Nothing Like the Sun

"In a far recess of summer
Monks are playing soccer."

No. Really.

From last Friday's Washington Post: During the Hoover Administration, the U.S. developed a contingency plan to invade Canada.  ( Raiding the Icebox! )

Apparently, however, the Canadians were way ahead of us: ( Canadian Counter-Attack! )

Or, as the Toronto Globe and Mail put it on Saturday: "They'd Take Halifax--And Then We'd Kill Kenny!"

Friday night, sleepwhenimdead and sarrabellum, and I went to a mutual friend's house for a party featuring a warm fire, mulled cider, and short fiction. At the hosts' request, guests brought a variety of short stories suitable for reading aloud.

This turned out to be a remarkably good idea: people read things like Stanislaw Lem's "A Good Shellacking" (from his collection, Cyberiad), Salman Rushdie's "The Mail Coach" (from his Haroun and the Sea of Stories), Ethan Cohen's (of Cohen Brothers filmmaking fame) "I Killed Phil Shapiro" (from his Gates of Eden), a chapter from Nicholson Baker's XXX-rated The Fermata, O. Henry's The Count and the Wedding Guest (you can read the entire story at that link--worth the chuckle), and the first chapter of Daniel Pinkwater's Uncle Boris in the Yukon and Other Shaggy Dog Stories--generally to peals of laughter.

All of which reminds me that I don't have enough short fiction, or enough humor, on my bookshelf.

"One recent Lent, he gave up talking to himself in public." - Heather King commentary, All Things Considered, 3/4/05

I could never do that ...