I’m telling the same story 100 ways. Read the first two iterations here. Here is the fourth iteration.
Please buy the knives: a dialog between the author and his sales prospect
Seven arguments by the author in favor of buying the knives
Patented and trademarked Double-D edge stays sharp longer than a straight edge, and a sharp knife is safer
High-carbon steel lasts longer than cheap stainless steel, they use it in swords
Ergonomic handle fits the hand
Full bolstered tang secures handle to blade
Cost is below that of Zwilling or Wustof, and if you haven’t heard of those, I assure you they are quite costly
Lifetime guarantee means you’ll never have to buy knives again
Product is made in U.S. — in fact just one county south of us, in Olean, New York
Seven counter-arguments by the prospect
But your set includes straight-edged knives
I don’t need a sword
What if I was left-handed
So?
It’s a hell of a lot more than I’ve ever paid for a knife
I bet they won’t really fix my knives forever
I don’t care
Seven counter-counter-arguments by the author
There’s a sharpener too though, so
OK but you agree the steel is good
But you’re not left-handed
A full tang is clearly better and everyone knows that, an idiot wouldn’t know that, I didn’t think you were an idiot
Right, that’s the point here, you aren’t paying enough for knives, that’s why all your knives are shit, look at this flimsy plastic crap you pulled out for me, look how it fails to cut my demonstration rope
They will fix them though, they said so, they said this one kid was on a sales call and a lady pulled out her fifty-year-old knives from the same company and she sent them in and got them sharpened, not fixed, actually the knives didn’t break they only got dull, that’s why they’re so good, that’s why they cost what they should cost, actually less than they should cost, have you not paid attention, should I start again
No, me neither
While I’m writing lists, here are
16 great short stories I read last year
Untitled (“A large loaf of bread lay on the table.”) by Franz Kafka: A previously unpublished flash fic, and the purest Kafka of all: A father fails to cut a piece of bread.
“Babel” by Alyssa Quinn: Poetic flash fic about people parading items through the Tower of Babel to name them. A hint of Plato’s cave as well as Adam in Eden.
“Numbers in the Dark” by Italo Calvino: You know how IT and digital security people always say the whole internet, the whole world even, is a lot more rickety than you think? That feeling is older than the internet. If you like this, you should read the whole collection of the same name—it’s full of similar world-eating slip-ups.
“T_ME” by Alex Jennings: Elegant scifi about a boy genius, and the anxiety that younger generations possess an alien intelligence — the horror of seeing teens replace Google with TikTok and toddlers giggle at procedurally generated CGI deep into YouTube. Reminds me of Ted Chiang’s “Understand.”
“Minuet” by Rumaan Alam: Flash fic about adult friends, and divorce, and the biological clock. A nice on-ramp from Fleischman Is in Trouble into the wider world of “friends be divorcing” fiction.
“The Mistress” by Gina Berriault: A young man meets his father’s old mistress, and they play cat-and-mouse. From the beautiful front-pocket paperback collection Seven Stories, which is a best-of best-ofs. Most of these are the title stories of earlier Berriault collections, making them a pain to Google.
“Good Boy” by Eloghosa Osunde: Opens like a guy at the bus stop monologuing at you uninvited. The cocky attitude of the narrator develops and complicates, but it isn’t just undercut, it’s not that easy.
“Nondisclosure Agreement” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh: As a snob, I relate to being shocked to find other big readers at a “day job.”
“Drones to Ploughshares” by Sarah Gailey: There’s a lot of bad solarpunk about the peaceful farmer folk liberating an oppressor drone. This is the good one.
“Lena” by qntm: Terrifying deadpan instructions for forcing a sentient AI to do as it’s told.
“Out There” by Kate Folk: When anthropomorphized spam bots prey on women by pretending to be the perfect man, a woman is relieved to know the shitty guy she’s dating must therefore be real.
“Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” by Jamil Jan Kochai: Deconstruction of this very weird thing our culture has normalized, turning real and recent wars into video games.
“Raw Material” by A. S. Byatt: A satire about writing groups and classes. For some reason I’d say Neil Gaiman fans might like this?
“The School” by Donald Barthelme: The first Barthelme I read, which made for a real letdown when I found out he usually wasn’t this light and Saunders-y. A short comedy about a class whose pets keep dying.
“Florida Lives” by Dionne Irving (subscriber-only): A roach problem brings out two couples’ interplay of prejudices. But in a fun way.
“Petals” by Guadalupe Nettel: A depraved connoisseur of bathroom odors prowls the local women’s restrooms for his imagined lover.
If you read one of these, please tell me what you think. And if you don’t subscribe,