Sentential Links #52

It's that time again! Click for context. Click, or the kitten gets it.

:: At this point, asking 'what graphic novels should I read?' has become a question equivalent to 'what movies should I watch?'. There is no general answer to the latter question, not only because there is simply too much good stuff out there, but also because it depends on your taste. Where do you start with movies? 8 ½, Citizen Kane or Casablanca? Or with the latest blockbusters, the latest Oscar winners, the latest art films? Depends who you are and what you want. (Terrific post. I only wish that graphic novels weren't so damned expensive. If I buy the entire Sandman saga, all ten volumes of it, at full cover price, I will have dropped somewhere around $150. I'm constantly seeing graphic novels I'd like to read, but I find price tags like $29.95 hard to swallow. The pricing structure of graphic novels tends to put a real damper on relying on serendipity to explore the medium, and I'm a reader who loves to rely on serendipity to go from one book to the next. There's always the library, of course, but the library doesn't have all the graphic novels I'd like to read.

This is an Upstate NY blog, by the way -- its writer dwells in Ithaca.)

:: They are going to hell, of course, but only because they smell like pee.

:: It looks like Harry Reid has begun ending his e-mails with the Democrats' dreaded 2006 catchphrase: "Together, America can do better." (God, what the hell kind of slogan is that?! It makes me think of Jean Hagen's immortal line from Singin' in the Rain: "Why, I make more money than...than...than Calvin Coolidge! PUT TOGETHER!!" Personally, I'd go with something like this: "Vote Democratic in '06. Because we gotta clean this shit up sooner or later.")

:: Apparently working from the curious assumption that coffee should be a refreshing jangle rather than a muddy, hostile punch in the mouth, Nescafe recently started selling Sparkling Cafe: coffee plus carbonation. Generations of European philosophers are jittering in their graves. (Just found this blog. Can't remember where.)

:: I’m finally learning what every 12-year old farm kid from Mississippi knows. (No idea how this blog got into my bookmarks -- I blame the Dutch -- but I like it.)

:: My purpose here is to point out that June 6, 2006 is an arbitrary date in a numbering system created by man that has been fiddled and fudged with over and over again across the course of centuries. (Yup. And the arbitrary nature of our calendar is why I always got irritated with people who would sagely pronounce that "The Millennium began on January 1, 2001 because there was no year Zero!" I'm thinking, "OK, let's just say that there was a year zero. Bam, now there was a year zero. Who cares! We made the whole thing up!")

:: An African-American and a Colombian serenading a Taiwanese woman with a forty-year old song by four guys from England, in a suburb of the Nation's Capital on Memorial Day/Black Gay Pride Weekend: Welcome to The United States of America, 2006. (That is just great.)

:: There are a few reasons why Hooters hits a sore spot with women.

:: I drove to Michaels the next day and I'll be damned if the whole store wasn't full of supplies for home crafts projects. I had no idea. (Michael's rules. It's like Lowe's, only with crafts and stuff.)

:: Don’t spend your time on the bus to basic reading Sun Tzu. (A lot of people have been screwed up by reading Sun Tzu....)

All for this week. Return next week for more. Or the kitten gets it.