I wrote this rant about the “Twilight Saga” (I love how they make it seem so much cooler than it really is) a long time ago (probably at around 4 AM) when I had just finished reading Breaking Dawn. Okay I admit, I didn’t get through the whole book (reasons are covered below). The utter lunacy spilling from the pages of the book forced me to stop and I read the end on wikipedia. The first time I’ve ever had to do that. ANYWAYS, I thought this rant would be interesting to post up. See if you agree!

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So I pretty just wasted about, oh I don’t know, EIGHT HOURS OF MY LIFE. And no, it was not wasted on some weird, overly-drawn out Indian movie, but on a book. Breaking Dawn to be exact.

Ok, let me rephrase. Technically, I have wasted 8345834 HOURS OF MY LIFE by reluctantly trudging through the dungpit-esque books of the “Twilight saga.” From Twilight to New Moon to Eclipse, I have dragged my self through the possibly non-existent plot in a strange love-hate relationship with the books, despising and craving at the same time. I don’t know how to describe it…it’s kinda like when you’re watching a seriously dumbtarded movie and yet you’re still compelled to watch it to the very end, only to scream in frustration and throw a hatchet at the TV monitor when you DO reach the end. (A perfect example would be this Japanese movie I watched a long time ago, where a ton of useless crap happens and then the main character dies of ovarian cancer or something.)

But dude. Woah. Breaking Dawn?

DO. NOT. WANT.

Breaking Dawn is where I had to draw the freakin LINE. Man, it wasn’t even a line. It was like the Great Wall of China with barbed wire and tasers on top. I couldn’t even finish the book. You know what I had to do? I had to go to wikipedia and read the spoilers, which is the number one thing i hate doing when it comes to reading books.

Where to start?!

First off, throughout the whole series, it pissed me off so much how

a) Bella was ALWAYS like “omfg edward so hotttt” and just wouldn’t st*u about it.

b) Bella has like seriously, NO SELF ESTEEM WHATSOEVER. “I feel like a lumpy piece of coal when I stand next to Edward.” (or something to that effect.) WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE IS SHE SENDING TO HER AUDIENCE, WHICH IS MAINLY COMPRISED OF BORDER-HORMONAL, PRE-PUBSCENT TWEENY BOPPERS THAT DRULZ AT EVERY EDWARD SPARKLE?! (Despite the fact that its “young adult fiction”.) If Bella, who is madly in LURRRVE with her “shimmery, eyed” bloodsucking stud muffin (aka Edward), keeps comparing herself to him at every chance she gets and puts herself down, how do you think young girls would feel next to their boyfriends or some guy that they deem hotter than themselves?

c) And this damsel in distress party got sooooo old. And her being all clumsy and awkward, but endearingly so. And also her being oblivious to the advances of the guys in her school, claiming that she’s just “ordinary” and “plain.” (But she is.)

d) i HATE how she led Jacob on SO MUCH. WHAT THE HAELL MAN?! During that one period Edward was gone, she literally used Jacob like a drug (I’m pretty sure she admitted herself in a chapter, in fact.) Then Edward pops out of nowhere, and its like, “o hay, lulz sry mah bad bb but ilyily!!!<33 kthxbi.” She can’t even let him go later on; every single chapter she keeps saying “But Jacob I love you so much you’re a part of me!”

SHUT UP!!!

wtfink is that even possible? What is going through Meyer’s mind?

But all this is whatever. Just nagging itches at the back of my head, compared to the asplosion of my brain cells that occurred after reading Breaking Dawn.

One, I know tthe books are young adult fiction, but honestly the REAL age group the books are attracting is again, the tweeny boppers. And Breaking Dawn, let’s just say that there are a lot of….”mature” scenes, even though the author narrates them like a prude (and I ask myself: WHY include mature scenes if you’re going to narrate them in the same way a father might have an awkward birds-and-the-bees talk with his wide-eyed son? Is the author trying to make the characters seem more “real”? There’s NOTHING real about a perfect romance with a freakin vampire.) Reading through those scenes, and trust me there are quite a few of them, just made me feel really awkward and bothered.

Also, I don’t know if it’s just me, but Stephenie Meyer seems to emphasize external beauty so much. Bella, who constantly compares herself to everyone, says she feels “sick to her stomach” when she’s in the same room as Rosalie because she is such a “knock out.” Gee, thanks for the ego boost there. Even on her wedding day, Bella is unable to look at her reflection in the mirror because she fears that it is ugly. Wouldn’t that be called some sort of body-image disorder or something!? And in the end, she becomes a vampire, through really weird and disturbing means, and at first all she can do is admire herself in the mirror and gloat that finally she feels “equal” with Edward.

Speaking of weird and disturbing, what the hell is up with the demon child sprouting up in Bella’s belly and killing her from the inside out? How can a vampire and human have a baby?! I thought vampires….nevermind. And then there’s this whole gory thing where she has to drink blood and then suddenly she starts spewing fountains of blood so finally Edward has to literally gnaw his way through Bella’s utureus to free the baby. With his teeth, since apparently vampire teeth are the only things strong enough to tear the placenta of a half-human baby.

I’m serious.

And to top it all off, the ONE character that I liked, the ONE character that made me push myself through all three and two-thirds of these books, imprints himself on a newborn (talking about Jacob here). A NEWBORN!!! THAT WILL BE IN A PERPETUAL STATE OF CHILDHOOD! Dude, now this is getting too ethically touchy. I mean…pedo, much? After I figured out that Jacob imprints himself on the baby, I shut the book and shook my fists to the heavens in despair.

And then all this useless drama happens where the Volturi are like “o noez half human demon child! must exterminate!” but Bella and the gang are like “no wai r yooh tuchin mah babi!” etc.

I must give Stephenie MEyer credit for one thing, however. She has a talent for cracked writing. Why else would I read all four books.

I need a life.

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I still feel the same way.

I have a love for simple, sweet, and funny things. Yes, I love long elaborate jokes or reading the daily life screw-ups of people on FML (which, by the way, has been blocked by the school server, and that breaks my heart), but the one thing that I love to laugh at most is a humorous diagram or picture. A picture is worth a thousand words. Most things are best coveyed in simplest terms. Unlike my last blog post (lol).

GRAPHJAM is one of my top ten websites that I visit multiple times a day. Users upload graphs that often reflect observations of life, and there is usually no actual mathematical element in the graphs. Some of the graphs are so witty and true, I just want to print them out, laminate them, and frame them. When you go to a site like graphjam.com, you realize two things:

1) There are a lot of funny people in the world.

2) There are a lot of funny people lacking lives in the world.

A few personal favorites:

I’m sorry, but…

1, 2, 3, 4…

Things Read on the Toilet

How Expensive Things were… (here’s a nice one)

How Much I want Something (LOLOLOL I cannot relate enough to this one)

Popular Colors of Residential Submarines (A perfect example of sweet simplicity)

Causes of Fire Alarm going off…. (I bet this will be me in a few years)

And here’s a real kicker:

Things My Roomates Talk about…

Have I gotten you addicted yet? I probably already have. Say good bye to those precious hours where you could be finsihing Jane Eyre annotations or getting around to those logarithm problems for math, GRAPH JAM HAS NOW ENSNARED YOU IN IT’S STICKY, GRAPHISH, APPEASINGLY-COLORFUL GRASP.

Now that we’ve established the awesomeness of graph jam, I shall proudly present my own very first work. Since we have recently finished Dracula, I thought this would be a nice finishing touch…

YAY!

- JANE

EDIT:

In dedication to our very own Office junkie, Susan:

WARNING: Extremely immature, incoherent post below. Read at your own risk; you have been warned. Patronizing/condescending/there-are-people-worse-off-than-you comments will NOT be tolerated.

No seriously, this post is pretty whiny.

Last warning.

Don’t give me crap about how I didn’t warn you and about how immature and spoiled I sound.

This post will be a stream of consciousness because I am not in the mood to think about a specific subject to talk about. Who said that that has to be a rule for blogs anyway. -_-

I understand that teachers probably do know and care more about us that we actually believe, but sometimes I think they fail to remember we have a life outside of class. I know it’s my duty as a student to meet those expectations and that I shouldn’t be complaining, but I’M GOING TO COMPLAIN ANYWAYS. Because I feel like my life right now is all messed up and confused and it’s not working out, so everyone just bear with me. (There aren’t any people who read this anyways.) Yesterday I finally slept for over 10 hours and what was my punishment for sleeping well? A project due the next class. Homework I didn’t know about. (Ok this might not make any sense to people reading this because I’m not naming any specific classes or assignments but hopefully people will know what I mean). I had a test today and I feel so stupid because I forgot to memorize certain formulas for it when I was confident that I had covered everything.I AM SO UNHAPPY RIGHT NOW. And SOMEONE will be like “Well Jane you should feel thankful that you’re attending such a nice school and living in such nice conditions blablabla” well DUH who said I wasn’t thankful?! Who said that I don’t realize how lucky i am? I do! But there are times, my friends, when you should just shut up and let people rant. We can’t live our lives in constant comparison to other’s lives. If you put it that way am I lucky compared to the billionaire stock owners on Wall Street, or to the beautiful and loved celebrities that make up 1% of the world’s population but 500% of the global media who probably eat gold for breakfast or some such thing? I guess I sound really immature right now but…if you’re already reading up to here then that means you decided to ignore the warning, and now that’s your fault. Back to my main point, I am so unhappy right now. Third quarter is always the hardest quarter. I feel my academics slipping and really i am trying my best, but I have so much going on…It sounds like another stupid excuse but it’s not. It’s just that I don’t feel like going into detail about what is going on in my life. And I try my hardest in school but I have to balance that with APs and volunteer work and tutor and eating and sleeping and breathing. Since when has our world created such high expectations of everyone. I guess some sort of qualification process is needed to lead in today’s society, but I think our current system of academics is NOT IT. It’s just stupid. ANd when you take a good look at some of the people with wealth or power or fame, you realize that education had nothing to do with it (e.g. certain presidents….cough cough just saying). Our current system of academics is basically “Just how far can go to kill yourself every night and still maintain a perfect GPA with honors and extracurriculars? Just how perfect a human can you be?” Or maybe it’s just Korean society that dictates this. Or maybe it’s just KIS society. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it is RETARDED and it is killing me. It is literally LITERALLY not figuratvely LITERALLY draining the happiness out of my life. When I shower, I can see the happiness drift down with the shampoo suds. When I wash my hands, I can feel the happiness slipping with the soap. I have no life.

Hopefully my next post won’t be as ranty as this one.

I WOULD HATE TO BE…

A goldfish. I have a goldfish swimming around in a bowl just a couple feet from me. Well rather than swim it’s more like drifting about and vacantly goggling at its distorted surrondings, but anyways. (Actually now it’s kind of freakin me out by sitting at the bottom of the bowl…how does a goldfish even manage to sit at the bottom of a bowl?!).

In the eyes of humans, especially the smallish ones with eternal sticky stains on their mouths and missing front teeth, goldfish aren’t even living organisms anymore. I even forgot that goldfish had the ability to reproduce…I had had the vague idea that they popped out of the walls of Walmart tanks or some such non-organic method of reproduction. Right now I’m watching my goldfish sleep, and it’s so awkward because I never thought about goldfish sleeping before. Don’t they just hover around until the next time you feed them?

See, this is why I would hate to be a goldfish. No one would value me for ME; I’d be just another prize at state fair or some little kid’s appeasement to his or her constant demands for “Nemo“. I would be a three week replacement until my poor little fish body wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of constant bag-shaking, glass-tapping, “FISHIE WAKE UP“-ing and pass over to Goldfish Heaven, presumably some sort of divine Japanese koi pond. (But I digress. As always.)

Goldfish are so disposable and no one even cares. Does something have a life if no one values it? So some sort of biology nerd could be like “Well, it’s breathing and eating isn’t? It’s heart is beating, isn’t? It’s excreting long strands of poo, isn’t it? Then of course it’s alive you dumb*** next question please!” Well shut up, that’s not the point. It’s kind of like that paradoxical riddle everyone asks: If a tree in the forest falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound? So I must ask the question again: If someone exists and no one really cares, is he/she really living?

In AP world history, I learned that the religion of the first agricultural settlers in the Yellow River Valley (China, for the history/geography incompetent ones out there) was based around ancestor worship. This tradition can still be seen in Confucianism today. Basically, their version of the afterlife was a vague sort of spirit world, where the souls of the deceased hung around in. Here’s the catch: The spirits of the deceased only remained in the spirit world for as long as their descendents remembered them. Once the descendants forgot about their greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat-grandfather who got lost somewhere in the family tree, his spirit would vanish forever. I don’t know about anyone else, but the thought of that made me a little sad. And I realized that that religion really reflected the basically psychology of us humans: our lives are made up of other people and our relationships with those people. Of course, above all people you need to value YOURSELF the most, self-confidence is extremelly important, but really…I don’t think I would be able to value myself if I knew that no one cared about me at all.

And now writing this blog post has made me really thankful for all the people who do care about me, my existence. My family, my friends, my teachers…I don’t need to the whole world to care about me. Because the people who do care about me care about me A LOT. Thanks everyone<3 I care about you too!

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And what the hell, I think my fish just ate it’s own poo. -_- lolol nasty creature.