Just as an FYI…

The internet is funnier when you’re drunk.

This was a Chaoticpix93 Public Service Announcement. That is all.

Fnord.

Breaking Dawn: Take Two!

Okay, so I have been beyond broke for books right now. I really have been in the mood lately to curl up with some books and read. So I ended up rereading a few things. One thing I reread this weekend was Breaking Dawn.

If you’ve missed me talking about the Twilight fandom and how weird it is to be part of a fandom that has most of it’s membership in the 12-13 years younger than I am. Go through my archives, and read the ones about WHY I like Twilight to begin with!

Anywhos, back on track again.

My first initial reaction to Breaking Dawn was an antithesis to the entire story. She did stop saying “liquid topaz eyes’ but kept talking about how fantastic everything was which was getting on my nerves, but it wasn’t that interesting. Things for the characters have changed and she wanted to wrap everything up with a pretty little bow. I really got annoyed with that because not all stories need a happy ending. Jake should be tormented the rest of his life by the decisions Bella has made.

The fight with the vulturi was such an anticipation throughout the entire series. I kept imagining how it would play out in both scenarios (one where Bella’s a vampire, one she’s not…) and came up with some parts where it would end in bloodshed and tears. But that never came about, there was a bunch of talking, maybe a few cheap shots and it was over. And there was no fighting. And bella would go on being happy dappy the rest of her days.

Toward the present:

I still don’t like how neatly everything in the plot worked out. I’m not a firm believer in happy endings and some of the part in it is very deus ex machima.  I think at least some of the caracters are believeable, at least her secondary characters.

I think a lot of the things happened rapidly because I read the book rapidly and didn’t read much into time sequence. The reread allowed me to see connections and logical leaps that characters made, even if in some places they were completely out of character and I gritted my teeth against them. (That’s where some of the deus ex machima came from.)

I had  problems with Aro trying to stall a fight that Caius obviously wanted to happen very much.  I mean, they all didn’t come off as the best guys in the universe in any of the books; and all of a sudden I’m supposed to have compassion for what seemed to be a very ancient and corrupt rulling class? If you’ve only seen the movies, sure Aro comes off as this guy who has just seen a very facinating puzzle he just can’t put down until he solves it. In the books he’s this frighteningly scary guy who wants everyone to become part of the vulturi because he wants to study them and bend them to the Vulturi’s ways.  This really jarred my sense of bewilderment.

As far as Jake and Bella. I think that was also contrived. Jake should have taken off, I’m sure Leah and Seth would have followed him, but I’m sure it would have been certain heartache to Jake. He’d been bested, he should have known that. And Bella was a stupid foolish/selfish person who thought she could have all of it. Eventually he would have gotten over it. Even if he was a shape-shifter.

Another contrivance that irked me was Bella’s sudden transformation into vampirism goes off without a hitch. I’m talking NONE. We’re told from the beginning, “‘newborns’ are very hard to control, they’re very powerful, they can’t be stopped but they’re very supid and sluggish when it comes to fighting.” Going on about how unruly they are, pulling Jasper into account as the newest of the Cullens and this is heightened in New Moon with bella’s finger cut (causing a few months of pain for her). Then all of a sudden, they’re not so bad, and hey, Bella is a frigging natural at all of it. The only possible reason I could fathom goes all the way back to the first pages of Twilight where Bella faints at the sight of blood in Biology.

Renesmee. First off, I HATE that name. Second off, I really hate the vampire child notion period. I’d read finally the part where Bella of all people came up with the idea. First. Women can’t have babies because they’re stuck in a state of flux from when they were first created. Males however are entirely still potent as their physiology doesn’t change. And even then this is only a theory. Still more supposition from everybody else in the book later on. If the body is in stasis from the moment of siring, then men shouldn’t have the ability to create sperm.

Back to the baby though: The baby has to be perfect of course. And it has to grow up exceptionally fast (what’s with the growth spurt thing? Jake doesn’t grow up, he just gets bigger. Renesmee is actually growing up.) Outside of that the kid shows no signs of having any kind of growing period at all. She’s suddenly able to walk and talk with no problems at all. None.  With perfect grammar and sentence structure. I’ve learned a lot about writing from writing and listening to people talk. People, they don’t talk right. (they talk more like the previous sentence.)

Other than Bella’s Mary Sue-ism carrying over into the vampire kingdom it’s just the same thing. Overall there’s enough compelling characters in there to read (and I create my own inflections with, and change the sentence structure with) that I don’t mind. It’s a satisfactory conclusion, tidying up loose ends with a satin ribbon on top for cuteness. Everybody gets their happy ending.

Looking up: Day 4.

Hah, I have lasted this long!

I’ve looked up to people as much as anyone else. I love Rachel Ray, Paula Deen, Murv, Dorothy. I really do look up to them. Hoping one day to look them in the eye (to overuse a metaphore and confuse a different one entirely.) I also look up to sucessful people who are doing good.

god, this is crap. I’m posting this and calling it a day!

Day Three: Um. Okay. Clouds

Looking up today, I realize we have no clouds in the sky. I guess that’s because of either low pressure or high pressure. I have completely forgotten about that kind of stuff about now.

I think a lot of people forget that the best sights are when you look up at the sky. Sunsets with brilliant golds and reds turning orange and pinkish and red and finally into the deep dark purple and navy of the night sky. The eerie cadescense that happens right before a storm. The greenish light of a bad storm coming. People can tell a lot from just looking at the sky. Even now, I can tell that we are going to be in a warming trend for a while because of how blue the sky is.  It’s always a deeper blue in winter than in summer because of temperature.

When it comes to night, I’d love to be able to see the stars. But in Columbus there’s so much light pollution that I can’t even see the big dipper anymore. Just one night star in the sky. Possibly the north star. I mean, I can listen to the perseid meteor shower on the am band of the radio, and at spaceweather.com; but that’s NOTHING compared to being able to see them firsthand as we pass through their field. Reminds me that we’re not as stationary in the night sky as we think.

As Columbus expands outward as it’s doing, urban sprawl, there’ll be nowhere left to see the night sky. And that makes me sad. As Polaris gets built up more and more, the light pollution from that and the two subsequent bright as hell car lots on the way are causing Perkins Observatory over in Delaware Ohio to be put in jeopardy. Light pollution is killing more and more of their field every day. (And so is funding apparently after a good google search.)

I guess that’s enough looking up today. I’ll be back tomorrow.

I’ve already forgotten NaBloMo! “Looking Up”

Okay, to start off, I guess my life is starting to look up. So I guess I’ll have to do two today then.

To start off, I’m going to MarCon. And I have gotten the requested days off from work so that I can par-tay! WOOT!

Second is that I might have my desktop back in working order again. THANK YOU GABE! You have NO idea what this means to me!  Ever since it broke I’ve been down about having a computer I could blast music from. Plus it’s my entertainment center! It plays tv shows and movies and such which is why I got rid of my actual TV/DVD/VCR.

I’ve applied to a few new jobs, and I’m awaiting a status from them. So if I get a better job it’ll be better than the number crunching I do every year.

We’re getting rain, which is what the world needs right now. Rain can be a good thing, if we’re looking up at the sky.

So that’s my first post of NaBloMo!

Yep.

Again, I haven’t been here in ages. Yep.

My life lately can be summed up into facebook shout outs right now. I mean, my life is so exciting. Of course, I might find the exciting in the banal existence of a wal-mart employee (customer service-to boot!), but people know my real name on here (I have a writing blog because I have my name parked on wordpress.) Writing about a job could hurt someone. Mainly me.

Either way, as a side note. My brother has been staying with me at the moment, with his three kids. Now, the thing is because they’re here, the kids have been bringing home lots of books from the library and such. Things that I know they wouldn’t really read (they’re not big on reading), and they bring them home in droves. The thing is that I will sit down and read them and I’ve kind of gotten a kind of addiction to them.

What amazes me, some people can write huge tomes of books (think: war and peace, gone with the wind, etc.) and still make you feel like you’re being beaten over the head with everything the plots, the characters and overarching story developments. These middle readers or even younger than that are quick, and easy, yet hold so much characterization and story in them it astounds me.

There are some, that are actually terrible. Both in characterization, motivation, and even story with plot holes that you could drive a truck through–kids aren’t that stupid.And there’s some you like enough you wish it were a series.

Like for example, I just read Radiance Descending. about a kid who has a brother with Downs. Not a bad premise, normally, and it does show how the family has to make adjustments to the kid, but their reactions are all wrong. The main character is supposed to be older in every passing scene yet the parents reactions don’t change and the character has minimal if any development. GAH! Characters need to grow and modify for anyone to stay interested in a story.

And there’s the Amber Brown series. Awesome series if you ask me. She changes, she adapts, she grows, her parents do different things and change and adapt. All in the time it takes me to go to the bathroom. I feel like i”ve been part of their world for a little bit.

Well, I guess that’s it from here. Gonna go file my taxes.

Yep.

Ahh, My Favorite Season

This marks the beginning of my favorite season:

The weather gets colder, chilly. It’s cloudy a lot. The leaves change, pumpkins are in season. NaNoWriMo starts up. Apples are eaten, cider is made, candy is consumed. Yes, my favorite season. I’ll watch horror movies and get out my writing movies, like “Stranger than Fiction”.

I’m watching it now. Who hasn’t had the though if, books they read, the characters would have been alive? Who hasn’t, as a writer, imagined their story characters coming to life? It’s amazing to think about. Kinda scary as well. If I were to meet some of the people I’ve written up, and the things that I”ve put them through, it scares me. It really does. Although some of them I’d like to hang out with.

As per usual, it’d be great if life were like the writers I see in movies. Agents who are taking you out to dinner all the time, or calling you if you’re stuck. Publishers who actually want to meet you all the time. They don’t show anything about how much time you spend at the computer actually writing and editing a novel. I guess because it’s not worthy of actually moving a holywood movie along. Even in newer shows they’re obsessed with the writer hunched over a typewriter instead of a computer screen.

Any creative endeavor is seen as soemthing as odd and exotic when it’s hard fucking work. I’m not going to lie. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And anything doing right is work.

My reasons for liking Twilight, PT 2

The vampire genre as a whole is different in the Young Adult universe. Sure, there are the “don’t come out until night” kind like with Blood and Chocolate and the Nightworld series by LJ Smith, and a few short stories I’ve read. Most of what I’m seeing today, is the kind where they come out during the day, “Vampire High”, as well as Christopher Pike’s “The Vampire” series. Also with Janice Harell’s small career vampires just don’t like sunlight because it makes them feel weak and powerless and sick.

So, I don’t see what the big fuss with Twilight is. Now, granted I get tired of hearing certain phrazes in the book over and over again, but I only heard a few, twice in the entire thing. I’m sure we all do that.

I guess that’s all I have to say on that.

In a fannish note, I’m very happy to see that LJ Smith is finally (FINALLY! YES!) finishing the Nightworld series. We were left dangling on a thread with what happens next to the characters and where they’re going. Now I want to start over. I’ll wait until January or so if only because it’s not coming out until April 2010.  YES! I guess she had some problems with her home life that interfered. No problem. At least it wasn’t 20 or so years, like, say, stephen king’s finishing of the Dark Tower series.

The only problem I have with such a gap is that people change, their writing styles change. So even if it is the same ending as what she started, it’s going to definitely be different because of the years difference between the two.

My reasons for liking Twilight.

Let me explain how I came across the book.

Back in the day, in Columbus there were a bunch of malls. One for each side of town and one downtown. I went downtown every so often even in the declining years. That was the easiest one to get to that didn’t take two hours, and it still had a Waldenbooks.

One of my favorite genre’s to read is the young adult section. Always have. I know more about that section than I do the adult section. Sure I read a few books from there, but most of the time I’m in the Young Adult section. (If it’s any indication of the write what you read, that’s all I write apparently.) The only problem I have with that section is that there are TONS of books there that take maybe a day at most to read. I wanted something to read that took a while. Henceforth why I found Twilight. It was a pretty damn big book and I was relieved to have something that would take a while. The last book I read was Thirsty by M.T. Anderson. It wasn’t that good but it wasn’t bad either.

 I started reading this on the bus. See, Twilight had just come out, and this was way before the hype began. Especially with the movies.  To me, it was another vampire novel, and that’s what mattered.

Before we go any further I want to explain something. This is a Young Adult novel. It’s actually a romance novel for teens and ‘tweens.  Which means, it’s not going to play into the normal adult understanding of relationships. Bella’s not an adult, and although he may be a few hundred years older, neither is Edward. At least their relationships are based more on reality than, say, Evermore. The genre is mostly about kids trying to figure out their own way with things with or without the adults. This is not for grownups in children’s bodies.

Let me go on with Evermore. I was reccomended this book by Amazon.com because Evermore was a paranormal story. You’ve got Ever who feels guilty for killing her family in a car crash because she asked her dad to turn around for a sweater. Now because she was the only one to survive, she has these nasty psychich abilities. She moves in with her aunt who just never is around. Ever befriends these two kids, one of them is every flaming gay male stereotype, and the other is a glam goth girl who is just as stocky as the gay kid. There is NO character development and her two friends might as well be cardboard cut outs. She ends up meeting Devon, who the author never does anything with. And when Ever finds a way to cut off her psychic abilities by becoming a drunk, her aunt grounds her and doesn’t even think about unstocking or locking up the liquor cabinet! And she’s never around period.

At least in Twilight we have characters with more than just a carbon cut out. Mike’s a puppydog who wants bella’s affections and actually gets angry at Edward. Jessica is vapid and calculating in her own way, and Bella’s aware of that and uses Jessica against herself. Charlie, her father, can’t cook so Bella cooks for him. He normally eats fish they catch in some lake somewhere, without Bella there. Possibly being hurt by Bella’s mom keeps him from opening up to his feelings. (NONE of this is portrayed in the movie, of course!) Bella does actually get grounded a few times because of Edward. And she does keep to it.

Most of the arguments are for the fact that the reason they can’t go out during the day is because they sparkle. And that doesn’t bother me. The books give it better justice than the movie ever could. It adds to the glamour that Edward has, because it’s actually better than the movie covering him in body glitter. This is where every part of his skin is like stone, with diamonds in it, that reflect back, I always imagined it as looking like shards of crystal on the skin or something similar. I was very dissapointed in the movie because of that. I was like, here we go, then that and I’m like, body glitter… really? Body changes in the vampire myth happen all the time.  So it doesn’t surprize me.

This keyboard is driving me nuts. It’s sticky so it don’t work the way it should and I’m going to stop for right now.

The ultimate Crazy Cat Lady Table

I was browsing the craigslist ads for Columbus. I do that a lot, actually, and it’s kinda fun (and kinda scary) the things that people think they can get away with selling on there.

This takes the cake.

Now, I love cats, almost obsessively as anyone who reads this blog can tell. I love making up cat stories, I have a few things with cats on them that I cherish dearly. But this, again, takes the cake.

On craigslist today, I happened to find the Ultimate Crazy Cat Lady table. I mean, Ultimate. Imagine this, you have a base for a coffee table, instead of a shelf that holds random copies of TV Guide or motes of dust, this is just four cats. Their ears hold up the table. And that’s not all. The centerpiece… is a ball of yarn!

“Very cute Cat and Yarn coffee table. Very Thick nice glass. The yarn ball opend up for storage. Asking $200 OBO

The table is 46″ x 33 1/2″ and is 17 1/2″ High”

(Sauce by copypasta: http://columbus.craigslist.org/hsh/1335713453.html)

If you don’t believe me…