It aint freekay to dig homeless guys
Review Of Dora Goes to School
Dora Goes to School, Leslie Valdes. Illustrated by Robert Roper
Forget trudging up hill in the snow to get to class, this bitch has to take a train and ride on a buzzard. So stop your bitchin, CR students. Broadway sucks and all, but it’s no “Treacherous Number Mountain” . Also, from the illustrations, the protagonist might be a waterhead, so maybe she just got lost.
Review of Tickle Monster
Book review- Sarah Godlin
Tickle Monster
by Josie Bissett
Illustrated by Kevan J. Atteberry
Compendium Press
This coming of age fable is the vehicle for Bissett’s brave stand in the name of sex fetish equality. The author has chosen a young alien as the protagonist; a metaphor for how foreign one with a so called “tickle fetish” might feel in a world of “sex squares”. He is labeled not only alien, but also as a monstrosity and, through discrimination, trudges on.. tickling not because he wants to, but because he must.
Bissett’s decision to rhyme her dialogue compounds the seriousness of this issue. This is best showcased in the sentence “My fingers are squiggly, your piggies are wiggly.” We can better hear the protagonist’s quiet suffering through the melodic exchanges in this work.
The downside of Tickle Monster is Bissett’s inability to add depth to the main supporting character; an unnamed, pointy eared, fluffy animal who seems to enjoy being tickled. Perhaps Bissett is making a point here about the anonymity of tickle enablers, but if so, the point is being lost.
This is truly a tale of emotional turmoil and the limitless triumph of the human, or in this case, alien monster spirit. We look forward to Bissett tackling her other pet issues; bath time and the first day of school, in an equally intriguing and thoughtful manner.
MADAME SPECIFICA’S (specific and retarded) JANUARY HOROSCOPES
CAPRICORN: After seven years of abstinence you blew it. One drunk hungry night and now the addiction is back. All those years you fought it and ate organically grown farmer’s market tofu dissolve as your relapse into delicious Taco Bell takes over your life.
AQUARIUS: The person you made out with on Halloween will start calling you. Why did you scroll your number out on his giant box of wine costume? Was it for wine? It was.
PISCES: Early this month you will buy a digital camera for around 400 bucks. However, you owe Suddenlink around that much money and as they disconnect your internet, your new camera continues to sit in your drawer as you use your phone to take pictures.
ARIES: You find yourself explaining the show quantum leap to one of your peers and you realize your peers are babies. Time to get yourself some friends your own age. But that do baby stuff still.
TAURUS: Due to bad planning, this month finds you sleeping in your vehicle more than usual. Bad planners do stuff like that. They also have all sorts of unwanted babies. Kick that girl out of your car.
GEMINI: You have been sweeping up the remnants of your shitty life more often lately. How about adopting a feline companion from the local shelter? Then you can sweep up the remnants of your shitty life AND cat hair.
CANCER: In the second week of the month you drop your precious phone and your screen breaks. Now you are forced to choose between buying a new phone or having an Angry Birds player with a broken screen.
LEO: This weekend will be a doozie. Your mother will spill a secret that will make dinner more interesting. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but, Here’s a hint…YOU’RE BLACK!
VIRGO: You can’t leave sausage soup out all night and heat it up in the morning to kill the bacteria. You can try, but you will still spend all day in the shower power puking and disaster diarrhea-ing.
LIBRA: In the first week of the month you will be awakened by a loud noise coming from outside of your window. It’s a Bear! No, It’s a raccoon in the trash! Wrong again. It’s the ghost of your dead grandfather asking if you’ve seen his cigarettes. He fell over your flower box.
SCORPIO: Your pillow has been missing for a few nights. Where is your pillow? It’s kinda irreplaceable because it has been perfectly shaped to your angelic sleeping head. Don’t bother tearing the house apart. It slipped through a worm hole and is being shaped by the head of a 48 year old hobo in 1958.
SAGITTARIUS: You finally finish War and Peace. What a hell of a lot of work you went through just to say that you read War and Peace. You’re an asshole. You could have just lied. Now go “read” the Bible.
