The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. The densely cross-hatched, scuzzy-looking artwork of the legendary R. Crumb serves to illustrate what we suspected all along: The book of Genesis is spectacularly weird. Recommended.
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life. It's fairly brilliant, and I liked it, but not enough to continue with the series. At least not any time soon.
I've added a new page to my website: SimplePhrase Top Five. It's a series of top five lists. I figure it may come in handy when people (or, more likely, social networking sites) ask me what my favorite X is. Now I can just point them to this web page. It's fun to mess with, so I anticipate somewhat frequent tweaks and updates. You know, until I get bored with it.
Asiago Fresco (i.e. fresh, i.e. not aged very long) is a creamy, mellow sort of a cheese the flavor of which I find difficult to describe. Subtle. It's a subtle flavor, with some similarities to parmesan. I find it a very pleasant cheese.
The Dreams in the Witch House has been added to Stories by Lovecraft.
As you were.
I picked this up during the Amazon pricing glitch I blogged about earlier. Shock SuspenStories was an EC sampler of sorts, featuring a horror story, a crime story, a science fiction story, and a war story. It quickly distinguished itself from the other EC titles by including social commentary stories about hot button issues like prejudice. Amusingly, these stories were dubbed "Preachies" by the EC editor-in-chief, William M. Gaines.
These are high-quality comics (which I expected from EC), but I didn't enjoy Shock anywhere near as much as the other EC stuff I've sampled — precisely because it incorporated real-world issues. When I sit down for some cheesy pulp 50s comics, I don't want to be reminded that the KKK used to beat people to death. Or that police brutality happens. It's like sitting down in front of a nice warm fire and then getting dashed in the face with a glass of ice water. I'll not be pursuing this line of comics any further; I'll stick to the purer escapism of horror and SF.
I won't be getting rid of this book anytime soon, though, simply because the cover is a perfect storm of exploitation.
So, a couple days ago Amazon experienced a pricing glitch wherein a bunch of graphic novels and comic collections were reduced in price to $14.99. I stumbled across this early on in the crisis. At that time, nobody knew it was a glitch; I assumed it was a big sale. Among the discounted items were the EC Archives (Tales from the Crypt, et al). These are 50 dollar books, and I covet them most highly. But we just don't have the money to throw around, so I limited myself to just one volume. With shipping it was 19 bucks. Score.
A day later, I received my shipping notification and UPS tracking number. Soon after, I learned that I was one of the lucky ones — some people (a lot of people, actually) had their orders cancelled. I also learned that Amazon was giving out $25 credits, which I thought was pretty nice of them.
The day my book was delivered, I received an email that I had been issued the $25 credit. Even though my order was not cancelled. Score again.
I used the windfall to get something for Steph and a couple more comic collections (ones that were unaffected by the pricing glitch and therefore still in stock). You'll be hearing about all of these acquisitions in due time here on the blog.
If you've ever tried to shut a cat in (or out) of a room, you know that they often make a break for it and escape if you're not super fast through the door. Well, I've figured out a way around this problem: Don't turn away from the cat.
Cats are predators, and they are unlikely to spring into action if they think they're being observed. In southern Asia, for example, boaters on rivers wear false faces on the back of their heads so that tigers won't leap from the banks and attack when the boaters go by.
It's the same principle with house cats. It's usually only when you turn to go through the door that they spring into action, darting for freedom. If, on the other hand, you keep your face and body turned towards the cat(s), they won't dart at all. And if they do, you can move to intercept, which almost always stops them short.
True, this does require you to open a door behind your back and then move backwards through the door, but that's a lot better than accidentally slamming the door on your cat.
Anyway, I didn't know if this was common knowledge or not, but I thought I'd share it with my fellow cat-owners. It certainly works on my cats, and has saved me a lot of grief.
Link to Sluggy Freelance web comic.
The early days of Sluggy Freelance were wild and woolly, and this book collects the earliest of the early days. These cartoons were published in the late 90s and are things of beauty.
I followed the strip at that time, and read almost all of the strips in this book online as they were published. That was a great experience, particularly because I had some friends with which to enthuse about the comic. Early Sluggy was magical.
Somewhere along the line, the magic wore off. We all stopped reading Sluggy at one point or another. And revisiting these strips was a bit of a let-down after they'd been built up in my memory.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the strips and I'm glad I bought the book, even at its outrageous price.
Man, that Dave Barry sure is funny. There are many laugh-out-loud funny bits in this collection of columns. I'd heartily recommend this book to anyone.
Some of these I hadn't read since they were first published in the late 80s. Going back and seeing them again made me realize just how big an influence Dave Barry has had on my own somewhat warped sense of humor. Reading this book was like getting reacquainted with an old friend.
I'll probably be picking up more Dave Barry collections in the future.
It took some tedious work, but I've finally gotten my web site up to HTML 4.01 strict compliance. My code has never been particularly sloppy, but I like having everything legitimized. My site is now a responsible one.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, I've updated the Quote Extant. It's even semi-topical.