A Brooklyn café is charging $12 for a cup of Ethiopian coffee. The drink doesn’t have a name, so The Week asked its readers to do the honors.

• Mocha Dinero
• Cost-a-latte
• Brokefest Blend
• Excesso
• Ka-Ching-accino

A young family moved into a house, next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers. Eventually the construction crew, all of them gems- ( Read more... )

1. Call your co-conspirators as soon as you wake up, and wake up early.
2. Brew a pot of coffee. You'll need your senses on high alert.
3. Open all windows, no matter how cold it is outside, and leave them open for as many hours as you can. The house needs a thorough air transfusion.
4. Start with the obvious. Remove all cans, bottles, boxes or ( Read more... )

You know the four seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction.
You wonder why there isn't a $5 coin.
You know the French equivalents for the words "free", "prize" and "no sugar added", thanks to your extensive education in bilingual cereal packaging.
You think 0 degrees Celsius as mild weather.
You only own three spices: salt, ( Read more... )

There was an engineer, manager and programmer driving down a steep mountain road. The brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control. Half way down the driver managed to stop the car by running it against the embankment narrowing avoiding going over a cliff.

They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death, but otherwise ( Read more... )

An elderly shopper at our supermarket used a check to buy such items as cotton balls, cotton swabs, powder, and cold cream. On the memo line, shed' written, "Repairs."

For her 40th birthday, my wife said, "I’d love to be ten again." So that Saturday, we had a heaping stack of chocolate-chip pancakes, her favorite childhood breakfast. Then we hit the playground and a merry-go-round. We finished the day with a banana split.

"So how did you enjoy being a kid for a day?" I asked.

"Great," she said. "But when I said I ( Read more... )

My grandfather was sipping a beer when he confessed to me he’d drunk more than usual the day before. "What’s more than usual?" I asked.

"A case."

"You can drink a case in a day?!"

"Well," he grumbled defensively, "it doesn’t take all day."

I was having lunch with my daughter Rachel, who’s three, at our local mall and was feeling particularly macho for a 46-year-old. All morning, women had been smiling at me and giving me the eye.

Getting up to leave the table, I ran my fingers through my hair-and discovered two yellow-ducky barrettes that had been lovingly placed there hours before.

The biggest loser at my weight-loss club was an elderly woman. "How'd you do it?" we asked. "Easy," she said. "Every night I take my teelth out at six o'clock."