Human Beings Are Weird

No class tomorrow due to Fake Martin Luther King Day. (Real Martin Luther King Day having, of course, been the first day of class.) There are supposed to be all sorts of Martin Luther King Day-appropriate events tomorrow, but who knows if they will actually happen because REAL SNOW hahaHA!

The roads being icy for probably the first time this year, this was naturally the day I ended up riding up the hill in the trunk of The Voice's SUV because we had too many people.

Our possibly-violent possible-furry was talking to the supervisor about costumes again today - he runs one of those businesses where he appears at events in costume and does little dances and all. Today I learned that he has a Darth Vader costume which he wore for the COSI Museum's Star Wars-themed science exhibit, but apparently he can "make appearances" in it only if he follows a certain little procedure he's established with Lucasfilm, and he can't accept any money.

He says he trained some of those guys who were dressed as Stormtroopers in the Rose Bowl parade - he selected the ones with some military experience out of their group (I didn't catch what the group was - maybe some kind of retired police officers' thing), because they could march in step better, and he made them practice every other day. He couldn't do it himself because his bulk makes him unconvincing as a Stormtrooper. Though I guess not as a Darth?

Jenan and I actually share a shift at the library this semester. She made faces at my reading material today.

I like how Firefox's spellchecker has a problem with the singular of "Stormtrooper," but not the plural. Presumably their lack of identity is such that it is actually grammatically incorrect to refer to one individually.

Separate book post due to distraction

I requested volume 1 of Bizenghast and Return to Labyrinth off OhioLINK, and they came today.

I got through Bizenghast during my shift. I wasn't hugely impressed. The writing isn't great - none of the characters really has a distinctive voice, the tone of the story's inconsistent, and the protagonist is obnoxiously passive. I would only buy her Big Decision at the end of the volume as a decision if she'd at some point previously given some kind of indication of selfishness. I was about to call her a goody-goody, but actually I don't think I can even describe her personality, or her boyfriend's, or anyone else's. There seriously is no characterization at all here.

The art's interesting, but seriously Needs Work. There are really huge shifts in quality and style from page to page. The big problem I had was with the architecture, which is kind of an important element in the story, but which the artist seems uncomfortable with. Whenever she has to draw a complex structure, the style is always slightly off of everything else - the rest of the art is all flowing and jagged-slash-twisty, but when she has to draw a house it always looks like an art-class perspective exercise cut-and-pasted in. Everything's pretty uneven, but that's what was bugging me the most.

Maybe it gets better later, but I'm not interested enough to keep reading.

I was unable to get through Labyrinth, and probably won't. Erg.