As soon as my time machine was finished, I traveled back to 1890, so I could kill Hitler before he was old enough to commit any of his horrible crimes. It wasn't as gratifying as I thought it would be.
-Oh my God. You killed a baby.
-Yes, but the baby was Hitler.
-Who?
-Hitler. It's...complicated.
-Officer? This man just killed a baby.
-"Time Machine" from Free-Range Chickens
As I mentioned in my last post, I bought this on a whim at the Virgin Megastore closeout sale yesterday. I'd read a couple of essays by Rich in The New Yorker and loved them. I brought the book with me to lunch later in the day, and decided to pull it out instead of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Bad idea. Within a couple of minutes I was putting such an effort into not bursting out laughing in the middle of Cosi that, at minimum, I was pretty sure I was making some unfortunate faces. (I also thought my chances of choking on my food were increasing the further I read.)
I took it out again when I was home later. The book is made up of a series of very short essays (the quotation above is the entirety of the essay "Time Machine"), so I kept reading "just one more" until there was nothing left. It's a very quick read - about twenty minutes if you went straight through, I'd guess - but I'm glad I bought it because I also think it's highly rereadable. I've already been flipping back through it.
A couple of samples to give you a better taste of his writing:
If adults were subjected to the same indignities as children
What I imagined the people around me were saying when I was . . .
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