Twilight sucks, you guys. Well, it sucks just as much as any standard paperback romance, but yet millions seem to think that it fell out of the heavens' great literary vagina. Here: there's nothing wrong with liking to read Twilight, just like there's nothing wrong with liking to read paperback romances, as long as you can recognize them all for what they are: lush fantasy stories basically designed to get you off.
I enjoy reading Twilight because personally I get a big arrogant kick out of its shitedom, and I'm minimally entertained by it, and vampire romances make me horny. Reading Twilight is like eating Cheetos; it's indulgent, satisfying, guilt-ridden and utterly lacking in nutritional benefits. Go ahead and eat your Cheetos (I'll eat them for you if you don't want them), but don't tell yourself you're eating fine cheese on crackers. My beef with Twilight doesn't pertain to its immense popularity, but to its reputation as being totally fucking great, because that is false. Twilight isn't Great; it's not Gourmet, it's Cheetos. The writing is mediocre at best, the story is simplistic, the characters are hollow, the plot is vapid. My guess is that the raw allure buried underneath the crappy crap made everyone so goddamned horny that they grew to associate Twilight directly with intense pleasure, which might have led the layman to believe that Twilight is totally fucking great.
I'm not booing the vampire fad - in fact, my other beef is out of respect for the vampire fad. Vampire stories inherently evoke a motherload of sexual tension and symbolism, which is further pursued by the vamp-human romance. Someone setting out to write a vampire story has a lot of deep shit to work with - sex, passion, temptation, love & hate, life & death, right & wrong, what have you - but yet Twilight is so maddeningly shallow and empty. Twilight reads like a fanfiction of its own story, because Stephenie Meyer writes like a drooling fangirl. (Indeed she is, actually - she's a fan of her own dream.) I mean, you can't just stick an apple on the cover and call the deep shit dunzo. Boy, is there a difference between fandom and artistry, and stories as rich as those of vampires deserve to be portrayed artfully.
Now I'm going to deliver this verdict without a trace of bitterness: if you want a shallow, empty and cheaply arousing vampire story, read Twilight. If you want a sensual, thoughtful and intriguing vampire story, watch True Blood. Vampires are dead, long live vampires.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
It's Tess, Bitch
I'm not a bitch in any capacity. It's not in my nature, nor was my bitchiness ever nurtured; insecurity has crippled my initiative to learn assertion. This has cut out a lot of potential conflict from my life, which is superficially relieving, but ultimately the only result is that I've become an excellent doormat. To become an excellent doormat, one must achieve a passive and flaccid state of mind, which results in grotesque plasticity. I've noticed myself warping my personality as situations vary just so I can avoid the minimum amount of conflict. Pathetic? Embarrassing? If you say so.
On the contrary, you'll notice that bitches are rigid. A bitch is a bitch no matter where she goes. In my opinion, every woman is entitled to harness bitchiness. Bitchiness is raw power (which is mostly recognized in the context of being used for evil). Bitches are strong and secure, and are thereby capable of great accomplishments. I'm not talking about cruel sophomores who pick on the fat and ugly, because they're just mean, and are actually the opposite of true bitches. Similar misconceptions make true punks hard to identify. Here's a hint: true bitches and punks are rare amongst teenagers, since adolescents are plastic by definition. Another hint: yes, there is a significant overlap between bitches and punks.
I need to learn bitchiness. To be a functional adult, one must be a bitch. My time has come. Bitches, I salute you.
On the contrary, you'll notice that bitches are rigid. A bitch is a bitch no matter where she goes. In my opinion, every woman is entitled to harness bitchiness. Bitchiness is raw power (which is mostly recognized in the context of being used for evil). Bitches are strong and secure, and are thereby capable of great accomplishments. I'm not talking about cruel sophomores who pick on the fat and ugly, because they're just mean, and are actually the opposite of true bitches. Similar misconceptions make true punks hard to identify. Here's a hint: true bitches and punks are rare amongst teenagers, since adolescents are plastic by definition. Another hint: yes, there is a significant overlap between bitches and punks.
I need to learn bitchiness. To be a functional adult, one must be a bitch. My time has come. Bitches, I salute you.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tessevision
When I think about all the television shows that are worth my time, the length of the list corresponds to how shite I feel. I'd love to be one of those people who stick to a precious few favorite shows, because their TV intake is limited by their interest. But alas, I have genuine interest in all of the following and more: Metalocalypse, 30 Rock, Mad Men, Weeds, Project Runway, South Park, the Simpsons, Venture Bros., True Blood, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, America's Next Top Model, Flight of the Conchords, Freaks and Geeks, Futurama, Strangers with Candy, Planet Earth, Arrested Development, House, the Sarah Silverman Program... and now I feel like some sort of jelly-brained agent of Tha Man. I care so much it hurts. Thankfully a couple of those shows are over so I don't have to face the doom of continuing my devotion indefinitely.
But wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second now - what's inherently bad about TV anyway? Yes, it tends to be vacuous/offensive/brainwashing/addictive/etc., but what about the good stuff? TV is the medium of the age. It has incredible power to unite people worldwide, and it has its own unique artistic merit. It's not lowly and backwards, it's refined and modern. (Try not to think about Jackass while reading this.) As viewers, we'd be stupid to let TV govern our lives, but that would be true of anything, and it reflects a problem in us rather than in TV. So: screw you, hippies; marry me, TiVo.
But wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a second now - what's inherently bad about TV anyway? Yes, it tends to be vacuous/offensive/brainwashing/addictive/etc., but what about the good stuff? TV is the medium of the age. It has incredible power to unite people worldwide, and it has its own unique artistic merit. It's not lowly and backwards, it's refined and modern. (Try not to think about Jackass while reading this.) As viewers, we'd be stupid to let TV govern our lives, but that would be true of anything, and it reflects a problem in us rather than in TV. So: screw you, hippies; marry me, TiVo.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Mysterious Ways
A local girl just killed herself a few days before her high school graduation. For me, as for lots of other people who didn't know her well, there's the blunt impact of realizing that the quiet girl who recently compelled me to buy a used copy of Six-String Samurai on Amazon probably didn't want to be alive at the time that we talked. (Misery, I've found, is either deafening or horribly quiet.) But I know some of the few people who understand the torment that defeated her, and what troubles me most is that for all of her unique problems, the world will only see the crater left by a girl who smiled in pictures and stepped in front of a train. No matter if you're plagued by nightmares or emptiness, cancer or celebrity; there's only one way out, which is through the fingers of everyone you've ever touched. One can only hope that peace exists after the last of their probing. What more cruelly fitting memorial than her Facebook profile, freshly swarmed with messages from people who liked her and loved her, but couldn't possibly understand her?
Then there's the selfish recoil that systematically follows the impact: take me, for example, shaking and sweating on the drive up to my boyfriend's house, unaware that I was one of the last people to hear about the suicide of his close friend, thinking that I'd have to break the news to him and having the nerve to think about how miserable that made me. I should be grateful to have been spared all but a bit of the pain that's just been unleashed. When my mom called later that day and asked how I was doing, I blankly said "Okay" while somewhere in a foggy part of my mind, I was thinking "What the hell does it matter how I'm doing? Someone else is dead." But this is the nature of the human beast, self-centered and delicate: something terrible happens and instantly we think of ourselves. When we join together in the aftermath of a suicide, holding candlelight vigils and compiling our memories, we don't act for anyone but ourselves. We embrace each other to alleviate our own grief, and when we mourn, we mourn not the pain of the dead, but our personal loss. Suicide is the most selfish act possible, and it in turn inspires great selfishness; in the end, the dead and the living turn their backs on each other, and we are farther away from the suicide victim than ever before.
When people end their lives, hardly anyone can understand how it could happen, because the equation is baffling (especially when the people in question are apple-cheeked young folk): on the one hand, there's friends and family and love and music and sunny days and laughter and the exciting promise of the future, and on the other, there's the abandonment of hope, the lonesome scary trip out of waking life, and the hellish aftershock of nausea and tears and scarring that is left behind. The choice of the latter is unfathomable to healthy humans, which is proof of good evolution. This hopeless oblivion haunts those who are close to someone that opts out of life (what's more disturbing than realizing that someone who seemed close to you was really very far away?), but the farther away from ground zero one gets, the more comforting the oblivion is. As the proverb gnomes say, "what you don't know can't hurt you". But depression taught me a very sick sensibility which led me to understand how the scales between life and suicide can start to even out. Never did mine tip critically, but being miserable generated the theory that life isn't always worth living. The trick to that equation is the element of dehumanization. For example, just like a bedridden cancer patient who is kept alive less by flesh and blood than by sterile hospital equipment, a depressed person is stripped of that which makes them human: happiness, love, empathy, feeling, spirit. What's the worth of life without humanity, the simple rhythm of the heart and breath? Humanity is what we cherish above all else. Life isn't inherently beautiful; life is a constant gamble between happiness and unhappiness, and happiness is a gift.
Evidently, I've been able to get close enough to this suicide story to be able to bash my head on it rather thoroughly. This is partially due to the absence of comforting degrees of separation, and also to a new sensitivity which I attribute to my experience with debilitating depression. Eerily, sickeningly, I feel closer to this girl as a suicide victim rather than a living acquaintance, having watched her reach the end of a track upon which I barely set foot. While her friends are struggling with feelings of alienation from her, I've had the shock of realizing that we were probably much closer than I thought: and now that I'm suddenly so attracted to her, she's been permanently deleted from life. As I watched her be buried, I tilted my head for a perpendicular perspective and thought "There goes someone I should've known". I suppose this potently strange sort of loss is just another card to be dealt in this endless game of five-card-stud we play... Some fold, condemning the cards in their hand to impotence, isolation, and eternal mystery.
Then there's the selfish recoil that systematically follows the impact: take me, for example, shaking and sweating on the drive up to my boyfriend's house, unaware that I was one of the last people to hear about the suicide of his close friend, thinking that I'd have to break the news to him and having the nerve to think about how miserable that made me. I should be grateful to have been spared all but a bit of the pain that's just been unleashed. When my mom called later that day and asked how I was doing, I blankly said "Okay" while somewhere in a foggy part of my mind, I was thinking "What the hell does it matter how I'm doing? Someone else is dead." But this is the nature of the human beast, self-centered and delicate: something terrible happens and instantly we think of ourselves. When we join together in the aftermath of a suicide, holding candlelight vigils and compiling our memories, we don't act for anyone but ourselves. We embrace each other to alleviate our own grief, and when we mourn, we mourn not the pain of the dead, but our personal loss. Suicide is the most selfish act possible, and it in turn inspires great selfishness; in the end, the dead and the living turn their backs on each other, and we are farther away from the suicide victim than ever before.
When people end their lives, hardly anyone can understand how it could happen, because the equation is baffling (especially when the people in question are apple-cheeked young folk): on the one hand, there's friends and family and love and music and sunny days and laughter and the exciting promise of the future, and on the other, there's the abandonment of hope, the lonesome scary trip out of waking life, and the hellish aftershock of nausea and tears and scarring that is left behind. The choice of the latter is unfathomable to healthy humans, which is proof of good evolution. This hopeless oblivion haunts those who are close to someone that opts out of life (what's more disturbing than realizing that someone who seemed close to you was really very far away?), but the farther away from ground zero one gets, the more comforting the oblivion is. As the proverb gnomes say, "what you don't know can't hurt you". But depression taught me a very sick sensibility which led me to understand how the scales between life and suicide can start to even out. Never did mine tip critically, but being miserable generated the theory that life isn't always worth living. The trick to that equation is the element of dehumanization. For example, just like a bedridden cancer patient who is kept alive less by flesh and blood than by sterile hospital equipment, a depressed person is stripped of that which makes them human: happiness, love, empathy, feeling, spirit. What's the worth of life without humanity, the simple rhythm of the heart and breath? Humanity is what we cherish above all else. Life isn't inherently beautiful; life is a constant gamble between happiness and unhappiness, and happiness is a gift.
Evidently, I've been able to get close enough to this suicide story to be able to bash my head on it rather thoroughly. This is partially due to the absence of comforting degrees of separation, and also to a new sensitivity which I attribute to my experience with debilitating depression. Eerily, sickeningly, I feel closer to this girl as a suicide victim rather than a living acquaintance, having watched her reach the end of a track upon which I barely set foot. While her friends are struggling with feelings of alienation from her, I've had the shock of realizing that we were probably much closer than I thought: and now that I'm suddenly so attracted to her, she's been permanently deleted from life. As I watched her be buried, I tilted my head for a perpendicular perspective and thought "There goes someone I should've known". I suppose this potently strange sort of loss is just another card to be dealt in this endless game of five-card-stud we play... Some fold, condemning the cards in their hand to impotence, isolation, and eternal mystery.
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