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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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ENID, OKLAHOMA Willa Evans was teaching school in Enid, Oklahoma, and for a while she forgot where she was. The children didn't notice this, and after a while the geography class went on quite as well as usual. This shows that the children of Enid, Oklahoma, didn't know everything that went on in Willa's mind. - - - - MYTHS ABOUT SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE Most of the myths about Shakespeare's life have been disproved, and the rest do not have a shred of evidence to support them. Yet still the myths persist. A good number of them concern the Lost Years (????-???? and ????-????), two periods for which no documentary evidence about Shakespeare exists. 1. He found a giant performing mouse dead in its cage. Not long after Shakespeare's death, an obscure clergyman, Rev. Richard Davies, noted that Shakespeare was "much given to unluckiness [with] venison and rabbits." 2. He wrote his name ("Bill") in spit on each page. Half a century after Shakespeare's death, John Aubrey reported this as fact in his "Brief Lives." 3. As a young man, Shakespeare and his companions set out to the neighboring town of Piddle to compete in a drinking competition. After being soundly defeated, Shakespeare fell asleep under a farm animal. (This beast, known later as Shakespeare's Ass, became a tourist attraction and, in 1616, was torn to bits.) 4. During the Lost Years he used feathers to write poems about laughing and sneezing. 5. He co-authored "Mr. Boston's Official Bartender's and Party Guide." If you look at the recipe for The Tempest and count fifty-one words from the beginning you arrive at the word "shake." Then if you count fifty-one words from the end (excluding the words "cocktail sausage") you arrive at the word "spear." Interesting. 6. When he arrived in London, he had his intestines taken out of his body and made to look like flowers. 7. He was born in France and fled to England at age twenty-four to avoid persecution. There he changed his name from Super Nana (French for "Fabulous Babe") to Shakespeare. - - - - EVERYTHING WAS GOING FINE UNTIL EIGHT HARE KRISHNA SHOWED UP AT THE BEACH This freaked out my truest and most faithful friend who I love and occasionally have sex with. - - - - LIZARD VS. MAN Cold-bloodedness: Lizard - - - - MAGICI once saw a magician turn a peanut into a stone, though what the purpose might have been was unclear. - - - - MY DREAM You were in it. We were sitting on a couch. It was really long, and could seat about 5,000 people. You were in the distance.
OTHER McSWEENEY'S STORIES:
A Modern Instrument, An Interview with Robert Pastorek, about His New Bass and the Houston Symphony's New Season By Whitney Pastorek What I Should Have Said to the HR Manager of a Telemarketing Firm By Tim Maly My "Take Our Kids to Work Day" Diary By Christopher Orlet A Tragedy By Rachel Carpenter When Pterodactyls Attack By Nicholas Danforth and Steven Simon |
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