When the doge comes around

Games Club. Played a new game, Doge, really good, simple yet leading to interesting interactions. Came in second, but it was oh so close — another player and I both achieved the victory condition in the same season, but he had one more house than I did. Also played Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers (did miserably) and a few games of Light Speed.

Before that I shopped around a bit at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, looking for a birthday gift for my mother. (Oh fuck, I forgot to call her! Despite having a reminder in my Palm. I suck.) I eventually remembered her once having said she liked Janice Joplin, and figured she wouldn’t have any CDs of hers (my parents having come late to the CD revolution), so I got one at Virgin. Also picked up Johnny Cash’s American IV: When the Man Comes Around for myself.

I’ve been reading AS Byatt’s The Matisse Stories, which isn’t my usual sort of thing, but I’m liking it quite a bit. These are short, slice-of-life stories, with strong visual descriptions, lots of emphasis on color. Byatt has a great talent for description and for conjuring up characters with an economy of phrasing. (Her grasp of formal color theory, in the second story, leaves a bit to be desired.) I’ve forgotten what turn of conversation led cthulhia to lend it to me.

Books, not pamphlets

Over the past few months, I’ve been cutting way back on the number of comics I buy in pamphlet form, in favor of getting collected trade paperbacks later on. For me, pamphlets are a way of either sampling new work that I might be interested in, or following work that I like so much I just can’t bear to wait for the collection. (Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder falls into that category, as does Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Alan Moore’s Promethea, and not much else.) This is primarily because of money — pamphlets are more expensive than collections. Secondarily, because of storage, which is also about money, since if I had a whole lot more money I could afford more storage space. With the economy the way it is, I figure I’m not the only one making these decisions.

I see in ¡Journalista! that Viz has become the first comics publisher to stop publishing pamphlets entirely, moving over to a books-only format. Dirk Deppey says:

Art-comics publishers have also begun moving the emphasis of their product lines towards books, though not with quite the decisiveness shown by the manga crowd. The goal, of course, is to have as much of the product line as possible accessible in the market friendliest to such works -- the bookstore trade.

This reminded me of something I’d noticed yesterday at the Union Square Barnes & Noble: They’d expanded their comics section. It’s still nothing to compete with any decent comics store, but there were a lot more titles there than there had been a few years ago, and a pretty good range. mainstream superheroes, manga, independent titles, including a couple I hadn’t seen before.

And Mark Evanier, who recently described comics as “not a healthy field in which to invest the kind of creative energy and passion that is usually required to break into a new line of work”, has expanded upon his comments in a way that makes it look to me as if he’s primarily talking about mainstream comics. This reinforces me belief that the comics field is evolving to favor book-form work.

Heavyhands, week 2, day 3

Actually doing three days of Heavyhands this week! I normally take Saturdays off from exercising, but I won’t have time tomorrow, and I’ve got Thursday’s sushi overindulgence to work off.

Today I walked west, up Newark Avenue, as far as Five Corners, then back. Not a good idea — level ground is better than hills, and there were too many high-traffic intersections.

• Weight: 274.5
• Walked for 32 minutes, doing six (or maybe seven) sets of flyes, lifts, and overheads, 30 reps per set, with 1-lb weights.
• Heartrate started out in the 120s, eventually got up into 130s and sometimes 140s. Stayed in 150s when walking uphill (with occasional peaks at 161), but down into 120s on downhill slope (occasionally as low as 118, which is actually outside of what my monitor thinks is my cardio range, though not according to the formula given in Hot Point Fitness).

Is Tlon part of the Klingon Empire?

It seems Multnomah County, Oregon has a list of about 55 languages for which the Department of Human Services is required to have translators on hand for talking to mental health clients. They’ve just added Klingon to the list.

Jorge Luis Borges remains the official prophetic author of the information age.