Anyone Want a Pic?
Dec. 11th, 2010 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darthfarWould anyone like a drawing, or would like to suggest something for me to do? I really need to get my painting muscles going again, but my brain's still frozen thanks to all the meds and peppermint drink.
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I actually went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant tonight. California temaki, and a whole plate of salmon sashimi all to myself. [Yes, I'm greedy. Yes, my degree was in microbiology. Yes, I eat raw fish. Deal with it.] It's officially my first real meal for the week: I'd been eating very poorly before, thanks to the cough (which was clearly opposed to my having anything digesting in my stomach), and everything had been pretty repulsive anyway. So yeah. Score one for me this time.
It's ridiculous how long this cough has been going on. It even got *worse* at one point, if anyone can believe it, and my mother became desperate enough to try the remedy from her friend, which she insisted would get rid of the cough. This was the remedy: coating the soles of my feet with Vicks VapoRub, and then stuffing said feet into a pair of very thick socks. Obviously, I hate having my feet touched more than the rest of me combined, and I protested vehemently that the day it worked was the day our sun rose from the west and set in the south, but she insisted anyway, so we wound up wagering an iPad. The result? Not only did I keep the neighbours up all night with seemingly never-ending paroxysms of violent coughing, the soles of my feet were so well lubricated that I spent the next day slipping, sliding and skidding around the house like a demented dog on an ice skating rink. At least my coughs are now respectable sporadic bursts, rather than the hacking variety with enough power to forcibly pop out my eyes and eject my brain through my nose.
Still waiting to regain hearing in my left ear, though. Left ear currently feels stuffed with sound-absorbent material; I lost a great chunk of my hearing earlier this week, following the ear infection. On the one hand, it's much easier to tune out and *not* hear things I'm not interested in (eg. market noises, horrible music from the radio); on the other hand, if I'm sleeping with my good ear in the pillow, you could detonate several bombs in our neighbourhood and I'd still sleep right through it. That is, if the coughing didn't keep me awake. Haha.
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A good friend of mine - whose taste I never had cause to doubt up to now - recently started reading Twilight and, believe it or not, actually liked parts of it. After getting over my incredulity, I decided I would give the book the benefit of the doubt (I did read Harry Potter, didn't I? even though I had no intention of doing so?) and actually read it for myself before I passed judgment. And now, having finished it, I can really, honestly say:
It's not a bad book. It really isn't.
It's unspeakably horrible.
Yes, I know it's a book for teens. Yes, I know it's romance. But even with the knowledge that all teens are angsty and have percolating hormones, and believe in soppy things like One True Love Forever... it's still horrible. And it's not just the romance because surprise surprise, there *is* actually such thing as - thought it hurts me to say this - tastefully written romance. (Which, incidentally, you won't find anywhere in this book). For one, Bella Swan is about the most spineless, lamest, most vacuous and insipid protagonist I have ever come across in the world of teen fic. Apart from her name, which should already send alarm bells ringing (beautiful swan???), she's a Mary Sue who doesn't even bubble and dazzle like her sisters; she's like a Mary Sue with all the fizz and glamour taken out of her. She's supposedly a disaster magnet, an accident waiting to happen - but apparently that adds to her charm because she manages to attract people (particularly boys) like flies, never mind that she's a new girl in a little town where presumably everybody has known everybody forever. Her range of emotions range from angsty/snivelly to needy to blindly enamoured to more-depressed-than-a-wet-mop. And that's just her.
It gets worse once Edward the sparkly glampire enters the picture. If you have read Les Miserables, and were annoyed by how Victor Hugo kept reminding his readers about how beautiful and statue-like Enjolras was... well, at least Enjolras was still human, and he did die at the insurrection. Not to mention Enjolras would've looked like a drippy wallflower next to Edward Cullen. Seriously, every few pages we are treated to Bella's fawning descriptions of how devastatingly beautiful and gorgeous and perfect Edward was. It was nauseating. And really? If a boy, in real life, kept breaking into your bedroom to watch you sleep at night, and stalked you everywhere, and claimed that he was nothing until he met you, and that his whole life revolved around you, you'd get a restraining order. But apparently it's perfectly all right if the boy is a vampire? Eh?
The tragic part is that there *are* interesting fragments of the story that, perhaps, in the hands of a much better writer, might have become midway readable (especially, say, if it had been written in the 3rd person rather than the 1st). But this isn't it. It's a jagged mountain of painfully clunky narrative, unrestrained blathering and angst and emo and angst and emo. And major characters so two dimensional they could've been printed on floppy typing paper. And at the end of the day, all there is to he book is a perfect, smouldering, angsty sparkling, stalky vampire, and a girl whose only purpose in life is to be around him, and be rescued from danger by him. It's as if someone collected the dreams of every sad, lonely, overweight, deluded teenaged girl who wanted to be loved by a perfect guy, and distilled it into a 500-page novel. *facepalm*
It terrifies me that not only teenaged girls but also middle-aged women all over the place are reading (and loving) this because, really, what does that tell you about their evaluation of love and romance and desire?
-----------------------------------------
I actually went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant tonight. California temaki, and a whole plate of salmon sashimi all to myself. [Yes, I'm greedy. Yes, my degree was in microbiology. Yes, I eat raw fish. Deal with it.] It's officially my first real meal for the week: I'd been eating very poorly before, thanks to the cough (which was clearly opposed to my having anything digesting in my stomach), and everything had been pretty repulsive anyway. So yeah. Score one for me this time.
It's ridiculous how long this cough has been going on. It even got *worse* at one point, if anyone can believe it, and my mother became desperate enough to try the remedy from her friend, which she insisted would get rid of the cough. This was the remedy: coating the soles of my feet with Vicks VapoRub, and then stuffing said feet into a pair of very thick socks. Obviously, I hate having my feet touched more than the rest of me combined, and I protested vehemently that the day it worked was the day our sun rose from the west and set in the south, but she insisted anyway, so we wound up wagering an iPad. The result? Not only did I keep the neighbours up all night with seemingly never-ending paroxysms of violent coughing, the soles of my feet were so well lubricated that I spent the next day slipping, sliding and skidding around the house like a demented dog on an ice skating rink. At least my coughs are now respectable sporadic bursts, rather than the hacking variety with enough power to forcibly pop out my eyes and eject my brain through my nose.
Still waiting to regain hearing in my left ear, though. Left ear currently feels stuffed with sound-absorbent material; I lost a great chunk of my hearing earlier this week, following the ear infection. On the one hand, it's much easier to tune out and *not* hear things I'm not interested in (eg. market noises, horrible music from the radio); on the other hand, if I'm sleeping with my good ear in the pillow, you could detonate several bombs in our neighbourhood and I'd still sleep right through it. That is, if the coughing didn't keep me awake. Haha.
-----------------------------------------
A good friend of mine - whose taste I never had cause to doubt up to now - recently started reading Twilight and, believe it or not, actually liked parts of it. After getting over my incredulity, I decided I would give the book the benefit of the doubt (I did read Harry Potter, didn't I? even though I had no intention of doing so?) and actually read it for myself before I passed judgment. And now, having finished it, I can really, honestly say:
It's not a bad book. It really isn't.
It's unspeakably horrible.
Yes, I know it's a book for teens. Yes, I know it's romance. But even with the knowledge that all teens are angsty and have percolating hormones, and believe in soppy things like One True Love Forever... it's still horrible. And it's not just the romance because surprise surprise, there *is* actually such thing as - thought it hurts me to say this - tastefully written romance. (Which, incidentally, you won't find anywhere in this book). For one, Bella Swan is about the most spineless, lamest, most vacuous and insipid protagonist I have ever come across in the world of teen fic. Apart from her name, which should already send alarm bells ringing (beautiful swan???), she's a Mary Sue who doesn't even bubble and dazzle like her sisters; she's like a Mary Sue with all the fizz and glamour taken out of her. She's supposedly a disaster magnet, an accident waiting to happen - but apparently that adds to her charm because she manages to attract people (particularly boys) like flies, never mind that she's a new girl in a little town where presumably everybody has known everybody forever. Her range of emotions range from angsty/snivelly to needy to blindly enamoured to more-depressed-than-a-wet-mop. And that's just her.
It gets worse once Edward the sparkly glampire enters the picture. If you have read Les Miserables, and were annoyed by how Victor Hugo kept reminding his readers about how beautiful and statue-like Enjolras was... well, at least Enjolras was still human, and he did die at the insurrection. Not to mention Enjolras would've looked like a drippy wallflower next to Edward Cullen. Seriously, every few pages we are treated to Bella's fawning descriptions of how devastatingly beautiful and gorgeous and perfect Edward was. It was nauseating. And really? If a boy, in real life, kept breaking into your bedroom to watch you sleep at night, and stalked you everywhere, and claimed that he was nothing until he met you, and that his whole life revolved around you, you'd get a restraining order. But apparently it's perfectly all right if the boy is a vampire? Eh?
The tragic part is that there *are* interesting fragments of the story that, perhaps, in the hands of a much better writer, might have become midway readable (especially, say, if it had been written in the 3rd person rather than the 1st). But this isn't it. It's a jagged mountain of painfully clunky narrative, unrestrained blathering and angst and emo and angst and emo. And major characters so two dimensional they could've been printed on floppy typing paper. And at the end of the day, all there is to he book is a perfect, smouldering, angsty sparkling, stalky vampire, and a girl whose only purpose in life is to be around him, and be rescued from danger by him. It's as if someone collected the dreams of every sad, lonely, overweight, deluded teenaged girl who wanted to be loved by a perfect guy, and distilled it into a 500-page novel. *facepalm*
It terrifies me that not only teenaged girls but also middle-aged women all over the place are reading (and loving) this because, really, what does that tell you about their evaluation of love and romance and desire?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-11 03:13 pm (UTC)Also, you cared me a bit with "It's not a bad book"- I'm glad you found it awful!
I hope that you feel better (and get that iPad!)!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-11 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-11 10:55 pm (UTC)also, in my experience, once your brain gets over the "WAIT WHAT THE FUCK" of twilight it sort of decides to think it is absolutely fucking hilarious, as some kind of defense mechanism, so, you have something to look forward to there.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 12:29 am (UTC)... no matter how much would I LOVE to see Les Misérables meeting Twilight heroes !!! :]
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 07:19 am (UTC)[grabs pencil and eraser]
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 02:38 am (UTC)my coping mechanism of all my friends liking twilight is imagining what anne rice vampires would do if they met them. it always ends the same way.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 05:37 am (UTC)Never read the Twilight series...just couldn't bring myself to do it. I like my old Vampire lit! Stoker and leFanu! But Enjolras outsparkling Edward would be nice. Or just staking him. And I TOTALLY echo the pleas for Lovecraftian Jehan! I'm tempted to do one as well...
Having recently seen the South Park episodes where Chtulu forms an unholy alliance with Cartman, I'm seeing Jehan riding about on the Great Old One's shoulder.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 12:50 pm (UTC)And seriously? Don't pick up the book. Just don't. Not if you value your sanity, and the purity of good vampire fiction. I was curious; I suffered!
[I think Enjolras wouldn't stoop to *sparkling*, but yes, he would outglow and outglare Edward. Not to mention his hair would send Edward away weeping in envy.]
I *dare* you to draw Jehan riding on Cthulhu's shoulder.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-12 08:17 am (UTC)