Extremely good short fiction you will probably want to read
I'm here to review not just the restaurants, but also the dysfunction, the dystopia. I feel I'm as much a reporter of the end of the world as I am the end-all brunch spots. Had I been so long in the suck of modern apocalypse that I never had an honest-to-goodness good time?
If food is alive, what food does food eat to stay alive? If food is alive, is it still morally acceptable, kosher even, for humans to eat that food? Is a live cookie the whole of the thing, or is it the sum of its live dough and live chocolate chips? Does a cake's life begin from scratch, from the first cracked egg, the first swish of the wooden spoon, or is it somewhere in the oven when the baking powder dances with the flour and rises up to life?
Who cares who’s right or wrong, when the whole city, and maybe even the whole world, had completely collapsed, or whatever, all around them? What ideas are worth fighting for when there’s no world left to enjoy those ideas in? Anyway, Earl had an okay OKCupid date to make.
I therefore give you my last boon: You will grow up happy, but a little poor. This will teach you the value of wealth. I will surround you with great teachers. They will be far more complex, far more interesting, and above all far sadder, than you will ever be. You will be boring compared to them, John Mallory, but their stories will inevitably end, and yours will go on. You will be just down-on-your-luck enough, just unremarkable enough, and just white enough, to grow up with enough self-confidence to achieve literally any crazy idea you come up with.
All things considered, especially in this rough economy, they were all very lucky they even had jobs.
Well… That is definitely not the direction I thought this was going to take.
Consider the gummy bear, the employer implored to John Mallory. So many of them, even in a single bag. Who knows how many there are in the world? Where do they all come from?
John Mallory's Uncle Jim was an ordinary man. He did not have superhuman strength or superhuman speed, he could not read minds, or shoot laser beams from his eyes, or control the weather, or commune with animals. However, lacking the superhuman abilities found in the heroes of traditional comic book fare, and unaccustomed to the dangerous living conditions that are part and parcel to urban living, his Uncle Jim was nonetheless the most heroic individual he ever had the honor of knowing.
He knew he was a smart boy for his age, and his mother always told him so. She would say “You’re a very smart boy, you know,” or he would say, “You know, I’m pretty smart for my age, don’t you think?” and she would agree, but then she would add a small caveat to that statement: “You’re smart for any age.”
His voice has the sound of angels, and his righteous solos give strength to the downtrodden man. But, some people, cynical people who chose not to see the light, they persecute and revile him! They call his lyrics hackneyed and trite, his populist working-man ethos too derivative of Bruce Springsteen! And yet, Jon Bon Jovi so loves rock and roll, that he still rocks to this day!
The Supreme Pancake 