I first knocked on Professor James E. Gunn’s office door in Wescoe Hall when I was an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. I think I was twenty.

Professor Gunn’s door was open. He was at his desk, typing on a Selectric. I had heard its rat-a-tat sound all the way down the corridor. So I hesitated before knocking, because the man was obviously working. But these were his office hours, so . . . I knocked.

He stopped typing and invited me to sit in the chair beside his desk. Then he extracted a manuscript from a pile on the far side of the desktop – the manuscript of a story I had submitted in hopes of being admitted to his advanced fiction writing class – and he proceeded to go through it line by line, paragraph by paragraph, explaining everything that was wrong with it.

As it turned out, there was a lot wrong with it.

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Apparently the Complaints Choir of Helsinki was an offshoot of this British project. Besides the original and the one in Helsinki, there have also been choirs in Hamburg and St. Petersburg. Cause, after all, complaining is universal.

• Why does my computer take so very long?
• Why can’t the bus driver talk to anyone
• And why is the beer so expensive in town?
• I want my money back
• My job is like a cul-de-sac
• And the bus is too infrequent at 6:30
• Why don’t they pay me more
• Life was good before
• And I am thirsty

Video here.

Me, I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m thankful for stuff like this (and to Pat Cadigan for pointing to it.)

Worth 1000 photoshopping contest: gross-out banquets for Thanksgiving. (via BoingBoing).

(Warning–they mean it when they say “gross-out.”)

This isn’t my official Thursday post. That’ll show up later.

But I wanted to do a little something extra for the holiday. So here’s a link to my story “Timmy and Tommy’s Thanksgiving Secret.”

Now pass the stuffing.