease, a young boy whipping his sister with a metal skewer, a guy eating chips and salsa to keep his insides warm, and a family from Mankato, Minnesota, who said, “Those flaming foreigners sure know how to have a good time.” Generations of Americans from Mankato have been impressed by removable showerheads, vibrating seats, hamsters, whatever household innovation is basically designed for burning, foreigners are no exception. As for me, I was on my way to pick up a pair of freshly polished shoes before heading to the park for some hotdogs on my favorite snowdrift. “I’ll get the shoes Monday,” I said gleefully when I spied the flaming Italian. Then I ran into a deli for a package of dogs. “Time for a cookout.”
Back on the street, I offered the young boy a roasted wiener in exchange for use of his skewer. Then I followed the flaming hussy down the street. She and I were like a team, her strolling through the snow, a real saucebox, melting it down in seconds; me alongside with the wieners, roasting one after the next above her flaming, upturned rump. It didn’t matter that I’d forgotten the Wonder Bread for pigs-in-a-blanket, I cooked up the whole package and people just ate them plain. It was one of those moments when everyone unites under a unique sense of shared experience. I completely forgot to ask Jezebel if she wanted a job in the noodle shop. The violent young boy and his halfwit sister were skipping at my side, brains agog with wiener joy. The guy eating chips and salsa slapped together a hotdog chipwich. The Siberians jumped about spilling Pennzoil all over, shouting for more wieners. McWeeney was there to provide. “Wieners anyone?” Even the business woman with the giant knuckles smoothed down her suit and adjusted her bra, held out her paw for a partly cooked dog. “Gimme one a them bad boys.” The family from Mankato was awestruck. “Wow, meat-stuffed skins!”
In all the excitement I never got round to asking that slutty Italian whore if she wanted a job in my newly opened 24-hour noodle shop. Never got to offer her work as a walking human spit roast or tell of my plans, as soon as I become limber enough to touch my knees, of becoming the first contortionist bartender. Tired of walking the slushy summer streets in my Ultima Thule kneehighs, I decided to pick up my shoes that night. The ranger boots were also in need of a polish.
Most pretzels are actually quite brittle,
Timothy McWeeney
From: “Newhart, Bryson”
Subject: But can she ride ditch ramp?
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
There was so much I wanted to respond to this week that my brain began to sizzle. Fortunately this heated my flesh to the point of evaporating the tears that were streaming down my face. Last night I had McDonald’s for dinner and thought of Whitney on a skateboard. I believe I was muttering aloud with a mouthful of quarter pounder. “But can she do an impossible or a pressure flip, a shove-it or a variable kickflip? Can she ride ditch ramp?” Whitney: I haven’t been to the banks in a while but a friend recently sent me a fat Zero with Pig bearings. Apparently they’re supposed to be better than Bones.
Jeff: you are not the Jeff I thought you were. Weird. Good point about the dwarves though: they are smaller and always have beards; hence, a good handle for limbless whores. Sick, I know. I’m glad you liked it.
GGT: the Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee has failed it would seem. I’m not sure who’s to blame but probably Juice Newton. Also, Cartago is elusive. I had UTM coordinates from the topo, but could not be sure that they were reliable. Only time will tell as I trudge on in speculation, the cold wind swooshing through the trees, or whatever those things are. As you know, the high security in my office is mostly controlled by fisting hounds. Baluster and Baby Newel. They rule with an iron paw and do not sit to shake hands. People find ways to break the rules by consulting various fumbled pamphlets which discuss disguises, among them, sea rover/Lothario and temp/gutter kitten. Anything Middle Eastern that blends with the brown & orange color scheme, lending a soporific quality. In South Africa you can play online chess, bridge, spades, and backgammon. This week’s thought. “Sometimes your subconscious talks.” Bleah, so what? Much quoting in Mpumalanga where they can never get the lyrics right: “Fit to be hair” and “Hiccupy Square” — “Now the elbow may be bad at breathing” and “Now the oboe may be barely breathing.” The result is of course strife, pornographic diamond mining, chunter.
Sorry for the mix up. The repetition.
Regards,
Bryce Newhart
From: “Sarah M. Balcomb”
Subject: Starlight Express never answered
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
A nice young family with a brand new baby just moved into the apartment below mine. From the sound of things, the baby’s room is right below my room and at night, when I am trying to work, trying to write serious fiction, the mother is down there cooing passionately to her new child. “Where’s blah blah? There he is! Where’s blah blah? There he is! Where’s mama? Here I am! Where’s mama? Here I am!”
Do you think it would be rude to stomp on the floor and shout, “Could you turn down the baby talk, I’m trying to work up here.”
Always wondering,
Sarah M. Balcomb
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000
From: Scott Matthew Korb
Dear McSweeney’s,
There is a good chance that Ms. Balcomb has a gift, really. You should check somehow.
She recently wrote a fine play that predicted I would work for a non-profit. Her play was right on, honest. I now work for a non-profit. And to top it all off, I think I make less than Mr. Purdy does at his job for a non-profit (which she also predicted!), though I cannot be sure. Can you believe it? She got everything right on.
I think this somehow makes me more interesting, too, according to Ms. Balcomb. Thanks, Ms. Balcomb, for making me more interesting.
Yours, I remain, dutifully employed, &c.,
Scott M Korb
Brooklyn, NY
From: “Timothy McWeeney”
Subject: Good help is hard to find
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 GMT
Dear McSweeney’s,
“Know a happy-sounding Italian speaker who is not as happy as he sounds?” Why I decided to ask the German man polishing my boots if he knew of any good Italians to employ in my 24-hour noodle shop is a mystery even to me. These ridiculous European entrepreneurs never know squat. “No se,” the man said, pretending to speak Spanish. Roiled, I lifted my boot and rubbed some polish on his lips. “Listen fellow,” I said. He stopped wiping to rub the polish in like lipstick. Then he lit his rag on fire and waved it about like a pair of pasta tongs. I smacked him a couple times to get his attention. “Listen,” I continued, “it doesn’t even have to be an actual man. Just one of them Italian ones. Two dwarves in large overalls or even a Roman statue will work just fine. Anything that can mix it up with tomatoes and ground ostrich meat. Know what I’m saying? Those crazy bastards are cooking pasta on every corner. All I’m asking for is just one.”
I was shouting by then, whacking the old man on the noggin with my noodle textbook, pretending to translate my simple request into a gibberish version of the Kraut language, but the man was clearly bored. “Screw you if you think I’m paying for your shoddy performance with the shoe polish,” I added. "I’ve got better things to do. Also, when I go for a shining, I expect my boots to look like new all the way up to the knee — like a young child after a swift caning. I hopped off the platform, yelled something in a language that even I did not recognize, and dove into my car through the window. Man was I pissed. My pants were ruined. In the backseat the rats were practicing their musical instruments. “Enough!” I shouted. I turned on the radio, the high beams, the windshield wipers, the juicer, the popcorn maker, and the shower head. Then I popped on my miner’s helmet, aimed it at the disco ball, and switched on the smoke machine. I put the car in reverse and took off down the sidewalk.
Breathing through my mouth,
Timothy McWeeney
From: Ryan Purdy
Subject: Celebrity Statistics.
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I never had the chance really to study science or math in high school or college, but I take an interest in them nonetheless. For instance, I just finished a book that is science-related, and am going to start reading another one soon, once I have finished this other book I am currently reading, which is about something else. But, of course, I digress; I mean to bring up the field of statistics, and also one of America’s favorite ethnic-character-actors.
Here is an interesting situation that involves said field of statistics, a situation I read about a little while ago. With any luck, I can explain it clearly and its interesting nature will be self-explanatory:
(1) In the card game, poker, the relative value of hand is inversely related to its statistical frequency, e.g., a “pair” is worth less than a “three of a kind,” because a “pair” is easier to get, i.e., is more frequent.
(2) Sometimes, when people play the card game, poker, they include a “wild card,” for whatever reasons. (Yes, I know there are many card players out there who dislike the use of “wild cards,” and may even call those who use such “wild cards” awful and spiteful and just-plain-mean names— either to the wild-card-users’ faces or behind their backs— but we must all take a step back and gain perspective, musn’t we? I mean, who are we to consider ourselves without fault— without fault enough to look down upon those who use “wild cards,” without once looking ourselves in the eye and recognizing that we all have our own “wild cards,” so to speak? Exactly.)
(3) If one is playing a game involving “wild cards,” and one is dealt a “wild card,” one will most likely— given human nature and the desire to win games— use it to improve one’s hand, i.e., change that “pair” to a “three of a kind,” because a “three of a kind” is worth more, right? (See Point #1.)
(4) But now there is a problem: given human behavior, and the use of a “wild card,” suddenly one is playing a game of poker in which a “three of a kind” is, in fact, sort of more frequent a hand than a “pair” is. (True, I admit my funny little pseudo-paradox gets hazy here, for two reasons: (a) it depends on how many “wild cards” one is using, and (b) I read this book about a year ago.)
(5) So. Where does that leave us? “In a conundrum of sorts,” is the answer. If one is using (enough) “wild cards” while playing the card game, poker, suddenly the rankings of various hands become an inverted mess, as there is little easily understandable rhyme or reason to hand-value anymore. You can’t simply invert all of the values of the hands, because a “full house” is still a heck of a lot harder to get than a “pair,” and yet a “pair” is less frequent than a “three of a kind”!
Anyway, when I started typing this I thought it to be a touch more mathematically sound; sorry.
Which brings me to my point: Dan Hedaya, star of the screwball 1999 comedy, “Dick.”
A few weekends ago (I have been busy), I had the pleasure of spending time with a friend (male) in from out-of-town, and another friend (female) who lives in Brooklyn. We spent time in a lovely SoHo bar, watching the Knicks sadly lose the first game of the playoffs to Miami.
After we left the bar, we decided to eat, also in the Soho district of Manhattan. On our way to find a restaurant, who should come walking towards us, unshave and in a Hawai’ian shirt, but Dan Hedaya, who played Carla’s (Rhea Pearlman) husband, Nick Tortelli, on the seminal NBC sit-com, “Cheers.” He was chatting with another friend, heading south, and radiating that cool Hedaya-vibe for which he is so well known.
Once we had decided not to follow Mr. Hedaya— although we loved his work in the slightly misguided, “Alien: Resurrection”— we settled on Corsican food, which, by the way, is delicious.
As we sat sipping our after-meal coffees, and as I could not avoid a post-prandial cigarette (although, as it has been thoroughly documented, I am cutting-back), my friends and I finished the Sunday NYT crossword puzzle and attempted to eavesdrop on the only others in the restaurant, they being the waitress and her friends, all of whom were speaking in French. As the eavesdropping was going nowhere, whom did I spy outside the window walking east, but— yes— Mr. Hedaya, who had recurring roles on both classic series, “St. Elsewhere” and “Hill Street Blues”! He was still chatting with his friend, almost two hours later, which almost made me cry because seeing a strong friendship between two grown men is a rare and valuable thing, is it not?
What do you think the odds are of this happening, this seeing Mr. Dan Hedaya, of both “Blood Simple” and “A Smoky Mountain Christmas,” twice in one day?
Thanks for understanding. Take care of yourselves.
Yours,
M. Ryan Purdy
Brooklyn, NY
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000
From: “Jason Dineen”
Subject: Music, Sweet Music
Dear McSweeney’s,
Where I work, I am partly responsible for the creation of a nearly-monthly newsletter, which is sent free of charge to “subscribers” all around the country. The truth is, we haven’t published an issue in some time now. But that doesn’t bear on this story. Or does it.
Today I received, from the hale and hearty folks at the United States Postal Service, an envelope containing two items. I knew there were two items inside because certain things that come from the USPS tell you how many items are inside, right there on the envelope, in a box marked CONTENTS. In the box, someone wrote the number 2. A woman’s handwriting, I’d say, insofar as these things are discernable.
And sure enough, what flitters out of said envelope upon opening, but two identical, torn-off bits of our newsletter; the part where the adressee’s name goes (also, their address). And above that, a USPS sticker, explaining that these items were “Undeliverable Standard Mail (A) and (B) and Special Standard Mail (B).”
An aside: didn’t you think just now, as I did upon first reading it, that the USPS sticker was all logically-worded, in the way your mother would lay out her litany of complaint at you when you were young, as in: “What you’ve done now is bad because, you were unconcerned for others’ feelings (A), and (B) you really could have hurt yourself.”
Now let’s return: so what’s hitting me as I go to toss this right into the garbage is, well, you know.
Elvis.
I became conscious of that ‘life-soundtrack’ thing, where you find yourself humming things, realize you’ve been singing it to yourself all day, and can’t figure out why. In this case, my cranial jukebox had naturally flipped to Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender.” Right when I got to the second line of the song, what should my eyes come across, but the very box marked “No Such Number.”
I know! Immediately, I thought, “Synchronicity,” and in a flash, could picture the place in my childhood home where I last saw the cassette tape of The Police’s last record. (It fell behind the dresser, as did the chopsticks-turned-drum sticks. You will know, synchronicity!)
Thrilled by the musical interlude this random piece of mail had brought into my life, I read more carefully, to see what would get spun next. I checked the adressee’s names. Nothing. I noticed that both of them were from Cary, North Carolina. I thought, ’Carry Me to*." No. In my mind, I went to Carolina. But, there was still nothing.
Disappointed, feeling that I’d lost it, I gathered up the returned newsletter bits, and looked at the envelope. “Huh,” I actually said out loud. “There was even postage due.” Which triggered that kind of whiny Chet Baker version of “Everything Happens To Me,” which I’m like, thank you very much, U.S. Postal Service.
Fly Like an Eagle, my ass! Right?
So now, and maybe this should be another letter altogether, but regarding the power of music, here is a list of words/phrases which, I can never come across them without hearing in them the melody or rhythm of popular song:
“these are a few of my favorite things”
“happy birthday, to you”
“let’s get it on”
“shaft. you’re damn straight”
when someone yells “philosophy!”
“everybody”
“Geraldo Rivera”
“though we touched and went our separate ways”
“I’m just talkin’ bout shaft.”
“party all the time”
Thank you.
Jason Dineen
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000
From: theresa young
Subject: tweeldes: dum and dee
Dear McSweeney’s,
Things found in and about Ms. Sarah Balcomb’s bed after an unusually satisfying night:
1/2 (one-half) fry, prepared French style
grease testing would link said object to Wendy’s deep fryer BW97092340-A
The scent of a carnivorous burp
Mr. Bryce Newhart’s roommate
Sincerely,
tay
(writing all by herself)
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000
From: Jon Zerolnick
Subject: and yet, he’s really, really skinny
Dear McSweeney’s,
Recently I found myself in my childhood home. When I say “childhood,” I refer to the last two years of high school, which for all intents and purposes is as good as “childhood,” as I have no clear memories before this time. This is not particularly relevant, though it is occasionally disconcerting to me. I was in Washington, D.C., which is quite some distance from where I live, but it is sadly close to Baltimore, the site of my father’s house. I could not escape a somewhat obligatory visit. While there, I was quite bored, and late at night, trying to amuse myself, I decided to catalogue the contents of my father’s pantry. But just the junk food. As far as I can remember, this list is fairly representative of what would have been in the pantry at any point when I lived there.
Pringles, original
Goldfish, original (3 bags)
Swiss Miss Fat Free Instant Hot Chocolate
Swiss Miss with Marshmallows
Chocolate Chanukah Gelt
Orville Reddenbacher’s Microwave Popcorn
Super G brand Popcorn
Fla-Vor-Ice, original
Fla-Vor-Ice Giant Bars
M&Ms, plain
Star Wars Episode I Fruit Snacks
Bazooka Bubble Gum
“Rain Stick” Candy
Henshy Bar (5)
Quaker Fruit & Oatmeal Bars
Chips Ahoy
Hershey’s Miniatures
Chocolate Chip Cookies (generic)
Chocolate Frosted Donuts (generic)
Fruit Roll Ups
Super G brand Miniature Marshmallows
Miniature Cupcakes (3), seemingly homemade
Heath Bars, “fun size”
Kit Kats, “fun size”
Tootsie Rolls, “fun size”
Quaker Chewie Granola Bars
Entenman’s “Little Bites” Miniature Brownies
Cheese Crackers with Peanut Butter
Frosted Flakes
Lucky Charms
Special K
Snack ’Ums
Quaker Toasted Oatmeal Squares
Cheerios
Trix
Honey Nut Cheerios
Fruity Pebbles
Crispix
Smartfood brand Popcorn
Doritos, original
Cheetos, puffy
Utz brand Tortilla Chips
Lays Original Potato Chips
GiantFoods brand Popcorn
Bite-sized Tostitos
Some may object to the inclusion of some of the non-sweetened cereals as “junk food.” They may be right.
It is only recently that it has been pointed out to me that this sort of hoarding of snack foods, on the theory of “you never know exactly what sort of hunger will hit you,” is not universal. And may actually be somewhat strange. I think it may go a long way towards explaining some of the ways in which I live my life. Thanks, dad.
Jon Zerolnick
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000
Subject: mail
Dear McSweeney’s,
Here is a tip for anyone who might find themselves in the throes of insomnia. If your television has the Secondary Audio Programming setting, tune it in during infomercials. Understand that there aren’t many infomercial producers who pay attention to the purchasing power of all the demographics, so actually finding a “show” like this may be frustrating.
This is the fringe benefit: Your’re not thinking about your lack of sleep anymore, are you?
Once you’ve found a show with SAP, select that setting from the AUDIO menu on your T.V. Then sit back and enjoy the bilingualism. Unless, of course, you understand the language the SAP rebroadcasts. In such a case, you are, by far, smarter than me and are allowed a celebratory toss of the remote at the T.V. screen.
Go ahead. You’ve earned it.
Dw. Dunphy
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000
Subject: Letter Number 867-5309 (for a good time call) to McSweeneys
From: whitney pastorek
Dear McSweeney’s,
Some Things Purchased at Wal-Mart in Asheville, North Carolina 6/10/00*
1. CD Single: Zachary, Isaac, and Taylor Hanson, “This Time Around”.
*2. 1 pound bag Twizzlers Cherry Pull & Peel.
3. 5 Bon-Bons mini body glitter, in red, blue, orange, green, and silver.
4. 24 oz Diet Coke.
5. Revlon eyeshadow, Bamboo Blue.
6. 25¢ Big Red gum.
*7. CD Single: Elton John, "Someday Out of the Blue (Theme from “The Road to El Dorado”)".
8. 10 pack, No Boundaries elastic beaded bracelets, assorted colors.
*9. Red, white and blue bucket hat.
10. CD: Travis, “The Man Who”.
*11. $64 VCR, display only.
*12. Star Magazine, featuring front page revelation: “Mr. Ed was a ZEBRA!!!”
*items not actually purchased, but gripped tightly in sweaty little hands until calmer minds prevailed.
thanks so much
whitney pastorek
From: “luke o’neil”
Subject: Putting the “sincerity” back in “insincerity”
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
“Short,” I have recently discovered, is in the new “long.” “Wednesday,” someone in the know pointed out yesterday, is the new “pinkish-gray.” “Black” is, however, still the same old “brown” of thirteen weeks ago.
With that in mind, my email:
Remember how I wrote about not having a job and moving back home with my parents and so on…well, I should have mentioned (except I didn’t know at the time) that my girlfriend is leaving me. Literally, which, isn’t exactly as bad as the usual sense. You see, she has recently graduated from college, one year behind me, and, like me, not having a job, decided (well, i guess she has known she wanted to do this for years) to travel and do volunteer work at various god-forsaken (literally) parts of the world. She will probably leave in september and be gone from 3-9 months. I am hoping for 3.
She assures me that it will work out fine. I am a bit worried though, because, as you know, I have been stung by love before, and it took me quite a long time to warm up to the idea of ever believing in it again. So, here we are two and a half years later, and I am a scared again.
She is downstairs writing thank you notes for the gifts she received for graduation. She got yelled at for our having slept together last night in her parents house, as she has a young brother who may be confused by those sorts of things. I am 23 and I am confused by those sorts of things.
I remain yours,
Luke O’Neil
From: “Andrei Sinioukov”
Subject: shopping
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
A shopping list written in pink marker found in the dressing room at “Limited” at the King of Prussia Mall, King of Prussia, PA:
- mascara
- eye shadow
- sunglasses
- tommy girl
- straw sandals
- flip-flops
- black sandals
- anklet
- hatter dreno (pacific sunwear)
- glitter
- strapless bra
j-crew:
- bathing suit
- halter.
Hope this helps,
Andrei.
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
From: circle dupont
Subject: Science Lab Door Sign
Dear McSweeney’s,
Re: W A R N I N G S A F F I X E D T O L A B O R A T O R Y D O O R S
I went to UCCS a decade ago, and always enjoyed walking by the door leading to, as the sign said, “EMERGENCY SHOWER – DO NOT LOCK”
Someone crossed out LOCK, and the sign accumulated quite a few witty substitutions. FOllowing are the few I remember:
DO NOT LOOK
Gee, I guess that’s the only one I remember. Well, it was the 80’s.
Best regards
Michael Jantzen
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
From: Whitney Pastorek
Subject: sporksporksporksporksporkspork
Dear McSweeney’s,
to BRIDGET HAMILTON:
Yesterday, as I walked past the Astor Place Starbucks (plural), I shivered. Despite the heat of midafternoon, the cold, snaky tentacles of doom that wriggled across Lafayette, slithered around the black cube, and darkened the sun over Cooper Union had turned the bright summer day to winter’s wan purgatory. They were the tentacles of homogenization, the grasping, clutching appendages of the gentry reaching out to strangle me, to wipe my mind clean of all originality and creative thought. And yesterday when they came for me— smelling vaguely of Jamaican Blend and bundt cake— I closed my eyes, I took a breath, and I screamed out SPORK!!! with every fiber of my being.
And I was saved.
People, we have found a prophet. Bridget, may the bards sing your praises in the highest courts of the land.
thanks so much
whitney pastorek
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
From: Jonathan Carson
Subject: bullshit
Dear McSweeney’s,
Tonight I came across the website www.bullshitanalyzer.com. This site analyzes another site selected by the ‘web surfer’ for bullshit (hence the name). Unfortunately, the makers of the site do not define exactly what constitutes bullshit in their minds. I’m sure that everyone reading this has a firm opinion on just what bullshit is – but is it the same opinion for everyone? What’s more this site is operating out of Sweden. Perhaps there is a completely different understanding of bullshit over there… I really have no answers.
Now that I have begun typing, this discussion is reminding me of a joke Martin Amis told prior to his reading this past week in Toronto. Researching his next novel, Amis has been spending alot of time in Los Angeles taking a close look at the multi-billion dollar pornography industry. In the course of his work – just a couple of weeks ago he said – he was sitting at the poolside in a porno villa with a porno king (I cannot remember his name, but he is the guy responsible for the Seymour Butts movies). Amis asked the porno king “Why the fascination with anal sex, not only in your work, but in the industry in general?”
The king got as pensive as he ever did and replied “Because, pussy is bullshit.”
Amis asked for, and received, an elaboration on the claim … something to do with the search for authenticity, but that is neither here nor there. The joke was that this story came up a few days back when Amis was dining in New York with Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens, and Salman Rushdie. The guys decided that if pussy = bullshit, then bullshit = pussy. The wit began to fly, as they discussed ‘Bullshit in boots,’ ‘The Owl and the Bullshit Cat,’ on up to that famous Bond girl Bullshit Galore, and the line which capped the night (according to Amis), Rushdie’s ‘Octabullshit.’
But, I digress. With the bullshitanalyzer, I took the liberty of running a few pages of yours. These are my results:
Melissa De La Cruz’s father – 900% Bullshit
Reader interesting experiences – 950% Bullshit
Letters page — 1030% Bullshit
Submissions page — 1070% Bullshit
McSweeney’s Representative – 1490% Bullshit
As yardsticks by which to measure the bullshit content of the given pages, I submit the following:
Joyce: Finnegans Wake – 20% Bullshit
Smith: Chapter 8 of Wealth of Nations bk. 1 – 600% Bullshit
Marx: Chapter 10 of Capital v.1 – 800% Bullshit
The text of this letter, up to this exact point right …. now! – 10% Bullshit
Jonathan Carson
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: taonward spiral
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Zen Buddhists have a simple phrase they repeat that really happens to sum up the way I feel right now, and that phrase is:
“Completely fucked against a brick wall, as if this life is a party where everybody acts like they love the hosts and guests, while not so deep inside, they seethe with a hatred that will, ironically enough, be the very force that keeps them alive in this world even longer.”
I love everybody-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: oooops!
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Only minutes ago I sent you a note about a Zen saying and I got it mixed up with something else. The phrase I meant to reference was “Calm and content despite chaos.”
Okay with my error-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New Work
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
From: Stephany Aulenback
Subject: oh!
Dear McSweeney’s,
Hi.
You don’t publish poetry. But you like poetry. So here is a poem:
Some people could
write a poem
that goes only:
Oh!
Oh!
That would be it.
And other people
would
ooh and
other people would
awe.
But not me.
I mean I’m not
some people.
I’m
other.
That’s it. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Steph
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000
Subject: How To Discover New Oxymorons
Dear McSweeney’s,
Intrepid folk are exploring the vast reaches of modern life in order to bring better, swifter and more ironic oxymorons to our nation…
….and you can be one of them!
All it takes is a little stick-to-it-iveness and careful scenario studies. Here are some fertile veins in the oxymoron mineshaft that might help you on the road to a pithier, more sardonic wit.
1. Visit any doctor participating in an HMO, explain to them that you cannot afford the kind of treatment necessary to maintain a decent quality of life, then wait for compassion. Please bring along a hefty novel during this experiment.
2. Visit a local fast-food restaurant and request your beverage without ice.
Once received, examine your beverage audibly. If it makes a sound like:
“Shooooka – shooka – shooka”,
They have denied your request. If, on the other hand, it makes a sound like:
“Splashy – splashy – splosh”,
That would happen to be spit.
3. Argue with your neighborhood magazine merchant over the declining quality of his pornography.
4. Wash. Rinse. Do not repeat.
From these meager social experiments, I am confident you will discover all sorts of previously unheard oxymorons as well as several new storage ideas involving the rectum.
Good luck, future farmers!
Dw. Dunphy
From: “Pascover, Alexander W.”
Subject: This letter is not meant to be funny
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Dear Luke O’Neil—
Don’t worry. I was in a very situation very similar to yours a few years ago (living with my parents, far from my girlfriend, in my early twenties). Now, I live in a real city, away from my parents and with my girlfriend, I have an interesting and well-paying job, and my prospects are bright. So just hang in there.
Alex Pascover
P.S. That thing with your name in lowercase? Not as nonconformist as you think it is. I’d drop it.
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
From: whit
Subject: in conclusion
Dear McSweeney’s,
Please tell Sarah M. Balcomb that smoking is really, really bad for you.
love
whitney
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
From: Chuck Easterling
Subject: Sound a motionless bell makes
Dear McSweeney’s,
I don’t even want any of these jobs they’re not offering me.
Sincerely,
Chuck Easterling
Date: 13 Jun 00
From: Thomas Gibbon
Subject: What I learned, just now, about lobsters.
Dear McSweeney’s,
a good friend of mine from the hazy crazy college days (Go Vassar! Beat State!) telephoned last night. I was out. This morning, I called back. She is a waitron at a swell lobster house on the coast of Maine. Could anything be better? No. Nothing could be better. Her employment there, at Cook’s, has always proven quite the boon to me, Sandor Lefkowitz [not my real name, which is Tom, it just sounds better, in this case, to be a Hungarian Jew than what I am which is one who never gets into “scrapes”]. Several years ago [the past is an empire, ordered, precise, and finite] she had the opportunity to “wait” on Bob Elliot and his occasionally porky but always hilarious son, Chris.
This news alone [I used to live in Maine, like David E. Kelley did, although I am not from there, like David E. Kelley is] sent me into “orbit.” I grew up on Bob Elliot [strange for one so young, but there were books, tapes, my father’s obsession] and his Radio Pal, Ray Goulding. Chris Elliot was once spotted, au enfants et femme et VSU, at, now what’s it called?, the drive-in burger joint by the navy base? Fatboys? I think fatboys, while I was sitting impatiently at home, pondering my infidelities, and craving beer. Anyway, suffice it to say, I am a big fan—BIG FAN!—of junior’s as well.
She, in her capacity as server, got them drinks, booze, hooch, juice, the sauce, Dutch courage, Irish wit, liquor. Chris got “vodka tonic, absolut if you have it.” She got an idea and Sandor Lefkowitz got a cocktail napkin. I keep it in a plastic bag, labelled. I had wished she had snagged Bob’s, I would have given it to my father, but, well, come on, Lefkowitz, you scored big time anyway. The past, she shines, like bronz-ed bird, like bronz-ed bird. The future’s shore is perilous, obscure. And evermore, for old Lenore, we seek the past’s patin’ and ancient reek.
But now there’s this. The preparation for baked stuffed lobster includes gutting a live lobster. This gives the preparer, or hangers-on (once a shocked couple who had demanded admittance to the kitchen to watch), a chance to hold a still-beating lobster heart in dey hand.
Please also, to note: lobsters, evidently, do not wander into lobster traps and get stuck so’s they can’t get out. They wander in and out at leisure, picking here, picking there at the bait. Going out for a smoke, coming back in for more bait, which is usually Wait-n-See Pudding, the past is my only comfort and my constant pain, chat with hoodlums, etc.. At the same time lots of lobsters are hanging around outside. So when your lobsterman hauls in his trap, it’s not that he got the first lobster to walk into the trap, it’s just he got the one that happened to be there when he hauled it up. This was discovered by a lobster cam, according to her, whom I trust in this matter, and many others.
I have cheated and lied and stolen and betrayed. My sins are small but they are total.
TGGibbon
ps- Mr Purcell, I don’t mean to suggest that porky and hilarious are intuitively mutually exclusive, I am just using one of those modern tropes, let’s call it…synchronic discord (synthetic apraxis?), in which two things not opposed are presented as though opposed. It’s very funny. “Thoroughly French but still quite mangrove,” that sort of thing. I am beefy and rotund. I would smack myself around if I could get my flippers raisied that high. I disgust myself. And others. And Others!
From: “Robert Beier”
Subject: From your office correspondent and Sarah Balcomb
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
“Yes drink and drug, have a drugged drink”, he said, whispering through the spaces in his yellowed teeth. The bar was long and narrow with just enough room for the glass that the bartender placed on it. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see maggots crawling on it. “Yes, thank you. I will.” He picked the oblong glass up and looked at its brownish contents and watched the debris swirl around and around like clouds on an endless day. He tilted back his head and let the liquid fall directly down his throat without swallowing or holding it in his mouth for an instant. Expecting a gag reflex, he closed his eyes and braced himself, spreading his feet wide, in the position he used to steady his body in a moving subway car. When the rush of the drug entered his bloodstream, he planted one hand on the bar, hoping to regain his sense of the third dimension without having to open his eyes. He was surprised when his hand easily wrapped around the entire width of the bar, the tip of his middle finger naturally finding the end of his thumb. The wood was warm and soft and he imagined wrapping his hand around his girlfriend’s thin wrist. The bar suddenly moved and his eyes opened with a sound like a gunshot going off just inside his ears. A woman with a sour look on her face was staring at him, or rather down at his hand which was wrapped around her wrist which rested on the bar. “I’m not your girlfriend.” She didn’t say this he could just tell by the look on her face. His bones were picking up the vibration and broadcasting it to his brain. He quickly let go and placed his hand back and then let go and placed his hand back and then let go again caught in a loop in and out of the moment coming and going letting go and coming back again her face changing from distaste to disdain. The motion of moving back and forth made his mind roll in waves and he was calmed and eventually forgot that he was in a bar. He stepped outside of the loop and saw the whole scene from above. He noticed that the girl had a knife clutched behind her back. All of the colors of the room shimmered back and forth like blinking Christmas lights and then they all ran together to blur and mix to an ugly brown. “I’m not your girlfriend.” He tasted lemon on his tongue but it was not the girl’s mouth. Closing his eyes to savor the sourness, he seemed to slip again. Then he was on the ground and he couldn’t see her. The ground was hard, hard like concrete, not like the parquet floor of the bar. Although he was sure his eyes were open now, everything was dark. A hand embraced his shoulder and he reached up to touch it. Caressing the soft skin, he said, “Yes, yes, I know,” but then the skin wasn’t soft; it was rough as if covered with scales and so thin that he feared pieces would fall off and crumble between his fingers. He pulled the hand down, feeling the need to gaze into a soft pink palm, but when his eyes focused on the palm, it was yellowish, hard and lined like a bruised banana. He gazed up into the face of an old homeless man. “I know,” said the man softly. “I know what it’s like to wander in an endless progression of streets, searching for the something that I’ll know when I find it. I know what it’s like to search for a ghost without a picture.” He reached up to touch the old man’s face. He wanted to let him know that he understood. When he touched his skin the old man began to cry. The old man’s skin became wet and as thin as paper. His fingers broke through the thin layer of skin. The old man sighed “yes” and he kept crumpling his head until it was a small wet ball in his hands. He threw it against the back wall. After wiping his hands clean of the old man’s remains, he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. His cigarette wasn’t lit properly and was burning in the middle on only one side, slowly hallowing itself out like a canoe. A couple puffs later the canoe was large enough to sit it. He set his new boat down in the murky stream that ran through the alley behind the bar and climbed in. It was a tight fit and he had to turn his feet out sideways, like a duck, but the conveyance seemed seaworthy. The current was a lot stronger than he’d suspected, but his reflexes were also quicker than usual. He grabbed a wooden post to stop his movement and a hundred splinters lodged into his palms. The post lost its grip on the ground and the canoe was off again. “At least I have an oar,” he said aloud. The splinters in his hand amplified his vocalization to 49 times the magnitude and burst his eardrum. A small trickle of blood ran down his ear.
The post caught fire and he began to smoke it falling into the blue haze tumbling until he stood on a cliff listening to the echoes cutting through the fog. “At least I have an oar,” surrounded him in the white, slippery tightness. Wait a minute, he thought. I’m deaf. How could I hear the echoes? The fog lifted and before him was a bird, naked but for one red feather on its left wing. It was trying to fly. Holding the oar, now burned down to a stick the size of Misty Menthol 120, between two fingers he snapped it cleanly in two and handed the pieces to the bird. The pathetic creature stretched out its grotesque upper limbs, no longer resembling wings although looking nothing like arms, to receive the gift, but since he had no hands, they fell limply to the ground, then rolled to the edge of the cliff and down, out of sight. “Now neither of us has an oar,” he wanted to say, but feared the backlash of the echo. The echo came on anyway, blasting his hair back with the single word, “Oar.” The bird’s solitary red feather, undisturbed by the wallop of sound, enraged him, so he plucked it off and stuck it in his shirt pocket. The bird, incredibly angry at his violent gesture, squawked as loud as its little body could muster. The sound was an atomic blast that blew the bird into tiny bits all over the cliff wall. The man was untouched. Oh, he thought, remembering the bird was undisturbed by the echo, the feather is my protection. He took the red feather out and held it in his hands. He glanced at the remains of the bird on the wall and screamed. “Remember thou art dust Bird and to dust thou shalt return!” The echoes reduced the cliff to rubble. Caught in an avalanche of rubble, he tumbled down the mountain with the rest of the cliff. At the bottom he landed on his back in soft pile of red feathers. He heard waves crashing somewhere to his right and let the rumbling sound lull him to sleep. After such a journey, he deserved a good rest. Just before drifting off, he dug both hands deep into the feathers and filled his fists with their downy softness. When he awoke, no birds were singing but his mouth was full of sand. He leapt up to discover that the previous night he’d landed on a pile of sand, not feathers. Shit, he thought, I need that one little feather. Diving down to his knees, he furiously clawed through the sand in search of anything red. In desperation he thrust both of his arms deep into the sand. He felt something grasp his wrist and dig in. In panic, he pulled up and out came a skeleton the sand spilling through the bones. “Thank you very much for saving me,” she said. “I’ve been down there a long time.” She bent down and picked up one of the rocks and cracked it on top of her skull. She reached in and pulled out a red feather. “I believe you were looking for this?” He reached for the feather, but misjudged the distance, his depth perception still altered from the drugged drink, and wrapped his hand around the skeleton’s wrist. His thumb and middle finger met around the back of her wrist and he knew: it was the girl from the bar. He pulled her close and whispered, “What the fuck happened to you?” The echo was gone; there was no need to whisper now.
Regards,
Sarah and Bob
From: “Keith Crouse”
Subject: RHIC OK by me
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I hope the world ends, or that I at least hit the gym a few times before the apocalypse. I want to be pretty buff while leading the survivors through the tunnels, torch aloft. I hope that girl upstairs is one of the survivors, too. Damn, she is fine.
Wan,
KC
From: “Newhart, Bryson”
Subject: The translation: www.bishops.ntc.nf.ca/studentwork/Terms.htm
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
It’s called an ollie Whitney.
Tay, GULP, scared me. Sure got me good with the horns. I think he’d get the joke though, don’t you? We’ve been getting some of your junk mail here on the north side. Don’t know why. Jesus, I didn’t even know your name. Nice to finally meet you, sort of. That is, if you are indeed who I think you are ….
Gibbon, you guffing jackeen. Allow me to shake your fipper. At first I thought: a fousty funk. A grumpus. I was all set to bostoon. But now I am aninst myself with flinders of mauzy joy. After all, old Newfoundland is a place at once old and new, land and found. A place to yarry with yaffle, slinge away the duckish, indulge in vang and crubeen after dark. Morning into day into night is a suent concept, a cycle we can all twig. But now I must go spend my lunch twacking at a squabby rames vandue.
Yoi, anon,
Bryce Newhart
Date: 13 Jun 2000
Subject: whitney pastorek v. Bryce C. Newhart/Sarah M. Balcomb
Dear McSweeney’s,
Gosh, this is so much fun. Here’s my whitney pastorek v. Bryce C. Newhart/Sarah M. Balcomb play.
p.s. Bryce: Which Jeff did you think I was? If for a moment you though I was the Jeff who was a LeRoy, you might be right! Do you still have my Paul Simon’s “The Caveman” jean jacket? I’d love to get it back sometime.
yr pal, Jeff
WAITING FOR PERNOD
by Jeff Boison
Characters:
Jeff Boison
whitney pastorek
The Black Rider
Rick Lazio
A Bull
NYPD’s Finest
NYPD’s Finest weapon
SMB
BCN
Setting: Astoria on a Sunday afternoon in mid June. wp making taking tentative strides upon her bad-ass ’board (as the cool kids call it) and JB manages to keep to her side as he tries out the very hip Razor Rollerboard he is planning to give to his groomsmen at his upcoming wedding (to the most beautiful woman in the world, mind you (Hi, Alli!)). The two are wheeling precariously close to the new Starbucks on Ditmars Boulevard.
wp: Jeff, can you feel it? Can you feel how the air fills with the choking aroma of Colombian blend as we approach the dreaded structure!
JB: Yes, whitney! ’Tis a sorrowful day! Who would imagine that yet another is to open on our beloved Steinway Street!
wp: I can think of nothing as horrendous…why, except for the recent slander I received at the hands of Sarah M. Balcomb and Bryce Newhart!
JB: How true, my reasonably physiqued friend!
wp: Why yes, my handsome and extremely intelligent, yet surprisingly egoless pal! They are quite dead, having been struck down in a great number of plays and emailed correspondences. Ne’er was such a deft ass-whupping and sanctioned slaughter to be had.
JB: I had heard they were buried side by side in a lovely plot at Greenlawn Cemetery.
wp: Yeah! Let’s go and do despicable things to their gravesites! My ire is inextinguishable and mighty!
(The two hop into the Black Rider, JB’s black 1998 Jeep Cherokee (a company car, no less), and speed towards Greenpoint by way of Long Island City. As they pass beneath the Queensboro Bridge they spy Rick Lazio emceeing an illegal rodeo in an empty parking lot)
BLACK RIDER: vrooom. vrooooooom.
Rick Lazio: And next! We have, all the way from…oh no! Quick! Run for your lives! The bull, he has escaped!
Bull: Snooort. Huff. rivverun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environ…
NYPD’s finest: BULL! FREEZE!
Bull: Sir Tristram, violer d’amores…
NYPD’s finest weapon: BLAMMO!
(the bull falls into the gutter and dies. JB and wp continue into Brooklyn and go to proceed to the Greenlawn Cemetery and to the freshly made grave of SMB and BCN.)
wp: Rest in whatever would be a suitable opposite for ‘peace,’ motherfuckers.
JB: whitney. That is not very nice of you. Now, perhaps Sarah and Bryce came off a little heady. Perhaps they rubbed you the wrong way and made some insensitive insinuation. And perhaps you’ve been a little too quick to call a vendetta upon them. The whole gang thing was a little over the top, I think.
wp: But Jeff! What about the gang, man???
(whitney throws her hands to her chest. On her right hand, she hides her thumb and pinkie inside her palm, forming the standing fingers into a ‘W.’ On her left hand, the fingers and thumb form a circle and with the straightening of her wrist, the limb resembles a ‘P.’)
wp: Jeff, you were down, hesse!
JB: Yes, whitney, I AM down. But I just think enough is enough! (JB take a step back and pauses, looking down at the fresh graves) I just wish it could have all transpired differently.
(A light shoots down from the heavens, illuminating the gravesite along with JB and wp. GOD, on a longboard, rides the light down to earth, pausing a few feet from the ground to pull a totally aggro Ollie, and then GOD pulls a sweet dismount and stands beside JB and wp)
GOD: Jeff, man. Very strong words, dude. Do you really mean all of that about Sarah, Bryce and whitney?
JB: Well, yeah. I think I do, GOD. I wish we could all get along. I wish Sarah and bryce had never made whitney feel they way they did, and I wish whitney hadn’t rallied all of those people to murder Sarah and Bryce. I wish we had all gotten together at someplace really cool, like Moomba or Vong, and
SMB: Hello GOD. Bryce, you look like shit.
BCN: Yes, hi, God. Sarah, you should take a long look at yourself before you start with me, dear. It’s good to see you. I missed you from the grave.
SMB: Oh, Bryce! I too missed you, my love! Even though we reek of decomposition, hug me you sexy man, you.
(SMB and BCN throw themselves into one another’s arms. They smell like the once-dead)
GOD: C’mon you two. Let’s get you cleaned up. We’ve got reservations at Moomba! Glasses of Pernod for everyone! It’s on me!
JB: Yay!
wp: Yay!
SMB: Yay!
BCN: Yay!
(and they all lived happily after until SMB said something about whitney’s singing voice and was soundly slain soon afterwards)
THE END
From: Joaquin Vargas
Subject: Our National Debt
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
The (Power) Ballad of Donny, Heavy Metal Accountant
Part One (in a an ongoing series of unspecified length)
Donny is unsure of whether he should proceed with his plan to reduce the national debt. True, he believes wholeheartedly in the power of music, specifically the sub-genre known as “heavy metal”, but can it really have a positive impact on the U.S. economy in the way he hopes? All of his extensive studies say yes. The “power chords” associated with this type of music, along with the traditional dress, which includes tight pants, long hair, and black t-shirts (surprisingly, this goes for both male and female adherents, pointing to the latent androgynous tendencies occurring within this subculture) have influenced crowds of up to 100,000 people to behave in manners most unbecoming in proper society. Such acts as “headbanging”, “binge drinking” followed by “anonymous sex with skanky chicks one wouldn’t normally give a second look” are common during heavy metal performances. However, budget balancing on a national scale has yet to be witnessed at one of these concerts. Donny is intent on changing all of that.
J.D. Vargas
From: “Erickson, Karl”
Subject: Fatness and Lunch
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Hello,
While I was eating lunch (pb&j, raisins, company coffee), I was thinking I remembered some people writing in and bemoaning and bewildered by the fact that fat or large people are not appreciated as much as thin beautiful people.
Well, it is because fat large people are in the way. No one likes to have others in their way, not I, at least. If I am walking down a sidewalk, and I see a “chubber” ahead of me, I groan and inwardly know that my journey is going to take at least an additional five to 10 minutes as I plot to navigate my route around the lumbering flabbo.
And sitting next to over weight people on the bus or train sucks. And if you have ever attempted to walk next to a fat person on the sidewalk, well, you know that it is not a successful endeavor.
So, you can see that it is not that fat folks have unpleasant personalities or are stupid or in anyway mentally different than thin, beautiful people. It is just that they are inconvenient.
I bought running shoes to help insure that I will not be inconvenient.
Karl Erickson
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Subject: two things
Dear McSweeney’s,
While listening to Thin Lizzy- the peel sessions and “Jailbreak” comes on, I am prone to laugh when Phil Lynott sings “Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak, SOMEWHERE in this town.” I might laugh at that line but it does NOT diminish in any way my love for the music. Also, I too saw the Star tabloid with corner headline of “Mr. Ed was a Zebra!”. Standing in the checkout line of a fine Chicagoland Dominick’s, I also was tempted to buy that outstanding newspaper but thought better of it. I decided to read my parents’ Enquirer which they have subscribed to since I was in grade school. It’s a fact.
All the love in my 100% pure beef heart.
kelly “the tall” king
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: OH, CANADA (dry).
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I have no idea what, but something is making my throat feel really sharp pain. I guess it could be the Ginger Ale I’m drinking right now, I don’t know. Not trying to be a downer or dramatic , but it just reminds me that once everything finally seems to start working out for me, it probably turns out that something about ginger ale is killing me.
Like barbed wire pressed against the left side-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York.
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: double u double u double u dot nothing dot calm
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
So now my job, and the Internet company that it was at, has been gone for ten business days now. Which, in light of the last month or two, seems fine with me. My little ..com job was starting to feel like being in a acapella-boy-band. And that behind our attempts to woo America’s moms in shopping malls with our noon concerts, we we’re really falling into the tour bus (van) every afternoon hating each other. Hating decisions made within the band by each other, and hating certain styles of certain members…even though we were aware that we needed this chorus of diverse styles to remain appealing. We needed the semi-cute computer geek. We needed the sleepier bad seed turned good. We needed the un-traditionally handsome Australian business-genius-boy-man-thing.
Here is the truth: WE RARELY SANG OUR OWN SONGS.
We were busy rallying ourselves to monitor mundane tasks that ultimately killed us… like creating documents that would outline strategies for people with talent to fuel our little show. And so we stood on our little stage day after day in the mall and I secretly steeped in hatred over the fact that the very thing that made us want to try this, was now something we didn’t even do ourselves.
I’m a little bit tired in a way that I can’t really put a finger on.
After three days by the ocean and getting burned by the sun, seven business days later my skin is shedding. Most of it. Maybe even all of it. As is if I’ll slither from it in my sleep and leave it here. And somebody hiking through the building, seasons later, will find it and guess my size and my stature and my current whereabouts. It’s a shedding that makes me think I should not take job interviews, because I am so obviously between skins. I sit in my apartment looking out at the city, drinking popular brands of bottled iced coffee drinks (2 left) and eating nutrition bars (4 left), convincing myself that when the peeling is done I will be something new. Somehow shinier and more ready for things I can’t even imagine.
Dan Kennedy
New Work, New Work
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: 5 and 11 with 1 at 10
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
It sounds like the newscaster on the TV in the apartment on the other side of the wall is saying this:
“Every single little session, and now every single lesson, and do I feel like I’m trying. The steel cannot display. Woof. Woof. Woof.”
“(looming music. Like a foghorn, almost.) The small church is stinging like needles. And when I Pay the world… sure, we can sail if we sail. Something is working. And feeling. The singing is jumping. (Dramatic music looming again)”
“Every thirteen years the sensitive blue thing falls on Peter.”
“Now the main land is knowing wallpaper. You have no idea of the faculty that requires.”
In 4b, not 4a-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
Subject: Phat
From: whitney pastorek
Dear McSweeney’s,
I think Bryce Newhart’s concerns about my bearings are valid; I went with Bones on the recommendation of the skate shop employee who graciously built my new board. For my purposes, they’ll do. I’m currently only using an AVEC 1, due to my complete inability to ride a skateboard prior to two weeks ago, but as soon as my skills improve, I’ll switch to a faster roll— perhaps a 3?— and I’ll see how Pigs compare.
I always thought the heart of rock’n’roll was in Cleveland.
thanks so much
whitney pastorek
From: “Newhart, Bryson”
Subject: hey pr9000!
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Back at ya big guy! Don’t you hate when people talk like that?
But seriously Paul, you should keep your bathroom window shut. People out for a morning hang-glide cannot help glancing. It’s embarrassing to say it, but I saw you in the shower with a fake cellphone the other day: a bar of Lever 2000. The light was off and you were using a fake arm to hold the bar of soap, one of those glow in the dark kind. Rinkes, I thought, from Chicago, so that … In a nearby tree was a zen soy nest with some small blue eggs in it. “Mmmm, Breakfast,” I thought, heading over there.
One last thing Paul, you’re supposed to hold the phone next to your ear, not rub it all over your body. Cellular phones? In the future we’ll have cellular bones.
Bryce Newhart
From: “Robert Beier”
Subject: From your office correspondent
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I dreamt of a copier. A weighty copier that spanned the breadth of three men 40 cubits wide and 16 angels 500 cubits tall. It was silver and black, occupying at the least 30 dimensions and at the most 57. It folded in and out of these dimensions creating a field of gray as deep as the Atlantic Ridge is buried under the sea. There was a golden chain around my ankle, snaking (o.k. it wasn’t a chain, it was a snake bitten into my ankle) back into the copier winding into and out of my current existence. Jeezel, the red butcher-demon, turned to me, his eyes two green start buttons, and bid me make him copies because he was the boss of me. He pointed his gnarled finger, the size of a tree, at a stone tablet that looked like it weighed 700 pounds. Yea, the weight was immense and the suffering sank upon my shoulders as the day sinks into night. Arash, up beyond where the sky levels the sea into an uneasy oneness, separate me from Jeezel. The demon laughed and it sounded like mountains avalanching. Copy, he said. 6, 000,000,000, I need. I knew that I was lower than the dust, cursed be the man who is named xerox. For each copy represented the days I have yet to spend in the office.
Regards,
Bob
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
From: “John O’Keefe”
Subject: Snubbed by MacArthur
Dear McSweeney’s,
I would like to state for the record that I was once again overlooked by the MacArthur Foundation selection committee. I’m tired of apologizing for the fact that I don’t work at Cal Tech or smash atoms or perform progressive ballet.
On the small chance that one of the committee’s anonymous members might be lurking out there somewhere, this is my project for the forthcoming year (please take note):
- “Sartre Trek”: innovative situation comedy in which the world’s favorite philosophers debate the merit of boldly going ANYwhere. I do not wish to reveal too much at this point but I have four words for you: First Mate – SOARIN KIERKEGAARD
Thank You,
John O’Keefe
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
Subject: [no subject]
From: Rubies at Tea Time
Dear McSweeney’s,
If my brain worked like those of your writers my body would instantaneously elongate, my skin would turn a lovely shade of violet and I would have really long hair, like a mermaid’s, but not wet. Furthermore, my digestive system would begin to allow for subsistence on nothing but the sounds of people talking. And I would never get another mosquito bite.
Love,
Mary Fisher
Salt Lake City, UT
From: Elise Allen
Subject: Adventures of The Hazy Eyebrow
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Okay, Okay, I must confess. Following the unsuccessful “The Helmut Story” and the successful “Priap’s Prison” I dropped out of graduate school.
After all…what can a writer do with a Ph.D. in Immunobiology? (except irritate fellow scientists with excessive anecdotal spew.)
So, having recently departed the East Coast in a whirlwind liquidation of personal belongings and with three flavors of prescription meds in tow, I have set up camp in a new city, Dallas, TX. Not my first choice in cities but I could have done worse.
My mother assures me to consider it an appropriate forum for growing one’s “sea legs.”
Does anyone know what this really means?
Am I a mermaid in need of physical therapy?
Is she telling me to tan my legs as one does lying prone parallel to the sea?
Please, fair McSweeneys readers, what does this matronly advice mean?
Upon my arrival in New Haven with $500 and no personal belongings, save for a butterfly chair, I proceeded to utilize local “Tag Sales.” Odd regional phenomenon. In the South these are known as “Garage Sales.”
So I boarded my fair clipper ship and went tag sailing. I guess now it is time to do it again, Gulf Coast Style. So I begin my garage sailing oddessy. I am mentally preparing myself for this event: reminding myself of the trials, perils and pitfalls of the garage sailor’s life.
Firstly, there are “Those who Paid.” “Those who Paid” should be given the number of the nearest Salvation Army. They should NOT have garage sales. These individuals price their items sky high (a characteristic shared with “Those who do the Garage Sale Groove”), BUT they expect exactly what they ask for because, you guessed it, “they PAID.”
Ex:
TWP #1: “Yes, that’s right, $2.00 for that tupperware. I paid $5.00 for it off the rack! $2.00 is a real bargain.”
Me #1: "What do you mean $2.00?!! This is tupperware lady – you obviously don’t know the tacit rules of garage sailing. This piece of plastic could have been used to feed your dog or store biological samples. This is an item of borderline disposability.
TWP#1: What?!!! Feed my daw…biological samples! We ONLY used this for the storage of odor free ICE !! It has this super-seal feature and…
Me#2: “Let me explain to you the tacit law of garage sailing,” I say as I jauntily tip my sailor’s cap (I got it at astroworld in 1985 it has “Elise” written on it in cursive – people will bargain better with a crazy lady just to get you off their property). "You clearly have not traveled the garage sale circuit, or you would know that an item crashes in price upon purchase, especially (leaning in in a tilting sort of I am about to fall into your lap way and lifting my voice, simultaneously) TUPPERWARE!
Me#1: "To put it simply: Traditionally, Tupperware is an item for the “freebie” box."
To be continued.
Please email eallen@flowersfedele.com with answers about my sealegs. Thank you.
Elise
(occasionally published as Guy Ives)
From: “Gillian Beebe”
Subject: LW’s Globules of Evil
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Mercury behaves like that.
When I was younger, my sister and I used to accidentally break thermometers and then grab bobby pins and jostle the mercury beadlets around the bathroom tile. It was fun! It behaved not like a liquid, not like a solid. It was so beautiful I wanted to eat some. I had self-control, though. I had been warned about going blind or something, which is the same reason I never touch my eyes after playing with a Wooly Bear caterpillar).
Eventually we would have to dispose of our liquidy silver joy (for some reason my mother would act very angry when she discovered broken thermometers), so we would manipulate the mercury spherules onto a piece of paper (not easy as they tend to break apart and wobble all over as if being affected by some magnetic force), and then carefully dump it in the toilet. I think there is still a globule in the bottom of my father’s. I haven’t looked that closely, though. I won’t! I refuse to. I just sort of know it’s there, ominous.
When my sister went away I used to rummage through her jewelry box and I discovered that she had saved a tiny stash of mercury in a plastic box inside another plastic box marked temptingly with a skull and crossbones (implying Poison, not Piracy). I haven’t looked for it lately, but again, I’m sure it’s still there. Does anyone know the symptoms of mercury poisoning?
Fondly,
Gillian Beebe
From: “Sarah M. Balcomb”
Subject: Scrawny Dutch Wrap-Arounds
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Writing plays is more fun than Death Race 2000. Here’s one more, then I retire.
UNTITLED, THE SEQUEL A Play for McSweeney’s by Sarah M. Balcomb
Characters:
SMB
BMS, a friend
Setting: A wooden bench against a black backdrop. Conspicuously artificial sound of birds and a bubbling brook in the background, mixed with a fly techno beat.
SMB: Give me one of those cigarettes.
BMS: Fuck no. Get your own. (Laughs) Here, take ’em all.
SMB: (Lights cigarette) Thanks, dude.
BMS: So I bet you think you’re hot shit now.
SMB: What’re you talking about? I’ve always been hot shit.
BMS: Seriously. That’s a lot of play you’re gotten.
SMB: Yeah, they say I have a gift.
BMS: They also say you sleep with fried food.
SMB: I prefer to focus on the positive.
BMS: So make another prediction. For the record.
SMB: OK, um .Whitney Pastorek will master the art of skateboarding. And stop referencing fast food chains in all her letters.
BMS: She was just taunting you with that Taco Bell thing.
SMB: Don’t tell anyone, but I do like the Bell.
BMS: Your secret’s safe with me, pal.
(SMB and BMS laugh robustly, then smoke more cigarettes.)
FINIS.
Did you get that? BMS was actually me, my initials reversed. I was just talking to myself. Endless fun, eh?
Yeah right,
Sarah M. Balcomb
From: “Pascover, Alexander W.”
Subject: Recent humor piece
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I found Kevin Shay’s piece (Pirate Riddles for Sophisticates) very funny. But what was with all the misspellings and capital letters?
Subscribe me,
Etc., etc.,
—Alex Pascover
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
From: Barry Osborne
Subject: A response, okay, two
Dear McSweeney’s,
To the woman who watches the delivery people:
Your story reminded me of a little game I used to play in the elevator of a large investment firm here in Boston, Mass. Being a temp, I was used to stuffy office environments, but even I had to adjust here. When I left my cubicle I had to wear my jacket, even when walking to the copier. Something had to give.
Anyway, I made many deliveries between two buildings which required riding the elevator quite a bit. When the elevator was empty (and descending) I would jump up to catch “air” like I did as a boy. This is where the invention of “How Close Can I Come to Being Fired” came about. After several weeks, mere jumping turned into dancing, and dancing transformed itself with spastically shaking about (funny faces included) up until the point the elevator beeped upon arriving at the lobby. I became so successful at this game (you won every time you gained composure before the door opened and someone noticed what a spaz you were) that I knew I could count to four, slowly and calmly after the elevator beeped before the door opened.
The company let me loose after 4 months. I retired the All Time Champion of “How Close Can I Come to Being Fired.”
To Dan Kennedy:
But don’t give yourself away.
Sincerely,
Barry Osborne
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
From: “Carman, Sean”
Subject: The Truth About Seattle
Dear McSweeney’s,
This morning on my drive to work I saw a woman teetering on a skateboard. She was wearing canvas flats, her legs were bare and white, and her floral-print skirt was too flimsy for her ungainly hips. She was on the sidewalk, not the street. She leaned too far forward and, moments before losing herself in a stumbling fall, picked up her skateboard and stopped on the corner to allow me to pass.
Seattle is a town that is famous for coffee, which is really just flavored water that leaves an acid taste on the tounge. And yet this is more than most cities can claim. Good fiction, I’m coming to believe, may represent nothing more than an aptitude and cleverness with words — the quick puff of a magician’s distracting smoke. The most authenticity its artifice may support is the writer’s personal experience because the reader, despite desperately wanting to be entertained, is poised to detect even the faintest lie or exaggeration. Reading David Foster Wallace is like spending a few hours with the really entertaining party guest who is delightfully stoned. He’s like John Irving on speed. At the other end of the room is David Sedaris, who is perhaps at war with his family and himself, but more likely is blessed in that both he and his relatives are too aware of the world’s problems to care what it thinks of them. These thoughts lead me to wonder if journalism is a higher art form than fiction, because it embraces an authenticity external to the writer, that eclipses the storyteller and keeps its own comfortable distance from exploitation or self-indulgence. But then look at those photographs from Bosnia and tell me what you see. They are shot through with exploitation at angles too deep and numerous to fathom. I’m reading Gouveritch’s book on Rwanda. It has scenes that only a true genius could imagine. No one could expect to write anything like it.
I travel the country. I flash my ID and breeze past the guards and metal detectors at the doors of federal courthouses. I work with Ramsey Clark’s son, who is unfailingly flattering and self-deprecating, and who drinks me under the table in a succession of cheap hotel bars. My family has been through some harrowing experiences recently, unrelated to the aforementioned. My desolate hometown is currently featured in an off-Broadway play. Some day I will write about these things. In this way I suspect that I am like you, Neil Pollack, Amie Barrodale and Zadie Smith. We all believe that we have one pitch-perfect novel in us that we just haven’t written yet. Like you, I also suspect, I am haunted by the knowledge that we can’t all be right.
Sean Carman
From: Jennifer Hoyt
Subject: my psyche
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Last night I had a dream that I am hoping you can help me with. I went to a party at the house of someone who is not my friend but a friend of a friend. As we walked into the house, there was a sheet spread out on the floor and on the sheet were a number of copies of the Jehovah’s Witness bible (I don’t know what it’s called, I was raised catholic, they’re all bibles to me). There was a variety of shapes and sizes, old and new, English and any other language you could want. I wanted one of these books very much, in fact, it seems I had been looking all over for the Jehovah’s Witness bible and had been unable to find a single copy. Well, when I went closer to the ones spread about on the sheet, I saw they all had little hand written signs that read “sold”. An incredibly attractive man came up behind me and told me that he had one more copy available but that it was very important that I tell no one about it. He brought me into the kitchen which was a disgusting mess of food-caked dishes and junk food wrappers on the counters. He handed me a martini that was actually just a glass of olives with a little bit of vodka in the bottom and pulled out an incredible mini sized version of the Jehovah’s Witness bible. It had a black vinyl cover with white letters and pictures of skulls in various stages of screaming. I wanted to make out with this man. Not for giving me the book but for being extremely attractive. I took the book. Later in the evening, all the guests at the party gathered in a very large back room that looked like my 3rd grade classroom and prepared to have a little impromptu poetry reading. I have never written poetry but was feeling so good from the effects of my olive martini and the book find of a lifetime, I sat on the floor in back thinking up good rhymes for words like tangerine and penguin, just in case. Right then a good friend of mine went to the front of the room and everyone gasped. There, dangling from a chain attached at his belt loop (much like the very tough looking “wallet attached to a chain”) was another mini version of the Jehovah’s Witness Bible. Now, everyone knew that he hadn’t come to the party with that! Where did he get it? There were none available; the little hand written signs said so. All eyes turned on me. Everyone, including the extremely attractive man, was under the impression that I had spilled the beans about there being other hidden copies somewhere in the house. I plead my case but as is common at Jehovah’s Witness bible parties, no one was interested, they just wanted the little betraying bitch out of their house. They forcibly removed me as I cried.
What do you think it all means? Any interpretations you may have, Jungian or otherwise, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jen Hoyt
From: “Kudirka, Catherine”
Subject: Letters from Lucy
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
This whole day has been a blank, except for earlier, after the Skinny One left, I slept for a little while (that was part of the blank, but I’m talking about after I woke up). Skinny one put Bag of Forbidden Snacks on the floor by the sink. Serendipitous. I don’t understand why these snacks are forbidden — no one else eats them, but she tells me no I can’t have them. I experimented a little with approaching the bag, to see if anyone would jump out from a hidden area and yell at me (this does happen sometimes, especially if I am absorbed in thought and not paying attention). No one jumped out so I removed the best snack which was actually not edible (how can this be so, I wonder, even though I have come across this phenomenon before, on the Cement especially) even though it smells very much like Dead Bird. It is lickable, however, and so I lick it for awhile, and when I tire of this, I bury the thing under the small cloth on the floor that belongs to me. No one should bother it there — it would be rude.
I think the best way to actually catch a rat would be to try hard to decide what one will do with it when one actually does catch it. It’s pessimistic to think that one will never catch the rat. One must move, in one’s imagination, past the image of grabbing the rat with one’s teeth (impossible as this seems), and onward, to the potentially satisfying reward of biting down on the rat’s body, and feeling the tiny bones crackle beneath one’s molars, and the blood of the rat sliding down one’s throat, warm and fragrant. We all make the mistake of being afraid that the rat cannot be caught, and I think this attitude hinders our success.
There is mud caked on the fur above my tail. I am not able to do anything about this. When I move, the dried mud pulls hundreds of hairs from my skin, some of them all the way out. It is very irritating. I can’t reach it with my tongue. I can’t rub this area on the sofa. I am not that acrobatic.
Sincerely,
Lucy the dog
From: Elise Allen
Subject: The Continued Adventures of the Hazy Eyebrow
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I can only assume that my garage sailing advice and adventure has brought you back to this site in hopes of more tales. But I will pause in my garage sailing adventures to tell the tale of Peggy Swindleford, a two-day a week secretary posing as a property manager.
APEX Plumbing and Supply. The shady front for a landlord/lawyer who is rising to Wizard of Oz stature by his simple refusal to be present at anytime. I know he exists because Peggy, of Swindleford fame, will occasionally wave a laquered claw at the wood paneling on one side of her office, indicating a “presence,” whenever issues of the landlord come up.
It is MY lunch hour after all, not his.
I have brought ole’ Peg Leg 60 photographs of the duplex in disrepair, temporarily known as “The Shat-oh” until Whitney Pastorek can come up with a better name. I am signing a five page lease, which in true Texas style states that all my personal belongings are considered to be lein on my rent.
Ha Ha, I think. Little good that will do them since most of my personal belongings were scattered willy-nilly around the city of New Haven or seized by my former landlord. Confiscating my up and coming salvation army scavenger collection of books will do them only $162 worth of good AND only if the book market compares to New Haven’s AND they’ve got to know the bookstore owner. Fat chance. These kids can barely type a lease, I don’t think they read much.
The Hazy Eyebrow is winning! Winning, I tell you! After all the grand theft auto/landlord lawsuit/German boyfriend pitfalls that she has encountered! WINNING!
Okay. I am calm.
So I read the five page lease and find a section that reads “the tenant will pay all but the following checked utilities”
Golden glory. Peggy has checked them all. Apparently she has a problem catching “buts.”
I wrestle with my cynical and bitter self and finally say “Oh! So we don’t pay ANY of the utilities.”
This is the fun part. She uses her you are an idiot voice and says: “Nooooeeew, you pay ALL the utilities.” in her buddah has spoken voice.
I point out her fallacy. She quickly converts from Budda to a flustered hen (Quite a sight to see) and starts clucking around finding a fresh “page four” to type up.
I read on. I feel a panic attack coming on so I go to take an ehem…asprin. I leave Peg’s office and wander amongst a veritable forest of pedastle sinks, glistening hardware, polished and decorated tile, tubs, and toilets. I am looking for one that will give up a little water so I can take my ehem asprin. I have to ask. One of the green monkeys (see Clockwatchers) points out the bohemuth (sp?) of a watering fountain. There it is, right in the middle of the showroom. A huge, rusty, gray metallic, retro-elementary school water fountain. The only functional plumbing in this thicket of porcelain.
I take my ehem asprin.
I must go now.
Some one ask Whitney Pastorek for a tale about the Caddos. She is quite the Native American history buff.
Yours, elise allen (occasionally published as Guy Ives)
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: PLEASED TO MEET MY CO-PILOT
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Certainly you’ve heard about that book in which the author claims to be simply documenting his conversations with God. He says, “Oh, I just write down what he said in the conversations we had.” I forget what it’s called at the moment. SIMPLY DOCUMENTING, or something. HEY, IT’S GOD DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE TO TALK? Whatever. The title is not important right now. The important thing is that I got to thinking about what possibilities this opens up for me personally, in terms of writing. I have always felt that any writing endeavor longer than these letters I write would be beyond my grasp of discipline, talent, etc. So some friend of mine, when I was saying this, blurts out “Oh, you should read [GOD’S HERE AND HE WANTS TO HAVE A WORD WITH YOU] because it changes all of that, blah, blah, blah…”
So I actually read a few pages of this book, and I think I see exactly what my friend was talking about! Basically, if this author essentially sub-contracted half of his work out for God to write, and the American public did not so much as raise an eyebrow, then nobody is going to say one thing if I decide to get, say, Nabokov or any number of writers or celebrities who have passed on, to shoulder half of the burden of writing MY book. See, essentially, this type of arrangement makes it possible for me to start thinking about writing something a little longer than these letters to McSweeney’s.
Do you see what I’m saying?
“Yes”
What?
“Yes, they see. And yes, we will get a novel finished this year…or my name’s not Harriet Tubman.”
Oh my God-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York.
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Subject: cap’m queeg
Dear McSweeney’s,
I very much enjoyed Kevin Shay’s pirate piece because I listen to someone at work do the “arrrrr” thing about two to three dozen times per day. I work on a trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade where the options guys have to yell their conversions over to the futures guys. I am a futures guy (actually a futures gal), and the clerk that stands next to me is named Yair (pronounce Yah- eer which is Hebrew for light). The guy from the options pit can’t pronounce his name and calls him Yar. When he needs Yair to do something for him he shouts “YARRRRRRRR” in a gruff pirate manor. I loved it the first thirty-five to forty times. Now it grates on my spine like a cheese grater. Also, last night I dreamt of the M.R. He wanted me to take a picture of a group of his friends including himself. He handed me the camera and proceeded to detail an elaborate process for how he wanted the picture taken and the settings on the camera that I should use. I don’t remember if I botched the job or not because I woke up before he got the film developed. This is the second dream I have had in which the M.R. appears. I am now considering writing a book much like the one I have placed on top of the toilet in my bathroom and that is “I Dream of Madonna- Women’s Dreams of the Goddess of Pop” (a birthday gift from a close friend). Although with only two dream entries in my book it would be a quick read. That’s it.
Kelly Ann King
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: RESPOND BEFORE 6_20_00
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
One question:
Who is reviewing the June 20th memorial of Newsweek theater critic Jack Kroll?
I hope the critic covering the event for you is every bit as firm, fair, but devilishly snide at times, as Mr. Kroll was throughout his career. I might suggest you send yours truly, being that we all know I’m between jobs at the moment. Did Kroll ever have anything to say about McSweeney’s? If he did, this is the type of thing I should be briefed on before I head over to the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, if in fact I’m covering this one for you guys.
Some of the things I’ll be considering in my coverage:
-Pictures of Jack. Are they gratuitous? Size? What is his expression in the photographs? Do they seem to be calculated to keep critics like me from certain angles in a review of the memorial?
-Speakers. Getting into the eulogies here. How is the writing? How are they presented? Was the writing barbed with little in-jokes that only an intimate mourner would appreciate, or was there the opportunity from someone like myself, who wasn’t really close with Kroll or the majority of his work, to mourn and enjoy the writing? How was the comedy used here? We all know these things are laced with ‘warm, thoughtful, and un-solicitous comedic musings’, to paraphrase my understanding of Kroll’s conversational comment regarding a show I was involved with, but more to the point ARE THE JOKES AND ANECDOTES APPROPRIATE TO THE SCALE AND SETTING OF THE MEMORIAL?
If you want to arrange for a more formal pitch for my covering the memorial, telephone me at my apartment. If you think I’m going to outline the pitch so well that you find yourself with a free Dan Kennedy review on your hands, YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR HEAD!
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York.
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: What I really should be doing is directing!
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
AN EMOTIONAL (Hopefully) MONTAGE DEPICTING THE EVENTS IN OUR NATION ON THE DAY OF SATURDAY, JUNE 17TH, 2000.
By Dan Kennedy
IMAGE: Washington Monument. Wide shot on video tape, not film. A tourist uses a payphone near the sidewalk. A child looks on without amazement or any understanding of the significance of the monument. Absentmindedly chewing on some kind of pokemon toy or something.
MUSIC: Instrumental version of any current hit single being played on the radio these days.
[Fades into:]
IMAGE: A late-eighties model of compact car is being parallel parked on a somewhat busy street in an average American city. Driver is probably going to go to the store or something.
MUSIC: Cross-fade from last track into an Orchestral rendition of current MatchBox 20 song that is on MTV all the time.
[Fades into:]
IMAGE: A high School. Nothing happening, as it’s Saturday. Maybe a group of 3-7 local kids playing an informal game of soccer way off in the distance. Camera is not stead at all. The camera’s tiny built-in mic is picking up my breathing.
MUSIC: Sudden cut to piano playing Louis Louis by The Kingsmen.
[Jump cut:]
IMAGE: One of those inexpensive small bottle rockets (From Mexico?) leaving a thin and spotty trail of white smoke against an off-white sky of high cloud cover. Video freezes for dramatic ending when bottle rocket “pops” like a firecracker at the end of its 71 ft journey into the sky. In the freeze-frame, in the background you can see a small plane, which isn’t doing much.
MUSIC: Piano playing Louis Louis stops suddenly.
END
Dan Kennedy
From: “Marissa D. Madrigal”
Subject:
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
An appropriate task on this fine Saturday. At work. Because they hate me.
Useless items on my desk:
Used post-it notes (various sizes)
1 Cracked purple plastic cup
1 List of commonly used abbreviations(in the medical staffing field)
Book- Wage and Hour Laws, 1996
Employee Photo Id’s (9)
1 bobby pin
1 pink piece construction paper labeled “winner”
1 chunk acoustic tile. (dime sized)
My strategic plan to use each and every one of these items is as follows:
I will cut and paste a collage of sorts out of used post-its, using the carpet as my canvas, fashion the purple cup into a visor/Frisbee/weapon, speak only in abbreviations " OCC BPF PREM AC EE NN GRF", read Wage and Hours Law, 1996, create a hanging mobile for the area above the desk with the Photo Ids, using the bobby pin as the vessel of insertion into the space left by the missing chunk of acoustic tile on my desk. I will affix the acoustic tile to the hood of my car, just for flare.
As for the pink construction paper, I’ll find something for it. I may just leave it pinned to my cubicle. I kind of like it.
Marissa D. Madrigal
From: “Timothy McWeeney”
Subject: McWeeney pays a visit to the fruity bar
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 GMT
Dear McSweeney’s,
It’s not easy driving a 78 Lincoln filled with smoke down a crowded sidewalk in reverse, the disco ball spinning, your crotch soaked with urine. I guess that’s why when I ended up in the gay bar I was still inside the car, the hood covered in brick and plaster. To make matters worse, my pet rats were sulking. I know you’re not supposed to snap at loved ones — I learned that in the brothel — but confiscating their miniature drums and tubas had been necessary, regardless of how many rodent necks got snapped. Their rat-faced marching music was making me quite insane. Besides, rats are a dime a dozen. One thing I could feel good about, at least the Mexican had given me a free boot polish. Anything to bolster my confidence. “Lemons of steel,” I thought. “That’s what I need in this sodomy rumshop.” The fruits were not even surprised by my entrance through the wall. I guess when you’ve been wearing a leather banana hammock and a dog collar for long enough, certain things just go right by you. I stumbled to the bar, hoping for a cool glass of urine, and immediately I was besieged by a flaming sissy.
“Allen gives me robotic accuracy. He’s my German programmer,” the prissy nancy lisped in my face. “Oh please,” I thought, “what kind of line is that?” The bearded fruit had removed his sailor’s cap and was almost on my lap. Planted in the middle of his face was a large red clown’s nose. Kind of hungry, I reached into my pocket for a few uncooked hotdogs — left over from the afternoon — and started to nibble. “Look fancy boy,” I said. “I’m not your type.”
“Neither am I,” said the fruit. “But as an almost fully functional AI-2000-BOT, I do have a sense of humor. Moreover, I can chop almost anything into 26 different sizes before you can blink. Never mind my beige flesh, inside I’m all black.” I raised my eyebrows. “A real fruit-juicer, huh?” I said. “Black on the inside.” I toasted him with my mug of urine. “No homey, I ain’t sayin’ whud you think I be saying.” He did a sort of robotic laugh. “What I’m talking about is hardware. And not what your dirty homophobic mind thinks about that either. I mean wiring: a whole damn alphabet of circuitry and microchips. Nanotech. Quantum shit. It’s got me floating somewhere between life and death. But my brain chip helps ease the social difficulties. It’s not all bad. Not that I’ve known different.” He seemed to forget what he was saying and slammed his fist on the bar. “Hey shit face! Some more battery acid over here!”
“You are some piece of work,” I said. “Some kind of robotic piece of work no doubt.” I stood and brushed off some plaster, fully intending to knock the robot down. Either that or offer him a job in my noodle shop. Suddenly he was laughing his robot head off. “Ah ha ha ha,” came the robot cackle. “I’m just kidding. Just being a goofball. Been that way ever since preschool when my mom gashed my face and carved it up with a razor. Old mom had weird idea of poetry. I didn’t let it bother me though. I took the opportunity to smear that blood all over. Then, with my face covered in blood, I pretended to be a clown. Still am one. Blood Clown. So you see, although I know I had you going, I’m not really a robot.” He held out his filthy robot hand, expecting me to shake it. “Sure, Blood Clown.” I handed him a wiener.
“Hey,” he continued, “when they really do replace us clowns with robotic clowns, do you think those bastards will be loud and clumsy like most clowns and robots? Or will they defy that stereotype and walk quietly on high-tech cat-like feet?”
I didn’t have an answer for Blood Clown so I pretended to ignore him. This seemed to make him angry. He leapt to his feet. “And another thing, tough guy. How many ounces of German Beer do you think my horny bitch wife can pour into her hot groin? Well? Answer me goddamnit! Do you think I can swing a bowling ball from my cock?” Blood Clown was swaying from side to side now. He’d become a real menace. “Huh? Do you think so? Well I can.”
I shrugged, unimpressed. He grinned and ran for my car. With the side of his face he smashed the back windshield. “What do you think of that?” he roared. The bartender had meanwhile produced a sawed-off shotgun. Evidently this was ordinary behavior for the Blood Clown. He came back, his face covered with glass and blood, and sat down. He seemed depressed now.
“Hey buddy. Why won’t you look at me?” he said. “You’re face looks kinda scary. Are you upset to find out that I’m not really a robot? Your look makes my voice sound kinda scratchy in my ears.” He then turned to the bar. “Jeez bartender, tough crowd tonight. How about a smile and a free drink for the non-robotic comedian known as Blood Clown. How about cutting Blood Clown some slack?” The bartender pulled out a knife and held it to the man’s neck. “You want it cut thin or thick?” he said. “Thick,” said Blood Clown. “You know the way I like it.” I got up and hobbled to the car. “See you faggots another time,” I called back. “This act is getting old.”
Your compatriot the general,
Timothy McWeeney
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS THREE TIMES ON THE CEILING WHEN IT WANTS YOU TO SHUT UP
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
There are five, maybe ten, things I knew I would accomplish by the age of 25.
1) Release a record that would make the Replacements seem like even less of a brilliant footnote in the history of American music.
2) Have sex with Jill in Seattle.
3) See the world.
4) Stay off tour long enough to redefine twentieth century American literature.
I forget the other one or five things. Doesn’t matter, best I’ve done so far on the four listed above is record two songs to cassette with an out of tune acoustic guitar; say “Hi Joel” to Jill when I was drunk and nervous at a party in Seattle; travel to Austin to run out of money; and eight years later write a few letters to you guys. Oh, well… not too shabby when you consider that I’m 32! Wait a second…
Dan Kennedy
New York, Now Work
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: NO GHOST
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Why is it that quotation marks appear around my name in the subject heading of my every letter ever posted by McSweeney’s? I don’t have the account information in my email software set up to display “Dan Kennedy”, I have it set up to display: Dan Kennedy.
Paranoia tells me that this is McSweeney’s way of implying that I am not real.
You know…that I’m a “Writer”… “Living” here in New York and “Writing”.
Of course since I’m between jobs right now, my worst fear is that there are people reading McSweeney’s who have thought about getting in touch with me regarding a writing job, but are leaning back in their executive chairs and saying things like "Well, I think he would be a good fit over here, this “Dan Kennedy”, but something tells me there is no “Dan Kennedy” and that the joke is on us."
All records on file-
(no quote) Dan Kennedy (No end quote)
From: “Dan Kennedy”
Subject: Rrrrrrreeeeeewwww (Sound of old fashioned siren)
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
I feel like if I lived in a small town and my house caught on fire that the only firetruck to come would be one of those antique fire trucks, and it would have fifteen or twenty clowns hanging off of it, and they would be honking old fashioned bicycle horns, and making dramatic frowns at me while I stood on the front lawn watching my house burn down. They would run around frantically trying to put the fire out by spraying seltzer bottles on it and tossing creme pies at it, and then when they made no progress they would stand scratching their heads and putting their hands on their hips in exageratted disbelief. Then they would put me on the truck and ‘kidnap’ me off to some community pancake breakfast.
Just fine in the city-
Dan Kennedy
New York, New York.
From: “Steven Tomsik”
Subject: further garment duncery
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Update on Clothing 6/19/00:
Pants: Mustard, chocolate
Shirt: Coffee (?)
Shoes: Mustard, some type of oil, unidentifiable crust on heel
I decided to try to be more careful while eating, and failed. In fact it was worse when I tried. I won’t try anymore. Bibs don’t work, either. Lunch in Bryant Park last week, the bib blew up in the wind JUST as I dribbled tomato innards. Very convenient? Or fate? I’m seriously considering attempts at making adult temper tantrums legitimate and possibly therapeutic. Screeching sobs and foot stamps, fists pumping, everything, in full public.
Join me.
Oh, plus my girlfriend informed me, nonchalantly, that I have ring around the collar. I am no longer allowed to wear her Guayabera shirt, which is white. But see I don’t smell or anything. Once my friend Murrow went to work, smelling an awful urine-type aroma, thinking to himself that someone around him was filthy and foul… later he realized it was him. His cat was responsible. But I check, though, so it’s mostly just a visual problem.
Help,
Steve.
From: Jeremy Stone
Subject: Letters
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
The Letters to the Editor section seems largely composed of a series of narcissistic attempts by people to further their own literary careers without submitting actual pieces for publishing. They hide their stories and plays in what begin as genuine “letters” but which slowly degrade to a series of empty adjectival signifiers and some debased form of a plot. They’re predictably off-beat and Nouveau Hip, but contain no real content aimed at the editor, staff, or even the readership at large. Usually, it seems to be a soapbox from whence these people can air their creative dirty laundry and hope that someone will see the genius underlying it all, and eventually give them a casting call for the next episode of “Writers Anonymous – Tales of Undiscovered Talent”.
For all it’s sneaky disingenuousness, I like some of it. I like Whitney the skateboarding girl. I want to know if she has tattoos and cropped, spiky, bleach-blonde hair. I think that in this case, however, I am only intrigued by what I deem an interesting story, or possibly the fact that all I want in life is a spiky-blond-skater-girl with tattoos. In any event, the quality of the stories is not what annoys me (entirely)… it’s the venue that these people are using to surreptitiously dispense their literary propaganda that makes me want to throw my monitor at small children just for the chilling sense of reality that it will produce.
So do I think you really care? No. But if you give a damn at all about anyone other than your clique of wannabe Kafka’s who can wax poetic about the unusual similarity of rubber-band balls and your quirky tenure as a human being, then quit hiding your memoirs and tragicomedies in such ridiculous places! Find some open URL like UnemployedNovelist.com or INeedPersonalRecognition.net and post your enthralling stories of cubicle life and prosaic disgruntlement there. Leave the Letters to the Editor section for people who are truly adept at bitching and moaning…
Jeremy Stone
From: “Keith Crouse”
Subject: Life after Death
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000
Dear McSweeney’s,
Has anyone ever faked their own death by hanging as a spectacle for your surprise? Well, they did me.
I opened the door and there’s Gary hanging from the ceiling light, only a silhouette against the window, but I can tell it’s not a dummy. It’s his fat stomach and curly hair and everything.
I lost all my breath. I made this croaking sound and probably said “Oh my God” and backed away spasmodically in terror.
Actually it was a dummy, made of pillows, with a fake curly wig. He did it to prove to me that he was not insane, because he had overheard me say I thought he was a little fucked in the head.
Now you know,
KC