Good morning! Me Cookie Monster. Sam Sifton and Melissa Clark both on vacation, so me here to help you plan out week of cookie – oops, cooking. 

Me grateful to NYT Cooking for valuing diversity of perspectives. It have recipe collections for sad people on special diet, like gluten-free, low fat, and potato salad. But Times also platform for connoisseurs like Cookie Monster, who think cookie is foundation of food pyramid. Me personally believe pyramid should be shaped like cookie, but me will save this argument for me op-ed column.

Chris Pratt battles demons while preparing for his role of Garfield in the Garfield movie. 

Is it possible you have enrolled in Short Story 101 by mistake? There is still time to withdraw from the class without penalty. You might consider switching your major from creative writing to math, which may be more suited to your literary skills.

I’m addicted to the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. I’m not kidding. One weekend, I watched six of them in a row. That’s 12 hours, including commercials, if you’re doing the math. I’ve viewed sixteen overall, and their cheesy, predictable plotline is outstanding.

It’s hard to believe we’ve already arrived at the last issue of the year, but here we are, folks. It’s December, 2022 is coming to a close, and the latest issue of Defenestration has arrived!

Once August’s issue came out, a bunch of weird stuff started happening. Bigfoot bought a hat, but that’s hardly noteworthy. Was IS noteworthy was that, someone, well, noteworthy, gave a shoutout to Defenestration, which caused a deluge of submissions for a month and a half. This isn’t an exaggeration, either. Normally we get a steady stream of submissions, but it got to a point where it was a struggle just to keep the inbox at 50 submissions or less. We’re a small operation with meager crew, most of whom are fictional, so that was a lot of stories and poems to read. I want you to keep that in mind as you read this month’s issue, because the stories and poems below were chosen from among the hundreds Eileen and I read over the past few months. It’s quite the badge of honor to be among the few chosen from the multitude.