“Long Married Date Night Menu From Vito’s Pizzeria Restaurant Owned and Operated By the Illiano Brothers Who Are Having More Sex With Their Wives Than You Could Possibly Imagine,” by Elizabeth Bastos

Pasta

Pizza

Steak Subs dripping with juice

Hand tossed salad

Juicy Imported Tomatoes come on the “Caprese”

Hot, Wide-Open Zucchini Blossoms, deep-fried

“Tea Party Protests National Parks,” by Sarah Tascone

A bus load of Tea Party protesters arrived Saturday at Yellowstone National Park, kicking off a cross-country tour to protest the National Park system for what they consider wasteful spending and misuse of public funds—among other issues.

“Give us back our land” was the mantra of the 1,500-strong crowd at Yellowstone’s front entrance, carrying signs saying “Real Americans R Endangered Species, Too – Wheres R Protection?” and “Illegal Immigrants Out of ‘Jose-mite’!”

“What’s In Other People’s Fridges Says A Lot About Them,” by Elizabeth Bastos

A hasty survey (taken at parties when I say I am going to powder my nose, but really I am checking out their fridges) of my friend’s fridges (and pantries) reveals that certain people can live without quinoa. Few of my friends are spelt-lovers. Few take the time to cut fruit with a fruit knife in the European manner—there are lots of packages of Wegman’s pre-cut melon.

“A Doozer Manifesto, or What I Did in Graduate School When I Should Have Been Writing a Dissertation,” by Ursula Lawrence

First incarnation: Orthodox Marxism (circa 1848)

The Doozers must organize.

Fraggles, in their role as exploiter, are directly appropriating the surplus labor of the Doozers for their own consumption. The Doozer’s dead labor is embodied in commodity form in the radish sticks/building material that provides the primary Fraggle means of subsistence. On first blush, this relationship appears most reminiscent of the standard exploitative-capitalist/exploited-worker binary that defines the capitalist mode of production.

“Making the Sale,” by Richard Turck

If you’re in any kind of sales profession, being able to sell is probably one of the most important aspects of your job. You need to take an object, any object, and force the customer into believing they need it. If they came into an electronics store thinking, “I could use a couple of D batteries,” I have to make sure they leave thinking, “Yes, I probably would have died without this programmable bionic android.” A large part of being a good salesman is the ability to scare people into buying robots.

“Writers Guidelines,” by Rachel Levy

1. Before submitting, please get an idea of what we tend to publish by, you know, READING OUR MAGAZINE. And not just one issue, but several of them. It is disheartening, not to mention anxiety-inducing, for our editors to receive manuscripts from writers who clearly do not know much about us.

“Robot Laws for the Future According to an Unemployed, Pot-smoking English Literature Graduate,” by L. Gilbert Heedyn

1. A robot must not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by a human being, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict [...]

“The Diary of Darrin Stevens,” by Jay Morris

Dear Uncle Jay:
My friend Irwin says that the TV series Bewitched was not a fiction-based situation comedy capitalizing on that era’s “magical” trend, but a documentary series detailing the tortured true-life existence of a man trapped in marriage to a sorceress. Irwin has “episodes,” if you know what I mean, but he seems sincere in [...]

“What Have You Become?: The Do It Yourself Quiz that Maybe if Your Hippie Parents Had Taken (Seriously) You Wouldn’t Have To,” by Amy York Rubin

The only thing that used to make you angrier than that jerk who sautéed her chicken in the vegan wok were when pronouns straddled a slash with the “he” unapologetically maintaining the primary position throughout an entire essay. But then you failed to internalize Cornell West. Cornell West started showing up on Bill Maher. And [...]

“Seven(ish) Techniques for Unforgettable Characters,” by L. Gilbert Heedyn

As part of my writing self-help series, “Great writing while sedated,” today I will discuss seven-ish techniques for crafting unforgettable characters.
1. Name names
Your character must have a name. As a writer you will find it really helps giving your character a name as a way to distinguish them from other characters (note: you should also [...]