Stranger's Day (August 24) -- an idea whose time has come, courtesy of the great Roz Chast

As if one genius idea wasn't enough, this week's New Yorker features Roz on the Satan Sandwich (see below)

"Stranger’s Day has the potential to be the greatest holiday of all, not least for the greeting-card industry. On all other holidays, you send cards only to those people you know, but the number of people you don’t know is in the billions."

-- New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff,
in his weekly newsletter/blog

by Ken

I was happy to see Bob Mankoff getting behind Stranger's Day in a big way, because this Roz Chast cartoon had really grabbed me in this week's New Yorker. Of course I could just have been carried away by the power of the poetry. What would Henry W. Longfellow have given to write:

I don't know you,
You don't know me.
Guess that's how
It's meant to be.
HAPPY STRANGER'S DAY!

Or:

We're both alive at the same time,
So here's a card, is that such a crime?
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU.

There's already a website (strangersday.com), though the content so far is kind of, er, limited. And by "limited" I mean limited to:

[You can click to enlarge this, if you really think that'll help.]

It appears that built into Roz's idea of Stranger's Day is a way of getting rid of stuff she doesn't want. Or, as she puts it:

Hello, stranger. We haven’t been properly introduced, and hopefully we never will be. I’ve got lots of friends—actual ones, and also all these other people that Facebook says are my friends. But even though we may never befriend each other, or even “friend” each other, that doesn’t mean we can’t exchange presents. Here are some items I wouldn’t mind giving to you, stranger, on this very special day:

and on the blog version there's a slide show with no fewer than ten such items.

Here's one that particularly caught my attention:

Sometimes I fantasize that I’m going to have people over for what will be the best dinner party since the dawn of time. My guests will all be the smartest, funniest people in the world, and we will all be laughing and talking and basking in the delight of one another’s company. And when dinner is over, I’ll serve dessert on these lovely sunflower plates. I can’t figure out why I’ve never used them.

And here's another:

Have you ever been mad at someone about something that you know is ridiculous, but you’re mad anyway? What do you do? Do you pick a big dumb fight, knowing that it’s not going to solve anything? Or do you take something that belongs to the person, like an ugly tie he never wears or an old CD he’ll never miss, and stuff it in the bottom of a garbage bag? Or you can give it away to a total stranger.

There are also Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram links that you can get from Bob's post (I don't get mixed up with that stuff), via which he invites you to post pictures of stuff that you’d like to give away. Use the tag #strangersday. He says, "We’ll look through the options and post pictures of the ones that we’d most like to receive from a stranger."


NOW FOR ROZ CHAST'S TAKE ON THE SATAN SANDWCH

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