All Your Hostages Are In Love With You Day!
Author: Bob Powers
Your partner hangs up the phone with the FBI.
“They need three hostages.”
You pretend to not be listening.
“You go tell them or I will! Ask some of them to leave. You’ve got like nineteen guys back there.”
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
Author: Neil Gaiman
“It’ll be brilliant,” said Vic, for the hundredth time. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” He grinned with white teeth.
We both attended an all-boys’ school in south London. While it would be a lie to say that we had no experience with girls — Vic seemed to have had many girlfriends, while I had kissed three of my sister’s friends — it would, I think, be perfectly true to say that we both chiefly spoke to, interacted with, and only truly understood, other boys. Well, I did, anyway. It’s hard to speak for someone else, and I’ve not seen Vic for thirty years. I’m not sure that I would know what to say to him now if I did.
The Six Swans
Author: Mallory Ortberg
“The king’s wife looks drawn and pale,” the king announced over supper, looking at her carefully “and not at all well.”
“I feel fine,” the king’s wife said. She tore off the crust from her bread and put it in her mouth. It had been so long since she had chewed and swallowed that it lay dead and heavy in her mouth. She smiled with her lips closed. “I feel very well.”
“But your health is not only your own now,” the king reminded her. “It is our child’s, and mine.” His wife, his child, his health, his dinner, his jacket, his house, his floor, his dogs, his servants, his plans. “A queen,” he reminded everyone at table, “is what a king uses to build the future.”