Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something

Featuring way too many forewords, including one by Jake Tapper It's a great undertaking to raise a humor website from infancy to full-fledged adulthood, but with the right editors, impeccable taste, and a dire political landscape, your site will enjoy years of relevance and comic validation. Join us as we revisit the first twenty-one years of McSweeney's Internet Tendency, from our bright-eyed and bewildered early stages to our world-weary and bewildered recent days. Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something is a coming-of-age celebration of the pioneering website, featuring brand-new pieces and classics by some of today's best humor writers, like Ellie Kemper, Wendy Molyneux, Jesse Eisenberg, Tim Carvell, Karen Chee, Colin Nissan, Megan Amram, John Moe, and many more. Including: I Don't Hate Women Candidates--I Just Hated Hillary and Coincidentally I'm Starting to Hate Elizabeth Warren It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid is Your Liberal Arts Degree If Women Wrote Men the Way Men Write Women My Coming Out Story, Sponsored by Bank of America I Regret to Inform You That My Wedding to Captain Von Trapp Has Been Canceled Please Forgive Us at Blue Apron for This Week's Meals. We've Been Having a Tough Time Lately

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

This volume addresses the relationship between irony and popular culture and the role of the consumer in determining and disseminating meaning. Arguing that in a cultural climate largely characterised by fractious communications and perilous linguistic exchanges, the very role of irony in popular culture needs to come under greater scrutiny, it focuses on the many uses, abuses, and misunderstandings of irony in contemporary popular culture, and explores the troubling political populism at the heart of many supposedly satirical and (apparently) non-satirical texts. In an environment in which irony is frequently claimed as a defence for material and behaviour judged controversial, how do we, as a society entrenched in forms of popular culture and media, interpret work that is intended as satire but which reads as unironic? How do we accurately decode works of popular film, literature, television, music, and other cultural forms which sell themselves as bitingly ironic commentaries on current society, but which are also problematic celebrations of the very issues they purport to critique? And what happens when texts intended and received in one manner are themselves ironically recontextualised in another? Bringing together studies across a range of cultural texts including popular music, film and television, Isn’t it Ironic? will appeal to scholars of the social sciences and humanities with interests in cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literary studies and sociology.

Playwrights have always demonstrated an incredible adaptability, able to nimbly adjust to new circumstances and media. This was never in greater evidence than during the coronavirus pandemic, when—with venues shuttered and stages darkened—writers and performers across the world scrambled to sustain the art of theater via remote video. Even today, it is clear that the experiences of 2020–21 have dramatically altered the landscape of theatermaking, as artists continually refine and deploy the lessons learned during a period of seat-of-the-pants experimentation. This groundbreaking anthology brings together new works from both emerging and established playwrights to explore the rich opportunities afforded by streaming theater. They reveal a range of styles and approaches to storytelling; encompass both traditional and experimental plays, from solo pieces to large-cast dramas; and take place within single settings, multiple settings, or even in a utopian “nowhere.” Throughout, these selections all help to bring playwriting fully into our new era, embodying the sense of magic that comes from simple moments of human connection, even when we cannot be together. Includes plays by the following: Audrey Cefaly Joyce Miller J. Merrill Motz Arlene Hutton Greg Lam Vince Gatton Lindsay Adams Sharece M. Sellem Mrinalini Kamath Brendan Powers and Rachel Burttram Dana Hall Aly Kantor Kitt Lavoie Jenny Lyn Bader Ivam Cabral and Rodolfo García Vázquez Michael Hagins Trey Tatum with Jordan Trovillion Colette Mazunik Tory Parker Eric Eidson and Lauren Lynch-Eidson

New York Times bestselling adult author of The Bear and the Nightingale makes her middle grade debut with a creepy, spellbinding ghost story destined to become a classic. After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think—she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with "the smiling man," a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price. Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she's been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn't have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie's previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN. Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver's warning. As the trio head out into the woods—bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them—the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: "Avoid large places. Keep to small." And with that, a deliciously creepy and hair-raising adventure begins.

Create the Christmas romance of your dreams, scene by scene, twist by charmingly predictable twist—each choice is yours. Slip on your favorite Christmas sweater, cozy up to a crackling fire, sip some spiced eggnog, and prepare to experience the ultimate holiday love story. But instead of watching it on some cheesy cable channel, open this book and put yourself in the director’s chair. First, decide your heroine’s problem. Was she just fired from her big city business job? Avoiding going home for Christmas? Or did she just realize the man who proposed to her maybe isn't Mr. Right? Then it's time to meet the man--should your heroine end up with the big city business exec, the small town hunk or someone totally unexpected (but still hunky)? Each choice will take you down a totally different path that all somehow end up making for a perfect made-for-TV romance. Will your Christmas activity montage include baking cookies, walking through a holiday festival, or skating on a picturesque frozen lake? Will you choose to include a generically bearded old man who perhaps could maybe be Santa Claus? Choice by hilarious choice, you’ll make your way closer and closer to the big payoff--the picture perfect, most romantic final kiss ever. And when you’ve savored that last bit of snowy, romantic goodness, don’t be glum. Turn back to page one and start a new love story. With hundreds of possible stories the happily-ever-afters never stop happening. Praise for Build Your Own Christmas Movie Romance “The choose-your-own-adventure-style parody features all the best tropes and treats of made-for-TV holiday specials.” —Chicago Reader “If you’re searching for the perfect gift for your Hallmark holiday film loving BFF (or just shopping for yourself, no shame), Riane Konc’s new book, Build Your Own Christmas Movie Romance, is the present you’ve been waiting for.” —Bustle

The Best of McSweeney's Volume 2 the second instalment of Dave Eggers's crash course in what McSweeney's is all about brings together more stories from the first ten issues of the magazine. Jonathan Ames, Judy Budnitz, Glen David Gold, Jonathan Lethem and A.M. Homes are amongst the writers spreading their wings in this fine collection and showing once more why McSweeney's is now a byword for brilliance, innovation and the unexpected.

When you look at your phone, do you see nothing but an endless stream of bad news? This book will help you understand just what doomscrolling is and how it can ruin your health, damage your relationships, and leave you depressed and alone. It can happen to anyone. This book was written to help all those who have gotten lost in the bad news that comes out everyday. It will help you understand why you can’t seem to stop, and it will show you the evolutionary reasons behind your obsessive behavior. I’ll also provide you with effective steps to take to break the doomscrolling habit. In this book, you’ll discover valuable insights into the following topics: What doomscrolling is What are the evolutionary and biological reasons behind the habit How doomscrolling damages your mental and physical health How it wrecks your social life How to break the habit and replace it with healthy alternatives; How to rebuild your health and your friendships. It can seem impossible to stop the doomscrolling habit, but it's not. You can do it and get your life back. This book will show you proven techniques for breaking this kind of bad habit. What’s more, it will help you recover your health and your lost friendships. You can rediscover the beautiful, positive things in your life and in the world around you. You can make positive changes that will help you escape the trap you’re living in right now. You can kick the habit and find the sunshine and the beautiful things in life that are still out there. If you’re ready to kick the doomscrolling habit and find what’s really good and important in life, this is the book for you. There’s no time like the present to get started taking your life back from the dark world of doomscrolling!