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.

“I don’t care if you have to lie down in a fucking coffin like Edith Sitwell,” Beelzebub says. “Get me some pages!”

This is my agent speaking. His name is not really Beelzebub—that’s just how I have him listed in my phone contacts. He’s very professional and he’s never spoken to me like this before. It’s just that I’ve pushed him to the end of whatever tether good agents are connected to their writers by. OK seriously—that sentence I just wrote? That is nothing like my usual high-quality prose. But just now, something really bad is happening to me.