TWITARDED

My Love/Hate Affair With Shapewear

2012-01-29T20:00:00.001-05:00

Spanx, body shapers, sausage casings, whatever you call them, I'm sure at some point in all our lives we've worn them. The things we do for fashion, am I right?

Because I'm anti-pants, I end up wearing shapewear on an almost daily basis. Sometimes I love them but for the most part... they just kind of suck.

First of all, the ads and commercials for these things are just full of shit. They always show a before and after picture of some rotund lady who suddenly becomes uber svelte and super thin just by stuffing herself into one of these girdles. Bull fucking shit. Body shapers make me look thinner by .00000000023 pounds.

"And now I'm a size negative 2!" You're a goddamn liar, that's what you are.

Besides smoothing out the various lumps and bumps that go along with having a normal-sized body, body shapers are pretty awesome at providing a little extra insulation during the winter, which keeps me warm while I'm waiting for trains that never run on time. The downside to this is that I sweat profusely while sitting at the office and end up feeling like I've got a kiddie pool in my underwear.

Unless you're wearing these. The assless version provide a little "air-conditioning" effect.

Another benefit of wearing these things is the extra workout you get each and every time you have to go to bathroom. Ever been in a bathroom and the woman in the stall next to you sounds like she's wrestling an enraged alligator? That poor bitch is just trying to pull her extra-thinning girdle back into place. Seriously, I've broken a sweat trying pull one of those things back up.

In case you've never worn a body-shaping slip, let me give you a word of advice - don't try to put it on over your head or you're going to end up with the entire slip stuck around your tits in a bunch, effectively cutting off your circulation. And good luck trying to get it off without choking yourself. Step into the slip and go from there, trust me.

It looks innocent until all 32 inches of it are wrapped around your neck.

My usual body-shaper are the gigantic undies that you hike up to your boobs, the idea being that it's going to slim your torso down. In theory, this is great. In actuality, the moment you sit down or take a deep breath, that thing is going to roll down to your vagina and then you're going to have to go to the bathroom for an alligator-wrestling session. Unless you're in the middle of a meeting, which is what usually happens to me. Then I end up sitting there while the boa constrictor the fabric has formed around my waist slowly squeezes me to death and only ends up making me feel chubbier.

It's exactly like this but without the penis

And yet, I still wear them. To be totally honest, as uncomfortable as they can be, I actually feel a little weird without being encased in micro-squeezing cloth. Plus, when I'm in the throes of wrestling my girdle back into place in the office bathroom, I like to mutter things like, "take that, you naughty bitch. Who's your mommy now, huh?" and moan loudly.

It really freaks the other ladies out.

Reckoner Part V [Twilight Fan Fiction]

2012-01-27T20:00:00.004-05:00

Author's Note -

So, I got sick again. Some awful spewing stomach virus ripped through the Myg house last week and pre-empted your usual dose of Reckoner. We all got it, me, the boys and Mr. Myg, and let me tell you, twin boys in diapers during a digestive illness is not something I EVER to experience again in my lifetime.

I was back on the mend this week (sheesh, I am actually terrified to type that out loud) but an insane work schedule made writing time scarce, so again you've got a short update. But an update, nonetheless. I am projecting and hoping and praying that the next installment will actually be quite long, and there will only be a couple left before we're done here. Until then, hope you enjoy this.

As always, many thanks to the generous donors of Fandom Gives Back for making this story see the light of day.

Yours in sickness and in health,
Myg

Reckoner, Part V

Heavy, cold rain fell. Fell in the cloud-shrouded dark, soaking the earth, forming pools on the surface of the road, flooding the ditches and the gutters. I remember thinking it should have been snow.

As Mercy drove, slowly and badly, and sometimes sang a few bars of something I’d never heard, I found my thoughts drifting ever so often back to that imaginary dance with the only woman I’d ever loved. For several moments I let myself fixate on her deep brown eyes, the way her hair framed her face, the feel of her against me. And then I tried to remind myself how ridiculous the whole thing was. How can you possibly love someone you’ve never met? How can you love someone you will never hope to meet? You can’t do it—it isn’t possible. It couldn’t have been love. This couldn't be real grief. It must have been some fucked up displacement of my grief for my mother. Yes, Dr. Freud would have approved of this interpretation. It had just been some bizarre fantasy I’d twisted Alice’s vision into, and it had to be over now. Whoever she was, had been, she was dead now. I had to bury the fantasy with her. But how?

As we got closer to Gray, I considered my next move. I’d see Alice and try to sort out what was going on with her, what she’d seen, and what I’d have to do to make that future disappear. But as soon as she was back to herself again, as soon as possible, I’d put Reckoner back in the water and leave. I’d sail south and just spend a year or so at sea. However long it took to get my head back together, if that was even possible. I just wanted to get far, far away from where I could do any more damage to anyone I loved.

We turned down the long driveway of the Cullen House and I balked a little as I considered what an asshole I’d been to Carlisle. I didn’t look forward to facing him again after what I’d done. But at least I could give him a proper apology. He deserved a lot more than that.

As the house came into view, we saw Alice standing in the middle of the lane, in the downpour without her penguin slicker or her boots this time. Her feet were bare. She wore a pair of Jasper’s running pants that hung off of her and an old black fleece with rug lint all over it. I almost didn’t believe it was her. A light flickered and went out in the kitchen and then Jasper came to the window and then backed away.

“Oh dear,” Mercy said, pulling the car to a stop.

“Wait here,” I said. I got out of the car and approached Alice cautiously.

Her thoughts were garbled and fragmented, conflicted, confused feelings of agony and relief but no words I could decipher. I couldn’t tell the last time she’d bathed, but it wasn’t recent.

“This is all my fault,” she said out of nowhere, wringing her hands. Her eyes were weary, like she’d actually seen the horror of my assorted futures with them instead of in her mind.

“No, Alice,” I said. “It’s not your fault at all. It’s my fault.”

You’re going to get yourself killed and it will be my fault. My fault that I ever showed you that woman…

“This is exactly why I asked you to stop watching my future.”

I’d stop watching if you’d stop trying to get yourself killed.

“I’m not trying to get myself killed,” I said. “I just wanted—”

“Vengeance,” she said, her eyes flashing in the dark.

“Justice.”

We stood there facing each other. Her hair was soaked and sticking to the side of her face. She buried her head in her hands and when she did that, I couldn’t help myself. I put my arms around her and pressed her tightly to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have left.”

You never even said goodbye. It’s like you don’t care what happens to the rest of us anymore. All you care about is her, and that’s my fault.

“Alice,” I said, feeling defensive, but then I caught myself. Really, after how I’d behaved, what else could she think?

“Just tell me,” I said. “What can I do to make it better?”

“Stay,” she said.

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t want to say no. But I really didn’t want to say yes, either.

Alice looked up at me, doubtful. The expectation of disappointment I read across her face told me she didn’t—couldn’t count on me anymore. And I didn’t want to be that guy, the one who was so self-absorbed with his own bullshit that the people in the world he loved the most couldn’t count on him. Couldn’t trust him. However much I’d fucked up in my life, especially recently, that just wasn’t who I was—who I ever wanted to become.

“Will Carlisle even take me back?” I asked.

He already has.

Over her shoulder I could see Carlisle, Jasper and Esme emerging from the house, cautiously observing us. Emmett came out next, a little befuddled, but there was a sense of relief too. Rosalie peered at us through a window upstairs. Mercy got out of the car and joined them on the porch, where Esme hugged her and thanked her for finding me, and I was immobilized there in the lane, facing a most uncharacteristically bedraggled Alice and her pessimistic eyes, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. And like the asshole’s own asshole because still, all I could think about was leaving. All I wanted was to be alone until I could figure out some way to move forward in my existence without resenting every moment I had ahead of me. But that wasn’t what I would do. I knew it not from my own thoughts, but from the small, grateful smile Alice gave me then, and the sigh of relief when she put her head back on my shoulder and hugged me.

I stood there quiet for a couple of minutes, my eyes shifting away from hers, over to the porch where my family looked worried and haggard.

“How do I get over this, Alice?” I asked. “Tell me I get over it.”

“I don’t know, Edward,” she said. “I can’t see it. But maybe that’s because you haven’t tried.”

~~~

So I tried.

I apologized to Carlisle and asked if I could come back. Of course, he welcomed me back as a Cullen without any caveat, any reprimand, any warning. None was needed, I knew the expectations well enough. My apology was accepted with hardly a comment, just an “I know you’re sorry, Edward. I’m just glad you’re home.”

I did swear to stop plotting Allston Kaine’s death, and immediately Alice’s appearance changed, not quite back to the old Alice but much improved from the depressed and half-deranged one. I swore off decree killing forever, again, and felt immediately better. Carlisle was right about that. He always had been.

I also agreed to return to Forks with them at the first sign of trouble. Rosalie was pissed at the prospect of moving back to “the most depressing place on earth,” as far as she was concerned, but then Rosalie was pissed off most of the time anyway.

“She’ll deal with it,” Carlisle said. “And hopefully things won’t get that far.”

The very next night, Carlisle, Jasper, Emmett and I met with Allston and his muscle in Portland at Jim’s Bar and Grill. We picked a public place for obvious reasons—nobody was likely to get their legs ripped off in a bar. We hammered out a new truce with the Kaines—one where they wouldn’t out me to my enemies in Boston and I wouldn’t go around killing their suppliers. I had a very, very hard time with this, I will admit. But I agreed to it. For Alice. For all of my family. It went more smoothly than I expected, but just as we were leaving, Allston gave one last taunt.

You can thank Mercy for this new arrangement, he thought. She paid me a special visit last night and that girl has always had a way of being persuasive.

Then he shared a vision of Mercy in his bed, as though this would rankle me with jealousy, as though Mercy hadn’t taken to the bed of more random lovers than I could ever count or name in the time I’d known her. Had the image been real it would have bothered me anyway, just because he was such an asshole. But the fact that he didn’t realize I’d know immediately that he was lying nearly made me laugh. Instead I tried to appear duly perturbed, and I must have been convincing because he smirked and then turned to Carlisle and said, “You really must bring the family over sometime soon. We’ll get Mercy to perform and make a night of it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Carlisle said. And that's all he said.

We never did get that invitation to the Kaines, though that was fine since the following week I went into the studio with Mercy and we recorded those songs we'd worked on before I left. I have to say, that helped my mood a lot. At least it gave me something to do all day. Nothing had really changed between Mercy and me, other than I found myself completely uninterested in sleeping with her, or anyone, actually. That certainly didn’t put her out or slow her down any. She brought plenty of guests home, but instead of watching or joining like I once might have, I just went out for long walks, went to midnight showings of classic films. I spent hours in Carlisle’s library reading medical texts for the hell of it. I did anything I could do to not think about vengeance. To not think about that fantasy or that beautiful woman I'd never know.

Over the following weeks, Carlisle relaxed and Esme encouraged my newfound tranquility. Spring came and I hunted religiously every week with Emmett and Jasper, just to keep myself focused. Best of all, Alice was back to her old pixieish self, and that made the effort feel well worth it. It seemed as though maybe I was really on my way--maybe I would find a way to get over things. It certainly looked that way on the outside, and Alice was relaxed enough that I could almost believe it. But inside of me something was still wrong.

And that was my thirst.

~~~

Until next week...

Breaking Dawn Part 1 - The Musical? WTF?

2012-01-26T21:22:00.000-05:00

What. The. Fuck? Seriously, the exact words that flooded my work-addled brain after hearing that there was actually something called Breaking Dawn Part 1: The Musical. And leave it to Letters to Twilight to bring us such a fucking masterpiece.

If you haven't seen it, you must watch it RIGHT NOW! Put down your smartphone, let your dinner burn to a crisp, let the kids turn to prunes in their baths... just take 8:47 minutes of your life, do yourself a favor and watch this sparkly genius! DO IT!! After you do (and after you've commented here, of course!), please head on over to Letters to Twilight, read their two cents on this stunning work of art, and leave 'em a little love for the sheer brilliance!

Believe me, I was skeptical, knowing the horrific nightmares I had just thinking about what could happen to BD Part 2 with the threats of a daddy-daughter duet with Edward and what's-her-name. I even commented in my previous post about it turning into some kind of twisted Cullen family vampire-y Sound of Music.... So you can imagine my surprise to hear the The Cullen - Favorite Things song! Oh ma gawd, I nearly shit my pants. Wicked creepy. I must be a mind reader or something.

I honestly can't even begin to tell you about all the amazing talent that went into the production of this musical. But let's just say there are many, many parts that holy mother fucking fuckity fuck, nearly caused a major nose disaster involving snorting and Diet Pepsi. I want to watch it over and over again.

The only thing that would make this video better is... well... nothing. It's perfect!

Thanks to LTT for making my day. Hell, you made my week which has been nothing short of shitastic until now!

YouTube: Not Just for Cute Animal Videos Anymore!

2012-01-25T22:22:00.003-05:00

Like most people, I turn to YouTube for my fix of cute animal videos. Well, I'm lazy, so I often let Cute Overload do the vetting for me. But it's recently come to my attention that there is more to YouTube than dogs denied bacon, twitchy sleeping puppies, talking cats, and rambunctious baby dwarf goats. There's even more to YouTube than Robert Pattinson porn and the eighty gazillion videos of screeching fans that never fail to catch me off guard and leave me lunging for the volume control.

Case in point: last week, Sister Snarky sent me an email with a link saying "This is hysterical and don't you wish you would have thought of it first?"

It was actually a link to one of my all-time favorite YouTube finds, My Drunk Kitchen. If you are not familiar with the wonderfulness that is My Drunk Kitchen, it's pretty much what it sounds like: a drunk cooking show. Well, a mini drunk kitchen show. Most episodes clock in at around five minutes, and feature the ridiculously cute and witty Hannah Hart cooking...something and drinking a lot of appropriately themed cocktails, wines, and other assorted spirits. Who doesn't love a person who makes mimosas by adding an eye-dropper of orange juice to a bottle of champagne? Girl after my own heart...

Next!

Have you ever had poutine? No? If you drink, stay up too late, and wander home in the wee hours of the morning searching for the perfect bad-for-you food that sounds dirty, tastes delicious after 2 a.m., and probably absorbs its weight in alcohol, look no further.

HOW CUTE IS SHE?!

For the record, my response to Sister Snarky's "Isn't this hysterical and don't you wish you'd thought of it first?" was "YES! aaaand kinda but not really." It's hard to be that witty when drunk, and to look that cute drunk. Many of you who have met me in person have seen me drunk. Actually, almost anyone reading this unless you are a crazy stalker following me around my local grocery store has seen me drunk either in person or in a video, since I find it nearly impossible to calm my social anxiety and face any sort of meet-up sober. And between you and me, if you ARE following me around the grocery store, the odds still aren't really in your favor that I was totally sober. I mean, you never know who you might run into at the grocery store. I believe in being prepared for any eventuality, people.

I am not a cute drunk. Oh sure, I'm generally a happy drunk, but I get the wonky eye where one of my eyes starts to get a little droopier than the other, thanks to a childhood bout of Bells palsy. There are no pictures of me at parties where it looks like both my eyes are open. Also, I tend to burn and injure myself in the kitchen a lot more than she does since I am naturally Bella-level clumsy, and adding hot things and sharp knives just ups the danger level tenfold. But if you need a quick pick me up, you are guaranteed to be cheered by watching an episode of My Drunk Kitchen. You also might have a strong desire to have a drink; plan your watching environment and stealth flask placement accordingly.

I also need to give a HUGE round of applause to the equally cute Kristin and her "Dirty Signs" videos. I think the following says everything that needs to be said about how much I love her -

Well, that and this -

It's possible that recently I may have inappropriately merged the two and angrily signed something along the lines of "Fuck you you fucking pancake waffle!", but really, I think I probably still conveyed my general point.

And last but most certainly not least...love Star Wars? Have two hours to kill?

You're welcome, and may the Forks be with you.

Share your favorite YouTube go-tos and guilty pleasures in the comments!

I Hope They Have Catnip in Heaven

2012-01-24T20:00:00.000-05:00

I know I usually write about the absolute stupidest things my brain can conjure, but I'm a little off my game right now. I had to put my best friend to sleep this past weekend. My eleven year-old cat Shakespeare became very suddenly and very seriously ill. He was actually probably sick for a while, but he was such a tough cat that he never showed any symptoms. He was my first baby and he will be very deeply missed.

Those of you with animals know they are more than just pets; they are part of the family. I've never lost anyone close to me before and I don't understand why his brush and toys are still here but he's not. I miss the strangest things about him. He loved water so I haven't taken a solo shower in over a decade. He loved the holidays. He would run to the door every time a trick-or-treater rang our doorbell. He loved the Christmas tree and was constantly covered in glitter from using the low hanging ornaments to brush his back. He would wait patiently while we opened presents on Christmas morning because he knew his turn was coming and it was going to be awesome. He had to wash his paws in his water bowl after every time he ate. Then he would move the bowl into the middle of the walkway because he not so secretly enjoyed watching me kick it over every freaking morning (and slip in the spilled water) and yell "Gawddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch!" Almost twelve years and I never learned. He was smarter than us all.

I haven't been able to process the loss yet to form any kind of coherent sentences, so I'll just share some pictures.

Shakespeare was a better parent to my son than I'll ever be. They've been inseparable pretty much since we brought The Boy home from the hospital.

This is the nest he made in the middle of the living room floor from the tissue paper he dug out of my baby shower gifts. Shakespeare was the only one who ever got a pass on my OCD madness. I let him keep this chaos for a month. Anytime I even talked of cleaning it up he would throw himself of top of it protectively and give me a look that said, "I will shit somewhere you will only be able to smell but never find. You know I will."

This is him just days before he passed, laying on BabyTK's blanket and using her doll as a pillow. He's pretending to be asleep in hopes he won't get evicted from this forbidden zone.

I liked this cat better than just about any person I've ever met. He was a better person than most people. My spot on the couch won't ever be the same without him.

Yet Another Poon Post

2012-01-23T21:16:00.000-05:00

Want to know what words I never want to hear when I'm at a family gathering, sipping coffee and eating ice cream? And, you know, surrounded by my family?

"So, I was reading your blog the other day and--"

This actually happened a few Saturdays ago. I probably would have been okay with it (sort of, not really) except I had recently written about my fucking vagina -on-fire issue and one family member not only read it but was about to spill the beans to the whole family. (I love you, family member, if you're reading this blog again. :) <-- See?)

Anyway, because I'm a glutton for punishment, I bring to you yet another poon post. But this time it's okay, because I'm not talking about my cock-pocket specifically.

For the most part, I'm pretty in sync with my love muffin. I get the general gist of how it's supposed to work and try to keep an eye out for things that might go wrong, like, say, having flames shoot out of it or something. I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure if my funhole is incinerating my panties, that's a problem. All I'll say is that I'm mostly fully aware of my lady parts.

I call dibs on this name when I open a brothel. Just sayin'...

Then I came across this article that is apparently an excerpt from a book called What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend and realized that maybe I don't know my cock-pocket as well as I thought I did. Or, well, cock-pockets in general, really.

Also, the mental image of Snarkier Than You being my gynecologist has pretty much scarred me for life.

The stuff of goddamn nightmares...

Anyhoo, I came across some interesting facts in the article. For example:

There are 8000 nerve endings in the clitoris, dedicated exclusively to female pleasure. The penis only has 4000.

Ha, ha, people-with-penises. We have more nerve endings than you. Now get to work stimulating them.

Pubic hair is not just a biological accident that forces us to the waxing salon. It serves three critical functions. First, it protects the delicate vagina. Second, it serves as a reproductive billboard to alert potential mates that you are biologically (if not emotionally) prepared to procreate. And last, it's a pheromone carpet and traps the scents that lead potential mates to the promised land. So you might think twice before you shave it all off. It's there for a reason. Embrace it.

I'm not entirely sure ML will be all excited if I grow in a pheromone carpet. Personally, I prefer the "landscaped" look but hey, whatever you suits you. I hear pubic hair is coming back into style anyway.

And I can't believe I just wrote that last sentence.

Someone's gonna need a weedwacker to find the clitoris in that thing...

Vaginas have something in common with sharks. Both contain squalene, a substance that exists in both shark livers and natural vaginal lubricant. (Cue music: "She's a maneater...")

Um, maybe I don't know my bearded clam as well as I thought as I did. I'm totally going to start singing the Jaws theme song the next time I'm doing some naked-time with ML. I'll bet that will turn him on. Or freak him out. Win-win for me, either way.

I'm ready when you are...

Yes, it's true -- your vagina can fall out. Not to belabor the sock metaphor, but it can turn inside out just like a worn out sweat sock and hang between your legs as you get older. But don't fret; this condition -- called pelvic prolapse -- can be fixed.

HOLYFUCKINGMOTHERFUCKINGHAMPSTERFUCKINGWHAAAAAAAAT????

What the fuck does that mean, "fall out"??? Like, someone tells a funny joke and I start laughing and snorting and the next thing I know my vagina is flapping against my knees-- OH MAH GAHD, HOLY FLAMING SHITSTICKS!!!

{Scrolls back up to reread...}

JEEEEEEZUS.

Okay, so maybe there are a few things I don't know about my lady bits. And maybe you weren't aware your vagina can end up... fucking fall out. If you want to know more, read here.

And for the love of all that is hole-y, do your kegels.

Breaking Dawn II to Feature Father-Daughter Duet

2012-01-22T20:55:00.002-05:00

According to Hollywood Life, Robert Pattinson and Mackenzie Foy will be doing a father-daughter musical duet in Breaking Dawn Part 2. Or should we call it A ~~Star~~ Spawn is Born? Is this a Twilight movie or a fucking episode of Toddlers and Tiaras? I'm sorry but this is sounding just a bit too hokey for me. It looks like both Rob and Mackenzie will be playing the piano -- I think I'd be ok with this scenario if she maybe just sat there and watched.

Leave that kid alone for two seconds and this is what happens!

Are they going to have Kristen Stewart dancing a tap number to the song too? I'm sure Vamp Bella would be far more capable of pulling this off than regular clumsy Bella. But I digress...

I don't give a flying firetruck how cute that little girl is, this movie does not need to turn into the vampire rendition of the Sound of Music. If any other members of the Cullen clan are involved in this number, I'm most certainly going to puke in my popcorn.

The piano scene in Twilight was sweet and sexy -- actually one of my favorite scenes of the movie. This piano scene sounds creepy and... just creepy. It's been a while since I've read Breaking Dawn so please help job my memory. Was this in the book? I don't remember it but that doesn't mean anything. My mind is like a steel sieve.

What do you think this song will be about? Is RPattz going to serenade his half-breed spawn? If he is, he's going to have really hard time finding something to rhyme with Renesmee... or maybe not.

Oh my Renesmee...
What do you say...
Let's go into the woods today...
And eat some eer-day.

(Bet you didn't know I was fluent in pig latin.)

I truly hope this scene doesn't remind me of how I felt when I saw this...

*gag* *vomit*

So level with me... am I being too hard on this duet or what? How do you feel about RPattz having to share his piano spotlight with the kid? I'm still hoping it's some kind of cruel joke...

PS - Holy mother fucking shit on a stick! Breaking Dawn Part 1 DVD comes out on February 11th??? That's like right around the corner!! Oh please please please let there be some good extras on that thing!

An Open Letter to my Friends About Chain Letters

2012-01-19T20:00:00.000-05:00

My e-mail is out of control. Of course, it doesn't help that I have multiple accounts and can't keep up with any of them. But I digress... I try really hard to read all my e-mails and make mental notes to respond to all (-ish) of them. [If you are waiting on a response from me, please know that I will make every effort to respond to you in the next six to eight years. Give or take a few.]

The situation just gets worse when my spam filter breaks down and I have to wade through mail about penis enlargement, free Viagra, senior singles in my area (Note to sender: This is not amusing.), weight loss pills, and some unknown South African uncle who has managed to side-step apartheid, genocide, man-eating lions, and poisonous snakes to become a billionaire before his death. My inbox can be a real ego boost.

My penis is totally the right size for a woman of my build.

If that's not annoying enough, I also get the mother of all annoyances in the mail world — chain mail. It was bad enough when you would receive the random chain letter in the mail back in the day. (Not that I'm old, as my spam folder seems to suggest.) Then e-mail came along and these crazy spammers could find you almost anywhere. You were safe as long as you didn't check your e-mail. Until... the chain TEXT rolled into town. That's right. I received my first chain text the other day. The scene in my house was pretty much like this:

Me: Oh! A text. Tralala. Let me check that. Someone probably sent me something that is crazy urgent and needs my immediate attention.

Still me: What the...? [insert primal scream]

This, my friends, is where I inform you that if you send me chain mail you are dead to me. I'm not talking about the e-mails and texts with funny pictures and videos. (Please keep sending those!) I'm talking about any correspondence that ends in "Jesus / Allah / Gandhi / Tom Cruise wants you to send this to ten people, including the one who sent it to you..." or "Bill Ackerd didn't forward this within three seconds and he died in a fire. Twice." Few things make me more insane. Like fly-into-an-irrational-rage-and-want-to-smash-things type of insane.

This will be me. And I don't care.

I realize that I've taunted at least ten of you into spamming me with chain letters. My retribution will be swift and terrible.

Fess up — does anyone here send chain mail? Am I the only one with an irrational hatred of it?

Pondering Breaking Dawn II [Too Soon??? Nah...]

2012-01-18T21:33:00.001-05:00

I know it's been a while, but believe it or not, I'm actually going to write a about something Twilight-related tonight. We know that the Twilighty content has been...light lately, but seriously, YOU try writing about Twilight and Twilight-y related stuff only - five days a week - for THREE YEARS and get back to me. Also, today is Twitarded's three year anniversary. Pretend you are drunk and covered in glitter and confetti and let's move on, shall we?

They're coming! (and I sorta wish they were going to look like this...)

I kind of missed the boat on writing much about Breaking Dawn: Before the Spawn (catch me after the dvd comes out), but lately, I will admit that I have been holding back comment on my gnawing fear of Breaking Dawn II: I Don't Have a Clever Name for You. Yes, it made me squeak a little when I read in Entertainment Weekly's "movies coming out in 2012" spread the one sentence devoted to BDII - "The vampire romance concludes." but I am not ready to have that conversation yet. OK, part of me is REALLY ready to have that conversation, but that is for another day.

What I have REALLY been wondering is if Kristen Stewart is going to step up and deliver the goods in BDII. Don't get me wrong; I am not a KStew hater - far from it - and I think she's made a good Bella thus far. Buuuut I think that she has largely played characters that are...kind of like how I envision her to be in real life, minus the profanity. So the way I see it, in BDII, shit's gonna get real. Because instead of playing a somewhat sullen, vaguely clumsy and uncomfortable-in-her-own-skin teenager, she has to make a convincing Vampire Bella. No clumsiness, not awkward in the least, doesn't stammer, twitch, or even blink unless she's putting on an act. In addition to turning on the steam with Edward (without the charming "OMG THIS IS SO UNCOMFORTABLE!!!" vibe she worked so well in BDI), she'll need to be a convincing ferocious vampy momma who would do anything to save her child while coming to terms with the fact that her "eternal happily ever after" has been shortened to...less than a year.

Photoshopped and not vampy, but I think this works.

I'm hoping that when November rolls around (and Summit, you can suck a dirty dick for making us wait an entire year for part two), I'll be pleasantly surprised. So what do you think? Kristen seems to have gotten much more comfortable in her public appearances in the last year - maybe it's a sign of good things to come!

...aaand hopefully we will see very, very little of anything like this. Alice would NEVER allow Renesmee to wear crappy flip-flops!

We're Sorry: The Blog You're Looking For Has Been Shut Down

2012-01-17T20:39:00.001-05:00

Normally we don't get into politics here but this one affects ALL of us.

In solidarity and protest against SOPA and PIPA, Twitarded is joining the big wigs of the internets like Reddit, Wikipedia, Boing Boing and hundreds (if not thousands) of other sites and blogs by going on strike tomorrow, January 18th from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm.

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) could have a devastating effect on numerous websites, even little ones like ourselves. We are taking a stand against Censorship and urging everyone to educate themselves on this bill and contact your representatives if you agree that SOPA is a really bad fucking idea.

Why is it so bad? (Excerpt taken from here)

The broad definitions in the bill create tremendous uncertainty for nearly every site online. This sounds like hyperbole, but it is not. Defenders of the bill like to claim that it is "narrowly focused" on foreign rogue infringing sites. Nothing could be further from the truth. While PIPA targets only foreign sites, the mechanism by which it does so is to put tremendous compliance and liability on third party service providers in the US. SOPA goes even further in expanding the private right of action to domestic sites as well. We've already seen how such laws can be abused by looking at how frequently false takedown claims are made under the existing DMCA. Of course, under the DMCA, just the content is blocked. Under SOPA all money to a site can be cut off. Under PIPA sites will just end up in court. Or, with both laws, an Attorney General can take action leading US companies to have to effectively act as network nannies trying to keep infringement from being accessible. None of this is good for anyone building a startup company these days. The massive uncertainty around this, combined with the need for a huge legal department sitting in "the garage" as a startup begins, will certainly slow down the pace of innovation in the US, while likely driving it elsewhere.

While it's true that our President has said he will not allow the SOPA bill to pass (but PIPA is still alive and kicking), it's important that our government realizes that we will not tolerate their efforts to take away our freedom of speech. Copyright infringement is a shitty thing, without a doubt. But these two bills are the absolutely dead wrong way to handle this.

List of sites joining the strike - here

Joining in the blackout? Register here We encourage anyone who wishes to participate to join in the blackout.

Find more information about SOPA here, here and here. Oh, and even though this is Cracked.com and not meant to be taken seriously, here is a very funny and alarmingly true possibility with PIPA/SOPA.

Or check out this video from Stop American Censorship:

Thanks,
Twitarded

P.S. - if you are participating in the blackout, please let us know in the comments before 8 am tomorrow!!

My Latest TV Obsession: United States of Tara

2012-01-16T21:07:00.000-05:00

I recently came across the Showtime series called United States of Tara created by Diablo Cody, the Academy Award® winning writer of Juno. Suburban wife and mother Tara Gregson juggles her family and career while suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder — a condition formerly known as multiple personality disorder. It's never a dull moment in the Gregson household, as Tara's supportive husband Max and their two teenaged children, Kate and Marshall, try to lead as much of a "normal" life as possible.

Tara and her alters... can you guess who's who?

Tara's family is saddled with having to deal with the various people Tara becomes -- Alice - a 50's housewife desperate to make everyone happy, Buck - an ornery Vietnam vet who loves his beer and the titty bars, and T - a slutty 16 year old who seems to get Tara in trouble a lot. And that's only the first season. But I don't want to ruin it for you so you'll have to watch to meet the other "alters".

Let's just say I'm obsessed with this show right now. I love that it's just a half hour so I can easily sneak an episode here and there. And it's only 3 seasons -- totally manageable and I expect to finish season 3 tonight. Toni Collette is ridiculously amazing as Tara and her many personalities. It has got to be a lot of work keeping them all straight! John Corbett is totally humpable in his role as Tara's husband Max. And their two kids are very entertaining -- Kate, a sassy teen (Brie Larsen), and intellectual Marshall (Keir Gilchrist) -- I almost watch it more for the cast than the actual plot.

Love this family -- this cast is so much win!

So during my marathon watching this weekend (it's been too cold to do anything else but snuggle under the blankets and watch TV), I noticed something... This show takes place in Overland Park, Kansas. There is a scene in season 2 that shows the exterior of a restaurant. I thought it looked really familiar so I went back and sure as fucking shit, it's the exterior of a restaurant in Freeport, Maine called Azure Cafe. I nearly crapped my pants.

Seriously... I even had to take a picture of my TV screen!

And even funnier, in season 3, daughter Kate appears to be schlepping around a brand new LL Bean tote bag -- which doesn't fit her style at all. Looks like the production crew did a little shopping while filming locations in Freeport. I totally cracked up. Kate has a very eclectic style -- in one episode in the final season, she wore a bear jumper that was freaking awesome. If you're looking for something fun to add to your Netflix queue, I recommend giving Tara a try.

I can't figure out why I love this jumper so much, but I do. And I don't even like dresses.

It's a quirky dark drama with some laughs sprinkled in... especially when Buck is around. And if you've already seen this show, what did you think of it? I don't have much experience with mental illnesses but I thought this show was done well.

Who needs a new internet time-suck?! YOU DO!

2012-01-15T22:26:00.000-05:00

Everyone needs a good distraction, right? I'm vaguely reluctant to tell you about my new favorite time-suck as there is the possibility that you will forsake Twitarded for the shiny new toy, but I trust you. Mostly.

I recently discovered Imgur. We are woefully behind the times and/or late on just about everything, so you might already be haunting this site, but humor me. It's basically funny pictures. Who doesn't like funny pictures?! I'm long-winded but not really great at actually explaining things, so I'll let the images speak for themselves. Below is a ridiculously random sampling of the photos you'll find on Imgur:

For the sake of full disclosure, let me come right out and admit that there is not a lot of this -

huminnahumminahummina...

...but it's still - strangely! - genuinely enjoyable. Sometimes people just post cool photos of their relatives-

Three generations of awesome.

...and as the laws of cute internet time-waster sites require, there are a LOT of great pet photos. Because really, outside of the Twidom, what is the internet really for other than entertaining yourself with cute dog and cat pictures?

I want one. All of it.

But wait! There's more!

This one made me think of Latchkey Wife...

I don't have kids but I feel your pain...

Come closer, mailman...

Baby hamsters!!!

Anti-snooze-alarm clock (please just get a new clock, whoever you are).

Not on Imgur either, but you wouldn't need an alarm clock if you had this in your bed. j/s.

Plus there are funny memes...

...and the people who respond ("Dumb Guy Poses" below) -

There are also lots of awesome gifs, but I don't know how to copy a gif into the blog, so you'll just have to take my word for it (and if you know how, please send me detailed instructions).

There is the usual plethora of hot chicks in geek regalia. If you have boobs and anything resembling a storm-trooper outfit, you will find love here. As long as your definition of love is fap fodder, there won't be any problems.

In fact, my only minor problem with Imgur is that according to their FAQ section, "Imgur" is pronounced "imager-er" or "imager." But I guess it's the interwebs and if you want to say that ";oskhd;hbxlkjhbg" is pronounced "Smooches!" and enough people believe you, then more power to you.

Stop-Motion Bookstore = Full of WIN!

2012-01-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

I was paging through boingboing looking for distractions at work the other day when I came across this absolutely delightful video - really, it's the most charming non-Twilighty, anti-snarky, not-even-a-little-bit-smexy thing I have ever posted here. Probably. My memory is for crap, so who can say definitively? Anyway, happy weekend - enjoy!

Heeeeeere's... Flowbeeward?

2012-01-12T21:01:00.000-05:00

People, the world has ended as we know it. There are flames shooting out of the center of Earth, aliens are doing bad things to innocent people and we're all fucking goddamn dead.

Or Rob Pattinson shaved his head. One of those.

(You must check out the rest of the pictures over at ROBsessed!!)

Nooooo! Where's the sex hair??

Oh! Sexy crooked smirky thingy!! Me likey...

As you're reading this, someone is madly writing out a steamy BettyWhite/Rob Pattinson fan fic. Guaranteed. Rule #34, bitches.

Gone is the disheveled coif, the sex hair, the bouffant. I daresay this is more on par with the what-the-fuck-were-they-thinking hairstyles he sported in all the movies except Twilight. What was he thinking? Did he wake up one day and decide, "fuck it, this hair is too much trouble and gets in the way of my smoking and drinking Heinekens" and decided to take a trip to a barber?

From Bellasugar:

The scruffy beard might possibly negate that haircut...

Or maybe him and KStew hit the sauce, got loaded and Flowbee'd it off in a drunken stupor.

Either way, he's got a sort-of-but-not-really-shaved head. Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what the fuck it going on but all I know is his hair is missing. Well, most of it, anyway. But here's my thing - WHY is he the only guy with a mostly-shorn head that doesn't look bad-ass?

Okay, he looks kind of badass here. Or drunk. Or bored.

Here's a video clip of his new 'do (from Hollywood Life)

Now that filming for all the Twilight saga movies is complete (sob!) I wonder if he's going to keep his hair short or grow it back to it's you-know-you-want-to-fuck-me length.

Level with me, Twitards - do you love it or hate it?

Alternate Spider Monkey Lines

2012-01-11T21:00:00.001-05:00

[Jenny Jerkface here - Texas Katherine is still on a little bit of a hiatus, what with being busy raising future generations of wise-asses and all. However, because she endeavors to make the rest of us here at Twitarded look like procrastinating shitheads, she did leave us a few posts to put up in her absence. Thanks TK!]

I always wonder about movie clips that hit the cutting room floor. Were they better or worse than what we saw on the big screen? Why do some scenes make it in & some don't? Why do my roots grow out really fast, but my hair never seems to get longer? These are all questions I need to know the answer to.

The first time I saw Twilight, I was totally in the moment when we were in Edward's bedroom. (Notice how I inserted myself into that situation.) Then, he flew out the window like Peter Pan and said "You better hold on tight, spider monkey." What just happened here? Catherine Hardwicke apparently gave Rob several options for that line and the spider monkey one is the line he picked. WHAT WERE THE OTHERS? What on earth could have been worse than that?

Here are several alternative lines off the top of my head:

Dude. This isn't where I parked my car.
Bella, there's a locust in your hair.
Want to see my spider monkey?
Sweet. You can see Waylon's body from up here.
I smell bacon.
Did I leave the iron on?
Wanna go half-sies on a deer later?
Hold onto my ample chest hair.
So, do you come here often?
Tree climbing would be such a turn on if we were like ten or something.
Last time I was here an eagle shit on my head.
The spot right below us is where we're going to get married before I inject you with my demon baby batter.
Your hands smell like ketchup.

Those are my options; now I'd like to hear your theories.

Am I Too Old For Uggs???

2012-01-10T21:30:00.000-05:00

I try to steer clear of wearing clothes or shoes or following trends that would be easily categorized as "too young" (er, except where sparkly vampires are concerned, anyway). I grudgingly stopped shopping in the Juniors Department a long time ago, and have been know to tease friends-of-a-certain-age if their clothes tend to come in odd sizes. Note: nothing made for a person my age comes in a 7, 9, or 11...and thankfully, the "Bella dress" sold by Hot Topic years back was sized S-M-L, so I didn't have to break my own rule to stash it in my closet - woo hoo!

Recently - like in the past year, I discovered the perfect pair of skinny jeans, and ended my years-long embargo of that style. Seriously, don't give up until you have tried Loft's Modern Skinny cut - while I realized that in theory all skinny jeans are created somewhat equal, these are one of the few cuts that don't make me look like a big-rumped ice cream cone. Once the weather started turning colder--you remember those two days last year when it acted like winter, don't you?--I decided that one possibly-questionable fashion acquisition deserves another, and declared that I needed a pair of Uggs. And I say "Uggs" like people say "BandAid" or "Kleenex." Although does anyone really say "Kleenex" when they mean "tissue" or is this just a really convenient example that people use even though it's not true? Anyway, armed with birthday gift cards, I scoured Zappos and Amazon to find the perfect pair (Bearpaws, actually) -

They're like slippers on crack! In a good way.

I love them. They are ridiculously comfy and are neither too hot nor too cold - they somehow manage to keep my feet at "just right" temperature at all times, indoors or out. However, it has occurred to me that maybe there is such a thing as "too old for Uggs"??? While doing Very Serious Internet Research on this topic, I found lots of pics of the Twilight cast and their Uggs (yes, we can make almost any topic Twi-related) -

Ashley Green has a well-documented love-affair with Uggs -

And the wolf pack dudes all wore them when they were running around the set half-nekkid -

Including Taycob, who must have been freezing when they shot the scene below, which thank goodness was filmed from the waist up, as I almost thought that this must be photo-shopped until I realized that you just couldn't see his feet in the actual movie -

Even Bella wears Uggs in Twilight, although not the kind you might associate with the brand. And Kristen Stewart wearing Uggs isn't really going to help me answer the burning "am I tool old for this?" question. I mean, I have tights that are older than she is.

Didn't see this particular shot on the movie...

...this one either. But cute shoes.

P.S. I am also considering buying a pair of Danskos to fill the hole in my shoe wardrobe where a basic black shoe with a little bit of height but not high-heeled goes. Because I am at a loss and have a lot of pants that are too long for flats and too short for real heels (and it would be nice to wear socks again). Please tell Texas Katherine that I love her and I am sorry, since I am pretty sure she's not speaking to me at the moment. But at least I won't be wearing these UggCrocVibram demon hybrids anytime soon, so maybe she'll be thankful for that?

I don't care if these make your feet feel like they're being kissed by bunnies and massaged by RPatts.
Or massaged by bunnies and kissed by RPatts. Just NO. Also, they cannot be unseen. Sorry.

So is there such a thing as "too old for Uggs," or am I good as long as I don't pair them with a tiny mini-skirt and a midriff-baring shirt?

Pinterest is the Devil

2012-01-09T20:02:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I got an invitation on Facebook from my cousin Double_Dippin for Pinterest. I've heard people talk about this site and shit they've "pinned." Sounded sort of weird and really boring to me. And since you need an invite to get on and browse around, I never actually knew what it was all about.

This "P" should stand for Prince of Darkness because Pinterest IS the Devil.

So I signed up and then yelled to my coworker in the office next to me for immediate help since I knew she was hooked on it already. I had know idea what the fuck I was doing. She (my coworker) was so excited I had come over to the dark side and showed me a few quick things to get me up and running. Aaaaaand know I might be slightly addicted.

This will eventually be the reason I get fired from my job.

Honestly, I thought this site was pretty much exclusively for women who had kids and did crafty shit and boy was I wrong. I'm in it for the food specifically. I'm convinced Pinterest is going to negate any weight I lose from exercising. The food I've "repinned" makes my stomach growl. I have about 20 new recipes to try and if you know me at all, you know I despise cooking. I would rather have dental surgery than have to cook dinner. So most nights, I put only the minimum effort into whatever it is I'm throwing together. Now I have recipes I'm actually excited about trying. I found one for a Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili that looks scrumptious.

I love anything I can do in my crock pot!! The height of cooking laziness.

I definitely have a sweet tooth when it comes to cooking - I would much rather bake yummy desserts than actual dinner-y type foods. My Yummalicious board on Pinterest is loaded with mouth-watering sweets. For example, today I found this Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies n' Oreo Fudge Brownie Bar. Sounds and looks absolutely sinful. I can almost hear my thighs expanding just thinking about eating this. It is taking all of my willpower to NOT run right to the grocery store for the ingredients to create this masterpiece.

*drool* *drool* FUCKING *drool*

If you're interested...here's the link to the recipe. If you do make it, please send me an email describing in great detail the orgasmic experience you had while eating it all ooey-gooey fresh from the oven. I can't believe how much my mouth is watering just thinking about eating this piece of heaven.

I'm still not entirely sure how this Pinterest thing works -- like how do I "pin" stuff? But fuck me, I'm completely addicted! @MyAfterCar warned me about this happening. Shame on me for not heeding her warning. Must. Pin. Everything!

A Little Something For Everyone. Or Not.

2012-01-08T23:45:00.000-05:00

So, it's Sunday again and I'm doing everything I possibly can to avoid thinking about the fact that tomorrow is Monday and I have to report back to my cubicle prison for the next five soul-sucking days.

Of course, there is nothing better than the internet for major distractions and I figured I would share a few of my recent favorites with you:

1) Slingshot Zombiehammer - I want this. I NEED this. My daily commuter battle with the Great Unwashed would be SO much better if I had this. And it's never too early to prepare for the zombie apocalypse...

2) A friend sent this link to Snarkier Than You and I a few days ago and I'm still laughing my ass off. Writer Lizzie Stark asks the burning question - what if Twilight was written by famous authors?

For example:

Cormac McCarthy
In the opening scene, Edward dashes Bella’s head against a rock and rapes her corpse. Then he and Jacob take off on an unexplained rampage through the West.

Be sure to check out her site and then come back here and leave your own in our comments!

Here's what I came up with:

William S. Burroughs
Bella and Edward are heroin addicts living in a slummy apartment building in New York City. The entire book revolves around them trying to get their next hit while dodging authorities and other criminals.

3) So many of you tweeted or emailed this next link to me so there was no way I couldn't blog about it because, seriously, what the fuck?

This reminds of a gift a boyfriend had given me many years ago. It was a book called The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress, which was pretty much a couple of hundred pages extolling the virtues of swallowing semen the old-fashioned way - straight from the penis. I'm sorry, but if I'm going to be smearing cum all over my face, it's going to be because there is a camera in my face and someone is paying me a lot of money to do porn, not because I think it'll maintain my youthful appearance.

Anyway, back to the recipes. I can't stress this enough - take a gander at the preview link on the page and just bask in the amazingness of gems like "Creamy Cum Crepes" or "Man Made Oysters".

I don't know if I'll ever be able to order a protein smoothie again, that's all I'm saying.

Happy Sunday to you all and if you have any jizz-based recipes please share them in the comments.

Actually, don't. I don't want to know.

Reckoner, Part--what part are we on again? iV ii, I think. [Twilight Fan Fiction]

2012-01-06T22:20:00.000-05:00

So, how's it going?

I've been back at work one week and I no longer have the plague but I do feel like I've been back at work for a month, if that's any indicator of how danged busy I've been. I know you know what I'm talking about.

This is the rest of the chapter I didn't post last week. I was hoping to have some, you know, time at work to get a bunch more of this so I could hand you a nice meaty chunk, but damn if work didn't make me work this week. What is that bullshit? Do they not realize I'm a public servant?

In any case, I'd sincerely like to thank those of you who have been reading Reckoner and leaving the very supportive comments (I'm looking at you, Lindsay Rae). I really do appreciate the feedback very much, even if I didn't have a chance to comment back this week (ref. above paragraph about being so busy working and oh, also tweeting a lot of pictures of a certain Welsh actor I'm into, but that's another blog post for another day).

Thanks again especially to the wonderful donors of Fandom Gives Back for their generosity in supporting Alex's Lemonade Stand. Without them, I wouldn't be posting this so if you're enjoying it, thank an FGB donor.

It's getting to be a little cumbersome to point you to the individual links if you haven't started reading this yet, so click here and start at the bottom if you'd like to read.

Much love and until next week,
Myg

~~~

Reckoner, Part IV ii

The Fort Kent Police Department was a small box of a building right near the bridge to Canada. When I brought Jimmy in, the Chief of Police wasn’t happy. Chief Barton bowled with Jimmy’s father, had known little Jimmy Colter since his DARE days in middle school and he worked with him often enough since he’d become an EMT. He’d taught him CPR, for Christ’s sake. So when he saw he was attached to me, he immediately gestured with his head toward a wooden stake with a carving of a bear on it, hanging unceremoniously behind the intake desk. I nearly laughed in his face, but his point was taken. It wasn’t unusual for cops to be aware of our existence, even if they never spoke about our kind. He assumed I was up to something and I couldn’t blame him for that.

He didn’t ask me any questions, he just asked Jimmy what the hell was up and Jimmy, I had to give him credit, spilled everything. The unregistered handgun in his pick up truck, his plan to kill Jolene, he even confessed to a quarter ounce he had stashed in his bedroom. Chief Barton wasn’t expecting that, and he took Jimmy in the back where I suppose he thought I couldn’t hear and asked him up and down if he was okay, if I’d put him up to anything and Jimmy swore he was telling the truth, and why was he asking? What did he know about me? But Chief Barton didn’t say what he was thinking, which was that maybe I was plotting some kind of small town terror.

When Chief Barton came back out front and saw I hadn’t left, I asked what he was going to do with Jimmy. He basically told me to fuck off, but I wasn’t leaving until they got the guy some help. So I waited until he reached the intake unit at the forensic psychiatric place in Augusta and made arrangements to have him admitted later that evening. With that, he asked me, and not nicely, to leave Fort Kent and not come back. I hadn’t gotten all that attached to the place in the 18 or so hours I’d been there and in fact, was planning to head to Montreal anyway. But I didn’t answer the man, I just turned for the front door and said, “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“You’re not normal,” Jimmy called from the doorway of the back office as I was about to leave.

“You’re just figuring that out, Jimmy? After all we’ve been through?” I turned and faced him one more time, wondering if sparing him was really worth the uncomfortable thirst burning at the back of my throat.

“Thank you,” Jimmy said, wiping the grime and the left over tears from beneath his eyes with an overused tissue. “Whatever you are. What did you call yourself? Reckoner or something?”

“Reckoner?” Chief Barton raised his eyebrows, reappraising me, the recognition of my reputation now lodged in his mind. He still didn’t know what to make of me and he was right to be unsure, because I was so thirsty I felt like I might kill the next man who so much as eyed a girl for too long. But before he could decide whether I was all right or not, I was gone.

~~~

Disgusted and alarmingly unsure of my killer instincts now, I took to the woods and in very little time sniffed out the trail of a bull moose, exactly what I wasn’t in the mood for. I found it sleeping, of course, in a grove of elm trees. It was just a few years old and big as hell and I had no taste for it at all. But I did kill it and sucked the volume of its blood down until it nearly caved in on itself, all hot and steamy against my cold throat. The drink was completely unsatisfying on every level but the one deep in my brain that said survive, in spite of myself. Survive.

It was after midnight when I got back to the hotel in Caribou, and Mercy was standing outside smoking a cigarette, waiting for me. I was not glad to see her. At all.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“You need to not be here,” I said.

It must have been some kind of whim, some sort of gut reaction that caused Mercy to hit me, because I didn’t hear her think about it and didn’t see it coming at all. She landed a hard punch square on the jaw, her fist cracking, my face aching with the impact. It sounded like a clap of thunder and sent me several steps back, reeling with the surprise of it, nearly toppling over. That really pissed me off. Before I could collect myself and give her the rash of shit she had coming, she hurled herself into me, knocking both of us into the side of a Dodge Caravan in the parking lot and putting a cow-sized dent in the door.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her arms across her body in restraint.

“You have no idea, do you?” she yelled, nearly wrenching herself out of my grasp, but I held onto her even as she struggled against me. “You’ve no idea what you’ve put us all through. Did you ever stop to think through the consequences of your actions?”

She stopped struggling but I kept my hold on her anyway, ignoring the shadow of the tired old woman who slipped out of the hotel to see what had caused the clamor. She saw us leaning against the dented minivan and just went back inside.

Mercy stayed quiet and still as I gripped her to me, rummaging through the tragic, desperate image she shared of Alice cowering in a corner of the basement at the Cullen house in Gray, her eyes wide open and vacant, her arms over her head, unresponsive even to Jasper as he begged her to come back to him. This was a far greater shock than the blow of Mercy’s fist.

“Tell me who did this to her,” I said quietly, practically whispering in her ear. “I will kill whoever it is. Just give me a name.”

“Edward Anthony Masen Cullen,” she said.

~~~

The drive back to Gray was much longer in Mercy’s old Crown Victoria sticking to roads and speed limits than it would have been had we just run back, but she wanted to talk at me for several hours before we arrived. She wouldn’t let me drive, either, which made me crazy but then she was in a mood to punish me and there was little I could do but endure her diatribe and her abysmal driving. I couldn’t say I didn’t deserve worse.

Our conversation was silent and it was just as well. Mercy was in no mood for listening to anything I had to say, and I had nothing to say, really. All she did was rail at me in her mind for renouncing the Cullens and fantasizing about Allston Kaine’s murder for three straight weeks. She didn’t care that I wanted Allston dead, though. The real problem with my plot for vengeance had been Alice. I’d been too much of an asshole to realize that she’d be worried and so projecting my future the entire time I was away, trying to figure out how to prevent me from getting myself killed by the Kaines. Apparently everything she’d seen—every end of mine—had caused her so much anxiety she just fell apart. Mercy couldn’t even be sure what Alice had seen because after a week of constant bombardment with the various ways she’d seen me die in all the assorted futures she saw, she stopped talking. Carlisle, Jasper, even Esme had all tried to reach me by phone, but I’d gotten rid of my phone on the way to Caribou so I wouldn’t be tempted to answer it. I thought I was doing them a favor by cutting them out of my life. What an ass I’d been.

I didn’t really know if going back would fix anything at this point. But I knew I was the only one who could figure out what was happening in Alice’s head. That would be a start, anyway.

“You’re going to have to let go of this plot to kill Allston, Edward,” Mercy said.

“I know that,” I said. “But he knows who I am—what I am. He’s going to hold it over me for as long as we’re in Portland.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to him?” she said.

“You’re not to go near him.”

“Edward, you are not my father and you do not tell me who I can and can’t go near. I’ve known Allston for more than 100 years. I’ll talk to him.”

“You can’t trust him,” I said. “We’ll have to think of something else.”

“Does he know you want to kill him?” Mercy said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not.”

“Then you’re making more out of it than you need to,” she said. “You don’t know, do you, that he killed your destiny girl?”

“Do not call her that,” I said. “And I told you I don’t want to discuss it.”

“You can make peace with the Kaines, and you can still consider her death avenged,” she said. “Whatever happened, you killed the man directly responsible for her death. That supply man in Boston found her and led her to her slaughter. You killed him, so her death is avenged, technically speaking.”

“Mercy,” I snapped. “Stop it or I’m getting out of the car.”

She caught herself then and finally recovered her manners. “Of course,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Edward. What was I thinking?”

She wasn’t really thinking, though. Her mouth was just moving. If she wanted me to let go of my thirst for vengeance then talking about the murder of the love of my life wasn’t going to help matters. But if my ruminating on Allston’s murder had anything to do with Alice’s catatonia, then I had to stop. My love’s life was over. She was gone. Alice was here. I could protect her and I would, even though protecting her meant getting a handle on my own dark thoughts and I really had very little idea how I was going to manage that. But I’d have to find a way.

I stretched back in the front seat and noticed the torn leather on the head rest, the worn mats on the floor and frowned.

“When are you going to let me buy you a proper car?” I said, changing the subject. “This one handles like a sinking ship.”

“Never,” she said. “I hate cars. I’d rather have a horse.”

Then she stopped thinking at me and she stopped talking at me and started singing a low, soft folk song from her childhood. The sound was sweet and kind, frustratingly soothing as the words flowed into the ragged core of my regret.

~~~

Stay cool, Twitards. And thanks for reading.

Dear iPeople Who Know iThings: I Need Your iPad Recommendations!

2012-01-05T22:34:00.001-05:00

I need your help. The good news? No need to hide your wallets this time around! All I need is...information. Advice. Technical know-how. Which I am sorely lacking.

If you know me even a little, you know it is a divine miracle of sorts that I have a blog and occasionally even go on Twitter and um...yeah, that's enough to stretch me to my limits. But seriously, when I first started blogging with Jenny Jerkface almost three years ago, I used to email the pictures I wanted to use in my posts to her because I didn't know how to add them myself. For those of you who have not broken down and started your own blog: this is really super-easy to do and JJ was just trying to make sure the general tech-overload I was experiencing at the time didn't make me go fetal. It was touch-and-go for a while there.

Anyway, fast-forward a few years and I am now miraculously the proud owner of a shiny new piece of remarkable technology: an iPad 2! [Please don't ruin this for me with your iPad 3 rumors, ok? I'm not tech-savvy but I don't live in a news-free bubble.]

Me too me too me too!!!

I have lots of storage space and 3G aaaaand I have no fucking idea what to do with it. I need you all to help me keep this thing from becoming the world's most over-priced paperweight. I want to make it do all of the cool stuff that I know - I KNOW! - it is capable of, but I am afraid of cacking it up with a bunch of useless apps or doing something wrong. So far, the only thing I have added to it is Netflix (I know, I know - I'm amazing!). It should be noted that the only instructions that actually come with the iPad are on a 2" x 3" card with almost no text -

[not kidding]

Not that I would actually read it if there was some sort of phone-book sized manual included, but it would have comforted me. So I need your recommendations and suggestions, please! I've asked everyone from my niece to my bloggy partners (well, the one who didn't just produce another human being, anyway - she's got her hands full at the moment) and it appears that everyone is too busy dealing with work and whatever it is that seven-year-olds do to get back to me.

Before you spring to to my rescue in the comments, please keep in mind that aside from an iPod Nano gifted to me on my 40th birthday by my lovely friends and Mr. Snarky, this is my first i-anything. I know they are supposed to be all intuitive and easy to use and stuff, but you are going to have to approach this as if you were explaining how an iPad works to an Amish kid during Rumspringa - I have no clue about anything, and I'll probably be drunk. Leave advice on your favorite must-have apps (or great tutorials!), the accessories that one simply cannot live without, and everything else I need to know to trick this baby out (and keep myself from killing it). I have been known to use my laptop to prop up the Sunday paper on the weekends. I need you.

Please don't let me and Steve Jobs down.

If this desperate cry for help doesn't pan out, I can always give it to the cat...

My Vagina is Not a Bakery

2012-01-04T20:33:00.000-05:00

So, for the past three weeks or so I had been suffering from a rather tenacious cold. I won't go into the details but involved an amazing amount of snot, the chafing of my nose and face from excessive blowing to the point where it looked like I had leprosy, and coughing loudly and often.

This is brilliant and I wished I had it when I had the plague...

When I first got the sniffles, I did what I always do when confronted with something unpleasant - I ignored it. Sometimes this works and whatever is afflicting me goes away. Not this time. Finally, it was decided that I had to go see a doctor, mainly because ML was tired of having to check to see if I was still breathing every hour.

I'm terrible with doctors. I never go unless I'm in extreme pain or think I might actually die. Because of this, I am usually calling every doctor in a ten mile radius for a last minute appointment. Hint - wheezing on the phone usually gets you an appointment. However, this is unfortunate for the doctor who has to examine me because when I'm sick, I'm a really, really terrible person.

Anyway, I got an appointment last Tuesday and went down and filled out the paperwork, got weighed in (assholes), my blood pressure/temperature, etc. taken and then met the doctor.

Right off the bat, I was put off. First of all, he was a dude. In the throes of the plague of the century, I forgot to ask for a woman. Not only did my Dr. Dude look to be about twenty-five, he looked like the poster child for every stereotype applied to a guy who spends his days playing World of Warcraft - shaggy, disheveled and pretty pasty.

Okay, Dr. Dude was a little older than this guy...

The exam was a typical exam and at the end of the day I was diagnosed with a sinus infection. Dr. Dude told me he would prescribe some antibiotics and the conversation went something like this:

Dr. Dude - I'm going to give you a 10-day prescription for Amoxicillin
Me - Um, no. Can't you give me the Z-Pack? You know, the 3-day one? All the other random doctors do.
Dr. Dude - I don't think a 3-day round of antibiotics is going to knock that infection out of your system (pretends to swing a bat. I mentally pretend to strangle him).
Me - Fine. How about the 5-day one?
Dr. Dude - Can I ask why you don't want the 10-day antibiotics?
[This question alone made me want to walk out. True fact - there is such a thing as a stupid question. I mean, who the fuck wants to take a bunch of big-ass pills for 10 days?]
Me - Because I don't.
Dr. Dude - Why?
Me - (sighing heavily) Because the 10-day antibiotics give me explosive diarrhea and a raging yeast infection, okay?

In the end, I haggled him down to a 7-day dose of Amoxicillin and a prescription of Diflucan for the impending temporary destruction of my vagina. Dr. Dude disappeared to call in my prescription and when he came back, this actually happened:

He points in the general direction of my vagina and asks, "do you know what the first signs of a yeast infection are? The itching and discharge--"

If I wasn't in the middle of hacking up half my lung I would have had a witty retort or perhaps even a drop kick to his head. Instead, all I could do was glare at him.

It was just like this.

This is exactly why I prefer a female doctor. First of all, obviously I know what the symptoms of a yeast infection are, fucknut. That's why I wanted the 5-day RX of antibiotics. No man can ever understand just how awful a yeast infection is. They think "itching and discomfort" and I think "holy fucking shit there are fire ants crawling around my labia and OH-MAH-GAHD, WHAT IS THAT GUNK COMING FROM MY SPECIAL PLACE???"

Her doctor didn't prescribe Diflucan...

Add to that the havoc that antiobiotics wreak on my intestines and, well, let's just say it ain't pretty. At all.

Slightly mollified by the fact that he threw in the Diflucan, I left and headed to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, eager just to get this shit over with. I didn't bother checking it until I got home.

That's when I discovered Dr. Dude had given me the 10-day prescription anyway. Shrieking and cursing ensued.

Payback will be swift and merciless. Just as soon as I feel better.

I Resolve to not Make Resolutions

2012-01-03T21:30:00.001-05:00

This is probably the type of thing we should discuss prior to New Year's Day, but Twitarded is nothing if not late to everything. I hate New Year's Resolutions. There's no logical reason why a decision made on January 1st should hold any more weight than a decision made on October 12th. Besides, I'm pretty damn close to perfect, so making improvements would just be moot.

Nonetheless, people always ask what my resolutions are. Because my bitch switch is always on, I usually reply, "To be better than you. Oh look, I'm already done."

I'm still charmingly sassy, though. No, really.

In the unlikely event that I feel like being a better person (NOT that I'm making a resolution to do so), I have created a list of bogus resolutions to share with ~~nosey sons of bitches~~ innocently curious folks. In no particular order... [insert drum roll]

Not gag when I clean out the shower drain
Win a Grammy
Star in a telenovela (dibs on the bee suit)
Start smoking & then give it up
Eat less candy
Be less awesome
Learn to play either the harmonica or the spoons (I am thisclose to being my own one woman band.)
Stop being personally offended when other people wear Crocs
Part my hair on the right
Stop procrastinating

I'm really curious to know how many people make New Year's Resolutions and if they actually keep them. I know I avoid the gym the entire month of January because it's so crowded with newbies who plan to lose thirty pounds by January 3rd. You always know who those poor schlubs are. They're the ones who still have the price tags hanging off their workout clothes and are wheezing on the treadmill because they've turned it up to Usain Bolt speed. (That's the world's fastest man; I Googled that shit.) Pace yourselves, people.[JJ's note - STOP TALKING ABOUT ME, ASSHAT]

Do any of you make resolutions? Have you ever kept them? If so, what were they? Did any of them involve a harmonica?

E! Online Announces Celeb of the Year

2012-01-02T20:13:00.000-05:00

In case you didn't hear (which I'm sure you have because as usual, we're a day late and a dollar short 'round here), E! Online recently announced their celeb of the year and the winner is... drumroll please... Robert Pattinson. *tosses confetti* Surprise, fucking surprise. This makes RPattz a two-time champ for this contest and once again he beats out the 63 other celebrities in a 5-week battle on eonline.com. What cracked me up even more was who he defeated for the crown -- none other than the Bella to his Edward, Kristen Stewart.

"Guess what second place is? Looooosing!" *giggle giggle*

You can tell I didn't have a whole lot of time over the holidays to peruse the interwebs seeing as I'm just hearing about this today! Seriously, it was announced like 5 days ago. Someone pull my fan card immediately. I suck balls at keeping on top of this shit.

I'm not surprised at the results -- RPattz had two big-ass movies come out this year. Water for Elephants in April and Breaking Dawn: Before the Spawn in November, both putting him front and center in the spotlight and generally all over the place! And he managed to pull it all off without even one crazy stalker claiming he had fathered her baby. Take that, Justin Bieber!

The Water for Elephants premiere in NYC last April to throngs of adoring fans -- present company included, although I did totally pussy out and didn't sleep on the street in the rain to get a wristband to the special viewing area. That's ok though. Double_Dippin, Laxplays and I were quite happy with the view from our footstools (courtesy of Mr. Laxplays). I imagine this premiere was a million times tamer than any of the Twilight movies.

Look, I even circled us -- and the arrow is pointing right at my head!

Fuck yeah, those stools kicked ass!

And then the big kahuna, the creme de la creme for any Twitard -- Breaking Dawn Part 1 in LA in all its tent city glory. My admiration for you brave souls runs deep. I don't have the patience or the balls for this sort of craziness. Plus, they would probably have frowned upon me packing heat in such a crowd. What? I need to protect myself from stuff -- like wolves and shit.

"Yo, motherfuckers.... this shit is totally getting me E! Online Celeb of the Year again. You're going down, *giggle giggle* Stewart!" (Not sure why I had to make RPattz all gangsta...)

Both premieres meant loads of interviews and appearances in multiple countries for young Mr. Pattinson which he executed with grace and uber hotness as usual -- despite most likely being ridiculously exhausted. Will I ever tire of seeing his smile and listening to his goofy giggle? I hope not...And while I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's not the greatest actor in all of actor-land, he certainly is the fucking prettiest.

Congratulations on your title, Rob! I'd love to express my compliments in person, if you know what I mean. *wink wink* Call me.

Reckoner, Part IV, i. [Twilight Fan Fiction]

2011-12-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

A/N

Happy New Year, you guys!

So, I have almost all of this story written but there are a few scenes scattered throughout that need to be finished. One of those comes in the middle of this chapter, and sadly, I have been too sick to write it this week. But I didn't want to not post something, so what you have is the first part of this chapter. What I'm trying to tell you is, I'M SO FUCKING SICK, OH MY GOD. I think I caught a man cold, no lie.

If you haven't been reading this and you still want to, quit here and go start reading here, then go to Part II here. And onto Part III here. As always I'd like to thank the generous donors of Fandom Gives Back for making this story see the light of day.

Hope you are all healthy and in eager anticipation of rockin' New Years Eve plans. I'll be toasting all of you with a fizzy glass of Airborne right before I pass out at around 7:30.

xoxo and Happy 2012.

Myg

___________

Reckoner, Part IV, i.

I ran north, all the way up to the town of Caribou without stopping. I didn’t answer the phone, didn’t read any text messages. I didn’t care if they called me a coward, or an asshole or even a brother or son. I only cared that I find some way to get them out of harm’s way. That meant I needed distance, and lots of it. Quickly. Eventually, I’d come back a solitary vampire like Mercy. And then I could kill whomever I damn well pleased for whatever reason suited me.

I booked a room at the Caribou Lodge, ignoring the tired old woman behind the counter when she raised her eyes at my lack of luggage.

“I’m just here for the hookers,” I said with a smile, slapping a pile of hundred dollar bills down on the counter. She scowled and thought I didn’t notice when she pocketed all of it.

For the first two weeks I stayed alone in a poorly decorated third-rate hotel room. Bad pastel wall paper, uncomfortable, cheap furniture, an outdated television I never watched. A bible I thumbed through now and then. I was still plagued daily by the unfaded vision of the woman of my dreams and by the twisted face of the man I’d killed in her name, whatever it was. I fantasized all the different ways I might kill Allston Kaine, too. Hell. All twelve Kaines. Why not? Really, why the fuck not? They were all murderers when it came down to it, and was I the Reckoner or not?

After another week of incessant stewing in that depressing hole, I desperately needed to hunt, but Caribou was somewhat lacking in rapists, child molesters and murderers. I could have hunted elk or moose or bear but if I was really going so far as to renounce my family, I wanted to indulge my thirst for human blood. I needed a bad guy.

After days of fruitless stalking in Caribou’s public school, church and three bars, I wandered over to the medical center in Fort Kent where I pretended to be a psychotic tourist. It had been awhile since I’d indulged the sicker side of my sense of humor, but the laughter that ensued when the poor intern tried to find my pulse only added to the authenticity of my ruse. Eventually, after they found that no needle could penetrate my skin and the Thorazine they administered by mouth had absolutely no effect, they called the local police. I thought I might hang out in the jail and see who came in, but before the local law enforcement team arrived, I’d found my next kill.

He was on the young side and I’d never enjoyed killing young men, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and I was feeling sketchy by then. My victim was a skinny, pale alcoholic kid, early twenties. Jimmy Colter was his name. He was an EMT and he had startling, relentless thoughts of a fixed murder-suicide plot with what appeared to be his ex-girlfriend, some girl named Jolene. I followed him home and watched him carefully load his handgun from his bedroom window. He still lived with his parents, there were still superhero posters on the wall, an old lamp with footballs printed on the paper shade. He drank two Budweisers from a can in under ten minutes, and then got into his truck and drove to the girl’s trailer. I dragged him out from behind the wheel before she even came to the door.

Out in the woods he struggled to run away but I held him firmly with his arms behind his back, dragging his legs behind him through the underbrush of the forest floor. There was some survival instinct left in this one, that was obvious and that for some reason pleased me. His eyes were blue, his hair was black and unwashed, probably for days. He shivered, underdressed for the dropping November temperature. When I found a good killing spot, I let him go and he ran, but I caught him easily. After a couple of more chases, he finally stopped trying to get away.

“What… are you?” he asked. “What do you want with me?”

“I know what you’re planning to do to her—what’s her name?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stammered and nearly pissed in his pants, shifting from foot to foot as he wrung his hands together.

“Jolene,” I said as he thought her name, and then he began to cry softly. I hated when they did that. “That’s her, right? What did she do to piss you off so bad?”

“She… she slept with my cousin Ted. It all went to shit after that.”

“You were going to shoot her and then kill yourself in her kitchen? You think that’s justified for infidelity? Seriously?”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even ask me how I knew. He just cried harder.

“Do you know what I am?” I asked.

“Are you a cop or something?”

“No,” I said. “I’m the Reckoner.”

“The what?”

“I kill rapists and murderers.”

“Shit,” he whispered and began to tremble. Then he wiped more tears from the corner of his eyes and surveyed the woods. He began to scream for help and I just watched him go through all those emotions, the fear, the denial. The fight. He tried to run again and I dragged him back, finally limp with resignation and sobbing into his shirt sleeve.

He didn’t ask me to spare him and that bothered me. They usually beg for another chance, swear to do better. Promise to turn things around, to find Jesus—something, anything they think will convince me to let them go. This kid didn’t do any of that, though. He just lay there crying, didn’t even try to hide it.

“I need a drink,” he said. “Do I get a last request or anything?”

“Are you serious?”

Then he broke down into sobs. Full-on choking sobs. He thought about Budweiser, of all things. Shitty, canned Budweiser. Then he started thinking about some dog at home, a fat pit-bull with brown splotches, bleeding gums and missing teeth. Something about the whole situation there made me sick.

“Who is the dog?

“What?”

“The dog.”

“Sally?” he said. “How’d you know about her?”

“Is that your dog?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t want her to go to the pound. They’ll put her down and she don’t deserve that.”

“Oh yeah? Did you think of that when you decided to murder someone and kill yourself today, asshole?”

“No.” He started sobbing again and then I had no thirst at all. None. In fact, the thought of drinking this guy's blood made me feel ill, though I knew it had to be psychological. He wiped his face with his sleeve. His eyes were puffy and red, his thoughts a tangled mess of pain I didn't even want to know.

“Let me ask you a question,” I said, regret filling me like dirty, wet sand. “What if I don’t kill you? What then?”

“You gonna send me to jail?”

“I’m not a cop.” Jesus, this kid was thick. “Just, tell me, if I let you live, what will you do?”

He was quiet, and I perused the clutter of his mind as he pondered this question. The first thing he thought of was shooting himself. I shook my head at him.

“No,” I said. “Not that.”

He looked at me funny, like he was confused. Then he had a thought of himself, obviously a memory from when he was young, maybe 11 or 12. There was another man there—some kind of coach. Soccer, maybe. And then I understood why he suddenly went back to the thought of him shooting himself and I had to ask myself, what the fuck should I do? What on fucking earth do I do?

His eyes went cold as they fixed on some blank spot in the distance, his thoughts very far from the moment. His mind then began to race, frantic fragments of memories. I saw not the intended rape-murder of Jolene or the suicide, but an elderly man he’d saved by administering CPR. A stray cat he’d rescued from the scene of a house fire. A toddler he’d saved from choking. His tears were flowing hot, running down his face, onto his jacket. His guilt, his shame, his rage, his remorse—I couldn’t stomach it. Not figuratively, not literally.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I said.

Jimmy stirred and looked up at me, his face contorted, confused, distrustful. He put his head back down between his knees and wretched, dry heaving and then coughing up clear mucus he spat onto the dead leaves between his legs. He wrapped his arms around his head and rocked back and forth like a frightened child trying to soothe himself.

“I need a drink real bad,” he said.

“You need a lot more than that,” I answered.

~~~~~~~

That's all for tonight, folks. See you all again here soon.

I Don't Want Your Dildo in My Cay

2011-12-29T20:14:00.000-05:00

Enjoy another TexasKatherine post in her absence. How long is a maternity leave anyway? And be sure to (a) maybe not be at work, and (b) empty your mouth of any liquids. This bitch is funny.

************************

I don't have much time to troll the interwebs these days, so I rely on others to spit entertaining info into my mouth like a baby bird. Mr TK sent me this link a while back ago. I kind of dismissed it because I didn't believe it was real. It's a blog article about the worst book ever written. It's called (wait for it...) Dildo Cay.

You totally thought I made up that title, didn't you?

It was written in the 40's so it's possible the author didn't notice the island's resemblance to this...

Possible. But not plausible. (P.S. This ~~not so~~ little beauty is available from Good Vibrations. P.P.S You might not want to read this post on your work computer.)

There is an actual place called Dildo Cay. I would consider visiting but I don't think they have a Nordstrom. I'd rather have a staycation and visit my cay. *ahem*

I'm sure you're wondering exactly what this book is about. I've read the following summary from the jacket at least a dozen times and I still can't tell you.

Ainsworths do not marry for love. They choose their women to carry on the line–thoroughbreds who can endure the loneliness and the eternal wind of the Ainsworth island–Dildo Cay. This speck in the Atlantic lies six hundred miles southeast of Great Bahama. Here the Ainsworths have lived for eleven generations–the one white family among two hundred blacks.

Young Adrian Ainsworth has followed the family tradition in selecting his wife, Mary. Then Carol arrives with her father, hired to revive the salt industry on which the livelihood of the Ainsworths and the blacks depends. Carol is a glittering and sophisticated creature caught in a strange situation. Adrian’s deep, growing desire for Carol and the tension between her arrogant father and the blacks mount to an electric climax. Without sentimentality, but with a powerful honesty, the author paints a consuming passion against a romantic and exotic background.

So, I guess this is some kind of apartheid romance between rough-looking people set in a salt mine. I can't believe it wasn't an instant classic. I'm not really up on my seasoning history, but I had no idea the salt industry was so robust after the invention of the ice box. Color me...still not interested.

The fact that this book was published and so many of my friends are stuck in a revolving door of querying agents makes me want to punch someone in their Dildo Cay. The few excerpts of this book I read were so painfully full of stilted dialogue and repetition I can not bear to repost it here. I found the Dick and Jane series more riveting in kindergarten.

Hmmm. Maybe these books are more similar to Dildo Cay than I first thought.

I would love to know if anyone here has ever read this book. What's the worst book you've ever read?

Here's To Our Tribe (A New Year's Thing a Couple of Days Early)

2011-12-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

Happy holidays, you amazing, loving, crazy, genius women (and a few men). It's the end of the year, the usual time for us to all ruminate fondly (or not so fondly) on another year that has gone under the bridge, been filed under "past" or... Something like that.

All I'm saying is that another year has passed and we are all still here, going strong. I once read somewhere that the average lifespan of a blog is less than one year. With Twitarded, I think it's less about the content and more about the readers that have kept this blog going.

Oooh, we made it into purple!!

See, here's the thing (and bear with me because I'm on cold drugs and am possibly high off my face) I think adolescent/teenage girls have a bit of a curse on them. Sort of like werewolves, but less hairy and way more in-pain-y and emotional. Lost and alone, sort of. Adult women are more like vampires. Vampires are smarter and classier but are also tortured in their ridiculously and eternal good looks by being... well, alone.

We're just like Edward Cullen, tortured and alone. Or not.

So, in 2009, we were all sort of wandering around lost, a little confused and maybe a wee bit embarrassed about our affection for all things Twilight. We loved the fantasy of them, the suspension of reality. But we were still all alone. Like the vampires (I'm definitely high). You know, like Victoria and James, before they got they together. But we were less murder-y (well, most of us were, I think).

Oh fuck it. I guess what I'm trying to say is this - thank you, all of you, for another wonderful year spent together. Thank you all for being so open-minded and generous with your love and kindness. Thank you SO much for totally digging the same porn as I do.

Unnnnnf.

You ladies have banded together and helped each other out when someone needs it, and that's just amazing. It blows my mind and warms my cold, cynical heart. Your acts of kindness have made me a better person, I promise.

Our last Forks trip (ever) was awesome and I hold so many memories from both those trips close in my heart.

The Twitter conversations I've witnessed between all you people are proof that not only are you ladies intelligent and kind, you're also fucking funny as shit. Nine out of ten times that my boss asks me why I'm laughing so hard, it's because I'm reading something one of you wrote.

So, thanks again for being exactly who you are. All of you. Stay awesome, be safe and have a kick-ass New Year.

Love you!

Buh-bye, Breaking Dawn Before the Spawn... See You in February?

2011-12-27T23:16:00.002-05:00

I totally remember this scene, don't you?

Bella was SO radiant when she was preggers...

I've been meaning to see Breaking Dawn again before it left the theaters since the second time I saw it with Myg and Jenny Jerkface in late November or early December (I have the ticket stub around here somewhere because I keep things like that but it would probably take me two hours to find it in the piles of other little things I feel compelled to hold on to). The first viewing I was all giddy and hopped up and it's hard to remember all the details after waiting so long to see it on the big screen. I was so baffled by some parts that I read the book again. That's right: I read Breaking Dawn again! Then at the second viewing, I just wanted to watch it without being all dumbfounded that I was FINALLY watching it and having to make notes to blog about it (my brain is like a sieve and I depend on a precarious system of notes jotted on everything to recall shit and make things happen).

I always knew I was going to see it one more time in the theater (how could I NOT?!), at which point I would REALLY pay attention and take a small notebooks' worth of chicken-scratched memos that I would later spend hours trying to decipher into a comprehensible post about what I liked and didn't like. Because the fandom really needed more of that, I think.

Yeah I remember that this never happened quite like this. I think.

There might not have been an ass-slip but I DID hear there was a nip-slip.

...and I totally remember this part too. Oh wait no I don't.

WTF is she eating, a lemon meringue omelette???

Sadly, even with a couple of years to practice behind me, I was unprepared for the fact that some time shortly after November 18th, life spontaneously churns into an out-of-control tailspin of holiday madness that starts to wind down at about the same time that all the Christmas-release and last-minute Oscar contenders hit the theaters and push poor little ol' Robward & Company out of the theaters for good. I kept thinking that I would have plenty of time for one last matinee with JJ and Myg... Then I started threatening to go alone, but never found the time. I vaguely considered taking a reeeeeeeally long lunch and seeing it at the theater near my office, but work has been too busy for me to disappear for several hours, at least if I want to remain gainfully employed. Which I kind of do, most days.

Today, after semi-wrapping up some family Christmas mayhem, I realized time was super-short and ran to Fandango to see what options were still available. It wasn't pretty - a midnight showing playing on a weeknight at one theater near me, or an earlier show at one of a very small handful of theaters (is two a handful?) within inconvenient driving distance, and in very sketchy locations. I won't name city names, but it's what Papa Snarky once referred to as "The Armpit of New Jersey" - is pretty much the kind of crappy, blighted town people not from around here think of when they think of New Jersey, and I will never go back there ever again, even if Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were putting on a stage production of the entire Twilight Saga. The one time I went there I think I saw a tumbleweed of crack vials and pit bull fur go rolling down the street.

So I bid you a fond farewell - for now! - Breaking Dawn: Before the Spawn. Until we meet again - you, me, and all your not-very-enticing-sounding "extras." I'll be there. With sparkles on. And with JJ and Myg in my little clutches, unless they manage to escape again.

Happy Boxing Day! Um...What Is Boxing Day?

2011-12-26T22:14:00.000-05:00

I'm not even sure what Boxing Day is but I like it. Especially when I don't have to work. So is Boxing Day always the day after Christmas? Seriously... I really have no idea and I'm super lazy (and possibly just a teensy bit drunk) and I have no desire to Google that shit right now. What I do know is that it happens in the UK and I probably have no right to even celebrate it!

Really not sure this is what they meant by Boxing Day!

So anywho...how was everyone's Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah? For those of you who celebrate Christmas, did the fat man deliver the goods or what? I love that pudgy elf -- he makes me so happy! Do you remember when you were a kid and you believed that crazy bearded man actually visited every single kids' house on Christmas eve? And how your parents would wrap the "Santa" gifts in different paper so they would stand out from the regular gifts? Those were the fucking days! I miss the "Santa" gifts now that I'm older and even though I really want to believe that jolly mo-fo is real, I know that he's just a myth. I kinda wish my mom would still designate one of my gifts to be from Santa. I would totally believe!!

This guy must sleep for weeks after his busy night.

My Christmas was pretty amazing! I love spending time with my family and it was my seven-month-old niece's first one and even though she was more interested in eating the wrapping paper than seeing what was actually in the package, it still made the day that much more fun. And I also had two cousins visiting that I hadn't seen in five years, which also made me really happy. At my age, I'm more thankful for these moments than I am for the presents. Which, if you know me, is a very bold statement. I fucking love presents.

My mom still goes all Christmas crazy and buys us all a ton of stuff even though she probably doesn't really have to since there's nothing we really "need-need". I think my favorite gift this year is something I haven't even received yet. I asked for a ClamCase for my iPad. If you're not familiar with this contraption, it turns your iPad into a sort of laptoppy type thingy. The iPad snaps into one half and the other half is a wireless keyboard. Sometimes I get super tired of typing on that touch keyboard so I thought this would be really cool. Of course, the fucking this is sold out so now I have to wait...

This thing better be kick ass or I will kick someone's ass.

What was your favorite gift this year or your favorite moment? Did you get a new Kindle Fire or an iPad or a new smartphone? Or maybe it was something else... or someone? If anyone had Robert Pattinson under their tree, you'd better fess up! And please tell me you've secured him away in your basement and will be selling him to the highest bidder in a private Twitarded auction, natch - lol. I'd like to start the bidding please... (For charity, of course...)

Why the fuck wasn't this under my tree this year?
Maybe Santa knows I've been just a liiiitle bit naughty this year!

PS: You know what is NOT a good chaser for a bottle of wine? Peanut butter chip brownies and a glass of milk. I might vomit soon.

Reckoner, Part III [Twilight Fan Fiction]

2011-12-23T22:38:00.000-05:00

Author's Note

Happy Holidays you guys!

I know that late Friday night right before Christmas is exactly the time everyone wants to dive into Reckoner again, right? I'm sure you have no baking/wrapping/panicking to do right about now. Well, hey, it'll be here whenever you're ready just the same.

Looks as though Friday night is the new posting schedule for this tale, so if you're reading it week to week you can look for it then. Thanks to those of you who have been reading it--I truly appreciate it. In case you are wondering, the answer is yes, this tale will wrap somewhere in the Osa Bella timeline, though I'm not telling where (mostly because I'm not 100% sure yet).

If you are new here, Reckoner is a pre-quel to Osa Bella in Edward's Point of View. You don't need to have read Osa Bella to understand what's going on here. If you'd like to read Reckoner but haven't started it yet, please start at the beginning here, then read the second part here. And then come back here. Whew. I'm exhausted just from cutting and pasting those links.

Reckoner is brought to you by the generous donors of the Fandom Gives Back. The first part appeared in the big author's compilation there. It will continue here at Twitarded until it's done, and I'm not 100% sure when that will be, but probably a few more weeks at least. If you donated to FGB, you are welcome to receive a pdf and an ebook version of Reckoner when it's all finished. Just email your receipt to me at mygdala @ gmail. (No need to include any private information though.)

Okay, I'm off to wrap presents until 3am. All the best to you, Twitards. May your holidays be sparkly and filled with dreams of your favorite Edward.

Love,

Myg

~~~~~~~~~

“I love it. Show me the chords.”

Mercy picked up her guitar from the stand and tuned it as I strummed the chords on the new song again. It was the fourth I’d composed in two weeks and darker than the other three combined.

“We need to record these,” she said. “We’ll make an album. What do you think?”

“What for?”

“Why not?”

I couldn’t really argue that, as much as I felt like arguing and did argue with her or anyone at every turn these days for any or no reason. I didn’t know how Mercy could even stand to be around me. I’d become so surly since Boston that I couldn’t pass by a mirror without wishing my reflection would disappear like a ghost’s.

“Listen to this, Edward,” Mercy said and began to sing.

Woman of your dreams, so young now...and you—you were younger still. Dreaming all the ways she fell still...Did you tell her about those dreams?

Open up your fantasy and ride your darkest fear... Baby I will get us home…***

“That’s good,” I said. “Really good.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right—we should book some studio time. Maybe put something out.”

“Really?” Her surprised smile lit her face and I suddenly felt like a royal asshole for how distant and cold I’d been.

“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t you call and set it up for next week?”

“I will,” she said, still smiling. She went back to strumming her guitar again, humming as she began to compose the rest of the vocal line.

I considered her carefully as she played. Mercy was beautiful. Petite, but hardly fragile. Long, flowing black hair. Perfectly huge eyes, lashes out to next week. She was without question the most beautiful vampire I knew. Prettier than Rosalie, and even I could admit that was saying something. She was graceful, elegant, talented. The sound of her voice always calmed me, brought me back from many a dark place. Mercy was always there with a supportive ear when I needed her. There was so much I loved about Mercy. Why couldn’t I just fall in love with her?

I knew the answer, though. I couldn’t fall in love with Mercy because I was still in love with someone else. It didn’t matter that the woman I loved was dead—nothing about how I felt about her had changed. I didn’t know if it ever would. If it even could.

But maybe I should try, I thought. Maybe if I gave myself some time I could try to fall in love with Mercy. Maybe if it worked, she would fall in love with me, too. We could get married, lead our lives peacefully. Everybody would be happy about that, right? Esme would be thrilled. Carlisle, relieved. Mercy and I were already close, rarely argued, shared a lot of the same interests.

Then as though she was the mind reader, Mercy glanced up and saw me staring and cracked another small smile. “Do you like that?” she asked, about the song. “I’m just fooling around here now.”

“Mercy?”

She stopped playing and gave me an expectant look. I felt like I might say something important, monumental. Significant.

“Do you have any cigarettes?” I asked.

“No, I need to run to the store,” she said. “There’s money in my wallet.”

~~~

At the Cumberland Farms a rumpled, balding middle aged guy had just hidden a porno mag beneath the counter when I walked in. His thoughts were as ugly as the stained teeth he showed when he grunted, “eight dollars,” after I asked him for a pack of American Spirits. He was thinking of girls. Young ones. Very young ones, though I wasn’t sure if he had a specific kid in mind or if this was just a sick fucking fantasy. Then I realized I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

“Edward Cullen,” you asshole, I heard from behind me. “You’re back in Portland, I see.”

Allston Kaine was a tall, thin vampire with close-cropped salt and pepper hair and the look of a distinguished older man. He stood in the doorway of the convenience store, flanked by three of his coven, Timothy, Mark and Adam Kaine.

“Let’s take it outside,” I said, nodding to the door, not at all happy with the fantasy of my beheaded body I found in Allston’s mind.

The Kaines were the largest coven north of Boston until you got into Montréal. Allston was its maker. They were your regular variety parasitic vampires, preying on whatever unsuspecting humans they could cull from Portland and the surrounding tourist areas. Allston was a former US naval officer turned vampire by Caribbean pirates in the mid 1800s. He’d known Mercy a hundred years at least and the two of them had their baggage. She had been entertaining an offer of marriage from Allston when I first met her, but she ended up eschewing traditional vampirism in favor of the humanitarian practices of our coven and turned him down. He always blamed me for that, but if I was to blame to keep Mercy from marrying that asshole I was proud of it.

Outside, we stepped into the alley next to the convenience store and they surrounded me while Allston spoke.

“An acquaintance of ours in Boston has gone missing,” he said. “We thought you might have heard something about it while you were there.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked. I had no idea how they knew I’d been in Boston, but I didn’t react.

“You’re familiar with the witch Elle Moreau, right?”

“The Boston witch? Everyone knows who she is.”

“Did you know that she’s dead?” Allston said.

I hadn’t heard that, but after my encounter with her I’d suspected it wouldn’t be long. My first thought was that Mercy wouldn’t be able to settle whatever score she had with Elle, but then it was obvious that wasn’t a concern of Allston’s.

“So?” I asked.

“Elle had marked one of our… suppliers.”

“What do you mean, suppliers?”

“What do you think I mean, idiot?” Allston hissed. “You think Portland has enough prey to feed a coven as large as mine without the police interfering?”

“You sick fucking bastards,” I seethed. “Too lazy now to properly hunt?”

“Edward, our Boston connection has been missing for weeks. Do you know anything about it?”

I hadn’t known what kind of strength I truly possessed until I stopped myself from killing Allston Kaine right then and there. The face of the man I’d last killed fixed itself in Allston’s mind and then I realized that the unrequited love of my life, the woman I still grieved for, might not have been murdered by the man I killed at all. Maybe she was just supplied by him, procured like livestock for the Kaine coven. Maybe Allston had enjoyed her, drank her, killed her, right under my fucking nose.

And so now I marked Allston Kaine as my next target. Sooner or later he was going to die by my hand, and hopefully sooner. But not here in the street. Somewhere where I could make his torment last a long, gruesomely long time.

My phone rang, and I didn’t have to look to see who it was. I ignored it.

“Are you picking that up?” Allston asked.

“I don’t know anything about your human trafficking connection,” I said. “Who was he bringing you, anyway?”

I searched Allston’s mind for glimpses of the last humans he’d fed the coven. I searched the minds of Timothy, Adam, and Mark and saw flashes of hunger, lust, and several pretty, horrified faces. All young looking women, but none that I recognized.

“What do you care?” Allston asked, studying the disgusted expression on my face. “My, you look thirsty just thinking about it. Maybe we should have you by for dinner.”

“I don’t fucking think so.”

“Well anyway, the does were for sustenance, Edward,” Allston said with a laugh. “You don’t name dinner. That’s sick.”

“Jesus Christ…”

“Someone we know saw you talking to Elle Moreau in Boston the night she died,” Timothy said. “The night we lost contact with our supplier.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

“So you’re saying you don’t know what happened to him?” Allston said.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“We’ll be looking into it,” Allston said. “But mind that you watch yourself up here. Without a supply of prey shipped up from Boston, we will be carefully hunting around Portland, and I don’t want any interference.”

“I don’t hunt humans, you know that,” I said.

“Yes, yes, I know all you Cullens call yourselves humanitarians.” Allston scowled and shook his head in disgust. “But let’s just be clear about something. If by chance you do decide to interfere, we will take out every Cullen.” Then he leaned in close and exhaled a ghastly cold blast of his breath in my face. “Am I understood?”

“Fuck you,” I said. You are a dead man.

Don’t try my patience, Reckoner.

I didn’t blink. I didn’t say a word. I just stared blankly at him, looking bored, doing my damned best to cover the rage and the disquiet I felt that he’d been tipped off to my identity. Damn that Elle Moreau, straight to hell where she belonged.

My phone rang again, and this time it wasn’t Alice, but Carlisle. I answered but before I could say a word he said, “Don’t even think about it.”

~~~

Carlisle met me deep in the woods near Sebago Lake, near our local hunting rendezvous. It was dark and drizzling where I waited, and quiet save the soft pattering of light rain on fallen leaves. He appeared at around one a.m. with Alice and no one else, as I’d requested. She looked out of place, nervous and fidgeting in her black rain slicker with penguins on it and shiny, white rain boots. Carlisle was in a trench and a fedora, perturbed and torn. He opened a large golf umbrella over the three of us and we huddled under it talking quietly, despite the fact that no one else was there.

“You don’t know, for a fact, that Allston is the one who killed her, do you?” Carlisle said. “Did you see her in his mind? In any of theirs?”

“No,” I said. “But…”

“Then we’ve got no basis for retaliation.”

“They’re engaged in human trafficking,” I said. “How can I do nothing? It goes against everything I…”

“This isn’t Boston—you’re not the Reckoner up here,” Carlisle said, cutting me off with a stern look and a commanding tone.

“How can you look me in the eye and say that?”

“This family is my priority,” Carlisle said. “Imagine what would happen to us if we decided to go after every vampire who killed humans. We’d all be dead, Edward. We do a lot more good in this world by being a peaceful example to others than by delivering some rogue justice. I thought you understood that.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“If you kill Allston it will be war,” Alice said. Her eyes were wide and hollow, her face forlorn with whatever horror she saw but didn’t share, but I saw it. In a flash of Alice’s mind, Mercy was torn and burning on a great fire. Carlisle was decapitated, his head cradled in Timothy Kaine’s arms. Esme was laying still on the ground. I reached out to comfort Alice but she moved out of my grasp, wrapped her arms around herself and glared at me as rain began to pour down on her. “We won’t win.”

“What is happening?” Carlisle demanded. “What do you see?”

“We can’t do this,” Alice said. “Edward, you can’t do it.”

“Allston knows,” I said. “He knows I’m the Reckoner. He will hold this over us—do you have any idea how many enemies I have down in Boston?”

“We’ll make an agreement with the Kaines,” Carlisle said. “I’ll speak to him about it.”

“You can’t trust him!” I yelled. “Alice, can you see that working out in any way?”

“All I can see is your vengeance,” she said, uncharacteristically adamant, frustrated. “You’ve got to stop thinking about revenge.”

She was out of her mind if she thought I wasn’t killing Allston Kaine after what he’d told me. Somehow, somewhere, he was going to die by my hand if it was the last thing I did.

“You need to take the family back to Forks,” I insisted. “It isn’t safe here in Maine anymore. Take Mercy, too.”

“If it’s too much temptation for you here, then we can discuss going back to Forks,” Carlisle said. “We need to discuss this with everyone else.”

“There’s nothing to discuss, Carlisle. You’ll be safer there, you know that.”

“If we go, you’re coming with us,” he said.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“What do you mean you can’t do it?” Carlisle said. “Do you think that you’ll stay behind, start a war with the Kaines and there won’t be repercussions for the rest of us, regardless of where we go?”

“Edward,” Alice whispered. “I know what you’re thinking. Please, please don’t.”

But the way I saw it, I had no choice. My feelings about my lost beloved aside, my disgust with the Kaine human trafficking issue aside, Allston had my number. One phone call to the wrong witch in Salem or the wrong vampire in Boston and everyone in my family would be a target, a retribution kill for those murderers I’d slain as the Reckoner. Now I only saw one way to keep my family safe. One choice that wouldn’t end with me dragging the rest of them into a war they had no place fighting.

“I renounce the Cullens,” I said.

Alice dropped her eyes to the sodden forest floor and refused to look at me again.

“You what?” Carlisle said, his eyes nearly glowing red with rage at the heartless words I spoke. “What did you just say to me?”

“I renounce you, Carlisle. I renounce the Cullens.”

~~~~~~~

***These lyrics are from the song "Fantasy" by Family Band. You guys know I love Family Band and always think of Mercy as having this kind of voice and writing this kind of music.

Until next time...

He Sees You When You're Sleeping...

2011-12-22T21:05:00.000-05:00

If you're all as busy as I am this week, you probably don't have a heck of a lot of time to spare so I won't keep you too long. I'm not sure what's going on lately but it's like all the busy-bee stars are aligned and I can't seem to keep my head on straight. I thought work was supposed to slow down this time of year. Fuck no!

Work + Christmas + Going on Vacation = Spinning LKW

Good news is my shopping is done. Bad news is I still have to wrap it all. Good news is I still found a little time to rustle up some funny Christmas-y videos to entertain you. I thought I'd make things good and simple tonight and I Googled "Robert Pattinson Christmas" and nearly pissed my pants when I watched this JibJab video.

If you've never played around with those hilarious JibJab videos, you have no idea what you're missing. My cousin Double_Dippin was even on a JibJab tear a couple weeks ago and did this one for the Twitarded crew.

Don't we make the cutest fucking elves ever?? And our guest elf... well, he never made it back from that cabin. You wonder why he's been MIA lately. *whistles innocently*

I truly hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

Merry Christmas from the Latchkey house!!

Tips For The Holiday Traveler That Will Possibly Keep Daily Commuters From Murdering You With Your Own Luggage

2011-12-21T21:39:00.000-05:00

Let me just preface this by saying that if you're driving somewhere for the holidays... have fun with that. If you pass me on the highway, you'll know it's me because I'll have a terrified expression on my face and hanging on to the oh-shit handle like my life depends on it. Which it probably does, because New Jersey drivers are fucking assholes. And ML likes to make me cry when he drives me places.

Pretty much my reaction when I'm a passenger in a car...

These delightful and hopefully helpful tips are for all of you who will be relying on trains, buses, planes, go-carts, what-have-you for traveling. As someone who considers herself a bit of an expert in the Ways of Commuting, I thought I would give you annual commuters a few pieces of advice.

Trains stations, bus depots and airports are like hornets nests. Everyday commuters are generally an even-keeled bunch but don't be fooled, it's like a fucking pressure cooker waiting to explode. Everyone kind of mills around peacefully until something or someone comes along and starts thwacking it with a stick. Then shit gets real. Ever seen a woman in a three piece suit wearing five-inch Manolos threaten to stab an elderly gentleman in the eye? I have.

Ouch. Trust me, you don't want that close of a look...

Here are a few things you can do to avoid getting a stiletto lodged in your eyeball:

1) Don't sit on the goddamn stairs. Those stairs lead to somewhere and you will be blocking people's way. And not just a couple of people either. If a train is called and you're sitting between the platform and a mob of about fifteen-hundred people, you will be in big trouble. It's like the Running of Bulls but with briefcases. Stand up and wait like the rest of us.

Tick tock, tick tock...

2) If you're traveling with your family, don't form a chain. This isn't a game of Red Rover, Red Rover and you are not the Van Trapps, all holding hands and singing around your luggage. It will be your family against a mob of people who are not only eager to get the fuck home, but they are really good at navigating. You are not the Berlin Wall of traveling. Huddle, like a football team. Pads and helmet might not be a bad idea, either.

3) If someone should jostle you or your luggage, don't glare and mutter. It's crowded and most likely they didn't do it on purpose. If they did, definitely don't glare and mutter. Actually, just get as far away from them as possible. Nothing brings out a hatred for humanity more than traveling around the holidays and anyone who is using the train station or bus depot as their own personal mosh pit is gearing up to chew someone's eyes out and chase it down with their bone marrow.

Unless he's got a wicked case of gas, this guy looks pissed. Either way, stay away.

4) That shabbily dressed guy/lady who only needs $2.75 to get to their destination and would be eternally grateful if you could give them some money? Yeah, those people are full of shit. I've seen the same two people pull this nearly every day on my way home from work, which means they've been trying to get $2.75 for five years. Either they're lying or they're the worst panhandlers in the history of panhandling. I'm all for giving to those less fortunate, but donate to a homeless shelter or food pantry.

5) Bring something you can stick into your ears that will drown out the noise around you. I can't stress this enough. Even the most zen person is going to want to drive a sharp object into their ears after listening to someone complain about the holidays and Uncle Joe's bad breath for two hours on a crowded train.

6) Don't be the shitnugget who complains about Uncle Joe's halitosis for two hours.

7) This one is the most important one of all - BE SAFE. We want all of you back home in one piece.

Do we really need an excuse to post a picture of this guy? I didn't think so.

Happy holidays!!

I'm Turning into a Vampire

2011-12-20T20:30:00.005-05:00

Don't worry -- we're NOT making TK work during her maternity leave. Although if it was up to me, she'd be chained to her computer with one hand on the keyboard while the other attended to her brand new mini. New mothers can change diapers one-handed, right? Anyway, she was nice (and organized, shocker) enough to leave us with a few TK MIA posts to use in her absence. I thought this one was appropriate given her current status!!

************

I'm sure it's completely normal to spend a good portion of your day contemplating how similar you are to a vampire. I've spent more and more time doing that over the past few years since I read Twilight. (Has it really been that long?) Something occurred to me the other day — maybe vampirism is just a symptom of old age.

This is so close to what I look like in the morning it's creepy.

Maybe vampires aren't blood-thirsty half-demons. Maybe they are just regular people getting kicked in the teeth by the ravages of time. Let's examine the facts.

Vampires don't sleep. Neither do I. I think I last slept when Carter was in office. I survive on cat naps (and sometimes naps with actual cats).

Edward can't digest pizza. Neither can I. Ever since I turned thirty (you know, last year cough, cough, cough) my body will not accept pizza or hot dogs or any other kind of yummy junk food. I'm not sure I could survive an eternity of this.

Damn you, irritable bowel syndrome. Damn you to Hell.

A vampire's skin is hard. So is mine. It's scaly too. It's like my vampire power is the ability to lose all moisture in my skin. I have a full-time job exfoliating and slathering lotion on my person.

A vampire's skin is cold. I could make a vampire look warm-blooded. I have no circulation (possibly due to my lack of heart). I'm always cold. My fingers are like frozen hot dogs, which is why I don't eat my fingers.

Vampires are impossibly fast and strong. I think I've become faster and stronger in my old age. My time on this earth is waning and I can't afford to waste any of it. Have you ever seen a child in front of me in the movie theater ticket line? No. Why? I'm faster than they are. Do you see any youngin's at the shoe store balancing eight boxes of boots and pumps with one arm? No. Why? I'm stronger than they are.

It's like this, but with shoes.

A vampire has pale white skin. Really? I am the fairest of them all and it has nothing to do with my average looks.

Vampires sparkle in the sun. I'm really not sure here. I don't go outside much, but I've been told I have a dazzling personality. Ahem.

It's like looking into the sun. I'm talking about me, of course.

Vampires have supersonic hearing. I totally have this. I can hear a Skittles wrapper being opened two miles away.

How about you? Do you find yourself turning more and more undead on each birthday? How long until I look like Alice should have looked in the movies? Can I skip ahead to that part?

All I Want for Christmas is...Another Year of Robert Pattinson

2011-12-19T22:31:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again - I have been in denial since some time around mid-October when the Christmas decorations and merchandise started appearing in stores. I remember having a minor meltdown in the middle of Macy's, actually - right by the tarted-up too-early holiday Godiva display. But here we are, less than a week away from Christmas, and I still haven't told Santa what I really want for Christmas. Granted, I haven't had Santa's ear much of late, and when he did make a brief appearance at the holiday party I attended this past weekend, I decided it would be in poor form to perch on his lap. Frankly, Party Santa seemed a little randy, and this was not a party for kids, soooo... I guess I'm also apprehensive about whether I would end of on the "Naughty" or "Nice" list. Actually, I don't want to know.

Realistically, I think I was on both lists this year.

Regardless, I know what I want for Christmas, and it's not an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. Or a Red Rocket of any sort. I want a 2012 Robert Pattinson Calendar. Box it up with a few lumps of coal if you must, Santa - I understand! - but I want that calendar.

I currently have a 2010 Robert Pattinson calendar in heavy outdated rotation. At some point in early 2011, I realized that I didn't have an acceptable replacement, so I sat down one night with a glass of wine and bottle of Wite-Out (or maybe it was a bottle of wine and a glass of Wite-Out - who can recall now?). I was patting myself on the back pretty vigorously for my resourcefulness when I realized I didn't give a damn about whether the days of the month were correct or not. Let's face it: this calendar isn't about being informative, unless the information I am seeking is "Robert Pattinson is HAWT!" It hangs on the wall with some other choice Twilighty ephemera in what could only be categorized as The World's Tiniest Walk-In Closet. Other than those rare moments when I've just completed a very rigorous cleaning and shoe-putting-away, I can barely get to it, so I probably shouldn't be relying on it for necessary information like "what day is it?"

Once I resigned myself to the fact that is was really just an excuse to have a nice RPatts photo hanging in my closet, things were just grand. It's in a spot that cannot be seen unless you are really trying or standing outside my bedroom looking in the window (and if that's the case, we should probably talk, Stalkie McStalkerson). Most of the dates are whited out and not filled back in, so I can switch the pages with impunity whenever I need a little change of scenery or when the lipstick smoochies get to be a little much. I kid - there is usually too much debris on my closet floor for me to make actual lip-to-glossy-paper contact possible, so I usually improvise, transferring a smack on the ol' kisser by way of my fingertips to the general area of his face. Maybe what I should really be asking for in 2012 is a cleaning service...or a shrink.

The Breaking Dawn 2012 calendar gave me the willies (like most of the Summit-approved merch - blech), but when I went looking for a Robert Pattinson calendar, I found only a couple of seriously unofficial-looking possibilities:

Bonus fridge magnet? Do I have something metal in my closet to stick it to? Hmmm...

This is my fave - the pics are oldies but goodies!

It's possible I might make sure the closet is clean enough for me to get close to this daily...

Decent, but... I'm a little underwhelmed with the selection, especially given that the prices tend to be in the thirty-bucks-and-up range. Or they are now when it's five days before Christmas and everyone is getting desperate... While you can't really place a price on bootlegged photos of The Precious, for that kind of money, how about a Rob-A-Day 365 Day calendar - plus an extra bonus leap-year shot! Make that one extra-sparkly, please...

Reckoner, Part II [Twilight Fan Fiction]

2011-12-18T20:00:00.003-05:00

Hiya hookers. Welcome to Reckoner, Part II.

For those who don't know it, Reckoner is the Edward Point of View of Osa Bella. It starts about a year before the Cullens return to Forks. If you haven't read Osa Bella, Reckoner will still make sense to you. But if you haven't read the first part of Reckoner, please go read that here before reading this.

For those of you who can't deal with lemons that put Edward with someone besides Bella, well, this isn't the story for you. As you can guess, there *is* a lemon ahead, so if you're under 18 and not supposed to be here in the first place, now's the time to turn back. But do return once your parents can't sue me.

Reckoner is brought to you by the very generous members of the Twilight fandom who supported Alex's Lemonade Stand during the last round of Fandom Gives Back. The first part of this story appeared in the FGB authors compilation. The rest will appear here and the full story will be sent out to all the FGB donors as an ebook and as a pdf. If you'd like that, just email me the receipt for your ALS donation at mygdala @ gmail and I'll put you on the list.

Thanks again to Snarkier Than You and Hollelujah (author of the amazing Substance Clad in Shadows) for beta help. And as always, thank you so much for reading. Your comments always make my day. I missed this and I really missed you. It's good to be back.

xo
Myg

~~~

Reckoner, Part II

Two weeks later I was alone in Mercy’s loft, the entire floor of a renovated brick building, five floors up from a set of retail units. Her place was an eclectic mixture of gothic artwork, heavy tapestries in lush blue, black, and purple velvets and modern furniture but somehow it all worked and it all spoke of her unique collection of tastes and mannerisms.

Mercy Brown was a dark and beautiful and peculiar vampire who had insight into people’s bodies, just like I had it into their minds. She was descended from the late 19^th century and loved high heels, long skirts and young women as much as she loved anything. I’d first seen her in a bar singing in the early 1970’s and I was immediately drawn in by her velvet voice and the sincerity of her songs. She still performed locally on the weekends and I rarely missed a performance when I was in town.

Mercy was known not just as the sultry singer-songwriter, but as the Last American Vampire by any humans who followed these things. Poor Mercy had had her heart publicly torn out of her body by her father and burned while she was undergoing transformation. The entire town was implicated in her desecration. It was after this horrific and widely told event that most Americans began to give up their beliefs in vampires and witches and the like, and all the better for those of us who had to live with that reality.

Because she had no physical heart, Mercy had the stubborn belief that she was incapable of falling in love. So at the beginning of the last century, she struck a deal with the Boston witch to be cured of this affliction, but it hadn’t worked as far as anyone knew. I never really believed she couldn’t fall in love if she’d just make a little effort, not that I’d wanted her to make that effort on my behalf—I had enough problems dealing with my own love curse. Our mutual inability to choose a mate had somehow led to a convenient and regular bed sharing arrangement, and despite the lack of any true romantic connection—or maybe because of it—I’d come to consider her my closest friend.

This night, she’d decided to head out without me for the evening to listen to some experimental jazz ensemble with a coronet and a Korg synth. I told her I wanted to stay in to read, but the real reason I stayed behind was because I was still nursing a bitter hangover from the first human blood binge I’d had in fifty years. I wasn’t ready to explain that, and might not ever be, though she of all people would have understood my run-in with the Boston witch.

“Witches are untrustworthy,” she’d warned me many years ago. “Don’t deal with them if you can avoid it.”

But you couldn’t take a piss in New England without hitting a damned witch. Like shape shifters in the Pacific Northwest or ghosts in the south, witches were everywhere in the Northeast. And they were brutal.

I put my book down and picked up Mercy’s Martin and started to pick out the notes on a B minor 7^th. Gently I strummed, the steel strings thrumming a simple, soothing tune that echoed in the empty loft. I’ll have to remember this one, I thought. Maybe Mercy will use it in something. I scribbled a few notes down so I’d remember what I’d written and then felt a jarring regret as I recalled the conversation we’d had just before she went out that night.

“You’re brooding too much ever since Boston,” she’d accused. “Even more than usual for you. Are you stuck on finding that destiny girl again?”

“No,” I said.

“You’ve got to get over her.”

“Never speak of her to me again,” I said. “I’m serious.”

Mercy looked me over with concern and then came and dropped herself next to me on her bed. “There are people out there who can cure you of certain kinds of thoughts, you know.”

“I don’t need to be cured of anything,” I said.

“So what, you’re just going to spend eternity looking for some imaginary woman that you think you’re in love with? Alice’s visions don’t always come true, you know. After fifty two years, I’d think…”

“I’m not looking anymore,” I said.

“You’re not?” she asked. “Really?”

“Really,” I said.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to tell her why.

~~~

I was so distracted I didn’t hear Mercy come home until she was just outside the apartment—and she wasn’t alone. I looked up and saw it was already 2 am.

I have a surprise for you, she thought to me, almost giddy from the other side of the door. A very, very adorable one. If this won’t cheer you up, I don’t know what will.

And then I heard the other voice—the voice of a very young college girl thinking, Oh my God! Am I really going to get to sleep with Mercy Brown? That’s so hot!

But there was no way.

Mercy burst through the door, all smiles and said, “There he is! He’s an absolute dream, right?”

“Hi!” A young woman with long white-blonde hair and a very short skirt, high black boots and a wool sweater beamed at me from the doorway. “You’re Edward, right? Mercy told me all about you.”

“Mercy…”

“I’m Jules,” she said, smiling as she shrugged out of her long hooded parka.

“No you’re not,” I said shaking my head. I looked her over and asked, “How old are you?”

“Come now, Edward,” Mercy gave me a playful but admonishing glance. “Be nice.”

“Well, that’s my name tonight,” the girl said as she sauntered over to me and dropped herself on the bed. “Do you all have any whiskey?”

“She’s too young,” I said.

What kind of a wretch do you think I am? Mercy’s smile betrayed the humor she felt. She’s been eyeing me all night, and she’s of legal age. I checked.

“Barely,” I scowled as I felt the toe of the girl’s boot brush intentionally along my ankle. I’d refrained from breathing at all since she came into the apartment, but when she did that I accidentally inhaled and caught the scent of her, and that just wasn’t going to do.

“I’m 25,” the girl lied. Oh my God he’s hot. Mercy wasn’t kidding.

She smiled broadly, her lips tight together and her eyes crinkled as she suppressed a giggle and took my hand. I pulled her to her feet and she put her arms around my neck.

“Do you want to dance?” she asked.

“She’s a doll, right?” Mercy said. It’s been way too long since we had company and I know you need to blow off some steam. Let’s just have some fun.

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“Thanks a lot,” the girl pouted.

“That’s not what I meant.” I frowned at Mercy who was smiling wickedly at me as I took the girl’s hands and disengaged them.

Mercy walked up behind the girl and put her arms around her waist, her long black hair falling in waves down her back, wisps of it falling into her face. The girl sucked in her breath as she felt Mercy’s cold lips press to the flushed skin of her neck. Mercy dragged her hands up under the hemline of the girl’s sweater and winked at me as she saw the lust begin to pool inside of me.

Do you want to just watch, then? Mercy asked me. “Why don’t you go pour Jules a drink?”

“Is your car here, sweetheart?” I asked, moving quickly to the window and looking down to the street where I saw a blue Prius.

“Why?” She looked disappointed as I came back and untangled her from Mercy and picked her coat up off the floor. “Is it something I did?”

“No, no,” I said, feeling a little guilty and a lot pissed off at Mercy for bringing this doe home. “It’s something she did,” I said, and tipped my head to Mercy, who was giving me the eye. “You’re very lovely and it was a pleasure making your acquaintance.”

You have no right to spoil my fun, Mercy countered in my head. Why don’t you just leave so I can at least play? But then she looked me up and down again and plainly saw the reason I wasn’t leaving. Then she smirked.

“Well, look, wait a minute,” the girl protested. “I’m just a big fan and I…”

“So we’ll see you at her show Saturday, yes?” I opened the door for her, smiled and said, “Drive safely, now.”

What a dick, the girl thought as she walked out into the hall. Too bad the hot ones always turn out to be such assholes.

I turned away from the door, closed and bolted it shut and leaned my back against it. I crossed my arms and gave Mercy the most menacing glare I could muster. The laughter in her eyes only pissed me off more.

“You used to be so much fun,” she said wistfully. “I miss the old you.”

“Shut up and take your dress off.”

“Not until you tell me why you were so afraid of Bambi,” she said, crossing her arms defiantly.

“Because if I were to fuck her the way I’m about to fuck you, I’d break her in half,” I said.

Oh, my… Mercy’s amused smile relaxed me some. You are in a foul mood.

“You’ve lost your human touch, then have you?” she said, undoing the zipper on the side of her shift and then pulled the green garment up over her head, almost business-like. She was wearing a black satin bra and a black lace tanga and I studied the curve of her ass in it. Her fine fishnets came halfway up her thighs, poking out of her boots. “What happened, did you break a sorority girl at BU?” she teased as she started to unzip one of her boots.

“Leave the boots on,” I said.

“I missed you, you know,” she said standing back up and putting her hands on her hips. She took off her bra and dropped it to the floor and took a step back. “I’ve been so bored.”

“I know,” I said. “Now turn around.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let me look at you. Please?”

“Turn around.”

She smiled again and took one last look at the painful hard-on I was about to relieve myself of before she turned away. I bent her over at the waist and her hands hit the floor as she steadied herself and then laughed as she heard me whip my belt off.

Oh, am I getting spanked tonight? she asked playfully.

“I think you’d enjoy it too much.”

She laughed again but then stopped and let out a small moan as I ripped her panties off.

“So, Mercy, how many girls did you bring home while I was out of town?” I asked, driving my fingers into her, but she was panting so hard she could hardly speak.

“A few,” she gasped.

“And how many college boys?”

What do you care? The sound of her thought was teasing, coy and she was breathing too heavily to physically answer me now.

“I need to know how many times to whip you.”

“More than I can count,” she drawled out just before moaning loudly and coming all over my hand.

I pulled her back up and backed her against the heavy steel door and compelled myself to feel, to think something other than, why her? Why why why her? But it wasn’t Mercy I was thinking of.

I was angry. Sick and angry. Then I turned that anger on Mercy for being so beautiful, talented, smart, fun and sexy as hell and not finding someone else, someone worthy to spend eternity with. She knew better than to waste her time with me. But then it didn’t matter. Mercy was there, and I was either going to fuck or kill something and I’d had enough killing lately.

She cried out as I entered her, her thighs gripping my waist as I held her up against the door, certain we’d break it, but I didn’t care. After she came again and I still felt nothing, I dropped her to her hands and knees and took her from behind. She came again and for me, still nothing. Nothing at all. No release, no pleasure. I felt like I was washing a car instead of fucking a beautiful woman.

What is wrong with you? She thought at me. You’re not even close.

“Please, please shut the fuck up.” Maybe I really should spank her, I thought. That might help. Maybe I should get her to blow me. Maybe she’ll give me her ass tonight. I rolled her onto her back and drove into her again, but she put her arms out and grabbed my hips, stopping me mid-thrust.

“What happened to you down there?” she asked, her face full of concern. “Boston. Spill it.”

~~~

The day was still and the 1500 pound bull moose was peaceful as it stood on the deserted shore of the lake. Too peaceful.

“Are you taking that one?” Emmett asked quietly over my right shoulder.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why, did you want it?”

“No, I’m good,” he said. “You go ahead.”

I hesitated. Found myself wondering how old it was, how many calves it had sired, how many cows it had mounted. I wondered what maple shoots tasted like. It lowered it’s muzzle to the water and began to drink. I was within striking distance when it finally noticed me, locking eyes with mine briefly and then I saw a flicker of knowledge behind them.

So the end is here, it seemed to say. How softly it sneaks up on us, eh?

I wanted it to fight me. At least a little bit. I wanted it to kick and struggle and threaten me, but it didn’t even try to run. I pulled its antlers to the ground and held it still. The massive, muscular frame of the beast went rigid and then limp with resignation as its hot, thick blood fevered down my ungrateful throat.

When it was dead, I rose from the shore and looked across the lake to where I heard the quiet rustling and cracking of twigs being stepped on. In among the thick of trees I thought I saw something moving quickly away, but it disappeared so fast I couldn’t make out what it was.

“That was weird,” Jasper said when I went back to the thicket where he and Emmett waited. “Do you think it was sick or something?”

“Did you see what it was?”

“What what was?” Jasper said, and then he and Emmett exchanged troubled looks.

“There was something across the lake,” I said. “Watching me make the kill.”

“We didn’t pick up anything,” Emmett said. “We would have seen something like that. Or smelled it.”

“I was talking about the moose,” Jasper said. “It didn’t even try to run from you. You don’t think it wasn’t a shape-shifter, was it?”

“A moose shape shifter?” I said. “I think I would have picked that up.”

“Maybe it just knew there was no point in running,” Emmett said. “Ever since you’ve come home you do have a pretty evil vibe.”

“Emmett, don’t be an ass,” Jasper said, smacking him on the arm.

“I meant evil in a badass kind of way,” he said. “It was supposed to be a compliment. Sorry.”

“That’s all right.” I surveyed the shore again for any glimpse of the phantom as we started the hike back towards Emmett’s Land Rover, but saw no trace of it. “I will admit that kill was damned disappointing.”

“I never did like the taste of moose,” Jasper said. “And any big game is going to taste flat after…”

“Jesus, don’t even say it,” I said. “I don’t need any more temptation.”

Yeah, neither do I, Jasper thought.

~~~

The Cullen House was an old retired Inn on 350 acres on the western edge of Gray, Maine. Carlisle bought the old Victorian in 1972 because Esme fell in love with the gothic feel of it, the many stately gardens and the rich history of the place, once a regular destination for the lesser politicians of New England. She swore one day she would meet the ghosts who’d lived there, but I’m pretty sure they all cleared out when the vampires moved in.

“Alice is still pretty upset,” Jasper warned me when we pulled into the driveway.

“Do you think I should go back to Mercy’s place?” I said.

“No, no,” Jasper said. “She’s been dying to see you, she’s just… well, you know how she can get.”

I knew better than anybody, probably even Jasper. It wasn’t easy being clairvoyant, and she hadn’t asked to be anymore than I had asked to be a mind reader. Alice’s excitability was one of the main reasons I hadn’t come home to see the family yet. I needed time to feel some approximation of normal again before facing them all. My hunt with Emmett and Jasper that afternoon was the first I’d seen of anyone other than Carlisle and Mercy since Boston.

I braced myself and opened the door and Alice was right behind it, of course, expecting me. Carlisle, Esme and Rosalie stood right behind her.

Oh Edward…

Now vampires, as a rule, do not cry. Are not actually able to cry. We are stoic creatures by nature, and while our emotions run hot, our bodies are made for strength and durability and are not inclined to show vulnerability of any kind. So when Alice broke down into heaving, dry sobs at the sight of me, I honestly didn’t know what to do.

“I… I don’t know how this could have happened… ” She threw her arms around me and wailed into my shirt collar. She didn’t even give me a chance to take my coat off. “Oh Edward, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

“No, Alice… “ I said, unable to speak clearly because I felt like I’d swallowed a burning coal. “It isn’t your fault at all. Come on, now.”

“Why couldn’t I see her?” she asked, her tragic eyes straining up at me. “How could she be… murdered?” I stiffened and she wailed again, burrowing her face into my chest. “There’s no point to having the sight if you can’t use it to protect the ones you love!”

What could I even say? That I agreed? I stood there, wordless, helpless all over again. I gave Jasper a look that said Do something here, please? And he said back I’m trying. She’d be much worse, trust me.

“Edward, she was your mate,” Alice cried.

“She was never my mate,” I said, feeling more hollow than I possibly ever had as I heard myself say the words. “It was… it just didn’t work out.”

“How can you be so calm?” she asked.

Calm? She thought I was calm? All I wanted was to go out in the world and set buildings on fire, sledgehammer expensive cars, deface priceless works of art. All that and worse, but I wasn’t allowing myself to entertain any more fantasies of breaking the coven charter.

“He’s not calm,” Jasper said quietly. “He’s numb.”

That was it. And for the time being, I was really okay with that because the alternative was a choice between either murderous rage or self-annihilating despair.

You need time, son, Carlisle thought. This is a lot to deal with. It’ll take awhile.

I had a sudden desperate urge to run, but I was surrounded. The compassionate, sympathetic looks on all their faces felt so wrong to me. Could they be looking at me this way? They pitied me? Did they not understand what I had done? What I was capable of doing?

“I killed him, you all know that, right?” I said, looking at Carlisle, confused. “You told them that part, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Carlisle said, but he couldn’t have told them everything, because none of them gave me that typical disappointed, “Edward, you’re better than that” attitude I normally got about decree killing. Even Rosalie reserved criticism and she never did that.

“I tortured him,” I said. “It was…”

“Understandable,” Carlisle said and nodded reassuringly.

“Any one of us would have done the same,” Emmett said.

Esme pulled me into a full embrace, cradling my head as I rested it against her shoulder. It reminded me of the way my mother had held me when I was a boy and how we had cried together after the sudden death of my father, but this time I didn’t cry, I just stared at the Persian rug and noticed how it puckered a tiny bit near the foot of the grand piano.

We love you, Edward, she said. And we are here.

~~~~

Has Anyone Seen My Christmas Spirit?

2011-12-16T21:00:00.001-05:00

I'm normally one of those Christmas-crazed adults that starts decking the halls and fa-la-la-ing the minute the Thanksgiving leftovers are put in the fridge. I love everything about Christmas -- the cheerily lit houses, the smell of a freshly cut Fraser Fir, and sitting in a dark living room with nothing but the tree lit up while watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. If you didn't know me, you'd probably think I was six.

But something happened this year. Someone stole my fucking Christmas spirit. The jolly is gone. Missing. Dead. And it's totally bumming me out. I feel like a total misfit.

I think I can attribute it to a few things -- #1 being Mother Nature's inability to get the fucking weather right this year. It's supposed to snow in December, NOT October. And it's not supposed to be 50 degrees eight days before Santa is supposed to depart the North Pole. How is he expected to land his sleigh on my roof with no snow? (Seriously, I think you people in warmer parts of the country are lucky he even makes it to your house. Does his sleigh have wheels for tropical climates?)

My scrooge-y grinch of a husband isn't helping matters either. He does nothing but whine about every aspect of the holiday. Buying the tree... erecting the tree... the shopping for presents... the crowds... the Christmas card. Every time he complains, he sucks just a little bit of the festive fervor out of me. I normally tell him to shut his pie hole, but this year it has taken its toll. It makes me want to punch every Santa I see in his nuts.

I think this picture is labeled wrong. It should say "Mr. Latchkey Wife".

Our newest family member, the bull-in-a-china-shop-I-eat-everything-not-nailed-down bloodhound, is also putting a damper on my Christmas cheer. I was forced to get a midget tree and put it up on a table. *gasp* We were so afraid she'd eat every ornament she could reach so we didn't want to risk it. I really don't need to be paying thousands of dollars to get the Edward and Bella Hallmark ornament surgically removed from her large intestine. No thank you.

I also had to be weary of where I placed the other non-ornament decoration. Especially the stuffed ones. She's a sucker for anything with stuffing that she can shred and snack on. And I only have so many high flat surfaces to display things. Needless to say there are a lot of Santas and snowmen that never made it out of the attic this year. I pray to Yukon Cornelius that she grows out of this phase by next year.

Yummy... I love stuffing. Even if it's not Stovetop. Bad dog.

I thought a good 'ol viewing of Rudolph would pep me up. I just got pissed that all those asshole reindeer were shitting on the poor little red-nosed guy because he was a little different. I mean really Fireball? You're wearing a blonde toupee. Shut your mouth. Next on the list is Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas. If that doesn't do the trick... I give up.

Anyone have any other suggestions? What's your go-to for getting your Claus-o-meter up to full power? I need help before it's too late!

The Vampire Diaries: The Plot is Good. The Vampires are Smooookin'...

2011-12-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

It has been approximately 10 days since I discovered that The Vampire Diaries seasons one and two were streaming on Netflix. To say I am hooked is the understatement of the decade. Possibly the century. Asking me if I'm addicted to this series is like asking if a shark shits in the water.

In those ten days I devoured the first two seasons with an unhealthy and possibly psychotic fervor and am currently working my way through the third, thanks to Amazon.com. The house is once again in shambles and ML keeps grumbling something about taking a sledge hammer to the modem because I. Cannot. Stop. Watching.

To put it in perspective: Combined, seasons one and two have a total of 43 episodes at approximately 42 minutes an episode. So far I've ripped through the first three episodes of season three, which brings my grand total to 46 episodes. That's a grand total of THIRTY TWO FUCKING HOURS of fuck-hawt dudes, super-natural awesome-sauce, violence and ridiculous butt-hurt teen drama.

Butt-hurt, front and center

That's almost a full-time job, people. But it's a really nice full-time job because I get to stare at a cast full of really, really hot guys.

Also, now that I did the math, jeeeeeezus I'm a loser.

I almost don't want to encourage you folks to start watching because I don't want to be responsible for your children going hungry or your S/O leaving you. I mean, I've already done that to you before, what with Twilight and fan fiction so...

Fuck it. I can't help myself.

Did I mention some serious hunkaliciousness going on in The Vampire Diaries? Even if VD isn't your cup of tea, you might as well have some eye candy! (And yes, I went there. Get it?)

Damon Salvatore - the bad brother. Yum.

Here, let me fix your shirt. By taking it off...

Stefan Salvatore - the brooding Edward wannabe. I'm okay with it.

The first thing I noticed was that oddly shaped candle in the corner. Nah, just kidding. Look at those pythons...

Group shot! The Salvatore brothers and a werewolf (yes, there are werewolves)

Klaus - one of the Originals. My brain is still reeling from the spontaneous orgasm I had staring at this picture so no witty captions for you.

At the very least, you need to check this guy out. Jaymes805 of Borderline Phenomenal sent me this link and I pretty much spent every chance I could get reading it and shitting myself laughing. It's a breakdown of each episode by a VERY funny guy named Price Peterson. You won't regret it.

When DIY Twilight Crafts Go Horribly, HORRIBLY Wrong.

2011-12-14T21:50:00.001-05:00

Edward says: Get your brain bleach ready, twatwaffles!

Warning: this post is mostly suitable for work - I mean, it's not porn-y or anything and I won't be talking about vampire baby-batter or putting up photos of sparkle-peens - but I'd suggest anyone with a delicate stomach makes sure they are not about to tuck into a meal...or a hot cup of tea... Honestly, I just finished a delightful dinner from Chipotle, and I'm starting to feel a little queasy just thinking about it, so this is going to be quick. But not painless. Because I've seen some really out-there Twilight merch in my time - heck, I am the proud owner of some of the best! *cough*PattinsonPanties*cough* - but this takes the cake.

I was minding my business over at Regretsy the other night when I was mentally assaulted by The Mother of All Horrific Twilighty-related stuff:

I... I... I don't even know what to say to this. Other than "I know what Jenny Jerkface's getting for Christmas"* maybe. But aside from that? And maybe that if they REALLY wanted to go too far they should have just had an applicator stirrer in a matching saucer with a maxi-pad tea-towel on the side? But aside from that??? I'm speechless.

I'll let the rest of the Regretsy listing do the 'splaining (not that this can really be explained, imho) -

Yes, it **was** because he was gettin' a little somethin' somethin' on the side.

Bloody tampon in a cup of water. No, really ... it's real fake blood (paint) in real fake water (resin) in a for real vintage melamine cup (but it is really vintage and it is really that uber-poisonous melamine).

GREAT. Now in addition to ruining my morning cup of tea forever, they've ruined vintage melamine for me, too. You bastards!

*JJ is off the hook - this item is SOLD. {{{shudder}}}

Domesticity: I've Heard of It. In Books...

2011-12-13T21:22:00.000-05:00

Let's cut to the chase - I'm about as domesticated as a pair of bull testicles.

It's true. Sure, my house is mostly clean and there isn't any weird life-forms growing on my kitchen counters (I can't say the same for my refrigerator) but as far as doing... household-y stuff, I'm a bit of a fail.

More or less what my fridge looks like. The mold is somewhere in there...

Take cooking, for example. I have these awesome cookbooks that just kind of gather dust on a high shelf in the kitchen because I can't be bothered to cook. If ML didn't frown upon having spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner every night, I probably would never prepare a meal.

That being said, I'm actually trying to change my mentality about cooking these days. I've discovered that pretty much anything tastes good if you throw it in some chicken broth and call it a soup. I no longer dry heave the entire time I'm handling raw chicken and I've learned that hot sauce is a bad chef's best friend, especially if you're totally fine with your food searing off layers of your mouth with every bite.

The only spice I need.

Frankly, with some of the meals I've made lately, taste buds are definitely not necessary. Possibly even detrimental.

This year I'm hosting Christmas dinner for my family, which means I have to actually cook something reasonably edible. Deciding to embrace this fact--and realizing that corn chips and salsa is not considered "dinner" food-- I've been poring over recipes online. I found this one and decided to give it a try, because it seemed so unusual. I mean, slow-cooked ham? I've never heard of cooking an eight pound slab of ham in a crock pot! There may have been a good reason for this...

I also had the wherewithal to realize there was a high potential of the recipe tasting absolutely fucking disgusting. Rather than unleash the possible tastebud-murdering recipe on my family, I decided to invite my friends over for a little ~~dinner~~ guinea-pigging session.

In my defense, I did warn my test subjects that the ham they would be served could possibly taste like utter shit. Nevertheless, for some reason they were game. Eager, even.

Suckers.

The day of the meal, I knew I was in over my head the moment I began to wrestle the ham into the crock pot and fill it up with apple cider. It became immediately apparent that removing the ham once it was cooked without sending a tidal wave of boiling hot apple cider all over myself and the counter would be... tricky.

Baaaaarf.

Things took a turn for the worse when ML announced that the ham smelled like "mulled wine or potpourri." I halfheartedly defended my ham and insisted that cinnamon, cloves and pig was an awesome, flavorful combination.

Ten minutes before everyone showed up, I finally tasted my ham.

It wasn't good. I served it anyway.

Even the Full-Size Edwards look totally fucking disgusted.

I managed to swallow down a few bites of the ham before I surrendered and admitted it was akin to chewing on a piece of leather potpourri. Snarkier Than You agreed with me, but in a much more mature and polite fashion. Ironically, Mr. Snarky and OPattz were eating it with great gusto, which was a bit surprising to me.

ML was just thankful he's a vegetarian.

Despite the total fail of the meal, it was still great to have an excuse to get a bunch of people together on a Sunday night. Yes, the ham tasted like fruity shoe leather but no one threw up on my floor so I'll consider a success.

It tasted like this but smothered with cinnamon and grossness.

I've decided that I'm just going to serve a boring old ham for my holiday dinner. They can be disastrous enough in their own right for the cooking-challenged. But better to be safe than sorry. At least, in this instance.

Have you ever had any meal disasters? Served half-cooked turkey? Set the ziti on fire when someone important is coming to dinner? Or do you play it safe and just order in?

Also, anyone have a good spiral ham recipe? Preferably one that doesn't involve a slow-cooker and a bouquet of fragrant spices?

"Once Upon A Time" - Are You Watching?

2011-12-12T20:28:00.000-05:00

Being the television aficionado that I like to think I am, I'm always skeptical about new mid-season shows. Usually mid-season shows are the red-headed stepchildren of the network scheduling world, born because a show that premiered in the fall tanked, and the network is desperate for something to fill it's time slot.

In my job, I usually get invited to "fall presentations" that the various networks do locally and get a sneak peak into the new shows. I vaguely remember seeing the preview for Once Upon A Time. I thought it looked awesomely stupid. I was wrong. It's. Fucking. Amazing!

The synopsis on ABC.com goes like this:

Emma Swan’s life has been anything but a fairytale. A 28-year-old bail bondsperson, she’s been taking care of herself since she was abandoned as a baby. But when Henry—the son she gave up 10 years ago—finds her, everything changes. Henry is desperate for his mom’s help and thinks that Emma is actually the long, lost daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. Yes, the actual Snow White and Prince Charming. Even stranger, Henry believes that Storybrooke, Maine, the sleepy New England town he calls home, is really part of a curse cast by the Evil Queen, freezing fairytale characters in the modern world with no memory of their former selves.

Of course the seen-it-all Emma doesn’t believe a word, but when she gets to Storybrooke, she can’t help sensing that everything’s not quite what it seems. As Henry shows Emma around with the help of his fairytale book, the town, and its inhabitants like Henry’s therapist Archie Hopper and the enigmatic Mr. Gold, seem just strange enough to set off her already suspicious nature. She becomes even more concerned for Henry when she meets his adopted mother, Regina, who he suspects is none other than the Evil Queen herself!

Storybrooke is a place where magic has been forgotten—but is still powerfully close—and happily ever after seems just out of reach. In order to understand where the fairytale world’s former inhabitants came from, and what ultimately led to the Evil Queen’s wrath, you’ll need a glimpse into their previous lives. But it might just turn everything you’ve ever believed about these characters upside-down.

Meanwhile, the epic battle for the future of all worlds, modern and fairytale alike, is about to begin. For good to win, Emma will have to accept her destiny and fight like hell.

I started watching this show with very low expectations. Seriously? How was ABC ever going to pull this shit off? Fairy tale characters in the real world? *psssssh* But now? For me, it's appointment television -- errr... well, at least for my DVR to record it so I have something exciting to watch on that evil elliptical on Monday mornings. I'm addicted!

My Monday morning friends. I want that red leather jacket. And her pretty hair too.

The cast is fantastic. On one side, Lana Parilla's evil Queen/Regina would make anyone quake in their boots -- while on the side of good, Ginnifer Goodwin's Snow White/Ms. Blanchard is pure as the driven snow. My favorite characters are bad ass Jennifer Morrison who plays Emma Swan and Jamie Dornan who is quite the hunky Sheriff Graham. And Robert Carlyle is the creepiest character of all in his dual role as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold.

The yummilicious Sheriff Graham - I'd definitely, ahem, "spread 'em" for him. I won't give away his role in fairy tale land. You'll have to watch to find out for yourself.

In the seven episodes so far this season, there have been so many twists and turns and new characters and switching back and forth between fairy tale land and Storybrooke, that if you look away for just a second, you could get lost. I absolutely love these types of shows -- the shows I get excited about when I see them in my DVR queue. And it appears I'm not the only one. ABC is boasting strong ratings despite its head-to-head battle with Sunday Night Football on NBC.

Are you a television whore like me? What's your favorite new show this season? I have a few faves... but more on those others later!

Reckoner, Part I [Twilight Fan Fiction]

2011-12-11T20:06:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well Twitards, what can I say? I have some kind of an "issue" which only you will understand. The issue is I can't seem to stop writing Twilight fanfic. Or at least, not quite yet.

I began to write this story over the summer and many times willed myself to stop. I was going to make it an original fiction piece and got pretty far into that (and I still might go back to it), but then it was time for Fandom Gives Back, and I couldn't pull the original story together enough to include it in the big comp. Actually, it became apparent that that version was turning into a novel of its own, which is great and all, but it will take far longer to properly to write it than I'd originally thought.

Anyway, I couldn't NOT participate in FGB, because, well, you know. And those of you who don't know, just know that FGB has a lot of personal meaning for me that you can read about here if you'd like to know. So I picked this back up, dusted it off, and here we are.

You would not be reading this now if not for the kindness and generosity of a number of people who contributed to FGB and some who even contributed extra (you know who you are) to get this story to see the light of day. I'd publish their online names here, but I don't actually have their okay to do that (but I'll get it and post their names next time). So just know that the generosity of this community in supporting Alex's Lemonade Stand is the only reason this story has gotten another chance at being written. I really hope that you enjoy it.

So now that you know all that, let me explain what this actually is. This here is a novella-length fic in Edward's Point of View that is a prequel to Osa Bella. It's Edward's experiences in the year prior to the Cullens moving back to Forks. So that means Edward hasn't met Bella yet. That is all I will say, other than to let you know that this is my beloved OBward, not the canon Edward of Twilight. He is dark, he has a violent streak, and he is no virgin. If you haven't read Osa Bella you can still read this and it will make sense, and if you have read it, I'm hoping this gives you more insight into that story as well.

I'll be posting this weekly until it's done. When it's over, FGB contributors will get the entire story in PDF and ebook formats, so if you'd like access to that please email your FGB receipt to me at mygdala @ gmail.

But whatever happens, I hope you enjoy this half as much as I've enjoyed bringing it to you. Many thanks to Snarkier Than You and Hollelujahs (Holland of Substance Clad in Shadows fame) for beta services, and Mama Cougar, Latchkey Wife, Lovely Brutal and Texas Katherine for prereading various versions.

Much love (and it's good to be back),

Myg

~~~~~

The world breaks everyone and afterwards, many are stronger in the broken places.

-Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

The first time you kill a man you understand that you will never be the same. It doesn’t matter the reason you take him out. It can be war, self-defense or in defense of someone you love. It can feel inevitable or justified and it still doesn’t matter—you’re going to give something of yourself up. That thing you lose is subtle, hard to name and difficult to describe but as essential to who you are as your preference for black coffee, whether you shower facing the shower head, whether you enjoy handling the car or prefer to have someone drive it for you.

The second time you kill a man is different. Not necessarily easier, but more familiar. You might give up more of whatever it was you lost the first time, but now you expected it.

If you keep killing, eventually you stop noticing that you’re losing anything. Instead you just ride the rush of adrenaline, feel the way his pleas for mercy make you angrier, the way his sin makes you feel more righteous. You recognize how utterly incapable you are of feeling anything akin to pity in that moment.

Then the day comes when the moment hunts you down and drops you.

~~~

Gray, Maine

“Look, if you can’t see where she is, a name, something besides that damned dance, then your vision is broken,” I said. “You’ve got to stop it.”

Alice dangled her feet like a little kid from her perch on the butcher block counter and then gave me a sheepish look.

“Stop reading my mind then,” she quipped.

“Stop thinking so loud.”

Her eyes wandered down to the black canvas duffle bag at my feet and then back up to my face, where I’m sure she saw the same thing she always saw—worn frustration. It was a near-permanent state of mine from all the years of failing at something that had become my all-consuming reason to exist.

“If you’re going out to look for her again, then I should at least try to get you more information,” she argued. “When you’re here, the vision is a lot clearer.”

“But it’s always the same.” I didn’t mean to raise my voice, but it was far from the first time we’d had this conversation and I was done having it. “It drives me crazy to see the same thing again and again. It’s like…”

“…a broken record?”

“I was thinking more like a flashback.”

“You can’t have a flashback to the future, Edward.”

Maybe she was right, but this vision was unlike any she’d ever had. It was rigid. Consistent. Persistent. Detailed. There weren’t any soft edges where probability or free will could come in and change the trajectory. This vision was stuck, like a video tape of something that had already happened, except that it hadn’t. I knew it hadn’t because it was a vision of me waltzing with a woman I had never met and if you judged by the way things were going, had no hope of ever meeting. I would have let it go a long time ago, but I couldn’t because I was in love with her, whoever she was.

“We can’t prove it’s the future,” I said. “That dress she’s wearing looks like one of my mother’s dresses, so maybe it really is the past.”

“I don’t have visions of other people’s pasts. That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“I don’t know then, maybe it’s a curse. Or a very, very bad joke. Whatever it is, you’ve got to stop showing it to me. I can see it clear enough on my own anyway.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

I’d made her feel bad, which only made me angrier with myself. This was exactly the reason I’d been spending less and less time at home. It had been five decades by this point that Alice and I had been in deep deliberation of this topic, this woman she swore was my destined mate. Everyone else in the family was sick of hearing about it—wouldn’t even stay in the room with us when the topic came up. So I tried to never bring it up, even though it was a constant preoccupation of mine. Or a fruitless obsession, as Carlisle called it.

Alice hopped down and wrapped her arms tightly around my waist and rested her head on my shoulder. Please don’t give up, she thought. It’s just a matter of time.

But my problem wasn’t that I might give up—it was that I could not give up, no matter how insane the fruitless search was making me. That was the reason I had to leave again. This time I was determined I was either going to find her or just descend into madness, and I didn’t need the few people in the world who mattered most to be there to see that.

“Promise me,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and staring her down like a guilty teenager until she recoiled a little. “You’ve got to stop looking into my future,” I said.

“I’m just trying to help you,” she said sadly as she saw the immediate future of me setting sail for Boston.

“I know that. But if you don’t stop looking, you’re going to see something you’ll regret.”

~~~

Even now I can still see it as clearly as I saw it that very first time.

Perfectly hued pink and orange rays of a late sunset halo dark hair arranged carefully on top of her head. Loose curls frame her face, eager and restrained as she looks up at me with dark brown eyes and a look so deep I’m sure I can dive right into it. As I’m looking back at her, her face warms to a perfect shade of pink and then she looks shyly down to her feet.

That very night as I made passage to Boston, I stood out on Reckoner’s deck under the gale-force wind and I could still feel the light touch of her delicate hands, one on my shoulder, the other in my right hand and the heat of it warmed me to the bone.

She is always wearing the same champagne lace dress with tiny pink, lavender and peach silk roses adorning the waist, a vintage from my youth, contemporary for the year of my death. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen anywhere and in this beloved and cursed memory of some future I could not seem to claim, I am forever claimed by the scent of her, the look of her, the way she feels in my arms. And I will not rest until she is there.

“Where the fuck are you?!” I bellowed from Reckoner’s deck, out into the dark and ambivalent gulf where no one would answer.

~~~

Boston, Massachusetts

“Can I buy you a drink?” The pretty redhead was young, though I couldn’t say what her exact age was. Probably mid twenties. She was tall and curvy in all the right ways with that gothic look I always found sexy. Dark-rimmed cat eyes and long painted nails. She was alone and she was trouble, that I instinctively knew.

“I don’t drink,” I said, expressionless, my eyes trained on the small stage across the room as the band played a loud, out of tune rock anthem to a thick crowd of swaying hipsters.

“That must be why you look so thirsty.”

Her smile was a subtle point. I didn’t smile back.

Come here often? The same voice abraded my thoughts and I snapped my head around to see her smile turn to a sneer. As I refocused I saw through several layers of enchantments to the withered old witch beneath. She was good—good enough that I couldn’t just blow her off without expecting a nasty repercussion. I tipped my head to the back door, the one leading the way out to the alley. She withdrew wordlessly through the crowd and exited through it.

Several minutes later I found myself in a dark and littered corridor behind the club, but there was no woman. Just a black cat perched on the lid of a dumpster, staring emphatically at me.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I said to it.

Liar, it said.

“What do you want?” I pulled out a pack of Camel unfiltereds and lit one, exhaling the smoke in the cat’s direction, but it didn’t move or flinch or even turn its head.

I wanted to meet Mercy Brown’s lover, she said, and then I realized what dark witch I encountered there.

“There are plenty who fit that description.”

Yes, I know, but you are Edward Cullen, the Reckoner. Not one of her many lovers, but the one she actually loves.

“She doesn’t love anyone,” I said very quietly, noticing a small group of young people wandering in the street just yards from where I stood talking to a magic cat. “Your spell hasn’t worked. You of all people should know that.”

Oh, is that what she tells you?

“Is there something you want?”

There is something you want. Very badly. Perhaps I can help you.

“I don’t think so,” I said, clawing my way back from the desperate hope she dangled in front of me.

I know how long you’ve been searching for her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

You know, for a vampire you’re not much of a liar. I know you’re here in Boston looking for a woman, a very special woman, but I can tell you she isn’t here.

I grabbed the cat by its neck and held it high in the air, squeezing its throat. It swung its legs wildly, trying to swipe me with its claws.

“What the hell do you know about it? Start talking. Now.”

I’ll tell you nothing unless you agree to my price.

“You’re lying to me just like you lied to Mercy. I don’t want any deals with a hedge witch.”

Listen to the vampire calling out the witch. You know, your own mother was a great sorceress in her time.

“You lie. You never knew my mother.”

How did she avail your sire to turn you, then? What human could do that?

“How do you…” I stopped talking. The more I said, the more I thought and the more I felt, the more she’d use her psychic tricks to fool me. I released my grip on the cat and it turned into a fading old woman, wiry dreads of thick, black and gray hair blowing in the brittle December wind. She fell to her knees and clutched a tattered shawl to herself against the cold. In a moment of pity I reached my hand down to her, which she took and then steadied herself against the concrete wall.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“Justice,” she hissed, her face shadowing over with rage.

“Forget it.”

I never should have come back to Boston. Never. Carlisle warned me it was a mistake, that I couldn’t tempt the future by flirting with the past. Again I hadn’t listened to him, and again I regretted it deeply.

“No, I don’t think I will forget it,” the old witch spat. “If I could forget it, I would have by now.”

“You’re a powerful enough witch to track me. I think you can handle your own vengeance.”

“Yes, well, I have a little problem, you see,” she said, lowering her voice and raising her eyes under heavy lids to meet mine. Her breath was stale and her skin was flaky, graying scales when you looked closely. I turned away. “If I do it myself, I’ll forfeit my last hope of redemption. I am old, Reckoner. I’m ready but I can’t let go until I know justice has been done.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

“You think my magic can’t find you in Portland, sweetheart?”

Fucking witches. For decades I’d watched Mercy suffer under the remnants of a spell the Boston witch had cast at the turn of the last century. But I also knew that this old haggard bitch had already discovered my greatest weakness.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Come with me,” she said. “And I’ll tell you all you need to know.”

~~~

Cambridge, MA

It was snowing that night. Large wet clumps of flakes fell more than floated down and covered the cobblestones, shining wet, reflecting street lamps and headlights from the busy road. I waited at the bottom of the stairs, outside by the basement entrance, where I could hear my victim’s sick mind as it went through its final preparations for a fresh kill.

She will be in a short skirt. She will be a blonde. It’s too bad no one taught her how to treat a man. It’s too bad it was left to me, but I am here and I will show her. One last time.

He was going to make it so easy for me to kill him.

I didn’t know his name, didn’t want or need to know it. The witch had given me only his address and the worst of his intentions, the prediction that he would strike soon, and the promise that in exchange for the hit, she would give me a vital piece of information about the woman I’d been searching for.

And so there I was, in a darkened corner listening to some of the final addled thoughts of the young rapist-murderer as he culled the potential pool of unwitting victims down from the entire female matriculation of Boston University. It doesn’t matter because they are all the same anyway, he’d told himself as he put on his black down jacket and black ski mask, the face rolled up onto his heavy brow. All women are the same when it comes down to it.

I didn’t know exactly what he’d done to anger the old witch, and I didn’t want to know. Better you don’t, she’d said, and it was the one thing she said that I believed.

My victim paused as he passed where I waited invisible in a shadow, his intuition picking up that his death had found him and would be closing in. I followed him silently down the busy street, many paces back, still trained on his thoughts. As we headed out under the black sky, I almost wished I could stop hearing the desperation, the quiet frenzy of his desire as it began to escalate. Vile, vulgar language spun tangled threads in the web of his cortex, sicker with every female he passed on the street.

Inside the bar he eyed every woman and I blanched considering how many women in the world had ever been surveyed and summed up by vile scum just like this, the lucky ones never the wiser that they’d been psychically raped as they stood innocently in a public space. I stayed quietly in the back of the room, listening to my victim seethe, plot, plan and then finally choose, a young girl with a shy smile and crooked eye teeth. She had pixie-short, light blonde hair with pink streaks and a striped wool scarf that he fingered inappropriately behind her back as she ordered a Sam Adams. She was there alone. How did they always know?

He was ordering the same drink as she was, paying the bartender, making inappropriately intense eye contact. She was instantly suspicious, that tiny voice deep in her brain signaling to her that something wasn’t right. She left her full beer at the bar and escaped to the bathroom alone. Bad move.

So perfect, he thought as he got up from his stool, but he never made it through the crowd.

~~~

“How many others?” I yelled as I dangled him by his ankles from the Charles River bridge.

“Who are you?” he cried. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“How many!” I squeezed his ankles until I felt the bones crack. A twisted smile spread across his lips as the pain fueled some final fucked up ecstasy.

Four… Five… Six…

Then I began to see faces, the faces of missing girls, all of them young and beautiful, as they flashed in his mind.

“You sick fucking bastard,” I whispered.

I was going to drop him into the water, dive in after him and kill him in the river. But just as I was about to let go, I saw the last face and it was her.

I still can’t recall all of the details of what happened next, but by the end of it he was missing his eyelids, his ears, every one of his teeth, his fingers and feet. He was finally dead after I plunged my hand directly into his chest and squeezed his heart until it burst. His blood stained me everywhere. I drank voraciously of what was left and then gathered his corpse, swam it to the bottom of the river and buried it deep in the riverbed where it would never be found.

~~~

Do you want to know how you came by the name Reckoner? The witch asked me just hours before the most brutal kill of my career.

“No, I don’t,” I’d said, wanting to relieve myself of her foul company as soon as possible.

It was Julie Parker’s mother, Anna, she said, a dark glint in her eye. She was one of us. You remember the girl, yes?

Like I could forget her. She once worked at the coffee shop where I studied during my first year at Harvard back in the 1950s. She always emptied my ashtray and never said a thing when my cup of black coffee was untouched. Polite, quiet and otherwise unmemorable, her thoughts were always kind and too generous toward even the most rude undergrads. One evening while I studied I heard the twisted but drunken inner-rambling of a stranger up at the counter. I never took his vile fantasy about getting the girl naked seriously, though. Half an hour later when I went to pay I noticed she was gone from the register. Then I saw the full cup of coffee and half a piece of apple pie left at his table. When I found them in his car behind the shop, I was too late. Her wide, dead eyes, frozen in horror, still haunt me to this day.

Geoffrey Fullerton was the killer’s name. He was my first decree kill.

You left a note for Anna, the witch said. You said you were sorry and assured her the killer had been disposed of. She tried to find you to repay you, but even with the lot of us working our best tracking spells, we never did. It was her who first called you the Reckoner. She said it to the paper, and then everyone in Boston started to follow your career: Boston’s own vigilante serial killer. The police tore themselves apart looking for you, though you know in secret they were grateful for what you did for crime statistics. But then you disappeared. Why?

“I retired,” I said.

“To hunt moose?” She laughed in my face until she coughed up bits of dark phlegm into an old kerchief. “Really? What did they ever do to you?”

She was lucky I didn’t use her as an appetizer, though the minute I had the thought, her eyes narrowed maliciously, and then she sneered again.

You alone have the insight to know who in this world truly deserves death, and the strength and desire to see justice done. I implore you to rid the world of just one more devil.

The devil now gone, I lay still on the riverbank, empty and blank, staring up at the falling snow until it disappeared into the dawn.

~~~

“You have a great gift, Edward, but this is not how you were intended to use it.”

Dirty winter sun poured through the tall window of my Boston apartment, a small, sparse sublet on the top floor of an old brownstone in Cambridge. That morning I’d called him to tell him I killed again and that I wasn’t coming back to Maine. I wanted to tell Esme myself, but he insisted on seeing me in person before I spoke to anyone else in the family. He and his crushing disappointment were in my apartment by noon.

I took a drag from my cigarette and tipped the ash into the ashtray.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said.

“I didn’t bring you into this life to become an executioner,” Carlisle said. “You were—are—meant for something better than that. Your mother…”

“Was my mother a witch?” I asked.

“Why would you ask something like that?” he said, impatiently.

“Why would you keep it from me all these years?” I raised my voice as I stood from my chair.

“Your mother was not a witch.” Carlisle glared at me as though he thought I’d lost my mind. “Where would you even get that idea?”

Not in the mood for long and embarrassing explanations, I turned and walked over to the window, staring out over the Charles River, watching its dull surface peak under the biting wind.

“It’s that woman again,” he said. “Your frustration over this unrequited love fantasy is ruining you.”

“She’s dead.” The words sounded ridiculous and cold and so unreal I half wondered if I’d actually said them. But Carlisle’s horrified expression was proof enough. “So I suppose we won’t be able to blame my offenses on her anymore.”

“What do you mean, she’s dead? You don’t know who—where she is—you don’t even know her name. How would you know that she’s dead?”

“I saw her in my last victim’s mind.”

Carlisle collected himself and his face softened from admonishing to sympathetic and then compassionate, ever the father to me. I had to look away but felt him clasp both hands firmly on my shoulders.

Edward, he thought and then looked at me with a fierce determination.

“You’ll come home,” he said. “You’ll come home and we’ll try again.”

~~~

Until next week... stay groovy!

Myg

Don't People Even MAKE Robert Pattinson Videos Anymore???

2011-12-10T00:07:00.000-05:00

Remember back in the day when people used to make awesome videos featuring RPatts and we'd post them and everyone would coo over them and then wipe the drool off their monitor and (grudgingly) get on with their day??? Whatever happened to that??? Because I've been looking for new videos lately, and I keep coming up empty-handed. Boo! I am not the best at searching YouTube, granted, and they have a new look (like everyone! change is bad!) that apparently is not helping my search results (can I filter by "not in Czech or Japanese and must actually have something to do with Robert Pattinson and not just be a cruel ruse to get my attention" please? thxkbye).

While I was desperately searching, I DID realize that I missed a lot of interviews during the Breaking Dawn press tour - I kept meaning to go back and watch, but I was overwhelmed and lost track... Maybe you did too! Here are a couple of highlights...

David Letterman!

Ellen!

...aaaand I also found this random one that was pretty damn cute - but where are the rest?!

I'm aware that at takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort to make a video, but there is SO MUCH FODDER!!! PLEASE - someone make a nice video featuring some of the recent red-carpet hawtness and put it to a song that doesn't suck, and we'll be in your debt forever... Seriously - I'll take up a collection if I have to - people will chip in for this - we know that time is money! Just make it go, for the love of all things hot - we need a fix!

Dear Vampire Diaries: You Win. Dammit!!!!

2011-12-08T20:56:00.000-05:00

As a general rule, I never get into television series about high school kids. Hell, even when I was in high school I didn't watch shows about high school kids. High school kids are obnoxious, myself included. No Saved by the Bell, or those douches in Beverly Hills. With the exception of a brief stint of My So Called Life (which was really good, or at least the whopping four episodes I saw were), I rarely watched any series at all but especially not a series about a bunch of good looking little seventeen year old fuckwads who slept with each other, had problems at home and drove an expensive Mercedes and/or a kitschy hunk of junk beaters.

I was too busy writing shitty angsty poetry and smoking pot.

I can tell you this with full certainty - if Twilight had been a television series, there would have been ZERO chance of me ever watching it. Books, yes. Television show, fuck no.

I blame Twilight for what happened to me the other day. It's like the gateway drug and I'm now thoroughly convinced it has completely rotted my brain.

Two days ago I was avoiding the gigantic pile of laundry in my TV room and searching aimlessly on Netflix for something to watch when I noticed that The Vampire Diaries was now streaming instantly.

The show isn't as well known by its other title - Dawson's Creek Vampires...

I read your tweets, people. I know a lot of you love this series like a fat kid loves cake but I never, ever had a burning desire to even check it out. I got my teenage vampire fix with Twilight and I was all good. I was all done. Finito. Game over.

Naturally, I began to watch the series. For those of you who don't know the whole premise (er, including me, probably) here it is - ~~Edward~~ Stefan Salvatore returns to his home town of ~~Forks~~ Mystic Falls because of some chick. There's an evil brother floating around in there as well.

What's happening, hot stuffs.

There are only a few things that make this NOT like Twilight:

1) Evil brother.
2) The heroine, Elena Gilbert, actually has a personality that is fiery, as opposed to... well, as dull as cardboard.
3) There is sex, yo.
4) The vampires don't sparkle.
5) The acting is actually good.

I spent the first few episodes rolling my eyes and groaning and sending out mocking tweets about VD (it does not escape my notice that the initials of the show are the same as "venereal disease". I'm pretty sure that means something). A few of you encouraged me to continue watching, which I did.

And right around episode four or so, something happened. It snuck up on me all quiet-like.

I actually started to kind of like it.

It wasn't just because the two vampire dudes are pretty fucking hot (though that had a HUGE part to play in it) or that I found our main leading lady actually highly interesting.

Apparently Edward Cullen shares his wardrobe with Stefan Salvatore...

The show was actually... good. The premise is pretty cool (albeit slightly cheesy), the plot twists are awesome, the characters are fleshed out and there is an even mix of reality vs. supernatural.

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I actually like-like it. Let's put it this way - I'm not going to sit around watching the episodes over and over again like I do the Twilight movies but I like it enough to really want to watch it at least once.

I still think it's a stupid show about beautiful teenagers who sleep with each other and create all sorts of drama but look young and perky while they do it. I'm also highly appalled at the overt under-age drinking that goes on in Mystic Falls, which I find more unbelievable than the whole vampire thing. Why don't these kids have to hide their booze in soda bottles like the rest of us did? Instead, they're all getting wasted with their parents at fancy Founders Party or something. I mean seriously, these kids seem to be drinking fancy wine, instead of Zima with a Jolly Rancher dropped into it (as if it was sickeningly sweet enough).

The Four Loko of the nineties

Regardless, I am now hooked. Hooked enough that I can barely finish this post because I want to run upstairs and watch it.

You win, Vampires Diaries. You win.

My Hate Affair With 3D Movies

2011-12-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

I was perusing The Oatmeal this morning and as usual I was spewing coffee all over my computer because this shit makes me laugh my ass off. Every. Damn. Time. Sometimes I think this guy has probed the darkest recesses of my brain. One of the newer posts called "Why 3D movies need to die" had me chuckling up a storm because, well, I fucking hate 3D movies with the burning passion of a thousand suns.

This is me, but with a lot more hatred. [Photo from The Oatmeal]

Why, you ask? What could possibly be my reason for hating such a exhilarating new technology (well, not so new, but definitely a long way from the days of Jaws 3D!)?

First let's discuss my propensity for motion sickness. I can get sea sick on a water bed. I've nearly had to use that tiny little barfbag on an airplane several times. Any curvy, hilly car ride makes me pray for immediate death. And if I happen to end up in a seat that faces backwards in a limo or a train, my complexion will immediately turn a nice Shrekish shade of green. Me and motion don't see eye to eye.

I've seen exactly ONE 3D movie in my life. Alice in Wonderland. I'm not sure why I felt the need to see it in this format. Maybe I was hoping at some point during the film, through the magic of modern technology, Johnny Depp would appear to be sitting in my lap. Sadly, that didn't happen.

Did I really want this in my lap? Maybe if I was interested in shitting my pants from fear.

What did happen was I spent nearly the entire movie futzing with the fucking 3D glasses which, although they are quite large, do NOT fit nicely over your regular glasses. It took me almost half the movie to stop feeling like I was going to hurl on the head of the person in front of me. At about that halfway point, those special glasses started to press into my head just behind my ears giving me a splitting headache. And then I just got sleepy and ended up taking a cat nap sometime during the last half hour of the movie. I'm not sure if that was because the incessant battles with my stomach and the glasses had worn me out, or if the movie was just boring. For some reason, I can't bring myself to watch it again to find out.

I am sure of this -- I will NEVER go to another 3D movie again in my life. I don't care if it promises that Robert Pattinson would walk off the screen, slowly rid me of my pants, and perform the most mind-blowing oral sex of my life on me... Errrr.... well, maybe that could get me back into the theater. But I refuse to wear those stupid glasses.

Now this I want in my lap. Face down in my lap. When I'm not wearing pants.

I can't even imagine what kind of shit would have been flying at me had Breaking Dawn been in 3D. Scary wolves? Flying vampires? Half-breed fetuses launching out of women Alien-style? Like Bella, there most surely would have some serious vomiting on my part. Although my puking would not have been caused by a fast-growing, demon spawn gestating in my iron-clad uterus.

What are your feelings about 3D movies? Are you the "all in" or the "I could give a fuck" type? If you hate them, is it because they make you want to hurl? (I really hope I'm not the only one...)

Siri: The Virtual Third Wheel

2011-12-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if I've mentioned my love of all things Apple before. Ok, I might have mentioned it just a couple hundred times. The iPhone 4s came out recently and I actually didn't race down to the Apple store to wait impatiently in line for the latest phone. I'm holding out for version 5 that should come out next year. (Please, tiny baby Steve Jobs lying in a manger, let that roll out not be delayed.)

I have long said my iPhone has replaced most of my real life interactions. A few people have commented on how sad that is. I always respond with "Not for the people I used to have to talk to all the time." It's best to keep a thick wall of technology between me and carbon-based life forms.

Maybe my friends should learn to organize my e-mail, keep my calendar updated and store funny cat pictures.

I was a little nervous when I heard the 4s came with a personal assistant named Siri. I assumed they were talking about Suri Cruise and I couldn't figure out how she would have time to organize my life AND be groomed to become next Scientology leader. I figured she had a full day of sacrificing goats or jumping on couches. (This will probably be the post that gets me killed.) As it turns out, Siri is a virtual assistant who can pretty much answer any question you throw at her. I need that! "Siri, did I leave my flat iron on?" "Siri, where can I get Skittles?" "Siri, what's my husband's name again?"

I don't really remember when we started doing it, but Mr. TK and I often sit on the couch next to each other and text back and forth. Does anyone else do that? We thought it was funny at first and now it's just become habit. I must be easily entertained because it cracks me up to receive a text from six inches away that says "What are you doing?" or "What are you wearing?" Yeah, I'm a twelve year old boy.

It was Mr. TK who sent me the video below and I was dying laughing. Again, maybe I'm easily amused.

Does anyone else have ~~an unhealthy~~ a close relationship with their phone? If you have a 4s, have you used Siri in an unusual or inappropriate manner? Do tell.

I Don't Want to Grow Up & You Can't Make Me.

2011-12-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

Note: it's not terribly necessary to mention it (until you get to the link, anyway), but for the sake of full disclosure, I wrote most of this several months ago then forgot about it until looking through older drafts tonight. I blame pre-early-onset Alzheimers. That or vodka.

Image from HERE.

I'm not sure what age I was when I realized that I was never going to feel like a grown-up. I'm pretty sure if I dug up my old diaries, you would find me lamenting about the unstoppable march of the hands of time sometime around the time I was turning 10 (I was an angsty child - what did you expect?). I always thought that the "grown-up' feeling/actualization must be something that comes with being a parent, and therefore I was never going to get there. But lately it's come to my attention - on several fronts - that it has nothing at all to do with having children. Or a mortgage, or increasingly high rent, or having a job or a lot of responsibilities...

When I turned 30, my parents treated me to a birthday dinner at a fancy steakhouse. My mom and dad got me a beautiful black leather bag - sort of a half-purse/half briefcase dealie. There were clips and buckles and locks and it smelled divine and expensive: I adored it. I gingerly picked it up out of its tissue paper swaddling, help it up against myself like a kid playing dress-up, and announced "This makes me feel like such a grown-up!"

My mom looked at me quizzically for a minute before coming back with "You ARE a grown-up." (This wasn't meant as a glowingly proud pronouncement of my obvious maturity, either.)

Funny, I didn't FEEL like a grown-up. I still don't.

The first time someone called me "Ma'am" in a store, I almost threw up. I've heard it enough since that it only makes the bile rise to the back of my throat, but I still cringe. The hurl-y feeling is generally directly proportional to the age of the person uttering the word.

I may share Bella's worries...aaaand I am not 17.

Paging an immortality-giving Cullen: any Cullen will do! Well maybe not Jasper; he has iffy self-control.

A few years back, I ran over to the Barnes & Noble near my office to pick up a few new CDs. I am far from cutting-edge in my musical tastes, but the things I bought were probably charting on college radio boards (or whatever you call it these days). When I got to the counter, the late-teen dude behind the counter (who can tell - all these whippersnappers look the same to an old coot like me) gave a nod of approval and said something like "Good choices!" It was only later, when I got back to my desk still high on the random affirmation of some kid making minimum wage, that I came to the realization that he was not acknowledging my decent taste in music; he was acknowledging that I had notably decent taste in music for someone my age. If it hadn't been time for my afternoon nap and Geritol injection, I totally would have went back and given him what-for.

When Poppa Snarky stopped by my house for a visit a couple of months back, we were chatting about who knows what, trying to avoid discussing politics (or at least I was...). At some point he states, "Well, I guess it's time to stop messing around and start acting like a grown-up." Interestingly, he wasn't talking about me. My father is 68, and he was talking about himself (I'd also like to note that he is taking my subsequent advice to NOT start acting like a grown-up and recently purchased a Harley).

So when I saw one of my online (and offline, for that matter) heroes post THIS the other day, it really struck a chord with me [note: yes, this link is to something The Bloggess wrote a couple of months ago. I also blame red wine]. And with Sister Snarky. And the hundreds and hundreds of other people who read it and felt compelled to comment. And the thousands who read it and didn't comment, I'm sure... If you don't have time to read the post (and you should make time but whatever), you can get the gist from the video below (which might make you cry if you pay attention to the words, but in a good way especially if you watch the whole thing) -

There's something supremely comforting about knowing you are not alone in this feeling of "Huh...so when do I grow up again, exactly? Do I even want to aspire to this? Is it ok if I don't???" The answer to that last one is "yes" by the way... In case you were wondering... I might not have a choice with the whole physical aging thing, but nobody can make me grow up. Nah nah!

You Say it's Bad But I Think Porn is So, So Good...

2011-12-04T16:10:00.028-05:00

So, the other day I was checking up on some links on our blog-meter and I noticed one that had the word "porn" in it. Naturally, I immediately clicked on it and was not only surprised to see the title - Porn for Women: The Twilight Saga but also that someone we all know kind of well was quoted in it!

We don't just read it for the prose, that's for sure.

The article isn't really that great but the gist is that Twilight is porn for women. I'm assuming the author meant this in the same way we say it - Twilight is a great at getting us off emotionally - but I honestly have forgotten what the hell his point was because I started reading the comments.

I love reading comments online. Especially when it's something controversial and the asshole-trolls come lumbering out of the dark recesses of the internets to spew their vitriol. I assumed that any article that had both "porn" and "Twilight Saga" in it would somehow be controversial.

I was right. If you don't feel like slogging through the 292 comments on the article, I'll sum it up for you:

1) OMG, Twilight is not porn, it's a beautiful morally correct love story.
2) No it's not, you're an idiot.
3) Men who watch porn are all selfish, disgusting assholes who are ruining this country and its good christian values and they should totally be castrated or maybe sent to Mars so they can't masturbate to porn because THEY ARE ALL EVVVVVIIIIIILLLLLLLL for watching porn.
4) I fought in Vietnam and I'm an American.
5) It says in the bible vampires are bad and you shouldn't be reading this stuff.
6) Twilight is the best literature EVVVVVERRRRRR.
7) Porn is destroying our country.
8) YOU'RE ALL FUCKING HIPPIE COMMUNISTS AND LEFT-WING NUTJOBS I HOPE YOU ALL DIE AND GOD KILLS KITTENS EVERY TIME YOU WATCH PORN OR READ TWILIGHT.

Game over, kitty.

Or something like that, roughly. Let's just say the devolution of the comments was highly entertaining- like reading a transcript from the Jerry Springer Show. It never ceases to amaze me how worked up some people get over shit like this.

But it reminded me that we live in a very nicely insulated little corner of the internet, where we get along fabulously with one another, share our stories and thoughts and feelings.

And discuss porn. Fan fiction porn, hair porn, finger porn, whatever-porn, we talk about it. We read it. We look at it.

And life is good.

Whimper.

I think it was all the comments about how disgusting men were for watching porn or the assumption that there was something morally wrong with them that kind of got me thinking (oddly enough, I don't recall a single comment about women consuming pornography, except for the one I left).

Some people care WAY too much what other adults do in the privacy of their own homes. I mean, seriously, if you get your rocks off by watching clown porn or something, go for it. But this assumption that people are wrong for consuming pornography pisses me off.

Porn is not cheating. It is not corrupting young children. Consumers of porn are not all pedophiles, or creepy men. I'm not a criminal because I happen to get excited reading a story that involves two people fucking like bunnies in every room in the house.

Porn can be a helpful tool for couples who want to experiment or spice up their bedroom life. It can help a man or woman discover fantasies and learn more about themselves - what turns them on or off.

And honestly? It sure beats staring at the wall while rubbing one out.

If there is one thing I can't stand, it's when people make ignorant, negative sweeping generalizations about other people based on a behavior. It's like saying all Twihards are dumb, naive little girls.

Normally, I don't bother jumping into a comments section that is the virtual equivalent to the frontline of a major battle but I really just couldn't help myself. I felt like I wanted to defend porn-users everywhere so I left this comment:

I’m the Jenny that was actually quoted in this article and I believe a few of you have misunderstood what I meant by “brain porn”. I did not mean that Twilight in itself was pornographic (quite to opposite, of course). Rather, by “brain porn” I meant that women get off reading Twilight but in a cerebral/emotional sense, not in a sexual sense (that’s what fan fiction is for, thankfully).

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading these comments – it’s always interesting to see how… passionate people can be about something like this.

The debates about pornography were… illuminating. I’m always blown away by how much some people care what grown men and women do behind closed doors and how colorful the sweeping generalizations were regarding people (or in this case men) who watch pornography.

I may have missed it (there were an awful lot of comments) but I don’t believe anyone mentioned anything about women who consume pornography (and I don’t mean we actually sit around gnawing on XXX DVD’s. I felt I need to clarify that since a few of the commenters above seem to take things very literally).

Pornography is lovely. I’m a fan of it, as are many of my 2000 + followers on my blog. Most of my readers are well-educated, in committed relationships, mothers, etc. Just normal, run of the mill people, really.

So, here’s the thing about porn – more people watch it than you probably realize. These are people who bag your groceries, take your blood pressure at the doctor’s office, write you parking tickets and so on and so on. There’s a reason why the porn industry is huge. It’s not just gross perverted men lurking in the dark corners of adult stores. It’s people from all demographics.

Cheers, Jenny

Will someone respond? Probably not, which is fine. To be totally honest, it's my personal feeling that leaving a comment on that article would be about as effective as sticking a tampon in your ear when you have a period. But I just couldn't help myself.

I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on pornography or erotica. Do you feel it's something to hide/be ashamed of? Has it freed you or enhanced your life at all? Please feel free to leave your comments below!!

What Would My Vampire Gift Be?

2011-12-02T22:02:00.000-05:00

Edward reads minds. Alice sees the future. Jasper calms the masses. Jane cripples people with agonizing pain and a bushy-eyed stare. I'm seriously feeling pretty left out in the special abilities category. So I got to thinking...if I were an amazingly gorgeous, sparkly vampire, what would my special gift be? Not that I'm delusional enough to think I'll ever be a vampire -- even though I'm almost there with the pasty white skin -- but work with me here. This is my fantasy.

Yes, Jane. Even vampires should wax.

I'm not sure I could handle seeing the future -- that's just a little too much responsibility. Or reading peoples minds. Sometimes it's better not to know what people really think of you. (I'm looking at you, Anonymous commenters who think it's ok to insult my writing [ouch!]) I have to admit, I've always been insanely jealous of Harry Potter's invisibility cloak which is just the fucking bomb-digity. But it almost crosses the same line as reading minds. There may be some conversations I don't want to eavesdrop on.

What is it that I enjoy doing? Something that makes me happy, yet protects me from others. I think I would want to go the route of Jane. I would want a power so crippling that people would flee at the mere sight of me. A power that would render me immune to defeat. Or one that is just fun and makes it easier to add to my freezer collection.

I want to freeze people with a single touch.

And I'll need these slippers to complete my bad-ass vampire outfit!

They would stay frozen forever, even on the hottest day of the summer. Until I release them from their icy prison at least. But with great power comes great responsibility. Or so I hear. I would only freeze the bad guys -- you know, like Edward only killed the scum of the earth during his young vampire years? I'm not going to take advantage of my new power and go all willy-nilly with the freezing. Maybe the cops would even hire me to help capture criminals...

If you were a sparkly vampire, what special sparkly vampire power would you want?

Don't piss me off or I will blind you with my sparkles!

A Review of The Tudors. Er, a Few Years Late

2011-12-01T22:22:00.003-05:00

I don't think it's any secret that I can't do anything in a timely manner. I file my taxes at about 11:59PM on April 14th. I send birthday presents so late I have to pretend they are for the person's upcoming birthday. I wait to go to the bathroom until I'm in very, very serious danger of wetting myself. I really need an adult to take care of me.

I watch almost no television, so I am exceptionally out of the loop in this category. We finally signed up for Nexflix (Did I mention I am slow at doing everything?) literally a few months before they doubled their rates. Bastards. Mr. TK and I marveled at all the shows we missed on the talking box. Most of them were crap, but we found a few gems. (I'm looking at you, 30 Rock.)

I'd heard good things about The Tudors (mostly about the pretty flesh it showcased). Naturally, Mr. TK was on board.

This looks promising.

I was expecting it to be mostly porn with a little plot and this was fine by me. I was a little confused when the plot-to-porn ratio was not as I anticipated. There was dialogue and a story and stuff with limited nakedness. I was actually having to pay attention.

The whole 'paying attention' thing led me to see the glaring historical, um, liberties the writers took. Overall, the story is pretty close to historical accounts, but there are parts where the creators obviously just said "Fuck it."

Parts of the Catholic masses and prayers are said in English instead of Latin. The parts that are in Latin are just random phrases that don't make any sense. Some of the characters' actions have been embellished to add drama — Thomas More and Thomas Tallis, for instance. I have to say Queen Catherine of Aragon is pretty spot on. I love the bits of Shakespeare's Henry VIII they have woven in. Anne Boleyn was actually probably smarter than she got credit for. She had much more education than most women in that era. Ironically, that's the thing that probably both helped her gain the throne and led to her death. It's tough to be royal. That's why I only pretend to be a princess.

It always comes back to Edward.

We haven't made it past season two yet because it just wouldn't be right to be less than five years behind the times. I've pretty much lost interest in the show at this point, mostly because I know how it ends and they don't show enough skin. I think everyone else on the planet has seen it. So, tell me — is it worth watching the rest? I'm not worried about spoilers unless Anne Boleyn comes back as a zombie and eats some people. That would be awesome. (Just don't Google "zombie Anne Boleyn." I made that mistake.)

'Tis the Season...to Catch a Cold.

2011-11-30T15:01:00.016-05:00

Add 1,357,286 used Kleenex and this is pretty much what things look like lately at Casa de Snarky.

I don't get sick often, but when summer fades into winter (which is how it usually goes in these parts, with some leaf-falling in the interim), I generally get my annual cold or flu. Something about the temperature going from 70 one day to 30 and snowing the next is too much for my system to handle. I've spent many a birthday - in late October - in a fetal ball on my bathroom floor. Thankfully, this year I made it through my birthday with a clean bill of health, and only gave in to the nagging "I think something's coming on..." feeling AFTER I saw Breaking Dawn. But since then, things have been a little sucky [note: these things definitely impact brain function and vocabulary].

I am tired of being sick. I have had a cold for almost two weeks, and honestly, if I had the energy to be annoyed, I'd be really pissed off about the way it's lingering. If it wasn't for Aquaphor, I would probably have a gaping hole where my nose goes at this point, since I have ejected my body weight in snot into tissues over the last two weeks and there is no tissue on earth soft enough once you reach a certain point of chaffed. I would consider a return to handkerchiefs - whisper-soft handkerchiefs! - until I remember that you have to wash them. {{{shudder}}}

Also, I miss the taste of food. Oh, don't get me wrong - other than a couple of days last week when things were looking particularly dire and I barely moved other than to work, I have been eating like a champ. I've got that "I'm sick and should indulge myself" thing going. "Feed a cold", right??? Um yeah... But here is a list of all the things that I actually enjoy when I have a cold:

Homemade chicken broth/soup (tastes like hot!)
Diet ginger ale (tastes like cold!)
Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Cheese Goldfish (tastes like salty!)

That's pretty much it.

Half-way into cooking my first batch of chicken soup about ten days ago, I realized that I would have no real way of telling if it was good or bad. Or REALLY bad (I make my chicken soup with leftover chicken carcasses that I keep in the freezer, sooo...). The cat didn't turn her nose up at it when I offered (thanks for taking that bullet for me, Quato), but I was relieved when Mr. Snarky came home and declared the soup definitely not putrid. There was an initial scare when he walked in the door and said something had a little whang to it, but we determined that it was emanating from outside and not my stock pot. Yay!

Today I started making a pot of turkey soup from the leftover Thanksgiving bird, only to have the top of the pot get a little...frothy. Despite the fact that I thing it was probably soap, I tasted nothing. I scooped out the offending bubbles and turned up the heat. A little detergent is NOT going to ruin this for me! I would have cried if I hadn't been able to make this soup. I'm not above Campbell's Chicken & Stars in a pinch, but nothing beats homemade for it's "goes straight to your marrow" goodness.

Oh...and why, you might ask, did I have leftover turkey/cook a big dinner on Thanksgiving? While I was sick??? Because this is what Mr. Snarky looked like at the grocery store last Thursday morning when I suggested maybe we should take it easy and just cook a chicken:

And this is what he looked like when I said FINE let's cook a huge-ass *#%$!!! turkey even though we're both sick:

In hindsight, it was a nice to eat solid food, and we've been eating leftovers all week. Plus I didn't have to go anywhere or cook anything extra for all those additional meals to happen. But I am OVER this cold! Or want to be...

So what are your secrets for getting over a cold? There's got to be something that doesn't require you start taking it when you get your first symptoms (yup, I should have been paying more attention several weeks ago...) - it's probably too late to break out the zinc lozenges and Oscillococcinum (I can't pronounce this but I have it on good authority it works IF you start taking at first sniffle). Hot toddies? Medically-induced coma? Twilight marathons??? Oh please let it be hot toddies and Twilight marathons...or something to do with RPatts...

Books to Add to Your Gimme-Gimme List: The Steampunk Edition

2011-11-29T19:13:00.005-05:00

Last month, I did a lot of research into the genre of Steampunk (which isn't necessarily what you think it is, per se***) to pull together a pretty classy costume for a masquerade wedding Snarkier Than You and I attended. At first I decided to go the steam-y route because, frankly, the costumes I saw online were pretty fucking kick ass. While I had always known that the concept of Steampunk found its start in books, I never paid much attention to it until recently, mainly because I've been obsessed with sparkly-ass vampires these past few years.

Fine. He's not a vampire but he sure is kinda sparkly. This was in my inbox this morning (thanks, VitaminR!!)

I'm pretty sure there is a Steampunk aficionado reading this right now and frothing at the mouth and calling me a poser while he adjusts his Victorian era goggles but whatever, I like what I like. I was never really good with labels, anyway.

So far, I've truly enjoyed every single novel I've read, but two really stand out.

Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Synopsis: (jacked from the site linked above)

Prince Aleksander, would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battletorn war machine and a loyal crew of men.

Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She’s a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn’s paths cross in the most unexpected ways, taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.

Not surprisingly, this is actually a Young Adult trilogy, because I clearly I have problems reading books geared toward people my age (mainly because a lot of them seem to be about 30-something women who are successful, beautiful and can't get a man. I have no idea why my mother sends me these. I have a man). However, this book was so fantastical and so out-of-this-world that I ripped through it in only a couple of days.

That being said, this story revolves around actual events (World War I, aka "When Shit Went Down the First Time) but is combined with a fantasy world that is so different from anything I have ever read before. It's like a history lesson (okay a veeeeeery small history lesson. Fine, not really a history lesson) that includes giant whales floating in the sky instead of zeppelins.

Video found here (check out their review of Leviathan, which is far better than any I could have come up with)

For those of you who have pre-teens or teens or whatever age group this is demographically targeted for, I highly recommend it for both you and your kid. It's creative, action-packed and has both a strong female and male protagonist.

However, if you're more into parody, satire and the goddamn apocalypse, then I have the book just for you...

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

Synopsis (taken from here) -

There is a distinct hint of Armageddon in the air. According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded, thankfully, in 1655, before she blew up her entire village and all its inhabitants, who had gathered to watch her burn), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witch-finders are getting ready to fight the good fight, armed with awkwardly antiquated instructions and stick pins. Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. . . . Right. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan.

Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon -- each of whom has lived among Earth's mortals for many millennia and has grown rather fond of the lifestyle -- are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture. If Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the Antichrist (which is a shame, as he's a really nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him. . . .

This book is hysterical, there is no doubt about it. Tongue-in-cheek in some parts, droll and wry in others, the characters are endearing (maybe with the exception of War, but only because she's probably prettier than me) and bumbling at the same time.

And what's not to like about an angel and a demon banding together to stop the apocalypse (well, mainly for selfish reasons. Especially the demon, but whatever)? Trust me, hilarity ensues.

Let's put it this way - if you liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you will love this book (and incidentally, if you haven't read HGthG, you really should).

Leave your thoughts and recommendations in the comments!! It's really important you do this because I've recently acquired a Kindle Fire and need to load it up with oodles of stories. Spread the wealth!!

*** Or I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, which seems reasonable.

Another Spoilerific Breaking Dawn Review

2011-11-28T20:50:00.002-05:00

I'm just going to come right out and admit it -- it took me over a week to get to the movies for my second viewing of Breaking Dawn. You can't believe what a failure I feel like right now. I'm blaming it solely on Thanksgiving and the 11 guests we had which required three days of cleaning - therefore foiling any opportunity to get to the theater earlier. *shakes fist to sky* Damn you and all your turkey and fixins goodness!

So here goes...forgive my bulleted lists. It's for the best, trust me. I'll try to be brief, but I really don't see that happening. I have a lot to say. If you missed Jenny Jerkface's review, click here!

The Love:

Sonofabitch! He really pulled off the rolled khakis. (Is that yellow tape on the floor their mark?)

The Cullen's eyeballs. I've done nothing but complain about the too-yellow-y contacts throughout both New Moon and Eclipse. BD eyeballs = win!
The wedding overall. I couldn't stop smiling. The vows, the kiss (oh MAN the kiss), the speeches... *sigh*
Jessica stole every scene she was in - all her snarky remarks just fucking slayed me. And calling Edward "The Hair" - nearly peed my pants!
Charlie. That is all. I love everything he does.
Just about everything that happened on Isle Esme. The headboard and pillow destruction. (I saw the nip slip...whoa.) Bella trying to seduce Edward with her naughty nighties. So fucking cute I wanted to die.
Edward's rolled up khakis. Yum.
The black eyes. Something about those black eyes, especially on Edward, especially when he's suffering, make me want to furiously hump his leg.
The make-up job on Bella while the fetus is sucking the life from her. Just wow!
Absolutely LOVE the ending -- the flashbacks, the venom repairing her broken bones... and when her eyes open red -- exactly how I pictured the first part to end.

The Meh:

I'd be smiling from ear to ear with that waiting for me!

Edward as a bad guy. I'm sorry, I just can't stop chuckling at the thought of Edward as a killer. Or as someone pointed out recently -- he's the Dexter of the vampire world!
The pre-wedding dream. Um, no. It was like Carrie, only all white.
Bella's lack of smiling during the wedding. I guess I would be scared shitless too but how could you not don a huge grin with that waiting for you at the end of the aisle?
Stephenie Meyer's too-long cameo appearance. Maybe that's why Bella isn't smiling...she's afraid Steph is after her man.
I would've been ok with just hearing the vomiting -- I really don't enjoy seeing the actual puke.
While I loved loved loved the whole end of this movie starting with Edward tearing the demon spawn from Bella's womb, I was annoyed by his blood-smeared face -- it looked more like he had been bobbing for meatballs.

The WTF:

Scary fucking eyeballs. Someone hold me, please.

The wolves breaking up. I just can't stop snickering during that scene. The whole lot of wolves bother me in general -- except Booboo/Seth. I agree with JJ, he was so adorable.
Why the FUCK is Renee's mailbox on the beach? Does the mailman do his sunbathing between houses?
Did anyone else notice that Eleazer is the Ice Truck Killer from Dexter?
The Denali sister's eyeballs scared the living shit out of me.
Where are Jacob's jorts? And shit, those wolves must have stashes of duds everywhere.... they always emerge from the woods fully clothed.
I'll always and forever be pissed off that Jacob is so short in these movies.
Bella's blood-stained chicklets grossed me out a little.

I'm sure that as I continue to watch this movie, like with all the others, there will be things I missed. But it's always a good sign when you love more of it than you didn't. And I honestly didn't think it started out on high note -- I was really hoping for that scene where Bella is driving her new car and the guys at the gas station were all ogling it. Weird, I know.

We all knew making this movie was going to be a difficult feat, but in my opinion, Condon did us proud. And fuck me ladies... how hot is Edward wearing a wedding ring... and pajamas...?

Our Zombie Babies Love You for Your Brains

2011-11-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

Last year we did a little experiment to see what our lovechildren with RPattz would look like. You might want to click on that link and refresh your memory. Or, you might want to take an ice pick to your frontal lobe and erase those images completely. I'm a little of column A & column B. Because I am completely ~~insane~~ curious, I thought it would be interesting to see what our zombie babies would look like. You might remember Latchkey Wife's post on zombie Edward.

"Grrr. Argh." That's zombie-speak for "You got a right purdy mouth."

Then she turned all of us into zombies. For some of us, that was an improvement. So, what would happen if two zombies managed to play Hide the Salami without body parts falling off? Nothing good, I can tell you.

JJZombieWard: She still looks like a serial killer, but much cuter than JJ's "normal" babies.

LKWZombieWard: This is the EXACT same picture as one of JJ's "normal" babies. So many jokes. So little time.

STYZombieWard: First off, I didn't notice the thumbnail of the picture frame said "Our Baby Girl." Somehow it still works. Lil' STYZW must be picking up one some latent Jersey Shore genes and is ready to embrace the GTL way of life.

TKZombieWard: This is not ok. Why is my baby a plushie?! How the actual fuck do you combine two of the walking dead and get a motherfucking duck?! "These are the feathers of a killer, Bella." I should just go ahead and get him fitted for an ankle monitor right now. I assume it's a him. I don't think he'll develop his bright plumage until he's at least an adolescent plushie.

It wouldn't be fair not to let my cat in on the action...

ShakespeareZombieWard: This is the most normal-looking baby of all. I fucking give up.

I don't really know how to end this without offering some kind of Groupon for counseling. Just consider the comments section a safe place to share your feelings and start the healing process.

A Special Thanksgiving PSA From William Shatner

2011-11-25T18:50:00.000-05:00

Guess who likes turkey almost as much as me???

Happy day-after-Thanksgiving, everyone (or at least everyone in the US)! Hope you all stayed home today, shopped online if you shopped at all, and pigged out on lots of leftovers. Turkey with all the trimmings is my FAVORITE meal, and I enjoyed my dinner last night even though I couldn't really taste that well because of this *&^%#!!! cold. Doesn't matter: I know what it tastes like: deliciousness. And the next day? More nom nom nom! Honestly? My "Thanksgiving sandwich" is the best thing in the whole world - basically everything but the green beans (i.e. turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce) on toasted bread with gobs of Hellmann's mayonnaise. HEAVEN! And yes, it HAS to be Hellmann's - Miracle Whip is the work of the devil.

I baked my bird yesterday, but if you have never experienced the joy that is a deep-fried turkey, you are seriously missing out. The first time - several years back - when Mr. Snarky's sister told us we were having deep-fried turkey for dinner, I was dubious at best. But she is an amazing chef so I (grudgingly) trusted her. It may have been the best turkey I have ever tasted - while I expected a greasy, KFC-esque mess, there was not a trace of oil in the finished product - just succulent, juicy meat. Mmmm... I am making myself hungry again just writing this, so please enjoy Bill Shatner's special turkey-fryer safety PSA while I go and fix myself another sammie.

Yes this is a little late, but you know how we do...

Thanks for Giving, Rob.

2011-11-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting here in a cold-medicine-induced haze, staring at the screen, trying to figure out what in the blazes to write about that isn't going to require me to be particularly functional or coherent... I've been under the weather and quarantined in my house for the better part of the week; the last time I went further than the end of the driveway was Sunday, when I HAD to go see Breaking Dawn again with Myg and JJ. It was Myg's first viewing, JJ's second; it seemed unconscionable to allow this to happen without my being present.

I figure most of you are going to be spending the next few days running around like maniacs, visiting people out of town, hosting guests at your own houses, cooking and cleaning up a storm. So really, I figure the best thing I could possibly do would be to post some Robward deliciousness for you to enjoy while you lock yourself in the bathroom for a few minutes to collect your wits and try to maintain your sanity. Don't worry - the dog probably won't eat the entire pumpkin pie while you are in hiding, and the cat will probably only maul what's left of the turkey a little bit. Nobody will even notice the little claw and bite marks once it becomes a casserole or a sandwich or soup.

I tried to look for some tantalizing videos that incorporated some of the recent BD press tour/premier photos and footage, but I came up empty-handed on YouTube. So either I am bad at searching, or people are slacking off in the video department. Please - someone alert Biel that we NEED her! I mean, I know she already knows this, but I think it's time to send out the Twi-signal and start begging her for some new 100% Robert Pattinson Content.

May I be so bold as to suggest that she include the following shots?

He's staring right into my Robotrip...

...and also please some "just the tip" and "thrusting Rob"! If you haven't watched this Jimmy Kimmel episode, at least watch THIS part, which is full of sound-bite WIN.

Breaking Dawn Critique 1.0 [MAJOR Spoilers]

2011-11-22T22:03:00.001-05:00

So many of you these past few days have been asking when we're going to do our critique of Breaking Dawn: Before the Spawn.

We've obviously spoiled you by posting within a relevant time frame. Duly noted.

That being said, ask and you shall receive. This critique is part one of...who the fuck knows. I imagine we all have a lot to say about this movie. Just think of this post as a sort of drive-by critique. I can assure you that both Snarkier Than You and Latchkey Wife have a much better ability to focus on something for more than two seconds, which is usually how long I can pay attention at any given moment.

Let's begin, shall we?

Someone just explained to Judge Judy what imprinting was...

Breaking Dawn: Part 1 was amazing. Everything about it was fucking perfect and I was orgasming rainbows by the time STY and I left the theater. It was the most pristine cinematic masterpiece I've ever seen. Oscar-worthy, even.

Nah, I'm just fucking with ya. While overall I thought this was the best movie out of all of them (well, not including Twilight, which will always remain number one in my book, despite of and because of all it's campy spider-monkey hokey-ness) there were still a few things that were, shall we say, totally fucking cringe-worthy. Yet, there were golden moments, too.

Anyway. In no particular order, rhyme or reason...

THE HUMANS

First of all, the humans are a huge win for me in every movie. Billy Burke as Charlie melts my cold little heart every time and when he doesn't, he's making me laugh my ass off. The speech he did at the wedding had me rolling. He's a great actor and a perfect choice for Charlie.

Speaking of laughing, Anna Kendrick as Jessica is, as usual, hysterical. She has those snotty little teenage nuances down pat - the little snide laugh, the passive aggressive quips and comments. I almost died during the beginning of the wedding scene when she asked Angela if she thought Bella would be showing with that smug little look on her face. Priceless.

THE WEDDING

The whole wedding scene was...interesting. I liked how Bill Condon incorporated music from Twilight (I think it was Bella's lullaby or the Iron & Wine song - I forget) - that was a nice touch and it really tied all four movies together.

I know there was a whole hullaboo about Bella's wedding dress but...I wasn't entirely impressed. Someone else said something that completely summed it up for me (and for the life of me I can't remember who but if you're reading this please let me know so I can credit you!!). They said Bella's dress was like a mullet - party in the back and business in the front. I couldn't agree more.

Fuck the dress. Let's just stare at this guy.

The Denali sisters freaked me the fuck out. I didn't think they were pretty (in their defense, someone gave them contacts the color of dog piss and it was really unnerving) and the acting was stiff and flat.

THE HONEYMOON (aka "Let's NOT Really Get it On")

We all knew this was going to be a fade-to-black sex scene. Despite that, I'm sure many of you (like myself) were hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, they would give us a little more than a breaking headboard and a couple of thrusts.

Oh well.

Annnd cut!! Shortest sex scene EVER.

Actually, I thought the whole montage for the honeymoon was really cute. Bella with her human moments, Edward being an emo baby about bruising Bella and then Bella trying to seduce him in any which way she can. Well done, guy who made this movie. Well done.

HOWEVER, the first time I watched this movie I thought I saw...something. Something that probably shouldn't have been in a PG-13 movie. It was only there for two seconds and at first I thought I was imagining it but when I saw BD the second time IT WAS STILL THERE. When Bella and Edward are making kissy-kissy in the bed, you totally catch a glimpse of KStew's nipple.

Considering the fact that Godzilla could be lumbering down the street behind me and I wouldn't even notice, I'm very impressed with myself for seeing it.

RANDOM SEGUE INTO ACTING CHOPS

Speaking of KStew, her acting has improved quite a bit and it shows in BD. There is far less twitching and minimal bellowing and HOLY SHIT SHE SMILES. Like, more than once. Kristen Stewart is very, very beautiful and I was glad to see her shine a little in this movie.

On the other hand, I feel like Robert Pattinson fell a little...flat. For a good part of the beginning half, it just seemed like there was something missing from his acting. Or maybe he was always like that but I never noticed because Bella's facial tics and mini-seizures were always so distracting. I will say he amped it up and pulled through toward the end but it was definitely a little rough in the beginning.

Whatever. I'd still do him.

Leah (Julia Jones) was another actress that I really enjoyed watching. I think she really brought the character of Leah to life and did wish that she had a little more on-screen time. Another "wolf" that I thought showed a decent amount of talent was Seth (BooBoo Stewart). He was very endearing and utterly adorable (I mean that in the most non-sexual, maternal way, Chris Hansen. Call your dogs off).

Before I forget I just wanted to say something quickly about Jasper. Really, it will only take one word - POSSIBLY. As in, you couldn't have possibly delivered that one line even more horribly than you did. I love the Rathbone, I really do. But he managed to kill that whole scene in one little word.

THE WOLVES (oh fuck it, you know which scene I'm about to talk about)

The wolves were...kind of silly looking in BD. I swear they looked better in Eclipse and I'll leave this to one of my fellow writers to do a comparison because it's been three days since I actually saw the movie and my memory is starting to fade.

But more importantly, how high was EVERYONE involved in this movie when they filmed the "wolf-pack breakup" scene??? You know, the one where Sam turns into the goddamn anti-christ and/or Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction and then Jacob rebels and sounds like fucking Moses on the Mountain or something?

Sam and Jake have a pack meeting. And it's not to discuss what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France..

It was mortifying to watch. I actually had to cover my eyes.

MAKEUP, WIGS AND COSTUMES, OH MY (mostly)

The Twilight Saga has been plagued with atrocious costumes, hideous-to-the-point-of-offensive wigs and makeup that sometimes look like a seven year old slapped some lipstick on Edward but BD: Part 1 wasn't by far the worst offender. Yes, Jasper still looked like he had a Shih Tzu balanced on his head but at least this time someone had groomed the poor dog before strapping it on. Rosalie actually looked really fabulous and Alice was (as usual) touch and go. Sometimes she looked beautiful, other times she looked like a psychotic fairy with plastic hair.

And Edward looked fuckable. Of course. The bouffant was kind of back, which was nice.

Bad, Jasper's wig! Bad! Don't wipe your ass on the carpet!!

It was Carlisle who took the brunt of the ugly stick this time. Handsome, kind, Carlisle looked like a cross between Powder and George McFly (if you don't know who that is, just pretend). Whoever decided they should give Carlisle a limp, shaggy comb-over had clearly participated in the "wolf-pack breakup" the night before and was obviously wickedly hungover.

Now just imagine the blond hair...

Personally, I could forgive all this for the sole reason that they did a spectacular job making Bella look all dying and then dead and stuff. Really. I thought the makeup/effects during the pregnancy was very realistic and relatively graphic. It was so good that I hardly noticed how bad any of the other Cullens looked once Bella got knocked up.

THE MOTHERFUCKING SPAWN IS IN THE HOUSE, YO (aka, little girls everywhere are swearing they will never get pregnant after watching this movie)

As I said before, the makeup/effects during the pregnancy was spot-on. The actual, break-backing, womb-tearing pregnancy was off the fucking hook. I honestly wondered how they were going to do it and I genuinely thought there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that they would be able to pull it off. Yet, they did. It was brutal and rough and everyone involved performed really well and it was a great scene**.

Dear Renesmee, you ended up with your dumbass name because you fucked mommy up when she was pregnant. Love, Bella.

I just want to know what sound effect they used to simulate Edward ripping into Bella's womb. I had no idea that's what the sound of vampire teeth against, well, vampire embryonic sac would sound like.

Then again, I never actually thought about it.

Anyhoo, the spawn was birthed, Rosalie fell in love with her, Jacob fell in love with her WAY more than Rosalie did and Bella was left lying in a hospital dead, all dying and stuff. I'd go into the whole imprinting thing but... nah. I'll leave that for the others.

The end. Well, until next year, when we get to watch two hours of a non-fight with the Volturi.

Please let us know what YOU thought. And stay tuned for more critiques galore!!

** I reserve the right to completely change my mind about this scene when STY and I go to the movies again this weekend. Actually, that goes for the whole movie...

The Twilight Belt: More Sparkly Than Orion's Belt

2011-11-21T21:30:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday, hookers. It's taking all of my willpower not to just post a giant 'FUUUUUUUCKKKK YOUUUUUUU!!!!" in two hundred point font today. Present company excluded, natch. I like you guys. It's everyone else I hate. I can't shake my case of the Mondays, no matter how hard I've tried. I think I'm the only person in America who doesn't work retail or in a hospital who has to work on Friday. I wouldn't be as bitter if I hadn't spent my entire day jumping through hoops for other people who JUST NOW sent me things I've been requesting for weeks (and months, in some cases) and need them processed RTFN because their office is closed most of this week. I am not amused.

This should really be above my desk.

But I digress. I came across an interesting graphic the other day that I thought I would share with you. Sadly, I probably wouldn't have even noticed the article if the graphic wasn't included. I embrace my OMG IS THAT SOMETHING SHINY? LET'S GO SEE!!! behavior. (Incidentally, if you read the article, I am not the TK who commented on it. I don't know who this person is, but I have those initials trademarked. Again, I am not amused.)

I don't understand why so many people in Utah read the book and hated it. Do you not talk to each other? Did you recommend it to each other as a joke? What's going on here?

I'm a little surprised that only twelve times more women than men read Twilight. I would think the spread would be a lot wider. I find it hilarious that the north and south are still divided on major issues (like Twilight). Flavorwire commented that the map looks a lot like the map from the last election. Why are my tax dollars not going to investigate this?

My main questions is — Really, Washington? Why you gotta be haters? Do Twihards and Twitards not spend enough money in your fair state? If I remember correctly, your state is a haven for bestiality lovers, so maybe we could overlook some sloppy prose, m'kay?

I'm curious how many of our readers are in the pink and red states. I know a lot of our blog readers are up north (not to mention MOST of the blog writers). How are you not skewing the results?