McSweeney's 17

McSweeney's 17 is an ordinary bundle of mail, of which each piece is addressed to a woman named Maria Vasquez. It's clever and cool and makes you wish that you had thought of or had the means of creating it.

I have not read through every piece yet, but I wanted to post pictures of it, because I am proud of those bastards that made it.

I did have expectations that some of the more ridiculous items, such as the mail-order catalog of "plural clothing", clothing for more than one person to wear together, would open up to reveal real content inside. That the fake junk mail wouldn't actually be pages of fake junk mail inside, but instead the quarterly's semi-regular letters section or a really great short story or anything. These things are fun for a second... like the envelope that you open to find four pages of dozens and dozens of color photos of red cars and with the occasional photo of perch fish thrown in for no reason. It was funny. It made no sense. It's back in the envelope until I'll show it to a friend or something.

The Yeti Researcher is damn near a book and very cool, if you're really into Hominids and all of that.

Unfamiliar is probably the first literary magazine to come inside of a disguised literary magazine. I guess you can say that it is the backbone of the whole package and I wish it were real. I mean, more than for just this one issue. Because it claims to be a twice monthly magazine of "different fiction" and I would love to have new and interesting stuff in my mailbox that often. (It's been almost half a year in between issues 16 and 17 of the McSweeney's quarterly) Not to mention, the stuff in this Unfamiliar is the McSweeney's stuff that is right up my alley. The short, fresh, fiction.

Finally, Envelope is a big manilla envelope with the word "Envelope" printed on it. Inside are 13 beautiful art prints from new artists or new paintings or both. There's also a card inside explaining their intent to make Envelope into an actual periodical, which would be fantastic. Some of the prints are boring or bad, but others were amazing and wonderful and I am going to frame them. Especially this baby.