Who am I? I’m nobody. I was cut from every team in high school. I didn’t go to an Ivy League college. I don’t make six figures. My wife constantly cheats and recounts it to me. My teen-age children do not speak to me.
All I have in the world is a paternal aunt and a tank of fish that love me. And my work. I’m nobody.
But every day for the past forty years, I’ve got up in the morning and tried to figure out how to get tiny shards of plastic into human testicles. Specifically, into the testicles of one very resilient test subject, Leonard W.
I’m not sure when we humans first decided to give a genuine try to getting a piece of plastic inside a man’s testicles. The 1971 horror film “Little Plastic Army Man in My Testicles” may have planted the idea, although that film deserves no other accolades, and should probably be categorized as a hate crime for its portrayal of the Vietnamese. But it proved to put a bee in the bonnet of the United States government, which has given us more than five hundred million dollars to get a piece of plastic into a man’s testicles, ideally before the Russians do.
Denne historien er fra August 26, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra August 26, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
