July 30, 2003

Death: At Death's Door

So when I was at the comic book store last weekend, one of the comic book guys waved a copy of Jill Thompson's Death: At Death's Door under my nose, so of course I bought it.

It was charming, a manga style companion to Season of Mists, showing what happens to Death when the residents of hell break free, and end up in Death's apartment enduring creatively flavored ice cream made by her sister Delirium.

I enjoyed the manga style character profiles at the beginning of the book, where you learn about all the traits of the Endless, age, height, special talent, favorite food, least favorite food, favorite color, smell, etc. I guess it wouldn't make sense to list the blood type personality often listed in manga for Sandman's immortals due to their lack of human blood....

I think it would be hard for someone who hasn't read Sandman to pick this up and get all the references. Basically, if you liked the 'lil endless storybook and wanted more, this fits the bill. And Death wears the best outfits!

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July 29, 2003

KeepMedia interview

CNet posted this interview with Louis Borders. I don't understand why people would want to pay to access archives of only 140 magazines, when you might be able to get access to similar resources at your local library. I'm sure that there won't be many librarians signing up to get access to back issues of Library Journal and School Library Journal, both of which are included in this service.

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July 28, 2003

I am yuppie scum

I bought a rug at Pottery Barn. Oh! The shame! I must say though, it does look great in my living room.

I always find something new everytime I look at the American Memory site. Like WPA posters on books and reading promotion. I like this poster for March, with a woman being blown away by strong wind of classics.

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July 24, 2003

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez, Batter Up!

I was only just getting around to checking around the Oyez site. I wasted some time this afternoon playing Supreme Court Baseball (requires flash). I'm so ignorant of Baseball though, I wasn't very good at it. Now, if it had been "Supreme Court Finnish Hockey Players", "Supreme Court Comic Book Characters", or "Supreme Court NBA Players from Wurtzburg" I might have had a fighting chance.

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July 22, 2003

Print!

It is probably sad that I get a little thrill when I have to consult print sources at the reference desk. It just happens infrequently at times. Today, I got to look up periodical title abbreviations, use Ulrich's, and show someone where the Poole's Index was.

Actually, now that I think of it I was more of an "Obscure Periodical Tracker Downer" today than anything else.

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July 20, 2003

Women in Refrigerators

Mike at AngryThoat has been writing about librarians in comics. It reminded me that one of the well known librarians in comics, Batgirl/Oracle, is one of the Women in Refrigerators, one of many female comics characters who have been diminished, cut up into little pieces, lost their powers, etc.

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July 19, 2003

Mavs drinking!

One problem with being a librarian and having a blog, I have a sick urge to play reference librarian for the people that are appearing in my referrer logs looking for news about Dirk and Steve drinking.
It was originally coming up due to two completely unrelated posts in my archives. I just it just goes to show how unintelligent search engines are!
I personally have no problem with Dirk and Steve drinking. There are far far worse things that NBA players do (and have done recently) than have a few beers and look goofy. I mean, let's face it, Dirk and Steve look goofy all the time anyway, dont they?
Here you go!

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July 17, 2003

The end is nigh

Courtney Love, the manga. I hope this is a hoax, it seems to be everywhere (pop-ups!), including Variety, but I'm not finding any announcements on Tokyopop's press release page.

Why, God, why?

I wonder what Ms. Love would look like with character designs done by Ai Yazawa?


-later- Press release now up at Tokyo Pop. The mind boggles!

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Bookmark[er]

Ok, take a look at the middle bookmark ALA is selling to promote Banned Books Week.

I do not think that Ms. Block wrote a book titled "I was a Teenager Fairy." I assume that someone caught the spelling error before the bookmarks went into production, but why on earth would you leave something like that bookmark up on your web site when you are trying to sell it as part of one of your larger marketing efforts of the year?

I'm being overly picky, I know.

Just for fun, Which Weetzie Bat Character are You?
I'm Lanka?

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July 15, 2003

Golf Pencils and Giant Robots

It was very slow at the Reference Desk last night. I had the following interior dialog with a Golf Pencil:

Why do you use me?
Because I need to write down call numbers.

-CLASSIFICATION!-

Why do you do this?
So I can help people figure out where to go.

-DIRECTIONS!-

Am I just a tool?
That's what you're for, writing things down!

-INSTRUMENTALITY! DESPAIR!-

Are you just a tool?
I hope not...I don't know, I hate you! I hate everybody!

Cue Ode to Joy and massive amounts of confusion!

Watching the last 6 episodes of Evangelion in a short amount of time has warped my brain. And I'm totally lost with the ending. I do not understand what happened at all. Perhaps I was watching everything too late at night. I haven't seen "End of Evangelion" yet, perhaps that will make more sense. I do think that it is good to have some anime where the deep psychological and philosophical ramifications of piloting a giant robot are explored. So many animated teenagers in Tokyo appear to not be all that surprised when they have to suddenly pilot a giant robot and destroy other giant robots/giant monsters/giant aliens.

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July 14, 2003

No Princess Di

I am very bitter that Princess Di will no longer be appearing in X-Statix. Marvel hacks! Did the powers that be decide that it would be too political and get in the way of some of their movie deals? Hmm? There was plenty of publicity for it earlier, maybe they weren't expecting the reaction that it got from the mainstream press.

Lying in the Gutters linked to an interview with Alan Moore. He comments on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, saying of one of the new characters for the movie 'What can you do with Dorian Gray, other than say 'Oh, hello Dorian, you're looking good'?
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I do have a sick urge to watch it, similar to the way people automatically slow down when driving when they pass an accident.

I'm thinking of picking up "Reign of the Zodiac" when it comes out. The art looks great(pdf), and I'm a sucker for a comic book world based on horoscopes!

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July 13, 2003

We have linkage captain!

Wow, I'm feeling so cataloged by other library blogs!

Thanks for the mention, openstacks and librarystuff.
I've just been plugging away for the past few months, confident that the only people reading this were a few of my buddies from library school and my family. Now I feel a little bit like I did when I was in kindergarten and played mama bear in the goldilocks and the three bears play -- nervous, excited, squinting slightly due to my peripheral vision being cut off by my giant calico bonnet.

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Cable Modem, Baby

I got my cable service hooked up to the internet yesterday. I had to spend around 10 minutes explaining to the repairman that librarians have masters degrees. I think that ALA should give out some sort of compensation or hazard pay when we have to do that. Obviously their marketing efforts aren't all that effective when held against the stereotype that most people have of librarians.

I'm so glad that I'm no longer supporting the evil dial up service that came with my computer. I had to go through the whole Q & A session with the customer service person:
"Are you using the fabulous new version of our browser"
"No"
"Did we send you the CD?!"
"Yes. I never installed it"
"Did you want to continue using your e-mail account after you-"
"I never used that e-mail account"

And finally my account was canceled. Now I just need to get an ethernet cable long enough to stretch over to my couch.

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July 12, 2003

ATTACK OF THE COMPUTER GENERATED ARACHNOID

I caught part of the spiderman animated series. I was not enthralled, I think because I just can't get in to seeing computer animated people. I just prefer my animation hand drawn or at least looking hand drawn. No tv show is going to have the budget to approximate the cgi in movies, and the animated characters just all seem to move too smoothly, you can sense the wireframe stuff underneath them controlling the action. And the plotline with the old/magically young woman who had a sword that looked sort of like the green destiny did not seem all that inspired to me. I know that Bendis was involved in scripting it at one point, but I think he stopped fairly early in the process.
I do think that Doogie Hauser is a geeky enough Peter Parker. I'm still nostalgic for the old "Spiderman and his Amazing Friends" cartoon, so what do I know?

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July 07, 2003

Batman

I am a little tired of the heat wave currently engulfing the east coast. My apartment is quite toasty right now.

I finally picked up the Batman/Planetary crossover. I'm glad that the series is being published again. Usually I tend to avoid crossover issues of anything, but I should have known that it would be good. It wasn't deep or anything, but it was funny to see the planetary team dealing with Batman cycling through all of his various incarnations (Adam West TV Show Batman, Frank Miller Dark Knight Batman, etc).

Posted by tangognat at 08:00 PM

July 01, 2003

Sim, still crazy after all these years

Cerebus has been totally off my radar for many years, but I stumbled across a few articles recently that detail what's going on in the comic as it approaches issue 300. "Return to Sim City" details the recent plot developments. And besides all the crazy women hating from the past which seems to still be evident, I'm very happy I'm no longer reading a comic whose nutty creator has evidently decided to spend his time explaining the Bible. Some issue by issue commentary at Davewatch (via LinkMachineGo).

So, I'm just happy that there are so many other comics to focus on instead, like 1602, X-Statix having Princess Diana come back from the dead, and a new issue of Scooter Girl.

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