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Dave Eggers' The Wild Things is available for preorder, in regular hardcover and
limited-edition fur-covered.
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L E T T E R S .
[Please send printable correspondence to mcsweeneysmail@yahoo.com. Thank you.] - - - - From: Kitchens, James LSubject: A helluva thing Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 Dear McSweeney's, I just finished reading about those four climbers who were kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan this past August...you know the ones I mean? Those four kids? Anyway, they were kidnapped by these IMU rebels, and to summarize, it was awful and harrowing and almost fatal. Well, it actually was fatal. That's how they got away. One of the kids pulled one of their captors off a rock face or something. Man, I'd hate to go like that. When I got to the end of the piece I was instantly reminded of a similar incident that happened to me a month or so ago. I was out with some people at a bar and this guy was telling me about how he was about to go to Vegas for the first time. I told him that he should definitely go to Cheetah's. So this girl is walking by us and kind of sticks her head in our space, narrows her bloodshot eyes a bit, and reproachfully says "Humph...'Cheetah's'!" I'm pretty creamed at this point so I just sort of wave her off and say "Keep it movin', jerk." I mean, can you believe that? The parallels in this life really make you think sometimes. Alright then, Jamey Kitchens - - - - From: Delahoyde, SteveSubject: Why Do I Keep Sending These? Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 Dear McSweeney's, Monday night I had my last cigarette. Everything's been going well so far, though I have had a few cravings here and there. It bothers me that I'm afraid to spend time with friends who smoke, in case I'd be led astray from my quitting. Maybe I should call them. There's always e-mail. Thanks, Steve Delahoyde - - - - From: McDermott, TerrySubject: send some quid, like, fast Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 Dear McSweeney's, No, no, I'm not working yet. Sigh. I know it's been, like, five months. Don't let this "prosperity" shit kid you, times are tough, man. The remote is gone and I could only see the top quarter of the TV, the beer and whiskey bottles are that high. I haven't seen the cat for over three weeks, but sometimes late at night I swear I can hear a sickly, consumptive cough. It's creepy, I tell you this. Luckily the corner liquor store cashes unemployment checks and delivers. I don't even want to talk about the rent. My liver hurts. riding on my last unemployment check, Ter . - - - - Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000From: Kevin Wilson Subject: Reading good books at work Dear McSweeney's: Today at work I spent my lunch hour reading Matthew Klam's book of short stories in the library. What a wonderful book, just fantastic, and so I decided not to return to work after my hour was up but rather hide in the library and keep reading. Around 2:00, some Teaching Fellow who works in the department that I'm an assistant for comes walking by, ostensibly to do work for that department, and she spotted me. She got up beside me and said, "working hard?" and I laughed, politely and then thought for a second, maybe five seconds and replied, "hardly working." She did not laugh though, most certainly did not laugh, which I thought was slightly rude seeing as how I laughed at her joke. Plus, her joke was not very good, don't you think, just offering up commentary in an arch way (tone of voice or facial expression) to render it funny whereas I actually made a joke, playing with inversion and altering the phrase that she had just previously used in order to make a pun. And it was self-deprecating which usually makes people laugh. No laughter though. She just kind of stood there and then walked off. And then, what I realized was that she probably wasn't joking in the first place, but actually making some sarcastic, snippy comment about the fact that I was reading when I should have been working. So my joke probably made her even more upset. Either way, I went home instead of going back to work cause I was afraid someone else would come by and see me. I don't really know why I'm writing you about this but I just want to say this: I'm kind of a lazy worker. -M. Kevin Wilson - - - - Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000From: Dan Stevens (Pen name) Subject: Sleep Dear McSweeney's: I just ate too much chicken makhini at the Indian buffet. That, and the fact that I didn't get enough sleep last night have left me feeling quite sleepy. Last night I dreamed that I was casting votes ceaselessly for George Bush, but the dimples were not being recognized. I should point out that a man I barely knew shared with me this statement: "time spent on Napster is just as good as actual sleep." I have not been able to corroborate nor refute this. As always, Dan Stevens (Pen name) - - - - Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000From: Nathan Friedkin Subject: The Despondent Correspondent Dear McSweeney's, In order for justice to be administered fairly and equally when applied to the current controversy involving the generally scary looking Florida Secretary of State Katherine "Cruella" Harris, it is imperative that she recuse herself lickety split from offering judgment as a matter of public record on the respective and disturbing issues confronting the Presidential election crisis disaster. In fact, due to the overwhelming preponderance of evidence which suggests that Ms. Harris has a substantial vested interest in the outcome of this election fiasco (last winter, Harris traveled to New Hampshire to campaign for the Texas governor in the state's primary, and with Jeb Bush, was a delegate to the Republican convention. - Washington Post 11/15/00) she oughta really be ashamed of herself for even attempting to shape the political landscape of this country in the first place. Clearly anyone who has ever watched Court TV or Judge Judy knows that possession of a self-interested motive with the intent to please Dubya would clearly preclude this misguided political figure from contributing any semblance of an objective, unbiased and non-partisan opinion with regards to the grave issue currently at hand which, upon further consideration, stand to adversely affect our great nation, DSL customer service and the defensive backfield of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as well as altering the face of genetically modified asparagus forever. Thank You. Nathan - The Despondent Correspondent - - - - Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000From: Cynthia Closkey Subject: My experiences in getting a copy of the print version Dear McSweeney's, The western side of Pennsylvania, where I live, does not provide a regular outlet for the purchasing of Timothy McSweeney's products. Not even in Pittsburgh, which is otherwise a terrific city. But, in late September I was traveling in San Francisco and suddenly remembered having read that copies of McSweeney's print version would be sold at the Naked Eye on Haight Street. I went almost directly there and, surrounded by subtly-threatening black painted walls and eclectic video tapes, I saw three copies of issue 5. One had on its dust cover a drawing of a nasty-looking fellow -- or at least, a fellow with a nasty-looking sore of some kind. This cover too was subtly threatening. I felt challenged to buy it, and buy it I did. I looked forward to reading issue 5 on the red-eye flight home that evening. Later, in the excitement of gathering luggage and getting to the airport, I left the magazine on my sister's kitchen table. I left my sunglasses too. The next day, my sister promised via email to send the book to me, but I guessed it would take some time before she got around to it. However. Several weeks later I opened my USPS mailbox to discover a large padded envelope from McSwys Books. Inside was issue 5, this time with a blank dust cover concealing color headshots of Ted Coppell. Turns out that I had sent a subscription order back in August, and my subscription had taken long enough to fill (for very reasonable reasons, I feel sure) that I had forgotten I had placed it. That was last week. This week, I received my Naked Eye copy in the mail from my sister, along with my sunglasses and a belated birthday present. And so now I am the proud owner of two copies of issues 5, when at one point I had despaired of owning even one. Should I go for a third, with a different cover? Or would that be greedy? Warm regards, Cindy Closkey - - - - Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000From: Magic Mike Simpson Subject: One of the things I've been thinking about Dear Mcsweeney's, I have read gleefully, over the past year or so that I've followed the McSweeney's website, some of the humorous notes found on doors at MIT. They are often really funny, and sometimes they make me think, "I wonder if X person [the person who sent you the note] actually works/studies at MIT, or if they just made it up to send it to you." And then I think, "I wonder if people write notes at MIT and hang them on doors in a desperate attempt to make it onto the McSweeney's website?" It's just something I was thinking about. And then, last night, I was sitting in my apartment in Syracuse, drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon (because I am poor), watching MTV's new show "Cribs". It's a show where MTV goes into the homes of famous people to give us a tour of how "they live". Last night, MTV Cribs went to the home of Snoop Dogg, and I couldn't help but notice, hanging in his home-studio, a typed note saying, "Please do not bring food or drink into the studio." I remember thinking, "How funny would it be if McSweeney's tracked "Real Notes Found at 'The Dogghouse'", but now, as earlier, I just wonder if Snoop didn't write it in some lame attempt to get a "shout-out" on the website. Just something I've been thinking about, Mike Simpson - - - - Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000From: Erik Kraft Subject: Oo-la-la: On French words Dear McSweeney's, So let me get this straight: When you're paying homage, it's pronounced 'HA-midge', but an homage is 'oh-MAJ'? When did this happen? That reminds me. The other night I was watching the evening news on MSNBC, and that dashing anchor Brian Williams referred to a George W. Bush photo op as occurring in 'an ersatz Oval Office.' Except I didn't realize at first that that was the word he was using, because he said 'air-ZOTZ' and I've been going through life thinking it was pronounced 'UR-satz.' Brian Williams is debonair. I am not. That reminds me. In my AP Literature class in high school, the word 'ennui' appeared on our weekly vocabulary list. I felt this word was made for me and my suburban adolescent malaise, so I immediately adopted it as my own and began sprinkling it liberally into my angsty journal entries and then into my daily conversations. I think it would have produced a very sophisticated fin-di-siecle effect, had I not been pronouncing it 'ee-NOO-ee.' When someone, several months later, finally told me the correct pronunciation was 'ON-wee,' I swore up and down that my literature teacher told us it was pronounced the wrong way. This is the position I still maintain. If everyone wrote in with anecdotes about how they used to think the written 'epitome' and the spoken 'uh-PIT-uh-mee' were different words, this letters page would become untenably long and uninteresting. I'm not too proud to admit that 'oeuvre' remains totally inscrutable to me. Down on all fives, indeed, Erik Kraft Chicago. - - - - Read Previous Letters:
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