Test monkeys cannot win.

(from In Persuasion Nation)

Only one animal within this high-dose group, animal 93990, a diminutive 26 kg male, appeared unaffected.

This reads like a lab report of monkeys being injected with a toxic chemical certain to kill them horribly. This was a slightly tweaked version of what I believe was the first George Saunders story I ever came across, back in McSweeney’s #4.
Hilarious and bleak. Read it here, as part of Saunders’ Institutional Monologues.

Done? Feel sort of empty and defeated? Replenish your soul with Regina Spektor’s new one, Begin To Hope. For this occasion, I recommend “On The Radio.”