Farmers' market

My pea guy has not been at the market for three whole weeks!

People! This means I have not had peas for three whole weeks!

It is a tragedy!

Today I found another stand that had English peas, but I am still sad because it is not my pea guy.

On the other hand, I am still rolling in heirlooms, and this week, the little pale yellow almost fuzzy peach tomatoes were out! And there is still amazingly sweet white corn, strawberries that almost smell as good as they taste, raspberries, and my French pastry place. Joy!

There has also been much fooding with the mom. Yesterday was my day of pampering, given that finals are over (WHOO!): we ended up eating dim sum, watching Stardust (so-so, but will post on that later), getting pedicures, and then having dinner at Left Bank, in which I had a very good corn chowder (still cannot get over how sweet corn is right now), a nicoise salad and an amazingly decadent dessert of layered mascarpone, berries, and crisp, fragrant almond cookies.

I haven't been posting as much as I have largely been stuffing my brain with manga and So You Think You Can Dance in an effort to decompress from IBARW, finals, and work being done on the condo. Oh! And watching VVC vids! Which I may post on later, though I have not been following any post-VVC discussions, so my input will probably be unnecessary and repetitive.

Yumeji Kiriko and Ubukata Tou - Le Chevalier d'Eon, vol. 01 (Eng. trans.)

My reaction can be summed up as: FREAKING INSANE!

I'm not sure if it's more cracktastic than Yuki Kaori or Cross, but it's definitely up there with them!

Um.

How to sum up?

D'eon is based on the historical personal d'Eon Beaumont, a member of Le Secret du Roi, a spy network that worked for Louis XV. She lived half of her life as a woman and dressed as such, though an autopsy revealed that she was physically male.

In Paris in the 1750s, there are crazed poets running around. (I have already burst into insane laughter, and I haven't even gotten started!) These crazed poets write psalms in the blood of virgins ad then morph into grotesque monsters; either that, or the blood of virgins self-writes psalms. Sometimes when the crazed poets die, their blood writes "palmss" (this is not a typo). Or possibly they do. Or they carve it into themselves. Or it is carved into them. Or all of the above! I am not sure.

This is, by the way, the first few pages.

Enter the Chevalier Sphinx, a loligoth version of 1700s French style, complete with ringlets and a magical sword! She kills said crazed poets and vanishes mysteriously into the night.

Now enter d'Eon, a foppish nobleman with a pragmatic and put-upon servant Robin. D'Eon is a spy for Louis XV and is also working on the crazed poet/psalm/palmss/virgin blood case.

I haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet, as it is somewhat spoilery! I feel, however, that enjoyment of the series will not be ruined by spoilers, as they are the type of spoilers that are so WTFF? that you will not really believe just how cracktastic they are until you see them on the page.

But for those of you who don't want to be spoiled, I ended up buying the manga after reading the first two pages in the bookstore because I was laughing so hard that I couldn't not get it. The below is a monologue by our first crazed poet!

The rituals of the masses break the mind, forced to sing and rejoice in the law while the soul fills with ice. God is dead. At least, God is dead. Tonight... the blood of virgins will fuel the pilgrim's grasping palm leaves, singing of revolution and destruction. Cast our flesh into the flames and bless the union of inferno. The world, filled with crimson, NOW RESTS CONTENT!

Again, this is just the first two pages!

( Spoilers, sort of? )

I have no words. I just stuck the anime in my Netflix queue, though I'm a little scared to watch, as the manga is really bloody. On the other hand.... INSANE MASS-MURDERING POETS!

Ogawa Yayoi - Tramps Like Us, vol. 11-12 (Eng. trans.)

( Spoilers )

November, Sharyn, ed. - Firebirds Rising

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me; but then, short-story collections invariably are as I'm not the biggest short-story fan in general.

I liked Diana Wynne Jones' "I'll Give You My Word" for the wordplay, I liked the oddness of Kelly Link's "The Wizards of Perfil," and I liked the view of a house through three different eras in Tanith Lee's "The House on the Planet."

My favorites ended up being Kara Dalkey's "Hives," which reminds me a little of Scott Westerfeld's YA SF -- the combination of social science and science fiction, with an extra dash of trendiness from So Yesterday. The story is about girl cliques and girl social dynamics, as brought into focus by the use of cell phone implants that make it sound like people are talking inside your head. I'm still a little wary about nearly everything involving girl cliques because of how it always plays into the "girls are catty!" stereotype, whether it means to or not, and this story didn't do enough with the trope to act as a commentary on it instead of a straight-up illustration of it. On the other hand, I loved the narrative voice of the POV character, and I loved that it was something that wasn't about white, middle-class girls. (More on this later.)

The other one that I loved the pieces was Ellen Klages' "In the House of the Seven Librarians," in which an old library ends up closing itself to the world, and seven librarians raise a girl. There is so much book love in this story that I couldn't not love it. I'm not sure what to say about the story, except that it so much sums up my feelings toward libraries and books and things like the Dewey decimal system versus Library of Congress, obsessive-compulsive categorization, nooks and crannies, and booksbooksbooks.

And now, back to white middle-class girls. Most of the authors in the collection were women; most of the stories were about girls. Both of these things make me happy. And yet...

( I swear I don't go looking for this stuff. )