JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

You wouldn’t like it when it’s angry.

Can computer keyboards do this?

Typewriter Sculptures. Thanks to Chus for the alert.

4.1. If transsexuals can join female beauty pageants, when can women become Pope?

4.2. Our friend Vivien says: “If we plant 1,000 trees for every transsexual who joins Miss Universe, we can help avert global warming.”

Read our column on the transgender Miss Universe question, coming up on InterAksyon.com.

We’ve always wanted those Pantone Guide Strips (an abaniko of color swatches). Now Chronicle Books has published this book of color palettes created around themes you could follow or ignore.

Pantone: 35 Inspirational Color Palettes, Php625 at National Bookstore.

We needed a birthday present for a friend who’s been gorging on culinary books.

Charlotte au Chocolat is Charlotte Silver’s memoir of growing up in her mother’s restaurant. As food books go it’s a pleasant merienda. Hardcover, Php995 at National Bookstore. (We got it at 20 percent off during the sale, which ended Sunday.)

We’re huge fans of NYRB Classics and are pleased to see them popping up regularly at National Bookstore and Powerbooks branches.

Amsterdam Stories by Nescio, the first English translation of the Dutch author’s work, Php565 at National. Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by the great Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, Php615 at Powerbooks. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr (a present from our friend), deceptively simple, sticks in the mind. The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer, a black comedy about marriage and parenthood, Php655 at Powerbooks.

Sherlock fans know that the third season won’t be out till 2014, leaving them too much time to speculate on how the consulting detective survived his last encounter with the consulting criminal. If you’ve already read all the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, here’s something that might help you endure the wait.

The House of Silk, a Sherlock Holmes novel by Anthony Horowitz (the Alex Rider series), authorized by the Conan Doyle Estate. (Php649 at National).

You can catch your favorite duo onscreen in December in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit—Freeman stars as Bilbo, Cumberbatch as Smaug the Dragon.

This is a table centerpiece.

And this.

And this.

Table arrangements at the HSBC Coffee Talks by Xtreme Works.

Five or six years ago, my mother and I sat in a darkened theater talking about a couple we knew. The wife was an executive with Ivy League degrees. The husband had some nebulous part-time job, but mostly he stayed home with the kids. What, I wondered, does he have that’s attractive to her? There was a pause. Sperm, my mother replied.

Breadwomen, a review of The Richer Sex (How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family) by Liza Mundy in the NYT.