telophase | The latest Hellsing

So why is it every time that I decide to go to an actual sit-down restaurant for lunch where they put me in a table in the frickin' middle of the room instead of a nice booth off to the side, the book I've got with me to read turns out to be a manga that's either violent or partially sexually explicit? Today's turn was the latest Hellsing, which I'd forgotten I had with me. I attempted to reassure myself that the mangaka's art is so dense that you have to be staring at the page for a few seconds before realizing you're looking at a picture of someone ripping half of someone else's head off. Not like MPD Psycho, where the violence and grotesquerie* is lovingly rendered in clinical detail with a sharp, thin line that you can see from a mile off. "Waitaminnit!! Is he ... planting flowers ... in her brain?!"

Compared to MPD Psycho, Hellsing is appropriate for all ages.

At any rate, I liked the latest installment of the Hellsing saga quite a bit - we get more character development in Seras Victoria, and there seems to almost be a light at the end of the tunnel of death and destruction. Not for a good long while yet, of course, but I was wondering if Kohta Hirano** was writing himself into a hole for a bit there.

And it's still got what I really like about the series: it lulls you into feeling sympathy and then reminds you that it's still monster vs. monster - the antagonists are monsters, and the protagonists are monsters, but you have to be one to fight one effectively. And no matter what side you're rooting for it's monsters all the way down.

Not to mention that the mangaka has a sense of humor: among other things, if you look closely at the letters on Zorin's arms, you can see band names. :)

* Which ought to be a word, if it isn't.

** Which is his personal name, and which his family name? I can usually figure it out, but I'm not sure which order Dark Horse prints them in.

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'Grotesquerie' is indeed a word. On the other hand, I have no frickin' clue about the mangaka's name.

Ah, cool. I shall refrain from looking it up because I don't want to know in case I'm using it wrong. :)

Of topic, sorry, but can I ask you a librarian question?

Sure, fire away. :)

Yay, thank you!

So, um, I'm thinking about applying to a few library science programs for grad school, and I've been asking the librarians I know for the names of what they think are good schools.

All I know are the ones here in Texas, at UT Austin (http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/) and UNT (http://www.unt.edu/slis/). Both are good - UNT is starting to specialize in info science and digital imaging and stuff like that, while UT is a bit more traditional.

UNT also has a large distance-learning program, with online courses. If you want to go the traditional library route, you can do i entirely online, but if you want to specialize in something odd like digital image management like I did, you'll have to take some classes on campus. But they're really geared towards working professionals, so you tend to get once-a-week classes for three hours at a time, in the evening.

Whatever you do, choose a program that allows you to get professional experience, and get as much of that as you can in school when you can afford to volunteer or work part-time for low wages or do internships. Don't let people saying that the library field is going to become wide open Any Minute Now since all these librarians are retiring convince you that you're not going to have to work hard to find a position. :) Any and all experience you can get previous to graduation will help you.

Also, think about where you want to go when you finish. If you're willing to move to a small town, you'l find it easier going than if you want to stay in the city you go to school - here in Dallas-Fort Worth, there's two school, UNT and TWU (which takes half their classes over at UNT so you might as well go to UNT), pumping out library graduates, many of whom are married and with families and don't want to move, so the market is glutted - took me 11 months of searching to find my job, 8 of those months after graduation.

That's an advantage for a distance-learning course - move where you want to be, then go to school. XD

Wow, thanks for the detailed information! I will definitely put this into my little info dossier ;).

One more question - you strike me as being somewhat liberal (though I could be wrong). Is there any tension to living in that area of Texas? I'm pretty hippy myself, and I've been somewhat concerned because I know there are very good schools for what I'm interested in in Texas and other parts of the South, but I don't know how well I'd hold up, since I've never lived in those parts of the country myself and have only hearsay and the news to go on.

If you wanna be in the liberal hippie section of Texas, Austin is the place to be. XD Basically, actually, it's not too bad if you're like me and just don't talk politics much. Small towns are worse than large cities, and universities tend to be a bit more liberal than the average person. I work at a private university that technically was a religious school at one point, although it's not really affiliated with any church right now despite being named Texas Christian University (like my undergrad, which was Trinity in San Antonio - originally Presbyterian, but in practice not really religious at all). And TCU is overall fairly conservative politically, because it's an expensive private school, but most of the librarians are quiet liberals. There's exceptions - one of my coworkers actually keeps a framed picture of President Bush on his desk (he's from a small town in Mississippi and doesn't really like the city), but there's never been anything political that came up at work other than him requesting not to be included on email forwards that contained jokes about Bush.

Austin really is the place to go if you want to be surrounded by very open forthright ~~loudmouth~~ liberals, despite it being the state capital. It's also the place where the Texas music scene is, if you're into music.

For the most part, you'll find Texans (and Southerners in general) fairly polite about politics in daily one-on-one interactions. There are the occasional loudmouths and annoying people, but rude behavior is rude behavior no matter what political stance it takes, and most people (that I deal with, at any rate) seem to understand that.

* Er, in case you couldn't tell, despite my snarking at Autin, I tend to the liberal side. :D Even Austinites snark at Austin - a popular bumper sticker is "Keep Austin Weird."

** And one more note: if you've got a sense of humor about your politics, you'll be far better off than if you tend to be knee-jerky.

Definitely food for thought (in general - I certainly HOPE I have a sense of humor). Thanks for all that. You rock like a rockin' thing.

* although Gmail seems to be doing weird things at the moment, so I'm not sure if/when I'll get the notification.

Dang, which series was I watching (in the past year?) where there is a character named Kohta? Anyway, I think that is a personal name.

Cool, thanks. I'm getting better at spotting Japanese personal names, but nowhere near perfect. XD

Hm. A little searching reveals that Kagome's little brother is Souta, but I don't think that's what I was remembering...

...and searching for "Kohta", "Kota", and "Kouta" as a character name on AnimeNfo.com reveals it is the name of the guy in Elfen Lied, of which I have watched 3 DVDs.

Still, that's only my best guess, and should not be taken as the least bit definitive!

Hirano sure sounds a lot like a family name. Kouta/Kohta/however you like to romanize it sure sounds like a given name. If it were the other way around, I would be suprised.

Also, I think they usually flip the names around in translations.

Anime News Network lists Hirano as the surname.

The latest Hellsing

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