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Tag Archives: idiocy

Freaking Dawn

17 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by IfByYes in TwiBashing

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

book reviews, books, Breaking Dawn, idiocy, literary criticism, literature, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

I’m not sure exactly how to review Breaking Dawn. It is like reviewing a train wreck.

I mean, I could go through it point by point and indicate everything wrong with it, but then it would look like this:

p. 6

(NB: These are the pages according to my E-reader. They may not correspond perfectly to the print book)

Preface:

It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again.

There is nothing “odd”, Bella, about death’s inevitability. Death and taxes, Bella, death and taxes.

Like I really was marked for disaster.

Bella, you are not “marked for disaster” just because you keep surviving dangerous situations. You’re goddamn lucky. 

“If you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options.”

It isn’t noble to sit there and let someone you love kill you just because you love them. You can still call the cops and then love them from effing afar. 

Also, chiming in with some hindsight glasses – given that this rant most likely pertains to your life-sucking pregnancy, this is risking your life for your child, not just letting someone you love kill you.

There is a difference. The fact that you can’t distinguish that difference is one of the many reasons why I think that you are a complete twerp.

Chapter 1:

Two pedestrians were frozen on the sidewalk, missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was gawking through the plate-glass window of his little souvenir shop.

But this is a town where the Cullens regularly drive sport cars about. Bella is supposedly driving a Mercedes Guard, but here’s the thing – the car may be a tank, but it’s not that flashy. That makes sense if you think about it – it’s meant to protect people, not look cool.

I sincerely doubt that this car is stopping pedestrians on the street and making people gawk out of shop windows. Bella is a paranoid weirdo, as usual, who thinks that everything is about her. Probably there’s a flamingo walking up the street and Bella has totally missed this bizarre occurrence because she’s such a self-obsessed whack job.

If I hadn’t been running on vapors, I wouldn’t come into town at all.

That brings up a good point. Bella, you live in small town America. If you don’t like driving your crazy new car, why don’t you walk like a normal person? You’ve obviously been driving this car, since it is “running on vapors”.

Either walk, or stop whining.

I had been going without a lot of things these days, like Pop-Tarts and shoelaces, to avoid spending time in public.

Not Pop-Tarts and shoelaces! How long-suffering is our heroine? The starving children of Africa don’t know how good they have it. If only there was someone else in the household who could do shopping, oh right, her father, but he can’t shop because he’s just a man, you know.

Of course, there was nothing I could do to make the numbers on the gauge pick up the pace. They ticked by sluggishly, almost as if they were doing it just to annoy me.

Bella, I realize you have paranoid and narcissistic tendencies, but try to get a grip. EVERYTHING is not about you.

p. 7

It was stupid to be so self-conscious, and I knew that.

Do you? Do you REALLY?

I briefly contemplated my issues with words like fiance, wedding, husband, etc. I just couldn’t put it together in my head.

I realize that it must be exhausting to try and make both neurons fire at once.

I just couldn’t reconcile a staid, respectable, dull concept like husband with my concept of Edward.

WARNING, WARNING – if you can’t imagine your intended behaving in a reliable, respectable way as a husband, then DON’T MARRY THAT PERSON. As much as teenagers want to believe that romance remains exciting forever, the fact remains that a few years down the road, it’s going to be much more important to you that your husband is the kind of guy who comes home and helps out with the dishes than whether or not he sparkles in the sunlight.

p. 8

I swiftly put away the nozzle and crept into the front seat to hide while the enthusiast dug a huge professional-looking camera out of his backpack. He and his friend took turns posing by the hood, and then they went to take pictures at the back end.

If someone is taking photos of the hood of your car, the front seat is a really stupid place to hide. Even if your side windows are tinted, the state of Washington doesn’t permit tinting on the main body of the windshield, so YOU ARE IN THOSE PICTURES. Especially since we have already established that it is “a typical drizzly day”, so the reflection of the sun won’t save you.

And missile-proof glass? Nice. What happened to old-fashioned bullet-proof?

There is no such thing as missile-proof glass, Bella, unless you count “missile” literally, meaning anything someone has thrown, like a rock or maybe a grenade. Then again, you believed that Edward was a vampire without much persuasion.

p. 9

I hadn’t seen the ‘after’ car yet. It was hidden under a sheet in the deepest corner of the Cullens’ garage. I knew most people would have peeked by now, but I really didn’t want to know.

Let’s get this straight. Your reason for not “peeking” at your gift is not because “it’s wrong to peek”, it’s because you just don’t want to know. You also think that “most people” would have peeked, which means that you either think that “most people” are bad people, or you actually don’t understand that it is wrong to peek at a gift. That makes YOU a bad person. But I knew that already.

No matter how many times I drove down the familiar road home, I still couldn’t make the rain-faded flyers fade into the background.

Are you incapable of naming a noun without slapping on an adjective? Also, why did you just use the word “fade” twice within a single word of each other? It’s called a Thesaurus, Bella. USE IT. Or even better, let the occasional noun pass undescribed. It won’t kill you.

Finally, rain doesn’t fade things, you everlasting moron. THE SUN fades things, and you’re always moaning about how little sun there is in Forks. Rain melts things, or washes them out, it doesn’t fade them. The only thing that rain can fade is radio waves. You fail at adjectives in every way possible.

He was more disappointed with Billy, Jacob’s father – and Charlie’s closest friend. For Billy’s not being more involved with the search for his sixteen-year-old “runaway.” For Billy’s refusing to put up the flyers in La Push, the reservation on the coast that was Jacob’s home. For his seeming resigned to Jacob’s disappearance, as if there was nothing he could do. For his saying “Jacob’s a grown up now. He’ll come home if he wants to.

Why are those periods there, particularly that first one, between “closest friend” and “For Billy’s”? That period should not be there. I realize, Bella, that you have a real hate on for writing normal sentences, preferring either nonsensical sentence fragments or multiple sentences that have been conjoined like Siamese twins, but this is a particularly atrocious example.

Let me play the part of editor, for a moment, since yours seems to have been on a smoke break through the publication of this entire series. Here are some ways you could have worded this in a way that didn’t suck balls and make the God of Grammar want to smite you from above:

[My father] was even more disappointed with Billy – Jacob’s father and Charlie’s closest friend – because he was not more involved in the search for his sixteen-year-old runaway. Billy refused to put up the flyers in La Push – the reservation on the coast where they lived. He seemed resigned to Jacob’s disappearance and kept saying, “Jacob’s a grown up now. He’ll come home if he wants to.

Was that so hard? Doesn’t that read better? Christ on a waffle, Bella, full sentences are your friends.

[over four hundred pages omitted for length reasons]

Continue reading →

Out, damn spot!

12 Saturday Sep 2009

Posted by IfByYes in The House Saga, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

carpets, damage deposit, idiocy, landlords, money, Perfect Husband

Early in our tenancy of our last apartment, we accidentally spilled canola oil all over the carpet, smack in the middle of the living room. Thus began the War Of The Stain. For the next year, we battled that oil stain.

We soaked up as much oil as paper towels would hold. This went on quite literally for weeks. In between paper towel changes, we attacked that stain with every method known to man.

We scrubbed it with dish soap and water, and flooded it with white vinegar.

We threw powders down to soak up the stain and then vacuumed up the powder.

We tried professional solutions from Rona.

We even rented a steam cleaner and attacked the spot, which disappeared beautifully for a little while and then, like a ghostly blood stain in a horror novel, it reappeared, dark and incriminating.

It was unsightly. It was embarrassing. After several months of scrubbing and moaning and worrying and trying new suggestions from the Internet, we covered it over with a large white rug from Ikea, and tried to forget about it. Every time we lifted it up to vacuum, I would try again, fruitlessly, to lighten the stain with more vinegar. More soapy water. More Nature’s Miracle. But nothing worked.

For 12 months, that spot’s existence laid heavy on my soul. It felt like the physical example of the things wrong in my life – my frustrations with my work, my struggle with my weight, my depression. It was all the fault of that damn spot!

Before we moved out, I insisted on hiring a professional cleaning service to clean that carpet. Perfect Husband warned me that it probably wouldn’t work and that we should just kiss our damage deposit goodbye, but I wanted to try. So we hired a carpet cleaning company… and hallelujah, the stain came out. Unfortunately, our landlord’s wife had to let the cleaners in, so she saw the stain before they could remove it.

” I was really relieved that stain came out” she said to us when we came to do the apartment inspection that night.

“So am I!” I said, “I was really worried.”

“Because that carpet was pretty new.”

“I know, it was an accident. I’m glad it came out.”

“I was really worried, you know. Because that carpet was pretty new.”

“Yeah… I know.”

Our relief lasted three days, until we started getting calls from our landlord (whom we unaffectionately nicknamed Semen Breath for no particular reason).  The stain had returned, and further attempts by the cleaners (free of charge) had not been successful.  I was always apologetic, but they wanted to speak to my husband about it. The SB family has always persisted in dealing with my husband, since my husband is clearly The Man Of The House and thus in charge of all financial decisions. However, Perfect Husband, being a banker, can’t just pick up his cell phone in the middle of the work day the way I, as a dog trainer, can. We have told them this many times. But would they deal with me? No.

Whenever Perfect Husband called back they were out, so he left messages indicating that they could take the damage deposit if they needed to. Mrs. SB called again today. Twice. Wanting to talk to my husband. I left her a message saying (again) that they could take it from our damage deposit. When she caught him home, my husband’s side of the conversation went like this:

“I’m not sure what else there is to say… I’ve already said in my messages that you can keep our damage deposit if you need to…

“…I’m sorry to hear that. Well, obviously you have to do what you have to do…

“…Yes, well, you have our damage deposit. If you need to take more of it, then you need to take more of it. We understand that we are financially obligated to let you keep that money to repair…

“…Well… if that’s the case, I’m sorry to hear that, but we are only financially responsible for the amount of our damage deposit…

“…No, it was not pet related, so you can’t actually take it out of our pet deposit. That is a separate deposit and you cannot legally take it for damages not related to the pets…

“…If that ends up being the case, I’m sorry to hear that. But you can only charge us for the damage deposit. We are only financially responsible for up to that amount…

“…As I’ve said, if you need to keep our damage deposit, we understand and you have the legal right to do so…

“…No, we can’t give you more money than that. We gave a damage deposit…”

and so on.

They still insisted on meeting with him in person. He tried to get them to stop into my work on Monday, where I could easily put a dumbbell down for five seconds to sign a release of our damage deposit, but of course my signature isn’t worth anything, because I’m just a woman. So he has to go in to them tomorrow, and fight with them further about the extra money. I’ve added it up, and they have called us like fifteen times over the last week, and we keep telling them the same thing. At what point does this become harassment?

Owning property has its pains, but I am very glad I will never have to deal with landlords again.

Or that damn spot.

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