The Best of McSweeney's

~
These pieces are all from The Best of McSweeney's, a collection edited by Dave Eggers and Jordan Bass and published by McSweeney's in 2013.  (There is also a deluxe box set edition available here.)

I live in St. Paul, Minnesota.  A nice place where God tries to ice-murder all inhabitants every year.
--Letter from John Moe, pp. 14-15.

I used to think only poor people set fires.  Two reasons for this: (1) I'd never known anyone whose house had burned down, and (2) when I worked for the Social Security Administration, "It burned up in a fire" was a common response to my request for documents.
--Letter from Mary Miller, pp. 15-16.

Five years ago, I played an angry gay teenager in a small coming-of-age film.  
--Letter from Colleen Werthmann, pp. 20-21.  

He is nine.  The other boys and girls have been like this, together, since they were four.  But he is new. 
--From "New Boy," fiction by Roddy Doyle, pp. 39-57.

1. The population of Spokane, Washington, is 203,268.  It is the 104th biggest city in the United States.
2. Even before the recession, in 2008, 36,000 people in Spokane lived below the poverty line--a little more than 18 percent of the population.  That's about the same as it was in Washington, DC, at the time.  The poverty rate was 12.5 percent in Seattle.
--From "Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington," fiction by Jess Walter, pp. 59-67.

My wife, the doctor, is not well.  In the end she could be dead.  It started suddenly, on a country weekend, a movie with friends, a pizza, and then pain.
--From "Do Not Disturb," fiction by A.M. Homes, pp. 89-111.

We drove there through a ferocious snowstorm, swaddled in old blankets and sleeping bags, because his car heater had gone out years before...  I huddled up next to him and adjusted the radio stations as they faded in and out of range...
--From "We'll Sleep in My Old Room," a comic by Chris Ware, pp. 128-131.

The trouble happened because I was bored.  At the time, I was twenty-eight days sober.  I was spending my nights playing Internet backgammon.  I should have been going to AA meetings, but I wasn't.  . . .  When I wasn't burning out my eyes on the computer, I was lying in bed, reading.  I was going through the third Raymond Chandler phase of my adulthood.  Read all his books in 1988, then 1999, and now 2007.  Some people re-read Proust or Thomas Mann and improve themselves.  Not me.
--From "Bored to Death," fiction by Jonathan Ames, pp. 361-386 (and his note on the story, pp. 359-360).

Bucks returned to Kenya in short order.  He met a barmaid who became pregnant and left with him for Uganda, where they were soon estranged.  For a while afterward he moved between that country and Kenya, once again attracting scrutiny for exporting protected snakes: his new specialties were Bitis worthingtoni and Bitis parviocula, highland adders from Kenya and Ethiopia.  On New Year's Eve 2005, Bucks was arrested and thrown into a Kenyan jail.  The official charge was something about illegal frogs in one of his terrariums, but Kenya now had a long list of grievances against him, as did Uganda and Ethiopia.  
--From "Benjamin Bucks," nonfiction by Jennie Erin Smith, pp. 457-475.

I first met the Polack when she worked at Fort Worth Gold.  This was before I learned the jewelry business myself and joined [my brother] Baron.  I was only a customer when I met her, buying a stainless-steel Cartier for an institutional client of mine.  It was almost Christmas, and the sales floor stood ten deep with buyers.  It was the fat time.
--From "How to Sell," fiction by Clancy Martin, pp. 543-558.

Mama taught me better.  She could give me a glare that brought me to my knees when she heard me talk about anyone without respect--especially Mabiordit.  It was Mabiordit who had sheltered us when we came to Juba looking for Jal e Jal and ended up stranded, with nothing in Mama's purse but twenty pounds and a battered Nokia mobile that could receive calls but not make them.  
--From "The Bastard," fiction by Nyuol Lueth Tong, pp. 589-602.