"Show me how pretty the world is because I envy the way you move"

Varieties of textual experiences:

• Fry, Stephen: The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within - A solid and entertaining beginner's guide to writing formal verse. If you like Fry's usual manner, he's in full form her; if you're allergic, there are other guides for you. Generally sensible, energetic, and if I disagree with some of his readings, he's rarely outright Wrong. I especially appreciate his insistence, backed by repeated examples, of the importance of crappy finger exercises. Bonus: an instructive analysis of what, exactly, goes wrong in McGonagall's The Tay Bridge Disaster.* All this said, it really is a beginner's guide: I did learn some technical tidbits, but mostly it was an enjoyable review of the basics. Rating: 3 odes**
  
  
• Juno - Dude. Yes. That. Tight script, tight snark, tight acting. I especially like how there are no characters from central casting, nor any scenes that are by the numbers (though a few play with expectations, only to break them nicely). Cleverness as a way of insulating yourself, oh yes. That. Rating: 4 TicTacs
  
  
• Shindell, Richard: Somewhere Near Patterson - It took me a while to warm to this album, possibly because only one song from it was on Courier. There's a lot to like here -- Shindell's first-person storytelling is in full form, starting with the tone-setting first track, "Confessions." "You Stay Here," despite one word that is exactly wrong, blows me away every time. A few tracks, I listen to and think "standard Shindell sort of thing," and I include his cover of Dar William's "Calling the Moon" in that, but there's enough songs like "Abuelita" and "The Grocer's Broom" and "Transit" to keep you going. Besides, standard Shindell is better than quite a number of people. Interestingly, there's a handful of songs where the speaker is in middle age or older. Rating: 3 1/2 Jersey turnpikes
  
  
• Lang, Robert: Pegasus (in Origami Design Secrets) - Nifty base and there's some satisfying transitions, especially when folding up the neck, but the final details leave something to be desired. In particular, the legs do not readily come out as diagrammed, even on my second attempt, and the head is more stylized than I like. Not nearly as nice a model as some of the others in the book, such as the box turtle with a plated back. Rating: 2 1/2 cranes
  
  
• I was going to do Yotsuba&! volume 6, but a month after supposed publication, the English edition is still MIA. Curse you, ADV! So moving along ...
  
  
• Sakura Wars tv series, episodes 1–5 - Lessee, we've got a Taisho-era Takarazuka-knock-off troupe piloting steampunked mechas in secret. Hello, my buttons. As long as it didn't actually suck, this looked worth watching. And it doesn't suck -- it ain't great, but it's watchably entertaining. The Imperial Defense Force Flower Division is the usual motley band of misfits -- a samurai girl, a veteran sharpshooter, Miss Rich Bitch, a powerful but traumatized orphan,*** and the (male) recent Naval Academy graduate inexplicably put in charge of the admittedly tactically challenged band -- they spend so much time rehearsing for their cover story and learning to just use the mechas, the women seem not to have learned how to fight as a team. I think I know where this is going, but that's okay -- I'm looking for more. Besides, they're kinda hot in the opening credits dance. Rating: 3 sakura petals of DOOM blowing in the wind

* In brief: everything.

** Although I learned to program in FORTRAN, not C, I use the traditional [0-4] scale instead of this newfangled 1 to 5 thingie.

*** You can tell she's traumatized because she talks through her teddy bear.

---L.