Like clowns

Today I downloaded Paul Stobbs’s new book The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns — because, well, how can you know there’s a book with that title and not want to read it? If it had been called The Demonic History of Clowns, or even just Clowns and the Nephilim, I might have given it a miss, but something about that title, The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns, is just irresistible. It’s like the Snakes on a Plane of books.

Shortly after I’d downloaded it, one of my very young students told me she’d been to the circus on the weekend and seen clowns. The circus? When was the last time you heard of anyone going to the circus?

Later the same day, in a different class, a student said (in Chinese) to a classmate who had been blowing his nose a lot, “If you keep doing that, you’re going to look like a clown! Because clowns always have red noses,”

No idea what this means, if anything, Just following my usual practice of noting coincidences.