and it's better if i don't read the fiction in its entirety, too.

I was reading (unawares) Alice Munro's story in the old anniversary issue and I started at the part where Nita was telling the story about the deadly rhubarb poison to her visitor (the magazine and I were in the bathroom) and I thought, this story is great. And then I turned to the first page and it was by Munro and I thought, well, I just have to read it. And then it turns out, well . . .

I wonder why she wrote the story in the way she did.

But you know why, really, my posting has been slow? Because I actually hate The New Yorker. That thing that was supposedly about umbrellas, but was really about people who manufacture plastic crap - excuse me, "moldable foam tubes" - in China? That was the last straw.