whimsical Amazon shipment

I receive tons of Amazon shipments in Cairo. (And by the way, they are a very nice company to deal with when it comes to lost shipments, which happen from time to time when sent here. Amazon briefly suspended service to Egypt during the Revolution, but quickly restored it.)

Most of my orders are the usual oppressive academic books. Today’s is more fun.

First, Masterpiece Comics, to which I referred briefly on this blog a couple of years ago and then forgot to order. It’s various classics works of literature written up as comic books. I’m not finished with the book yet, but up till now my favorite (as expected) is Dante’s Inferno done as Bazooka Joe comics. Bazooka Joe gum, for those of my readers unfamiliar with it, is terrible gum also accompanied by the most terrible humor, and the authors of Masterpiece Comics does an unbeatable job of translating Dante into Bazooka Joe sub-adolescent corniness.

A good example is when they reach the famous forest where suicides turn into trees. The following dialogue occurs:

Tree: “When I took my life my spirit was changed into this tree– wild beasts chew my leaves and break my branches.”

Bazooka Joe: “It could be worse– I could have brought my dog.”

And then the tree, like all the victims of Bazooka Joe’s “punch lines,” shows a puzzled face, lines of motion near the head, and sweat-drops of exasperation flying away from his face.

Then, just for the heck of it, I also ordered one of my favorite books from when I was 7 or 8, Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? There were a couple of illustration I remembered fondly from 35 years ago, and generally I just wanted to see if the book was still entertaining.