Oh, can't forget the movies I've seen in the past couple of weeks.

• Tales of the City (Checked out of the library)
  
• More Tales of the City Watching these mini-series made me miss San Francisco. (Library)
  
• MST3K: The Magic Voyage of Sinbad (Borrowed from Teena)
  
• MST3K: The Beast of Yucca Flats (Teena)
  
• MST3K: Alien from LA (Teena)
  
• MST3K: The Amazing Transparent Man (Teena)
  
• MST3K: Hercules Against the Moon Men (Teena)
  
• MST3K: Angels Revenge (Teena)
  
• Like Water for Chocolate Watched at Teena's place. (Library)
  
• The second season of Futurama.

Time to start using the Amazon links again. Right now it's for a couple things I want to buy.

Diana: Warrior Princess Imagine if, in the year 3000, some television producers decided to put out a show based on Princess Diana's life but researched it as thoroughly as was Xena: Warrior Princess. This is a role-playing game based on the resulting show. How could I possibly resist a game in which Margaret Thatcher is a necromancer?

The Tick: The Entire Series Yet another wonderful show that Fox cancelled way too soon.

Let It Be...Naked Can't pass up a "new" Beatles record.

And then I get sick for nearly 2 weeks & am stuck at home (without net access) for most of that time. (On the upside, when I first got sick, Teena brought me chicken soup, orange juice, MST3K videos, and comfort.) So lots of time for reading. Plus, a lot of the reading was manga, which tends to go very quickly, so a huge list this time.

Books

• Iron & Silk: The Player's Guide to Improvised Weapons by Chris Jones, John Seavey, & Will Hindmarch. An okay book for the Feng Shui game. It lists the kinds of locals where fight scenes might take place, the kinds of things you'd find there, and how they could be used as weapons.
  
• Ranma 1/2, vol. 22 by Rumiko Takahashi. Takahashi's manga are very popular, so there's always a queue for her books from the library. I tend to forget just what the latest volume published is (and I'm too lazy to go through the notebook where I write down the books I've read), so I tend to end up re-checking out (and usually re-reading) a volume each time I sign up for the queue. I did that here.
  
• Ranma 1/2, vol. 23 by Takahashi. (Library)
  
• Ranma 1/2, vol. 24 by Takahashi. Also, I can't keep track of her books' release schedules, so I end up reading multiple new volumes at the same time. (Library)
  
• DeadLands: The Great Weird North by Aaron Rosenberg. This setting book details Canada in the DeadLands RPG. It's a concept I really like: a horror western. But the execution just doesn't live up to the premise's promise. But I still get some of the books for the game.
  
• Lupin III, vol.9 by Monkey Punch. (Library)
  
• InuYasha, vol.14 by Rumiko Takahashi. (Library)
  
• InuYasha, vol.15 by Takahashi. (Library)
  
• The Art of InuYasha by Takahashi. (Library)
  
• The Vampire Brat & Other Tales of Supernatural Law by Batton Lash. (Library)
  
• Y: The Last Man, vol.2: Cycles by Brian Vaughan & Pia Guerra.
  
• Nextworld, vol.2 by Osamu Tezuka
  
• Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, vol.1: 1954-1955. Yes, Frank Frazetta (of many a fantasy poster & paperback cover fame) was Al Capp's assistant for several years.
  
• Legal Action Comics by various.
  
• The Montaigne Revolution by various. This is a meta-plot update for the 7th Sea role-playing game. Like DeadLands, the idea is better than the execution. This is a swashbuckling game set in a world that bears a striking resemblance to 17th century Europe. Unfortunately, it's so close to the real world that they should have just stuck with the original names. As it is, it just doesn't work. I want to like it, and I want to support swashbuckling games, but it's just so disappointing. Parts of the world are okay, but the thing as a whole just doesn't hang together well.
  
• Point Blank by Ed Brubaker & Colin Wilson. Noir-ish comic with superheroes. (Library)
  
• Tank Girl 3 by Alan Martin & Jaime Hewlett. (Library)
  
• Alan Moore's The Courtyard adapted by Anthony Johnston & Jacen Burrows.
  
• Alan Moore's The Courtyard Companion. This includes Moore's original short story, Johnston's script for the comic, some more art by Burrows, and annotations (by Ng Christakos) to all the Lovecraftian (and other) references
  
• Dance Till Tomorrow, vol.6 by Naoki Yamamoto. (Library)
  
• Dance Till Tomorrow, vol.7 by Yamamoto. (Library)
  
• SandLand by Akira Toriyama.
  
• Maison Ikkoku, vol.3 by Rumiko Takahashi. I like Takahashi's work, but this is the only series I've bought. Guess I have a soft spot for romantic comedy.
  
• Lost World by Osamu Tezuka.
  
• Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama.
  
• Astro Boy, vol.17 by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka is amazing, but his Astro Boy stories start to blur together after a while. So I stopped buying these monthly volumes (although they still show up occasionally in my box at the comic book store). However, there are still 2 or 3 of these in my unread pile.
  
• Burn, Bitchy, Burn by Roberta Gregory.
  
• YuYu Hakusho, vol.3 by Yoshiro Togashi.
  
• Hey Mister Celebrity Roast by Pete Sickman-Garner.
  

Well, I also watched a lot of movies, during my illness, but it's getting late, so I'm going to stop for now. More tomorrow.

And of course, after that last entry, it ends up being 8 days before I update again.

Books

• The Gunwitch: Outskirts of Doom by Dan Brereton & Ted Naifeh. This is a retelling of the story from Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, etc. using one of the characters from Brereton's The Nocturnals. It's okay, but doesn't really bring much tothe story.
  
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. This graphic novel depicts Satrapi's childhood in revolutionary Iran. Very moving. (Checked out of the library)
  
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. I really enjoyed this, although the end fell a little flat. One of the things that I especially liked was how Maguire created an Oz that reflects Baum's books & not just the movie. (Library)
  
• Justice League Adventures: The Magnificent Seven by various. Another collection of the comics based on the cartoon series.
  
• Real Stuff by Dennis Eichhorn et al. Autobiographical stories by Eichhorn, illustrated by a variety of cartoonists.
  
• Maison Ikkoku, v.2 by Rumiko Takahashi. Romantic comedy manga. This is the second volume of a new edition, published without flipping the artwork (so the book reads right to left). Unfortunately, the number of chapters per volume has changed between editions, so unless I want to buy all the volumes in the new edition, I'll have some duplicated chapters.
  
• Hellboy: Conqueror Worm by Mike Mignola. I'm starting to get excited about the upcoming Hellboy movie.
  
• ad6 Degrees of Separation by John Kovalic. The latest collection of "Dork Tower" comics.
  
• Slow News Day by Andi Watson. Wonderful story about two people working for a newspaper in a small English town.
  
• Nextworld, v.1 by Osamu Tezuka. More manga from "the god of comics."
  
• Batman: Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, v.3 by various. (Library)
  
• X-Treme X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont, Ivan Kordey, & Brent Anderson. It's been a while since I read anything written by him, but this confirms it: I'm over Chris Claremont. (Library)
  
• Southpaw by Scott Morse. (Library)
  
• My Sassy Girl, v.1 by Ho Sik Kim & Dae Hong Min. Korean comics. Eh. (Library)
  
• Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski & Gary Frank.
  
• Munchkin Monster Manual 2.5 by John W. Mangrum.
  
• Burning Shaolin by Robin D. Laws. This is a role-playing adventure designed for either Dungeons & Dragons or Feng Shui.* I really liked the attitude the author took to the differences between the two games. In the description of one area, there is a pile of debris. The D&D rules say "In the time-honored tradition of dungeon trash, this refuse pile contains a tiny amount of treasure and a bunch of nasty poisonous creatures." It then describes how the adventurers can find a miniscule amount of saleable junk if they search through it (but they run the risk of getting ill if they do). The Feng Shui rules simply say "Feng Shui characters are too busy looking cool to root through trash for spare change."
  
• Ethereal Player's Guide by Rebecca Sean Borgstrom & David Edelstem. The latest (last?) supplement for In Nomine, a role-playing game about angels & demons. This felt a lot like Borgstrom's Nobilis rpg: Many little snippets of fiction that do a lot to set mood but almost nothing else. Also, the sense that you're being shown a vast & detailed cosmology that bears almost no resemblance to anything that has gone before & therefore doesn't resonate. I'd love to play in a game run by Borgstrom or read fiction written by her, but for me her game-writing doesn't really work.

*Feng Shui is a role-playing game that tries to capture the feel of Hong Kong action movies. It has nothing to do with arranging furniture.

Man, I've really got to start updating this thing more frequently. Quite a few books to add since last time.

• The Redeemer by Pat Mills & Wayne Reynolds. (Checked out of the library) Graphic novel about the Warhammer universe (at least, that's what I gather; I don't actually know enough about Warhammer to say that definitively).
  
• The Streets of Ankh-Morpork by Stephen Briggs & Terry Pratchett. Another Discworld map. (Borrowed from Teena)
  
• Crisis on Multiple Earths by Gardner Fox & Mike Sekowsky. This is a collection of the first 4 team-ups of the Justice League and the Justice Society. Comics from the '60's feel very different from the way they do now. (Library)
  
• Isolation & Illusion: Collected Short Stories 1977-1997 by P. Craig Russell. Beautiful artwork.
  
• The Interman by Jeff Parker. (Library)
  
• Club 9 by Makoto Kobayashi. More manga. (Library)
  
• Sweater Weather by Sara Varon. (Library)
  
• A Tourist Guide to Lancre by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, & Paul Kidby. (Teena)
  
• The Discworld Mapp (sic) by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Briggs. (Teena)
  
• The Avengers: Clear & Present Danger by Kurt Busiek & George Perez.
  
• Potlatch: Comics to Benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund by various
  
• Justice League Adventures, v.2: Friends & Foes by various. This is a collection of issues of the comic book based on the cartoon series on Cartoon Network.
  
• Star Wars: Rites of Passage by John Ostrander & Jan Duursema. Why is it that the best Star Wars stories are not coming from LucasFilm? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.) These comics & the 5-minute cartoon shorts that aired on Cartoon Network last November kick ass & are way better than anything Lucas has done for a long, long time.
  
• Pride & Joy by Garth Ennis & John Higgins.
  
• Dr. Radium Battles Phill, King of the Pill Bugs by Scott Saavedra. Silly stuff, but very fun.
  
• Daredevil: Love's Labors Lost by Dennis O'Neil & David Mazzucchelli.
  
• Shaman King, v.1 by Hiroyuki Takei.
  
• Shaman King, v.2 by Hiroyuki Takei.
  
• Art Adams' Creature Features
  
• Summer Blonde (stories) by Adrian Tomine. (Library)
  
• Lupin III, v.5 by Monkey Punch.

Movies

• MST3K: Operation Double 007 An amazingly bad film starring Neil Connery, Sean's brother. (Teena)
  
• The Kingdom Very creepy Danish mini-series about a haunted hospital. Written & directed by Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark). This series is being remade in English as Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital and will air in March. (Library)
  
• The Zero Effect I'd never even heard of this movie before Teena told me I should see it. We watched it together. It's very good.