Scavengers by Joseph Bennett.

Don’t forget about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted.
Voltaire is my new role model, in a very jealous and admirable sort of way.

I had a suspicion dogs and cows shared a lot in common…
(that was the first time the cows had grazed since winter)
[via MetaFilter]

Letters of Note publishes such correspondences to the internet, and getting a feel for their authors is great fun.
Here are some good ones:

• Ayn Rand
• Matt Stone and Trey Parker
• Wil Wheaton
• Steve Martin
• William Safire
• Mark Twain
• Alfred Douglas and father
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• David Foster Wallace (Look at that, it was published)
• Hunter S. Thompson
• Richard Feynman

The archive is useful in finding more. The same person also runs Lists of Note; bonus David Foster Wallace vocabulary list!

Metafilter has a post listing ¡the best! essays from the past year as chosen by The Browser. There are a wide variety of subjects covered, and the latter website will hopefully prove to be a new, interesting one to follow.
Oh there was another Metafilter post a while back about short science fiction stories.