Happy Cruelty Day!: Daily Celebrations of Quiet Desperation

by Bob Powers

Overview

For everyone looking to find a little extra magic in a life with little to celebrate, Happy Cruelty Day! is here. Beginning on January 1, this book features 365 new holidays, each accompanied by a strange, dark and humorous short story explaining the day you woke up in and how to celebrate it. These 365 daily doses of delight, perversion, and nonsense include "Hire Someone Attractive To Pretend To Love You Day," "Hang on to Your Wide-Eyed Innocence Day," "Sit in Abject Terror Day," and, of course, "Cruelty Day."

Far more than just a humor book, Happy Cruelty Day! is like a daily instructional manual written by a psychopath. On one page, the book has you joining a community crime watch group in an effort to make friends (it won't work). Flip the page, and you'll find the details of your attempt to rescue your husband from a POW camp (you'll fail). Flip it again, and Happy Cruelty Day! will have important insight into how best to befriend a runaway teen (offer her some soup).

These holidays celebrate everything from that pivotal point in your life when everything changes, to the day you're not going to do anything but sit on the edge of your bed and get very drunk. When people realize they've fallen in love, or when they realize their love was just a lie. And of course, when love of whatever incarnation brings an index finger to clench tight around the trigger of a gun.

Raw, ridiculous, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a sharp-edged satire on the subtleties, shallowness, and stupidity of daily life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312359522
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/26/2006
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	8.08(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.11(d)

About the Author

Bob Powers has performed at HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival, and he cohosts and performs in the monthly reading series "How to Kick People" in New York City. Bob has written for Flaunt magazine, The Onion A.V. Club, and the New York Press.

Editorial Reviews

My kind of book. Mean, but in a way that makes me smile. It's like a pleasant nightmare.” —Saturday Night Live cast member Fred Armisen

“Never again we will wonder why every day is the same. Now each day can be horribly, hilariously different.” —Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

“Wickedly funny work - a writer to be reckoned with, and maybe just a little afraid of.” —Chris Regan, Emmy Award-winning writer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and co-author, America: The Book

“So much more than a humor book - hilarious, wise, and truly original - the daily psalmbook of the absurd.” —Mike Albo, author of The Underminer

“Bob Powers is the kind of man who can inform you that you'll be waking up in a dilapidated budget motel in Denver. That you'll be jumped by drug-addled corporate embezzlers; that you're prone to robbing your personal physician for his wedding ring and cash; that you're the last milkman in the country, and that you sleep with any boozed-up piece of office trash who wins the weekly trivia night at the local bar-and when he tells you all of this, it somehow makes your day. Hell, even your entire year.” —Dan Kennedy, author of Loser Goes First; McSweeney's advice columnist

From the Publisher

Bob Powers is the kind of man who can inform you that you'll be waking up in a dilapidated budget motel in Denver. That you'll be jumped by drug-addled corporate embezzlers; that you're prone to robbing your personal physician for his wedding ring and cash; that you're the last milkman in the country, and that you sleep with any boozed-up piece of office trash who wins the weekly trivia night at the local bar-and when he tells you all of this, it somehow makes your day. Hell, even your entire year.

author of Loser Goes First; McSweeney's advice co Dan Kennedy

Though comedian Powers may be tongue-in-cheek when he says to disregard the instructions of the 365 short vignettes on how to "devote yourself to a life of passion, vengeance, and heartbreak," readers may ignore this cobbled-together, flat collection. Powers proposes that each day of the year be distinguished by its own unique holiday, a structure he uses as an excuse for his dark and not all that funny musings. Selections include the muddled message on race relations in January 14's "When You Overturn the Hyundai at Tonight's Race Riot, Make Sure the Chicks Are Watching Day!" and May 30's "The Sk8r Boy Who Can Help You Day!" in which the title character provides a cure for cancer and relationship troubles. In March 1's "Sit in Abject Terror Day!" Powers details instructions for a dramatic anxiety attack about one's "flat, static" life. On December 17-"Your Favorite Yoga Position Day!"-Powers reports that when asked why they do yoga, most people say, "Because I was told it will make my bowels stop aching when I am all alone in the night." This volume will only appeal to those with the most tortured sensibilities. 13 b&w photos. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Comedian Powers's compilation of 365 vignettes is crass, witty, snarky, and unbelievably funny. It's for anyone—misanthropes and pessimists particularly—who's ever been fed up with books of daily inspiration. Go ahead and replace Christmas with "Stuff Your Underwear into My Mouth and Punch Me in the Nose Until I Can't Breathe Through It Day!" Readers will wonder how July 10 could ever have been anything other than "Tell Everyone You See, All Day Long, That They Can Do Whatever They Want Because It's Not Like It's Going To Bring Your Dead Brother Back Day!" This book is recommended for public libraries with the caveat that it contains profanity and material many readers may consider objectionable (sickwould be an apt descriptor; the words raunchyand tastelessare also applicable here). Academic libraries may wish to add this title to their leisure collections. Reservations about appropriateness of content aside, it is a severely and morosely funny book.
—Audrey Snowden Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal