It's the beginning of the semester and lines are out of control at the Barnes & Noble and, occasionally, at Book Culture, where the line has snaked up the stairs (or alternately, has been non-existent, like every time Bwog goes there to take a photograph of the line). For a shorter trip to the bookstore, don't head over right after a class lets out.

Or, just skip the whole headache and head to Butler, which is nice and empty this time of year. One tipster did and saved $600 on textbooks, sadly reminding Bwog of (Good) Will Hunting's dressing-down of a Harvard snot: "you wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library."

Spec is only running Monday and Wednesday on this sunny, gloriously action-packed midterm week. So in the absence of our usual morning recap, we present this motley roundup of completely unrelated miscellany...

• Behold the latest email from the CC '09 class council, proving to seniors, perhaps, that they don't have it so bad. The missive begins by observing "Wollstonecraft is a hotty," and quickly goes downhill. A section titled "Free Food Just Doesn't Get Any Freer" describes the purchase and movement of the Broadway farmer's market a few meters inside, to Lerner. To wit, soon will be your "Last Chance to SEXIFY" the student center. Add an announcement for a campus group J. Sachs project called GROCC, at least three misspellings, four instances of triple exclamation points, and three announcements copied and pasted from other emails. Coda? "BEST OF LUCK ON THE MIDDIES". Beware, sophomores - it's never too early to start worrying about Class Day.

• You've probably only visited if you've taken the English department's seminar on children's literature, or if you're a GS student with a full house. The rest of us, apparently, are missing out: Bank Street Bookstore was recently named by New York magazine as the best indie book vendor (well, for kids) in town. Come to think of it, where else would you find a place featuring picture books in Urdu, Vietnamese, and Bengali - not to mention an edition of "Winnie the Pooh"...in Latin?

• Material on college sex finally running thin, the Daily News calls out Columbia students for throwing "narcissistic" parties. Which deadly sin will the tabloids tackle next week?

• Meanwhile, Dartmouth students discover a new way to be bored...as if they needed it?

-CJS