If all your friends were dating vampires, would you date one too?

My Twilight review gets new readers. They don't appreciate criticism.

ETA: Apparently the recent influx is coming from here.

You really must check out the comments on the post linked above. Apparently I am just jealous of Our Heroine Bella because "[m]aybe [I] never had a boyfriend or got ask to the prom either."

Twilight the Movie: Liveblog

Belle and I got tipsy* and watched the Twilight movie. This is the result.

(Belle Lettre: Apologies for the bad formatting, though we tried really hard to extensively edit a raw Gmail chat transcript. Apologies for the lack of the "more" tag, for which we do not know the html. Apologies also for the insane length, but this was a two hour movie. But you're welcome for the hilarity that will ensue as we infuriate yet more teenagers, who are thankfully not a significant part of Amber's blog demographic.)

Belle: Hi Amber

Amber: Hi.

Belle: These brandy alexanders ROCK

Amber: They are creamy, boozy goodness.

Belle: So, ready to get crunked and watch Twilight and then blog our not-so-secret shame Amber?

Amber: I will now look askance at you for sayin "crunked."

Belle: You keep saying that I talk with a Southern California accent. I may as well go all the way. Anyway, preliminary observation: Kristen Stewart: pretty, but in a vapid, slightly plain way

Amber: Well, that pretty much sums up her character so it's good.

Belle: Robert Pattinson: I confess that I found him cute in that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie. I feel dirty saying this, because he's not much older than my oldest nephew. I keep getting older, and the hotties stay hot, and as my nephew ages so does my potential for shame.

Anyway, Pattinson/Edward Cullen: way too much hair in this movie. I fear the hair! It's like Flock of Seagulls kind of shit.

Amber: I found him aesthetically pleasing, but he's less good looking here from what I can tell.

Belle: Hmm, interesting. His good looks shift in quality? We will one day have to talk about what is 'good looking' and infuriate everyone in the blogosphere.

Amber: This is an important conversation. But right now, I will just say that I prefer alive to dead.

Belle: So, I haven't seen this movie, and I haven't read these books, out of principle--the principle that evil, shitty movies with bad moral messages should be avoided at all costs.

Amber: Right, and I've read the entire series, which I blame on a ticket snafu in Penn Station and subsequent inability to look away from trainwrecks.

Belle: It's okay. I still love you. I judge you, but I still love you.

(next conversation: love is not unconditional and allows for judgment)

Amber: But will you love me by the end of tonight? ( I knew I should have put more brandy in.)

Belle: I am ready to be corrupted! Love corrupts, as we all know. I will love you more by the end of the night, when we are both equally bad people. Let us show Amber to be likewise the unprincipled person that I am! Bring on the brandy ice cream and craptastic teen romance!

Amber: Let's get started! Right now all I'm seeing is deer butt.

(First part of the movie, a soliloquy from Bella. Soliloquies are very useful vehicles for narrative exposition. They are also appropriate for emo teenagers. See also, Hamlet.)

Belle: I don't get the "I never thought about how I would die" line from Bella. Every emo teenager thinks about that! And these are the emo-est! Tickle Me Emo; Whiny McEmoPants, etc.

Amber: We can tell Mom is wacky because she wears sequins and cowboy hats.

Belle: Dude, girlfriend is wearing a lot of clothes for Phoenix. Also, way unfreckled for a Sunbelt State resident. I call out the costume director and makeup artist.

Amber: And now ... BLUE! filter.

Belle: It's to enhance the emo. Though is she were tan, it would look like Jungle Fever starring Annabella Sciorra and Wesley Snipes, circa 1991 when she embraces the deathly pale Edward (and I know she will, teen movies are so predictable). Now she's holding a cactus. CLICHE symbol of the Southwest. It's like me, the Californian, holding a fucking orange. An ORANGE.

Amber: (The dad, in a fit of latent paternalism, has decorated his daughter's room in purple, the favorite color of five year olds.) Purple is cool. Not as cool as Black, of course. Black like her dreams.

Belle: Awkward but tender moment with absent, estranged dad. Are we watching an afterschool special? (Dad gives Bella a beat up old pickup as a present. It looks like something out of a documentary about The Dustbowl and the Great Migration.) Sweet whip!

Amber: Okay, who's the hot kid? Oh, Jacob. He looks completely age appropriate. It's doomed.

Belle: She can't get very excited, even about her Piece of Shit (POS) car. Was I this morose as a teenager, such that even my moments of excitement conveyed a deep ennui that weighed my limbs to the very earth? Probably. I was one of those kids that read Plath.

Amber: She doesn't know what a clutch is but they bought her a manual transmission truck?

Belle: She probably won't like Jacob back the way he seems to like her. He's cute, but Native American is not different enough. Must be a VAMPIRE to be forbidden love. And hey, I don't know how to drive a stick.

Amber: Me neither.

Belle: I hope that no one pounces on that as a pun of "that's what she said!"

Amber: Why is Eric wearing a tie?

Belle: Asian hipster kid: no chance with Bella. Oh hey, scene of co-ed PE. Why is the PE co-ed? Why do people play volleyball indoors? They should only play volleyball in the Southwest, where you can play outside year 'round. (traumatic flashback) In high school, they called me "Butterfingers" because I kept missing the ball with my arms in volleyball. Fuck high school.

Amber: I always got hit in the head. No depth perception.

(Amber and Belle have a bonding moment about high school ostracism. Movie shifts to some guy kissing Bella on the cheek as she's surrounded by new friends. Amber and Belle have flashes of indignation at undeserved acceptance of awkward Bella by the entrenched social clique.)

Amber: Okay, sexual assault much, kissy boy? Seriously. even in small towns nobody gets this excited about new girls.

Belle: I don't get how she is so popular. She has NO personality.

Amber: And nobody knows her.

Belle: Auto ethnography: the popular kids are criticizing the Cullens for being "insular," and they mention the incest taboo. Twilight, the crucible for our social norms.

Amber: Edward Cullen: totally gorgeous? What's up with those mismatched eyebrows?

Belle: Edward Cullen: So PALE! Such big hair! Scary ass motherfucker. Oh wait, I just made an incest taboo joke. Wordplay! Bella is standing in front of a fan in a dramatic pause! Who the fuck is the director, or did we just switch to a Pantene ad?

Amber: Definitely a Secret ad

Amber: Strong enough for a man, but pH balanced for a vampire.

Belle: Ha, and she's sniffing her hair. Why is he gagging?

Belle: Who wears t-shirts on the outside of long sleeved thermals this side of 1994? Oh wait, he falls in love with her scent, right?

Amber: Yes

Belle: Weird. Maybe she uses that Pheromone perfume from the 90s. It is always about the '90s.

Amber: Gardenburgers, very 90s also.

Belle: I hate Gardenburgers.

(Movie transitions to some scene involving vampires attacking some fisherman. Sucks to be the fisherman.)

Belle: "Things were getting a little...strange." Great dialogue!

Amber: Shift to dramatic pursuit scene. And ... mysterious death. We are shown that Bella is clumsy. This is called foreshadowing.

Belle: "Security guard killed by some kind of animal" Somewhere in here is a terribly written essay about the destruction of authority by the anthropomorphized beastly outlaw.

Amber: Edward questions Bella's judgment... also foreshadowing.

Belle: Their kids will be like phosphorescent white.

Amber: You'll see. If he is dead, why does he have huge bags under his eyes?

Belle: Bella has a minor league baseball player stepdad: Bull Durham, ten years later, with a vampire-obsessed emo teenage stepdaughter, and hilarity ensues. I should write movies. They can be mashups!

Amber: You'd think after 100 years he would have a better comeback when people noticed his color-change irises. "Fluorescent lights"?!

Belle: Edward Cullen looks like James Dean, but if possible, even more sullen and emo.Vampire saves the day! He's a GOOD vampire. This is called demonstration of ethos.

Amber: Yet the other vampires are angry.

Belle: They are BAD vampires. (ok, I have no idea. Maybe good/evil are not so black/white. But I suspect that in this movie, it is.)

Amber: No, they just don't understand how good she smells

Belle: Dude, Peter Facinelli looks like a freak show. Why do I know his namer and the fact that he's married to Jennie Garth, also known as Kelly from Beverly Hills, 90210? I blame my dentist sister and her waiting room full of People magazine. Anyway, I don't understand the penchant for peroxide among vampires.

Amber: It's probably because they don't age. they need some way to alter their appearance.

Belle: "I am super pale and freaky looking. Let me bleach my hair and look even freakier and completely devoid of pigment!" Anyway, I guess that's one way of dealing with a 200 year beauty rut. According to the women's magazines, because I have been wearing the same hairstyle and lipstick for ten years, I am in such a rut.

Amber: Is Bella having a sexytime dream? There was an awful lot of panting for a PG13 movie

Belle: Edward in bedroom! Vampires show up in your room at night to watch you sleep and talk to you about Serious Stuff! They copied Buffy!

Belle: I feel dirty. Aw, lame dude asking Bella to prom. Did I ever tell you no one ever asked me to the prom?

He is so rejected! And yet, I feel for him.

Amber: Ouch.

Belle: I was a late bloomer. Also, psycho strict parents a known commodity, so why bother asking. Maybe this is why I somewhat enjoy high school themed movie/TV drama. Vicarious living! Ok, TMI.

Amber: how did Edward know about her private conversation with another guy? and why is he bitching her out for slipping?

Belle: My dad is like that. He loves you so much, he is angry when you get hurt. It's the kind of frightened anger one can have when the object of one's love is shown to be beyond one's grip, and can be lost or injured. So he got really mad when my mom fell, or when I got injured for a non-medical reason. This is not unlike abusive amounts of love as control, because of course we can't/shouldn't love things so much we get angry at our inability to control what happens to them. It's one thing to be protective and fearful, it's another to get angry over such things. Again, this movie is evil.

Amber: Your experience will help you understand this movie. Bella plus Dad = lots of plaid

Belle: Sometimes I'm worried that I'm a social conservative, because divorce makes me sad. It's like I have this secret "family values" campaign in my head.

Amber: Divorce is sad. And here is Edward, being emo and telling her he knows best.

Belle: Dude, if your mood swings are so volatile for a TEENAGER, you are BEYOND emo.

Amber: If he really gave a crap he would just not talk to her at all Instead of being all Mysterious

Belle: E: "What if I'm the bad guy." B: "But you're not. I can see that it's a defense mechanism. Let's hang out." This is FUCKED UP. She sees him as a PROJECT.

Amber: Well, yes.

Belle: Oooh, feminism, sort of! Bella counsels friend to ask a guy out!

Amber: Hot Native guys approach!

Belle: This is the one glimpse of chutzpah! This is it, isn't it.

Amber: pretty much. Here's more "I shouldn't talk about this thing that will make you incredibly curious"

Belle: If I were centuries old, I would have more than a high school education.

Amber: But then you'd look like a dropout to all the HS hotties

Belle: All vampires are hot. Why is that? They also look like the mosh pit people at Coachella.

Amber: Because the vampire magic keeps away zits?

Belle: I don't get why she doesn't buy that book on myths and monsters from Amazon, when there was clearly that purchase option. "No, let me pretend to be enthusiastic about prom dress shopping with my friends so that I can go all the way to some far away town and buy this book at full retail value!" This movie is stupid. Maybe this is some message about supporting your local independent bookseller.

Amber: Because then Edward couldn't stalk her to the bookstore

Belle: It is anti online shopping.

Amber: Oh look, more apples. How dramatic

Belle: Oh yeah, I just noticed that. God, that is lame symbolism.

Amber: Bella is the worst friend ever. "Here are my castoff dates." "Your dresses are meh."

Belle: Yes. You and I are shallow though. We are genuinely excited to try on dresses together. I think we are really destroying our feminist cred with this post, aren't we.

Amber: We can reestablish it by condemning this scene

Belle: But we are good friends. Dear Internet: Belle and Amber will be excited by your fashion choices! Go shopping with us, and then we can talk about feminism!

Amber: Girl attacked by dudes, tries to take control, but must be saved by scary dude

Belle: Man, I hate gang rape scenes. What did Edward do, growl at them?

Amber: Yes

Belle: I wish she had busted out Krav Maga. She is the anti-Buffy.

Amber: Her dad is a cop. Shouldn't she know what to do?

Belle: Seriously. And what's with the "seatbelt" talk, and why is he scoffing at her attempt to establish normal conversation so that he can't hear the rapey thoughts of the dudes he just saved her from? You should wear seatbelts!

Amber: because vampires are indestructible, practically

Belle: Whatever. Bad message. Kids: Wear your seatbelt! It's the law! This movie is full of morally destructive messages.

Amber: I can hear an angry parent now. "When you're a vampire too, you can not wear your seatbelt. Until then, missy, keep it on!" "Along with your pants!" How did he knows where she was? Because he is a stalker.

Belle: It is highly dramatic to pretend to leave a restaurant when you have no car and no means to get home from the boondocks of wherever.

Amber: she could have gone home with the girls

Belle: Her mind is not so impenetrable or insightful. He is not missing much by not being able to read her mind.

Amber: Of course But of course she immediately thinks there is something wrong with her

Belle: E: "I don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore." B: "Then don't!" They stole this line from "Meet Joe Black."

Amber: At least this movie is shorter

Belle: If his hand is so cold, having sex with him must be painful. Much less pre-teen technical virginity stuff.

Amber: Maybe he could wear a hot water bottle as foreplay.

Belle: I swear the Dad Vampire is wearing Max Factor pan cake makeup.

Amber: If only she had the pepper spray earlier this evening ...Dad needs to be more on the ball

(Bella is looking through the book of myths and monsters and figures out that duh, Edward is a vampire.)

Belle: Sarah Vowell wrote that her favorite thing about Buffy was that The Scooby Gang's immediate response to any problem was to research it. It was the ultimate in nerd pride! Somehow, despite the fact that Bella is going to the books to figure out this, I am not optimistic about the conclusions she'll reach.

Amber: To be fair, she has no Giles

Belle: It's like "Oh, so they're cold blooded killers. But so dreamy, too!" And she's no Slayer.

Amber: It's like women who marry imprisoned serial killers

Belle: YES.

Amber: they're so intense

Belle: cough Mrs. Menendez cough.

Amber: why is she walking in the woods alone after realizing that he's a killer?

Belle: Her laundry list of his attributes makes him very unappealing. What does she see in this dude?

Amber: all the camerawork is making Amber dizzy

Belle: I like walking in the woods. I do it recreationally. I am mad that they are making this some dangerous, taboo activity fraught with the potential for emotional betrayal. Next thing you'll tell me is that they're going to the same to sex. She said the V-word! Not virginity.

Amber: it is when the woods are rife with murderers. Okay, he just grabbed her really violently

Belle: The spinning cinematography and lens filter reminds me of an R&B music video, and not in a good way.

He looks like one of those hologram stickers from Lisa Frank. Vampires' skin sparkles like diamonds?!

Amber: Edward, trying to push Bella away: "I'm a killer!"... of deer

Belle: It's like this line from 30 Rock: "I have hunted the most dangerous game. Man...(cough), excuse me, as I was saying, "manatee." Hmm, Bella seems unperturbed by Edward's violent, murderous (of animals) past. She has a very permissive view of juvenile criminal justice. "I've killed others! I want to kill you!" Bella: "It's okay!"

Amber: I think he could be tried as an adult

Belle: Edward: "Your scent...it's like drug to me...you're...like....my...own...brand....of...heroin." OMG. He talks like William Shatner. And this sounds like a lyric from Evanescence.

Amber: His delivery here is so stilted. I can tell that the actor had utter contempt for the character. (Which is apparently true.)

Belle: I can imagine all the teen girls masturbating to this scene on repeat. I feel REALLY dirty now.

Amber: ew, let's not

Belle: Pause, question: would we have felt so intensely attached to this book/movie at 17? Or actually, 13.

Amber: No. But then I didn't watch Titanic eight jillion times either.

Belle: me neither. This is why other girls didn't like me enough. I don't get the appeal of that movie. I don't get the appeal of this.

Amber: Other girls will be eaten by vampires. It's Darwinian and you WIN

Belle: We will be bitter and alone, but we will be ALIVE! Bella: "Then why did you hate me so much when we met?" Edward: "I did....only because of how much you made me want you." What is with the fucking abnegation of agency and free will?! This is not unlike all those defenses about intimacy as vulnerability I rail against Take responsibility for your feelings and relationships, people! No one MAKES you do anything. And I have been super emo because of love in my life! We're talking "listening to Mariah Carey on repeat" emo! But seriously, no one MAKES you fall in love.

Amber: Love is a sickness, Belle.

Belle: Did my parents escape Communism for no reason?!I HATE the love is a sickness argument!

Amber: He needs to accept a higher power and learn to live one day at a time without Bella-smell.

Belle: This movie is EVIL .Teenage girls everywhere are now afraid of the power of their sexuality

Amber: Even alcohol cannot mask its insidiousness. She can't help it if every guy in school and random men in alleys and scary stalker vampires want to do her

Belle: they are now apotheosizing themselves and their sexual powers and allure, and thinking it's THEIR FAULT some guy goes crazy obsessive in love in a borderline abusive, controlling way with them. This is Chris Brown/Rihanna bad.

Amber: totally

Belle: Did you read that Hilzoy post responding to Hirschman on domestic violence?

Amber: Yes, it was great.

Belle: How Hilzoy described a learned helplessness model of DV, one in which the victim learns to be weak, and that it is all her fault? This is not unlike the model of love perpetrated by this book/movie. Powerless in love, powerless to control sexual allure, powerless to stop the violence, and apparently here, love is violence. Sex is destruction

Amber: Her agency is a sham. She's shuttled from place to place, herded like a cow to slaughter by this ancient, pasty freak, and then she just falls in love with him. Because otherwise he would have to kill her. He couldn't take it, I'm sure.

Belle: I'm getting total domestic violence vibes from this. He is hovering over her.He scoops her up like a paperweight. This is SCARY. I would not want my daughter to watch this/read this, except for my liberal First Amendment principles. I would almost rather have my kid read the Marquis de Sade. Which I have read. It's extremely perverse stuff. But so extreme, you know it's way off the Kinsey scale and most sexual mores. This is celebrating a retrograde, controlling model of love/sex/romance that appears to be totally acceptable. Whereas this model of love is made NORMAL, acceptable, DESIREABLE.

I don't get why she trusts him. Bad imagery: He presses her against a wall. She's not afraid of him? She's afraid of LOSING him? Ok, she's talking like a victim.

Edward: "I've been waiting for you for a long time." I fucking hate this whole "feelings of destiny" bullshit. I don't believe in soulmates. Bullshit model of romance that is DANGEROUS, because it keeps people stuck pining unrequitedly for the wrong people. Edward: "So the lion fell in love with the lamb." Bella: "What a stupid lamb." Edward: "What a sick, masochistic lion." this is BULLSHIT dialogue!

Amber: The lion/lamb thing is a very religious piece of imagery

Belle: Yeah, I hate that.

Amber: There is really no other religion in here, though, besides the Native myths.

Belle: Love is not transcendantly spiritual. This is a terrible philosophy of all consuming love.

Amber: Doesn't anyone care about the existential questions raised by vampirism?

Belle: So, when Edward first saved Bella, and scooped her up, it reminded me of religious iconography of ascendance. Fuck that shit.

Amber: He is the resurrection and the life? Or at least he is in Book 4.

Belle: I have to admit, I was once this fervently in love. I was 17. Were you ever that fervently in love?

Amber: Yes. But not with a bloodsucking murderer.

Belle: Ah, and now they go "public" with their relationship. It is sad that so many young relationships are shrouded in shame (over what?) and "to go public" still means so much. I can sort of get it in the vampire-human context, but I bet teen girls everywhere are celebrating the gallantry of Edward owning up to actually liking/respecting a girl. See also, "Grease." Anyway, Edward put her arm around her against school-wide disapproval. I am reminded of Logan and Veronica. All forbidden love is alike.

Amber: Except that was actually good.

Belle: Yes, true.

(In which Edward tells Bella that he and his family are "good" vampires, who eat animal blood rather than human blood, and thus consider themselves "vegetarians." And in which Edward invites Bella to meet his family, which is apparently scarier than finding out your boyfriend is a vampire.)

Amber: This whole veggie vampire thing is silly

Belle: Seriously!

Amber: I have it on good authority that vegetarians can be completely satisfied.

Belle: I wish my boyfriend liked tofu. Vegetarians should be offended at this movie.

Amber: We are lucky to have the closed captioning on so we know this is a slow, exotic theme.

Belle: Why did he have to rush around the car?It's not that hard.

Amber: so they can get to the house with all the other vampires super fast?

Belle: I really love Danish modern furniture. These vampires have good taste!

Amber: wait, they don't have to hide in their house? the walls are made of windows!

Belle: They even cook well! Why is it funny that "if this ends badly...badly as in I become the meal"?

Amber: and why is jasper all freaked? he goes to school every day with humans.

Belle: This is a very weird.

Amber: He has no bed.

Belle: No sex!

Amber: This does not bode well for her no-pants dreams

Belle: That solves that. I mean, what do teenagers do when they don't have beds?

Amber: he does have a car. oh look, they're dancing to what even I recognize is lame classical (Clair de Lune)

Belle: he wants to make her dance?! She's no puppet! And now he's doing some kind of stupid Spider Man fantasy. This guy is controlling. Oh, and now he's whisking her out the window, to fly from tree top to tree top. Hmm.

Amber: the problem is that her hold on him is not vampire-strong. she could die

Belle: His world sucks. Even if it includes beautiful views.

Amber: She has to leave her world and enter his

Belle: What do they have to talk about? Well, I guess he's read The Catcher in the Rye like 500 times. Maybe he just talks about how much he identifies with Holden. and she swoons. Much like the Jennifer Aniston character in "The Good Girl."

Amber: I never saw that

Belle: Ok, I, Super Emo Girl (TM) am hereby declaring a ban on the Emo Boy leading boy character.

Amber: Ew, her dad is pumping her about boys. And her mom. And her boyfriend is a old hand at B&E

Belle: Creepy. He breaks and enters. And he is fascinated by her sleeping. This is one creepy motherfucker. They're kissing. He's pushing her away when she becomes too aggressive in her kissing. This is fucked up.

Amber: And of course she apologizes

Belle: He broke into her room! He kissed her first! He now says he'd lose control with her! Her sexuality is too powerful! Now they're just hanging out. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Amber: Why is she snuggling him? Isn't he like 60 degrees? The shotgun toting dad is so unsubtle.

Belle: Edward is used to courting people in the 18th century. Dude, I do not want a guy to ask my dad permission to date me.

Amber: and assuring men that he'll care well for their chattel

Belle: Even though my dad would prefer that. I do not want to perpetuate the patriarchy! I Blame The Patriarchy!

Amber: Your dad has no say by this time.

(Edward, resigned to let Bella stay in his life, invites Bella to play baseball with his vampire family. They can only play during thunderstorms because their superhuman strength means that the bat hitting the ball makes a sound like thunder. They must be using titanium bats, because a wooden bat would break and a metal bat would dent. But whatever.)

Belle: Are the vampires trying to embrace some American past time by playing baseball?!

Amber: I guess.

Belle: I like baseball a lot.

Amber: I don't think it's physically possible to hit a baseball with an aluminum bat so hard it's thunderous

Belle: This is a perversion. And the Yankees are evil, so I am upset that they're wearing their uniforms. Unless those are red stripes (can't tell with the moody camera filter), in which case the Vampires are OK.

Amber: Uh oh,

Belle: Scary Goth vampires with dread locks and long hair approach!

Amber: Since when do French vampires play baseball? The wind is blowing her delicious smell at the bad vampires!

Belle: Seriously. Now there's a showdown, with both sides of vampires in a half-crouching, ready to wrestle position. This is like the Pat Benatar Love is a Battlefield (wordplay!) video with the vampires facing off in that pose. I expect them to shake their shoulders. See also, Michael Jackson and "Bad."

Amber: Why are Edward and Bella leaving alone?

Belle: Seriously.

Amber: Isn't she safer with a half dozen vamps?

Amber: can she even rent a motel room? she's like 16

Belle: This is heartbreaking to watch her leave her father. And she is really saying hurtful things. I feel for the dad.

Amber: But it's for his own good

Belle: This movie is making me campaign for more parental authority.

This movie is evil.

Amber: she has to very obviously leave so the tracker vamp won't go to the house

Belle: The family that slays together, stays together. Nice that they're protecting her.

Amber: she's part of the family after about five dates?

Belle: Seriously. Again, bad model of teenage romance. I suppose this is the complete opposite of that "hook up" culture written about so much in the newspapers (a trend I believe as much as teenage pharm parties, but whatever, I think in our day it was called "dating." Anyway, apparently they're married after five dates. Great family values.

Amber: She is his life! His undead life! She's only not safe because of him. Who trusts a vampire? How can she be so stupid as to trust the evil vampire? He'll just eat her and her mom.

Belle: Bella: "I'd never given much thought to how I would die. But dying in the place of someone I love seems a good way to go." Wow, the self sacrifice bordering on self-immolation is terrible. Also that being lead to your death is being lead to your love.

Amber: and it's not even effective

Belle: seriously?! creepy: slasher porn. Bad vampire wants to film himself devouring her?! Great, she is described as fragile And he just broke her bone

Amber: Don't worry, stalker boy will save her

Belle: This is a very violent against women movie. (Bella is bitten by the evil vampire and envenomed. Edward's father lets him choose whether she will change or be saved.)

Amber: He has to make a choice? SHE should get to chose!

Belle: Seriously! Even Mary Jane got to choose to stay with Peter in Spider Man! I actually liked that line. "Don't you respect me enough to let me choose for myself?" This is lacking from this movie.

Amber: You can't suck venom out. Someone is going to die of snakebite from this movie.

Belle: Lack of Female Agency In Twilight: A Deontological Discussion.This is like a really bad dissertation.

This movie IS evil!

Amber: It is the worst movie ever

Belle: Great, another teen movie celebrates death by saying "Death is beautiful....easy. Life is harder." BAD message! Public Service Announcement: Dear Teenagers: Call your suicide hotline TODAY.

Belle: This movie is a glorification of The Guy In a Hoodie.

Amber: See, now it's her fault if she gets hurt

Belle: Great, he is breaking up with her to protect her from getting hurt.

Amber: because he told her he'd hurt her more if she stays

Belle: Bella: "We can't be apart. You can't leave me." This is EVIL. This movie is 1) misogynistic, 2) paternalistic, 3) BULLSHIT. Annnnd....it ends in a prom scene. This is like Sweet Valley High.

Amber: Oh, it's Jacob! ... to tell her to break up with her boyfriend.

Belle: Ok, WTF. Native American dad of Jacob pays his son to tell her to break up with her boyfriend Does Bella have any decision making capabilities of her own?! Does she have ANY control over her life, or are mengoing to tell her what to do for the rest of the series?!

Amber: She decided she wanted Edward, that's where her agency stops. It's been signed over

Belle: And this is the main problem of Twilight. This is a chattel model of love.

Amber: At least her dad didn't sell her to Edward for dinner.

Belle: I think we have stared into the heart of evil. And it makes her puke. Jacob says that her his dad will be "watching her." WTF. Police state! Patriarchy!Why are they dancing like they're in 1986? I missed proms. It is not an important rite of passage. I am mostly ok.

Amber: Because Forks is liberal enough for fake gambling at prom but not for freak dancing

Belle: Why aren't they breaking out in a coordinated dance number like in "She's All That"? She has the worst outfit ever. Halter tiered dress, converses, and a beaded shrug.

Amber: He's telling her she's dancing, but he's doing it all for her.

Belle: Yes.

Lack of Agency, again. He didn't want to turn her into a vampire, because she can't be corrupted.she must be pure.

she wants to spend eternity with him, and will die if she lives without him.or rather, she'll die eventually and that sucks, because life without him, or death without him, is hell. This is like Tuck Everlasting, but the WRONG end.

Amber: They don't even know each other!

Belle: I know! They've SMELT each other. He's sniffing her right now!

Amber: He is illogical

Belle: She'll grow old, and he'll always be beautiful This is not a good plan.

Amber: Maybe he digs grannies

Belle: It's like failing to plan for retirement when you're 17. Old age sounds great now! Except for the incontinence later. This is supposed to be a happy ending, isn't it. The song is saying "I found you, flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you" The lyrics, they are prophetic or rather, symbolic. She is a flightless bird. Lacking power.

She is incapable of escape, flight, freedom, without him. I am super lame. But the movie and the music, it brings out the lameness in me.

Amber: This music is so obvious

Belle: I feel really shitty right now.

Amber: I guess middle school girls are not subtle. why?

Belle: and it's not because of the delightful brandy alexanders. Of which we only had one. Because we just watched a really shitty, evil movie.

Amber: It was only a dollar

Belle: And yet I feel compelled to read/watch the other books/movies in the series.

Amber: Don't do it!

Belle: This is like Dan Brown for teenage and middle aged women. Compulsively readable, but complete shit.

Every sentence is 3-5 words. Every paragraph is 3-5 sentences. It is really bad writing obscuring weak ideas, shitty philosophy, and EVIL moral premises. This is evil, and it has taken over the world.

Amber: It's just emotional pornography. porn is popular.

Belle: true. Why am I not surprised that Linkin Park is part of the soundtrack? Well, so overall, what did you think?

Amber: Wretched, poorly directed, distracting camera work, and evil.

Belle: Me too. Well, I guess that's my final insight. "Me too."

Amber: This was fun! Sort of.

Belle: It was!

Amber: Insofar as evil can be fun

Belle: Yes. Maybe we should watch some other evil movie together. If we watch good movies, we would have nothing to talk about. Let's rewatch Titanic.

Amber: It's like MST3K but for teen lameness ... and on that nerdy note I will sign off.

Belle: Me too. Night!

* One beverage apiece. Because we are lightweights. Always drink responsibly, kids.

Wittle bitty horns

I had to leave the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival early lest I purchase a pygmy angora goat. Goats are not allowed in my neighborhood.

Remember Die Hard 3 and the sandwich board? It's the dress version.

I was checking out some vintage clothes online the other day.

"Oh, that dress looks like it has a pretty neckline." *click*

OMG.

I'd be more scandalized if it had sold.

Skinny jeans and popped collars

Someone wrote a 28 page treatise entitled "On Douchebags." Really.

Open Thread

What's up?

Drug Tests for Clerkships?

This is just weird:

I want to clerk for a Federal circuit court judge when I graduate and then work for the State Department. Chances are I won't be able to do either because I won't be able to pass a drug test.

Since when do federal judicial clerks have to take drug tests? I never had to do so. (Not that it would have turned up anything, because I am boring.)

Just my impression.

Resolved: That Mary Cassatt is the Anne Geddes of the 19th c.

Thank goodness?

I guess I don't have to worry about swine flu if I die of heat exhaustion while trying to cut my grass with a push mower.

Mel Gibson has daughters, right?

I found this comment sort of interesting:

Overheard in the neighborhood chocolate shop/cafe today:

Her: I don’t drink because I do terrible things when I’m drunk. Once this guy was hitting on me, and I pushed him through a plate glass window, head first. Nothing happened though. And I say all these racist things! Only when I’m drunk. But when I get drunk I just…say anything. Is that part of me? I don’t want to be a racist, so I don’t drink.

Is the decision not to drink accomplishing much here? Does the individual have a moral obligation to do more?

Remembrance of things past

I normally find Caitlin Flanagan off-putting, if only because she's obviously very intelligent and insightful and yet manages, through either selective blindness or malevolence, to get nearly everything wrong. (Sometimes just a smidge. A tweak toward wrongness. It's infuriating. But mostly she's lots wrong.) But the juxtaposition of her review of Alec Baldwin's book on divorce and Hugo Schwyzer's reposting of the need for kindness and desire in marriage really struck me. She's got something there. I don't agree with where she takes it, but there's something.

Schwyzer:

While chemistry may wane and lust may fluctuate, I do believe that in order for a relationship to be successful, there must at the least be an initial period of extraordinary desire. In times of low desire and little sexual activity, memories of "how it used to be" can serve as a reminder that the two people in a given relationship really did once passionately long for each other. What one once had and then lost can be found again. What one never had in the first place is a lot harder to create from scratch.

Flanagan:

[T]he spark that had gotten it all started, turning one Flanagan into four and making a certain red-shingle house in North Berkeley an unparalleled trove of talked-out Chatty Cathy dolls and years-long quarrels, Julia Child soufflés and weekend benders—was a consuming passion. The fact that a long time ago, a young man had gone to a cocktail party in Greenwich Village with a Navy buddy, caught sight of a beautiful young woman, and said to the friend, “Introduce me.”

Or words to that effect. I wasn’t there! All I know is that for all of their quarreling and bellyaching, they had begun in romance and they gestured back to that romance a hundred times a year. It was in the gifts they gave one another, the notes they sent when they were apart, the fact that whenever she was combing my father’s fringe of white hair before a party, she would say, “You look so handsome, Tom”—and you realized that she wasn’t exactly seeing something; she was remembering it.

Aren't the happiest couples are the ones that see each other as the people each fell in love with, even years down the line?

Customer Service

At the sushi restaurant:

Me: I'd like to get some takeout.
Hostess: Oh, we don't do takeout.
Me: Can I eat at the bar?
Hostess: Yes, there's a seat at the bar available.
Me: If I order more than I can eat, can I take it home in a box?
Hostess: .... No.

Coinage

Having one best friend at a time: monogamie?

But Snape wouldn't like it.

Requiring a stay-at-home puppy mom is fairly common in animal rescues these days, from what I saw during my ultimately unsuccessful dog search. Also, discrimination against renters.

Recipe: Spicy Shrimp & Soba Noodles

This is nicely spicy, and you could probably sub extra-firm tofu for the shrimp or cook additional veggies at that stage.

Shrimp:
8-12 raw medium shrimp
3 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Toss shrimp in marinade until well coated. Let sit while preparing rest of recipe.

Sauce:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp hot red pepper flakes

Cook the sugar and water until sugar is dissolved, stirring frequently. Let cool for 5 minutes, then add other ingredients. Keep on low heat.

2-3 servings dried soba noodles
1-2 cups thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Cook noodles as directed, drain, and toss with half the sauce. Cook shrimp and mushrooms in a dab of oil for 3 minutes, then add them to noodles. Add cilantro. Serve with more sauce if desired.

Having a baa-d day?

For your enjoyment: Lambcam.

ETA: And Japanese hot-tubbing monkey-cam. (I went there!)

Business in front, business in the back.

So my bloggy friend was asking me why I didn't go to [Trendy Blog]'s happy hour and I replied that I am not cool. To which she responded, "Oh, you could have gone. They are not cool."

Is it my fate to be a suit (not that I dislike suits. on guys.)? I need the weather to warm up so I can do things that are more youthful. Ideas for DC weekend fun? Remember, I don't ride a bike.

I am also thinking I might want to go to Yosemite sometime but that is solely based on pretty pictures from Flickr. Thoughts from people who have camped more recently than Girl-Scout-age welcome.

Amber sans fards

Every time I go to work without makeup and don't hide in my office with the door shut, someone asks me if I'm sick. That's because I don't look like this.

Grr

Fell down my stairs this morning. Landed hard on my bottom, but somehow injured my neck in doing so. And now my head hurts.

Weekend Bake: Festive Cheese Enchiladas

I have tried to make some good Tex-Mex at home before, but was a little unsatisfied with the results. This cheese enchilada recipe was much tastier and not as messy to prepare.

Chili Gravy:
1/4 cup Crisco
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp dried Mexican oregano
2 T chili powder
2 cups water
3 cloves pressed garlic

Enchiladas:
7 corn tortillas
3 cups shredded cheddar cheese
One medium onion, diced
2 cups chili gravy

Preheat oven to 450.
Melt the Crisco in a medium non-stick pan. Add flour and make a roux (cook 5 minutes or until caramel brown). Stir constantly.
Add dry ingredients and cook for one minute, while continuing to stir.
Add water and garlic. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Gravy should be thickened but not pasty.

Heat the tortillas one at a time on your stove's gas burners, flipping every ten seconds or so. Keep them wrapped in a cloth until all are heated.
Pour enough chili gravy to cover the bottom in a non-stick baking pan.
Roll 1/4 cup of cheese and 1 tablespoon of onion inside a tortilla and roll it.
Place rolled tortilla in pan, seam side down.
Repeat with remaining tortillas. (We fit 7 in a 9x9 pan.)
Take remaining chili gravy and pour over the top.
Sprinkle remaining cheese and onions on top of that.
Bake for 10 minutes or until sauce is bubbly and cheese is melted. EAT.

Female Timothy Treadwell?

A woman entered a polar bear habitat at the Berlin Zoo. During feeding time. Bad idea.

Blurgh.

Two jobs last year. Two W-2s. Two ... copies of the same W-2.

I'm sure that my old workplace can pull the form and email it to me Monday, but ... #*&%^%^@*!!!

Two Hour Benetton Ad With Screeching

Finally saw Rachel Getting Married. White people with Indian-themed weddings: the apogee of lameness?

He shot me (and it felt like a kiss)

This is so wrong:

As of March 2009, [Amber Benson, who played Tara] was dating Adam Busch, who played Warren on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Is love submission?

Really interesting discussion in the comments to this post on whether love and sex are really all about submission. BDSM community members weigh in to say no.

The difficulty in these situations is acknowledging that "I eroticize submission" (as Coates apparently does) is not the same as "Submission is erotic [for everyone, or generally]." Maybe the BDSM viewpoint on D/S not being intrinsic to love and sex is derived from their experiences at having to persuade more vanilla people that there is no single common thread for what love and sex are really all about.

As one commenter notes, though,

perhaps this is merely a terminological issue.

I make sacrifices, of course.. I stop and listen and change my mind when convinced in disagreements.. but I would never call these things as "submission"...

(and, for the record, I don't see "submission" necessarily as a bad thing.. but it's not a term that I would use for myself in a context that doesn't involve force or authority(==delayed/implied force)..

I submitted to parents.. I submit to work and school powers when I need to.. etc.. but I don't ever "submit" to equals.. and I never expect anyone to submit to me.. I can disagree/agree/fight/avoid etc.. but all of these things imply willing choice and acceptance in a way that doesn't imply a hierarchy like "submit" does to me.

Does your view of "submission" imply hierarchy at all? That by submitting, you are recognizing a "higher authority" (even in just that instance)--or is it just more of an acceptance...?

To my way of thinking, it doesn't make sense to call the generalized give-and-take of relationships mutual submission, due to the connotation of submission with dominance and hierarchy. Thoughts?

I want you to want me.

In his review of I Love You Man, Ezra Klein reflects on adult friendships:

What the movie gets right, I think, is the way in which making friends as an adult is not merely similar to dating, but actually worse. The absence of sex renders the process more uncertain: Unlike with dating, there are few discrete waypoints available to help you judge the relationship's progression. Unlike with dating, the acceptable behaviors aren't rigidly defined and so the appropriate moves are not always as obvious. Even the expectations are more uncertain: Two single people at least have a certain symmetry in their dating lives. That's not true for two potential friends, one who might have lots of friends and a busy social calendar and the other who might be searching out a best friend or a whole new group.

It is so hard to make clear to someone that you want to be their friend. Is this problem worse for men? Sometimes I feel jealous of the easy superficiality of (ed.: some!) male friendships. The expectations for female friendships are sometimes higher, and maybe that causes us to end up not connecting at all.

Plaintive wail

I really, really, really want more kolaches. And ribs and fatty brisket. And Tex-Mex.

All your fault, Sean.

I have the overwhelming urge to dye my hair red.

Get out.

It's like this was calculated to make me angry:

Law schools may also become more serious about curriculum reform. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released an influential report that, among other things, urged law schools to make better use of the sometimes-aimless second and third years. If law jobs are scarce, there will be more pressure on schools to make the changes Carnegie suggested, including more focus on practical skills.

They may also need to pay more attention to preparing students for nonlegal careers. Law graduates have always ended up in business, government, journalism and other fields. Law schools could do more to build these subjects into their coursework.

Emphasis added to provide direction for my hearty "WTF!" Law graduates usually end up in those fields because they didn't like law. This probably means they shouldn't have gone to law school in the first place, not that an already "sometimes-aimless" law school curriculum should be diluted with more cheesy law and ____ classes to cater to people who really ought to be in J-school or an MPP program. These people ought to cross-enroll, or better yet transfer. The idea that law schools should teach more practical legal skills is in direct tension with the idea that they also ought to teach finance and reporting so graduates can use them in non-legal careers.

If it's reform we want, why not just drop the 3L year altogether? Then you'd have a whole year's tuition money to go to a school that would teach you a bunch of non-legal things. Maybe you could even do that first and not go to law school at all.

Maybe the first thing to convince me of intersectionality

A very good post:

[I]n the white male paranoid mind, the deepest ambition of all black men lay between the two legs of some white woman--any white woman. And white women, of course lacking any real agency in the narrative, joyfully go along. Or are forcibly carried along. From that perspective, white racism really is a fear of a black planet--and (paradoxically) of white women.

Bigotry, in all forms, requires a shocking arrogance, a belief that other communities deepest desires revolve around your destruction. It is the ultimate narcissism, a way of thinking that can only see others, through a paranoid fear of what one might lose. The fears are almost always irrational. To go back to Chuck D, perhaps he was too cold when he said, "Man, I don't want your sister." But there was deep truth in it, the idea was, "Fool, this ain't about you and your fucked-up sexual hangups." In much the same vein when I read people complaining that gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage, I think, "Fool, these gay motherfuckers ain't thinking about your marriage. This ain't about you and your hang-ups."

Bigotry is the heaping of one man's insecurity on to another. Sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-immigrantism, really all come from the same place--cowardice. In his history of lynching, Phillip Dray notes that mob violence against black men wasn't simply about keeping black men in their place--it was about keeping white women in their place. Lynching peaked as white women went to work outside the home in greater numbers, developing their own financial power base. White men, afraid that they couldn't compete with their women, would cowardly resort to lynching. I am not saying that the anti-gay marriage crowd is a lynch mob. But in tying opposition to the sexual revolution what you see is, beyond a fear of gay marriage, a fear for marriage itself. A fear that their way of life can't compete in these new times. It's ridiculous, of course. But bigotry always is.

Recipe: Garlic Ginger Tofu

You should like ginger if you're going to eat this.

Peanut oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cups sliced cremini mushroom caps
1 tbsp minced ginger
1 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1/2 cup white wine
1 (10 oz?) package extra firm tofu
1/2 cup chopped scallions
2 tbsp soy sauce

Cook onion until soft in peanut oil. Remove to bowl. Cook mushrooms until soft. Remove to bowl. Cook garlic and ginger for 10 seconds in oil and then add tofu squares. Cook for 2 minutes or until slight browning begins. Add stock and wine and cook down to 1/2 original volume. Add back onions and mushrooms, stir until all ingredients are hot, then add scallions and soy sauce and stire for 30 seconds. Serve over rice.

You can use snow peas in place of the mushrooms, but instead I tossed a bag of snow peas in oil in a large skillet for 4 minutes, added 1 tbsp each minced garlic and ginger for one more minute of cooking, and then dressed it with a splash of sesame oil and peanut oil and 1 tbsp of soy sauce.

Book Review: The Steel Remains

I'm as big a fan as the next person of the modern "difficult and grim" fantasy novels, but at some point I feel like the authors may be trying too hard to be the new bad boys of fantasy. We get it, violence is bloody and brutal, soldiers and quasi-medieval societies are unlikely to have cosmopolitan views on sexuality, and sometimes people die horrible, undeserved deaths. You don't have to beat me about the head and shoulders with how in touch you are with the grittiness of (fantasy) life.

All this is to say that I really, really wanted to like The Steel Remains, but it came across as very strained. The protagonist, a gay former miltary leader and disowned member of the aristocracy, gets called a "faggot" regularly. We are treated to lovingly detailed descriptions of impalement. An entire city is razed and destroyed based on a silly misunderstanding. All this makes it more psychologically challenging for the escapist reader, but is not cause to turn back.

You might consider turning back because the book doesn't make the challenge of reading worthwhile. The plot trips along a cliched path for much of the novel (tough guy with a past investigating a woman's mysterious disappearance that is more than it seems, conspiracies rise up to block his way). One of the characters is like a less interesting version of Cnaiur. The motivations of the villains are nonsensical, which we are expected to wave aside on the ground that they are insane and alien creatures. Godlike beings pop out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, to save the main characters from the mortal puppets of other godlike beings acting out of similarly inscrutable motives. The writing is pretty fast paced, but this is sort of a bug, not a feature---I got almost to the end and became frustrated at the realization that the author wasn't going to be able to tie all this together in a satisfying way.

Perhaps the main thing that bugged me, though, and maybe this will not be a problem for others, is that this isn't really a fantasy novel. It's being marketed as the entry into fantasy by an established sci-fi author, but, like Matter, it's really a science fiction novel in thin fantasy trappings. This of course spurred a long and rambling meditation on my part in which I tried to figure out why this bothers me and how you can class something as fantasy or science fiction in the first place.

They're both genres with established conventions. What aspects came into play here?

• Races: There are a variety of different non-human races (push) but they appear to differ from humans in that they have extremely advanced mechanistic technology (scifi) or are bestowed with magical-seeming powers through their manipulation of probability fields (scifi). Some implication of space/dimensional travel by other races (scifi).
  
• Social and Political: Empires based on slave labor (push, slight edge to fantasy). People fighting with non-light-saber swords (fantasy). Lost civilizations of more advanced beings (push). Invasions of giant lizard creatures/dragons (push).
• Mores: Generally medieval sexual morality (fantasy). Pretty low value on human life (fantasy). Stark gender divides (fantasy).
• Philosophical: Not a lot of interest in mulling over interesting problems of human society or conducting thought experiments (more common with fantasy). Clearly you can have fantasy that's engaged with exploration of philosophical problems, either implicitly or explicitly (I actually prefer it), but fantasy is generally more escapist.

How do you class something as fantasy versus science fiction? What separates your wise old elves from your Vulcans? Is it just that it's INNN SPAAACE? Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and sufficiently-far future timelines may provide settings eerily like the medieval ones typically found in fantasy.