America Happy

Still holding on to warehouse dreams.

Trying to come up with a new entry for today. You know. Got to keep the people up to date. Can't have Babyface and Higginblatt bored at their respective jobs. So I'm looking around, trolling for interesting news about things I care about since nothing much is happening in my personal life. (Except for the savage beating we took at the Last & Final Trivia Night - it still stings.) It was coming out all bad & bored & uninspired. And it looked more like a damn Wish List than anything else. Who gives a fuck about the products I want &
Can't afford? I don't even care. I was like fuck it. But then my far-flung friend Raven sent me this e-mail from Thailand where she's teaching little Thai kids & generally being awesome. And it really - Well. Here it is:

{At Dara Academy we have an afterschool program called "Dara Star Bright". If parents choose to, they can send thier child to extra lessons twice a week after school in a particular subject (math, science, English etc.) I teach third graders extra English for an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Because they are in the third grade and it's afterschool, I try to make the lessons as fun as possible and do a lot of games and art projects. I have a Dr. Suess book I brought with me called Great Day for UP! That has a lot of fairly easy English Vocabulary in it so I had them make up liitle books with covers and everything and every week they are going to write and draw pictures in 4 or 5 pages of the book and I'll teach them the vocab then at the end they'll have thier own English books that they can read.

(I'm getting to the point of the story soon I swear)

Anywho...there is this one little girl named Sasinan who is really bright and knows more English than most of the other kids. She has a little English dictionary she carries around and everything. So she asked if she could make up her own story instead of copying and I said she could. Occasionally she would come up to my desk and ask me for help spelling some words but beyond that I gave her no help. She's only done the first 4 or 5 pages but let me share with you what she has so far.

The title of the book is "America Happy"

On the first page there is a sunrise and a boy and a girl standing in two houses looking at the sun.
"Up, Up the sun is getting up! (This line was taken from the Suess book)
Son, daughter, America, UP!"

On the next page is a picture of a man asleep in a bed.
"George W. Bush wake up!"

Page 3 has George standing in an office with a question mark over his head.
"George W. Bush?" (I took that to mean he was thinking"

Page 4 has him with a light bulb over his head walking to a door.
"Goes to his dollar room."

Page 5 has him in the room surrounded by bags of money with a joyous look on his face.
"Ha ha! Dollar!"

Page 6 has him standing on a platform waving a fistful of money at a cheering crowd.
"Come on. come on, dollar."

And that's as far as she has gotten.

Could there be anything more perfect than a third grade Thai girl's impression of America portrayed in Children's book format? I think not!

When she has finished, rest assured that I will be making photocopies and sending them out. "America Happy" could have liberal cult following by Christmas ;)

Just wanted to share,
Raven}

I'll be putting any more of these she sends me up on this website as soon as they come in.

In other news ...

Higgins! You're the best, too, you know. But, seriously, I just can't co-sign eXistenZ. I'm sorry. I did, however, make you a new T-Shirt design for your upcoming move. (Who doesn't like a play on a damn Ted Nugent (live) album title?) So, yeah. Get some transfer paper & blank tees and get going, ha ha!

On a related DIY (I'm more of a Do It For Me kind of guy, myself) note, Readymade has a sick little Dan Clowes thing in it for all you FancyNerds.

These guys + These guys = I'm going to make Curtains look better.

And finally (finally) from the That Little Girl Sasinan Is Right About Us File:

Ben Sherman is about to start selling suits in the US. This, I think, will solve all of me & Shamanzo's sartorial issues. (I talked to this fashion major \ waitress the other day who thought my idea about making suits myself and to my own bizarre specifications would take like five years of training. Again, DIFM.) Word to Glenn.

(Ecch.)