1. I Married a White Man – Wanda Calvert, a Baltimore washerwoman, explains how it came to be that she married a white man. The fact that she is also white makes the story very uninteresting.
2. I Loathe Lucy – Willam Frawley takes us on a dark journey into the seamy underbelly of Desilu Studios. He takes particular aim at “Little Ricky’s” incredible growth spurt. More specifically Mr. Frawley decries the implausibility of Little Ricky being born one season and showing-up as a wise-cracking 5-year-old in the next.
3. One Door Closes, Another Opens – An elderly female elevator operator from Pasadena is forced to retire after she accidentally inhales too much clumping cat litter. Her coworkers now call her, ♫The Little Old Lady with Emphysema.♫ When asked how she was doing the former elevator operator responded, “Well I don’t have as many ups and downs as when I was working.” In the British edition of this book, the little old lady is a lift operator from Wuthering Heights.
4. This Plant is Closed – The story of a Venus flytrap as seen through the compound eyes of a newly imprisoned fly. And yes, near the end, the fly does eke out a forlorn “Help me!”
5. This Plant is Closed – The story of a straw manufacturing plant as seen through the hole of the final straw. And when that final straw rolls off the assembly line, a visibly moved CEO picks it up and cries, “We’re closing now. This is the last straw.”

The Not So Good Ones

1. The Queen Elizabeth Phone Sex Tapes: Naughty, Naughty on the Telly – In these newly discovered recordings found in the rethatched roof of the Pig & Whistle Pub in Ipswich, the Queen is heard sharing tawdry talk with her palace guard Beefeater, Heathclyffe. Listen in sordid salaciousness as Heathclyffe refers variously to the Queen’s undercarriage as Her Majesty’s Pita, the Royal Gash and the Outback Downunder. Some question the tape’s authenticity. Especially since in the background we repeatedly hear someone picking up a phone and saying, “George Santos residence.”

2. Hair Raising Experiences – Pie weight salesman Osgood Pantene shampoos a woman against her will. Or did he? He says she agreed to it by bending over a portable basin he keeps in his wallet. She says she didn’t know what was happening until he had his sudsy fingers all up in her hair, but by then it was too late and she was all in a lather. This kind of thing happens a lot in the book so I can’t recommend it. I mean it’s just so lather, rinse, repeat. Still, this “He said, She said” shampoo story is Head & Shoulders above anything else we’ve read in the Bathic novel genre.
3. Letters of Pol Pot – People sometimes forget this little mass murderer who disappeared 1/10^th of Cambodia’s population in the 1970s – and just because someone screwed-up his take-out order (who orders blue curry?). In a pique of rage, he channeled his wrath into an indiscriminate cleansing of the population just to get rid of all the sloppy order-takers everywhere in the greater Phnom Penh region. His method was the very definition of overkill, but then again misplaced anger seldom achieves its goals. In this attempt to rehabilitate his legacy, Madam Wat, who ran the brothel Mr. Pot frequented, has released a trove of love letters the young and lovelorn Pol wrote to his favorite prostitutes. If this doesn’t make you reassess the diminutive despot, nothing will.

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