It's a bit cluttered in here, watch your step.

Oh, that bundle in the corner, why it's just some, ah, curtain rods. Yes, that's it. Just curtain rods.

I'll speak to Lee, the caretaker, about leaving his personal property laying around like that.

Now, on the shelves to your right, you'll find...

The graphic novel (or the comic book/strip, as it's better known) is much more than just pictures with word balloons.

It's a way of telling a story using images and words.

Everyone knows about Batman and Superman and Spiderman. I'm going to talk about some comic strips that aren't as well known.

First up, Dykes To Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel's ongoing strip concerning the lives and loves of a group of lesbians.

This is a great example of a multithreaded story, as the lives of all these women (and the occasional man) intertwine and effect each other. These are not characterazations of lesbians. These are real people whom I've grown to like and care about.

While the strips are syndicated in diverse gay and lesbian local papers, they have been collected in book form by Firebrand Books, with the addition of an extended story at the end of each book, tying up some loose ends, setting up threads for events to come.

The strips are also available online via PlanetOut So, those folks who can't pick up their local G&L paper, for whatever reason, can get their comic fix.

One of the pleasant aspects of following Alison's work over the years has been watching her skills as an artist and storyteller greatly improve over time.

On the other side of the coin, we have The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life Of Ethan Greene. Written and drawn my Eric Orner, a gay man living in Cambridge, MA, Ethan Greene is a gay man living in Boston, MA. Talk about art imitating life!

While the Dykes strips are grounded in reality, Ethan's life occasionally takes off into flights of fancy, but are quite in keeping with the rest of Ethan's life. His lover, Doug, is HIV positive; Ethan is negative. And people in the strip do die.

A couple of characters that regularly show up are The Hat Sisters, local Boston celebreties in the gay community. They are quite fabulous, both in the comics and real life.

As with the Dykes strips, Ethan can be found on PlanetOut and his collections are published by St. Martin's Press.

Tom Tomorrow has been doing a strip for many years, with the aid of his trusty Toshiba copier, his vast collection of clip art from the 40s and 50s, and the acerbic commentary of Sparky (The Wonder Penguin).

These strips show up in "alternative" papers and on the Web, via Salon.com. Collections of his strips are published by St. Martin's Press and are edited by the same fellow who edits the Ethan Greene collections.

I like Tom a lot. He vexes the Left, as well as the Right, with his strips.

Tom's site archives older strips and other interesting items from Tom's world.

After the events of September 11th, 2001, Tom began posting his thoughts and comments from readers (mine among them, I might add!) on his website. It soon turned into a full-fledged "blog" (short for "web log"). I think his blog is well worth reading. I check it at least once a day.

One other online strip I follow is (I finally noticed that the link was bad. It's now fixed.)Sabrina Online written and drawn by Eric Schwartz. OK, this is gonna take a few minutes, so bear with me.

Sabrina is a skunk. A real skunk, with fur and a tail. She's also bipedal, uses an Amiga computer and is having an online relationship with a guy she's never met. Her roomate, Amy is a squrrel and is pregnant by her boyfriend, Thomas. A wolf. (Look, I told you this was gonna take a while.)

All these characters are anthropomorphic. That is, they are humanoids with both animal and human characteristics. Bugs Bunny is a 'morph. Got it? Good.

So, Sabrina is a recent college graduate and is now working for a local XXX film company. She runs the website and does cover art for the cassettes. So far, she has not been asked to work in front of the cameras... yet.

Her online relationship has reached a new level when she met her friend at an out of town science fiction convention. It'll be interesting to see where this goes from here.

Sabrina is a sweet kid, kind of innocent, but surprisingly worldly in some respects.

And like the other strips mentioned here, her life can be found on the web and more recently, collected in a book, Sabrina Online: Year One. See the website for ordering details.

First up, Legends of Caltech and More Legends of Caltech. These two 80 page volumes chronicle technopranking at Caltech from the 1920s to the late 1980s. Learn about the classic Rose Bowl card section prank that was broadcast live on NBC, See the HOLLYWOOD sign become the CALTECH sign before your very eyes. Vicariously enjoy the revenge of Caltech students upon a greedy police department.

These books MUST be ordered from the Caltech bookstore, as they are privately published by the Caltech Alumni Association. Ordering info is at the bottom of this page.

Ah, but what of MIT? For their history we must turn to a pair of books.

The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT. Published by the MIT Museum, this is a 158 page book with lots of photos and text concerning the hacks pulled by MIT men and women over the decades. See The Great Breast of Knowledge, The Great Pumpkin, the legendary Smoot Marks on the Harvard Bridge. Read about the chronic humiliation suffered by the inmates at Harvard as MIT has its way with the statue of John Harvard and the Harvard Stadium.

"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore. 165 pages of legends, essays, photographs and stories of and about hacking at MIT. This book, published in 1996, continues where the Journal leaves off. The MIT Campus Police car on the Great Dome, arguably one the greatest hacks in MIT history, graces the cover and several inside pages. Regrettably, only black and white photographs are used in the body of the book, as there are several hacks, most notably, the Cathedral of Our Lady of The All Night Tool (The "stained glass" panels in Lobby 7) that really should be seen in full color. That minor gripe aside, this is a fine companion volume to The Journal and shares the same binding dimensions as The Journal, making them a handsome pair of books to grace the shelves of any creative malcontent. (The title refers to the canonical reply to an MIT Campus cop when one is discovered in a spectacularly inappropriate location, such as the apex of the Great Dome at 4:00AM.)

A third volume in the series of "hack" books from the MIT Press has just been published.

NIGHTWORK: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT, by Institute Historian T. F. Peterson.

This is a semi-compendium of hacks detailed in the previous two volumes, as well as detailing some hacks that occured after the publication of the second volume, "Is The The Way To Baker House?". It also includes details of pranks and goings-on at MIT in it's early years.

One difference from the previous books is that it includes a section of color photographs, something sorely lacking in the previous books. Some of the color pictures are of the "stained glass windows" of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the All Night Tool.

On the other hand, some of the black and white images in the book are very poorly processed and are lacking in detail.

One surprise is that the binding does not match the previous books. It's rather smaller in height.

The specifics: 8 x 9, 208 pp., 125 illus., 16 color $19.95/£13.50 (PAPER)

Our final book is published by St. Martin's Press and should still be available via any bookstore that will special order books for its customers.

If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks, is a 240 page history of collegiate pranking in America, beginning with the earliest colleges in America, and even taking note of some hijinx taking place in Canada.

This is an excellent companion volume to the preceeding four books, as it covers collegiate pranking in general, as well as detailing some events that are NOT covered in either the Caltech or MIT books.

If I were sending a son or daughter off to college, I would certainly include all six of these books in their "books to bring to school" box. Start 'em off right!

I have all six books and have enjoyed reading and re-reading them. I trust that these will be inspirational to all who enjoy a good hack and tweaking the nose of Authority, be it the State or the School.

Order Online Legends of Caltech is $12.00

Order Online More Legends of Caltech is $12.00

The mailing address of the Caltech Bookstore is:

Caltech Bookstore Mail Code 1-51 San Pasqual Street Pasadena CA 91125

This is the website for the Caltech Bookstore.

The toll-free number for the Caltech bookstore is 800/514-2665. For those of you outside the US, their non-free number is 818/395-6161.

(Neither Caltech book has an ISBN, so ordering via your local bookstore is not recommended and may very well be nigh-impossible.)

"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore is $20.00. The ISBN is: 0-917027-04-3

NIGHTWORK: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT is $19.95. The ISBN is: 0-262-66137-3

The address of the MIT Museum is:

The MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02139

These books can be ordered from the MIT Press bookstore.

The address of the MIT Press Bookstore is:

The MIT Press Bookstore
Kendall Square
292 Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142
617.253.5249
M-F 9am-7pm, Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 1pm-6pm
books@mit.edu

The URL for ordering The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT is here, the URL for "Is This The Way To Baker House?" is here And the URL for ordering NIGHTWORK is here.

The MIT Press site website supports online ordering.

by Neil Steinberg

$9.95 St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-07810-2

This book is out of print. Try eBay, amazon.com or dealers in remaindered books.

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