i just realized there are only two episodes left in the entire season. it is certainly not a sure thing the CW will pick up VM for next year. and if they don't, we will NEVER GET TO SEE LOGAN AND VERONICA HAVE SEX. so people. you need to watch tomorrow. some random ass predictions behind the cut. vaguely spoilery!

With Kriston in Chicago as well, the nerd contingent finally had numbers on Catherine, and the three of us ended up making a trip to the completely awesome Chicago Comics (conveniently located just a few blocks from Catherine's apt).

Thanks to Tim I've been jumping back into comics recently — he set me up with some Sandman and Transmetropolitan torrents, and I'm slowly working my way through them.

I have to say that I don't really get the appeal of Sandman. And it's not just that I'm tonedeaf to this stuff — I dig the mythical mystery, and I enjoyed American Gods. But so far the series just seems to be about a pale, skinny sliver of humorlessness who spends a lot of time on concerns related to faeries and the dreamscape. It's like some terrible, terrible Trent Reznor/Tori Amos collaboration. I'll stick with it, but so far it hasn't hooked me.

Transmet's considerably more enjoyable, even if Ellis's writerly narcissism isn't actually dismissed by his constant winking in the way he seems to think it is. Also, it provides another excuse to link to a photo of Julian's awesome Spider Jerusalem Halloween costume. And I think it might provide a comprehensive alternate philosophy of journalism for Catherine, should this Medill thing fail to cover all the bases.

I added to these at Chicago Comics. Kriston bought a bunch of incomprehensible but cool Marvel alternate universe thingamajigs, and a mixed bag of DC trade paperbacks. I stuck with my tried & true formula: volumes 7 and 8 of Powers (and 9's out already!? w00t) and a Hellboy spinoff that's not quite as awesome as solo Mignola, but still pretty satisfying in a "former Nazi scientists' hubris unleashing unspeakable supernatural horrors" kind of way. And that's one of my favorites ways.

So yeah — dorking it up: recommended.

I'm back from Chicago, barely. My redeye to DCA had powered up the engines for takeoff when a light went off. Apparently a warning system had registered a false positive, incorrectly indicating that the pilots had set the controls to some sort of wildly suicidal configuration. Back to the gate! Two hours later, the ground crew admitted defeat and I got bumped to the next flight, which was merely delayed, not cancelled. Also, ATA came through with a $50 discount card. I remain irked, but I'll get over it.

Chicago was great — first and foremost because Catherine is there, of course, but also just because it's a great town (albeit a rainy one on this particular weekend). She, Kriston and I walked a lot, drank a little, and ate way, way too much. And, as mentioned, met a bunch of fine folks from unfogged and the charming Dan. All in all, I declare my time in Chicago a success, even if there was a little more of it than I intended. But now I'm dead, dead, dead tired.

photographic evidence that the two lads were here and duly squired.

the weekend also provided the opportunity to meet up with several unfogged folks and dan from iconoduel, and everyone was wonderful. have i mentioned how much i love the internet?

the only crappy thing was the sucktastic experiences both tommy and kriston had getting out of the city. kriston's account is here; tommy took a cab this morning at 5am to ostensibly catch his 6:30am flight...which ended up being instead at something like 11:30am. fabulous.