Musings of Our Madness: May 2014

The Happy Sunshine Gang

No. 19

Musings of Our Madness!

May 16th, 2014

So... About The Hiatus...

Letter From the Editor

Well, as you may have noticed, we have been on a nearly 3-month hiatus. While this is utterly pathetic, we must claim that it is not entirely to us being lazy. The Happy Sunshine Gang has been having to deal with a coup that is still attempting to either take over or form a new group to render the HSG useless, essentially accomplishing the same thing. On top of all this, we have been unable to find a way to continue printing the HSG without some sort of income. Therefore, on top of asking for you to give us your money (loose change, organs, soul, etc.), we are going to have to find ways on the side to keep things going. While this will create a lot of instability until we get things going, we are working on getting a club set up next year so that we shouldn’t have to worry about the financial aspect of things anymore.

While hardly anyone responded to the survey from before (hardly anyone means one person), we are trying to take your suggestions. For that reason, we will actually start having a decent serial published, restore the Knowledge Corner, and do more fun shtuff (we would be able to if we wouldn’t have things going wrong right and left...). Thanks for surviving through this long-winded letter that apparently nobody likes. I don’t blame you.

-The Infamous Gavin Stalin

Fancy Headline

Letter From the Editor

-The Infamous Gavin Stalin

Word Search

“Happy New Year From HSG” by Crossroads

Back to School, Fourteen, Snow, Midnight, Party, Resolution, Dancing

Bits and Pieces

All you do is sit down and count how many words you can make from a given phrase without using the words that are part of the phrase itself (ex: If the puzzle is ‘Fun Puzzle’, you can make ‘Fez’, but not ‘Fun’ or ‘Puzzle’). If you have beaten the given count, you may bring in your list of words to receive some sort of prize. It may be emailed or given to your local HSG representative.

I’m Freezing to Death

Count: 48

What Do You Think?

We’re wondering what our readers are thinking, and may or may not be using their answers to program a robot that will destroy the world. No worries. Just email your answer to niesbixby@gmail.com or give it to your local HSG representative. It will be published!

“_______________________________________”

Serial

The serial might be coming? Soon? Maybe if you’ve been a good child this year. That means that you don’t get to see it, Tommy.

Stereotyping States

Who knows? Our writers thought that this section would be fun. So, without any further explanation...

Michigan

Michigan is a wonderful state filled with UP ers, eh? They like to eat moose for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They particularly enjoy fishing for trout using their second born children as bait, hoping that each child is good for at least three casts.

-Glinda, Witch of the North

33 Haikus About Poetry

I wrote 33 haikus about poetry last year for poetry warmup exercises. Enjoy!

Poetry VII

Poetry still is

Boring without some music

It’s not poetry

Holiday Corner (???)

The Question

What do you hate most about May?

Opinion

Welcome to Hannah’s opinion piece. Yes, I am perfectly aware that I am not the usual writer for this section, however we are currently undergoing some changes as you may have noticed. One of these changes involves me posting the newsletter on a Google Blog. Which you no doubt know if you are reading this online.

Please do not blame our editor for this, as it was probably not entirely his fault. He does try, but there were some middle schoolers who were causing us issues yet again, and I have taken it upon myself to put the newspaper in a place where it can actually be seen by the general populace.

This week’s piece is going to be on finals week. If you are a middle schooler, I envy you so. You do not know the horror that is finals week. I mean, sure you get to sleep in a couple days, but you make up for it by having to take tremendously long tests on those Scantron sheets that nobody even likes or uses anymore, except high school teachers.

Frankly, finals week kind of ticks me off. I mean, we’ve already made it this far into the year, so why are you piling like twelve tests on us in the last week of school? I don’t know about you lot, but my brain is already on vacation during that last week. So wouldn’t it make more sense to schedule testing during a week when people will actually put some more effort into the test they’re taking? Wouldn’t that be better than people failing because they can’t deal with the stress and lack of sleep from studying?

Please tell your school if you agree with this, and stand up to the tyranny and stress. Kidding.

Thoughts for the Apocalypse Thrillseeker

So. Once again, here we are.

Hello, my friends. It was indeed a long hiatus, was it not? We are so terribly sorry about that, are we not.

Here is a bit of explanation, if you didn’t read the letter at the top. So our publisher’s parents kind of freaked because apparently we were using too much ink to print this, hence the hiatus.

But on to the fun bits. Yes. I find it somewhat interesting that we live in a society that cannot be bothered to stand up straight, tie its shoes, and not complain. And I’m not saying this because I’m secretly an old woman who thinks

that our generation is doomed to a life of eating cat poop and working at McDonalds ninety hours a week, but it is my personal opinion that people are just lazy.

Think about it this way. We used to go about trimming grass by hand with shears. Now we sit around on lawn mowers and kill the environment just to keep our lawns pretty. I mean, while we’re at it, what even is the point of a lawn? It’s just dead space that you can’t put a house or anything genuinely useful in. Maybe we should just get rid of lawns. (No, Hannah, that’s just making the problem worse. Shut up and go back to ranting now.)

Anyway, it is my personal opinion that a lot of our problems could be solved if we were a little bit less lazy and more proactive. Like if we all wanted Wifi everywhere, we could totally do that. People really don’t appreciate how much power they have until it’s taken from them. So that’s my dose of morality for the week. Come back next time for something that’s actually interesting.

-Glinda, Witch of the North

Proclamations for the Dependent Mind

“They share, like, everything.” The Guardian satirizes in it’s article, “Are teenagers really careless about online privacy?” If you know anything about me, it’s that I try not to have any image of myself online. My parents have implemented the strongest search settings on my laptop and monitor me half the time I’m online. Some would say it’s a breach of privacy. I say it’s only in my best interest.

Sure, I hate it. And sure, it’s unimaginably awkward when I try to watch a Youtube video on my laptop and AVG Family Home Security pops up, blocking my view of the screen.

And yet, I’ve adapted enough to shrug my shoulders and ask to borrow someone’s cell phone. Because to me, even though my parents restrict me, I’d rather not end up with viruses or creepo men messaging me (eww).

This isn’t to say that I defy any person who does choose to post pictures online. However, I advise readers to check their search settings; for instance, did you know that Google’s calendar settings can be set so everyone in the world can see where you are at 5:30 next Tuesday? Take a few minutes to make sure only friends can see your events. Don’t give out phone numbers online. Click on “moderate filter” instead of “none” during image searches. And most of all, be safe. As Steven Wright once said, “It's like the Wild West, the Internet.” Don’t be unprepared for the world at your screen. -Crossroads

Musings of Our Madness

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Waunakee Men's Chorus/A capella

Friday, May 16, 2014

Happy Sunshine Gang Volume Nineteen