McSweeney’s

I’m the Guy Who Writes the Assembly Instructions for Kids’ Toys, You Stupid Idiot

David Distenfeld — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:30:00 -0400

It’s me, the author of countless wordless, step-by-step booklets for assembling your twenty-month-old’s favorite toys.

Oh, you’re having trouble with that little plastic wheelbarrow? Wondering how something that’s only four pieces can take so long to assemble? Me—that’s how, you incompetent fool.

I take my craft very seriously. It’s a process I’ve honed over decades, built specifically to demoralize the most over-educated, high-achieving new parents.

Step 1: No words. No color. Just the most microscopic black-and-white diagrams that carefully position the parts away from the one angle you need to complete the task. Nothing gives me more pleasure than waiting until step 14 to reveal that the piece you attached in step 2 was supposed to have the little hole facing inward. What little hole? HA. Exactly.

Step 2: Labeling. This is where you’ll find the only letters in the entire booklet. I identify the sixteen screws in your package as A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, and R. There is no F. There is no O. Why? Go fuck yourself, that’s why. But, oh yes, you will spend fifteen minutes searching for that O screw. By the way, hope you know the difference between a flat-head screw (D) and a bugle-head screw (M) because I’ve made sure they look EXACTLY ALIKE in the illustration.

Step 3: Nothing else. Good luck, loser.

So, please, dump everything out onto your living room carpet and just try to organize it. Did one of the washers roll into your floor vent? Congratulations, fuckface: The toy is now completely unsalvageable.

Oh, I almost forgot my masterpiece. Estimated assembly time: ten minutes. I put that shit on EVERYTHING. Toy truck? Ten minutes. Backyard swing set that may or may not require a building permit? Ten minutes. How did I arrive at that number? I didn’t, you moron; I’ve never assembled any of these things—why the hell would I do that?

Wait, did I mention I always divide the instructions into twelve different language sections, even though there are literally no words, just so you’re rifling through a ninety-eight-page booklet to build a mini soccer net? Try not to lose your place in my little novella, you pathetic imbecile.

See that plastic bracket with the two tabs? That’s my personal favorite. Once you snap it in, you can never remove it. NEVER. So take a good long look at the three-pixel drawing I provided and decide which direction it faces. No pressure.

You’re a doctor, right? Medical school, residency—the whole nine. Impressive stuff. Anyway, part H is backward, dipshit. God, I fucking love my job.

Now grab the seat and press it firmly into the base until you hear a click. No click? Push harder. Still nothing? HARDER. Come on. Eventually you’ll hear some kind of noise. Whether it’s the piece locking into place or the plastic cracking in half is between you and Little Tikes.

Oh, you’re doing this alone? You really should’ve noticed the quarter-inch illustration on page 73 indicating that step 18 requires two adults. What’s your partner doing? Putting the baby down? Great. Go get them! I’m sure they’re in the mood for some light manual labor.

Go on, screw those screws into the water table base and you’re home free. What’s that? There are no pre-drilled holes? Only the barest suggestion of where the screws should go? Wonderful. Then grab that flimsy included screwdriver and start bearing down straight into the thick plastic. Really put your whole weight into it until the skin on your palm starts to chafe and bleed.

What’s that? You thought you were done? Check underneath the cardboard there. Uh-huh. Stickers. Twenty-seven of them. And unlike every other part of this piece-of-shit toy, those stickers need to be adhered with the precision of a LASIK surgeon because you’re going to stare at that crooked headlight for the next three years.

Why are there so many pieces still left in the bag after you finish the last step? Are they simply extras, or are they critical pieces you somehow skipped that threaten the structural integrity of your kid’s art chair? YOU’LL NEVER KNOW. This will haunt your every waking moment.

It’s been three hours. Your shirt is soaked. Your hands are bleeding. You’ve questioned your intelligence, your relationship to God. But you’re finally done.

You proudly present the completed plastic car to your two-year-old for her birthday. She climbs inside, presses that little red button on the steering wheel and—

Nothing.

Oh, did I not mention it takes six C batteries?

They’re not included.

See you at Christmas, shithead.

Stumping

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:30:00 -0400

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

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Twelve Upsides to Gerontocracies

Michael Kleber-Diggs — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 -0700

Gerontocracies are political systems that arise when leaders who are elected over and over and over again become significantly older than the general population. You may have noticed that gerontocracies have gotten a bad rep lately, what with all the freezing, falling, sleeping, and… um… “stuff.” But if any of you young whippersnappers would put down your Walkmans and your wine coolers for a second, you might learn a thing or two from your well-seasoned elders.

Here are a dozen upsides to gerontocracies:

1. JOB CREATION
Elderly leaders need more staff. They require vote prodders, computer starters, password rememberers, just-in-time press-conference enders, auto-pen activators, people who do the thing where you alter photos, security staff to block paparazzi if you need a moment to stare into the void and, of course, “personal attendants.”

2. ELDER CULTURE
Did it even occur to you that gerontocracies are one of the many ways Americans elevate and celebrate elders?

3. LEGISLATIVE RESTRAINT
As the ancient axiom goes: “Infirm legislators make no bad laws.” As a point of fact, it’s very difficult to shred the Constitution if you’re sound asleep.

4. ANTI-INCUMBENCY
A hypothetical. First, imagine a system of governance where incumbents have an almost insurmountable electoral advantage. Now think about how, under such a system, succeeding generations would ever get a chance to govern. Are you stuck? Well, through a gentle, natural, but kinda slow process, gerontocracies solve for entrenched incumbency bias.

5. INCOME GENERATION
Gerontocracies create new ways to earn lots of money, like predictive markets where savvy investors can accumulate wealth by making informed decisions.

How many members of Congress will finish their term?
Senatorial drop-dead dates.
What are those things on Dear Leader’s legs?
The daily-gaffe-and-outright-lies over/unders, and scores and scores of other press-conference prop bets.

6. FASHION
Mature leaders are often decades ahead of the curve on retro style trends.

7. PROPRIETY
Frankly, sex scandals are less common in advanced gerontocracies. Old leaders don’t cuss as much as the kids do. They chew with their mouths closed.

8. LEGACY
As leaders near the afterlife and reflect on their accomplishments, they grow increasingly concerned with how they’ll be remembered. No, this does not lead to signature legislation like universal health care, affordable housing, or AI constraints, but it does lead to huge, superfluous arches, ginormous bunkered ballrooms with drone launch pads, new airport names, rebranded lakes and gulfs, gilded-age renovations, and fast but cheap reflecting pool upgrade projects.

9. COMMUNICATION
Would you rather get your legislative updates by mail so you can keep them in a file cabinet with every bank statement you’ve ever received, or do you want to watch your senator on YouTube and TikTok all day?

10. ACCESSIBILITY
Remember when good ol’ Senator Strom Thurmond used to remind committee witnesses to “speak into the machine” (read: microphone) so even people in the back of the room could hear their testimony? That was early accessibility work, essential advocacy for people with hearing limitations. The honorable senator thought to offer those reminders because he himself was very old and could barely hear.

11. REST IS RESISTANCE
Late-stage capitalism is an absolute grind. Gerontocracies remind us that short-term, medium-term, and long-term disability insurance policies exist for a reason. Sometimes a person needs to take three months of paid days off without explanation or proof of life before making a return of sorts.

12. DOOMSDAY PREPPING
Later this year or early next year, when the Age of Darkness descends across the land, every apocalypse team will need experienced people who can start fires by banging rocks together, trap small urban game, and easily skin and cook raccoons, opossums, and whatnot. No one in Gen Z can do these things. No one.

HONORABLE MENTION
Anticipatory champagne sales are surging; grim reaper Halloween costumes have never been more popular; flatulence and scat humor have increased 273 percent; that Kool & the Gang song “Celebration” is already available on every music platform; there’s a housing boom in hell, and before you know it, the Silent Generation Senators and Boomer Representatives will be gone, so that the next generation in line, Millennials, can take their place… for decades.

I Hereby Resign as This Year’s Faculty Advisor for Our School’s Human Cloning Club

Joe Schiappa — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:30:00 -0400

To Faculty and Parents,

I am writing to let you know I can no longer serve as the faculty advisor for the Harrison High School Human Cloning Club. I am sick of developing cutting-edge cloning research, pushing the boundaries of biological possibilities, and dominating in the world of science when student interest has clearly waned.

At the beginning of the year, I was buoyed by the students’ enthusiasm for the synthetic laboratory reproduction of human cells and tissues, and now I know they just wanted a place to eat lunch, socialize, and ask for the bathroom pass.

After agreeing to be an advisor, in MY FREE TIME, I raised millions of dollars to build an eleven-acre research lab on the back lot of the high school. I had hired thirty researchers to support what is now a thriving biotech research firm, yet I hardly saw any student step into the lab and clone. When they did show up, they spent the club period playing the water bottle flip game with the DNA hyperbolic chambers.

The club members had no intention of cloning a human being or even working on a years-long cloning project to eventually publish papers in major scientific journals and aim for a Nobel. Most of them (Cooper, Amir, and Sophia) used the high-speed cloning computers with large amounts of RAM to shop for prom and/or google something called “Real Life Backrooms.”

The students barely helped clone our first pilot project, and when I showed them the piglets I CLONED from somatic cell nuclear transfer, they said the pigs looked “chopped” and asked if they could use the Y-Combinator Accelerator grant money to order them Jersey Mike’s. Two months later, the now team of 150 professional scientists and researchers and myself had the critical biological breakthrough of watching the first human clone begin to have a heartbeat and open its eyes for the first time to experience the natural world for itself; none of our club members could be found anywhere near the lab. Later, I found out they “forgot it was club day” and spent seven and a half hours at Amir’s house playing Fortnite.

Vaping is not permitted on the school premises or in the lab, especially in the middle of a ceremony when the other paid researchers and I were accepting our Nobel Prize for finally cloning a human. Think of how I felt, opening a cloning pod and finding Sophia and Cooper and the WORLD’S FIRST HUMAN CLONE playing Uno Flip and eating a Y-Combintaor-expensed Jersey Mike’s giant-size Jersey Shore’s Favorite.

Let me remind you: I didn’t initially want to be the faculty advisor of the club, and I am not even part of the science department. I had to go to Johns Hopkins to get a PhD in bioengineering, only to find out later that the students 3-D printed a fake ID for the clone and dropped him off at Big Y supermarket to buy them beer and Zyn.

It’s disappointing since I have had great relationships with many of you, and this feels like a letdown. I have had to take many days off work to hunt down and retrieve the clone from a secret government lab. When I told you all why I had to clone myself a new arm because it was blown off during a laser battle while retrieving the aforementioned clone, you just shrugged and asked if it would be cool to switch to Anime Watching Club.

Reminder that my actual job here is to teach physical education and help with bus arrival and dismissal.

Several students have already approached me about a Galactic Time Portal Club, and I will have to take a moment to even CONSIDER doing it, based on last year’s behavior and my application approval to the University of Chicago’s program for Quantum Physics.

Best,
Dr. Jane Bianchi M.ED, MD, DSc
Nobel Prize Winner for Science
Former Advisor, Human Cloning Club
Arrival and Dismissal Bus Liaison

My Campaign Promises

Jo Garrity — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

I’m running. I will do it better.

I will create wilder expectations, deliver fewer results, and scapegoat even more.

I will raise plausible deniability to record highs.

I will say even less with more words.

I will make knowing what I actually think, stand for, or am joking about more impossible.

I will stage my downfall more theatrically, raise more questions, and answer even fewer.

I will ensure no consequences for your friends, only their daughters.

I will make more young men hope that I will bring them their manhood.

I will make more young women consider misogyny a radical tool of self-help.

I will convince your child it is impolite to have questions about gender norms.

I will convince your child it is impolite to have questions about abuses of authority.

I will convince your child to outsource their inner voice to opiate-level algorithms.

I will test the limits of serves-them-right when your neighbor is accidentally, intentionally, or jokingly detained indefinitely.

I will accept an even more expensive plane with even fewer strings attached.

I will raise my ratio of children-by-surrogacy to children-who-have-gone-no-contact.

I will live out traditional family measles.

I will liberate your family from Medicaid.

I will bring down the inflation of life expectancy.

I will expand the right to bear arms at more mass memorials.

I will make your books less aware of your son’s eventual gay wedding.

I will define the start of life as 1973.

I will ensure “Never Again” by continually redefining “Again.”

I will outlaw freedom from religion.

I will label more things as woke. I will make ignorance blissful again.

I will ban choosing your own pronouns. I will refer to everyone as she/her.

I will treat your local flood, fire, or hog invasion as a fluke. Woke FEMA will not show up.

I will economize your attentional capacity down to listicles only.

I will snort crypto with Kash.

I will only pretend to swallow Tylenol.

I will spearhead Operation Woke Speed to develop and deploy a vaccine against mind-virus-20, then sow doubt about its efficacy, and let hundreds of thousands figure it out.

I will remind the masked goons to remember who you voted for.

I will create age verification for my children to search for me on the internet.

I will be pro-life, except for post-birth, when you are on your own.

I will revoke the citizenship of all who have not walked the Bering Strait.

I will cancel student deadbeats.

I will complain about deficits for longer, then fold on the issue even more quickly.

I will saddle your child with loans for a promising career in job hunting.

I will add you to the “Find My” of Peter Thiel.

I will support our troops by quoting a Tarantino Bible verse and downplaying their casualties.

I will swear an oath to defend the con situation.

I will protest your right to peaceful protest with ten in the back.

I will express my condolences by offering an alternative cause of death.

I will suggest you get your eyes checked through my custom website.

I will recommend you contribute your arms to the dwindling US stockpile.

I will need a new word for how many times I double down.

I will make the fifty-first state Psychosis.

I will rebrand the greenhouse-gaslighting effect.

I will ban from halftime shows the foreign language of sign.

I will be seen in every championship photo.

I will pose with extrajudicial deportees in third-country removals.

I will eventually release the files never.

I will avenge my loneliness tenfold.

I will make it seem more like strategy and even less like kamikaze.

I will free you from being someone who should have known better.

I will run for more and more terms, with less advising.

I’m running in your uncle’s district. Can I count on her support?

Relax, We Can’t Invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment Every Time a President Offers to Let an Enemy Bomb an American City

Carlos Greaves — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:00:00 -0400

“President Trump, speaking at a campaign rally Monday, suggested ‘[Iran] can take out a city, let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.’” — Los Angeles Times

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Listen, we get that Americans are upset. The Iran War has stretched from a four-week special operation into a months-long quagmire. Nobody could have predicted that attacking a heavily militarized regime in the Middle East would lead to a protracted conflict. As a result, working-class families across the country are feeling the burden of high gas prices and inflation.

That said, we understand why some people are upset about the joke the president told at a campaign rally the other night. However, that’s no reason to lose our collective cool. We, the members of Trump’s cabinet, see no reason to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment simply because the president offered to let Iran obliterate two American cities. He was obviously kidding, like “Wouldn’t it be so funny if everyone in LA was dead? Haha.”

As we’ve said before, the bar for removal under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is quite high. One little remark about approving the deaths of tens of millions of Americans at the hands of a foreign power shouldn’t warrant such a severe response.

If, for example, President Obama had joked that letting ISIS murder everyone in Ohio would be a “small price to pay,” then, sure, Republicans and Democrats alike would be saying, “What on Earth happened to poor Barack’s brain, which was working so well just a day ago?”

But when Donald Trump goes off script at a rally and admits that he would gladly watch two Democrat-run cities—communities full of Black and Brown people he considers to be his political enemies—get wiped off the map, that’s just Trump being Trump. This is the same man who once said that George Washington’s army “took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War. If nothing the president says ever makes sense, why should this nonsensical thing put him over the cognitive fitness edge?

Don’t get us wrong, we have concerns about the president’s mental acuity. As we approach the midterms, the president has made several outlandish statements that warrant further scrutiny. He has promised to give every American adult $5,000, which would amount to a $1.2 trillion spend that he lacks authority to dole out. He has also urged his supporters to “cheat like hell,” has aired bizarre and possibly illegal taxpayer-funded campaign ads, and said that this election is the opportunity to “put down” his enemies “once and for all,” whatever that means.

Taken in isolation, any one of these things would warrant removal under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. But taken as a collective, they demonstrate that the president is no more or less unwell than the time he suggested bleaching our lungs to kill COVID, or the time he fantasized about getting away with shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we aren’t prepared to pull the Twenty-Fifth Amendment lever if absolutely necessary. Let’s imagine that Iran did somehow launch an attack against America. If, hypothetically speaking, the president ordered our military to stand down, thereby allowing the Iranian government to annihilate Los Angeles and San Diego, then obviously such a senseless act would leave us no choice but to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

Assuming, of course, that we felt like JD Vance was a preferable option. But that’s still a pretty big if.

An Excerpt from Jessica M. Goldstein’s Novel, Retro

Jessica M. Goldstein — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400

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Longtime McSweeney’s contributor Jessica M. Goldstein’s novel Retro is about a struggling, out-of-work actress, Ash, who gets a job as a Time Travel Agent at a start-up that takes wealthy tourists on vacations to the past. Destination bachelorettes in the Wild West! “’20s for your twenties” birthday parties at Prohibition-era speakeasies! Concerts, sporting events, inaugurations, assassinations: Bygone America is just a Retro Metro ride away. It’s about misplaced nostalgia and dread for the future; having a weird boss and an office crush; feeling like everything was better before; life under megalomaniacal tech overlords; travel that’s mostly about getting pictures to post; and cigarettes.

Retro has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. We’re thrilled to feature an excerpt from Retro today. The novel is available at your closest and/or dearest bookseller.

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Ash had heard about recreational time travel, of course, but it was expensive—prohibitively so, for all but the sliver of the population who had designed a present so obsequiously bent toward their every desire it was hard to fathom why they’d ever bother leaving it. She’d assumed it would be out of reach for her forever, until she saw the Instagram ad:

Retro: The Time Travel Agency. We’ll take you from here.

The caption read: Come away with us! We’re hiring.

More scrolling revealed how many friends—or, at least, friends of friends—had gone on Retro trips. A shirtless guy from her high school up to his knees in Walden Pond in 1845, a hunk of a crusty loaf clenched in his smiling teeth, captioned: I went into the woods to live deliberately and eat the greatest goddamn hazelnut raisin bread I’ve ever tasted. A video of Ash’s freshman-year RA and her sister, both with choker necklaces snug at the jugular and twists of their hair pinched off their faces with butterfly clips bright as Skittles, scream-crying in a mob of teens: The last time we were in the year 2000, Mom said we weren’t old enough to go to TRL, but BACKSTREET’S BACK and SO ARE WE. A an ex-coworker gazing up at a Ferris wheel, the puffed shoulders of her dress ballooning from her small silhouette: Trying not to get serial killed at the Chicago World’s Fair.

Every square drew Ash in deeper. Was she the only person she knew who’d never left the present? Well, not anymore. She filled out the Time Travel Agent application, noting its tantalizing promise: “Fulltime employees travel for free.”

You’ll hear from us soon! came the auto-reply. We’re working around the clock.

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The front door at Retro HQ whooshed open automatically as Ash approached. This was the guest-facing side of the operation, and it looked more like a boutique hotel than an office. The main desk was glass with gold piping, like an oversize ice cube on a metal frame. Wide, south-facing windows let the sunlight spill in. A trio of concierges in cute, kitschy uniforms manned the desk. They were all women, inviting and confident and warm. Glossy hair, poreless skin, soothing voices. Their mannerisms reminded Ash of 1960s stewardesses, which, for all she knew, they were. The air felt balmy, with a light coconut scent, like after-tan—and stirred in Ash, somehow, the sensation of rinsing the ocean off her toes in an outdoor shower, of a slender stripe of sunburn along her nose that would sting just a little if she scrunched the skin there when she laughed.

A man bounded out from a door that Ash hadn’t noticed, one that was painted to disappear into the back wall out of view of the main desk. He could have been thirty-five or fifty-five or any age in between. His skin had the taut, plasticine sheen of shrink-wrapped raw chicken breast under the glare of the supermarket fluorescents. He inhaled and let out a satisfied little sigh. “I’m Christopher,” he said. “And that’s Get-away.”

“What’s that?”

“The smell,” he said. “We pump it through the vents. Scent is the strongest tie to memory. Memory means nostalgia means yearning means our guests decide there’s no place in the present they could possibly go that will make them feel the way they used to feel, way back when. And they can’t get to way back when without us.” He turned on his heel and led her toward the door he came through, which Ash still could not see, even though she knew it was there. “Getaway is one of a dozen proprietary Retro scents, manufactured here in our lab with samples from the Before. It’s from Southern California, 1943. Before it got so crowded; nothing like today. Bougainvillea, the beach. Late August. We tried one from Memorial Day weekend but it didn’t have that same wistful feeling to it that you get when summer is almost over and you can feel the school year creeping in.”

“You can smell the difference?” Ash asked.

“Can’t you? It’s very popular. I like Holiday, though it’s a little literal for my taste—gingerbread and pine with a touch of first snow, from 1860s Vermont. Pristine is the best, in my opinion. It’s just pure, unpolluted air. We go back to the 1400s to get it, from way out by Denali. The Retro Metro doesn’t run to Alaska regularly, so we have to send Conveyance out there special. It’s unreal. You think you know how it feels to”—he took a deep breath through his nose and ahh-ed out his mouth—“but you have no idea. Modern air is filthy.”

Ash followed him through the door. They were staring down a long, gold-tiled hallway. The walls were lined with identical, practically invisible doorways. He led her down the corridor to a conference room.

“First things first: your employment contract.” He pulled an enormous binder off a shelf and thunked it on the table.

“I’m supposed to read this whole thing? Right now?”

“It’s all boilerplate stuff,” Christopher assured her, which struck her as unlikely. She bobbed her head agreeably and opened the binder.

“As you can see, it’s mostly liability waivers and consent forms,” he said. “The most important thing is: You’re not allowed to go to the future.”

“Fine by me,” she said.

“Of course, you’re already going to the future,” he clarified. “But you can’t use our technology to get there ahead of schedule.” He laughed.

“So,” Ash said, filling the air as she thumbed through the pages. “You’re the head of human resources?”

He twisted his mouth into a tight knot. “I prefer the term Experience Manager.”

“Oh. I just figured, since you’re doing this. It seemed like the kind of thing HR would handle.”

“Well, if you run into any issues in your time here with other employees, you should feel one hundred percent comfortable bringing that to me.”

“And you’ll… do what, exactly?”

“I’m always here if you need to talk something through.”

“Right, yeah. But then what?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You know how it is.”

She thought: I do not know how it is. She said, “Definitely.”

“Go ahead and look the rest of these documents over. And sign at the tabs.”

Ash flipped to the first page:

I, the undersigned, am aware that traveling with Retro: The Time Travel Agency (henceforth known as “Retro” or “TTA” or “The Agency”) carries with it risks that include, but are not limited to: Exposure to buildings, environments, and materials that would not meet modern safety standards (e.g., poor infrastructure, lead paint, absence of smoke detectors and/ or fire alarms); germs, allergens, injury and/or illness for which the Destination may not yet have proper medical care; social norms that may frighten, upset, or endanger me (e.g., cigarettes in restaurants, cars without seatbelts, slavery).

“You’ll want to study up on our top Destinations,” he said. “All the bachelor parties go to Woodstock. Dads have a thing for battlefields. They’re all hoping we’re going to let them get in on the action and carry a musket or something. As if we’d trust any of them with a loaded gun! We’re strictly spectators around here.”

As a semi-retired-slash-failed actor, Ash’s experience with firearms was limited to prop guns. “That’s good to know,” she said.

“We get lots of concerts, sporting events, inaugurations, assassinations. Your generation is quite hot to trot on the Oregon Trail. Every now and then, we get a moody teenage girl who thinks she’s the first one to want to spend her sweet sixteen at the Salem witch trials. Oh, and we do a lot of ‘’20s for your twenties’ birthday trips. All the twenty-one-year-olds love to get sloshed at speakeasies.” He paused to flick through a filing cabinet. “Our ‘’30s for your thirties’ push didn’t really take. Too… well, depressing. Ha!”

I will not attack, assault, maim, or otherwise come into unnecessary adversarial contact with any individual from the Destination. I will not attempt to incite a revolution, insurrection, or overthrow of any government, corporation, or landowner.

“You should do a little reading on our competition too,” Christopher went on. “It’s really just Space RACE.” As in, Recreational Adventures Catering to Everyone; trips to outer space were, like time travel, an increasingly popular vacation choice for the world’s wealthiest voyagers. Ash had seen a few celebrities post their jaunts on social media: their perfect, symmetrical faces grinning beneath their bubble helmets; their inane, obvious captions: love you to the moon and back! “Oh, and Disney cruises, which, I see the appeal if you’ve got little kids, but we’ve been pushing the educational angle really hard. Space RACE is another story. Their PR is fantastic. Although some of it practically writes itself. They’ve almost cornered the market on honeymoons.”

I will not attempt to alert individuals from the Destination (“Locals”) to events, natural or man-made, that have yet to pass. I will respect the sanctity of the Timeline, even if I am personally dissatisfied with how history has unfolded and/or the circumstances of my own life.

There were easily a hundred pages in the contract. Ash skimmed paragraphs, skipped pages. How important could they be? It was like the terms and conditions she agreed to before downloading a new app: reams of legalese that nobody ever actually got around to reading. Probably even the people who wrote this didn’t know what it said.

If I am involved in or a witness to any sort of criminal, illegal, or questionable activity in a Destination, I understand I must return to the Destination to cooperate with local law enforcement, up to the point at which the Destination’s legal system jeopardizes my safety and/or life (e.g., witch trials, duels), at which time the Preservation Department will determine the wisest course of action. If any Locals discover my true identity, and/or become aware that the identity I have presented to them is a false one, I will extricate myself as quickly as possible and never return to the Destination again.

“Should I ask a lawyer to read this?” she asked.

He looked her up and down. “Do you have a lawyer to read this?”

She was a little offended. Then again, he had a point. She kept reading.

I agree to undergo regular examinations and treatments in the Clinic. I am aware that I may be called upon to participate in work at Retro beyond the boundaries of my job description, as deemed appropriate and/or necessary by my supervisor.

“Also, once you get your Pastport, you can go whenever you want on your lunch break,” Christopher said. “As long as you’re back in time for the monthly two p.m. all-staff.”

Ash’s hand hovered over the last signature line.

Christopher asked, “Any questions?”

I agree to hereby indemnify and hold harmless Retro and its Lead Inventor, Creator, and CEO Roland Temple (“The Creator”) from and against any liability for expenses, damages, and/or losses (including of property, limbs, health, sanity, relationships, and/or life) incurred while or as a result of traveling through space and time.

In a loopy, swooping script, Ash signed her name.

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You can buyRetro here, or wherever books are sold.

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RETRO 2026 by Jessica M. Goldstein. Used by permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. Cannot be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Welcome to Our Strip Mall

Madeline Goetz and Bobbie Armstrong — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Welcome to Pearly Gates Valley Mountain Strip Mall, located off whichever highway is closest to you. Parking is free.

Our strip mall has a pet shop called “Pet Shop,” featuring premium poison dart frogs and betta fish in Tupperware containers. There’s also a donation box for used Tupperware. Plus, one hamster that has been there for years and has testicular cancer. Please note we no longer carry pangolins.

Next door is Famous Footwear, which only carries Rocket Dog and secondhand Sperrys. There’s also a not-insignificant number of naked mannequins. The last census gave us an even forty. Don’t talk to them.

Our strip mall has a notary public named Jean who only does divorces. She occasionally will do marriages down at the local breastaurant, but only if she’s attracted to both of you.

Our strip mall has a Bath & Body Works that smells expired candles. You read that right. You bring in your expired candles, and they smell them for you and tell you what they actually should smell like. For instance, that odorless pile of wax in your hand used to smell like a pumpkin.

Our strip mall has a Sears that only sells washing machines from 2004. Inside one of the washing machines is a secret entrance to the world’s last Charming Charlie.

Our strip mall has a sushi restaurant that serves fresh local catches, straight from the man-made stream that runs behind the mall. Al Gore has been trying to get it shut down for years.

Our strip mall has a dentist who went to dental school online. The strip-mall dentist is where the local Mormon influencers go to get high on laughing gas.

Our strip mall has an interfaith prayer room. It’s mostly used by a local hobbyist group, Grannies Who Knit, who also happen to be Satanists.

Our strip mall has a pet relief area that’s just a single litter box in the interfaith prayer room.

Our strip mall has a smoke and vape shop that sells shit that will fuck you up for days.

Our strip mall has a shapewear store called Shapeless.

When you finish shopping, head on over to Jug’s Pub (the breastuarant) for their ball pit and signature prison-brewed mead.

No matter which store you patronize, including Jean the Divorce Notary Office, you will leave Pearly Gates Valley Mountain Strip Mall with a receipt that includes a QR code to sign up for the class-action lawsuit of the month. Last month was a massive data breach from our dentist. This month’s is a Salmonella outbreak from the Pet Shop. Our average payout is $17.99.

Don’t forget to validate your parking ticket. We lied before—it’s twenty-five dollars an hour to park, and WE WILL TOW.

I Live in a Swing State and I Am Going to Need to See More Political Ads, Please

Matt Alston — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:40:00 -0400

I am a citizen living in a swing state, and I need to see more political advertisements before deciding who to vote for. Many of my state’s federal elections are toss-ups. So for the last year, I have been advertised to every time I engage with media, front yards, billboards, bus stops, Tubi ad breaks, Tubi pause screens, Nextdoor posts, Facebook posts, Facebook Marketplace posts, radio stations, podcasts, PTA brunches, car bumpers, car windows, and in-person conversations. I’m here to tell you that it’s still not enough. I can’t decide, and I require more guidance, please.

My current senator is older than the audio cassette, so I should have a good sense of who to vote for, but I have rocks in my head in place of a brain, and rocks don’t retain information. So I am asking: Please, someone advertise to me today, tomorrow, and the day after that, and tell me more about my senator who has been in office since “MMMBop.”

Also, if someone could fill my mailbox with flyers about this candidate and her opponent, their decades of voting, their general political alignments, maybe I could build a Memento-esque collage around my home and workplace, decorating the walls with their deeds and misdeeds, so that no moment of eyesight is uninterrupted with information about why my life is good or bad and why it’s their fault or not.

I would like someone at Apple to look into advertising in my Notes app. That bad boy never lets me forget to get trash bags or mayonnaise when I head to the store, so let’s get the senator and Election Day on the list. And on the socials too. I do not want to so much as thumb past a single friend’s baby picture or engagement announcement without them telling me that my candidates did something or are something.

I would like for you to place a political ad in this essay, before the next paragraph, if possible. The moments between this sentence and the next paragraph’s first sentence are crucial, and I, a total fool, could forget about the upcoming election and suddenly make a bad choice.

What day is the election anyway? I have never seen a calendar and wouldn’t even know where to begin when it comes to knowing when and how to vote. I need some kind of internet-enabled media thingamajig to show up in my life, maybe every seven to ten minutes, and boop remind me that the election is happening on a certain date, and that I am expected to cast my vote.

Without the upcoming election dominating every second of what I’m doing in my life, I won’t remember the election. I mean, we all keep a note by the door that says PANTS, or else we leave my house without pants on, right? Do you not do that? And the note inside the pants that says UNDERPANTS? Am I alone in this need? Don’t you sometimes show up pantsless at the post office, wondering what you’re even doing there? Only a relentless, unending torrent of election advertising will allow me to arrive at the polls with pants and underwear on whenever the election so happens to be.

Look, I like yards on their own, but I think it’s pretty crucial to have signs in yards until the election. My hope is to not so much as look at any blade of grass, leaf in the wind, bird on a branch, without also digesting information about the candidates. Remember, voters are basically tetras in a kid’s fish tank. If you forget to supply us with pellets of election guidance for even a few days, we may try and eat our weakest neighbor. You wouldn’t leave your daughter’s fish unfed, would you? So slam signs down in every yard. Leave no public plot of roadside empty. I just want to see names as far as I can drive. And I wouldn’t mind an occasional reminder of the opaque double-negative ballot initiatives, but mostly I need to see NAMES. Fill those yards up with SO MANY, MANY NAMES.

I also hope you have no plans for discarding the signs after the election.

You see, I am not much more complex than a unicellular organism, like a protozoan or yeast. Think of my behavior as less “decided” and more “dictated by the chemical reactions happening inside my membrane, determined by other chemicals present.” Consider my origin a mystery, and my evolution hotly contested.

But above all, consider me stupid. Pour money into my state and strangle every aspect of the parts of life I use to acquire information to make choices. Ruin my television. Make Nextdoor only slightly more insane. There is no way for me to “vote” or “know who to vote for” without a high-pressure jet of political advertisement blasting away the detritus I call “regular life.” Keep them coming, I beg you. Don’t stop, never stop, blast me with the hose of voter ads, and do not relent.

Any chance you know the location of my polling place?

An Open Letter to Cornell University from the Mother of a Prospective Male Student

Anaïs Godard — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

“An intense, public outcry over a woman’s account of being gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity house prompted New York’s governor this week to angrily yank control of the investigation away from the local prosecutor who didn’t initially see what happened as a crime.” — A.P.

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Dear Cornell University,

My son is six, so admittedly, we have some time. Still, college admissions have become terribly competitive, and it is never too early to start researching the institutions that might one day shape him. Cornell seemed like a good place to start.

My son is bright. He reads above grade level. He plays competitive chess and does competitive gymnastics. He is fascinated by science, numbers, and infinity. I am currently debating Mandarin lessons, because six is, I’m told, when one begins panicking about the Ivy League. Last week, he asked me whether numbers ever stop, and I told him no, which led to several follow-up questions I was not academically equipped to answer.

This is why we need institutions like yours.

I understand Cornell offers thousands of courses across nearly eighty undergraduate majors. Your students study astrophysics, biomedical engineering, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and something called Operations Research and Information Engineering, which I do not understand but assume is more complicated than calling 911.

And yet I can’t seem to find HUM 101: Calling for Help When Someone Is Being Hurt in your course catalog.

Maybe it’s graduate-level? My son has already completed some introductory coursework. At his elementary school, when another child gets hurt, students are expected to find an adult. Someone is hurt. You get help. That’s essentially the whole semester.

I was relieved to learn that some students were reportedly allowed to submit essays in hopes of mitigating their suspensions. My son is already writing complete sentences, so we appear to be on track.

I understand things get more intellectually demanding at an Ivy League university: What if you’re at a fraternity? What if your friends are involved? What if you find out through Snapchat? What if helping would make things socially awkward? My son has not yet encountered these advanced ethical problems.

He does know how to use a phone.

Which makes me wonder whether smartphones operate differently in Ithaca. Perhaps Cornell students receive special models in which the emergency-call feature has been replaced by Snapchat.

Seven former Cornell students are accused in a civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting another Cornell student who says she was incapacitated. Messages allegedly inviting other fraternity members upstairs were sent to a larger group chat during the alleged assault. Everyone is talking about the seven. I keep thinking about the others.

I don’t know what every person in that group saw, knew, or understood. But I am raising one of the others. The boy who might someday be in the room. Or down the hall. Or holding the phone. The boy who didn’t do it. The boy who could therefore spend the rest of his life explaining that he didn’t do anything.

I don’t merely want my son to learn how not to rape someone. I was hoping we could aim a little higher.

Perhaps BYST 101: Other People Are Still People When Your Friends Are Watching. Prerequisites: none.

And, for exceptional students, maybe LEAD 401: Being the First Man to Ruin the Vibe.

I would enroll my son in that one. I want him to ruin the vibe. I want him to be annoying. To be the guy everyone hates for five minutes because he said, “Stop.” To lose friends if necessary. It seems a modest definition of courage, but we can save ambition for graduate school.

Cornell does, after all, have a distinguished tradition of producing leaders: governors, members of Congress, CEOs, Nobel laureates, people entrusted with decisions affecting millions of lives. Perhaps leadership could begin with one. Before teaching young men how to run the world, teach them what to do when the world is one room, one woman, one terrible thing happening, and nobody wants to be the first man to ruin the evening.

My son is six.

When someone says stop, he stops. When he does something wrong, “But he did it too” remains an argument, certainly, but so far has not survived peer review. He’s still learning. Sometimes he doesn’t share. Sometimes he cheats at Uno. I had to explain that you cannot change the rules of chess because you are losing.

I am under no illusion that I have raised a good man. I haven’t raised a man at all. I have a little boy.

And one day, I may hand him to a university like Cornell. I may spend eighteen years teaching him that doing the right thing doesn’t stop being the right thing when it becomes inconvenient, then trust you with the rest of his education. Teach him physics. Literature. Engineering. Teach him whatever impossible thing he decides he wants to know. There are just a few things I’d prefer he not unlearn.

That “stop” is a complete sentence.

That silence isn’t permission.

That friendship isn’t immunity.

That being one of the good guys, on occasion, requires doing something.

And that everyone else doing nothing does not make doing nothing right.

Anyway, please send me whatever information you have about the program. We have twelve years before my son applies. He already knows most of the material. I’d just like him to graduate still knowing it.

Sincerely,
A Prospective Cornell Parent

Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Has Something to Say About This Massachusetts Lesbian Bar Situation

Julie Klausner — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:00:00 -0400

Hi, it’s me, Grandpa Joe from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I used my family’s food budget to sign up for high-speed internet, and I just learned about this controversy surrounding a lesbian bar in Western Massachusetts. I don’t really know what lesbians are. Are they like Oompa Loompas? Those orange nuisances better not sing a song about me, Grandpa Joe, being a freeloader, or I’ll kick one into a chocolate river.

Anyway, I figured it was about time for me, a white cisgender heterosexual man over seventy with cabbage scraps in his mustache, to weigh in on this matter. I don’t understand a lot about it, but what I do glean is that there are people who are upset about not being able to attend bar events on mask-optional Saturday nights on account of their being immunocompromised. I don’t personally consider myself somebody with a disability; I just don’t like to get out of bed unless my grandson wins a free trip to a chocolate factory.

My wife Josephine would be the first to tell you that I can be a little judgmental. I’m from a generation that will see another person’s kid acting out in public or on a “scare boat,” and I’ll say, “What she needs is a kick in the pants,” even though nobody asked me. But after reading about the intra-community conflict around that LGBTQ+ space in Greenfield, Massachusetts, I can’t help but feel empathy with everyone who seems to be tangled up in this nonsense like my in-laws’ and my legs under the drafty covers of a stinking living room bed.

Somehow, despite my age, location, and everything else about me, I find myself relating to all of the folks in this story. For example, take the bar’s co-founders, who left their former partner to try to make ends meet. I know what it’s like to take a controversial stance in the business world: I encouraged my grandson to sell Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper recipe to his rival Slugworth the moment I felt slighted by the ornery, top-hatted candyman. At least I thought it was Slugworth at the time. Sigh! Another “L” for Grandpa Joe.

The next character in this tangled tale that made me think of me was the person who showed up remotely to the staff’s mediation session and felt judged for it. Well, I certainly know what it’s like to stay home while the world marches on. And I sure do feel judged just because I happen to choose to stay in bed when there’s no grandson’s golden ticket seducing me to put a jacket over my nightgown and do a nauseating hat-and-cane number in warm, bare feet, baked toasty by years of communal bed rest. Side note: Imagine how the inside of that hat smells. It’s worse!

I even relate to the internet commenter who, once the bar posted their new policy, expressed a desire for the establishment to get firebombed. I once stole fizzy lifting drink and implicated my grandson in my crime, and we had to burp ourselves away from Willy Wonka’s murder fans. So I, too, know what it’s like to go a little too far.

I’ll leave you with this. While I may not know nonbinary from nonpareil, I’d like to extend my compassion to the subjects of this Boston Globe article. I’m sure they’re getting a lot of flak from people who don’t even know them. Believe it or not, some people consider me a villain, or lazy, or someone who doesn’t appreciate the value of money, or just plain unlikeable. Just because I regularly buy tobacco with the wages my daughter earns from making laundry soup for neighbors. And because I sang about how I have a golden ticket, even though my grandson found it, and with no help from me because I bought the wrong kind of chocolate bar on his birthday, when you factor in which ones the tickets were actually hidden inside of. And for many other reasons.

But, look, you’ve gotta be true to yourself. Am I wrong? And a place should be everything for everybody. Am I right? Hear me out: How is it my problem if a bar doesn’t make money, or if Willy Wonka doesn’t want me deep-tonguing the snozzberries on his wallpaper even after everybody else has moved on to the next room? Or if everybody in the world who’s seen my hand thinks my one long fingernail is gross and upsetting but I still refuse to clip it? Or if I did foul up that glass elevator at the end of the movie with my intestinal gas, ruining that sweet last line?

I think we are all doing the best that we can, or at least, in my case, the best that we want to.

One day, I’d like to visit this bar in Massachusetts and get a sense for myself what exactly is going on over there. But until one of my relatives wins a contest and schleps me along like an albatross that smells like bedsores and looks like mold and dust collaborating on sentience, I think I’ll just keep posting my hot takes on the subreddits. My handle over there is MattressIsBedPan, and I love starting fights.

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AUTHOR NOTE: Special thanks to the GrandpaJoeSucks subreddit for inspiration; that forum is the second-best internet destination for comedy writing after, of course, this one.

A Forty-Two-Year-Old Man Checks the Score of a High School Football Game

Aaron Hertzog — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400

You don’t have to do this. In fact, it would be a whole lot better for you if you didn’t do this. You have absolutely no connection to that place or the people who live there anymore. None of your family members have children who are on the high school football team. You don’t even have any high school friends with kids on the high school football team. You know this because you’ve already gone to the team website and looked at the roster. There’s not a single last name on it that you even recognize. Your hometown isn’t the same place you grew up in. You’re nostalgic for a memory of a ghost of a place that doesn’t even exist. Did it ever exist? Did you?

I shouldn’t have to remind you that you didn’t even play football when you were in high school. Your mom wouldn’t allow you to play, because she was afraid that football was too violent a game and that you’d get hurt. Given what we now know about football’s long-term effects on the human body, her overprotective nature was certainly justified. But still, you wonder if trading immediate glory for your future health was worth it. You could have been a state champion, and you can’t say for sure that you are healthy today. The last time you saw a doctor, the Twin Towers were still there. You have health insurance; you should go. But you don’t. Because you’re scared. You’re scared that something deep down inside you is wrong and that you made a bad decision to sacrifice the thrill of high school victory for a future that wasn’t even promised and will never be fulfilled.

Knowing the results of this game will only result in a spiral that ruins the rest of your weekend. Do you want to be walking around the farmer’s market on Sunday morning in a tizzy and have to explain to your wife it’s because a bunch of kids, half of whom are not old enough to get their driver’s licenses, lost the Coal Bucket Game to your biggest rival for the first time in thirty years?

“That’s why you’ve been so upset all weekend?” she’ll ask, with a tone that lets you know she thinks you’re a ridiculous person.

“You couldn’t possibly understand; you’re not from where I’m from,” you’ll reply.

The seed of not understanding each other’s foundations will be planted, where it can grow twisted roots deep into the earth and sprout into a who-is-this-person-I-have-chosen-to-spend-my-life-with tree. Is that the future reaping you’d like to sow at 6 p.m. on a Friday night?

The reason why the results of a high school football game are available so early in the evening is that you moved all the way across the goddamned country to get away from Central Pennsylvania and all of its Central Pennsylvanianess. You live in beautiful Southern California, and you could be spending this evening breathing in the ocean air, staring at a sunset with the woman you love the most. Instead, you’re sitting at your computer with “Prep Football Hype HQ Dot Com” typed into the address bar, finger hovering over the ENTER key because you need to know if you can still say, “Fuck it, we got the bucket,” when things are looking down. No matter how bad things get, you still get a glimpse of hope from being able to say “fuck it,” because a “we” you never truly were a part of and are even now further removed from has held on to “the bucket.”

Got laid off from your job? Fuck it, we got the bucket.

The economic systems we put our blind faith in are about to crumble to dust, leaving the vast majority of the population in utter shambles? Fuck it, we got the bucket.

The entire world about to cross a dangerous climate threshold, damning future generations to environmental chaos and disaster? Fuck it, we got the bucket.

So let’s see, who won the game?

Not us.

Wow. I feel surprisingly okay about this. I thought it would be worse. It actually feels like a weight has been lifted. I’m no longer tethered to a place I no longer belong in by a thirty-year-old rope with a bucket of coal at the other end. Perhaps a bucket full of coal isn’t a prize. Perhaps it’s what bad kids get for Christmas. Perhaps I’ve been subconsciously labeling myself as a bad person who doesn’t deserve happiness because of my attachment to a bucketful of anthracite.

I think it’s time to find a primary care provider. How about making a last-minute reservation for a romantic dinner with your wife?

Fuck it, we lost the bucket. What I have gained is an eternity of possibility.

How Could Such a Thing Still Happen in a Country with a Frat Boy Supreme Court Justice?

Devorah Blachor — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:15:00 -0700

I thought this kind of thing would surely no longer be happening. After the multiple waves of feminism, the #MeToo movement, and all that wokeness we did before it became cringe, we believed we’d progressed. Now here we are, back in this terrible place, just forty-one years after Brett Kavanaugh became a Delta Kappa Epsilon Deke, and eight years after his confirmation to the Supreme Court. How did we get here?

It’s terrible that we’re raising girls in a culture where they still face threats of harassment, assault, and violence. You might expect something like this in countries where women don’t enjoy equal rights. But in a country where the Secretary of Defense is a testosterone-pushing reactionary who was credibly accused of rape and whose own mother publicly denounced him for mistreating women? Color me surprised.

I guess the question that faces us now is how to prevent assaults like these from happening again. Should we tell girls and women to avoid frat parties, dark streets, and public places? Should we stop shaming victims? These are all important ideas to explore in a country where guys like Max Miller and Roy Moore feel entitled to run for office and are endorsed by Republicans and President Trump.

Maybe we need to have a czar to address violence against women. Why not appoint the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk, again, since he did such a stellar job in his last czardom? He’d definitely be qualified, since he’s had so many different wives—and even more accusations.

Or perhaps this should be under the purview of the nation’s health department. Maybe, in between severing whale heads and murdering bear cubs, the secretary of health and human services can use his extensive experience to address the problem of treating women as less than human. I just hope brain worms don’t also hate women.

Speaking of which, and I’m just thinking out loud here, but maybe a political party that has dedicated the last forty years to taking away women’s rights could also give some thought to how to protect girls and women after they’re born? And maybe I’m being naïve, but could it be that the Your Body, My Choice movement sends a confusing message to boys?

Sometimes I wonder if part of the problem is that we allowed people like Jeffrey Epstein to operate in plain sight for so long. It’s a good thing he was finally brought to justice, even though the actual justice system tried to let him go free. And it’s not like his enablers and associates held high-ranking positions in the government or anything, because that would truly be bananas!

It’s not completely a bleak picture, however. Luckily, no one respects women more than President Trump. As the man who appointed Brett Kavanaugh, took away abortion rights, sexualized his own daughters, peeped on teenage beauty contest contestants, was accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, was found liable for sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll, and who literally advocated sexual assault, it really makes you wonder: What could we have done differently?

Nocturnal Listening

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0700

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

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My Trusted Royal Advisor, Conniving Worm Would Never Lead Me Astray

Madeline Goetz and Johnathan Appel — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:01:00 -0400

As the ruler of this fine kingdom, I must surround myself with only the most virtuous and wise minds as I navigate the daily demands of my position. That’s why I rely heavily on the counsel of my most trusted advisor, Conniving Worm.

No one knows where he came from, but I like to say he’s a godsend.

Ever since Conniving Worm joined my Royal Council, he has proven to be highly competent, fiercely loyal, and constantly laughing to himself while rubbing his hands together. Which is understandable, as this castle can be quite drafty!

When my other advisors started dropping like flies due to sudden illnesses and freak accidents, Conniving Worm rose to the occasion and picked up all the slack. Now, what used to be an elite group of fourteen scholars and strategists is just one Conniving Worm.

And if anyone else dares try to give me advice, Squirmy Wormie (that’s my nickname for him) hisses at them, unleashing a forked tongue as his eyes turn a deep, terrible yellow that makes men tremble in fear. It’s such a good bit. Like that time I put my ass on the printing press.

One way I know his guidance is sound is his signature soft-spoken mode of delivery. He whispers all of his musings into my ear so that no one else can overhear. He shuffles in close, hunches over my throne, releases a few heavy breaths, and then imparts brilliant advice in a secret language only we know.

Frankly, I love that Conniving Worm stands watch while I sleep so that his words of wisdom may rattle undisturbed around my dreams. My wife is admittedly less thrilled about this.

Conniving Worm has all the best gossip. He touches an orb, his eyes roll back in his head, and he says, “Your three noble nephews are plotting against you and must be sentenced to death within the fortnight.” I know, I know—DRAMA!

Noodles (that’s my other nickname for him) is also the best mixologist in the land. He always gives me strange concoctions, and when I drink them, he whispers, “Yessss… YESSSS.” And, wow, they are strong, let me tell you. I fall asleep instantly whenever I’m done. Sometimes a guy just wants a cold beer after a long day, but Conniving Worm says the best drinks are the ones that smoke and fizzle and render you incapacitated, and therefore ceding power to your closest advisor, for sixteen hours straight.

Look at this guy. What’s not to trust? His skin looks like fresh snow. His clothes are covered in cobwebs. Direct eye contact with him sends a shiver down your spine, but if you look at his eyes from the side, they’re actually a very lovely shade of bog green.

Yes, the man drools. Especially when looking at my throne and my wife. And, no, it’s not spit. It’s a kind of deep black bile that, when pooled onto the floor, reflects your worst nightmares. But that’s a medical thing, I think.

Conniving Worm has his fingers on the pulse. Specifically, his fingers seem to be on my pulse all the time. And whenever he feels my steady heartbeat, he looks disappointed. Presumably because my heart isn’t beating even stronger!

I’m a keen judge of character, and I know Conniving Worm is a good man. I understand his demeanor might be off-putting to some, as well as the fact that he eats live crows, beak and all. He just bites the head clean off. But behind eccentricities often lies genius.

At the end of the day, his ideas are sound. As a matter of fact, he recently suggested that I sign a decree declaring him my sole heir and bless his marriage to my “beautiful, mouthwatering widow” in the event of my untimely demise. Brilliant. This is the kind of clear-eyed foresight that keeps a kingdom safe.

An Open Letter to Senator Eric Schmitt About It Being Totally Okay Not to Know Anything About Sports

Amanda Hollander — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:30:00 -0400

“Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) is facing accusations he tried to launch a conspiracy tying former special counsel Jack Smith to others who prosecuted President Trump—a line of questioning that unwound when the senator apparently confused two basketball teams.” — The Hill

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Dear Senator Schmitt,

While people may be online mocking the collapse of your big reveal about former special counsel Jack Smith, I want to note that I, for one, would never join in the public derision for being confused about sports.

I, too, have been befuddled trying to remember which Chicago Cubs players scored the winning touchdown of the World Series. I also never have an answer during trivia games when the question is what year the Florida Panthers won Wimbledon. Whether it is scoring a hole-in-one in rugby or the Knicks winning the Super Bowl, I find it difficult to keep track of which teams are which. I couldn’t tell you who had the most Stanley Cup wins—Michael Jordan or Cal Ripken Jr.—anymore than I could say which curling team Simone Biles led to victory during the World Cup.

It is hard in America not to be good at understanding sports! People have no idea how excluded people like us feel.

Many a night I have sat and stared, blank-faced, while friends discussed who was the better varsity basketball player, Ilya Rozanov or Shane Hollander (no relation), or while I was unjustly mocked for believing the Dodgers played for Brooklyn, because they did in Newsies, which is like sports but a musical.

So you confused two teams? It’s an easy mistake to make! The one time a friend invited me to watch a Yankees game from seats near third plate, every New Yorker I knew was outraged that I had such an amazing view but couldn’t remember whether the Yankees had faced the Lakers or Manchester United. They might as well have asked me if Caitlin Clark won her Olympic medal for fencing or Pokémon Go. I do not know. It remains a mystery, much like the ever-changing name of DC’s football team, which I hear we still have.

I have never understood our nation’s obsession with physical prowess or its love for rewarding it with shiny objects and pop stars. In this age of unrest, surely it no longer matters?

So I will be candid with you: I cannot tell you which horse won the Henley Royal Regatta. I remain mystified as to whether Usain Bolt is regarded as the world’s best mountain climber or quarterback. Do I know if it was the University of Maryland Turtledoves or the Cornell Rapists that won the Kentucky Derby this year? Absolutely not.

Even the names make no sense! Did you know (sorry, I know you don’t) that the University of Pennsylvania calls its competitive athletic teams the Quakers, which are primarily known as a religious movement committed to pacifism? It’s true. Though then again, Thomas Hope, also a Quaker, whose Hope & Co. basically funded the entire plantation system and slave trade for Europeans in the eighteenth century. So maybe the whole chill Quaker thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In any case, the point is this: Athletics are confusing. My friends and family may keep airing grievances about my lack of sports knowledge, but my ignorance, like yours, is constant, and I don’t think either of us should be ashamed of it.

What is important is that in the modern age of political intrigue and sports betting, collusion can happen anywhere, even if it didn’t happen in Atlanta, which is not in the Midwest, where I am informed the Hawkeyes play when not battling their nemesis, Loki. Or something.

Look, you made a mistake anyone could. And by anyone, I mean me. But I’m not the one whose testosterone Hegseth will be testing.

So don’t worry, Senator Schmitt. You may not know sports, but you’ll always be a loser.

Sincerely,
Amanda Hollander

A Text to My Husband Upon My Conscription into a Rave

Bernadette Kelly — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400

“I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life.”
— Union Major Sullivan Ballou

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10:00 p.m.

My Very Dear Husband,

Indications are strong that we shall soon Uber to the superclub. Lest I have poor service or big drops to cheer, I feel it prudent to compose this text that will float to you in a blue bubble of tranquility while I am still sober and wide-eyed.

Our experience may be two hours in duration and tolerable, or it may be eight hours of severe boredom if FISHER doesn’t take the stage until 1 a.m. I must confess I trembled when Mike informed me that the audience will be double that of a Gregory Alan Isakov concert.

If it is necessary that I should endure this rave for my childhood friends and Mike’s date, I must ready myself. Annie and Mike possess freer spirits than I, as exhibited over the years by mountain hikes without proper shoes and the Four Loko incident.

I know how strongly modern friendship leans upon the notion of “being there for each other’s moments,” and how great a debt I owe to those who attended our marriage and baby events, which were, I was told, no more valid than their bohemian pursuits. And I am willing to sacrifice all my plans for the weekend to help maintain these friendships.

But, Brandon, I know that along with my own plans, I also surrendered your long-awaited day of catch-up sleep and forced you to watch the kids alone.

I cannot imagine what my feelings will be on this raucous night, wholly unprepared in my attire that leans more festival than club, when ten thousand glittery men and women are jumping around me, many on the cusp of losing consciousness, and I, aware that Feebleness is dancing behind me with her lethal fourth vodka shot, ask God, “When can I leave already?”

When my body, bruised from the current of bacchants thrashing about my perimeter, nearly buckles, I will courageously infiltrate a VIP table to secure its privileges, especially sitting, for my friends. Know that my thoughts are only of you the moment your phone notifies you of the $4,000 Amex charge.

I won’t deny that I’ve contemplated a cowardly path. I have most diligently racked my brain for a way out of this show—a work conference, tinnitus, an AI-generated cancellation email. Briefly, I engaged in a clandestine alliance with Mike’s girl, who was vexed by the $250 ticket price. But after learning that Mike paid for her ticket, her ire subsided, crippling my plan.

And in truth, I am glad for it. A fear of being disliked and labeled a hypocrite due to the principles I often advocate (namely, committing to confirmed plans) binds me to this cause.

Although resigned, thoughts of forfeited moments waft over me—watching “one more episode” four times, touring luxury ranches on Zillow, and waiting too long to cook, obliging us to order California burritos. How hard it is to give up mundanity with you and our children for lasers and unreleased IDs. When I employ the earplugs you gifted me, I will not stew about my lack of familiarity with each track, but will praise the Divine for such a husband.

But, O Brandon, if in the morning you feel a hot gust against your ear, it shall be me muttering that I’m finally home, recounting nonsensical anecdotes you are too tired to listen to. When a vibration throbs your temples, it shall be the funky bass still rumbling through my entire body. If you wake and worry that my spirit is nigh bound for God’s embrace, fear not. I am dead to this world only until deep slumber revives my weary bones. Remember me to the children and wait for me!

— Your affectionate wife until death

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12:07 a.m.

Everyone’s tired, so we’re bailing early . In the car now!

Announcing Cornell University’s Newest Writing Course: Rape Essays 101

Alexea Malaletkin — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:52:00 -0400

“A New York prosecutor said Monday that he would reopen an investigation into accusations of a 2024 sexual assault at Cornell University… The lawsuit alleged that the seven accused fraternity members were given the opportunity to ‘mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell.’” — New York Times

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Here at Cornell, we aim to prepare our students for a wide breadth of challenges with our academic offerings. Recent criticism of our assigned Rape Essays has made us reflect on our approach. We understand that it is our responsibility to teach Cornell collegiates what a good Rape Essay looks like. Rape Essays 101 is the best manifestation of this commitment that our most tenured minds could come up with.

Can a rapist’s prose effectively elicit remorse for sexual assault? What word count best equates to appropriate jail time? In this class, we will dissect what empathy and accountability might look like so undergrads may successfully mimic them on paper in pursuit of avoiding just punishment.

We engage with works about guys who kinda seem to feel bad now that they’ve been told the only way people will get off their backs is if they feel bad. This includes YouTube apology videos, the works of Charles Bukowski, and screenings of The Cosby Show.

From here, enrolled students are assigned to write their own absolutions of guilt in MLA format. It’s then our job to help them make it the best Rape Essay it can be.

While committing sexual assault is not a prerequisite to taking this class, this class is ideally a prerequisite to committing sexual assault (and mandatory for fraternity acceptance as a new liability practice). This empowers students to take responsibility and get ahead of their punishments on their schedules rather than at inopportune times should they, say, rape a peer just before finals. Instead of adding to their heavy course load, we will now incorporate it, because Cornell cares.

Male students who have the most to gain from this course are likely asking themselves, “But what’s in it for me?” We think Cornell’s gentlemen will be very happy to find that Rape Essays 101 earns the same credits as any gender studies course, fulfilling requirements that would otherwise put them in less self-emboldening classes such as Feminist Theory or Body Politics. It might even earn the same credits as prison.

We expect that those especially keen on the GPA benefits of enrollment will jump at the opportunity for extra credit, earned by writing “I will not rape” as many times as they can before their hands hurt a little bit. We’d hate to inflict any lasting harm on a student through our choices as a university.

Please note that no AI may be used under any circumstances in submitted Rape Essays. Discovery of AI use will result in immediate, nonnegotiable expulsion, revocation of all credits, and support of any legal action or public shaming that follows. This does not fit Cornell’s standard of pupil.

All of this makes Cornell a safe place, for us, so that we can say we absolutely did something in future inevitable sexual assault cases set on our esteemed campus, soon to be brimming with essayists.

Will completed essays be graded by victims? Probably not. They don’t want to read that.

Reviews of New Food: Chicken and Waffles Oreos

Leslie Ylinen — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 06:00:00 -0700

I’m an American, and as such, I believe in free and fair elections. Actually, let me dial that back. I used to believe in them, and I’d like to again. So when I heard the cookie perverts over at Oreo had launched their “Twist, Lick, Vote” campaign, I felt a long-dormant patriotic swell awaken in me. A heroic call to civic duty compelling me to make a decision that will impact the people of our country for potentially several weeks, until the next marketing gimmick comes along. It’s a responsibility I take seriously, and candidly, I’d like to microdose a little democracy—as a treat.

Here’s how it works. There are currently three limited-edition Oreo flavors on the shelves. This immediately gave me pause because all bad things come in threes: the heads of Cerberus, celebrity deaths, witches on the blasted heath. In this case, we’re presented with Banana Pudding, Deep Fried, and most ominously, Chicken and Waffles. Oreo is asking us to vote for which of these flavors we’d like them to continue making. No purchase necessary, of course. That would be a poll tax and a clear violation of the 24th Amendment.

I’m an American, but also a Southerner, a Tennessee native, born and raised. However, I’ve spent my entire adult life in West Coast culinary hot spots, where my southern hometown flavors—from fried pickles to Nashville hot chicken—are regularly bastardized for the delight of the coastal elite. I recently joined the experimental 600,000-person polycule known as Portland, Oregon. Here, it’s only a matter of time before some bearded lumberjack gets off his kayak, blends up shrimp and grits, and serves it as a folksy ice cream flavor at Salt & Straw.

This is all to say that when I got my hands on the Chicken and Waffles Oreos, my expectations were measured for this latest shameful debasement of a southern classic. But I promised to go into the experience with curiosity and an open heart.

My questions about Chicken and Waffles Oreos were probably the same as yours:

1. What kind of god would allow this?
2. Exactly how do you put chicken in a cookie?

I don’t like to blame everything on perimenopause, but since turning forty, I have developed a visceral revulsion to chicken. It’s a hormonal chicken ick. When I’m presented with a piece of its meat, I can’t stop thinking about their lizard faces, their scrotal chin wattles, and those gnarled, diseased feet that strut through their own waste, unbothered, because they’re nature’s biggest idiots. How did Oreo plan to reconcile that with a cookie and make it all work?

Well, they didn’t make it work. I’m not saying I think anyone at Oreo needs to lose their life over this, but they definitely need to lose their job and their freedom. The smell and taste of artificial pancake syrup are so overpowering that I had to remove the box from my kitchen with a pair of tongs and relegate it to a containment zone in my garage. My next step will be to build a Chornobyl-style sarcophagus around the Oreos, but the design prototype isn’t ready yet.

The filling’s syrup smell is so persistent that after a full Silkwood shower and three handwashes with Method brand lavender soap (their most fragrant varietal), I can still smell Chicken and Waffles Oreos on my hands when I adjust my glasses or tuck my hair behind my ears. It’s a modern-day Edgar Allan Poe story, and I cannot escape the beating of the hideous heart. But with syrup.

The hard cookie tastes mostly of brown sugar, and I’m happy to report there’s nothing poultry-flavored in here at all. The ingredient list confirms this. They are using an artificial smoke flavor for a pop of bird. Bottom line: if you don’t hate yourself, don’t eat this.

And what of our other two candidates, Banana Pudding and Deep Fried? Well, remember when I said bad things come in threes? That was foreshadowing. They are disgusting. Banana Pudding tastes like an OSHA violation happened at a chemical processing plant. I say that confidently because I once accidentally made a cloying but putrid chemical that smelled exactly like this cookie tastes in an 8 a.m. organic chem lab in college after being out all night in New Orleans dancing with a day-glo Santa wrapped in barbed wire at a Christmas-themed dive bar.

Deep Fried is the only one that tastes remotely like it’s food for humans. Between two golden cookies are two layers of fried dough-flavored cream, which sandwich a third, black cream layer flavored like an original Oreo. That means the Oreo cookie is actually consuming itself. The taste is abominable, but those sick freaks have finally done what the ancients predicted as far back as the fourteenth century. They created the oreoboros.

The Twist, Lick, Vote campaign is ultimately a painful allegory for American elections. Once again we’re told the decision is ours to make, that we, the people, are the drivers of fate. And then we’re given the ballot version of a ransom note. A diseased-feet bird cookie and then five decrepit white men pushing ninety. Vote or die.

In the end I did vote, sadly and reluctantly. I held my nose with my hand that still smells like artificial pancake syrup, and voted for Deep Fried, the least of the evils. I did it because I’m an American, and I believe in free and fair elections, and the worst thing you can do is stay home.

I’m Going to Have a Third Cup of Coffee, and I Need Everyone to Respect My Decision

Aliza Zelin Neidich — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400

To My Best Friend
You will receive a midmorning text asking if you, too, have ever felt a sharp pain on the left side of your chest when flexing your right foot while seated. Your job is to assure me that you’ve had this same sensation many a time without consequence. In fact, it’s also happening to you right now, and you’re absolutely fine.

To My Husband
When I call to say I feel like I’m going to pass out, you will ask if I’ve had anything to eat all day, and I will reply that yes, I have, but the forkful of leftover birthday cake I had at 8:45 a.m. after my workout is not the issue. You will apologize and agree that this is completely unrelated.

To My 11 a.m. Meeting
I will be speaking at a pace only seen in clinically diagnosed mania. Do not mistake this for enthusiasm—I will feel like I’m dying. Also, I will be actively trying to distract myself from the fact that I can feel my pulse in my teeth.

To the Receptionist at My Doctor’s Office
I will call to make an appointment and then ten minutes later call back to cancel. I will repeat this process three times within two hours. Your job each time is to immediately confirm that you are adding me to the doctor’s schedule because, yes indeed, Sharp-Chest-Foot-Flexion could be very serious and how smart of me to call. When I cancel once last time, you will reassure me that this will not affect my future ability to book same-day appointments, and also that I am the doctor’s favorite patient.

To My Therapist
You will notice my anxiety measures are abnormally high. You will ask about this with great sympathy and agree that my life is full of woe. We will spend forty-five minutes attempting to figure out why. I will not mention the coffee, for it is irrelevant.

To the School Nurse
If you call me today to mention that my son ran into another child on the playground, there is a 100 percent chance I will ask you to transport him to the nearest hospital to initiate concussion protocol. When I question your qualifications after you ask if this is necessary, you will not take it personally and, in fact, you will pretend this never happened.

To My Oura Ring
Signs of strain will appear, but you will not count these towards my overall health metrics. I get a text from the Oura Ring Founder saying they have never seen such an accurate depiction of crisis and, do not fear, they will monitor my condition in the Oura Ring Control Room.

To My Group Pilates Instructor
You will preface the class by mentioning to everyone that it is completely normal and, in fact, encouraged to get up and use the bathroom several times during class and also definitely no one else can hear what happens in the bathroom. You will mistake the fact that I have broken out in a cold sweat during warm-up for excellent physical conditioning and audibly reward my efforts.

To My Children
When you carefully ask if it’s normal that my body is vibrating, I will pick up the glass I dropped and shout that yes, it is normal. In fact, we are highly evolved creatures, and our bodies contain many unknowable mysteries. You will instantly grasp this concept, and nothing about my parenting will need to be discussed in therapy ten years from now.

To Myself at 1:30 a.m.
This insomnia was entirely unforeseeable, and it is an excellent time to deep-dive into research about the closest geographic fault lines.