Ooh, philomath is dictionary.com's word of the day!

1. A lover of learning; a scholar.

It is precisely for the philomaths that universities ought to cater.
-- Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies


Is "anti valentines day column" a genre unto itself yet? It's that time of year... you know, that sounded like it should have been a title.

Ah well, there was a very sweet pro valentines column in todays Metro paper.

I picked up a huge pile of comics at the library Saturday after another binge of placing holds on things. And today there was more waiting. Good stuff.

Books of note: last night I read "North of 40" where this evil force is unleashed on a hicktown/whole county by a Dungeons and Dragons kid, and this surly goth girl. The cover described it as a new horror comic (not that I'm usually much of a horror guy, my love of Walking Dead notwithstanding) but it very quickly became a super hero book, what with one main character suddenly ending up with "flying brick" powers- flight, strength, nigh-invulnerability.

It bugs me how arbitrary the story's opening seems- the goth girl hates the small town, so to spice things up releases an eldritch evil and mystical curses on the townspeople, resulting in various mutations.

There are... several steps that go before goth girl to crazy evil force.

There's one character that, when she first appears, is on the run from some guys that are trying to assault her, who think they can get away with it because she's half black. With that kind of trauma, I could easily see her release that evilness, even if she only wanted to do that for a moment, or didn't fully realize what she was doing.

But the character that actually does it, we aren't shown WHY she's the way she is.

Even that would be okay, she could just be REALLY evil. End of story, she's evil. Fair enough- but then I don't buy the D&D kid being in love with her, especially since he's shown to be good, manipulating the crazy powered forces to get some heroes around (mostly that "flying brick" character)... or if not "good" necessarily, then definitely "idealistic".

The creators (written by Aaron Williams, great art by Fiona Staples) jumped the gun, creating a great status quo by sacrificing a good reason for that status quo.

That said, the old Sheriff is awesome. He looks like (the jury's still out on whether he his) an old man in a cowboy hat, but when the guy he arrested last night suddenly gets super strength and the Sheriff's got bupkis- he doesn't even blink, keeps talking tough, then proceeds to point his gun at the guys scumy (and vulnerable) brother... or relative or something.

And when the bad dudes try to straight up ambush him- the Sheriff STILL keeps his cool, and proceeds to immediately turn the tables on them again. Again, I say, awesome.