Short-a-Day: Daniel Mason's "The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I"
Originally published in Harper's, March 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 92.In each issue of The New Yorker, there's a one-page section called "Shouts & Murmurs," in which a comic writer attempts, through exaggeration, to mock some bit of recent news or a cultural norm/stereotype. It's rarely any good, so imagine my surprise to find that Mason had written a decent four-page story in this style, openi…