As the latest installment in the Twilight saga, New Moon is in the theaters and already has been making Summit Entertainment $481 million in just two weeks, a big rumour is floating around that the final part in the series will be split into two movies. Happy news for the Twilight fans as they will be able to see more of the characters they have come to love.

According to the rumor they want Chris Weitz – the director of New Moon – to direct the final part back to back. Another big expense for Summit to make this happen would be to sign the actors and actresses to make the last one into two movies. They are only signed on for four movies.
As the Twilight Saga goes so well in the theaters, I don’t think there will be a problem to land them even if it’s 8-figures we’re talking.

Summit Entertainment would also have to get an approval for them author, Stephenie Meyer to be able to do so.

I still haven’t seen any of the Twilight movies – am I missing something big here?

Hier haben wir einen weiteren ‘Trailer’ zu New Moon. Allerdings wird dieses Video als Werbung in den USA ausgestrahlt .

Oh yes. You don’t need glasses, you’re not going blind, it really says “Twilight goodness”. (Though for not updating this one for so long, I should be forced to read the entire series. Not a saga, Goddamnit.)

This is the goodness I was talking about. Ah, I love Sparknotes. They made this guy read the series and write blog entries on it, and his comments are great. You’ll never see soup the same way again!

Also, These girls earn the Grandpa Badge of Slayage for their burnin’ hot slayage of Twilight. There’ll be tears in your eyes, I tell you. It will be beautiful.

(And I know this wasn’t strictly LB, but hey, after the blog below on Warner Bros’ horrific decision to reference Sata-I mean…SMeyer… we need a chuckle. At Twilight’s expense.)

So I went and saw The Twlight Saga: New Moon, and I’ve read all the books. Not just because I have kitschy taste (although I often do), but because when I’m speeding down the 405 and a cop car with lights flashing starts weaving back and forth in front of us to slow down the flow of traffic, I tend to think it’s foolhardy to just keep motoring along like nothing’s happened. I keep an eye out for the car wreck that I would otherwise have slammed into.

I can’t say New Moon was very good.  Parts of it annoyed me.  Here’s some of them.

1. Jacob’s teeth.

It’s an old, old convention: the vampires are the aristocrats, the werewolves are the working-class salt of the earth. Seen Underworld? It’s just that in most versions of the convention, both are white folks and so it’s a class thing more than a race thing. I’m shocked that everyone went ballistic over the racial stereotyping embodied by Jar Jar Bing in that George Lucas movie but no one remarks upon how the poor, slovenly Redskins play the canine protectors of the white girl and her kin. With their little disheveled shacks and fixer-upper cars and trash everywhere, they’re like the janitors or security guards of the Monster world.

It’s weird, how the movie essentializes these roles. Vampires are made, but werewolves are born. And while vampires are refined and deft at self-control, the werewolves can only barely discipline their natures—they’re more like animals, prone to erupting into fur and teeth whenever they lose their tempers. “Don’t make me angry! You don’t want to see me angry!” In both the book and the film, too, one of the conflicts between Bella and Jacob emerges over his inability to tell her he’s a werewolf because Alpha Dog (Sam) has forbidden it . . . and werewolves can’t defy Alpha, even when they want to. While you’ve got a slew of Cullen bloodsuckers who elect to go vegetarian and, miraculously, succeed, those poor Indian werewolves can’t elect to do anything. That’s just their nature.

In any case, poor Jacob—too uneducated and culturally innocent to know he doesn’t have a chance against privileged, refined white boy Edward. The rich kids always get the girl (or boy). Always. It’s a marriage plot, after all, this whole Twilight saga. And we all know from our Jane Austen novels that the pretty people will marry the rich people. No matter how smart or spunky or iconoclastic Bella may be, she’s going to go for the owner of the nice big house on the hill. With loads of money. And nice cars. And good taste in music. She may play around with the red boy in the white boy’s absence, but when old whitey returns then red boy is history.

Stephanie Meyer tries to mute this classicism/racism by making Jacob younger (thus the cougar jokes), giving him bleached teeth (because without cosmetic dentistry the class divide is too obvious), and playing up the mythic love element of Edward and Bella’s fated chemistry, but still . . . she chose to make the “wet dogs” (which is what Alice calls Jacob at one point) impoverished Injuns. It’s kind of creepy.

2. Cullen family politics.

Bella demands that the Cullens vote on whether or not she should be made into a vampire. When it’s time for Carlisle to weigh in, he announces patronizingly, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to lose my son. Edward, I will not have you suicidal again over the possible death of Bella. I vote yes.” The wise Carlisle has spoken. Fine. The thing that makes me crazy about this dynamic is how inconsistently the movie portrays the maturity of its vampires. Is Edward 109 or not? And if he is – why is Carlisle talking to him and about him like he’s a teenager?

At casa Cullens, all these 100+-year-old vampire “children” revel in acting obnoxiously immature.  The big one—Emmet—wears a sideways baseball cap, for goodness sake! He’s about 80 years old and wears a sideways baseball cap like to the manor born. I don’t buy for one minute that it’s a self-aware stab at fooling mortals into thinking he’s only 18. He wears it like he means it.  And coven politics aside, I think at about 80 you should start acting and thinking like a bona fide grown-up no matter how much older than you your father is. Carlisle and Esme are not parents, even. They’re just older vampires, like 200 years older. At what point is age just a number? Only when the 109-year-old Edward wants to bed an 18-year-old girl, I guess.

3. Bella’s grief.

It probably says more about me than Bella, but my favorite part of the book was her grief. It fascinated me. I’ve been through the ringer, and while at one point (or mor than one), I may have worried that I wasn’t going to make it, deep down I knew I would.  And I’m talking about major loss—like years and years of intimacy down the tubes, child-rearing together, or being so connected to somebody that I can’t breathe without thinking about him.  And yet in each case, I dealt. Not Bella. Nope. She’s been with Edward (without sex, mind you!) for all of, what, 1.5 years, and upon his departure she collapses in the woods in order to die of exposure until one of those redskin canines finds her and carries her home to Daddy. Then she sits in front of the window for months—literally, months, the subtitles read from September to February–staring into space like she’s just not going to make it. What a cheap way to convey love and grief. Complete immobilization. Why not have her read some poetry?  Take up painting? Drinking? Talk to a friend? Learn something, anything, from the experience? Something a little less passive? Nope. There she is, bottomed out with grief, waiting to die.

Until she discovers that by actually courting death she can “summon” Edward’s voice. Cut me a break. It’s the unhealthiest, most self-indulgent fantasy of grief I’ve ever seen: “I’m going to suffer so deeply and be so suicidal that my ex-lover will sense my proximity to death and therefore try to recall me back from the brink, because in truth he really does still love me, even though he threw me away.” As if. Somebody needs to make a satire wherein when Bella goes racing headlong toward a tree on her new motorbike, there’s a spectre of Edward beside her not pleading with her to stay safe, but laughing his ass off at how pathetic she is.

Oh, wait, I forgot: Edward abandoned Bella because he loves her so damn much. Right. Never mind.

4. Bella’s rebound.

I’m not a huge fan of Jacob—his teeth are too white and, until he crops his hair, his extensions are too annoying—but he deserves better than this rebound shit that Bella pulls on him. In effect, she uses Jacob to get over Edward, then dumps Jacob as soon as Edward reappears. And we’re supposed to think it’s cool because it’s in the name of Mythic Love. Which may be it is. And, okay, so maybe she and Edward belong together. But somebody, somewhere in the movie world should at least acknowledge that using your best friend in this manner is not cool. She should at least apologize. Instead, it’s all part of the vanity game: oh, look how cool and irresistible Bella is, what with TWO monsters in love with her. And Stephanie Meyer has the gall to represent Bella as completely unaware of this vanity game. “Who, little old me with the cutely arched eyebrows, adored by not one but TWO monsters? I just don’t know why or how that happened!” I’ll tell you why and how, Bella. You spent every afternoon of the week with the boy you know has had a crush on you since you were ten, all the while perfectly aware that he had a crush on you, but also all the while choosing to ignore this fact because you were too absorbed in your own pain to give a shit. The fact that you’re pretty and act super-nice, with that self-deprecating false modesty where you shrug your shoulders all the time, does not entitle you to cause unnecessary heartbreak.

5. Werewolf transformation.

Watch closely when Jacob becomes a werewolf. He’ll be running along in his cut-offs and then suddenly he’s a naked wolf. What happened to his clothes? Like I said, watch closely: they disintegrate into a cloud of little blue denim bits that hover around his face for a second like a swarm of indigo flies before evaporating into thin air. Annoying. And we never do get to see Jacob when he returns to human form without shorts on. It’s a rip-off. And that’s not just a pun.

PARAMORE v. TAYLOR SWIFT

http://fairtilizer.com/track/66287

-frail.limb.purity

I made a vow to myself today; to update this blog on a daily basis – no more of this half-assed stuff.

Let’s start this out right. I have a confession to make. Yes, I seem to make a lot of those –but who’s counting. I watched New Moon last night for the second time. But I was sneaky sneaky…I found a copy to watch online. Sure the picture quality wasn’t that great – darks were really dark and whites were blindingly bright – but the sound was great and it served its purposed! Saved me from going to the theatre alone, and saved me ten bucks!

Now the truth: Remember that good old saying “sometimes the truth hurts”? Well, it does. As I was watching and “rewinding” the movie to various parts I felt a twinge of remorse for not thoroughly enjoying the movie. Maybe it will grow on me. Or maybe that twinge will change when I have the DVD and can gaze at it without giving myself a splitting headache from watching it as a streaming video – but regardless, Twilight; as of this moment to me is better. New Moon has awesome effects, and beautiful colors – but the score in the background is annoying and in all the wrong places. It’s lacking the luscious close-ups of my beloved Edward Cullen. That’s the underlying deal breaker, I can feel it. I know he doesn’t play a major role in this chapter of the Saga – but damn I missed that face!

And so the story goes….we’ll see what happens next.

Oh boy. I really don’t know where to begin.  The Twilight series of books and now accompanying films are a genuine global phenomenon, and it is almost enough to make me give up on the world altogether.  Okay, that’s unfair, as there are plenty of cultural touch points that are just as bad and befuddling in their popularity (Dan Brown, Transformers, and The Hills come to mind).  Still, there’s something insidious about the enterprise that just feels worse in some way.  The writing in the books (of what little I have read, anyway) is appalling, and I can’t help but feel that an entire generation is getting dumber for reading them.  At least with Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks it’s a more adult demographic, meaning that an awful lot of people are already lost.  Stephanie Meyer’s series is directed at tweens and teens, however, and I worry that it might stunt their growth.  Only time will tell, and that’s literature anyway, which isn’t my area in the first place.  Based on the two films so far, however, I wonder if they’re not just feeding a generation of emotional idiots, but actually creating them.

To recap the first in the series, boring, annoying, drippy Bella (played by a comatose Kristen Stewart) moves to a small, foggy town.  She’s something of an outsider and has to negotiate the difficulties of adjusting to a new life in a new school, which isn’t easy for her.  After all, it takes about ten minutes into her first day for a group of loving, really friendly peers to take her into her group, after which she’s forced to fight the eternal struggle to be as callous, condescending, and dismissive of them as possible.  It is not an easy trick to pull off, as they find no fault with her and are continually supportive through everything.  High School is never a cakewalk.  She becomes obsessed with a family of pale-faced loners, and one in particular:  the intense(ly bland) Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson as a humourless, self-important bore.  They begin an epic romance that can only be had by people who are entirely without personalities and interests.  That’s basically it, really, as the first film is a meandering and structureless mess, directed with professional indifference by Catherine Hardwicke.

New Moon picks up where Twilight left off, with Bella and Edward still in the most boring ‘epic’ romance of all time.  Every time they kiss they moan and grumble in either orgasmic delight or terrifying sadness, I can’t tell which.  They cannot consummate their love, of course, because in Twilightland, ever man is an uncontrollable beast who will ravish you if you don’t push them away fast enough.  Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile, presumably in under two seconds given their speed.  Instead of passionate lovemaking, they’ve decided to fill their time disproving Schopenhauer by demonstrating that the fulfillment of desire does not lead to boredom, but that it is the desire itself that is boredom.  I hope the third part consists of them writing down their findings and then climaxing with a blood-curdling peer-review process, but I digress.  So the two lovebirds continue on, never really asking about each other’s days but rather greeting each other with some variation on ‘Hey!  If I’m not with you, I’ll KILL myself!’ because that is just how epic their love is.  A problem arises when one of Edward’s brother’s tries to eat Bella, and instead of working this out like normal people, Edward dumps Bella and runs off to be alone.  Now, you’d expect a piece of horror fantasy to exploit this post-breakup situation by using the tropes of a well loved genre to metaphorically explore the emotional fallout, the Buffy did or the way even these films do to advance their abhorrent, backwards morality.  Something along those lines would be far too interesting and entertaining for New Moon, which instead just shows Bella sitting in a chair catatonic for months, her depression occasionally punctuated by laughable night terrors.  She briefly becomes an adrenaline junkie before attempting to move on with Jacob (Taylor Lautner, who at least attempts a smile on occasion, thus giving him the lead-character charisma award), an old friend and eventual werewolf who builds motorcycles.  The film trundles forward as we watch Bella shamelessly use the poor kid for his affection, as her approximation-of-a-heart lies elsewhere, and thus the love triangle consists of a line segment and a sad, pathetic dot hovering off to the side.

Chris Weitz, responsible for my much-beloved About a Boy and the mediocre mess that was The Golden Compass (based on an infinitely greater book series for teens, I should add) is slightly more interested in the material than his predecessor, helped in no small part by a significantly larger budget.  Still, very little can be done with the wretched source material, and the screenplay itself is so dull it’s hard to truly blame the performers for being unable to infuse their parts with anything approaching humanity, even if they are the undead.  In fairness to Weitz, there is a fairly entertaining sequence involving a Thom Yorke song and a chase through the woods, which is well shot and cut together, and helped in no small part by its utter lack of dialogue.  Beyond that, the film lies on the screen as lifeless as its love interest.  It opens with a cheap framing device that should pique the viewer’s interest in what happens, but only serves to remind us that, ninety minutes in, we still have another act to go.

All in all, it is a terrible viewing experience.  Boring when it’s not outrageously cringeworthy, it is a film that only exists because of its brand popularity.  The appeal of the love story must be in its dumbfounded nothingness, allowing teenagers to put themselves in the empty space that is Bella and be swept away by a powerful force of nothing.  Edward is not challenging in any way, for what might give him personality might take away his mythic mystique, and the appeal is not for an actual romance but rather a superbeing choosing an average girl and raising her to the level of special by association.  You can blame the success of a lot of numbskull blockbusters on 13-year-old boys, but in so doing you must blame the success of The Twilight Saga on 13-year-old girls.  Neither assessment is particularly fair, however.  Shit, after all, is not gender specific.

-M

another Manny Pacquiao Twilight pic via Facebook.

if it’s a fight between Team Pacman and Team Edward,
I’d go for Pacman of course! lol (sorry Twilighters..)

Affordable Finds: These looks from Max & Cleo are a great way to look chic on the cheap. Available at Twilight.

Ruching on the bust line and an empire waist line with a bubble hem make this the perfect little black dress! Great cocktail dress for a night out on the town. Accessorize with bold jewelry to dress this piece up or pair with a shawl or cropped cardigan to have a dressed down look.

This long-sleeve V-neck sweater dress offers a flattering vertical-striped skirt. Pair with tights and boots for a perfect Fall look.

I’ve just read a fascinating post about New Moon, the newest in the Twilight establishment. Someone’s looked at the relationship the two main characters have through the lens of domestic abuse. There are fifteen signs that the National Domestic Violence Hotline regards as a signal that you may be in an abusive relationship. Answering ‘yes’ to even one of the fifteen questions is  a bad sign. Bella would have fifteen ‘yeses’. An excerpt:

Has your partner…
* Tried to isolate you from family or friends.
Bella doesn’t have time for anyone else!

* Damaged property when angry (thrown objects, punched walls, kicked doors, etc.).
Check.

* Pushed, slapped, bitten, kicked or choked you.
Does tossing her through a glass table count?

* Abandoned you in a dangerous or unfamiliar place.
“We’re breaking up. And I’m leaving you in the forest.”

* Scared you by driving recklessly.
Check.

* Forced you to leave your home.
She had to run away with him to flee from the other vampires in the first movie, and she had to drop everything and run to Italy in the second.

* Prevented you from calling police or seeking medical attention.
Check. Even in the hospital, nothing is a big deal.

The compete list is here. I also found a list on Wired’s Underwire blog of 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn from Twilight, which are in a similar vein. I understand that some of the situations in the film arise as a result of the fantasy/vampire theme, and as such probably shouldn’t be classed as abusive. That said, I saw the first movie and have to say that I think 14-year-old girls need a better role model than a girl with no ambitions other than pleasing her (abusive vampire) boyfriend. Maybe that women’s studies course taught me something after all…

Here are some of the main charactors…

Edward Cullen: Robert Pattison

Belle swan: Kirsten Stewart

Charlie Swan: Billy Burke

Renee Cullen : Sarah Clarke

Emmet Cullen: Kellan Lutz

Alice Cullen: Ashley Greene

Esme Cullen: Elizibeth Reaser

For Christmas this year I would like:

•  A Lamborghini Murcielago LP650-4 Roadster
• An African Elephant
• £1,000,000,000,000 (That’s an English billion)
• Snow on Christmas Day
• A Puggle (Pug/Beagle)
• An Alaskan Malamute
• Taylor Lautner
• An ability such as flight/teleportation/telekinesis
• Someone to do all my uni work for me, and get really good marks
• Tickets to the Twilight Saga: Eclipse premiere
• Houses in London, New York, Orlando, San Diego, Tokyo, anywhere in Kenya, Beijing
• blink-182
• Someone to love

Please?

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for.

Thanks.

Hayley
xxx

Have a Christmas song. The Pogues and Kirsty McColl – Fairytale of New York ♫ http://blip.fm/~h3p38 Enjoy!

One day every semester the IDS Opinion page pretends we’re The Onion and produces a fake news page. Because we’re original, we call it The Radish.

IU Freshman and eternal vampire Derrick Hardy was rejected last night when he attempted to seduce mortal sophomore Ashley Smith. Hardy was surprised at the response, having assumed his vampirism to lead to instant action. “I re-enrolled in college specifically to hook up with undergrads. I’m immortal. Why else would I spend thousands of dollars in tuition? I have seven doctorates now.”

Hardy played everything by the book, specifically the Stephanie Meyer series. Despite recreating the exact habits and activities of erotic-fantasy character Edward Cullen, Hardy has had little luck winning over mortal women. Smith woke up in her room two nights ago to find Hardy standing in the corner, staring intently at her. “He was just standing there like some reject mannequin and when I asked him what the hell he was doing in my room, he looked like he was about to throw up. Then he threw up.”

Hardy expressed a severe devotion to Ashley. Not one of love and care but a barely controllable, never-ending desire to eat her. Upon realizing Derrick’s intentions, Smith instantly rejected the idea. “Look, there are a lot of bonuses to dating a 17-year old with a personality from the 1920s; the idea they have of women as second class citizens, they sparkle in the sunlight like a survivor from a glitter factory explosion, and he’ll likely kill me in a blood rage if we ever have sex.  But Derrick’s not that good looking. If you can take the personality of a serial killer but place him in a model’s body, we have a deal.”

As Hardy slinked home through the shadows he reflected on his strategy. “I was reading up on this Nosferatu fellow. Might look into that.”

Robert Pattinson is reportedly in talks to appear in a Twilight spin off TV show.

It’s claimed the British heartthrob will receive up to £1 million per episode he stars in.

Filmmakers behind the series are keen to cash in on the success of the movies and get the characters on the small screen.

There are also rumours that Kristen Stewart could sign up for the Twilight TV show for a similar pay deal.

Vampires already feature heavily on US screens with both True Blood and The Vampire Diaries watched by millions.

Twilight bosses will be hoping their huge cinema success can work on TV too!

Mtv.co.uk

f you were one of the first to see “New Moon” on November 20th, then you might have seen some of the blunders throughout the movie.  So far, fans of the growing franchise have pointed out roughly 22 errors in the film, and they’re just getting started. Here’s what they’ve found: Continuity: When Alice is driving Bella to the Volturi, she is wearing a headscarf and sunglasses. During the scene the way the headscarf is tied changes; the size and shape of the knot (and the colours on the knot) are different. Continuity: In the last scene when Jacob confronts Edward and Bella. Edward’s hair is it’s usual poofed up, uncombed look but after Bella separates Jacob and Edward and Jacob runs off, when the camera is back on Edward, his hair is flat and neatly combed, then within a few seconds it’s back to its uncombed look.

Revealing: Just as Jacob enters Bella’s room through the window, a stunt prop – white band on his right wrist – is briefly visible.

Continuity: When Alice is driving Bella to the Volturi, she is wearing a headscarf and sunglasses. During the scene the way the headscarf is tied changes; the size and shape of the knot (and the colours on the knot) are different.

Continuity: When Charlie is talking to Bella at her truck about her going back to Jacksonville, the large wisps of hair on Bella’s left ear keep changing position and alternate from not / blowing in the wind.

Continuity: When Bella is at the cafeteria table with Mike and he is asking her to the movies her hair keeps moving from behind her ear to hanging, and back again.

Visible crew/equipment: In the very last scene, right before the ultimatum, if you look into the tail lights on Edward’s car you can see various members of the crew reflected.

Continuity: When Alice jumps over the staircase in school to wish Bella happy birthday, between shots during the scene the positioning of the decorated scarf around her neck varies.

Continuity: When Jacob first shows off his tattoo, it is up at the top of his shoulder. Then when he is in the forest at the end with Bella and Edward, his tattoo is about 2 inches further down his arm.

Factual error: In the main title when the giant new moon appears on the screen the shadow fades over the moon from right to left when it should actually fade from left to right. The moon travels around the earth clockwise. The waning moon should turn to a new moon, not the waxing which is shown.

Continuity: In the scene where Bella is in the meadow talking to Laurent, Bella’s hair is at first straight and then in the next scene it is wispy and pushed back and then it is straight again.

Continuity: After Bella awakes from the first nightmare, we see her Romeo and Juliet book on the pillow beside her. When Charlie brings in her presents the book is gone, but then reappears on the pillow between shots.

Did you notice any of these? source.

No surprise. I didn’t enjoy New Moon movie all that much :-|

OK, the movie is better than Twilight, no doubt about that. I have expected this actually. Because I really didn’t enjoy reading New Moon. I skipped a lot of pages in the book. I just like Bella and Edward. That’s all. That is why I don’t like New Moon.

Just now, in the movie, I just enjoyed watching Mr L closed his eyes, as if he was falling asleep and also eating popcorn.

So, actually, it’s not the movie. It is me. I am the one who dislikes New Moon storyline. I just want to watch Bella and Edward, NOT because they are great, perfect or whatsoever and no, I don’t think Edward is cute in any way. But he is kind of good looking but not the type of guy to be “worshiped” by girls all over the world. Heh

Beyond all doubt, the movie was a 3 out of 5. Minus the fact that I don’t like the storyline. So, I won’t really stop you if you want to go. It depends on your taste.

Last night’s sleepover was very funny. I bullied people, as usual. Touching them here and there. Kelly was yelling like crazy and I think Su Yin almost cried because she was so scared by me. But I really feel bad for making her angry last night. I thought she wouldn’t take it seriously

Really, I really appreciate the fact that they came and accompany me throughout the night. Very nice of them. But I did a terrible mistake for giving them wrong info about the traffic light just now when they wanted to go back to college. Again, I feel very bad I hope they won’t be mad at me for too long…

We woke up at around 9:00am, I think. I was the second last person to wake up. I was very sleepy! We all got ready and I took them to Mr Kaya to have late breakfast.

After that, they went to college and I went back home to get ready to go out with Mr L. He came around 20minutes later and we went to 1 Utama. Didn’t really manage to be on time for the tickets I booked at TGV Cinemas, so we just watched the 1:30pm show at GSC.

Had 30 minutes before the movie started. Walked around for a while, bought food and drinks and went in. The movie took AGES to start! Lots and lots of advertisements! I am starting to hate GSC and like Cathay instead. Cathay doesn’t really have a lot of advertisements. Or maybe it was just me who came in late, I don’t know

After the movie, we checked out some running shoes for him and hehe, I have a secret plan to do for him No! Not going to buy him running shoes. But something else. Hehe. Just a plan! Can’t do the plan without money though! *sigh*

Then, we went to eat at Burger King, again. The one in Extreme Park.  Gosh, we ate at Burger King 2 times in 7 days! I am starting to feel fatter already!

Oh yeah, there was a spider in my car and I actually cried because he actually kind of scared me with orders like: PUT YOUR HAND ON THE SPIDER!!

AND, he didn’t let me to move away from the spider! How cruel, right? He wanted me to get over my fear. Like, WHAT!? NO WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Really, I have this phobia towards spiders. Not the normal “spiders-are-disgusting” fear, but I seriously can’t tolerate with spiders, at all! Doesn’t mean that I kill them though. I just can’t be near them! My heart goes faster and I sweat everytime a spider comes near me. Urgh. Just thinking about it makes me go all weird. There’s a story behind my phobia but maybe I will tell it some other time…

Went home at around 6:00pm. Went straight to Sorfina’s house because it was getting dark and I so don’t want to be alone at home when it is dark! And guess what? I was so sleepy that I managed to fall asleep immediately after I lied down on Sorfina’s bed. I like the environment in her room just now. It was raining and her fan was so fast, it felt like I was sleeping at the beach! Seriously. It was cool, but not cold. It was warm, but windy. And being in her comforter made that all turned into perfection! Me likey!

I have a project due this Friday. A presentation on Thursday, and another one on Friday. And not to forget, another Islamic Studies test tomorrow! I am so dead. OH! And Malaysian Studies test on Friday. Really, I am toasted :-| I don’t know if I will survive or not. I just hope that I will at least pass Malaysian Studies so that I won’t have to repeat it!

Hmm. I am starting to panic now. Just realized just how in trouble I am right now! I should stop blogging, right?

Oh well, overall, it was a good day minus some misfortunes here and there. Sorry to my friends because I can be a total pain in the ass sometimes Trying to change that.

ps; you make me happy in the weirdest way : )

xoxo, Fanah.

Morning!

How did you sleep? Hopefully better than me! Work was haunting my slumber and I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. Grrr! I’m going to pretend to be well rested this morning and hopefully all the sleep I got over the long weekend will catch up with me!

I tried a new method of preparing my oatmeal this morning. Instead of boiling water, adding oats and then toppings last, this morning I put everything on the stove at once:

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 banana
• 2 heaping tsps pom
• 1 tsp ground flax

Stir, stir, stir. The final product:

Obvi added some brown suga and PB on the side. These oats were much thicker, creamier and stickier than my usual oats.  Really different, but I liked it.

I also had some TJ’s Pomegranate Green Tea and enjoyed breakfast while reading. YES, I know, so late, but I’m jumping on the “Twilight” bandwagon. I was tired of hearing all the fuss about the series and the hot vampire. When I interned in Austin, I heard a lot about Twilight from Lindsay, I think she was kinda obsessed.  

Lunch is a big ole salad and a pear:

The salad has all kinds of goodies: hard-boiled egg, garbonzo beans, tomato, avocado, asiago cheese, hummus and balsamic. I THINK that’s it.

I’m going to hit the gym after work, so I’m going to try to wait to have a snack until I get home.

Have a good morning! Time for worky.

Twi-hards, brace yourself for details about a fifth Twilight movie: Following in the footsteps of the Harry Potter blockbuster franchise, the Twilight movies may double down on the final installment in the series. In its first two weeks, New Moon, the sec

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Oh, I want to let everyone know that today I pretended to be an American. Yes, that’s right after 4 months of pretending, to the best of my abilities, to be Japanese, I broke down and indulged in my natural-born tendencies to bring American culture wherever one goes. Today, I went to McDonalds. While I had vowed, at the onset of my journey, never to darken the doorstep of the golden arches, Rebecca and I ventured into America’s favorite fast food chain to taste their wares, purely for empirical studies. We both ordered quarter pounders with cheese (if you’ve chatted with me anytime in the past few months you know my cravings for meat and cheese are overwhelming and have not been sufficiently quenched) with diet cokes (if you say one word about carcinogens I’ll club you to death and soak you in diet coke– it’s less sweet than regular coke and I find the taste quite appealing). The entire meal was 590 yen each (about $6)– not bad. When they handed us our tray, both of us were astounded at the size of the fries– we are in Japan, after all, two large and loud Americans in an extremely space conscious society– the fries were the size of MEDIUM fries in America. I’ve never seen so many fries in front of me in this nation. And, dear lord, they were delicious. The quarter pounder is celebrating it’s first anniversary in Japan so there were posters all over the place and we opted for the celebrated burger over something more “Japanese” like the McPork or the Teriyaki Burger. The quarter pounder had double the cheese of an American QP and the meat had more pepper. The first bite sent chills down my spine as I re-lived years scarfing down cheeseburgers in the States. I greedily alternated between perfectly cooked fries and my burger dripping in cheese and katsup gobbling quick to prevent my food from cooling. I was back in America and loving it. There were two things that reminded me I was still in Japan: 1. the drink I received was drastically reduced in size (their drinks are all tiny here… I don’t know I haven’t seen Japanese people dropping on the streets from dehydration. At the same time, they do drink frequently and eat liquidy foods — lots of tea, soup, and one vending machine per every 23 people). 2. the trash can which was in my peripheral vision as I scarfed was more complicated than my washing machine with a place for liquids to be deposited, and specifics bins for each possible variation in recycling and disposal. After our deliciously American meal, Becca and I walked to the cinema to check on the times To-Wi-i-Li-i-To was showing. American christmas music was playing over the loudspeaker, as we checked the times. It happened to be the first of the month (60 days until someone turns 21…the official countdown has begun) which means a discount on tickets! Japan takes their cinemas very seriously which can been seen in the outrageous price of watching a film (although, America is catching up quickly). Without discount of any sort, a movie ticket is 2000 yen ($20, okay more like $22 since the dollar is dropping drastically as I type). But the theatre offers various ways to lower that price. For instance, the usual discounts, for students (1800 yen), children (1500 yen), elderly (1500 yen) ect… but there are also others: every Wednesday is ladies day (1000 yen), their are couple’s days and elderly couples days once a month (1000 yen each) and the first of every month (1000 yen). Plus, and this is a real puzzler, the late show (usually starting around 10PM) is cheaper than the early after noon shows.  So we arrived 20 minutes prior to the next showing of Twilight and perused the stand in the lobby which sells movie memorabilia. After waiting for 15 minutes or so in the lobby, contemplating jazz, I hear our show called over the loud speaker indicating that we can go into the theatre. You are called and then you enter within a 15 minute time span– once the previews have started you’re not allowed to go in. Also seats are assigned; when you pay for your ticket you also choose your seats on a seating chart. I always sit in the middle middle (so the actors look right into my eyes… that’s not really the reason, I think being in the middle allows for enjoying the full screen without a bias to the left or right) and am able to pick the perfect middle middle seats. There are “couple’s seats” on the sides which are red instead of black and do not have a troublesome middle armrest which so many teens and tweens on dates curse as they try to navigate the blockade between eager blossoming bodies. There are luxury chairs which resemble Laz-y-boys more than theatre seats and offer the option of semi-reclining bliss. Then there are the regular seats which offer extraordinary leg room and a coat hanger on the seat in front of you.

As we filled into the theatre and found our seats, Becca casually mentioned that she hoped the movie was in English. A wave of panic grabbed at my frontal lobe as I considered the probability that it would be dubbed in Japanese and my options when confronted with Japanese vampires and wolverines. My Japanese is coming along, I can stumble along in a conversation with classmates peppering my Japanese with high-pitched cries of “so desu ne,” “kawaii,” and “sugoi” and American words pronounced with Japanese flair. I can manage to follow along in my Japanese lecture classes by using the pictures in power points and occasionally prodding  Becca for a translation. I can even manage to watch some Japanese dramas as they use many of the same phrases in their dialogue. But, I couldn’t possible follow along in a movie which has colorful words and phrases like “vampire,” “damnation,” “pale-faced,” and “You’re my only  reason for being alive, if that’s what you call this.” Also, I’ve never read those books; I grew up reading Harry Potter and feel that Twilight is for the new generation, not mine, so even if watching it in English I would have questions as to what the hell was going on. My plan, if the feature was in Japanese, was vacillating between sneaking into another show or taking a nap. I watched the previews (which are quite frequently my favorite part of theatre going) uneasily weighing my options. On a side note (since I never do side notes ^.~), Up or Uncle Carl’s Flying House, as it’s titled in Japan, is opening soon in 3-D which would be neat to see. For anyone who hasn’t seen Up, please go see it. It’s lovely and IMDB named it one of the top 15 movies of the new millennium.  Why is there this trend in animation that’s not just for children and has deep existential themes? Dunno, but I’m enjoying it. Back to the main story, I watched the previews reminiscing over my years spent in dark theatres. I have been raised by the cinema, literally. Because of that, I think I live in the realm of the unreal. But when the movie’s reel started running through the projector and I heard the first words in English my heart was light.

I won’t bore you with the details of the actual movie. My mother made me watch the first one over the summer; she has this obsession with fluffy, romantic-comedy, supernatural, or Austin-esque movies (not films, note) which I occasionally join her in viewing. Her netflix account is riddled with cheese while I like to keep my well-groomed with pretentious and obscure foreign films from the 1960’s. So watching New Moon (part two of the twilight “saga”) was comforting like getting a warm hug from my mother even if it did include overly dramatic moody emo vampires with hairy chests, way too creamy buff sweet talking werewolves, and a dumb-ass Juliet of the 2k9.

Seriously, some of the dialogue made me chortle but I do wonder how this is affecting the youth. I know for a fact that my obsession with the realm of fantasy and fiction has done strange things to my loosening grasp on reality. I grew up ensconced in a celluloid world and one filled with elves, deamons, ninjas, moon princesses, and supernatural powers. I was terrified of walking down hallways alone as I was sure some evil being (generally a ninja… maybe that stems from my power ranger’s addiction at an early age) would attack me. I grew up knowing I would transform into some sort of magical being when I turned 14. After puberty came and went, I went into a depression upon realizing that magic just did not exist in the world. I blame most of my teenage angst not on hormones (although they certainly did nothing to help) but on my fascination with the other worldly. What will happen to a generation of tweens who find solace in the forbidden romance of a fictional being? Twilight seems to have been tailored to fit that demographic of obese, social-misfits in the tween range… it’s really a Romeo & Juliet of modern times but perhaps with more social repercussions in this declension narrative of youth. Young girls certainly have a rough period of adjustment as they occupy that difficult gray area between childhood and adulthood. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to develop an identity and maintain purity in this age of over-sexualized images and advertisements. Girls lack a proper role model and it certainly won’t be found in Twilight where a young girl gives up her life and dreams to become the property of a hot guy. She does not exist as a individual but instead defines herself by another entity and a completely fictional one at that. At least Sailor Moon was a heroine who was able to fight and interact with other girls her age; she did not make choices based on some guy and instead fought for global harmony, thinking of ultimate good over her own selfish desires. And Harry Potter’s heroine, Hermione, is an intelligent, marginalized individual who fights for her individuality in a world where she is denegrated as a “muggle;” Hermione represents a positive role model for girls as she studies hard, nourishes friendships, and exerts her self despite her definition as an Other.  Twilight depicts a loner who finds solace and a definition of her existence through non-beings. Bella makes choices based on Edward alone and sinks into a long and deep depression when he leaves her. She experiments with non-healthy lifestyles choices, seeking adrenaline as a way to placate her loneliness when her only means of defining her identity is removed from her world. What kind of a role model is that? Also, Twilight is highly sexualized. What many praise as being “pure,” “innocent” and advocating non-sexual relationships is quite the opposite– Bella begs Edward to turn her into a vampire which traditionally involved drinking the vampire’s blood, imbibing their bodily fluids. She’s always wanting to deepen their relationship physically which is difficult for Edward as he desires her blood. On a side note… what happens when she’s menstruating? And female vampires apparently can bear children… do they menstruate, too?  That just seems like it would be a bad thing if you were living with a mess of Vampys and they’re all blood thirsty.

That’s a little strange to think about but still… there are holes in this plot.

w/e It’s still enjoyable. Especially since there were so many shirtless boys in the film… Which reminds me– those wolfies parade around in cut-offs (which looks ridiculous, y’all) which explode off when they transform. However, they are supposed to tie their shorts around their ankles prior to their transformations– well, all of the wolfy transformations were quite spontaneous and egged on by lack of anger management. I’d like to see what those creamy, ab-packed boys do when they transform back into humans entirely naked. Uh. It’s getting late. I’ve said enough.

Why the hell is Twilight so effing popular?

BTW, team jacob. Just because he seems more emotionally stable (sans anger problems) than emo-vampy boy who has an unsighly hairy chest. I’m totally with the Japanese on this. Hairy chests are not appealing except on a few exceptional cases, mainly well-tanned Italians with well sculpted chests. If you don’t fit those specs please don’t flaunt your hairy chests… it’s doesn’t excite any carnal desire in most civilized woman. Is there a return to the primal man? The beard phenom would point to yes. Ok, I will admit, I can get weak in the knees around a nicely groomed beard– but cheek bones and creamy skin (to a point, y’all… I don’t want a guy who looks like he wears more makeup than I do… which is almost none) is guaranteed to weaken knees on all accounts.

So if you fit my perfect man lists please apply to… JK y’all. I think the Perrier has gone to my head. (The trick to a particularly moist and crispy skinned turkey lies in basting with Perrier– it’s true, I read it in the New Yorker food issue). But this post certainly didn’t turn out how I had imagined. Not that anyone reads this far down if there aren’t pretty pictures— it’s true I know your bad habits. I do the same. Who has time for lengthy rantings if it’s not in Vogue, Hipster Runoff or the New Yorker anyway?