stories

And I thought the British were the masters of understatement. They ain't got NUTHIN on the Canadians, apparently. Here's a story about poor Fournier, the skydiver who's trying to break the freefall record. He planned to send himself aloft on a helium balloon, break off at 130,000 feet and freefall down. Just for reference, that's about 24.6 miles high. Airliners [...]

“Excuse me,” said the man beside the dairy case, politely, “But can you help me?” I’d watched his son zooming around on rollerball sneakers earlier, swooshing in circles around my cart until his father brought him to heel. The son, about 7, had grinned at me sheepishly, “Sorry,” and hurried back to where his father stood, frowning at a list [...]

Am I the only one who remembers irony? Got into a bit of a Facebook thing with a woman who was bemoaning the death of Thanksgiving. She said it had been murdered by the crass commercialism of Black Friday, thanks to crass commercialist shoppers crassly trampling over each other to buy crass commercialist electronic plastic crap that was, well, crass. [...]