All week I’ve been in the nether regions, the sticks, the country, the bucolic boonies, the hinterregions of the backwoods, fretting over how much I’d have to read to you upon my return, how many hours I’d have to try my larynx to make it up to you, just how many stories I’d have to penitently tell.

Not necessarily a festive mistletoe-and-chestnut sort of story, thus, but for those in need, want, or glimmering hope of a holiday story, this unpodcasted tale from the vaults should suffice. Happy days, holly and otherwise!

There’s a common Yoruban idiom, “oruko lonro ni,” which means, more or less, that your name affects your actions, defines your character, determines your destiny. For instance, if you’re named Lady, you’re going to end up exceptionally feminine. If your parents were brazen enough to name you Klepto, you might find yourself in a spot of trouble.

What else is a podcastress to do when a great writer dies? Sheckley wrote hundreds of exceptional stories, hundreds, and though I wouldn’t rate this one his best (I See a Man Sitting in a Chair, and the Chair is Biting His Leg rates high on my list, and very few of life’s experiences top a first glance at Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? (and I’m only just barely exaggerating)).

This morning, as with all mornings, I took She Who Must Bark At The Most Inconvenient Times on an early morning walk, which, given the several feet of snow on the ground (read: a few inches), was less an “early morning walk” than a “mighty difficult time staying afoot for the bipedal member of the walking party, as the bipedal-squared one trounced happily and darted into snowbanks and tried her best to cause the amputation of the fingers on my icicly leash-bearing hand.”

I know, I know. It’s morning. Nowhere near your bedtime. You listen now and get all confused, expecting a glass of warm milk and sugarplum dreams, only to discover it’s ten in the morning and you’ve got to drag yourself to work. It’s just, well, Out Of The Ordinary that I’d be sending a story now. But Boris Vian.

I’ve had a long meeting with myself just now, myself, who has been thinking for months that I ought to read Mann for you. After all, Mann is nothing if not the one empty corner in the squathouse of growing up, and although my romance with Mann ended years ago, I can still smell him at the thought… you know how it is. And so, month after month, I look at his stories, and I Just. Don’t. Know.