Following the tradition of pranks on Halloween, I realized on Monday that I’d managed to trick myself when I added up the number of classes I was teaching this week and figured out that I was teaching 14 classes. That’s a bit too much! There’s no way I could teach that many classes if I [...]

Books
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - I’d been avoiding this because of all the hype, but Safran Foer is a good prose stylist and I always enjoy novels that are written from multiple perspectives of a few characters.
The Blond Baboon by Janwillem van de Wetering - A quirky mystery set in Amsterdam, [...]

I’ve managed to steer clear of J. Michael Straczynski. I think I only saw a couple random episodes of Babylon 5, and wasn’t really inspired to keep watching the TV series. I bought the first issue of Supreme Power, but I didn’t really like it enough to buy any more comic books. I was very [...]

What manga should you read on Halloween?
Sugar Sugar Rune - This is the story of two witches who are sent to earth to capture human hearts in a contest that will determine who will become the Witch Queen. Candy references abound.
xxxHOLiC - Clamp’s series combines lovely art nouveau influenced art with the story of the [...]

Bleach by Tite Kubo (amazon)
Sometimes I wonder if contact with spirits from the beyond is the manga equivalent of developing superpowers after a horrible encounter with radioactivity. It certainly seems like a convenient way for a teenager to encounter a life-changing event. Bleach is the story of Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenage boy who has always [...]

I’d been hearing rumors about a horde of composition students with a tricky assignment descending on the reference desk. I ended up helping three of them last night, and boy did they need help - their instructor hadn’t scheduled a library visit and their assignment directed them to find scholarly articles related to a particular [...]

Make Mine Marvel Milkshakes at MetroKitty
I wonder if Dark Horse will put out a sequel to the bizarrely named anthology Sexy Chix? Isn’t it nice that someone’s providing a mock-up of a cover for Sexy Dudez?

So I’ve been having fun visiting with my little sister - we ran around, saw two movies (Mirrormask and Wallace and Gromit), went shoe shopping, and I think I found some possible wedding shoes. Now I don’t have to worry about not having shoes when I get married in around seven months. I am [...]

Via Dark But Shining, look at this lovely rendition of Lost done to “Bohemian Rapsody”.

I rented this movie because I was curious about The Man Who Will Be Bond. The plot was rather convoluted and at times I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, due to my not being able to interpret British English very well. Something seemed off about the sound levels of the movie, because when [...]