Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country

That title is just too good not to steal.  This month I got TWO books from McSweeney's book club, plus one I bought for myself because the bookstore didn't have The Wire boxset and I can't leave a bookstore without buying something.  

I haven't gotten to the collection of short stories I bought yet, but these two were great:

    

"Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids' Letters to President Obama" is just what it sounds like.  It's letters.  By kids.  To the President.  Obama, not the other one.  They range from cute to touching to confusing and frightening.  I'm about as liberal as the average Internet Personality, and I was raised by a hippie, but I have to say that the one where the little girl tells Obama to get rid of the right to bear arms and reduce the right to free speech kind of freaked me out.  I suppose that growing up in rural Minnesota gave me a healthy appreciation for the correct use of guns, even if I'd never touch one myself.  And as much as I wish that almost everyone else would shutup, I'd hate to find out all of a sudden that I can't say whatever I want on a blog read by at least three people a day.

The Cold Fusion book is one in a series by Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis on Whey, the comically mismatched couple who are rewriting the encyclopedia.  It provides all kinds of important facts about Cold Fusion, like exactly how to make it and which common items are made better with Cold Fusion.  I keep capitalizing that because it intimidates me, and capital letters intimidate me, so it's thematically correct if not gramatically so.  Anyway, it also had an advertisement in the back for more informative books that I look forward to buying and reading, such as "Giraffes?  Giraffes!"

Both of these books were under 100 pages, and in the case of the letters to Obama, written in very simple and easy to understand words and phrases, such as "What are you going to name your puppy?" and "Smoking is bad for you."  So, get to cracking and report back to me when you've read something that cannot be decoded into ones and zeroes.

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