Twilight is over, so is 2008

I finished book four of the series last night. It took me 5 days to read the entire series so I think it is pretty safe to say we aren't dealing with foundation shaking literature here.

For anyone who has never read the book but intends to, you should probably stop reading here. In case you are slow that was your spoiler alert.

I knew a lot of the problems with the book going into it thanks to Lori and Papercuts but I turned off the part of my brain that listens to them and decided to judge the book on its own merit. After all they were (sorta) wrong about Eragon.

Lets start with my biggest problem a certain irritating twit named Bella Swan. I actually wished I was a fictional character so I could eat her. I don't even have to be a vampire I would go cannibal just to silence her constant whining. So yeah she is whiny did I also mention she is stupid? How about her serious Daddy issues?

"Oh I'm SO in love with Edward. I love the way he bosses me around, never lets me out of his sight, and sneaks into my house without my knowledge to watch me sleep. It makes me feel so safe and secure and loved." ok that's the end of my swooning Bella impression, but really her psycho vampire boyfriend does these things and she is cool with it. She is everything I hate about female leads. Bella is dependant, whiny, needy, insecure, and helpless and even worse she was created by a woman.

Edward come here a moment please. Surely you didn't think it was only Bella I had issues with. You are my second biggest issue with the piece of fiction. I can get that you don't wanna eat humans and sacrifice to save them. That's cool and even kind of endearing but you are also a psychotic control freak. Any man treated me the way you treated Bella and I would smack him into the next state (or province) with a restraining order. What vampires can ignore them? Well then I guess I would just to have my shape shifting friend deliver the message. Oh and what is with the virgin thing? I mean I get you not wanting to break Bella and all so I can see holding out on her but surely in the 99 years you have been trapped in the body of a 17 year old boy you stumbled across at least ONE promiscuous vampire girl. I mean from what I gathered you are hot enough to melt solid rock and you have women both mortal and immortal throwing themselves at you like groupies and you abstain because? Oh yeah because you are old fashioned .... no wait they had premarital sex back then too hence the gunshot weddings. Sorry you are not a believable character for me either.

NEXT .....................................

With the notable exception of Alice the rest of the coven seems to just stand around and with their turn to be useful to the plot. I mean for three books Rose was about as fleshed out a character as the dining room table.

Now on to the technical side.

You know I can swallow the whole daytime vampire thing as soon as I pointed out to myself that I had made the (IMO inexcusable) mistake of confusing vampire lore with Dracula lore. Yeah Dracula could be destroyed by sun and holy relics and a whole bunch of other things but vampire lore is much older than that and varies throughout the world. Most of us are familiar with the European version so that is what we set all our preconceived notions about vampires by but it is not all there is out there and in much lore they are simply nocturnal the same way an owl is not because they CAN'T go out during the day but because they don't wanna. Why they had to sparkle though is beyond me.

Stephanie Myers writing though is a different story all together. She is NOT a gifted writer and she does not make up for this short coming by being a spell binding story teller. Her story is very linear with many characters being two dimensional until it is their turn to take the spot light. She abuses, the, comma in a , way I haven't, seen since second, grade. For a while I though speech impediments ran rampant in the town of forks. I mean if I put all those pauses in the conversation there was no other assumption to make. well that's not true I could have assumed she lacked technical finesse AND that her editor is an idiot both of which would have been correct. I actually honest to go almost threw the book after reading this

Hey, Edward. Skipping, Bella?

ARGH!!!!!!

Sometimes she changes tenses in the middle of a sentence or from singular to plural. I shut my eyes and shook my head to clear it but the evidence was still there when I was done.

So yeah all that annoyed me but do you wanna know what the worst part was?

I read three full books and part of a fourth (over 600 pages) full of mistakes that a 10 year old would catch. I did my best to swallow that a woman not suffering from munchausen syndrome could seriously fall in love with the vampire stalker. I even did some of my own research so that I could read about a vampire going to school during the day without getting a side stick from laughter.

I did all this for two reason

1. I hoped Bella would eventually get eaten
2. I knew the sex was coming.

Well I was wrong on one *tear* but number two was looking promising. Edward promised to have sex with her while she was human as long as they were married. Like a good little puppet she went along with what she wanted and then came the honey moon. FINALLY this book gets a redeeming quality ------------------------ WTF do you mean it's the next morning? I spent 600 pages in purgatory and I don't get ANY details? How did you get those bruises? What happened to the poor pillows? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

SO not fair.

In review:
The book was poorly written.
The characters were unbelievable.
There was no sex.
There was minimal violence.

Since I would hate to end 2008 with THAT literary catastrophe I am reading some Steven King now. "The Dead Zone" has to be better.

Comma abuse

Comma abuse is right up there with apostrophe abuse when it comes to things I can't stand to see in a book I am reading. It is only bested by seeing the word alot in a professionally published book.

I mean do there people not have books proofread before they are published? I recently showed a few sentences from New Moon to an eight year old and she immediately spotted the incorrect comma usage. That is pretty sad IMO that an eight year old caught it but some overpaid editor who probably has a degree in this shit can't manage to figure out there should not be 2 commas in a 5 word sentence. Brilliant.

New moon doesn't abuse apostrophes but lost of other books do. Apparently it is hard to remember 5th grade language arts.

Oh and there is some horrid sentence structure in the Twilight series as well. To the point that sometimes I had to read a sentence three times to be sure of what she meant.

If it was a blog I was reading or an email or even just a letter someone wrote me I probably would not even notice there flaws but I find I am seeing A LOT of them in recently published books as if both authors and editors have forgotten the basic rules.

Write what you know ???????????

Boy I remember hearing that many times when I was just starting out with vague ambitions of maybe someday being published. It was something I was never good at because the sentence sounds so damn literal. I rejected it flat out and after many failed attempts at the great Canadian novel I have finally figured out what it means.

I have two work in progress now and writing them feels like 'coming home' yes I am still struggling with trying to avoid adverb abuse, and where to split chapters and what is needed info and what is useless background information but that is on the technical side. On the creative side where stories are born things are just flowing ...... maybe too well.

I have found this is especially true in my second project as I started to write the opening scene. I have been grappling with it for a few weeks never sure how much detail to put it, how vague to be, and worrying it would traumatize someone. Problem is the book opens with date rape and I had it butchered trying not to be to graphic until I realized that date rape (well all rape for that matter) IS graphic and horrendous and if it makes people uncomfortable to read about it then that is a good thing because it also gives victims a voice.

So as I started to write it I realized there is value to writing what you know and that writing what you know does not mean you have to be autobiographical it just means putting your own voice, experience, and emotions into your characters.

What's in a name?

I hate naming things. I have a cat named King Kong because I delegated the task to a three year old. Naming my children was harder than birthing them. I don't name plants because well A) it's weird and B) I suck at it.

So I am trying to name a girl in a new project I started today and ARGH! No name seems right. I can't go name her Bertha or something because she is supposed to be hot as rocks and yet all the sexy names I can come up with seem wrong for a 16 year old girl.

My Inferiority complex

Since Lori is showing me up in the writing department I decided it was time to get down to business and take a day off from using my screen time to read Sins and get some more words on paper/screen.

My biggest issue is when transferring work from one medium to the other I tend to edit in the process and that slows me up.

I am however making slow but steady progress. Once I learned to read my own hand writing I had to convert my short hand scribbles into coherent story. I think tequila may have helped with this but alas I have none.

Santa can you bring me an extra 3 hours a day of quiet?

I prefer the devil you don't

I have heard many people say "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" I have decided that is just a cliche used to avoid making necessary changes in you life because I really preferred the devil I didn't know.

When I first moved to my current town I thought it was lovely, I lived here 2 years thinking people were nice, and friendly, and compared to my home town OH SO normal. Then I took a job at a corner store and figured out this town is full of Alcoholics who like to drive around drunk, wife beaters, pot heads (which I can deal with) and perverts.

Now I have always believed a dirty mind is a wonderful thing BUT I prefer to save my lewd comments for those willing to listen to them. The people I have met around here just creep me out and have made me consider painting my windows black.

Also I live in a good sized community but every pervert I encounter knows where I live. If it was just one or two I would assume they were the problem but since it is a dozen or more that have told me where I live (and I have never been more specific than up the street) I assume I must be the problem and have a perv magnet in me.

Seriously I was happier living in oblivion where I didn't have panic attacks in the night and want to make sure the door was locked.

Writing has all but come to a stand still lately between time constraints and reading but I am hoping to get another chapter or two done on Monday while I have an empty house. I have a billion quick notes that I need to transcribe into long hand so very little creative juice will be needed just grunt work.

making friends

HMM I have empty screen syndrome. That is when I look at my screen and everything I wanted to say just flees my head (also known as ADD in some cultures)

So i figured if I just start writing something would come to me. So far all that came to me was a snotty kid and a hungry cat. I mean that literally I have been interrupted twice in the time it took to type this.

I am going to my husbands work party next weekend. That should be good for me I guess as I really need to make friends. I have a grand total of one friend who does not live either in another part of the country or in my computer. I used to have lots but they all annoy the shit out of me now.

I like my online friends because I can turn them off and blame it on my comp. Don't look at me like that I KNOW you have wished people in your life came with a mute button.

So I am putting myself out there and seeing if I can meet someone with friend potential. I have strict criteria though so it may be hard.

Criteria

1) you must be articulate. I am not asking for Shakespeare but you should at least be able to tell a story without making me want to puncture my own ear drums.

2) you must be educated and have a desire to learn. I don't mean you have to have a degree from Harvard law but you should at least understand how time zones work and not really think that a channel is getting our weather wrong because they are an hour in the past (seriously run into this) I am also not interested in spending my time with someone who will never think outside their own narrow experience.

3) You must not be judgemental. I have no use for anyone who is going to write me off for having a kid without even knowing how old I am. Regardless of how I look I am NOT 16 and there is nothing wrong with my having a six year old.

So really that is not a lot to ask yet it has been years since I have found anyone I want to spend More than 20 mins with.

Take some paxil and leave me alone

when things go bad in my life (and they usually do) I always try to remind myself that it could be worse, I generally do this to other people too. For example if my husband comes home complaining about his boss I will point out that it could be worse, he could have gangrene in his right testicle. Now of course this does nothing to rectify the situation at hand but it does get his mind off his issue so I do understand how this can be a helpful tool in pulling yourself out of a funk.

What I DON'T get is why when people try to think of a way it could be worse they always need to to compare it to me.

ex. A friend of mine is humongously pregnant and having a hard time moving around. I know this sucks I have BTDT and I was empathizing with her when all of a sudden she says "well it could be worse you know at least the baby is healthy, lord knows I don't know what I would do if I had to deal with your pregnancies"

Now could someone please tell me WTF my abysmal pregnancy luck has to do with her being fat and uncomfortable?

Or when someones kid is giving them a hard time and they complain they will follow it up with "well I guess I really have nothing to complain about because at least I have all my kids with me" again WTF does my loosing a child have to do with your kid stabbing someone with a thumb tack?

Mad at your family 'oh well I am better off than Melisa who doesn't see her family often'

Really I am glad to know that reminding me of my misery can help you to feel better but I would really like to resign my post as the totem pole you compare your craptastic life to when you want to feel better. Why not just pop a paxil like everyone else when you need to feel better and leave me out of it.

Can anyone recommend some good emo music I can wallow to?

Hey life, leave me alone

Why is it whenever I get into a good groove for something life comes along and demands I do something else?

Take yesterday I was reading "Camera Shy" for Lori and my phone rang like a BILLION freakin times. Oh and of course it was not telemarketers or people I could otherwise ignore It was my boss and husband and my other boss.

Then after I finished reading I set out to make supper and do the house work I was supposed to do during the day, HAH yeah right. My cat came in covered in sheep manure. Kitty bath time :) let me tell you King Kong (yes my cat is named after a gigantic fictional ape) does not like water. What I wanna know though is where did he find sheep shit to roll in, I mean really I am stuck in the middle of suburban hell, there are no sheep around here.

I think he may have pissed off a mage kitteh

Moving on I get Ethan to bed and head towards a nice hot tub after which I will work on my current book. Along comes Billy and asks "are we watching Heroes tonight". So after unleashing a string of mental explicatives that would curl a sailors hair I gave up. I had to watch last weeks heroes on the comp (because I fell asleep last week) and then go up and watch this weeks episode.

So nothing of great importance (except Lori reading) got accomplished yesterday and since I am sitting in front of my comp at the moment I think it is safe to say nothing will be accomplished today either.

Well except maybe starting a chapter or two of my reread of "Camera Shy" well MAYBE just MAYBE I will start twilight today as well. After all it is better to mock - I mean criticize- a book that you have actually read because otherwise you just sounds like an ass regurgitating the opinions of others.

Talk dirty to me

I have been in a rather musical mood of late so I figured what better to blog about than my current musical interest.

I don't care by Fall out boy is my current favorite song. Listening to that even makes housework fun. I love it IMO it has all the components of a great song. It is well written, has a good beat and a singer who is actually capable of singing.

I think that last part is the most important. In fact I will listen to a bad song with a good voice. Take Gavin Rossdale's recent release of love remains the same. Really the song its self is not that spectacular but his voice just entrances me. I told Billy the other night I could listen to that man sing a dictionary.

The lead singer to Hinder is another example of this. While I would listen to Gavin sing a dictionary I would listen to him sing a thesaurus Lips of an angel is an awesome song but I am more than willing to listen to him sing his crappy songs like Better Than me on repeat as well.

I guess I have a 'thing' for a certain type of voice. Those raspy, deep, almost growly voices make me weak in the knees.

I may be a happily married woman but Jhonny Rzeznik talk dirty to me.

Crazy Bitch

OMG the bitch is fucking CRAZY, there is no other word for her. Oh you probably wanna know who I am talking about right? My main character.

See I was having problems with my segue I knew where the story had to go but I was having difficulty making it go there. Turns out that is because miss crazy bitch turned out to be a serial killer. I had no PLANS for her to be one in fact it kinda flies in the face of my whole outline but she apparently has a mind of her own.

So now that I have reconciled the fact that she is a completely sane serial killer the story is making progress again. It will make much better progress if I ever get a lap top but what can ya do?

In other news

My 6 year old has discovered Beastie Boys, Oh nothing makes me prouder than hearing him sing about how his mom stole his best porno mag. Why do other moms get kids who love the gummie bear song and mine is into Alice Cooper and Motley Crue?

It should be interesting at parent teacher interviews next week

Preparing

So I have an interview for child care with a new family in 3 hours. I also have dirty dishes in the sink, a pile of laundry, floors to mop, a shower to clean and a child to make look presentable (giving up on that last one).

Oh yeah this is gonna be SMOOTH.

In other news I took Ethan to a food drive movie yesterday. They were showing the Polar express at the theater and admission was food. Great sounds liek good cheap fun .... did I say fun I meant torture.

Figuring it would be kinda busy we showed up an hour early. we waited in line 45 mins for our tickets. THEN we needed popcorn. Ethan had a gift card to cover that, yeah except they have a new system and the card would not work ..... goodbye money.

The movie malfunctioned, the arcade ate my change, and then I had to go straight to work when it was over.

Jesus is it Monday yet? I need a nice slow school day.

Oh did I mention I am also procrastinating because I SHOULD be cleaning and preparing for an interview right now?

Hello wall

So I have hit a wall. The problem is not that I am out of ideas or anything like that. No I don't have anything so poetic as writers block. I just can't focus long enough to put anything good on paper.

I am so bloody stressed out right now that my writing is choppy and has no flow at all. It seems a cruel joke of nature that my ADD flares up when I am stressed out and need to work out a valid solution.

I KNOW where I need my story to go next, I KNOW what point I need my stupid bitch of a main character to make in order to get there but I am unable to enact a smooth transition.

In other news I am job hunting again. The family I babysit for recently experienced a lay off and will no longer require my services. WHY WHY WHY does this shit always happen right before Christmas

Time, I lack it

I have REALLY been meaning to update this but holy fuck batman I cant get 10 mins to myself. well except now when I obviously have time to type.

So I left off at Halloween. I believe you could probably quote me as saying I love Halloween, I recant.

After school six kids came over to watch Halloween specials eat cookies and then join me for a supper of worms and eye balls (they decided meat balls look more like eye balls than brains). There was minimal drama when one parent tried to take a kid home so they all stayed to trick or treat with me and their parents met us here at 6.

So there I was (stupid me) thinking wow these kids are being SO good and there is only one of me to six of them (age 1,2,5,5,6,8) so when we add 3 more grown ups to the mix it should get easier, Um NO.

See what happened was at 6 when we were getting ready to go there was no longer a clear chain of command for them to follow so all hell broke loose. We did after 20 mins though get them out of the house and no one was bleeding (at least not profusely)

So we go trick or treating and once we get on the street it starts going pretty smooth. I only screamed twice both for walking into a street although I yell to get off the grass a few times.

I dressed up and went trick or treating as well. SOME people refused to give me candy. Those commie bastards are so gonna get it. I was gonna egg their houses but though they might figure out It was me so I decided to wait until Christmas eve, Fuckers will never see it coming.


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It's the most wonderful time of the year

Halloween of course. I love this holiday because it is so low pressure (unlike Valentines) and there is no pressure to give gifts. Nope it is perfect I get to hit random strangers up for donations of chocolate. Halloween was SO invented by a woman.

We made pumpkins, and put up decorations and baked cookies and for supper tonight we are having worms and brain (spaghetti and meatballs)

The down side is getting 6 kids ready for the festivities. I took two to school at noon and while I was there helped the two oldest change into costumes. Have you ever spent a significant portion of time at an elementary school on Halloween when you were not a student? It is freakin mayhem. And the baby was in my arms growling at all the kids in scary costumes so that got me mobbed by prepubescent girls who are baby obsessed.

I am going trick or treating tonight with 6 kids (but 3 more grown ups are coming) and I think if people were nice they would give me vodka in my bag.

I will post some pics when I get my sizing issue dealt with

Lord of the Star Wars

So a few weeks ago I got Brisinger in the mail. I was NOT impressed despite waiting 2 damn years to read it I had no desire, I blame Lori. Seriously got to figure out how to make typing her name bring you to her blog so people will know EXACTLY who I am blaming.

I loved Eragon and Eldest with a passion normally reserved for uber hot celebrities and she ruined them in one fell swoop with a very simple phrase "lord of the star wars" At fist I backed up against the wall of denial, There was no way I would have missed something that major as the book being a rip off of star wars set in a middle earth style setting, she had to be full of shit. I may be a book whore but I like to think I am a book whore with standards!

****warning spoilers ahead, in fact if you don't want me to give away the entire plot you should stop reading now****

Her words stuck in my craw though , seriously what the fuck is a craw?

craw

   /krɔ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kraw] Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

1.	the crop of a bird or insect.

2.	the stomach of an animal.

—Idiom

3.	stick in one's craw, to cause considerable or abiding resentment; rankle: She said I was pompous, and that really stuck in my craw.

---

Origin:
1350–1400; ME crawe, prob. akin to crag ²

OK so now that I have that bit of Googling out of my system.

I thought about it and thought about it and started to see teh similarities.

When the story starts there is one known dragon rider in the world and he is evil, as well as fucking insane (Vader?) but then a young boy (skywalker) discovers a dragon egg and takes off with an old man from the village who just HAPPENED to be an old dragon rider (ObiWan). The evil dragon rider king Galbitorix controls everything but the varden (resistance) are fighting to overthrow him along with the elves. Eragon (young skywalker) falls in in love with an elf princess (leah anyone) and is trained by another old (freaking ancient) dragon and rider everyone assumes in dead (yoda). At the end of book two we find out that one of the Crazy evil dragon riders is Eragons dad. How did I NOT see the "I am your father" moment coming?

So this was where I was when book three arrived.

I am not one who ever to let words go to waste and since I owned the book I decided to read it. Before I could read it though I had to reread book one and two because I have a weird compulsion that forces me to reread the prequels if there is more than a month between books so that I don't forget any important details, in fact this is the main reason I don't read sequels until they are completely written but I thought this was a two book set when I first bought it.

So I am rereading Eragon and Eldest and discover despite Lori's evil whisperings I STILL like the books. I became engrossed in them again immediately and finished both books in four days and moved on to book three.

I was very impressed as he seemed to move away from the star wars comparisons (at least in so far as my weak Star Wars knowledge was concerned) he went into a lot of detail about HOW Galbitorix had the powers he did and we learned more about his family tree including the fact that his mama was incapable of keeping it in her pants and that Brom (obiwan) and not Morzan (crazy evil dragon rider) was his daddy.

The one down side though was that the book was NOT a trilogy as I had been lead to believe and there is ANOTHER book coming. I will let you all know my final opinion in a few years.

So after rereading I have decided that although Paolini obviously draws on star wars for inspiration and may have in book one and two shown less creative ability than I would have liked the books are still enjoyable and well written with few plot holes and very little left unexplained, there are no sub plots left to wither, and the characters are believable. I can totally wear my Eragon shirt in public with my head held high (now I have to GET an Eragon shirt)

Why there

I work in a convenience store and for some reason THAT is where inspiration keeps hitting me. I mean today I FINALLY came up with the PERFECT first name for one of my lead characters while I had a line up of customers. WTF . This is PROOF the universe hates me because the cosmos KNOW I have ADD and yet they keep letting the muse shit in my brain at inopportune moments. Thanks a lot cosmos now I have a mans name written on my hand. I did get about 3 pages of long hand done between customers though, unfortunately it is all in short hand so I am praying it will still make sense tomorrow when I try to re write it.

I so need a fucking lap top

Working on my bucket list

I don't have an exceptionally interesting bucket list by most peoples standards which is odd because most people seem to think I am rather eccentric however overtly imaginative or not I am getting it done, slowly but surely.

So here was/is my list

1) Live in Newfoundland

2) Have one shot at every bar on George Street and walk off the street

3) See Alice Cooper before he dies (note I said before HE dies not before I die)

4) Go to OZ fest

5) Have kids

6) Go to Australia

7) Own a Newfoundland Dog

8) Start my own business

9) Write, and publish, a novel

10) Get inked

11) Feel sexy in my own skin

That is it. I have no other desire that I feel my life will be incomplete if I die without doing it. This could be directly related to the fact that I have enough weird life experiences to supply most people for ten life times by the time I was 14 and started thinking bucket list though so the mundane seemed more appealing.

So here I am at 26 and I think I have made pretty good progress.

1) Live in Newfoundland - I moved to Newfoundland in 2000 and while I left for a year I came back. I guess this is my hearts home although I wish some loved ones would move here

2) Have one shot at every bar on George Street and walk off the street - incomplete but not for lack of trying. There are over SIXTY bars on that street and although I am pretty good drinker I only made it a little over half way through. I will try again some day when I have a few hundred dollars to blow though

3) See Alice Cooper before he dies (note I said before HE dies not before I die) - WOOT did that one Tuesday night. I want to do it again, would it be weird to call him my muse? his music unleashes a creative wave in me and seeing his concert has put me into a full out writing frenzy !!!

4) Go to OZ fest- not done yet. I have to travel to where it is going as it is NEVER coming here so I am biding my time but I will get er done before he dies

5) Have kids - Did that turns out I am not as good at having babies as I thought but I did get one healthy little ray of sunshine out of 6 pregnancies

6) Go to Australia - Cant wait to do it. No idea when it will happen though, I am thinking I would like to take Ethan with me so I want him to be a teen at least

7) Own a Newfoundland Dog - This is in fact one of the main reasons I am striving for home ownership.

8) Start my own business- Done that I am over 2 years as a child care provider now.

9) Write, and publish, a novel - I did part a but my last 2 works were not good enough for publication . One because it just wasn't and the other because I think I was trying too hard to be someone else rather than trusting in my own ability and words to be worthy

10) Get inked - did that in may doing it again next summer

11) Feel sexy in my own skin - shockingly that never happened until AFTER having 2 kids. Realistically my body was better 10 years ago but I like it so much better now

I did it

Yeah I made one, ok so this is my second blog BUT it is one that I have no intention of giving to my overly judgmental family and friends although I may let a few of the cooler ones hang out.

Now all I need is something to write about but I am stuck on the topics of WHY it is ok to eat a container of frosting after going to the gym, how badly I want Alice Cooper, and why Iron Man should be considered pornography.

None of these however seem all that urgent so instead I think I will go play with the lay out and see what I can do for funz