McSweeney’s — Feed Items
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Originally published April 15, 2022
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Wow, guys, this is deeply uncool. After all these years, I finally make it to a Passover Seder, only to find you polished off the only cup of wine specifically intended for me. I mean, it had my name engraved all over it, in two different languages. Kind of hard not to take that personally, you know?
Well, look at you. You’re all so brand spanking new, shiny, and gleaming. The world was made for the likes of you as you are now. Young. Supple. Idealistic. Yes, even the goths with their cloaks of (imaginary? performative?) sorrow, black as their black kohl-rimmed eyes. Yes, you are hopeful and just as starry-eyed and dreamy as the sunshiny ones that you scorn as vehemently as Dracula despises daylight. But you’re here too, wearing a robe and a ridiculous hat with a tassel. The truly sinister-at-heart, antiestablishment marauder wouldn’t be caught dead among such living.
Sega fanatics and pancake aficionados rejoiced last week as the International House of Pancakes dropped their latest collab. These six foodstuffs, inspired by America’s favorite blue hedgehog, are sure to make Sonic players curl up in a little ball and spin around really fast in joy. But don’t worry, I tried every item on the new menu, so you don’t have to. And while I’m happy to do it for you, I’d feel better if you tried an IHOP novelty menu one of these times, just so I’d know we had an equal partnership.
He’s your current employer, and you live in his house.
Not a red flag. Not for you at least. As the person in the higher class, he is the one with the most to lose. For you, there is nowhere to go but up.
He lies to you about who he is when you first meet.
Not a red flag. This is called keeping the mystery alive, and he is smart to make a habit of it early on.
In this column, Kristen Mulrooney writes letters to famous mothers from literature, TV, and film whom she finds herself relating to on a different level now that she’s a mom herself.
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Dear Alison,
The LiveJournal community, circa 2005
The university café where English adjuncts hold their office hours
My tenth-grade ELA class when I ask them to write one (1) poem
The subject line of Submittable email notifications
Bard College
Any and all bars named after Oscar Wilde
Literary Twitter
The reception for the Nobel Prize in Literature the year Bob Dylan won
An MFA workshop forbidden from writing any more poems about birds
English professors walking by the new $80 million STEM building
Hi, sweetie. Remember how you told me that your childhood crush was Laura Ingalls Wilder? And that you think America is in the toilet? Well, you’re about to have all your home-churned-butter dreams come true, because I’ve decided to become a tradwife.
If you think a piece is 100 percent done, it’s actually 45 percent done. To get it to 100 percent done, you can’t.
If you think you need “just a few more hours,” you really need a few more months.
“I’ll send it by EOD”—no, the odds are 6-1 you won’t. 7-1. 17-1.
“EOD” equals 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 11:59 p.m., as well as 2 a.m., 8 a.m., 10 a.m., and 11 a.m. the next day.
Each breakthrough equals ninety days of clinical depression. (But you can’t pay upfront; if you commit to ninety days of clinical depression, then you may or may not get one breakthrough.)
With apologies to Thin Lizzy.
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Guess who just got back today? Mothers, lock up your daughters, because after five long decades away raising our families and building careers of varying success, them wild-eyed boys are back in town to attend our dear friend Johnny’s funeral.
It’s such a shame, and we all miss Johnny terribly. It’s wild to think someday all the boys will be gone for good, never to come back to town again.