AAAH TWILIGHT

I picked up the first book intending to read only to the bit where the vampire sparkles. I was told this occurred early in the book, but I was misled. After wading through 200 pages of Bella and Edward exchanging significant glances and Bella’s internal monologue about Edward’s perrrrfect sillhouette and deliiiicious-smelling breath (seriously? a vampire? shouldn’t he smell like blood?), Edward finally sparkled. I was so close to the end that I finished the book, but first I bought sparkly gel pens and left my opinions in the margins. I then proceeded to mark up the second book and got halfway through the third before nausea left me unable to read any further. (I am now enjoying The Scar by China Mieville.)

I don’t expect teen romance novels to be beautifully written, but the messages these books send are flat-out apalling. Bella has no interests aside from Edward, scorning human friends unless she needs something from them. In the first book, Edward snuck into Bella’s room every night and watched her sleep–she finds out after a couple months and is of course flattered by his attention. Later on, Edward forbids Bella to see her werewolf friends, even disabling her truck so she can’t disobey. The Cullens basically keep her as a pet–seriously, they carry her around. Oh, and did I mention that the whole reason Edward is so fascinated by Bella is because she smells like the tastiest walking dinner he has ever encountered and he has to constantly battle desires to drain her of blood? As of now, her only plans for the future consist of becoming a vampire and living happily ever after.

My eventual plan is to finish, ahem, annotating the books, include warning signs of abusive relationships inside each cover, and release them into the wild, possibly through Bookcrossing.

 

In which the author plans to put her number-crunching skills to good use

Gilmore Girls is finally ending, hooray. Since I’ve been watching that show with reasonable faithfulness since it’s inception and I am approximately the same age as Rory, you might expect a little more wistfulness. However, Gilmore Girls warrants increasingly high scores on the Irritation O’Meter. I originally enjoyed the show because Rory and Lorelai were so snippy, smart, and independent, but over the last few years they’ve slowly spiraled into madness characterized by troubles with OMG MEN. Additionally, women keep getting pregnant, and everyone’s all, “But you’ll love being a mother! You’ll be great!” No mention of, oh, I dunno, not squeezing out a kid just because one started growing in your uterus, even though you don’t really want it and can’t really afford it. Irresponsible reproduction is not something intelligent women should promote.

One of my biggest complaints about the series is conspicuous consumption. Between ever-expanding vast wardrobes, ordering takeout, and eating at restaurants, their single income household should be bankrupt–particularly as Lorelai also owns a business. Statistically speaking, estimating the amount of money spent on food shouldn’t be too difficult. My sister owns the first five seasons on dvd, so if I were to stratify by season and watch a few random episodes I could come up with a reasonable tally of how often Rory and Lorelai eat restaurant food or buy massive mugs of coffee on a daily basis, and calculating estimators is deceptively simple after data has been collected. If I can just get through finals week, success will be mine…