Stopped by Harvard Sq. last night on the way home from work, and found some nifty little treasures. The first stop was at "Million Year Picnic," where I picked up Dave McKean's "Signal to Noise" CD. It's a radio adaptation of the graphic novel originally put out in the late eighties. It includes a new chapter called "Millenium" written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by McKean. The new chapter is in booklet form inside the box. MYP also had some CD Boxes illustrated by McKean which contained music by saxophonist Iain Bellamy, who also can be heard on the "Signal to Noise" CD. I keep referring to them as boxes, because they are beautiful cardboard boxes which are uniquely shaped and house only one CD - a much nicer form of packaging lending itself to rich inserts, unlike your typical jewel case.

The next stop was at "Anime Crash," where I found yet MORE Tare Panda stationery. Actually, they were nifty little 3x2in. notepads, which don't even seem like notepads. They seem like a collection of illustrations. The pads are divided into sections of usually two or three, each comprised of about 20 sheets of the same illustration. There is almost no room to write! Basically they're great for tearing out and using as bookmarks or passing along in letters to friends as nifty inserts. I collect them for the images, of course, as I'm still obsessed with the Japan aesthetic. My collection is housed in a smart little "My Melodie" lunchbox which I picked up from the same place, and is growing rapidly. They also had some really nice Tare Panda stickers printed on a greenish-gold metallic paper.

After all of the purchasing, I sauntered over to Wordsworth to check out new design titles, but found nothing of interest. I did notice a flyer, however, advertsing a Douglas Coupland reading there on the 30th of January at 7pm. The reading will focus on his "Miss Wyoming" novel - one of the two or three most recently published books of his which I haven't read. I thought of possibly picking it up to read before the appearance, but the "spirit" didn't quite move me enough and I left. (For those of you who don't know me and fail to understand the significance of that statement, let me elaborate...I LEFT A BOOKSTORE WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING!). I just haven't been able to get into anything of his since the "GenX-Microserfs-God-Postcards of the Dead" grouping. But, I've heard "Miss Wyoming" is good, so perhaps I'll try to make it. It would be fun to have him sign my beat-up old copy of Microserfs.

We'll see.

Am feeling SO icky today. I may need to take a sick day - which I was hoping to avoid, but which now seems unavoidable.

More later... mudpup : 9:02 AM | link | comments

Sunday, January 21, 2001