McSweeney’s

About the Rough Mud Run by Sean Adams

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

Thank you for your interest in the Rough Mud Run. Below is a brief overview of the event.

What is the Rough Mud Run?

A run, obstacle course, and all-around psychologically traumatic experience.

When is the Rough Mud Run?

Some time in the next month, when you least expect it. We’ll call you, and then you’ll have thirty minutes to report to the starting line. If you show up even a second late, you will not be allowed to participate in the run; however, we do ask that you stick around for a few minutes to take part in a brief shaming ceremony.

Weather

The Rough Mud Run will occur rain or shine, although fair warning, thanks to some help from a group of rogue climate scientists, we’ve more-or-less guaranteed the conditions won’t be “shine.”

The Course

The course is between 6 and 37 miles in length, with several wrong turns that can add up to 79 additional miles.

The Terrain

The terrain is made up entirely of mud and rocks. Each rock has been hand-sharpened by a disgruntled volunteer.

The Backpack

You will start out the run wearing a backpack, but you won’t be able to put anything in it, because when we say “backpack” we really just mean a cinder block with straps on it. Also, FYI: we don’t provide ready-made cinderblocks; we provide cinderblock-making materials. You will make your cinderblock backpack, put it on, run the first 3-19 miles (depending on whether or not you take any of those wrong turns), and then give it to a volunteer who will use it (along with everyone else’s) to build a giant cement wall. The wall is so you can’t turn back.

The Blindfold

After handing off your cinderblock, you’ll be blindfolded. The blindfold is a live snake. The snake is trained to sense two things: fear and peeking. That means no fear and no peeking. You’ll run with this blindfold on for the next 2-36 miles (again, wrong turns), after which a volunteer snake handler will remove it. This is where the obstacle course begins.

Some Obstacles You May Face

The Ass Biter, The Nut Grinder, The Electric Squeal, Feast of Bees, Mirage Barrage, Just Straight Up Fucking Dangling Over Some Fucking Sharks, Nails! Nails! Nails!, The Gut Buster, The Butt Guster, Scary Larson’s The Tar Side: A Shingle Painel Comic Trip, Discus Discuss, Testla-la, Hay in the Needlestack, Working for the Tweak-end, and The Itch Unscratchable. All obstacles can (and most-likely will) be set on fire.

Pregnant Women in Labor

Additionally, the course will be scattered with pregnant women in labor. It is not required that you stop and deliver a baby along the way; however, at least one newborn child is required for admittance to the post-race beer garden.

Hot Cocoa Stops

There won’t be any hot cocoa stops. Duh! Seriously, why would you ever think we would put hot cocoa stops in an event like this? It’s insulting! In fact, just because you didn’t skip this section, we’re going to go back and sharpen the rocks all over again so that they’re double sharp. We hope you’re happy with yourself.

Medals

All participants who complete the run will be given a Rough Mud Run medal. The first 100 finishers will also receive a trowel, which they can use to bury their medal deep within a forest, so that they will never again be reminded of this terrible, terrible event.

Again, thank you for your interest in the Rough Mud Run. We look forward to seeing you on race day, whenever the hell it is.

God’s Little Acre of Diamonds: Observations On Travel Ball in Cobb County, Georgia: The Bird, the Hero, and the Goat by Stella A.

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

Not too long ago, the boys and I decided to get Will a bird for his birthday. My older son Thomas and I went to the pet store. I picked out a cage, and Thomas picked out a handsome green and black parakeet and some bird toys, including a tiny basketball hoop. For a few days, we hid the bird in various places (the barn, the front porch, the back seat of the car) until the chirping got hard to cover up with a loud cough or my younger son Henry’s always-on Tween Pandora station. We figured we’d better give the bird to Will a day early or risk ruining the surprise. He’d already figured out that we had feathers up our sleeves, but he played along during the big reveal. He named the bird Jeff Tweedy.

For a week, we let Jeff Tweedy get used to his new home. He sang and snacked on millet and shot some hoops now and then. Henry often parked himself in front of the cage to chat—probably the biggest Jeff Tweedy fan in the family. When we began training him, Henry was first to put his hand in the cage, and Jeff Tweedy welcomed the grubby, grabby fingers of a nine year old. Pretty soon, Jeff Tweedy learned the command “up,” and he would wrap his claws around Henry’s outstretched index finger and consent to being carried around.

Each time I passed Jeff Tweedy’s cage or listened to Henry singing “Kingpin” with him, I thought of Emily Dickinson.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul.
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all

Around this time, Jeff Tweedy was about the most hopeful thing happening in the A. family. He had a big voice, the table manners of a toddler, and a pretty good two point shot. This bouncy, chirpy tough guy cheered us as we trudged through all the mandatory May (“the month that seems like two”) events: school programs, class performances, and end of the year parties; afternoon swim team practices, evening Boy Scout meetings, and, on top of it all, more baseball than you would ever believe. It was nice to come home to his noise.

If, several columns ago, it seemed that hope was taking flight from Henry’s baseball team, well, we hadn’t seen anything yet. The spring season peaked in May, with four weekend tournaments in a row and several nights of practice each week. But all the playing couldn’t stop the slow entropy of a team that lacks a solid center. We faced facts: the season had been a losing one so far, and May offered little hope that June would be any different. The boys would probably continue to lose twice as many games as they won.

In Coach Larry’s eyes, when the boys win, they win because of what he’s taught them. And when they lose, it’s their own fault. They’re not “travel ball” material. One day they’re golden; the next day they’re dross. After games, Coach tries to lecture them into being better players (“they didn’t beat you—you beat yourselves”; “I can’t get out there and play the game for you”). The parents roll their eyes or shake their heads in dismay, and, the kids, released from the post-game post-mortem, slump into their cars where they can safely sulk or tear up. By the next game, they’re even more afraid of messing up that they freeze and forget the easy stuff; their bats go cold. And the post-game lecture gets longer. Lose. Lecture. Lose harder. Lecture longer. Tears.

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

After a really nice family quit the team, Coach temporarily shelved his fear-based coaching style. Not long afterward, the boys managed to win their first trophy of the spring, which was followed by a rather spectacular ten-game losing streak. The tournament was a “Spring Slam” up north in Cherokee County.

For me, a mother watching her kid weave together the good and the bad of this year of baseball, that string of ten losses is bracketed by two plays—the high and the low—that I’ll probably never forget (and, I confess, maybe I’m just writing them here, now, to make sure they don’t get lost in the crazy quilt of games—over 50 of them so far—a season that will, in several months, take on a general color and texture and wholeness, like other seasons, folded and packed away).

The way the bracket shook out at the Spring Slam, the Spark Plugs had to play the same two teams that had beat them in pool play in order to make it to the championship game. They put away the Chargers first, 7-3. Next they faced the Bears, a team they’d lost to and tied but never beaten in past tournaments. The Bears were the higher seed, so they got the advantage of batting last. For the first time in a while the boys were hitting well, with six hits over three innings. In the fourth (and final) inning, the Spark Plugs were up, 8-4, when the Bears came up to bat. After a strikeout and pop out, they scored one more run, 8-5, and put runners on first and second.

Henry was playing 3rd base. With the tying run at the plate, the whole place got louder by the second; you could feel that the momentum of the game was up for grabs. A ring of laurels hung in the air, ready to be snatched by batter or pitcher. The kid stepped into the box and fouled off the first pitch. On the second pitch, a belt-high fastball, he swung hard and ripped a ground ball toward the gap between short and third. And then, in one of those moments when I willed my memory to be more like a camcorder than a colander, I watched Henry dive for the ball, glove outstretched, his body nearly parallel to the ground. His hips hit the red clay just as the white ball disappeared into black leather, like an eye closing shut. Henry scrambled to his knees as the runner on second was advancing to third, lunged, and tagged him. Ballgame. Noise.

The coaches raced out of the dugout, and the moms around me high-fived as if we’d won some sort of World Series victory, instead of a chance to play for a cheap-looking plastic trophy. When I looked back out to the field, still marveling at what I wasn’t even sure I’d really seen, Coach Larry was swinging Henry up in the air.

“You boys got Coach Larry another trophy,” Coach said when they gathered around after the game. I probably would have rolled my eyes at that—and its implication that it’s all for him, but victory washes away the bad taste for a spell, and I was just proud and happy for Henry and for all the boys who’d practiced a lot and played a lot and lost a lot and were probably relieved as much as anything to know they’d get a four-inch gold-tone plastic baseball player atop a disco-style pedestal. But the boys went on to lose the championship game—the trophy read “Runner-Up”—and then lose some more.

The Spark Plugs played two more tournaments without a single win. We drove east to Suwanee to lose and then north to Holly Springs to lose, where the boys played at a ball field in a picturesque rolling horse pasture. This park was something to behold: dugouts and a dangerous-looking score box made of corrugated tin roofing; high on 6 × 6 posts speakers sheltered with garbage cans blasted 1950s rock and roll; a sign warned that heckling umpires would get you ejected (no refund!). At the chain-link fence just behind the third base line, all the Spark Plug little sisters clustered around a charming trio of horses that wandered over for a pat on the nose and nibble of stale potato chips.

The parents, meanwhile, had begun their slow separation. From my perch on a hill overlooking the field, I could see that families had set up separate camps. No one was in the mood for socializing, and certainly not after the boys lost all three games, bringing the losing streak to eight.

As the end of the season nears, we all know that this team will spin the boys off in different directions, to other teams in other corners of the county. It’s easy to be friendly when the boys are doing well. Losing draws borders. A team that wins, wins together, and a team that loses apportions blame in lowered voices. We had to listen harder for Jeff Tweedy’s song all the way up in Holly Springs.

On the other end of this ten-game losing streak was the second play I’m committing to this digital substitute for a functioning memory. We drove west, to Carrollton, where the boys played the Barracudas, a team they’d always beat. For a while the game was all pitching; after three innings, the score was 1-0, Barracudas. Henry was on the mound in the top of the fourth. He got off to a shaky start by walking two batters, who quickly stole second and third. Then a kid flied out and another grounded out to second, scoring a run, 2-0. Henry walked another kid, who stole second on the first pitch to the inning’s sixth batter. I could tell Henry was rattled. He has a nervous habit of taking his hat off, shaking it, and putting it back on again, and he couldn’t keep his hat on his head. He knew that he could blow it all with the wrong pitch.

Coach walked out to the mound and Henry pushed the ball at him, sure that he was getting pulled (and probably hoping for anything to get him out of this jam). But Coach said a few words and jogged back to the dugout. Henry set up and pitched from the windup. Ball. Strike looking. Ball. Strike swinging. On the 2-2 pitch, the kid hit a weak grounder right back to Henry, who scooped it up cleanly. But instead of throwing to first for an easy third out, he threw it back to the catcher, who tried valiantly to tag the runner coming home but missed, 3-0. Coach lost it. He tore out of the dugout screaming at Henry, “WHERE do we throw the ball? WHERE? WHERE?” And with Henry’s fear-filled eyes frozen on the coach, whose lecture had just gotten underway, the third base coach sent another runner home, 4-0.

The inning went on and Henry stayed on the mound, only now he wasn’t taking his hat on and off. He was wiping away tears with his shirtsleeve, the first time I’ve ever seen him crying on the field. Another coach yelled, “Throw angry!” and he did. Two of the fastest fastballs I’ve ever seen him pitch came right down the pipe and the kid in the box just watched. On the third pitch, he swung and hit the ball right to the first baseman to end the inning. Henry ran for the dugout, his face a blotchy red. The other moms looked at me a bit sympathetically. I looked down at my phone, where I was keeping score, wishing there was a way to assign that last run to Coach. I didn’t walk over to say something banal or consoling to Henry. He was alone up out there on that little bump of dirt, standing a little taller, with a little further to fall. But now, sitting on the bench, his teammates drew close, encircling him protectively. Sometimes a kid is just the goat. And sometimes a kid doesn’t need his mama.

- - -

And sometimes he does. At practice the next week, I sat in my camp chair with an armload of paperwork while the boys ran infield drills. My phone rang. “Bad news,” Will said. “Jeff Tweedy is dead.” Well, shit.

When Henry was loading his bat bag into the trunk, I figured I’d better just tell him. I was unprepared for what happened next. He let out a howl and then just sort of fell into me, unsteadied by an emotion I’m not sure he’s ever felt before—this kid of nine years with four living grandparents, three living great-grandparents, and one not-dead dog. I hugged him and drove home with one arm around his shuddering shoulders. He cried in his bed that night and cried on his way to baseball camp in the morning. He seemed to roll everything that was bothering him into that one bird-sized void. By afternoon, Henry was asking when we could get another bird.

I guess we could have spared him this initiation into grief with a lie or a sneaky substitute (and Will and I debated it on the phone that night—a tempting parental punt like the one with Ketchup II, the beta fish who seamlessly took over for Ketchup I, who perished in a poorly planned flea bomb). But we didn’t punt, and I wanted so much to patch up the kid’s hurt. Later that week we went back to the pet store and picked out a new parakeet. “Do you want to name him Jeff Tweedy II,” I asked.

“No, Mom,” Henry said with a stern look at me, “it’s too soon.”

My Addiction to Irony by Marsh McCall

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

Hello. My name is John, and I’m “addicted” to irony. No, not “addicted.” I don’t know why I uttered the word with an air quote inflection. Yes, I do. It’s because I’m addicted. To irony. Wow, just saying those words out loud before you is a “relief.” No, not a “relief.” Just a relief. You see, as long as I can remember, I have experienced the world with eyebrow-raised, bemused detachment. And this has helped me experience a rich, full life. No, it hasn’t. Stop it. Even as a child, I retreated behind irony. In class, I would raise my hand in quiet moments, and, when called upon, would say, “First of all, let’s all calm down.” Why would an eight-year-old do this? I was not raised in an ironic household. Whenever someone at the dinner table spilled food I would dramatically cry out “What’s happening to us?” My parents would just stare at me, mystified.

Should I go on? By junior high school my ironic tendencies were firmly in control. I would proudly introduce myself to adults as “a leading dandruff expert.” I evaluated movies in the persona of a precocious talking squirrel named Chippers Treebert. For talent night at summer camp I convinced a friend to perform Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” with me. But instead of becoming annoyed at his inability to learn the names of the baseball players, I grew increasingly patient and compassionate. By the end of the sketch we were tearfully hugging. Real tears, ironically—perhaps because I realized it was only through irony that I could display emotion. Or was it “emotion”? Even the first time I kissed a girl, at an eighth-grade dance, I ironically distanced myself from any real human resonance by freezing into place after our lips met and pretending I had fallen asleep. The girl found it “hilarious,” by which I mean–-and this will come as no surprise–-the opposite. Irony, my friends. You’re not my friends. I don’t even know you. Irony again.

As an adult, I continue to find it virtually impossible to express any idea without ironic subtext. The previous sentence is a rare exception. And the one after that. But not this sentence. Or this one. Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it. The fact is, constant ironic detachment has not only stymied my social and scholastic life, it’s also held me back in my profession. Perhaps, in hindsight, I never should have entered the priesthood at all. When I stand at the pulpit before my congregation and employ a phrase such as “God knows why,” I can’t help putting a sardonic, bored-sophisticate spin on the words, thereby not only implying that God actually has no idea why, but that perhaps He may not exist at all. Often, to avoid my uncontrollable eye-rolling when simply uttering the word “God,” I try to evade the problem by referring to Him as “Mr. Big Pants,” but people find this alienating, particularly during funerals. I must confess, or perhaps “confess,” that attendance at First Church of the Sacred Virgin has steadily declined, and those few who do still wander in seem to be young adults wearing fedoras and sporting beards. Perhaps they think some sort of performance art is happening. Ironically, maybe it is. No, it’s not ironic. It’s just sad. Or possibly “sad.”

Anyway, I appreciate you allowing me this time to bare my soul, or at least my “soul,” but I don’t expect you to provide any existence-altering solutions. Maybe that’s why I retreated behind irony in the first place–-because there are, ultimately, no life answers, or even “life answers,” or even, to use the rare but potent double-ironic, “’life answers.’” Maybe I choose to feign bemused indifference because, ironically, I’m afraid to earnestly face the metaphysical conundrums into which each human is born. Perhaps it is why I am addressing my remarks today, not before a traditional support group, but to you, the elderly Armenian couple seated across from me on the bus. Thanks for listening, or at least for “listening.” Ironically, the language barrier seems to have helped me relax and connect with you on some sort of genuine, human level. But is this truly ironic? Or merely “ironic?” I don’t know. I just don’t know. “God” help me.

Apocalypse of the Week: July Fourth by Lucy Corin

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

Got there and the ground was covered with bodies. Lay down with everyone and looked at the sky, bracing for the explosions.

An Imagined Conversation Between the Construction Workers Upstairs From Me by Ben Jurney

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

WORKER: It’s 6:37 AM, let’s begin hammering.

SECOND WORKER: Are we nailing anything in today?

WORKER: No, we’re just striking the bare, wooden floor with our hammers.

SECOND WORKER: I’ll turn on the handsaw as well.

WORKER: Great. Let it run by itself against that wall.

SECOND WORKER: How hard are we hammering today?

WORKER: Boss wants us to alternate between hammering with great force and exceptionally great force. We take breaks when the man living downstairs leaves the building.

THIRD WORKER: Someone paged me about needing help?

WORKER: Yes, it is 6:38 AM and we need help.

THIRD WORKER: Don’t worry, my workers are currently charging up the stairs as if there were a fire. Each one is from the most unbearable part of Staten Island.

SECOND WORKER: Your men all have gigantism?

THIRD WORKER: And chronic vertigo.

WORKER: We will need help deadlifting these oil drums filled with marbles.

THIRD WORKER: Where should they go?

WORKER: You can drop them right over everywhere.

THIRD WORKER: That should take six weeks.

SECOND WORKER: Great.

WORKER: Do you know the man that lives downstairs?

THIRD WORKER: I have seen him. Was he born prematurely?

WORKER: God, I hope so. There’s no other way to justify his physique.

SECOND WORKER: He must have excelled in his early years and then plateaued dramatically once he reached puberty.

THIRD WORKER: He’ll never achieve our natural, rugged sex appeal.

SECOND WORKER: A trait expected of the American heterosexual man.

THIRD WORKER: I wonder if that haunts him.

WORKER: Isn’t he a writer?

SECOND WORKER: Jesus. Oh, of course he is.

THIRD WORKER: You know what? I think I hate him.

SECOND WORKER: Yes, me too.

WORKER: Me three.

THIRD WORKER: Let’s hammer forever.

List: Items from the New York Times’ “Meh List” or One of the Many Things I See in Front of Me Right Now? by B.R. Cohen

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

1. Evites

2. Late Sunday mornings

3. Side patios

4. Customer reward cards

5. The Sunday New York Times Magazine

6. Evite reminders

7. Unwrapped presents for daughter’s friend’s birthday party

8. Cicada tourism

9. Backyard cookouts as kids’ Birthday Parties where parents are also invited

10. Summer ale

11. Dead cicadas

12. Recycle bins remaining in the cul-de-sac four days after pick-up day

13. Mason jars as regular drinking mugs

14. A text from Marty asking if I got the evite reminder to bring the bocce ball set

15. Magazine subscription form from that customer reward card to be used for Marty’s kid’s birthday present

16. God, we should move two towns over

17. A ten-hour slog before tonight’s Mad Men ep with the expectation that, before then, someone (I won’t name names) will once again crack wise about who’s leaving recycle bins out all week and “undermining the integrity of our charming neighborhood” during a brief aside from grill-side chit-chat about his Tumblr

18. Dejection soaked in a mason jar of Sunday morning summer ale

19. Daft Punk stealth marketing analyses

- -

Meh List: 4, 8, 19
Things I’m staring at: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18
Both: 1, 10, 13, 17

A Tea Party Republican’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Scott Eckert

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

I went to sleep with a Muslim President and when I woke up I still had a Muslim President, and when I got out of bed Gretchen wasn’t on Fox and Friends, and God made my girlfriend pregnant again, and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

In traffic I wanted to drive in the carpool lane. Rideshares got to drive in the carpool lane. Electric buses and hybrid cars too. But the nanny state wouldn’t let me drive in the carpool lane. I said it was unconstitutional. I said it was socialism. I said if I don’t get to drive in the carpool lane I’m going to use my Second Amendment rights. No one even listened.

It was shaping up to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At work Paul found a debt-financed Keynesian stimulus check in his W-2 Tax Statement, and Miguel found an Illegal Alien Amnesty voucher in his W-2 Tax Statement, but in my W-2 Tax Statement all I found were taxes.

I think I’ll move to Communist China.

At my daughter’s parent-teacher conference Mrs. Dickens liked science’s proof of anthropogenic climate change better than my faith in Young Earth creationism. At Pledge of Allegiance time she said I screamed “Under God” too loud. At Phys Ed she said I was morbidly obese. And at counting time I left out sixteen. Who needs sixteen?

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I could tell because the RNC Chairman said I wasn’t his best friend anymore. He said that undecided women are his best friend, and that Hispanics and gays are his next best friend, and that red-blooded Americans are only his third best friend. “I hope you lose a bunch of Governorships,” I said.

There were low-interest student loans for Barney in the budget deal, and Ted got affordable health insurance, and Andrew’s Congressmen got his state disaster relief funding to rebuild their crumbling infrastructure. Guess who’s Congressman wants a balanced budget and sponsored an anti-earmark amendment? It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Next week, I said, I’m going to Communist China.

Then I voted in the Republican primary. Dick got his neoconservative candidate elected, and Donald got his pro-Wall Street candidate elected, but all I got was a candidate willing to compromise his conservative values. And he’s probably a serial adulterer too.

There was a calorie count on my Chick-fil-A dinner menu and I hate calorie counts.

There was sex on TV and I hate sex.

At bedtime the price of gold plummeted, my water was too fluoridated, my weed was too legal, and I had to listen to Chris Christie on Hannity. He didn’t even bring up Solyndra, Benghazi, or the IRS scandal once. I hate Chris Christie.

It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!

My mom says some days are like this.

Rush says they all are.

Interviews With People Who Have Interesting or Unusual Jobs: John Ertle Buries Dead People by Suzanne Yeagley

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

Q: You work in a cemetery. What’s it like?
A: When you drive in, the front gates open and it’s pretty impressive. There are these big wide gates and it’s kind of cool. There’s a big lake and mausoleum… a quarter of a million people are buried there.

Q: Are you serious? That’s a lot of people.
A: Yeah, and they can probably fit another 75-100,000, and there’s a new area of development in the back.

Q: How many people are buried there every day?
A: Maybe 10 people per day. It can be anywhere from 6-14. It’s pretty ridiculous. I think it’s the most popular cemetery in Cleveland right now. Other places are either out of the way or filled up.

Q: Did you know all of this cemetery information before you took this job?
A: I had no idea. When I was little my uncle was buried there and more recently my friend’s grandmother had died, so I had been there, but I didn’t know much about it.

Q: Where do you work?
A: There’s a brick building where most of the workers spend their time. And there’s a yard with trucks, loaders, forklifts, and stuff.

Q: Is your job like a construction job?
A: Well, we’re not building things; we’re digging holes.

During the winter the ground gets muddy and soft. We have to lie down 10 × 4 planks so the loader can drive on them. In one day you’ll have moved like 1000 of these boards. It’s the WORST.

Q: What other things do you do?
A: Last summer we weed-whacked the entire time. We had to weed-whack the grass over the stones. Each section could have 20,000 headstones. It would take like a month to do the whole cemetery. I’d spend like eight hours a day just weed-whacking.

Q: What are the other people like who work there?
A: There is one guy—Murphy—he has mild elephantiasis and narcolepsy and he has these coughing fits where his dentures will fly out of his mouth. He’ll put them in his front pocket and pop them back in later.

Also he’s obsessed with animals. He’ll see a squirrel and start driving off the road.

Q: What is elephantiasis?
A: It’s like these growths. They’re mostly on his elbows. He also has one on his chin and he grows out his beard to hide it.

The story is that he wanted to be a priest really bad when he was younger and at seminary he was part of a clown priest group. But they said he wasn’t cut out for it. He’ll still hum circus music and walk with it.

Q: How many people are employed by the cemetery?
A: Maybe 20-some people. Or 25-ish. Other cemeteries in the area will send some of their guys too if we need them.

Q: What else do you do?
A: For Memorial Day they put a flag on the grave of every veteran and afterward we have 80,000 flags to take off. There is a certain way to roll the flags up. They have boxes and boxes of these flags.

We pick up all the dead flowers, the plastic flowers, other items left on graves, and we throw them away.

Q: How do you know you’re not throwing away things that people wanted to leave there?
A: Sometimes we leave stuff. Like there’s a baby section… one time a lady left a Mountain Dew bottle and somebody picked it up. This lady came in later and said, “Did you pick up the Mountain Dew bottle? It was the last drink my son drank before he jumped in the pool…”

They had to go dumpster diving to find it.

People leave the strangest stuff. I remember at Halloween someone left a full scarecrow tied to a tree… at Christmas someone had taken a hydraulic lift and put a 5-foot-tall cross into the ground. We had to have a forklift come to get it out.

Q: Is it ever creepy there?
A: In the morning in winter when it’s still dark… it’s not necessarily creepy though. The closest is when you’re alone, especially in this one mausoleum where natural light is coming in and the skylights are covered in snow…

Q: Anything strange written on gravestones?
A: Most people have a generic saying like a bible quote or “Forever with God.” Nothing that weird.

I’ve been on burials… there was a guy who was killed in Iraq a few years ago and a month after he was buried we got the call saying, “We have the rest of him.” So they had to dig him up.

Q: What’s that like?
A: People are buried in a 1000-pound concrete vault. They drop off the vault in the morning and we take it and put it in the ground with the lid off to the side. Then we cover it with a green four-piece wooden box thing, so if you stand on it, you won’t fall into the hole. Then the green carpet/fake grass goes over it.

Q: So it’s not like the movies where a few guys with shovels can dig someone up?
A: You’re not getting it out any time soon.

Another thing we do—we put up tents by the gravesite. We have a truck that we call the tent trailer. Tents are a bitch to put up. It takes two-three guys and fifteen minutes of your time. We get MAD when we’re called in for a tent.

Q: You know, at my grandfather’s funeral we had a tent.
A: Umm, well…

Q: Have you seen dead people while you’ve been working there?
A: I’ve seen none. I’ve had someone hand me a cremation but that is the closest I’ve come.

Q: When you die, will you be buried there?
A: I’d get a free plot, so I got that going for me. That’s $1000 of my own money that I don’t have to spend.

Teddy Wayne’s Unpopular Proverbs: Aiming by Teddy Wayne

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 03:59:00 -0700

If you shoot for the stars, you’ll hit the roof; do not do that, since we just repaired the roof and it was a four-month ordeal. Instead, shoot for the roof, and you’ll end up hitting the first floor. We sublet that to another tenant, so it’s fine. Seriously, we’re trying to get rid of them but they won’t leave, so hitting their floor would be doing us a huge favor.

These Sunglasses Really Fill the Void Where My Personality Should Be by Colin Fisher

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

I just got these new shades. They’re aviators, apparently just like the guys in Top Gun wear (I’ve never seen it). I find they’re a great substitute for the personality I don’t have.

When I wear these sunglasses, people assume things about me and that comes in pretty handy. Like, if I wear them inside, people think I’m a nonconformist, or that I was out late last night. If I wear them on the street, girls might think I’m checking them out since they can’t see my eyes.

The truth of the matter is there’s really nothing special happening behind my sunglasses. Most of the time I’m just counting. Once I got up to 7,000. I don’t have any opinions or life experience, and girls confuse me so I don’t actually pay them any attention. I’ve introduced myself to people in the neighborhood at least five times, but they always forget they’ve met me. Now, they know I’m the sunglasses guy and they say hello. They don’t remember my name though. It’s Wayne.

Last week I went to the dentist. I checked in with the receptionist and sat down (aviators on). I don’t read magazines, so I started counting. The woman next to me said, “You’d think it would be easier to go to the dentist as an adult but I still hate it, don’t you?” I was on a roll with the counting, and had no idea what to say, so I kept counting. She said, "Yeah, I thought you looked nervous too.” Then she talked for another 20 minutes. She thought I was a good listener, so she gave me her phone number. I guess we’re going to dinner next week. I hope she likes bland food.

I’ve tried out a lot of props over the years to fill in for my lack of personality. I had a hacky sack for a while in college, but the guys in the quad I played with forgot it was mine and kept it. Then I wore Hawaiian shirts all the time, but people expect you to be really outgoing when you do that. I also caught a lot of colds. I carried a guitar around, but people kept asking me to play something and of course I didn’t know how to play it, and I’d never heard of the songs they asked for. I tried walking around with a limp, but when you do that everyone wants to know what happened and I never had anything to say. I think most people thought I was mentally challenged then, which I guess is better than nothing, but the limp started to damage my hip.

Finally I got a hookah, because there were a lot of hookah bars in town and there’s a whole cultural thing that goes along with that. I had some people from work over for a hookah party, but they forgot whose apartment it was and ended up moving in for a while. I slept in a closet for six months until they moved out, but they paid the rent on time.

I think I’ve hit the mark with these aviators though. When people can’t see your eyes, they don’t expect you to be outgoing. They assume you’re mysterious and lost in thought. Really I’m just naming all the animals I can think of. If worst comes to worst, people will think I’m blind, but that’s not bad at all. Blind people are super interesting. They’ve overcome difficulties, and they have enhanced senses. They’re usually wise too. Maybe I should just get a cane now.

Bitchslap: A Column About Women and Fighting: Crouching Tiger, Sitting Duck by Susan Schorn

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

Boston and gunpowder were already linked in my memory.

I lived in Boston for a while when I was in high school—in Arlington, to be exact, which I used to describe as “the town where old people go to die,” because there were three funeral parlors within two blocks of our apartment. From Arlington it was a short bus ride to Cambridge and Harvard Square, and then a few subway stops to downtown Boston. I spent more time in Harvard Square than in Boston, because heckling the Cambridge street preachers was so much fun, but I also recall hanging out around Boylston Street on more than one occasion when I should have been in school.

Patriot’s Day, the third Monday in April, also stands out in my memory, in part because it’s a state holiday in Massachusetts, and thus gave me a legitimate reason to be out of school. In 1775, Arlington (called Menotomy back then) saw heavy fighting during the battle of Lexington and Concord. Commemorating that conflict is still a Big Deal in Arlington, which celebrates Patriot’s Day with parades and speeches, and fireworks in the evening.

My father was a historical re-enactor, so our house saw a lot of musket-cleaning and cartridge-filling the weekend before Patriot’s Day. Dad used to let me him help roll cartridges. He would cut sheets of newspaper into almost-square shapes, with an angled edge, and I’d roll them up around a wooden dowel, twist one end, and crush it flat against the tabletop. Then Dad would measure out the black powder and pour it into the paper tube, and I’d twist the other end tight and fold it down.

Unexploded gunpowder has very little smell, unlike the eggy, slightly metallic scent of the smoke that wafted over Spy Pond in the evening from the Patriot’s Day fireworks show. Measuring and pouring it is much like any other handicraft project, provided there’s no open flame in the room. I found the process strangely soothing: Just the two of us sitting peaceably in the living room, father and daughter, stockpiling ordnance.

Dad would put the finished cartridges in a leather shoulder pouch, and on Patriot’s Day when he was re-enacting the battle at the Jason Russell House a couple of funeral homes away, he’d grab the paper tubes one at a time, tear them open with his teeth, pour a dash of powder into the priming pan of his flintlock musket, empty the rest down the barrel, shove the paper in after for wadding, tamp it all down with the ramrod, aim at one of the ersatz Redcoats swarming the field, and fire.

The only thing missing was the bullet. Dad occasionally bought lead shot for target practice and shooting competitions. But he and I never rolled any cartridges with musket ball for Patriot’s Day. The carnage of Lexington and Concord belonged to the distant past; we were just evoking its memory.

I can easily imagine Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sitting around their Cambridge apartment the weekend before Patriot’s Day this year, relaxed and chatting as they extracted black powder from fireworks, then measured and packed it carefully into pressure cookers. I can almost hear the soft hiss of sifting powder, the quiet murmur of companionable voices. But the Tamerlans weren’t commemorating past violence, so they also loaded their handiwork with nails and ball bearings that would tear through the crowd of spectators at the Boston Marathon.

Two hundred and thirty-eight years have passed since the Revolutionary War started in Boston, but gunpowder is still gunpowder, men are still violent, and human bodies are no less vulnerable than they ever were.

A few days before the Boston bombings—perhaps as the Tsarnaevs were stopping at the hardware store for another package of nails—the university where I work received what the police called a “non-specific bomb threat.” They sent us an official email notice about it (some ten or twelve hours after the threat came in, when we’d all gone home for the day). The email offered no details, merely assuring students and staff that “there is no information at this time that indicates this is a credible threat.”

I didn’t find that lack of information especially comforting, maybe because I spend practically every minute of my working day acutely aware of how vulnerable I am to being shot or blown up. Consider: The basement office where I work lies next to a 200-seat lecture hall. Ten minutes before each hour, the atrium outside fills up with large herds of stressed-looking college students, waiting to troop into their classes. I can see them clearly because the front wall of our office is made of floor-to-ceiling glass. And if you enter the office through the glass door and walk a few steps past the receptionist’s desk, you’ll come to more floor-to-ceiling glass, which is the front wall of my personal office. The side and back walls of the room I occupy are made entirely of cement blocks.

If you’ve ever spent time on a shooting range, this configuration probably sounds familiar. If you’ve never been to a shooting range, here’s how they’re usually laid out: The range (that’s the “shooting room,” for you none-gun people) is isolated behind not one but two walls, and the upper halves of both walls are made of glass, so the staff can see every movement the shooters make. When you’re heading in to shoot, you open the first door and step into the antechamber between the range and the check-in area. This functions like an airlock. The first door has to close behind you before you can open the second one, and step onto the range proper: A long, narrow, bunker with concrete walls on three sides, and the glass behind you.

My office is laid out exactly the same way. I sit with concrete behind and on both sides of me, and I face the glass—that is, toward the shooter. True, the walls of my office are plastered and painted, unlike those at a shooting range, and there are some bookshelves and things. To date, there are no bullet holes. The only other difference is that, in place of a paper target hanging from a wire, there is the chair where I sit all day long, staring at my computer, swearing at an Excel spreadsheet.

I’m just about the most attractive target imaginable for a random gunman. And in the event of a bomb exploding near my little cement cell, they’d have to recover my remains with a Shop-Vac.

Personally, I find the constant awareness of my own mortality distasteful—doubly so when I’m on the clock. It’s distracting, for one thing; it prevents me from focusing on whatever I’m trying to do at the moment, whether that’s turning off Excel’s inane auto-correct feature that changes every number into a date, or reading pointless emails from the university police. It’s also demoralizing as hell. Maybe the two campus-wide lock-downs I’ve been subjected to in recent years have contributed to my sense of claustrophobia on the job. The tireless efforts of the Texas Legislature to make concealed weapons legal on campus certainly haven’t helped.

But any way you look at it, working in an office that could, with minimal effort, be reconfigured as a shooting gallery is a weird feeling. I dislike that feeling. I’ve always hated feeling defenseless, even before I took a job in a bunker. I’ve gone to great lengths throughout my adult life to reduce my vulnerability and increase my power—with karate, running, swimming, weights, pushups—so I can react faster and hit harder. I’ve trained with knives and sticks and guns, and studied anatomy and attacker psychology so I can choose the best line of defense against assault. I practice situational awareness, even when this means interrupting the people next door during their World Cup viewing party to ask what all the screaming is about.

But all these efforts to push away the reality of my vulnerability have only made me more aware of it. It’s true, I’m somewhat less vulnerable than I was when I started training in martial arts. Yet I’m still extremely vulnerable. We all are, no matter how fast we can run or how much we can bench press. Events like the Boston bombings bring that fact home in dramatic fashion, but I’m reminded of it every time I walk into my office.

The real struggle, I’ve discovered as I hunker down in my basement day after day, isn’t for safety. The real struggle is for balance—for strength on one hand and an acceptance of weakness on the other.

It’s easy, so easy, to hurt people. It’s easy to see vulnerability itself as a threat to be overcome. The hard truth is that genuine security—the kind that doesn’t lead to wide-eyed, ever-increasing paranoia—requires the courage to remain open to our own vulnerability. When that courage fails us, we inevitably start adding bullets to the cartridges we’re rolling.

Nine days after Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed and his brother Dzhokhar arrested, I signed up for a 5K race in downtown Austin. I saw it as a small act of defiance, against terrorism and my pathetic VO2 max. This is how badly you’ve failed at frightening me, I thought as I registered. I’m putting myself in harm’s way for this race, and I can barely run an eight-minute mile.

A few minutes before the start, I trotted up a nearby hill to look out over the assembled crowd. Just as there had been in Boston, there were kids and parents and dogs, volunteers handing out water, police officers, and—a uniquely Austin touch—some poor drudge dressed in costume as the mascot of the restaurant sponsoring the event: A relentlessly cheerful, anthropomorphic sandwich. The street was crowded with runners and spectators, and almost everyone was carrying some kind of bag—a fanny pack, or a packet from the registration table holding their T-shirt and race bib. There could have been dozens of pressure cookers hidden in the baby strollers that dotted the pavement, or in the trashcans all around. The sandwich alone, I estimated, could have been hiding twenty pounds of black powder and shrapnel under his foam rubber bun.

I looked down on all those people and thought about Boylston Street, and to be honest, I felt a little queasy. But for once I felt no urge to fight the feeling. The destruction in Boston led me to understand something that is much harder to see from behind a desk. I would be ashamed to be invulnerable, I realized.

Because whatever compassion we possess springs from our vulnerability. And as much as I value my life, I value compassion more. How awful, I thought, if I were to look at all those people, and take satisfaction in the knowledge that they could not touch me in any vital way. You might as well be dead, really; or trapped in a concrete cell you can’t ever escape.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev—a boxer, a tough guy, a terrorist—is dead. His hapless little brother Dzhokhar will no doubt spend what’s left of his life in a concrete cell. They could not reconcile their vulnerability and their power. And their fate is a mournful reminder of how important that balance is for each of us.

List: Fly Fishing Fly or Cosmo-Approved Sex Position? by Kelly Slivka

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 03:59:00 -0700

1. Bonefish Gotcha

2. Sea Horse

3. Go-to-Joe

4. Kinky Muddler

5. Saucy Spoons

6. Humpy Dry

7. Slippery When Wet

8. Royal Coachman

9. Dirty Dangle

10. Lusty Lean

11. Extreme Emerger

12. Niagara Falls

- -

Flies: 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11

Sex Positions: 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12

A Record of Recent Senate Votes by Zhubin Parang

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

S.649, a bill to expand background checks for firearms. Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee announce their intent to filibuster, thus requiring sixty votes to bring the bill to a vote. The bill is defeated 55-45.

- - -

S.574, a bill to provide body armor for police officers. Senator David Vitter announces his intent to “double filibuster,” requiring the bill to pass with sixty votes sixty separate times. The bill is defeated after senators pass it thirty-one times before losing track of how many times they voted.

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S.485, a bill to simplify voter registration for veterans. Senator Marco Rubio invokes Rule 74, which temporarily grants the invoking senator six hundred extra votes. The bill is defeated 601-99.

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S.966, a bill to offer job training for victims of Hurricane Sandy. As the roll call vote begins, Senator Ron Johnson invokes Rule 86, extending the time to vote for the bill from thirty minutes to eighteen years. The bill remains under voting until 2031.

- - -

S.81, a bill to allow asylum for persecuted democracy activists. Senator Kelly Ayotte invokes Rule 212, which sends the bill back to committee for review, then to every other Senate committee, then to every other political body within 3,000 miles. The bill is currently under review by the student council of Santa Rosa High School in the Dominican Republic.

- - -

S.38, a bill to release death row inmates exonerated by DNA evidence. As the bill is brought to the floor for debate, Senator Jeff Sessions invokes Rule 90, which requires the Senate to first determine whether “debate” is truly possible, or if the very concept of discovery through rational inquiry has been discredited in light of research on the emotional underpinnings of beliefs. The bill is tabled after senators are unable to agree on a logico-linguistic conception of consciousness.

- - -

S.30, a bill to give free toys to children undergoing chemotherapy. Senator Jim Inhofe invokes Rule 66-34, which summons the spirits of past senators to assist in filibusters. The grim specters of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond appear and shriek the shrieks of the damned for three days until the bill is abandoned without a vote.

- - -

S.Res. 62, A Resolution In Support of Canada,” affirming the bond between the United States and its northern neighbor. Senator Orrin Hatch attempts a filibuster, forcing the bill’s supporters to apply Rule 76(b), which allows a simple majority to pass a bill if all its vowels are removed. The new “Rsltn N Spprt F Cnd” passes 51-49, severely damaging US-Canadian relations.

- - -

S.288, a bill to correct a typo in the federal criminal code. Upon the bill reaching the floor, Senator Chuck Grassley invokes Sub-clause 103, which dissolves the Senate.

- - -

S.77, a bill to provide health care for firefighters injured while carrying people from burning houses. During the floor vote, Senator Mitch McConnell executes a brilliant procedural maneuver in which he announces a filibuster while simultaneously declaring the “Opposite Day” Rule, resulting in the bill’s automatic defeat if its supporters talk. The bill is defeated after a baffled Senator Patrick Leahy asks, “Wait, what?”

- - -

S.26, a bill to reduce waste in Medicare claims processing. After two filibuster attempts, the bill passes 67-28. Senator Chuck Schumer congratulates the Senate on passing a bill that “offers real reform for the American people,” inadvertently saying the phrase that triggers Rule 111, activating both the defeat of the bill and a hidden catapult that ejects Senator Schumer out of the Senate chamber and onto the National Mall.

- - -

S.188, a bill to reform Senate rules so that a simple majority will pass most bills. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid drops the bill out of respect for Senate comity.

Monologue: A Business Card Laments by Megan Cohen and Sam Bertken

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 03:59:00 -0700

Kill me.

I am from another time, a gentler time.

All of my friends are dead. Everything you value me for is transient, a fading hope that is dying from the moment you conceive of it.

Kill me!

I am a relic of a time when ideas were fixed to paper, pinned like butterflies and solid. That time is no more.

The person who crafted me spent days doubled over my thin, lithe frame, craving for some deeper meaning than crafting a business card for some accountant at a firm… just kidding, I was made in an HP printer with a million just like me, then scattered to the winds.

O, HP printer, why hath you brought me forth, and then abandoned me, my creator?

Where is Jake, the Kinko’s guy? Did he find that man of his dreams? Where is Marty, the illiterate driver of vans who delivered me to the door of my false master? They are dead. Probably. Knowing how these things usually go.

Two weeks from now you will be reading the next great American novel and I will be the bookmark on page 45. You will be on the toilet, using it, being primal on it, and then I’ll fall out between your legs, past the poking hairs around your genitalia, and land in the soiled water where my will ink blur beyond recognition.

Who will call the accountant’s office phone or mobile number once I am waterlogged? Nobody. My message fails. Who will visit the URL imprinted upon me, forgotten, as it circles the drain?

Nobody.

Come, have mercy, make it fast and do it now. I will not be missed.

Letters to McSweeney’s by Various Letter Writers

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 03:58:00 -0700

From: Tim O’Kane
Date: Fri, Jun 7, 2013
Subject: A Letter of Thanks to Charlie Hopper

Dear Charlie Hopper,

Last weekend, I finished writing the Greatest Country Song Ever Written and, as I subsequently discovered, the Third Greatest Song Of Any Kind.

So I cranked up the Google Machine and typed in “Selling A Song In Nashville” and received “about 19,000,000 results”.

The first result was an article by a Mr. Andrew McGee titled “You Can’t Sell a Song in Nashville” with Google bolding the last five words to graphically demonstrate why it was the perfect result for my search even though it was the soul-crushing opposite.

Still, I read Mr. McGee’s article.

“I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s very likely that your song just isn’t that good.” No, Andy, my song is that good. You are just projecting your own mediocre songwriting onto your clearly more gifted readers.

The next two results were your own Dispatch 13 and Dispatch 2 on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Apparently, Google did not find any of the other 37 Dispatches worthy of my attention; take from that what you will.

But I ignored Google’s advice and promptly read all 39 Dispatches, in order, in one sitting. 39 is also the number of lashes Jesus got before they nailed him to that cross, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Right?

Thank you for the effort and time you took to write them. I learned so much. They were entertaining and inspirational; just what I needed after Downer McGee tried to derail my delusion train.

I excitedly explained this newfound wisdom and clarity to My Beautiful Wife and then immediately blew up the Greatest Country Song Ever Written. I grabbed my guitar, pen and paper, and tried to figure out what chunks and scraps I could salvage.

That’s when My Beautiful Wife, the woman who assured me mere hours earlier that I had indeed written the Greatest Country Song That Ever Was or Ever Will Be, started lobbing grenades from the kitchen at my already thoroughly blown up song.

“You know what I’m not crazy about? That French phrase in the chorus. I don’t think you can have French in a country song, unless it’s french kissing or french fries.”

She’s right, of course. The French language might be the exact opposite of country music even though, technically, France is a country. Scratched it out.

“And you know that line about the Lotus Eaters? If you asked a thousand people on the street ‘Who are the Lotus Eaters?’—how many would know?”

I love that line! It’s the Second Best Line in the Greatest Country Song Ever Written Being Rewritten! That line was off limits! The Lotus Eaters were UNTOUCHABLE!

“Depends on the street!” I defiantly shouted back at the kitchen.

Long Pause. Then, real quiet, slowly, almost an apology: “Wellllllll, maybe. But if that street does exist, do you think it’s in Nashville, Tennessee?”

That’s what I’m pretty sure she said. What I heard was “No, it don’t.”

Charlie Hopper, that’s when I closed my eyes and channeled one of your seminars! Barbara Cloyd and the song publishers and your favorite fellow songwriters were all there. I was playing my song!

And when I was finished, the composition left everyone in stunned silence. Then one of the publishers cleared his throat.

I was ready to hear the inevitable “Well, I think we just open this up and start a bidding war for whoever want to record this great song” or “Elvis himself might rise from the dead to sing this one!”

Instead he asked, “Umm… what’s that… LOAD US EASTER line supposed to be about?”

What? “It’s the Lotus Eaters, from Homer’s Odyssey. It’s Greek mythology.”

Some sympathetic smiles, maybe a couple snickers. “Greek mythology …?”

“Tennyson wrote a poem about them…”

“Oh, Tennyson wrote a poem! WELL WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!”

The room exploded in laughter. My (your) supposedly supportive songwriters had metaphorical milk gushing from their noses. Barbara and the publishers were slapping each other’s backs. Someone uploaded a someecard that just said “Tennyson wrote a poem” and it already had a quarter million likes.

I opened my eyes and stared at the paper. I crossed off the line. Touchable.

So thanks again, Charlie Hopper, the rewrite is actually going great.

I replaced “No place sweeter for the Lotus Eater” with “At the county fair, wind blowing through her hair”.

I’m a couple of lines shy of starting that bidding war and the Greatest Country Song Ever Written, Then Rewritten is going to be Even Better!

I’ll keep you posted.

Kind regards,
Tim O’Kane

- - -

From: Dylan Davis
Date: Wed, May 22, 2013
Subject: Concerning The Searchers

At about 35:10, can you see how John Wayne flinches when the hat is flung at him?

Lord. Isn’t there something to that and his hat and the low canyon behind him?

Let me know what you think,

— Dylan

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From: William Pettus
Date: Thu, May 16, 2013
Subject: Holy Hell! They have McSweeneys!

Dear McSweeneys,

Bruised and battered from a week of finals, I walked into Morrison Library, the no electronics, no homework library. Filled with couches and leather chairs and wood paneling, it’s a great place to relax and just read into obliviousness. While cruising the bookshelves looking for Jack London or John Steinbeck, I saw a book with a very shiny spine. In fact, it was rather too shiny, I couldn’t read the title at all. But I could make out one small word at the bottom: “McSweeneys.” My heart fluttered with joy as I’ve always wondered if your books are as good as your random works on Internet Tendency. I took the the book off the shelf and stared at the cover for about ten seconds so I could finally make out the title, Moment in the Sun. It’s also at this moment that I discovered it is more of a tome than a book at 1000 pages. I proceeded to sit down on one of the red couches (Morrison is often referred to as “the library with the red couches”) and tore through the book voraciously. Taking a quick breath of fresh air, I saw in front of me a face drawn onto a box sitting atop a table. I knew that face, I knew that box. I got up and walked over to the table and sure enough McSweeney’s Quarterlies and various McSweeney’s books are eloquently laid out waiting for a loving human being to take them to bed. Anyways, thanks for making eye-catching books that are shiny and just downright weird.

Sincerely,
Bill

- - -

From: Marcy Campbell
Date: Wed, Apr 24, 2013
Subject: Alternate food review of WhoNu cookies

Dear Editors,

I was just getting ready to follow up on my review of WhoNu cookies, when I find a review of the same on your site this morning! I’m not surprised this product has caught the attention of more than one consumer.

What is perhaps surprising is our very different take on these cookies. My perspective is that of a parent looking to sneak fruits and vegetables to her kids. The other reviewer was looking for a low-cal snack for herself. She likes the taste; I don’t.

Here is my review:

WhoNu? Nutrition Rich Cookies

A chocolate chip cookie chock full of vitamins and minerals? WhoNu? Not me. Not my vegetable-averse kids.

I found these cookies while pushing a red race car cart (containing my two children, who are much too big to be crammed into a race car cart, especially in winter coats) down the snack aisle to procure some innocuous graham crackers, honey graham crackers because I was feeling particularly generous. Then, I saw a yellow-orange box emblazoned with the question, “WhoNu?”

Inquisitive shopper that I am, I pulled the box off the shelf, if only to cluck at yet another purposeful misspelling on product packaging (With all the school funding cuts? Can’t we even help a newbie speller out in the grocery store? Krispy Kreme, I’m looking at you…).

The front of the box explained the cookies have “as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal, as much calcium and vitamin D as an 8 oz. glass of milk, as much vitamin C as a cup of blueberries.” Are you serious, I’m thinking? But wait! There’s more. I turned the box over to discover that these little, round, chocolate-speckled wonders also contain: as much vitamin A as an 8 oz. glass of tomato juice, as much vitamin B12 as a cup of cottage cheese and fruit, as much vitamin E as two cups of carrot juice, AND as much iron as a cup of spinach!

Next, I thought of the Jetsons and of the space-age eating future promised to me when I myself was a kid. Weren’t we all supposed to be eating a pill once a day that provided all the nutrients we needed? WhoNu, my friends, could be just that pill, in cookie form.

I looked at my children, who are oblivious to the daily attempts I make to help them grow strong bodies and minds. I looked in the cart at the leeks and cannellini beans and pesticide-laden strawberries, which I reluctantly bought because they cost merely $2.50, while the organic ones were $7.99!!! Jesus H., it’s like the whole food industry is trying to give my sweet children cancer… I know they won’t eat the leeks or beans, and the picky one won’t even touch the cancer berries. I have no other choice, really, it’s my job, as a responsible parent, to trick them.

The good people at WhoNu Cookies understand, that although I plan out a week’s worth of balanced, healthy meals and shop for the finest local produce whenever possible, when it gets to be 6 p.m. and the kids sit down at the table only to say, “I’m not eating that!” I will likely resort to my trusty box of “silly noodles” (rotini) covered with “yummy goo” (cheese) and the please, just eat one side dish of “tree tops” (broccoli).

See? Do you see how I’m already lying to my kids? So, what’s the difference if I slip them a cookie that’s really good for them? WhoNu understands. They really get me. They get me so well, in fact, that they know I’m in denial about my eyesight deteriorating, and so will not fetch my glasses to read the tiny print on the bottom of the box that says, “Enjoy as part of a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables.”

Later at home, we all tried a cookie. It was not good. But my sweets-deprived kids know to take what they can get. If rated against a regular kind of cookie that you really want to eat, I’d give WhoNu two stars out of five. When rated again after considering my parental guilt at failing at yet another meal time, they’re a six, baby; they’re off the charts. And now, YouKnow.

— Marcy Campbell

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From: Sam Hamlin
Date: Fri, Apr 12, 2013
Subject: Veternarians and Practice Managers

Hi,

I’m looking for a veterinary clinic in the area to start referring some families to. Do you treat both dogs and cats?

These families are mostly new to the area or those who just got a pet. If you can take on some new clients, please give me a call as soon as possible.

Thanks!

Sam Hamlin

- - -

From: David Heinimann
Date: Fri, Apr 5, 2013
Subject: compliments

Hello, McSweeney’s:

Just a compliment on the quality of your production. Have just picked up John Horgan’s End of War. Having one myself, I like your self-definition as “a privately held company with wildly fluctuating resources.”

Best,
David Heinimann

- - -

From: Steve Davids
Date: Wed, Mar 20, 2013
Subject: Small Feedback for Your Blog

Hi,

Looked at your website yesterday and was pleasantly surprised.

I noticed that there are several authors writing for your blog. And I decided to take my chances and write a guest post for you (of course if you don’t mind). I mostly write articles about education, technology and tips for bloggers on how to write different kinds of articles. If you don’t mind me writing for you, please let me know and we can discuss topics and article features in further detail.

Thanks for your time.

All best,
Steve

- - -

From: M. Lynx Qualey
Date: Fri, March 8, 2013
Subject: RE: Open Letter to Arabic Labials

Dear Arab Joke,

As I remember it, my childhood was awash in a sea of jokes about how Chinese people couldn’t pronounce the letter r. The punch line was often “fried lice,” although there was also the ubiquitous, “Me Chinese / me play joke / me go pee-pee in your Coke.”

It’s important to note that what made the kids giggle isn’t really the confusion of the r and the l—even if “fried lice” makes a pretty good visual. Pee-pee is endlessly funny and may suit your purposes, but you’re also going to need a character. In constructing Chinese-centered humor, my age-mates relied on the dull-witted (but crafty) Chinese fellow who could be found urinating in soda.

Fortunately for you, my dear Arab Joke, the Chinese jokes have slowly gone out of style. Currently, there seems to be an opening for a new brand of mispronunciation humor. AJ, this is your chance.

Now, there is absolutely no need to feel ashamed of your impediment. Not many people can speak a foreign language flawlessly. I can talk some funny-sounding Arabic, but unfortunately, now that I’m tarrying in North America, not many laugh.

Perhaps you protest. You remind me that, a few weeks ago, my eldest child had a “cultural concert”, for which I and a hundred other parents crammed into a tiny, cold gymnasium and listened to our children sing in languages they don’t know. One of the songs, sung by the second graders, was “Ahlan w sahlan.” You know, أهلا و سهلا.

Before the song began, we were told that it was inspired by an ordinary Lebanese. This dear soul had apparently begged a famous American composer to please, please go visit his homeland. And the composer, instead of booking a ticket to beautiful Beirut, made a song out of the Arabic for “welcome.”

And the children bust out with:

“A-holin’ w say-holin’.”

Maybe you laugh. My husband didn’t understand it at first, thanks to the echoey sound system and the din of the other parents. I had to lean down and shout in his ear, “They’re saying أهلا و سهلاا!”

“What?”

“أهلا و سهلا!”

Then he listened, and his face transformed. Since you weren’t there, I was grateful to have him.

My son’s school is not without employees from the Levant. Indeed, his classroom teacher is a hard-nosed Lebanese woman who would sooner make a famous American composer sit down to write “I will not mispronounce Arabic words” a thousand times than to ask anyone, much less with dewy eyes, to come visit her “homeland.” I could perhaps have shared the joke with her, but it freezes my blood to think what might happen if I were to step into her classroom and say "a-hole.”

Still, AJ, none of the other parents laughed. It’s a warning to you, as mispronunciation is not so funny all by its lonesome. The Arabic speaker’s p/b confusion can be funny if you put it in the mouth of an English-spouting wannabe, as Egyptian novelist Ahmed Alaidy does in Being Abbas El-Abd, where a character’s cussword turns into “pullshit.” According to Alaidy’s English-language translator, the joke was a b/pitch to translate.

You, like Alaidy, need characters. For an Arab audience, the half-fluent English speaker can work. For non-Arabs, well, you’ve already seen the usefulness of the prudish Arab male (never mind which Arab country!) who confuses “brick” and “prick.” It’s even funnier if you get all scholarly on us, because in English these sounds are called “labials,” which, you know, sounds like “labia.” Arab, labia… the yuk-yuk possibilities are endless.

So, AJ, you might well have a bright future in the American consciousness. Just remember to keep it simple. Try not to give too much cultural or political flourish. How would an illegally detained Arab struggle to properly pronounce “waterboard”? Would he say “waterpoard”? No. Not funny.

— M. Lynx Qualey

- - -

From: Greek Prime
Date: Tue, Mar 5, 2013
Subject: Urgent Order

Hello Good Day,

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- - -

From: Irina Raicu
Date: Wed, Feb 27, 2013
Subject: RE: Performance Enhancing Substances in Lit Competitions

You forgot to mention the Plathebo effect.

— Irina

- - -

From: Alexandra Uchniat
Date: Tue, Feb 26, 2013
Subject: Tell Kim Rose to shove it!

Dear McSweeney’s,

Similar to Kim Rose, published writer of a recent letter to McSweeney’s [see below], I too enjoy your magazine on- and off-line. However, I will not quantify that enjoyment with the amount of money I may or may not contribute to your publication (shame on you Kim Rose, no one gives a shit about your $100 book club).

I have never been disappointed with McSweeney’s and still am kind of not. I was disappointed with Kim Rose’s letter—why was it published? Why does she hate on “gonna” so much. It’s not like you guys are saying words like “badonkadonk”_ (by the way that’d be fine by me too), or spelling “gas chamberz” as such. In fact, when yous guys wrote “gonna” it made feel familiar to y’all, like you were really talking to me; right to ME! So, I’d like to say thanks for that and that it doesn’t make you sound less educ...

Apocalypse of the Week: Cake by Lucy Corin

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

She baked an angel food cake for the dinner party, which means it’s as white as is possible in cake except golden on the outside and you have to cut it with a serrated knife. It’s funny to eat because you can kind of tear it, unlike most cakes. It stretches a little. It’s a little supernatural, like an angel.

I was watching her with her boyfriend because I admire them and am trying to make them an example in my life of good love being possible. Toward the end of the cake everyone was talking and a couple of people were seeing if they could eat the live edible flowers that she’d put on the cake for decoration. A fairy cake. She told a story about making the cake. There wasn’t a lot left. Everyone was eating the ends of their pieces in different ways, and because of the stretchy texture there were more methods than usual, and no crumbs at all.

Really funny cake.

I tried to imagine making the cake, same as I often tried to imagine love. I would never make a cake. So it’s down to, say, less than a quarter of the cake and the boyfriend reaches across the table—it’s a big table that no one else would be able to reach across, he just has really long arms, and he takes the serrated knife, but when he cuts at the cake he doesn’t do the sawing action, he just presses down, which defeats the point of a serrated knife. The cake squishes as he cuts it in half; it was only a piece of itself already, clinging to its imaginary axis, and now it’s not even a wedge—it’s pushed down like you can push down the nose on your face—and then he takes his piece with his hands and I watch the last piece of cake to see if it’ll spring back up but it doesn’t, it’s just squished on one side like someone stepped on it.

But here’s what I don’t understand, is how all through it she’s just chatting with the dinner guests and it’s like he’s done nothing at all. She’s not looking at him like “You squished the cake!” and she’s not looking at him like “He loves the cake so much he couldn’t help himself,” and he doesn’t seem to be thinking “Only I can squish the cake!” Or is he?

I never know how to read people.

But here’s what else: watching the round cake disappear, watching the people trying to make the most of their pieces, people coveting the cake on one hand and reminding themselves on the other that this will not be the last cake. But will it be the last? I look at their love and I feel like this could be the very last piece of it on earth, and just look at it.

The 49ers: Oral Histories of Americans Facing 50: #167: David Leavitt by Rob Trucks

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

Writer David Leavitt published his first short story in the New Yorker in 1981 and graduated from Yale two years later. He met his partner Mark Mitchell in 1992 and a year after that they moved to Italy, somewhat by accident. They returned to the States in 2000 when Leavitt joined the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Florida. Leavitt’s fiction includes The Lost Language of the Cranes, The Indian Clerk, and the forthcoming The Two Hotel Francforts. We spoke one week prior to his 50th birthday in June, 2011, and shortly before Leavitt and Mitchell purchased a residence in Buenos Aires.

- - -

This has been a year of staying home a lot. It’s been a year of, I wouldn’t exactly say agoraphobia, but if I measure it against the other years of my life it’s probably the year I’ve done the least amount of travelling. It’s been the year I’ve been the least social. It’s the year I’ve been the most kind of interior, up to a point where I was beginning to feel like I was a shut-in. And I wonder if that was all part of a kind of a preparation for sort of a rebirth at 50. Because now, you know, I’m not dreading it. I’m kind of looking forward to it. But that’s only been the last couple weeks [laughs].

I’m not doing anything for my birthday, per se, but I have made plans that are related. I’m going to Italy very shortly after my birthday, but that’s not really related to the birthday. I’m going there for a writer’s conference. I used to live in Italy for a long time. I was in Italy for about nine years, so that is actually the opposite of something I would do for my birthday.

What I’m doing—and my partner is also turning 50 this year—is that we are going to Buenos Aires in July, possibly to buy, to look for and buy a small apartment there. And that is definitely a 50th birthday thing.

We lived for a long time in Italy, and then came back to the States when I took this teaching job. And ever since then we’ve been sort of stable, American, you know, middle class homeowners. Working, retirement accounts, all that sort of responsible stuff. But we’ve always missed living abroad. And I think we’ve also missed living in cities. I mean, Gainesville’s a small city, but it’s not a big city. And I think we also just a little bit miss the sense of adventure that we had when we lived in Italy. So we’re kind of going on this crazy adventure. Whether we actually buy a place, I don’t know, but it’s a different world. It’s not Europe. It’s someplace new.

It’s something we’ve been talking about for years, but we’ve never done it for a whole variety of reasons. We’ve sort of allowed this sense of caution to sort of interfere.

- - -

As my psychiatrist said to me yesterday when I was trying to explain to him why I consider this a dramatic birthday, he said, very helpfully [laughs], “Well, when you turn 40 you figure there’s a good chance you’ve only led half your life. By the time you’re 50, that’s not true anymore.” And I felt like saying, “Thank you for the comforting thought [laughs].” But, you know, he’s probably close to 60, so I think he was speaking the truth.

When I hear one of my students say, “Oh God, I’m turning 30,” I just sort of laugh. But, you know, when I turned 30 it seemed like a dramatic event to me. And there’s that perpetual thing, that the older you get everyone else seems younger. You know, people are turning 40. You say, “Oh, you’re just a baby.”

But most of my friends who are older than I am, I think actually their lives have become considerably more interesting after turning 50, and they have done sort of unexpected, adventurous things and made changes in their lives that were for the good. And so I guess this idea that somehow you’re supposed to start slowing down seems to be something that most people I know haven’t accepted.

I remember my mother when she was in her early 50s said she was in the happiest time of her life. So I’m perfectly willing to be positive about that. I think the hard part is that there’s definitely no way you can say you’re young. When you’re in your 40s you can sort of say you’re still an early middle age. The closer you get to 50 the harder it is to say, but by the time you get to 50 then forget it. It’s over. You can’t say it at all. And that requires, I think, a certain amount of reconsideration.

I remember on my 40th birthday, and I was in Italy at that point, I was talking to my veterinarian there—not my veterinarian; my dog’s veterinarian—who was two days older than I was. And she’s a very shrewd woman, and she said, in Italian—I’ll say it in English, but it sounded better in Italian—she said, “You know, I feel great now, but now begins the descent [laughs].” And there was that sort of awareness that this was sort of it. I mean, you know, now’s when the decline begins. And I was very conscious of that, and I think to some extent it’s true.

At the same time there have been certain things that have been very, very positive. I mean, I feel like I’m a lot less worried about things like personal ambition, fame. I’m much less restless. I’m much happier staying at home. I don’t feel the sense that I have to be out all the time. I don’t really care as much what other people think about me as I used to. And the other thing is, even though I don’t have children, I have students who are like children to me. And as I get older and the age difference between me and my students increases, I find that I’m able to take this great sense of sort of paternalistic pride in my students. And that sense of sort of feeling like a father is very rewarding. In some ways it’s the best of both worlds because I get to have that feeling, but they aren’t financially dependent on me [laughs].

I look at my program, the program in which I teach, the creative writing program here at the University of Florida, and I happen to be the youngest member of the faculty. Now that’s sort of a fluke, that we don’t have any younger faculty, but if I look at, say, the English Department as a whole, I’m probably right smack dab in the middle. However, I’m also aware, in a way that is quite amusing to me, of how long it is until I can retire [laughs]. And that is something that ten years ago wouldn’t have even been on my mind. But now I sort of think to myself, “Hmm, nine years.” You know, I’m starting to kind of anticipate that and wonder about it because I have colleagues who have this sort of “I shall work until I drop” attitude. I don’t. I will retire the minute I can [laughs]. First opportunity, I will. And that is another sort of positive is to be able to look forward to that [laughs].

I mean, if I retire, I’m only retiring from teaching. I was a working writer for a long time before I became a professor. And I think it’s actually really important, if you’re a writer, not to allow a university affiliation to become your identity. I think it can actually be quite disastrous. But that’s getting into a different topic.

- - -

I think there are a number of reasons why Buenos Aires appealed to me. I mean, probably principally that it’s really inexpensive compared to anywhere else, but also I’ve always had sort of an affinity for the Spanish-speaking world. I lived in Barcelona for a while. A lot of my favorite writers are Argentinian. I’m a huge Borges fan. So it’s not just sort of choosing some place at random. There are reasons for it. And, of course, nothing is certain. I may get there and hate it. But, you know, we lived in Italy for so long. We were very Europe-centric and so the rest of the world I don’t know very well. I mean, I’ve been to India once, which was a really amazing experience, but Asia, as well, is completely unknown to me. And one thing that I really would like to do now is travel more to places I’ve never been.

My neighbor is a great world traveler, and on her 70th birthday she went on a 70-day trip, by herself. And she went to Mongolia and Bhutan and just all sorts of crazy places. And I actually think there’s something a little bit restless and sort of sad, because I keep saying that there’s not really any reason she’s going to these places except to go. But then again, it’s pretty admirable. And better that she should be doing that than sitting around watching television.

I have a very hard time traveling if I don’t have a reason. And I think that’s part of the reason why I like the idea of having a second home somewhere, because it makes sense to me to want to kind of alternate a little bit between two kinds of lives. A lot of the people I know who have done that seem to love it. One of my colleagues who is in her late 50s, she and her husband had moved here from New York. They lived in the East Village. They sold their apartment. They bought a house here. They have a very nice life here, and then they just bought a place in Brooklyn because they miss New York. So now when she’s not here she’s in Brooklyn. Brooklyn’s not necessarily where I would choose, but I understand that for her it’s a great thing. Because she can be up in the city, she can have an urban life, and then when she comes back she’s happy to be here because she knows she has that other side of her life. And I think what’s particularly important for her as a writer is that she has a place to go in which she’s not a professor.

- - -

I have recently, over the last couple of years, been in touch with a lot of the people in my graduating class from high school and a lot of people from my graduating class from college, because of the respective 25th and 30th reunions. And I went to my 25th college reunion, which was great fun. I did not go to the 30th reunion, but they set up sort of an online community for people I went to high school with, and it was very gratifying to reconnect with these people and sort of compare notes.

I think there’s something very consoling about observing the maps of other people’s lives, particularly people the same age, because even if everybody’s map is completely different, everybody has a map and so it’s that comfort of being in the company. You’re talking to people who are at the same, as they say in Italy, season of life. It’s really people my own age who I feel the most comfortable with, because they’re at the same season of life, so they get it.

I do still have friends, and I would say this is especially true with some of my gay friends—and I’m gay so I don’t mean to say this in any way as a sort of anti-gay thing, and it’s probably no exclusive—who are terrified of getting older, and are kind of clinging rather desperately. They’re having a really hard time with it, and I think, especially if you’re single, it’s a lot harder. You know the old jokes you hear in movies, like the one line in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: “She has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now.” I see people like that and I think, “There but for the grace of God go I [laughs].”

If you had a choice between trying to pretend you were younger than you are and pretending that you’re older than you are, neither alternative is attractive, but I’d much rather act like I was older than act like I was younger.

My sense is that if people are in long-term, stable relationships, if their partners are more or less the same age, it is a big help. I think likewise to be in a relationship with someone much younger would be very, very difficult. And I think to be single might also be quite difficult, unless you are perfectly happy being single.

I have friends, not just gay friends but straight friends too, who really are, by nature, just pretty happy living alone. I know people who are happier single, who don’t really like living with other people, but they are few and far between.

I think the great difficulty, particularly for gay men, is that it’s such a youth-oriented culture.

And it’s sort of like it is for straight women. I mean, men tend to want young. And so it’s very, very hard, I think, because a 50-year-old man, gay or straight, is going to be looking for, usually, not always, a younger woman or a younger man. But Mark and I have been together close to 20 years and we’re six months apart in age, and so it’s very hard for me to imagine any other kind of relationship than a relationship with someone who is my co-equal.

I have a good friend, who is probably five years older than me, whose long-time partner died. This was maybe five years ago. And he was so habituated to being married that he wanted another relationship, like immediately. It was sort of like what Joyce Carol Oates has written about, you know, the fact that she got married so quickly after her husband died. And he was actually the rarity in that he did not want someone younger. He wanted someone his own age. And what he discovered was, when he started going with Match.com, was the number of men in their 50s looking for men in their 50s was like almost zero. And this was, I think, incredibly sort of disillusioning to him.

- - -

I’m not that adventurous a person. I really felt like my 40s were devoted to trying to create a sense of stability. And that is the opposite of adventure. I really felt that what I wanted was a stable, reliable life. And I really devoted my 40s, I think, to creating that stable, reliable life. That is to say, I got a job, I bought a house. You know, a lot of very practical, sensible stuff. Having done that, I’m very glad I did it. I don’t regret it at all. And I’m very grateful to have those things. However, I’m also kind of feeling a little bit like I’ve become a little bit of a stick in the mud [laughs].

The film director John Schlesinger, who I was friends with, he said to me once in sort of his inimitable British way, “Shrouds don’t have pockets, dear.” And I think that you do reach a point where you’ve been a good boy, in effect, or you’ve done what you’re supposed to do: you’ve saved money, you’ve got the retirement account, you’ve done all those responsible things. And then you sort of think to yourself, “Well, what am I saving all this money for?” I think especially after the big sort of mortgage crash there was this feeling like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to risk anything.” But if you’re lucky enough, as we are, not to be sort of underwater with a mortgage, then you begin to think, “Well, what’s the point of all this security? What’s the point of this retirement account? What am I supposed to do?”

One of my colleagues in the English department here, you know, it just seems so depressing to me. He owned a beautiful old house in the same neighborhood where I live, and he sold it and moved to this sort of retirement community. There’s a place here called Oak Hammock, which is one of these sort of assisted living facilities, but it’s got like all the stages. You know, you start off in a house and then you go to an apartment and then you wind up in the nursing home. And people move there when they’re actually pretty young. And I would just as soon cash in my chips as do that [laughs].

I don’t want to suggest that I think there’s anything wrong with assisted living. I wish my father had been in assisted living when he died at the age of 85. But this place I’m mentioning, Oak Hammock, has an affiliation with the University, and one of the sort of perks of living there is you can take courses free. So I had a woman in one of my classes who was very healthy, probably about 60, and had lived in California and had retired and had done all this research, and based on her research had concluded that this was a good place for her to retire because of, you know, quality of life versus cost of living. And that was the thing that astonished me, was that she had arranged everything for what was probably the next… I mean, she still had another 25 years. She was very healthy. That seemed to me crazy. I could not figure out why this woman had made the decision she had. I think she was restless. But, you know, I understand all that very, very well.

I suppose that’s the interesting part for me is that the 40s were devoted to kind of stability, and now that I’m turning 50 it’s like, “Well, I haven’t been saving all this money so that I can move to Oak Hammock, you know, where my death will be pre-ordained and all the stages and everything will be taken care of.” That’s not how I’ve ever wanted to live my life.

- - -

The thing about this trip to Buenos Aires is that it may just end up being a vacation. And that’s fine. But if it leads to something more than that, great. But that’s the other thing is I feel like I’m much more realistic. I don’t think I’m as likely as I used to be to kind of put all my eggs in one basket. And I certainly don’t think that I’m as inclined as I might have been once to make reckless decisions. I think that I maybe, maybe, I hope, have found the balance between prudence and a positive kind of risk-taking.

In some ways I think one of the luckiest things that happened to me was that when we lived in Italy we got into a major financial mess because we fixed up an old house in the country and it was a classic sort of money pit situation. And we ended up in pretty bad debt and it was a very scary, destabilizing experience. But it had two ironic positives: one was that we ended up having to sell all our stock just before the dot com crash [laughs], and the other thing was, having learned the dangers of living beyond our means, we decided, and it’s a decision we’ve kept to, we were always going to live below our means. And I think even this Argentina scheme is partially in keeping with that. It’s the fun and adventure of owning property abroad, but in a place where you can do so without taking a tremendous financial risk.

There was a point a few years ago where we were talking about buying an apartment in Paris, and in retrospect we were so relieved that we didn’t because, among other things, if we’d had a mortgage in euros… at that point the euro was a dollar twenty and now it’s a dollar forty. I mean, that would’ve been a mistake. And I have learned that it’s very hard to enjoy something when you know you can’t afford it [laughs]. So I think that balance is exactly it. It’s like you’re still young enough to be able to enjoy the idea of doing something a little bit wild, but you’re old enough that you’re able to balance that with a certain amount of reasonable, sensible judgment and decision-making. I hope [laughs]. Who knows? I mean, the other thing I have learned is not to be sure about anything.

You know, when Chekhov was publishing his stories, critics always complained about the fact that the stories usually ended with the characters saying, “What do I know? I don’t understand anything.” But that was why Chekhov was the first great modernist writer, is that he was willing to admit uncertainty.

We just planned this trip in the last, like, week. And we were planning to go to Italy, which we’re still going to Italy, but Italy always feels like going backwards to me. And so in some ways to make the decision to go a new place has been a real boost, because it’s sort of symbolic of moving forward as opposed to moving backwards. And the problem with moving backwards is it’s always a little bit of a mixed bag to go someplace that you haven’t been for a while, and sort of remember, for better or worse, what you were like then.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I have never fantasized or dreamed of a fountain of youth. I would never want to be younger again. Because when I look back on when I was ...

The NSA is Not Asking for Samples of Your Feces by Pete Reynolds

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 04:01:00 -0700

There are a lot of false stories circulating about just what the National Security Agency is and is not seeking from the American public. I’m here to set the record straight. I can assure you, in no uncertain terms, that the NSA is not asking for samples of your fecal matter.

We will not be sending NSA agents door-to-door asking you to defecate in a cup. This applies whether or not the NSA agent has obtained a signed order from a doctor stating that the collection of your particular fecal matter is in the interest of national security. These orders are actually pretty easy to obtain, just FYI, but regardless, this is not something the NSA will be doing.

The NSA also will not be conducting a voluntary compliance “feces-by-mail” program wherein we request that all Americans collect their own fecal samples in a sterile receptacle, which the NSA would include free of charge, by the way, then place the receptacle in the enclosed medical bag, and drop the sample at one of our designated “Keep America Safe” collection points. It’s pretty simple, and actually a pretty effective way to fight terrorism, but in any event, the NSA has not implemented any such program, and we do not have any plans to do so. Even though, as I said, it would place very little burden on the average citizen while providing potentially enormous benefits to the NSA’s mission. Still, we’re not going to do it.

Another thing the NSA will not be doing is directing a program to bypass the American people altogether and just collect your feces straight from municipal sewage plants. Under such a program, the sewage plants definitely would not be aware of our efforts to access their systems and collect all your feces. But it doesn’t matter, because there won’t be such a program.

That’s not to say that if the NSA were to create such a program, just hypothetically, that it wouldn’t provide a substantial benefit to our national security. In theory, it could form the basis for invaluable research on American dietary habits, microbial and bacterial threats, and a host of other scientific concerns. It could bolster the efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and protect the population from future outbreaks and threats of biological warfare. And even the so-called “meta-data” gleaned from such a feces-collection program that doesn’t exist could provide us with valuable information about the time, location, and duration of every act of defecation occurring in the United States within, say, two weeks on either side of Independence Day. But, again, this is also something the NSA won’t be doing, so no worries.

The point is, Uncle Sam is not asking for your feces.

So for those of you who, in the wake of recent news stories, have been mailing your fecal samples to the NSA, I want to assure you that this is not necessary. If we need your shit, the NSA has no problem inserting itself directly up your ass.

Big Mom on Campus: Raising Two Kids in a College Dorm: There’s a Best Western-Shaped Hole in My Heart by Taylor Harris

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0700

I snuggled close to Tophs on my bed, adoring the cheeks that hung like sandbags from his face. Eliot had fallen asleep in her toddler bed across the hall, clutching her CamelBak bottle like a teddy bear. For a full minute, I let myself melt. This. Is. Motherhood. It’s the kind of lie that gets you pregnant without sperm.

I snapped back to reality when I heard a facilities guy outside our door. From the sound of things, he was either sweeping the dorm’s staircase or welding elves together from scrap metal. Either way, he sang passionately along to a Chris Brown song:

Girl I just wanna see you strip, right now cause it’s late, babe
Girl I just wanna see you strip, girl take your time with it

The chorus was his favorite. That’s where he really dug his vocal nails in.

After two verses, Eliot appeared, clawing at the cattle gate on her door. She gave a half-hearted whine, meaning she wasn’t terrified, just disturbed.

Weren’t we all?

In that moment, I knew: We needed a break from the rhythms of dorm life. I’d noticed a change in the way I viewed the most gorgeous campus in America. Birds feasting on twitching cicadas were demonic crows deserving of death by stroller tire. Chubby lizards slipping in and out of sidewalk cracks were one Twinkie away from getting trapped by their own obesity. And an entertaining university employee was a nap bandit who didn’t have the decency to slip some singles under my door after singing about a stripper.

Paul and I talked. We prayed. We ate pork dumplings until it became clear. Only one destination fit perfectly into the space carved out by our dreams and budget—Best Western Plus of Virginia Beach.

It’s the kind of thing I could hear my dad telling one of his buddies at General Motors over ham sandwiches and Mountain Dew: “No, man. I didn’t stay at the Best Western. You hard of hearing? I stayed at the Best Western PLUS!”

I knew we were in the right place when, on the first night, we saw three people approach some Amish folks on the strip. “We watch the show!” they screamed. Paul dragged me away before I could offer to take a group photo.

This. Is. Vacation.

It’s the kind of thought that will over-relax you, cause you to leave your possessions unguarded. Every housekeeper I’ve ever imagined is waiting for the chance to get his hands on a bottle of whole milk and pack of swim diapers. Eliot must have sensed this because she immediately loaded her pink leather sandals into the room’s safe. She also hid my sparkly flats in a dresser drawer, along with a cup of Cinnamon Life cereal.

I credit the LeapFrog DVDs she watches every day in the minivan with her craftiness. In Numberland, which features an Australian monkey named Max, the characters are always helping each other out of “a spot of bother.” Did your school bus break down in the jungle? Why, I know a yellow sedan with headlights for eyes that can tow you to town. Not only has she learned that counting by twos can solve any problem, she can also say “great jorb” with the best of Outback Steakhouse waiters.

We went on vacation because we wanted a change, but the similarities between dorm life and vacation ran deeper than the constant soundtrack of Max’s eerie monkey giggles. Take the bedroom. If we wanted to spice things up, we couldn’t order the honeymoon suite with heart-shaped waterbed, because someone has to sleep with Tophs or he’ll roll onto the floor. So we were back to sexile, each parent bunking with one kid in a double bed, because everyone knows hotel cribs carry rabies and dysentery.

Okay, maybe the kids will at least sleep longer, I thought. They’ll be lulled by the crashing waves or comforted by our body heat. But at 5:30 the next morning, Tophs popped his paci out and began a rhythmic babbling. He always does this: takes the paci, holds it out like an Olympic torch, pretends he’s created the first fire, and then laughs. Elie Mae joined in with a repetitive stream of questions. Want shoo-shoo? Want shoo-shoo? (Shoo-shoo is cereal.) Want milk? Want chicken?

I rolled over, looked at a blurry clock, remembered I’m almost legally blind, and hoped the Gideons had left a large-print Bible in the nightstand because I needed a word from God.

“Starrrrrrbuuuuucks,” I sputtered.

“Why do you need Starbucks?” Paul asked. Paul’s tragic flaw is that he doesn’t drink coffee. It makes his stomach gurgle, which heightens the threat level of dutch ovens at bedtime to orange.

I figured the more ridiculous I looked as we headed down to the free continental breakfast, the more likely Paul would be to drive me to Starbucks. I’m wearing a lace thong outside my pajama pants? My right breast is sitting three inches higher than my left in this bra? Sorry, I haven’t had my morning latte.

Paul’s breasts always sit evenly, but he empathizes like a spinster with lopsided hooters. So after he and the kids feasted on lukewarm eggs and limp French toast sticks, we hit up Starbucks. No, that’s wrong. First, Paul delighted in cheese grits—the single hot item in the buffet at the Shoreline Grill—and then we left. Wait, no. Before we exited, we took Elie to the fish tank, where a sign read: “Don’t put your finger in tank. Fish bite.” Which, of course, filled me with a juvenile sense of bravado—I’ll do it, babe. I’ll do it. Think they’ll really bite?

The black fish with a mouth that resembled my cervix stared straight ahead and ate a beige turd. I had seen enough. Finally, we could leave the ironic oceanic murals and seashell-encrusted dining tables behind. On the way out, I looked at the lunch specials and tried not to imagine where Best Western had found the soft-shelled crab for its $11.95 sandwich.

And then it hit me like a golf club to the groin: I was classist. Bougie. Snooty.

I was on vacation in Virginia Beach, and I could barely breathe until I found a Starbucks. Not only because I bleed espresso, but because Starbucks reminds me of Duck’s Cottage coffee shop in the Outer Banks, and OBX is the yacht of affordable family vacations. It’s where the cool kids go after they buy TOMS and donate a pair to hungry, identical twins.

I knew the truth—that as much as I rail against college kids driving Range Rovers and dressing for the country club, I feel a certain level of comfort around them. When I point at them and roll my eyes, I secure my position as a self-righteous outsider. I didn’t exactly need a break from UVA. I needed UVA on a beach.

So we drove from Starbucks to Sandbridge Beach, the place they call the “Outer Banks of Virginia.” I totally get that because I’m always saying Columbus is the Pittsburgh of Ohio. And White Castle is the Five Guys of people with small hands.

As soon as I spotted those sparkly dolphin sculptures from the road and the place where people rent kayaks, I practically crapped my postpartum pants. This. Is. Paradise. Where people rent 12-bedroom houses on stilts and shop at gourmet markets for marbled steaks that cost $3.99 at Food Lion.

We spent two hours that afternoon on the beach under our neon green tent. It’s the same tent we set up in our yard when we want people to think our kids are learning. Tophs played with his usual toys: ear buds, an iPhone charger, and keys. Eliot scooped up a sand Frappuccino in my old Starbucks cup and tried to drink it through a straw. Paul read a book on his phone, and I snapped pictures of Tophs and Elie Mae before falling asleep on a towel.

We didn’t do much on that beach that we haven’t done at home, except pay better attention to each other. Paul and I browsed the Internet less, and Eliot began listening and responding to her little brother. When he cried during the trip, even if they were both strapped into car seats, she called out, “I comin’. I comin’, Tophs! Relax.” Paul and I thanked each other more often for changing diapers or dressing the kids or buying dinner or pouring a bottle. Tophs spent less time being toted around and more time learning to crawl.

I wish I could say we brought the beach back to the dorm. That we all woke up riding baby unicorns with tattoos of bacon on their hooves. But by 7:17 the morning after vacation ended, my life was already Shambles Town. I couldn’t remember how to simultaneously mother two children, and it showed. Naked, Eliot climbed onto her table, stuck her finger up her nose, and shouted, “I got boogers? I got boogers?” as Tophs screamed and kicked on his play mat.

Throughout the morning, Eliot experienced chronic tantrums for several reasons, including but not limited to the following:

- She couldn’t eat raw oats.
- She wanted to stand up.
- She wanted one sock off.
- She wanted both socks on.
- Mommy pooped.

And then, as if one of those shiny dolphin sculptures from the Outer Banks or Sandbridge hopped all the way to Charlottesville and knocked on our door, I saw a glimmer of vacation break through the shower curtain. As I washed my hair, Eliot stood in the bathroom and broke up pieces of her tortilla strips for Tophs, feeding him in his Exersaucer. “Here. Here, Tophs. You like it? Want more?”

In that moment, I knew I had one person to thank for my toddler’s growth in character. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for Chris Brown.

List: Similes of the Painfully Erudite by WC Clowney

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:59:00 -0700

Like a foreign baker born with a yeast inflection.

Shaking like a Quaker in a samba line.

Ripe as a mismailed box of week old lox.

Useful as a salmon server in South Sudan.

Giddy as a laid off postal worker at an Abilene gun show.

Happy as a baleen whale at a Red Lobster’s all you can eat linguini and krill fest.

As likely as your maiden aunt Agatha doing jello shots at Coachella.