McSweeney's

12/09/2024

DAVE EGGERS SILKSCREEN PRINTS TO BENEFIT THE NEW INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF YOUTH WRITING.

In November, across the street from 826 Valencia, we opened the International Library of Youth Writing. The library features books written by young people from all over the world, and collects all the publications created by 826 Valencia and its sixty sister centers across the globe.

The library started as a pop-up, but now will be expanding and will soon fill most of the s**ce at 849 Valencia Street in San Francisco. To help cover the costs of that expansion, we’re offering a series of prints by Dave Eggers. All of these prints were hand-pulled by Eggers in the new printmaking studio in the basement of the same building—849 Valencia. All proceeds go to the library. We will be adding more over time, at irregular and seemingly random intervals.

To see all currently available prints, visit the link in our story.

12/09/2024

"Just like you, this groundbreaking thermostat rewrites the laws of thermodynamics to be hot and cold simultaneously. It can instantly cool any s**ce to 28 degrees Fahrenheit while simultaneously warming it to 114."

Just like you, this groundbreaking thermostat rewrites the laws of thermodynamics to be hot and cold simultaneously. It can instantly cool any s**c...

12/09/2024

I leave work; ‘tis dark.
Just like it was this morning
When I got to work.

Do all those farmers
Really need that extra hour?
I’d like it back now.

When you say to me,
“Yay! An extra hour of sleep!”
I want to punch you.

I. I leave work; ‘tis dark. Just like it was this morning When I got to work. Do all those farmers Really need that extra hour? I’d like it back no...

12/09/2024

"You know those songs you like? The ones those syndicated coastal radio guys play in between invasive studio interview segments with artists half their age? I make sh*tty imitations using an ancient Pro Tools installation, a guitar once owned by a deceased former contestant, and smartphone vocal recordings from our longtime production assistant, who’s an aspiring singer but nevertheless still a production assistant."

I dreamt of being a music icon, but instead, I’m sweating through my clothes inside a mobile edit bay somewhere in South America, soundtracking an ...

12/09/2024

"She must go home for Christmas and throw that high-powered career in the garbage."

She must be a high powered career woman living in a major metropolitan area She was born in a small town, but she must move to the big city to bec...

12/08/2024

"Scoopy Daddy is not a person; it is a child-development teaching tool. So, Scoopy Daddy isn’t held to any behavior standard. We don’t expect the internal combustion engine to be 'polite' or 'quiet'; we expect it to help us reach a destination."

This memo serves to answer questions that you, my eight- and six-year-old children, have about Scoopy Daddy. What is Scoopy Daddy? How did we get h...

12/08/2024

"The group of friends"
Who are these people? They’re talking with the easy familiarity of people who have known each other for years. Haven’t they read any of those think pieces about how we live in an isolated age with no sense of community anymore?

The referee This person has been taking their children to the playground since the 1930s and has developed an elaborate game that involves constant...

12/08/2024

“She walked out with empty arms. Machine gun in her hand. She is good, and she is bad. No one understands”

I appreciate that you’re trying to tackle the duality of human nature here, but how can her arms be empty if she’s got a machine gun in her hand?

Thanks for sharing your work, Glenn. It definitely engaged my imagination. However, there were a few instances where I found it hard to parse. Here...

12/08/2024

"Connor finished 8th grade with flying colors. He continues to follow in his father’s footsteps, fervently pursuing basketball."

TRUE. Like his father before him, Connor is playing basketball because of intense paternal pressure.

To our dearest friends and family, FALSE. While this letter was indeed sent to dear friends and family, it has been confirmed that the recipient li...

12/08/2024

"When Hannibal tells Clarice he ate that guy’s liver with 'some fava beans and a nice chianti,' that is a metaphor for eating figgy pudding and eggnog with a big Christmas ham. Movies are filled with metaphors and symbols, you just have to look for them."

It’s the debate that just won’t die: is The Silence of the Lambs a Christmas movie? Naysayers say “nay” and they say “nay” because it’s a movie wit...

12/07/2024

"He’s going to be wearing a cloak, which may seem a bit weird at first. But he pulls it off. By the end of the night, you’ll feel like the weird one for not wearing a cloak."

I hope you don’t mind, but my buddy texted me, and I told him he could stop by. I’ll warn you in advance, he can be a lot. But once you get to know...

12/07/2024

Q: How are you okay with this?

A: I, like all small-town public school custodians, am a proud Democrat. I exist only as part of a tribalistic hive mind and blindly follow the will of my masters when it’s beamed into the 5G chip from my COVID vaccine.

Hello, I’m Carl, the custodian in charge of maintaining the litter box in your child’s public school classroom. Ask me anything. Are there actual l...

12/07/2024

"Now I actually have to do the dishes, but this naturally takes a long time, so if I keep making noises like running water and clanging pans, I can continue to surreptitiously pick at the deviled eggs while sipping on the Yorkshire pudding."

Oh no, everyone’s done eating, and the lady hosting this dinner party wants us to “retire” to the living room. Retire? There’s a turkey leg danglin...

12/07/2024

Thomas Jefferson: "Call on your child and their brethren. Announce you shall march to school, not to attend, but to distribute pamphlets urging all kindergarten parents to form a united republic that will self-determine appropriate drop-off windows."

Niccolo Machiavelli When one child refuses to go to school, ignore their insolence and lavish praise on their compliant sibling. Malcolm puts on h...

12/07/2024

"The coldest periods will be early to mid-Dec, mid-to-late Dec, early to mid-Jan, mid-to-late Jan, early to mid-and-late Feb, early to mid-March, mid-to-late March, and five days in April that will push anyone who’s made it that far right over the edge."

It’s hard to believe we’re about to head into another winter, isn’t it? Time sure flies when you’re in intensive light therapy. And yet here we all...

12/06/2024

DAVID: Let’s talk about the guest list. Who’s coming to this party?

JEN: I knocked on thousands of doors. Millions of doors. Front doors. Back doors. Screen doors. French doors. Weird side garage doors. Fans of the Doors. Doors are coming to this party, is what I’m saying.

DAVID: Who else?

STEPHANIE: Celebrities and nepo-Republicans.

QUENTIN: I invited the entire cast of SNL, which is an important cultural touchstone for Northeast Boomers and CNN’s home page.

DAVID: I just invited the faculty of Harvard.

QUENTIN: I just invited the DC press corps.

STEPHANIE: I just invited Bruce Springsteen.

JEN: According to people from the East Coast, he speaks to people from the Midwest.

DAVID: Did anyone invite someone not from New York or DC?

All hands go up.

DAVID: Or Hollywood?

All hands go down.

JEN, QUENTIN, STEPHANIE, and DAVID enter a conference room located deep inside the DC Beltway. DAVID sits in a chair. QUENTIN sits in a chair facin...

12/06/2024

"We selected our 86 most experienced testers and sent them to 189 countries to test 1,500 faux firs. After six months, we had graded 1,200 trees on color, beauty, sturdiness, ease of storage, and overall joy quotient."

We believed we were capable of anything. We had already used 22,000 bagels to test 280 brands of toasters in North America. We sent twenty-five rep...

12/06/2024

“Concerts should be fun. I don’t like it when they feel like religion.”

An excerpt from our friends over at The Believer of an interview with musician Jack Stratton.

“Concerts should be fun. I don’t like it when they feel like religion.” - - -I had been wondering something about Jack Stratton, the founder and l...