Happy Sunshine Gang Volume 20

Letter from the Editor-
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the official Volume 20. It's been a long road to getting here, which may or may not have included bribery, perjury, and other crimes of that nature. As you may have noticed, The Infamous Gavin Stalin has gone mysteriously missing from the circuits of the Interwebs. Hopefully we will find him by the time the next issue is set to print. (Well. Not really print.)

So the reason I'm still talking is because I wished to tell you all about our schedule for the upcoming year. A new issue will be published every Friday evening, and if not then, then it shall be posted Saturday morning (because sometimes I work on Fridays). If you have any questions about his, please comment somewhere below.

So, without further ado, on to the issue!
-Glinda, Witch of the North

Opinion-

How to Transition Into School Like a Pro

Good morning, afternoon, and evening my friends!

As the summer draws to a close this August, I’d like to focus on the best time of the year: the start of school! While I am absolutely ecstatic about going back and seeing all you lovely readers and finally having a schedule to my disorganized life again, I know many dread the oncoming days filled with quizzes, homework, and presentations, not to mention little to no sleep and stress levels off the charts. So relax! For the time being...and enjoy the precious minutes filled with sunshine and late morning rises. Just follow my tips for a successful school year on the first day and it’ll be like you never left. :P

Step one: Walk in like you own the place. Put on your favorite shirt, a smile, and some confidence and enter the school building with your head held high. If you act like you want to be there, your cloudy persona will be quick to catch up. Before you know it, you can’t wait to come back!

Step two: Pay attention and get your homework done early. At the start of the new school year, teachers are only going to give you easy, “Tell Me About Yourself!” assignments and tons of review material. With this in mind, tackle that homework early so you can have some free time. This will ease your body back into the school feel of things so you aren't squashed under piles of homework as soon as you come back. And paying attention? At the very least, you’ll feel more alert and awake in those early classes.

Step three: While those are the main steps, enthusiasm is always a great way to enter the school year. So try something new! Join a different club, make some new friends, etc. And if you’re ever so sad about the loss of summer, I will always be available as one who is quite enthusiastic about school and can make it seem like Disneyland.

Happy Back to School! Have a great year!

-Crossroads

Thoughts for the Apocalypse Thrillseeker
Sorry, guys. No Satan/Santa this week. I'm saving that up for the Christmas Issue. That is, if we survive that long. Who knows?

Instead, I have opted to extol the symptoms of fangirl-itis.

Fangirlitis is a rather serious disease that affects only human females of the age range 11-26. Symptoms of fangirlitis include but are not limited to excessive squeeing (yes, that is a word now), crying, attacks of "feels", extreme sadness over character death or emotional trauma, a devotion to fanfiction and fanart, and spending a lot of time on sites such as Tumblr, Deviantart, or Fanfiction.net. As of now, there is no cure for fangirlitis, but researchers are spending much time and effort to find a cure for this disease.

Until official medication is invented, I recommend keeping the afflicted person away from materials related to their obsession, or encouraging them to write a fanfiction. While it may sound counterproductive, it is often helpful to get out the "feels" by writing about the characters who are causing them.

Thank you very much. This has been Thoughts for the Apocalypse Thrillseeker.

-Glinda, Witch of the North

The Hobo Royalty Pageant: The Results

This just in from the Annual Hobo Days-Songbird Joe McCue has been crowned King of the Hoboes for the second or third time. Next post will be this Friday, when we answer this important question; Is Santa actually Satan?
-Glinda, Witch of the North

The National Hobo Convention

If anyone out there is interested in some good times, possum stew, and camping under the stars, the National Hobo Convention is this weekend in Britt, Iowa, a scant 260 miles from the home base of the Happy Sunshine Gang. That's just 4 hours by car, 79 hours on foot, and 22 hours 7 minutes if you manage to drag a bike out of the creek. Because there is no shortage of such things. It honestly makes one want to start throwing cabbages.

Visitors to the convention can participate in hobo sing alongs, buy hobo crafts, and eat genuine hobo food. For aspiring hobos, there is a prom-esque contest in order to be crowned king or queen of the hobos. I kid you not. For recently deceased hobos, you can even be interred in the one and only authentic hobo cemetery.

Some names of previous hobo royalty are as follows- Hobo Lump, Fishbones, El Paso Kid, Liberty Justice, Iowegian Rick, and Come On Pat. The entire convention comes complete with a website that looks as if it crawled out of the pit of hell that was the 90s. The website includes the history of hobos. (hoboists? Hoboites? hoboistory?) as well as the hobo code ( which contains such gems as #6-Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk.) and even an in to the hobo grapevine.

As he reads over my shoulder, my writing partner nearly swallowed a lemon seed out of his tea. He's okay now. It's okay, guys.

Scrolling through the pictures on the site, you can find such lovely pictures as hobos cooking over fires, hobos playing guitars, and hobos sitting around talking to each other. All in all, it seems like a good ole time out there in northeast Iowa. If such a thing can be found in northeast Iowa. Or Iowa. Or the Midwest. Yes, we're bitter. Live with it.

For our steadfast readers in Germany and Russia; one can only hope that this site translates into your languages. If you are trying to read this in English, I truly pity you. We use enough malapropisms and made up words to confuse native English speakers.

Hopefully we shall be posting more often.

For more information, check out this hideously crafted website. And they actually paid someone to design it. (This was Stalin's contribution.)

www.hobo.com

Cheers,

-Glinda, Witch of the North