Dotted Pomegranates

3D televisions have not been invented yet.

2011-01-25T07:10:00.001-08:00

I know what you're thinking. "Luke, I've seen all these advertisements for 3D TVs. I've even tried one out with the glasses at a store." Ah, but all those TVs that are available now, which the companies that manufacture them are so quick to label as "3D" or even "True 3D," aren't 3 dimensional at all. And more than that, they shouldn't be called 3D televisions.

The televisions available now claim to be 3D because they can (through one method or another) send two different images into the left and right eye, simulating depth perception and making the brain think that it is looking at a 3-dimmensional object. However, 3D opjects have more properties than just being perceived with depth. To see what I mean, ogo ahead and pick up a 3D object that you probably have near you; a pen. Hold it close to your face and close your right eye to look at it with just your left eye. Now, quickly close your left eye and look at it with just your right eye. You'll probably notice that the pen seems to have "jumped" to the left. This is because each of your eyes has a slightly different point of view to see the pencil from and your brain pieces together the difference to give you a sense of how close it is to you. This is how current so-called 3D televisions work, by giving you a different image in each eye.

However, like I said, there's more to an object being 3D than just that. To see this, try holding the pen close to your face again. While looking at it, tilt your head to the side. Since the pen is a real 3D object, you notice that as you move your head to the left, the pen seems to move to the right in your field of vision, and visa versa. If this were a current "3D" television you were looking at, instead of a real 3d object, then it would just seem to hover in front of your face when you move it, rather than going from side to side. If you move your head up and down relative to the pen, you should notice the same thing. And finally, if you move your head forward (beside the pen, not directly into it), you'll notice that you can see other angles of the pen; its side and rear which were previously hidden to you. There's quite a bit more ways to look at something that's actually 3D than the "3D televisions available today, right?

That's exactly why we have a long way to go before we truly have 3D televisions. The televisions we have today are important as a stepping stone to that technology. Rather than 3D, let's call them 2.1D displays. They are able to create the illusion of depth perception, but they are still outputting 2D images (just that they're producing 2 2D images at a time). Their are several methods used by displays now to achieve this effect. Some of them are use glasses to create the desired stereoscopic effect, while others use different methods (such as a paralax barrier) to create a stereoscopic effect without the use of glasses. This post will be focusing more on the latter, because I feel that they are closer in nature to their future sucessor.

The next step (which I'll call 2.25D) is to create television displays which can create a whole range of 2D images across the X-axis. Why the X-axis? Because that's the axis on which our eyes are seperated and it feels more nature to move one's head from side-to-side to get a good look at things than it does to move one's head up and down. These televisions will function similar to many glasses-less 2.1D displays now, with one exception. 2.1D displays output 2 images, one for the left and one for the right. 2.25D displays, on the other hand will output an array of images from left to right. This will still produce two different images for each eye, allowing the display to fool our depth perception, but it will also do more than that. It will allow people to see the image differently, by moving their head from side to side (or sitting at a different angle from the TV). Say you're looking at a 2.1D television, straight on. Your left and right eyes will be receiving different images. Now, if you move your head 2 inches to the left so that your right eye is where your left eye was, your eyes wont be getting any different perspective than they were before. What's more, because you're not perfectly alligned with the center of the television, you will lose the depth perception. On a 2.25D television, on the other hand, if you moved your head two inches to the left, your right eye would now be seeing what your left eye was seeing before and your left eye will see an entirely new image for the position its in. If you continue moving left, your left eye will continue to see new images for the different angles as it moves. This allows the 2.25D display to further replicate real-life objects by allowing you to view them at different angles

After that would be what I call 2.5D television. This would be very similar to 2.25D displays, except for the fact that in addition to the multiple angles of view on the X-axis, there will also be mutiple angles of view on the Y-axis. This will be a more difficult step because it will require exponentially more tenderings (for viewing of computer generated graphics) or image sensors (for recording video footage) to be seen on the screen. However, the effect will be amazing. The screen will appear to be a window into a non-existant world. Much like a real window, you will be able to peer into it from different angles in order to see different things that would otherwise be hidden by the frame. At the same time, the stereo viewing effect could be used to cause objects to appear at various distances from the window. It could even be used to make it appear that objects were passing through the window and getting even closer to the vuewer. However these objects would lose their realism as the viewer would stop seeing them if they moved their head so that it was no longer completely in front of the window (from their field of vision).

The final step would be an actual 3-dimmensional display of some kind. Whether this would still be achieved with a screen as we know it today or by some other kind of image generator is yet to be seen. The effect would be amazing. Rather than imagine it as a display or a screen, it might be better to think of it as a hologram (as they are portrayed in science fiction movies). It would be able to create the appearance of an object inside the room (outside of the display itself), which you could then walk around and view from any angle as though it were really there. Aside from trying to touch it, it would seem like this object was really in the room, in every way. That would be a true 3D display.

If you consider something like a real 3D display and then think back to the 2.1D displays we have now, you can see that we have a long way to go. We as a society (and, more importantly, the companies marketing the displays) don't need to be patted on the back and congradulated for creating 3D televisions quite yet. If we start thinking that what we have now are really 3D displays, it kind of lowers the incentive to get to work on the real ones. What we have now is certainly an accomplishment, but it's not nearly as much of an accomplishment as when we actually start producing 3D displays.

Comeback Fodder

2010-11-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a trend in media lately. Everyone wants their characters to have a rapier wit and and attitude, but that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the tendency to have other characters make take the role of a kind of strawman, to make comments that would otherwise make no sense simply so it can be a setup for the favoured character to make a witty comeback.
Because these characters are only saying what they're saying for the sole purpose of getting a witty comeback from another character, I have dubbed these lines "comeback fodder."
A good example would be in the Simpsons episode "Sideshow Bob Roberts" (in which Sideshow Bob runs for mayor). In this episode, the host of a gubernatorial debate asks presents a criticism to Sideshow Bob that he said originated from a councilman Les Whinen. Sideshow bob replied with a witty comeback, by saying that said councilman should do "more thinkin' and less whinin'." In this instance, the comeback fodder was canonically so; created by a character rather than by the writers.
Another example is from an episode of the Boondocks:

Herein, Mr. DuBois (a lawyer) is arguing with Riley (a child) about where R. Kelly is guilty of anything for having been caught making a video of himself urinating on an underage girl. However, everything Mr. DuBois says is lacking in any intelligence and exists solely to set up Riley for whatever clever comeback the writers thought up for him.

Cabbage Head Complex

2009-08-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that people, in general, don't like to think negative things about themselves. And, amongst those people, I notice that some like to deflect away criticism (valid or invalid) which has been targeted at them, by saying and/or believing that it's actually criticism against some other feature of theirs. Usually, the other feature which the criticism is directed against is some feature which isn't entirely their fault, or would reflect shallowness on the person giving the criticism. For example, if you were to break up with your boyfriend and cite issues with him being an alcoholic with a borderline abusive personality, and he were to believe at all the reasons you gave him were false and the real reason you were dumping him was because he was overweight, then he would be exhibiting the kind of behaviour I'm talking about.
Occasionally, someone will latch onto a specific feature of theirs and attribute all criticisms and negative opinions people have of them to that one specific feature (or create a feature if there isn't an obvious one available) . I call this a "Cabbage Head Complex," named after a recurring character from Kids in the Hall. The basic premise behind this character is that he is rude, obnoxious, dishonest, misogynist, and also has a cabbage for a head; he'll talk to women and they'll all be repulsed by him for the former four reasons, but he inevitably blames all rejection on his cabbage head, because doing so would imply that they are rejecting him for a shallow reason, and thus they are to blame and not him.

I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 9

2009-08-11T21:41:00.001-07:00

This chapter consists of nothing but Bella and Edward talking as he drives her home. And the things they talk about consist of nothing except answers to the little questions that audience may have been wondering about until now. Rather than have you suffer through the narration, I'm just going to provide you with a list of points that are established:

Edward knew where Bella was before the rapists cornered her because he "followed her scent,¹" establishing another power for him: super-scent. This, of course, makes it even harder to believe that he doesn't notice that Bella gets all hot and bothered whenever he's near her.
Edward is the only one who can read people's minds (because he's special) and Bella's is the only mind he can't read (because she's double-special). He hears the thoughts of everyone around him, as though they were just talking instead of thinking. He thinks that he can't hear Bella's mind, because it works different than other people's. Bella is "bothered,¹" by this (probably insincerely, because every high school student loves to be told there's something non-obtrusive to their live that makes them special and different from everyone else).
Edward drives 40 over the speed limit everywhere because he can; he has super vampire reflexes, and can also mind-read whether or not there are cops nearby. After that, it was Bella's turn to give some exposition:
Bella tells Edward where she got the notion that he's a Vampire, thus fulfilling my prediction that she would break her promise to Jacob not to tell anyone, at the drop of a hat (or, in this case, the drop of Edward's "low," "velvety" voice). She tells him everything, even so far as to mentioning Jacob Black by name, and saying that Jacob had mentioned Edward's family specifically.
Bella has decided to herself that it "doesn't matter¹" whether or not Edward is a vampire (because she's got the hots for him anyways). Edward, being a more reasonable character than I usually give him credit for, freaks out at how stupid this is. After that, it's his turn to start filling in some holes again:
Edward says he's 17, but has been so for "a while.¹" (ie; he is a pedophile).
He also let's Bella know that all the vampire legends about burning in the sun, being nocturnal, and sleeping in coffins are completely false. That's right folks, Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu, and folklore are all full of shit. Meyer is the only real source on vampires (according to Meyer). Edward does, however, allude to something happening in bright sunlight (but not your piddly little Washington sunlight) that would make it obvious to those around him that he's a vampire. Also, with regards to the sleeping-in-coffins thing, he says he doesn't sleep at all (which leads me to believe that he has a couple of level 60 characters of Word of Warcraft).
He also says that he does drink blood, but he does the family-friendly cop-out of only drinking animal blood, never humans, because "I don't want to be a monster.¹" This doesn't really explain why he actually goes out and hunts for blood, rather than just getting it from a butcher shop.
Bella considers herself coordinated enough to smash a rapists hose bone into his brain with the palm of her hand, but not coordinated enough to run four blocks without face-planting (thus, her decision to try to fight off several attackers and Port Angeles rather than run).

     After that, there's really nothing new, just some old ideas are hashed over again. For example, Edward reminds Bella that her life could be threatened just from being near him. She says (again) that she doesn't care, and he points out how stupid that is, which makes Bella cry. When he asks if she's crying, she lies and says she's not, but "traitor tears were there, betraying me.¹" They wouldn't really be "traitor" tears if they didn't betray you, now, would they?
    So, they arrive at Bella's house, and as she's getting out of the car, she makes him promise that he's going to be at school the next day. Normally, if a friend's been missing a lot of school, you might make them promise to go out of worry for their slipping grades. In Bella's case, though, it's completely selfish; she just makes him promise so that she can see him and swoon some more. In return, he makes her promise not to go into the woods alone, because he's "not always the most dangerous thing out there.¹" I cracked up about how he says "not always the most dangerous." It's like he wanted to reassure her: "but don't be fooled, I am really dangerous. Dangerous and mysterious. I might kill you at any time... I'm a vampire." Also, this brings up the question why he would bring it up.   Either he was spying on Bella in chapter 7 when she ran into the woods to pout (which is creepy), or he just brought this up randomly without any indication that she would go into the woods by herself (which is stupid), or it's another matter of "I know, because the author told me."
    In her house, Bella does some lying (and more lying to cover up those lies) about where she's been and how she got home, to her dad. Then she calls Jess. Finally, she spends some quality alone time doing what she does best, thinking about Edward. At the very end of the chapter, she comes to the conclusion that she "was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.¹" So ends chapter ten.
    Actually, I'm glad that she finally said that, because that means that we the readers now know all the events that lead her to be in (I would say it's lust, but just for the sake of simplicity let's call it) love with him. A friend of mine who's a fan of Twilight suggested that I could better understand how to get women using the information in this book, so (now that we've seen all of Edward's "game"), I'm proud to present:

How to Get Women: The Edward Cullen Method (by Edward Cullen).

        Part One, First Impressions
    You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make it a good one. No matter how much you want to date a girl, or have sex with her, or drink her blood for sustenance, never let on when you first meet her. You should never make it clear that you like a girl; in fact, act like you hate her guts. Without saying anything to her face, do whatever you can to avoid her, try to switch out of any classes you have with her, and just generally make it seem like you don't even want to look at her. If you do want to look at her, though, make sure and do it with "piercing, hate-filled eyes."
    Now, the whole hate thing may seem counter-intuitive, right? You want this girl to like you after-all. Well, it does help her like you by fulfilling two important needs. One: it will make you seem mysterious (chicks dig mysterious guys), because you'll be creating a mystery for her as to why you hate her so much. Two: it'll give her a project (making you not hate you). No body likes to be hated, so people will try to be extra-nice to people that do seem to hate them.   This does create a system where people are rewarding others for being mean to them, but no one thinks into it that much.
    Now, it's important to make sure you pretend to have the right kind of hatred for your mark. As mentioned before, you want to have the ostensibly-unfounded kind of hate, but you don't want to have the kind you act on. That is to say, you don't want to look like your actively seeking out your mark to punish them for whatever reason you hate them. That's seen as the needy kind of hate. Rather, you want to act like you're trying to avoid them at all costs, like they're not even worth your time so you're going to give them as little of it as possible. Remember, don't be a doof; be aloof.
       Part Two, Establishing a Friendship
    If all goes well, then your mark will try to get closer to you, to fix or at least understand why you hate them. This is good. It means that they've shown an interest in you, and that you've made them decide in their mind that they want you to like them. Once they start putting enough effort into it, you can drop the whole hate act. Don't worry, though, you can always bring it back up without explanation later if you need to. Instead of replacing it with genuine niceness or affection, just sort of act like you tolerate her, but like ultimately you're doing her a favor every time you talk to her. And you should definitely not ask her out. After all, if she knows that you want to date her, she might start questioning whether she wants to date you.
    Now, dominance is very important in getting a girl, especially at this stage. It's important to let her know that you're a good mate, by ignoring whatever she says and just doing what you want. Remember: no means yes. If she asks you not to pick her up, you pick her ass up and carry it. If she says she doesn't want a ride home, you tell her tough shit and that you will drag her into your car if need be. If she says she's not hungry, you tell her that she is. Repeated use of this tactic establishes two things in your relationship: what she wants doesn't matter compared to what you want, and you are always right (because, she always ends up doing what you want, so you must always be right).
        Part Three, Stalking
    It's not really stalking if you do it out of love, right? Follow her around everywhere. Don't get to close, though. Your purpose for stalking isn't to gather a ton of information, it's to be there and ready to swoop in when a heroic opportunity strikes. What's a heroic opportunity? Any time your mark is in danger (or perceived danger), you need to be able to save her like a knight in shining armor.
    Now, I happen to have a wide range of super vampiric powers (and I usually get a new one every couple chapters or so) so it's easy for me to do things like stop skidding minivans with my face. However, there's still a wide range of of things that you can do, such as verbally assaulting some guy who's hitting on her, or running rushing into a pack of rapists with your car to drive her away. If you do that last one, though, make sure you wait until the last minute, so it's clear that she was in danger. Otherwise, you wont get credit for it. If she ever asks about you stalking her, deny it if it's believable that you would just happen to be there. If it's not believable, then fess up, but don't say it was stalking. Make it her fault and not yours; you're not there because you're obsessed with her, you're there because she needs you.
       Part Four, Staying Mysterious.
    If you start doing good deeds for her, you do possibly run the risk of loosing your mystique. So, it's important to establish that your dangerous, and could possibly kill her at any moment. Chicks dig threats. Although most girls are too smart to fall for it, you could say you're a vampire like me. It's not like you'll ever have to prove it; if she ever points out that she's seen you walking in broad daylight before, just tell her that "all that stuff about only coming out at night is folklore. Vampires don't really die if exposed to sunlight, or have fangs, or drink human blood... except, I could drink your blood at any moment. Because I'm dangerous." Other options are that you're a murderer (but don't worry, you only murder rapists and child molesters), or that you're an assassin for the CIA (but don't worry, you only kill vile dictators, not innocent people), or that you're a member of the mafia (but don't worry, you're a reformist working within the Mafia to move it away from smuggling drugs into the country in hollowed out bodies of children, and towards things like promoting rock concerts). The possibilities are literally endless. Whatever you pick, though, stick with it. And bring it up whenever you feel you might be being too nice.
        Part Five, appearances
    Confidence and emotional manipulation will only get you so far. You get the rest of the way with rugged good looks, because (let's face it) girls are just as shallow as you. Now, ideally you're like me and have a velvet, muted, low, rough, quiet, soft, musical, velvet, muted voice, as well as messy blond hair, lean, muscular arms, and a charming crooked smile. Also, tall. If that doesn't describe you, though, then you can compensate for it by getting a sexy car (also, do some push-ups, fatty). Now, I'm so damned sexy that I can get away with going around in a Volvo. Hell, I could probably get away with going around in a pink BigWheel. If you don't quite live up to my standards, though, you might want to stop my your local Mustang dealership.
        Conclusion
    Now, all this might seem like a lot to take in, but it can really be boiled down to just a few concepts and a simple pneumonic device. Remember to act:
        Enigmatic around her, and give up as little information as possible
        Dangerous, like you could kill her at any moment
        Willful, as in: your will matters and hers doesn't
        Aloof, trying to avoid her
        Revolted, acting as though you despise her and the very site of her makes you want to kill yourself, and
        Dreamy, like a gorgeous, Aryan model.
    Keep these principles of the Edward method in mind at all times, and you'll have Mary Sues falling in love with you left and right. The end.

Now, back to the story. Stay tuned for chapter 10.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 9: Theories” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 8

2009-08-07T13:16:00.001-07:00

Chapter 8: Port Angeles
On the drive, they're listening to "whiny rock songs¹" on the way (I find it pretty ironic that Bella would describe anything else in this book as "whiny") and chatting about boys, as Jess talks about ho well her date with Mike went. During this conversation, Bella reveals that she's never been to a dance because (and I don't see why Stephanie Meyer thinks it's necessary to remind us of this) she's clumsy, and also because she's never had a boyfriend before (I guess none of the boys in Phoenix were sparkly enough). Actually, she says it's because none of the boys asked her. Jessica points out a plot hole:

She looked skeptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no.¹"

    Good point, Jess. Are we going to get an excuse for the Sue-paradox that Bella is both wanted by every guy with a name and still playing up the whole "unlucky at love" thing? Nope, it's just used as a segue into the fact that Tyler was telling every that he was going to the Prom with Bella.
    Anyways, their shopping trip continues, and the girls talked about boys, and "giggled while pawing through the clothes,¹" and paid compliments to how each other looked in different dresses and looked at shoes, etc. I know that Meyers actually is female, so I almost can't make this argument. But, is it me or does she seem to write the whole "girl time" part like a middle-aged man would, like someone who has never been female and is just basing it off of stereotypes from TV and movies? Maybe it's just my imagination. But then again, what girls'-night-out with Bella would be complete without her bringing up Edward? She asks Angela whether it's normal for the Cullens to be missing school a lot, and Angela rather unceremoniously reassures her: yes, yes it is.
    After they're all done with dress/shoe shopping, they decide to split up for an hour and then meet at a restaurant for dinner.

I wanted to go look for a bookstore. They were both willing to come with me, but I encouraged them to go have fun - they didn't know how preoccupied I could get when surrounded by books.¹

    "You two go do some stupid non-thinky thing. Only I am allowed to enjoy books and reading." Bella goes out walking and looking for a bookstore. In a seemingly-pointless scene, she passes a hippie, New Age looking one and decides to forgo it and look for a "normal book-store.¹" Screw local business; I'm going to find me a Borders.   While looking, she gets lost, because her mind was busy "wrestling with despair¹" about Edward. She finds herself in sort of an industrial/warehouse district (which, inconveniently, was just one block away from the main tourist boardwalk), where she passes a group of guys who are "joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other's arms.¹" So, I guess it's not just girls; Meyer writes "guy-time" out as a ridiculous stereotype of male behaviour, too.
    One of the guys tries to hit on her (all the boys do), but she gets freaked out and starts walking away quickly. As she's walking, she notices that two of the guys from the group are following her. She keeps walking quickly down the street, trying to out-pace them, until she finds the other two guys waiting in front of her (I guess they can teleport, too).   As they close on on her, suddenly a silver car bursts through the alleyway, making the guys scramble. A door opens, and the driver tells Bella to get in. She does, and gets driven back to the main part of town. The driver is Edward, obviously. Oddly though, Meyer doesn't say it's Edward at first, just referring to him as "him¹," until several paragraphs after Bella gets in the car. Was she expecting us to be surprised that the person in the car was Edward? Because, if so, she completely failed.
    Anyways, Edward speeds out of there with Bella, "blowing through several stop signs¹." I guess because he's worried that those guys could outrun his car if he doesn't bolt out of there. On the way, Edward sounds really pissed off at her for almost getting raped. After she calms him down, though, he explains that he's really pissed off at the would-be rapists, and was having trouble resisting the urge to hunt them down and slaughter them. He drives to the Italian restaurant that Jessica and Angela are waiting out side.

He parallel-parked against the curb in a space I would have thought much too small for the Volvo, but he slid in effortlessly in one try.¹

    Bow-chika-wow wow. You know how Bella is constantly thinking that all the guys around her are jealous over her? Well, in the restaurant she does the same thing the whole time, except with thinking that the hostess and waitress are jealous over Edward. You could tell the hostess would be trying to steel her man, because of her "unnatural blondness¹." Curse you bleach-blondes and your inherent evil!
    After they get seated, Bella gets jealous an tells Edward that she doesn't want him being all sparkle-sexy in front of other girl. After that the waitress comes out, and Bella is actually thinking, when she sees her, that she was gossiping with the hostess in the kitchen about how smoking hot Edward is. This is what she's thinking about. She's so paranoid about other girls getting Edward, that she's actually imagining that they're conspiring together to steel him away. Not to mention the fact that she was almost just raped, and probably has more to be shaken up about than possible competition for Edward. Actually, I should note that the word "rape" or "rapist" is never actually used in this chapter. It's always just replaced with a phrase like "do something horrible¹" or the character trailing off before finishing their sentence. Why Meyer decides this is beyond me. Maybe they just didn't want this book to be too adult, so they could put it in the "teen" section at bookstores. Although, if you ask me, having a chapter about rape is going to make the book just as mature whether you use the word or not.
    Anyways, Edward makes Bella drink a couple Cokes (the word "Coke" is actually mentioned five times in this chapter. Sponsorship?) and eat some pasta and bread, the whole time his eyes "golden butterscotch.¹" He asks her if she's feeling okay after the whole rape thing, but she just keeps turning the conversation back to him. She mentions about his eyes changing colour again, and says she has some theories. He asks to hear them, but she says she wants some information out of him first, and he agrees. Um, that's not really a good deal for Edward; I mean, it's not like Bella's theories are going to reveal any terribly useful information about him; they're just facts about him which may or may not be true. But, I guess the story has to move forward somehow.
    The fist question, "why are you in Port Angeles?¹" Edward passes on. The second question, "how can you read minds?" he's oddly open about. Actually, before he answers it, it sort of evolves into "how did you know I was in trouble?" Edward responds by saying "Only you could get into trouble in a town this small. You would have devastated their crime rate statistics for a decade, you know¹." Okay, so he’s actually saying that it is her fault that she almost got gang-raped. Also, it did seem really unrealistic that Bella would fall victim to street crime in a town as small as Port Angeles, but now that I've read Edward's explanation... it still seems really unrealistic. He further elaborates the point:

"I was wrong about you.. You're not a magnet for accidents - that's not a broad enough classification. You are a magnet for trouble. If there is anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you¹"

    He also says that he would fall into this whole trouble category, "unequivocally¹." He then goes back on his previous decision to past on her first question and announces that "I followed you to Port Angeles,¹" apparently because he was trying to keep her alive. How would he know that she'd be in danger, though? They give the wishy-washy excuse that it's because he knew that she was a "magnet for trouble," based on her clumsiness, but there's no sound logic-track that leads from someone being clumsy to you knowing they'll be raped at a certain time and place, no matter how much you think about it. It seems like another instance of "I know, because the author told me so."
    Bella notes that this is the second time he's saved her life and/or virginity, and he says that it's actually the third time; saying that "your number was up the first time I met you,¹" presumably because he was so tempted to kill her to drain her blood when they first met (or just kill her because she was so annoying). Saving someone's life and refraining from murdering them are hardly the moral equivalent, though.
    He then gives her some more information regarding her second question and lets her know that he knew she was in danger, because he could tell that she wasn't with Jessica and Angela by reading their minds, and then later was able to read the rapists' minds and see her face and what they planned on doing to her.   Wait, what? You mean, when he was talking about reading people, he didn't mean just estimating what they were thinking by reading their body language, he actually meant looking into their heads and seeing what they were thinking. How stupid is that? Stephanie Meyer, apparently, was sitting in front of her computer thinking, "Well, he's already got super-strength, super-speed, super-hotness, and immortality... but maybe, that's not quite enough powers. I'll make him psychic, too."    Protip, writers: it is your hero's weaknesses, not their strengths, that makes them great. He also makes it clear that Bella's mind is the only one he can't read. Maybe she lacks the delta brainwave from doing the nasty in the pasty at some point².
    Edward laments again, how hard it was for him not to kill the would-be rapists (awww, poor Edward). He then suggests that they leave and asks for the check, in a voice that's "quiet, rougher, still reflecting the strain of our conversation.¹" He let her into his car, and as he was walking around to the driver's side, Bella was "amazed, yet again by how graceful he was.¹" Umm... okay. Walking to the other side of the car isn't an act that usually requires a lot of grace; but who knows, maybe he was doing some spins and pliés along the way. They drive off, and Edward lets Bella know it's her turn to answer questions. So ends chapter 8.
    Nice thing: it is sort of refreshing that Meyer decided to give Edward a Volvo as a car. Given that the rest of his character design seemed like she was trying to build the "perfect man," one would guess that she'd give him some kind of sexy car, like a Charger or a Corvette, or a roadster, or at least a Beamer.. But instead, she chose to gave him a rather non-descript vehicle from a company that's known for making cars that are reliable but boring. Kudos. Stay tuned for Chapter 9.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 8: Port Angeles” Little, Brown and Co., 2005
²Futurama episode 3ACV07 "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid," Which incidentally pre-dates Twilight by four years.

I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 7

2009-07-28T21:08:00.001-07:00

Bella is distressed. She doesn't want to think about the idea the Edward is a vampire, so she tries to drown it out by going up to her room and emoing out to some music. I don't know why she's giving that much thought, since the only reason she really has to think this is that she heard it from a 15-year-old kid that she'd just met. Oddly enough, though, she doesn't pick up to the thought that Jacob is a werewolf, probably because it would require her to think of something other than Edward. The strain of thinking tires her out and she falls asleep, where she actually has a dream where Jacob turns into a wolf (still, without getting a clue), and then Edward is a vampire and he goes the bite her and she wakes up.

"I groaned, fell back, and rolled over onto my face, kicking off my boots. I was too uncomfortable to get anywhere near sleep, though. I rolled back over and unbuttoned my jeans, yanking them off awkwardly as I tried to stay horizontal."¹

    Yes! Finally, something for the gynophilic readers to enjoy. Except not, because the narrative strip-tease starts and ends in one sentence. Each one of Edward's eyelashes has a sonnet written to it; you think we'd at least get a little more detail about Bella, if she was stripping anyways, at least the colour of her panties. But no, nothing. She just gets up and takes a shower (with a complete lack of titillating detail) then putters around doing some boring chores for awhile.
    Next, Bella decides that if she's going to be stalking a vampire, she may as well know what one is so she Googles it, and Meyer demonstrates her lack of understanding of how computers work. "...I turned my computer on. Naturally, the screen was covered in pop-up ads."¹ Wrong, pop-up ads appear when you go to a website that utilizes them for revenue; they don't just appear when you turn on the computer, unless you were an idiot and set your internet browser to launch at start-up and your homepage to some kind of pop-up launch pad. "I made my way to my favorite search engine. I shot down a few more pop-up ads and then typed in one word. Vampire."¹ I guess that Google is resorting to pop-up ads now, too. Actually, she doesn't specify which search engine she uses, just that it's her "favorite search engine." Also, it's pretty stupid to just type in "Vampire" and hope it will come up with what you want. Try searching for it yourself. You’ll get the Wikipedia entry (which is pretty useful, and it’s a wonder that Bella didn’t use that), but besides that all you usually see are stupid fansites made by fangirls and fanboys who gush uncontrollably over anything “dark,” as well as websites to sell useless crap to the above mentioned people.
    Fortunately, Bella is punished for her stupidity. "It took an infuriatingly long time. When the results came up, there was a lot to sift through."¹ "Like, oh my god, the internet is so stupid. I hate it." Also, what were you expecting; that there would only be 15 hits in a search for "vampire." Use more keywords to narrow your search. She says she eventually found a "promising site - Vampires A-Z."¹ Which sounds like the kind of page you would find hosted on Geocities, that someone made back in junior high and has forgotten about years ago. The website tells Bella that, contrary to what anyone living in modern society can tell without doing any research, vampire lore focuses mostly on female vampires and doesn't have a lot to do with blood-drinking. She was trying to find a vampire lore that "sounded familiar"¹ to Edward. If she wanted to do that, though, she should have just saved herself some time by searching for "Anne Rice."
    Doing this research also causes Bella to finally board the obvious train: "one [myth] that I'd remembered from the small number of scary movies that I've seen and was backed up by today's readings - vampires couldn't come out in the daytime, the sun would burn them to a cinder."¹ Duh! It's not until 7 chapters into the book that Meyer finally acknowledges this plot hole, but still doesn't fill it. I eagerly await what will no doubt be aneurism-inducingly stupid explanation for why Edward can walk around in the daylight without bursting into flames, or turning to ash, or otherwise dyeing some horrible undeath.
    Bella becomes frustrated with Meyer's poor, unfaithful storytelling and turns off her computer. Then she explains to the audience how things that are happening are everyone's fault but her own:
        "What was wrong with me? I decided that most of the blame belonged on the doorstep of the town of Forks - and the entire sodden Olympic Peninsula, for that matter."¹
    Like I said, everyone's fault but her own. I'd hate to see how much she complains when there's actually something wrong with her life. Also, “sodden”? What, is she British now? After deciding that she wasn't having enough of a tantrum yet, Bella "stomped out the door"¹ and into the woods behind her house to do some more ruminating and complaining. She kept walking into the woods "as long as my anger at myself pushed me forward."¹ Conveniently, her anger pushed her just far enough to where "a recently fallen tree - I knew it was recently fallen because it wasn't entirely carpeted in moss - rested against the trunk of one of her sisters, creating a sheltered little bench just a few feet off the trail."¹ First of all, assigning genders to genderless objects tends to be deep within the territory of idiocy, especially when you're inconsistent about it, and refer to something as a "she" in the same sentence that you called it an "it." Second, we get it; you're supposed to be good at science. We don't need this fact re-established every chapter. Neither do we need to be reminded that you are un-coordinated, every guy is jealous of you, and that Edward is so gosh-dang gorgeous. If we weren't reminded of these little tidbits over and over, it would make the book a much more bearable read. It would also make it about half as long.
    Bella sits on her pondering log for awhile and continues to ponder about whether Edward is really a vampire, citing such evidence to herself as his "inhuman beauty," and also the fact that "he seemed to know what everyone around him was thinking... except me."¹ Am I the only one that really thinks that Edward was simply humouring Bella when he said she was hard to read? I mean, by her own description of her actions, she seems to broadcast her thoughts pretty well. It's never going to be hard to guess what she's thinking about (hint: Edward).
    After plenty of recapping the story so far, Bella finally decides that maybe he's a vampire. It's not a satisfactory conclusion for you or me, but apparently it is for her. Now faced with the decision of how to act knowing he might be a vampire, Bella quickly (very quickly) rejects the idea of simply avoiding him for her own safety, because "I was gripped in a sudden agony of despair as I considered that alternative. My mind rejected the pain..."¹ Wow, they're not even dating and she's already emotionally dependent on him. That's... kind of scary.

"I could do nothing different. After all, if he was something...sinister, he'd done nothing to hurt me so far. In act, I would be a dent in Tyler's fender if he hadn't acted so quickly. So quickly, I argued with myself, that it might have been sheer reflexes. But if it was a reflex to save lives, how bad could he be? I retorted." ¹

Actually, dear, it's spelled "retarded," not “retorted.” And you forgot to include "am" before it.

"I knew that I had my answer. I didn't know if there ever was a choice, really. I was already in too deep.Now that knew – if I knew - I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him."¹

    So, Bella has made a decision, which could realistically lead to the harm of herself and others, based solely on her attraction for this guy. This is what we call "thinking with your vagina," and it is generally to be avoided. Satisfied with her stupid decision, Bella makes her way back home. She has little remorse for what she decided, except to note that "the decision was ridiculously easy to live with. Dangerously easy."¹ Isabella Swan: Dangerously easy.
    Bella gets home and does some studying. Her dad gets home with some fish and Bella makes "a mental note to pick up a book of recipes for fish while I was in Seattle next week."¹ Forks may be a small town and not have a lot in the way of book stores, but I'm sure that "fish recipes" is not something so exotic that they wouldn't have something available without driving to the nearest big city.
    After dinner, the amazingly uneventful and over-narrated day ends and Bella goes to sleep ("dreamlessly,"¹ thank god). The next morning, it's sunny out. Bella's mood is invariably linked to the weather (almost as much as it's linked to whether or not she's staring at Edward) so she's in a good mood. Or, as she puts it, "my blood was electric in my veins."¹
    She heads to school and realizes that she got their early. After some lame excuse to the reader for Bella not knowing what the time was, Bella decided to "industrially"¹ take out her Trigonometry book. I guess that's why I was never as good in school as Bella; I would only take my books out normally. Of course, she's only rechecking some answers, because she'd already completed the assignment, "the product of a slow social life."¹ How fast of a social life was she expecting? She moved there less than a month ago and she's already the most popular girl in school, she's been embraced by the entire student body, and has been asked out by every guy to look at her. And she's complaining about a slow social life? I guess she just thinks she's so good that she deserves even more, or something. Anyways, her work quickly breaks down into daydreaming about (surprise surprise) Edward. She's eventually brought back into reality when Mike shows up.
    They chit chat a little, and Mike asks Bella "'What did you do, yesterday?' His tone was just a bit too proprietary."¹ I'd love to hear Stephanie Meyer try to demonstrate exactly what a "proprietary tone" sounded like. Bella says she was working on her essay and Mike asks:

        "What are you writing yours on?"
        "Whether Shakespeare's treatment of female characters is misogynistic."
        He stared at me like I had just spoken pig Latin.¹

    "What is this word you speak of? Miss aw gin histic? I have never heard such a thing before. I am but a mere Forks bumpkin, and I have not learned any words over three syllables." Also, I find it supremely ironic that a character in a Stephanie Meyer book would be writing about misogynistic treatment of female characters, when Bella has already proven to be a damsel in distress who just isn't complete without her man who makes all her decisions for her.
    Anyways, Mike asks Bella out (again) and Bella worms out of it by giving an excuse instead of just being honest and telling him she's not interested (again). This time, she says that she can't go out with him because she feels she would hurt Jessica's feelings. This is of course hypocritical and two-faced of her, because she has no problem lusting after Edward, despite the fact that she also noticed that Jessica likes him back in chapter one (page 22).
    Anyways, Mike becomes "clearly dazed"¹ by the painfully obvious fact that Jessica was interested in him, and Bella runs off to class, were-in she's invited to go to Port Angeles to go dress shopping with Jessica, and a few other girls. She gives them a maybe.
    At lunch, she immediately starts looking for Edward, but feels a "shiver of panic tremble in my stomach"¹ as she realized that Cullens' usual table was empty. Upon further looking and not seeing Edward "desolation hit me with crippling strength."¹ And when he wasn't in her Biology class either, she "felt a new wave of disappointment."¹ Protip, everyone: you will never be happy in a relationship if you can't learn to be happy by yourself. It's pretty bad if you're this utterly dependent on another person for happiness if you're dating them. But if you're this dependent only shortly after meeting them, then you need help. And by "help," I don't mean that you need to start dating them; I mean you need to stop obsessing over them and go see a psychologist. Oh yeah, and at lunch Bella turns her maybe into a yes, and agrees to go to Port Angeles with the girls, "grasping at anything to distract myself."¹
    In gym class, they were starting badminton, "the next torture they had lined up for me,"¹ but they spent the entire class explaining the rules and apparently it went long so they were going to do the same thing the next day. "What's that coach? You hit the birdie over the net? With a racket? This is all so complicated. Maybe you should slow down and take another day to explain it." After that class, Bella headed home where she would "be free to pout and mope,"¹ as though she ever let being at school stop her. When she gets there, she finds that Jess had moved the Port Angeles plans to the next day (in order to go on a date with Mike), complains about it, gets some emails from her mom, complains about them, looks through her book collection, complains about it, then grabs a Jane Austin compilation and goes outside to read on the lawn (which she complains about).
    She begins into Sense and Sensibility only to remember that (oh noes!) the protagonists name is Edward. She then starts on Mansfield Park only to remember that *gasp* the main character in that is named Edmund, which is kind of close to Edward. It's like the whole universe, include a great author that lived and died over a hundred years ago, are all conspiring to make her fall in lust with a guy she barely knows. She gives up on the whole reading thing and decides to just lay in the sun.

I pulled all my hair over my head, letting it fan out on the quilt above me, and focused again on the heat that touched my eyelids, my cheekbones, my nose, my lips, my forearms, my neck,soaked through my light shirt...¹

    Ho ho, what's this? It sounds like it's going to be followed with "absent-mindedly, I slid my hand down my stomach and unbuttoned my jeans" or some similar lead-in to a masturbation scene, but no; it just leads to Bella falling asleep. This chapter keeps faking me out. The next thing after that quote is her waking up to the sound of her dad's car pulling into the driveway
    She asks her dad for permission to go to Port Angeles the next night. After he agrees, she then patronizes him about his ability to feed himself, and then goes to bed.
    The next morning (god, this chapter just doesn't want to end), she goes to school find that Edward is still absent and starts panicking at the thought of not going to Seattle with him that weekend. She also finds out that the trip to Port Angeles that night is still on and also that one of the girls (who had been rude to her earlier) wasn't going. Bonus. After school, she drops her truck and school stuff off at her house, then her and Jess pick up the other girl that's going ("Angela") and they hit the road, as Bella notes that her "excitement increased exponentially as we actually drove out of the town limits."¹ So ends chapter seven.
    I know this has been a long one, but I want to introduce a little extra bit at the end. It occurs to me that, despite the fact that I said that I would give Twilight a fair shake, I've been writing nothing (without any exception that come to mind) but negative commentary about the book. So, I'm going to try every now and then to include something positive about Stephanie Meyer or her writing. Right now, I have this to say: she has avoided (at least so far) making any horrible puns with the name "Forks." For this, I am grateful.
    Stay tuned for eight.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 7: Nightmare” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

I Read Twilight and Hate it: Chapter 6

2009-07-24T16:35:00.001-07:00

    Chapter six starts out with the usual kind of teen-drama crap that plagues this book. There are bunch of girls at the school who are, like, OMG jealous of like, Bella and how she gets to like hang out with Edward. Bella overhears one talking about her with an "unpleasant, nasally voice."¹ You can tell she's evil, because her voice isn't deep or velvet. Mike defends her to this girl "loyally, but a bit territorially."¹ Bella really has a hard time seeing good in things he does. I guess she likes to keep her enemies far and her friends further.
    Later, she asks her dad about the place that Edward said he would be camping that weekend (did I mention that? He said he couldn't go on the road-trip because he was going camping with his vampily). He said it was known for bears, and most people don't go there to camp, but rather to hunt. Not much to say here.
    The next morning, Bella's sleep is interrupted, because "an unusual brightness woke me."¹ She was actually so amazed by clear weather that it woke her up early. Now, first of all, I've already talked about how Washington's bad weather is greatly exaggerated (by Stephanie Meyer herself and the population at large). Second, she's been away from Arizona for less that a month; not really enough time to forget what sunshine looks like.
    She met everyone who was going on the trip at Mike's dad's store. All the non-vampire students who had names were there, as well as a couple generics. Two of the generic boys were given names ("Ben and Conner"¹) which leads me to suspect that they're going to be asking Bella to dances soon. Two of the generic girls ("Angela and Lauren"¹) were also given names. They seemed to be part of the group that was gossiping about Bella. Mike asks Bella if she's invited anyone else.

"Nope," I lied lightly, hoping I wouldn't get caught in the lie. But also wishing that a miracle would occur and Edward would appear.¹

    I guess Edward is kind of like Jesus now and his appearance constitutes a miracle. Also, "lightly"? Talk about unnecessary adverbs. What did she mean, "quietly"? If so, why didn't she just say "quietly"? Or did she mean that it was a "light" lie, as opposed to a more serious or "heavier" lie. I am consumed by the mystery that Stephanie Meyer's writing presented. And more than a little obsessed by her writing itself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
    So, they make their way to La Push, and there's more trivial love-triangle drama. I'll spare you the details. It's not even exposing new information; just that Jessica likes Mike and Mike likes Bella. Meyer gives some vanilla descriptions of the coastline, and the rocks on the beach, which are every colour including "dull gold"¹ (OMG, just like Edward's eyes!). Anyways, make it to the campsite, and start a fire. Some people go hiking and come back. Nothing really interesting until a group of teenagers from the nearby reservation shows up.
    It's like they were sitting around saying, "Man, I'm so bored hanging out with other Native Americans. If only some cool white kids would show up for us to talk to. That would be awesome." Anyways, the group includes one younger kid named Jacob. He eventually makes his way over to Bella (all the boys do, after all) and introduces himself as the son of the guy that her dad bought the truck from. They talk about various things, cars, Jacob's sisters (whom Bella used to be friends with), and the Cullens. Conversations with Bella always lead to the Cullens. Actually, Meyer gets around Bella displaying her creepy obsession by having another girl, one of the ones who was making fun of Bella, bring up the Cullens. And it's totally believable and not awkward at all, that she just brings it up right out of the blue. Heavy sarcasm. After serving her purpose of bringing up Edward in the conversation, the girl leaves so Bella can start pumping Jacob for information about them.
    Actually, she tries to take him for a walk on the beach and seduce the information out of him. He says he's barely fifteen, and she's insincerely trying to flirt with him to use him to get info. What a bitch. Jacob had said that "the Cullens don't come here"¹ and that had intrigued Bella to find out more info. Although, I think there was only one work in that sentence that she even heard. He could have said "I've never even heard of the Cullens," and she would still be dissecting it and trying to find more info from him.
    Together, they walked a bit down the beach and sat at a “nearby driftwood tree that had its roots sticking out like the attenuated legs of a huge, pale spider.”¹ “Attenuate,” in case you’re wondering, is a verb which means “to make thin.” Why she said the branches were “attenuated” rather than just “thin”? I have no idea. Maybe she gets paid by the syllable. After a liberal amount of whoring, she gets him to tell her that the Cullens aren't supposed to come onto the reservation. This is due to a pact that Jacob's great-grandfather made years ago with the "cold ones"¹ [vampires], because they are the "natural enemies" of the werewolf. Immediately afterwards, Jacob says:

"...the cold ones are traditionally our [emphasis added] enemies. But this pack [the Cullens] that came to our territory during my great-grandfather's time was different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did - they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So my great-grandfather mad a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces [crackers]"¹.

So, Jacob says that the vampires are werewolves' enemies, then afterwards calls them "our" enemies. Dear god, I hope Meyers isn't planning some kind of stupid idea to make the Native Americans be werewolves. Anyways, if Jacob just revealed all this information to blank-face here, didn't he violate the treaty, and lead to a vampire invasion of his reservation? Why on earth were they trusting this information to a kid, anyways?

"I guess I just violated the treaty." He laughed.
"I'll take it to the grave," I promised, and then shivered.¹

I hope that shiver means she's going to die soon, for making promises that she inevitably breaks. That is to say, I really really doubt that she'll take this information to the grave.
Bella and Jacob return to the group, and there's some more trivial stuff with Mike being possibly-but-not-really jealous of Jacob. Bella also tells Jacob that she'll come see him, next time her dad comes to visit his dad. I guess he's become her insta-friend. All the pale-faces decide the night is through and jump back in their suburban to head back to Forks. So ends chapter six. Stay tuned for chapter seven.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 6: Scary Stories” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

I read Twilight and Hate it: Chapter 5

2009-07-18T22:45:00.001-07:00

Bella moans and whines some more about being late to class, being invited on the road trip by Mike, and the fact that Edward isn't constantly following her around so she can look at him whenever she feels like it. This puts her in a funk until, at lunch:

"Edward Cullen is staring at you again," Jessica said, finally breaking through my abstraction with his name.¹

Abstraction is not the same thing as daydreaming, Meyer. Edward is sitting at alone, away from his sibling-pack (I guess Forks High School has enough spare tables that you can just go grab on for yourself when you feel like it), and motions for Bella to come sit with him. "As I watched in disbelief, he winked."¹ He's kind of the Sarah Palin of vampires.
They talk, and over the course of some awkwardly-written dialogue set the record straight that yes, they are going to be friends. Edward takes the time to reiterate that he is, in fact, bad for her, because (I'm guessing) he's afraid that talking to her straight-forward like this is taking away some of his mystique. I don't think that personality matters too terribly much with Bella, though, because she's so pre-occupied with how her looks. Here are some things she thinks during this conversation:

        "It was hard to believe that something so beautiful could be real. I was afraid that he'd disappear in a puff of smoke and I would wake up.
        He was still smiling, but his ocher eyes were serious.
        That breathtaking crooked smile reappeared.
        I looked up into his deep gold eyes, became befuddled...
        He looked own, and then glanced up at me through his long black lashes, his ocher eyes scorching."¹

Even if Edward's appearance did turn out to be a major plot point down the line (like, if he were to end up becoming a male model or prostitute at some point), it hardly seems worth it to keep describing how he looks over and over. There's really no literary reason to keep talking about this, except for that Stephanie Meyer is typing with one hand and she expects the readers to be reading it with one hand as well (if you catch my drift²).
Edward asks Bella what she thinks he is, and she says she’s been “vacillating during the past month between Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker. Vacillating: for when “oscillating” just isn’t pretentious enough.

    Bella decides that her previous statement was far to modest, and to say that she is, in fact, hard-to-read. Either that, or she's just really open to suggestion; Edward just has to tell her something twice and she believes it. "Was [Edward] a hypnotist, too? Or was I just a hopeless pushover?"¹ Definitely the latter. Or rather, you're a shallow character with no roots, no set opinions, and no purpose other than for minor bad things to happen to you so you can become the damsel-in-trivial-distress and be rescued by the author's masturbation fantasies.
    Again, Edward seems to feel his mystique and bad-boy-appeal slipping, so he takes the not-so-subtle route of just telling Bella that he's more of bad guy than a hero. And again, it doesn't matter because Bella would want to jump his bone, even if he had spoken nothing but gibberish to her since they met.
    Lunch ends, and Edward informs Bella that he's skipping Biology and invites her to do the same. Bella "hesitated, torn."¹ I think I'll skip class because the boy I'm liking is skipping class. Tee-hee! She ultimately decides to attend, though. In class, the teacher has them pricking their fingers and testing for blood type, because he wants them to attend an upcoming blood-drive in Port Angeles (which, incidentally, is an hour drive from Forks; kind of far to expect your students to drive). Any teacher who did this in real-life would have angry phone calls from a dozen parents that night and a pink slip by the end of the week, especially if they grabbed one of the students hands and pricked his finger without warning or consent (as is the case in this story).
    Bella, apparently, is one of those people who can faint at the sight of a little blood (Oh boy, what wacky situations will this lead to with her dating a vampire?) so she feels woozy and asks to be sent to the nurse. Mike volunteers to escort her.
    He begins helping her to the nurse's office, but she makes him stop after a short while to take a nap or something. Edward shows up (of course) and, to her protest, picks her up off her feet and begins carrying her to the nurse. Mike yells after Edward as he walks off with Bella, but I guess that Edward can walk faster than Mike can run, because he never actually catches up to him. Edward just ignores Mike's shouts, and Bella's shouts to put her down for that matter. Let's take another look at how this novel is teaching young men to treat women. Mike is helping Bella move, but stops when she tells him to stop. Edward, on the other hand starts moving her without her consent and refuses to stop when she tells him to. And which one of them is going to get rewarded with her affection?
    Edward gets her to the nurse's station and sets him down, and the nurse lets him know he can return to class.

"I'm supposed to stay with her." He said this with such assured authority that - even though she pursed her lips - the nurse didn't argue it further.¹

    Protip: ladies, if he's good at lying to other people, it means he's good a lying to you, too. The nurse leaves for a bit to give them a chance to share some pointless dialogue. They use the time to make fun of how pissed off Mike was at Edward. Speaking of Mike, he finally shows up, with another fainter in tow. Edward tells Bella to leave the nurses office. When they get out, he says it's because the kid who entered was bleeding. Bella claims that she knew because she could smell the blood. "'People can't smell blood,' he contradicted."¹ Only vampires can, because we have super-smell!   Mike joins them outside the nurses office and gives Bella a superfluous reminder of the road-trip that they're going on, shooting glares at Edward as he does it, and making it clear that it wasn't an open invitation. They don't say what expression Edward was shooting back at Mike, but I'm guessing it was smug, Ozymandias-smug³.
    Mike leaves, and Edward offers to use his superior lying ability to get her out of P.E., so she can go home early, which she accepts. He also insists that he's the one who drives her home. When she refuses, he makes it clear that he doesn't understand that "no means no," by threatening to physically force her into his car if she doesn't get in. Yeah. Remember, when someone gives you the romantic advice to "be more like Edward," they mean "act like a rapist."
    Anyways, in the car, Bella discovers that Edward had been listening to "Clair de Lune," by Debussy, and they talk about how they both like the song. Now, I almost can't fault Meyer for picking Clair de Lune, because it is a really great song. The implication that they both like means that they have something meaningful in common is bogus, though. Despite what most high-schoolers like to think, liking classical music does not set them apart from their peers; it's actually a pretty common preference.   And Claire de Lune is quite popular as far as classical pieces go. As far as music goes, it's just so safe. If Edward has been listening to Insane Clown Posse, instead, then sure it would have been crappy music, but at least it would have been someone more polarizing, less guaranteed to be liked by whomever entered his car.
    On the way, Bella mentions the road-trip she's taking with Mike and company that weekend, to which Edward says:

        "I don't really think I was invited."
        I sighed. "I just invited you."
        "Let's not push poor Mike and further this week. We don't want him to snap." His eyes dance; he was enjoying the idea more than he should.
        "Mike-schmike," I muttered.¹

    Jeez, they're just stepping on this poor guy every chance they get. With the way they treat him, I wouldn't be surprised or really blame him if he goes Judas on them later in the book. Actually, that probably will happen. I could see Meyer making Mike do something semi-evil down the line to prevent readers from feeling sorry for him for him and retroactively justify how he's been treated up to this point. I heard that the as-of-yet unreleased Stephanie Meyer novel Midnight Sun is a retelling of the events in Twilight, but from Edward's point of view, instead of Bella's. What would be much more interesting, though, would be to see it from Mike's point of view.
    Still driving, Edward asks Bella about her mother. "'She looks a lot like me, but prettier,' I said."¹ Wait, hold on. I remember that she narrated a description of her mother in the first chapter: "My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines."⁴ So what we can read from these two descriptions is that (unless she considers short hair and laugh lines to be the defining qualities of prettiness) that Bella doesn't actually think her mom is prettier than her, but she will say that she thinks her mom is prettier than her, to other people. So, when she gives that disparaging comment about her own looks, she doesn't really think it's true. This is pretty much proof positive that (just as I've been saying) Bella is insincere about her self-judgments; her modesty is just an act. Either that, or Meyer just isn't too big on inter-chapter continuity. I prefer to think that it's the first one.
    Edward also talks briefly about his parents; that they both died long ago (because they were born hundreds of years ago, because Edward is a vampire), and their names were "Carlisle and Esme"¹ (c'mon, Bella, you don't think that's odd at all?). When he gets to her house, Edward, our of the blue, asks Edward how old she is.

        "I'm seventeen," I responded, a little confused.
        "You don't seem seventeen."¹

You're right about that, Eddy. Maturity-wise, she seems fourteen, tops. Still, Bella interprets his comment in a flattering way and goes on to brag about how mature she is. Edward lets her out of the car, and makes a pointless and awkwardly-worded dig on Bella's clumsiness (curses! my one weakness!) before driving away. So ends another chapter in the life of everyone's favourite Mary-Sue. Stay tuned for chapter 6.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 5: Blood Type” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

²Masturbation.

^3:

⁴Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 1” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 4

2009-07-13T12:42:00.001-07:00

A note on spoilers and what I know about the series. I feel I should mention, just in case anyone was worried about spoilers, that I don't plan on spoiling anything in the book early. That is to say, I'm going through everything in order and I'm not going to spoil something that I haven't come across yet. However, these reviews are meant to be a substitute for actually reading the book, so any spoiler information that occurs in the book will occur in my review as well. For example, if there were a big spoiler in the 15th chapter, I wouldn't mention it until my review of the 15th chapter. If you want to avoid spoilers, it'll pay to read my reviews in order. It would be hard for me to spoil information early on anyways, because I haven't read the book before (each chapter's review is written before I start reading the next chapter), and know little about the events that take place. What I did know before starting this project is: It's about a girl named Bella and her Romance with a boy named Edward. Edward is a vampire and sparkles in the sun. Also, all the fan-girls want to jump his bone. Even though the fact that Edward is a vampire hasn't explicitly come out yet, I still don't consider it a spoiler, since anyone who knows someone who knows someone who likes Twilight is aware of this fact. I also know that there's a character named Jacob at some point in the series (whose bone none of the fan-girls want to jump) and a certain piece of information about him which may actually be a spoiler so I wont bring it up now. For everything else that happens in the book, I'm hearing about it for the first time when I do that chapter. Anyways, on to chapter 4:

    The dream that Bella hinted at at the end of Chapter Three was surprisingly boring; just your standard chasing-after-someone-but-can't-catch-up-to-them affair. "After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach."¹
    At school, Bella ponders about why no one saw Edward teleport across the parking lot. I use "teleport" loosely here, because the book doesn't actually describe how he got from point A to point B; it just makes note of how fast he was there (and, of course, how gorgeous he looked once getting there). For all I know, he could have ran super-fast, or just made a really long leap. None of these are the kinds of actions that would go unnoticed be a large crowd of people. Bella has a theory as to why no one noticed him, though: "no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful."¹ Edward may have super-strength and super-speed, but Bella has acquired her own superpower: Stalker Senses. Also, I sincerely hope that she's using "pitiful" here to describe herself for obsessing over Edward, rather than everyone else for not obsessing over Edward.
    Actually, this raises the question of why the other girls aren't obsessing over Edward. I mean, it's not like Bella just has really uncommon taste in men. It seems like every Twilight fan out there wants to marry Edward, so it only makes sense that lots of the girls in the school would be interested in him as well. Maybe he did something just a week before Bella arrived that turned all the girls off to him, like showing up to school in nothing but a cape and soiled Spiderman underoos, and everyone remembers it but no one's mentioned it to Bella yet. Who knows.
    Anyways, Edward is back to his Bella-hating stoner mode, and has stopped talking to her in their Biology class (because I guess the plot was just moving too fast). There's a girls-ask-boys dance coming up and a lot of drama circulating around the school because of that (or at least a lot of drama circulating around Bella's head). Jessica asks Bella for permission to ask Mike to the dance. She asks him, he says maybe, because he wants to see if Bella will go to the dance with him before he agrees to going with Jessica. So, he asks Bella to the dance, and she makes up some excuse about going to Seattle that weekend. Actually, pretty much every character with a name, including the guy who almost hit her with his van ("Tyler") asks her to the dance. Edward, however, does not.
    Edward, in Biology class, calmly tells Bella that it would be better of the two of them weren't friends. He didn't say why not, because that would be all too un-mysterious. Bella kind of freaks out and has a bitch-fest at him when he tells her this (I guess because she's not used to when guys don't all bow down before her).   She then storms off to P.E., where she continues to think about him some more.
    Actually, when she's storming off to P.E. she stumbles and drops all her books before right in front of Edward, and he picks them up for her. It's supposed to be one of those "OMG, I was so embarrassed I could die" moments (along with another showcase for Ed's super-speed), but really it's hard to feel sorry for her. Everyone has a friend (you all know who yours is) who just likes complaining. They make it sound like they have the worst life in the world by taking every little thing that happens to them and blowing it up like the Hindenburg. They're not really miserable, though, they just act miserable because they enjoy telling people about all the bad things that happen to them; it's fun for them. Bella is that kind of person. She complains about the weather, she complains about her parents, she complains about being unattractive, she complains about being attractive, she complains about Edward being around, she complains about Edward not being around. I'm sure when she was in Phoenix, that she complained about everything there, too. So don't feel sorry for her when she dumps her books in front of the guy she lust-hates; it'll just give her complaint fuel for months to come.
    That night, her dad is (allegedly) suspicious when she starts cooking peppers that night because "the closest edible Mexican food was probably in southern California."¹ Yeah, too bad they're not in a Mecca of international cuisine like Arizona. Actually, as a point of fact, Washington is an agricultural powerhouse, and many people living there have immigrated from Latin America (both legally and illegally). A quick Google Maps search of Forks reveals that there are no less than four Mexican restaurants in the small town (none of which are Azteca), and the census info states that roughly 15% of the population is “Hispanic or Latino.”² I’m sure at least a few of those 15% (or 485 people) are from Mexico, but I guess that Meyer doesn't consider the food made by Mexicans to be real Mexican food; only that made by Californians.
    Anyways, she and her dad have some boring discussion about gas-mileage and her getting lost in Seattle, etc. She points out that she used to live in Phoenix, which is five times the size of Seattle. I don’t know how she figures this. Phoenix is actually less than four times the size of Seattle, as far as square-mileage goes. The population of Phoenix is roughly 3 times that of Seattle, and population of the Metropolitan area is less than double.³
    The next day, Edward displays his super-speed again, grabbing Bella's fallen keys in the parking lot. Because he loves drama, apparently, he's now going back on his previous no-friends proposition and offering her a ride to Seattle on the weekend she planned on going (with the pretense of his Volvo getting better mileage than her truck). He does this in a "velvet, muted"¹ voice. To review,Edward's voice is "low," "attractive," "soft," "musical," "velvet," and "muted." Edward himself is "interesting," "brilliant," "mysterious," "perfect," and "beautiful."¹ That's not a list from all the descriptions so far, though; all those are from one paragraph. Anyways, Edward insults her/offers her a ride and Bella hates him/accepts the ride (abusive relationship in the making?) Bella also questions Edward about his flip-flop on the friend issue:

        "Honestly Edward," I felt a thrill go through me as I said his name, and I hated it. "I can't keep up with you. I thought you didn't want to be my friend."
        "I said that it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."
        "Oh, thanks, now that's all cleared up." Heavy sarcasm.¹

Yeah, thanks Meyer. The sarcasm was so subtle; thanks for labeling it. I wouldn't have been able to guess that that was sarcasm without you cluing me in.
And so ends chapter four. Stay tuned for Chapter Five.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 4: Invitations” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

²Source: US Census. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_event=Search&geo_id=&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=Forks&_cityTown=Forks&_state=04000US53&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&show_2003_tab=&redirect=Y

³Information from Wikipedia, because I’m lazy.

I read Twilight and Hate it: Chapter 2

2009-07-11T20:36:00.001-07:00

Previous: Chapter One

Here's the short version: Edward was gone from school the next couple days, then it snowed, them he came back with new eyes and started acting nice to Bella for no apparent reason. That's basically the gist of chapter two. Except it's drawn out over twenty-two pages and sprinkled with lots of trivial teenage social problems and flowery descriptions of how gorgeous Edward is (something tells me that a lot of the chapters are going to be like that).
It starts with Bella talking about how she's been having fantasies about telling Edward off for not bowing down/paying attention to her, or whatever. She notes that she'd never actually do it, though, because she was a wuss and "made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator."¹ I have no idea why Meyer decided to capitalize "Cowardly Lion," but not "terminator." Some subtle display of her admiration for the Wizard of Oz and disdain for Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, perhaps? Or just a lazy copy-editor. I guess I can't really blame Meyer for that one.
Anyways, all the guys that she met the previous day (except Edward, who doesn't show up to school) are swooning over her and having jealous little almost-fights for her attention. At least that's what she says. Since this is all being related to us by the character of Bella, rather than an impartial narrator, we don't really know that these boys are jealous over here; we just know that she thinks that they're jealous over her. Is this to demonstrate that Bella is self-centered or has a run-away ego? Probably not, because this book doesn't seem that deep.
The helpful guy from the day before (who is named "Mike," by the way) "who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by [Bella's] side to class." She talks about him as though he were a dog for much of the chapter, and notes that she "was going to have to do something about Mike, and it wouldn't be easy."¹ Ouch. Nice guys finish last in Meyer's world. Bella makes a third reference to her being bad at volleyball, and leaves school to get groceries, but not before pausing again (in the parking lot) do note how damned sexy the vampire siblings are (even with Edward being AWOL).
After a pointless-seeming explanation that her dad can't cook, she would be taking over the kitchen duties, and explanation of what she was cooking that night, Bella checks her email to find three "OMG, I'm so worried about you" messages from her mom. She replies with an "I'm fine, but angsty. Also, you're worthless without me." Then, more pointless talk about what she's cooking her and her dad for dinner. The whole dinner things seems vestigial to the plot, except for that her dad gives her some information about the Cullens. Their adoptive-father is a very gifted surgeon, and all the kids act really well-behaved and mature (probably because they're so damned old).
The next week or so passes by in a couple paragraphs. Mike is up to his dastardly tricks, like inviting her on a group road-trip, and Edward continues to not show up. Then it snows, and Bella has more angst about that. Grease-boy from before (who's name is "Eric") hits Mike with a jealousy-snowball. Bella then retreats, but at lunch she finds out *gasp* that Edward has returned to school and he's *gasp* no longer acting freaked out by her. Also, he and his posse no longer looked like they were coming down from a three-day high.
Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: we're going to be told the reason that Edward voided Bella at first but now doesn't, and it's going to be something incredibly stupid; like... she looked so yummy that he could barely hold himself from biting her neck, or... he heard some ridiculous rumor about her and accepted it without question. Something stupid like that. I haven't actually read this book before, so I honestly don't know what the explanation is going to be. Let's see if I'm right as the book pans out.
Anyways, Bella spends lunch freaking out about Edward's presence to her friend, Jessica. Jessica, incidentally, has a crush on Mike. Or, at least, Bella narrated that she has a crush on Mike. Knowing how Bella perceived all the guys to like her, I'm surprised that she didn't narrate that Jessica had a crush on her.
She heads to Biology, where Edward introduces himself to her today in a "quiet, musical voice."¹ You can add that to "deep" and "attractive" from the first chapter. They make awkward small talk, and go through the lab, demonstrating how much better they both are at science than every other student (probably because neither of them originally went to the vastly inferior Forks public schools). Bella also notices something different about his appearance:

I vividly remember the flay black color of his eyes the last time he'd glared at me - the color was striking against the background of his pale skin and his auburn hair. Today, is eyes were a completely different color: a strange ocher, darker than butterscotch, but with the same golden tone.¹

Seriously, she gave him colour-changing eyes? I guess Meyer just couldn't decide whether she found "dark, piercing eyes" or eyes with a "golden tone" to be more attractive. This is getting to be so fanfictiony, I'm surprised she doesn't give him cat ears.
They continue the small talk and Bella explains her reason for moving to Forks anyways (so her mom would be free to travel around the country with her new husband, a small-time baseball player). Edward, at this point in the conversation, has taken to telling Bella how she feels, rather than asking. To this, Bella says:

"My face is so easy to read - my mother always calls me her open book." I frowned
"On the contrary, I find you very difficult to read."...
"That must mean you're a good reader then," I replied.¹

Bella's kind of an idiot, I realized. Let's look at the logic again. Bella is easy to read, and Edward finds her hard to read, so that would make him a good reader? No, it would be the opposite. For example, if you saw an adult reading The Little Engine that Could, and you walked up to them and said "hey, that's an easy to read book," and they said "actually, I find it quite difficult to read," you would think that they were mentally handicapped. The thought that they're a good reader would be the last thing from your mind.
So, Biology ends and Bella walks out with Mike. He gets a jealousy-face when they talk about Edward (and considering how much she narrates about Edward, Bella probably talks about him a lot). They go to P.E. together, and Mike is on her team in Volleyball, covering the week-spot she creates; a fourth reference to her being bad at the sport in half as many chapters. Is this going somewhere?
After school, she catches a glimpse of Edward outside his car in the parking lot and, in her lust-frenzy, almost crashes into a Toyota Corolla, "just the sort of car that my truck would make scrap metal of."¹ Take that, foreign car manufacturers! Thus end chapter 2.
Stay tuned for chapter 3.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 2: Open Book” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

I Read Twilight and Hate It: Chapter 3

2009-07-10T14:26:00.001-07:00

    Bella wakes up the next morning to find that the snow has stuck, and rain from the previous day has frozen, and has some more angst about this. Actually, she admits that it looks nice; "all the rain from yesterday had frozen solid - coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, an making the driveway a deadly ice slick," but still complains about it.
    She then spends the rest of her morning thinking about Edward (considering how much she does that, though, it seems like it would just be a time-saver to tell the audience when she's not thinking about Edward) and how much she wants wants him. I realize that this book was mostly meant to appeal to a female audience, but I'm sure there are some teenage boys out there who read it, and what advice about women is it giving them? "To get girls to like you, be mean to them as soon as soon you meet them (especially if they're new and don't have any friends). Then, start being nice, but tell some really obvious lies. Chicks dig that." Anyways, Bella describes this part of the chapter better than I could: "I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen. And that was very, very stupid." Yes, yes it was.
    Bella makes her way to school through the snow, pondering to herself about what hot stuff she is and how all the boys want her. When she gets to school, she realizes that her dad had put chains on her truck for her that morning. Every time she mentions her dad, she calls him not-awkwardly-at-all by his first name, Charlie. Because, you know, I guess it's easier for the author than showing to us that she doesn't think of him has a father figure. And FYI; if it was that icy out, they would have just closed school.
    After getting out of her car in the parking lot, she suddenly notices something shocking. That an out-of-control van is heading towards her? No. Well, there is an out-of-control van sliding on the ice towards her, but before that she notices that Edward is staring at her (along with a number of other students); staring at her because she's about to get nailed by the out-of-control van. God knows Bella isn't going to do anything to rescue herself from the van of doom, so Edward teleports across the parking lot, knocking Bella to the ground in the process. While she's down, Bella narrates, "a low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognize." I guess Edward has the only low, attractive, soft, musical voice that she's heard. Also, I don't know what Meyer thinks that "oath" means, but it's pretty far from it's actual definition, unless she's telling use that Bella heard Edward pledging fealty to his lord. At this point, Edward pushes the van away. With his bare hands.
    I'm going to take a minute here and talk about vampires. First of all, Vampires aren't super-heroes. It seems that every new writer who thinks that they're the coolest thing ever wants to one-handed-type up a story giving them some amazing new ability that they never had before. Vampires don't teleport, and they don't have super-strength. And for that matter, they don't walk around in the middle of the day without dying, overcast or not. Originally, vampires were just mindless, unholy, reanimated corpses that hungered for human blood at night, while resting in their burial place during the day.   But, Bram Stoker had to go and write Dracula, which wasn't a bad novel per se, but it did pave the way for decades of shitty, semi-erotic vampire-fiction. The kind of vampire fiction, which reached it's nadir with Twilight, and now I'm making fun of it.
    An ambulance arrives to take Bella and Edward to the hospital, but they don't get out of there before Bella's dad (now referred to as "Chief Swan") arrives to give the ambulance a police escort. People die in ambulances all the time, but (despite Bella's worries) very few of the deaths are by embarrassment. Don't worry, though, Bella was fine. Nothing but a bruised ego and a new sense of angst, this time at Edward for A)Teleporting across the parking lot and B)Not falling down himself, so he was allowed to walk into the hospital instead of being carried in on a stretcher with a neck-brace. Conveniently, despite the fact that there was a large group of people watching the accident, no one but Bella saw Edward teleport, so he asks her to keep it a secret.
    Bella's placed in a room with the driver of the van, who has some minor cuts (or "shallow slices"), and Edward walks in to act nonchalant. He's followed soon afterwards by Dr. Cullen. "He was young, he was blond... and he was handsomer [sic] than any movie star I'd ever seen. He was pale, though, and tired-looking, with circles under his eyes." What's with all the vampires looking like people you'd see in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue? What happened to the good old days, when the unclean looked like this:

    Dr. Cullen pronounces Bella to be healthy, and she leaves the room to go harass Edward about his apparent super-powers. He just brushes her off and acts like she's crazy, which she kind of is. I mean, they're not even dating yet, and already she's being pretty possessive. Bella then leaves, with a new-found source of angst. She gets a ride home and continues to obsess about this guy she barely knows.
    "I was consumed by the mystery Edward presented. And more than a little obsessed with Edward himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I wasn't as eager to escape Forks as I should be, as any normal, sane person would be. ...
    That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen."
    Ewwwww. That's where chapter three ends. I'm sure a steamy, sticky dream description soon to follow in chapter four.

I Read Twilight and Hate it: Chapter One

2009-07-09T15:27:00.001-07:00

I picked up the book at the library today. Despite having a number of friends that read the series, I wasn't able to borrow a copy from anyways, so I put myself on the waiting list for the book, which lead to me getting a copy yesterday, a worn paperback with a ripped and creased and some water damage near the end. Which is good, because I wont feel too bad about dog-earing the bottom, but bad because I'll have less than a month to write as much as I can before I return it. But anyways, let's dive in to Chapter One:
It starts with Disney-Princess-esque-named heroine Bella Swan departing from her previous home in Phoenix, AZ in order to live with her dad in the town of Forks, in "Washington State." ¹ She laments and complains about this move, through narration, all through the chapter. Oh my, could we maybe expect her to find that maybe appearances are deceiving and she'll actually grow to decide that Forks is where she was meant to be? So, she says goodbye to her mom, flies to Seattle then to Port Angeles, then gets picked up by her (who split with her mom long ago) dad for the drive to Forks. On the drive, they talk about a car that he plans to help her get. One passage stuck out to me:

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in.
"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good care for you" as opposed to just "good car." ¹

The reason that this stuck it to me, is that she would be most likely misinterpreting the "for you" in his sentence. Often, people add "for you" onto a sentence when they announce that they did a favour for the listener. "I made some cookies for you," "I got rid of that hornets' nest for you," I cut off my right ear for you," etc., etc. Of course, her father could have emphasized the "for you" in such a way that made it clear that he thought it was good enough for her but not a goo car in general, but that seems unlikely (unless her dad is an asshole). Talking like that sounds really unnatural, unless you're trying to sleight the person you're talking to. It's also possible that Meyer intentionally wanted to show that her protagonist made unfair assumptions about people in order to give her personality flaws and make her a more three-dimensional character, however Bella is turning out to be a major Mary Sue (in general) so that seems unlikely. Chalk it up to the writer forgetting that the characters don't know everything that the writer knows.
During the ride, she describes her new environment as being far to green for her tastes, claiming "Even the air filtered down greenly through the trees... It was too green - and alien planet." ¹ First of all, Arizona is not so barren that grass and trees would make somewhere feel like an "alien planet". And if it is, I'm truly sorry to everyone who lives there. Second, "greenly"? Seriously, "greenly"? This series is known for purple language and excessive verbiage, but I didn't think it would get this ridiculous this fast. My Journalism teacher always said that adverbs were a crutch for poor writers. I guess made-up adverbs would be a crutch for poor writers in elementary school.
Anyways, her dad says that he bought her an old, but reliable, 50s or 60s pickup truck, which she decides that she just wont like. But when they get to the house and she sees that it's an old, but reliable, 50s or 60s pickup truck, she suddenly decides she loves it. Don't ask.
As she's getting settled into the house, Bella narrates to us some information about the high school, including the exact number of students (which is kind of feasible that she would know) and the fact that "their grandparents had been toddlers together,"¹ which is a piece of information that seems like it would be beyond the grasp of the students there themselves, let alone someone who was just moving in. Bella was having another one of those "I know, because the author told me" moments.
She then goes on to explain that she didn't "look like a girl from Phoenix should." Explaining that (apparently) the expectation for Phoenixian girls was that they're "tan, sporty, blond [sic] - a volley-ball player of a cheerleader, perhaps. I don't really know where she's getting this stereotype. ¹ The only Arizonan I can think of is John McCain, and he's so pale that he doesn't cast a shadow. Also, is it really necessary for every "underdog" high school heroine to point out that she's not a cheerleader? I put "underdogs" in quotes, because it's clear from her subsequent physical self-description that Bella is not hard to look at. The description is kind of awkward, because it seems like Meyers wants it to sound like Bella doesn't consider herself attractive, but she uses language one would generally use to make someone sound attractive. For example, where-as most people who thought their complexion was to light would use "pale," or even "transparent," to describe it, Bella opts for the much more poetic and flattering "ivory-skinned." She describes her figure as "slender, but soft somehow,"¹ as the the prevailing standard of beauty was for women to be heavy-set with hard features. None of this would be so awkward if it were an impartial narrator talking about Bella, but Bella is the narrator; this is how she thinks of herself, which seems like an odd thing to do, even if you don't immediately afterwards say that you'll never fit in physically (which she does).
Anyways, Bella unpacks her clothes, and after a long day of sitting in various modes of transportation, complaining through narration, and insincerely judging her appearance in the mirror, she's beat. So she heads off to bed.

___________________________________

And crying. She's also tired from a long night of crying, she informs us the next morning. After a non-descript breakfast, she dons her It's-always-raining-in-Washington parka and drives to school. It is, literally, always raining throughout the first chapter. I've never been to Forks specifically, but I did live just north of Seattle for most of my life, and let me tell you: it is, in fact, raining less than half the time. Somehow, Seattle (and Washington in general) got this reputation for constant precipitation. Try watching "The Ring." There's not a single sunny scene in that whole movie, but I digress. Bella gets her schedule from the school office as well as a piece of paper on which she has to collect all her teachers signatures and then return it at the end of the day; I guess new students aren't trust-worthy enough for regular attendance-calls or something. She parks in the student lot, mentally prepping herself for the first day. "I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me." ¹ Hahahaha, get it? Because it's a vampire novel, and vampires bite people! Hilarious! Really, though, who actually thinks that before an awkward social situation. I mean, if someone is acting like they're afraid of you, you might tell them, "It's okay, I wont bite you," but you do it jokingly; it's not like you actually think the other person was afraid that you'd bite them. Not unless they were raised in the wild or had some kind of phobia about being bitten by other people (neither of which seems to describe Bella).
She makes her way to her first class, English, where she's given a list of reading for that term, which she already happened to have read at her previous school. I guess Forks' educational standards are inferior to Phoenix's. In this class, a friendly male student who was "gangly," and had "skin problems and hair black as an oil slick,"¹ (no Bella-snogs for you, grease-boy) started a conversation with her and offered to show her to her next class. Actually, she had an escort to pretty much each of her classes, including lunch.
During lunch, Bella first spots the legendary apple7 of every fangirl's eye, Edward Cullen. He was sitting with a group of four other (I'm guessing) vampires. They stood out to Bella, because they were all just sort of staring at nothingness, not really looking at anything in the room, and just threw away their lunches without taking a bite either ("unbitten apple" ¹ Get it?). Also, they appeared to be too old to be high school students and

"every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students... They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruise-like shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose..." ¹

Now, maybe I'm just really jaded, but if I saw kids that fit the above description in my high school, my first thought would be that mind-altering chemicals played a large part in their lives, or at the least that they had eating disorders. Bella's mind, however, took a different path:

"... their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces that you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful - maybe the perfect blond [sic] girl, or the bronze-haired boy." ¹

Upon asking another student who they are, Bella is told that they're the semi-incestuous group of adoptive-siblings that live with the wacky, young doctor down the street (from Alaska). Also, they're all dating each other, except for Edward. Edward apparently hasn't dated anyone; he was waiting for the right middle-aged Mormon author's highschool-aged, literary self-personification to come along.
After lunch, Bella headed to Biology, where they were again going over something she'd already learned back in Arizona (c'mon, Forks, what's with the lax education?). That's alright, though, because not only is Edward in the class, but she gets seated right next to him, so she has something else besides cellular biology to study. And study him, she does; there's a lengthy description of Edward's posture and expression during the class, which both denote a man who's getting a prostate exam from a pirate an trying to pretend like it doesn't bother him. Also, he glares at Bella a lot and seems to hate her.
Despite the fact that Edward was being kind of a douche and "so mean," Bella managed to look deeper him and notice that "his forearm was surprisingly hard and muscular," and he had a "deep, attractive voice." ¹ She knows what's important.
Bella seems to fall snugly into the stereotype that women always fall for good-looking jerks rather than nice, sincere guys. I've heard that, later on, Edward is supposed to be this ridiculously nice gentleman, but Bella doesn't know that yet. He's being a jerk to her and she's falling for him, sometimes in the same sentence:

"He turned slowly to glare at me - his face absurdly handsome - with hateful, piercing eyes. For an instant, I felt the thrill of genuine fear, raising hair on my arms." ¹

Anyways, her last class was P.E. Some friendly guy gave her some consolation about Edward being a douche, and paid her a nice compliment, too. Something tells me there will be no Bella-snogs for him, though; his eyes aren't piercing and black enough. Bella makes some comment about volleyball bringing back lots of bad memories of causing injuries in others. Did she have to move away from her old school because she went into a Carrie-like rage in response to a blocked spike? or was this an allusion to her being really un-coordinated? Probably the latter.
Bella narrates the Forks was "literally my personal hell on Earth." ¹ No it's not. Don't say "literally," when you don't actually mean "literally." You only say "literally" when you mean something for it's literal meaning, not as an expression or a metaphor. Forks is not actually hell, or is it personally yours. It is a real town, with real people living in it, and not hell. I suppose that the fictionalized version of Forks in this book is personally yours (in that you specifically wrote it for your characters). It's still not hell, though, it was written out in every way to make Bella succeed as a romantic heroine... unless it's like that episode of the Twilight Zone where the criminal dies, and thinks he's sent to heaven because everything he wants is given to him, but soon realizes how boring existence is with no challenges and realizes that he's actually in hell³. Forks could be that kind of ironic hell, but even then it still wouldn't be literal. Also, I'm probably reading too much into it.
After P.E., Bella is done with classes and heads back to the office to return the random slip that they gave her at the beginning of the day. She finds Edward there, trying to convince the secretary to let him move his Biology class to a different time, just in case the audience hasn't yet grasped that he doesn't want to be near Bella for some reason. After discovering that he can't change it, he blows out of there and Bella turns in the slip, and drives home to get some more crying done.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2.

¹Meyer, Stephanie Twilight. “Chapter 1” Little, Brown and Co., 2005

² Oh that reminds me; before the start of the book, there's a quote from Genesis, regarding the "tree of knowledge." Also, on the cover you see two hands holding an apple. I guess there's going to be some kind of forbidden fruit metaphor later or something.

³ “The Twilight Zone” Season 1, Episode 28 “A Nice Place to Visit”

New Feature: I Read Twilight and Hate it

2009-07-09T12:05:00.001-07:00

I have decided to read Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. I've already done some reading about Twilight, which leads me to dislike the series, but I've never read the actual books. This makes is somewhat difficult to impress on people that have read it that it is a bad book, as all the Twilight fans would just accuse me of criticizing something I didn't even know or understand (and they would be right)¹. I've decided to read Twilight partially to give it a fair chance, but mostly so that I can criticize it better. Also, because I usually try to avoid any book or TV series which becomes suddenly and intensely popular, but sometimes (after it's been out for awhile) my curiosity gets the best of me, much like it did with the Harry Potter series.
Actually, Harry Potter became somewhat of a guilty pleasure, where I enjoyed reading it but was still able to recognize that it wasn't actually good² (sort of like when I would watch "Jackie Chan Adventures"). Really, though, my prediction about Twilight is that I will neither think that it is good nor enjoy it, at least not how it was meant to be enjoyed. Still, I'd like to give the series a fair shake before judging it further (well, maybe not fair, but a shake at any rate). What I do believe I will enjoy is tearing it a new literary hole here, on my blog. You see, I'm introducing a new feature today on Dotted Pomegranates; it's called "I Read Twilight and Hate It." It's meant to be a chapter-by-chapter criticism of the book, as well as a synopsis and substitute to actually reading it, for those in the same situation as me. Look forward to installments, soon.
¹: And if you have read it but say that you hated it, then they just ask "Well, why did you read it then?" It's a bit of a Catch-22
²: I still maintain that Harry Potter is not a good series. I will explain why I think this in a separate post, if necessary.

How much people want to have sex with you.

2009-07-07T16:12:00.001-07:00

This mostly describes heterosexual relationships, because that’s what I know.

(As usual, totally made up and not based on actual data).

Compounded Stereotypes

2009-06-26T23:58:00.001-07:00

As a litmus test for racism, I often hear the question, "If you're walking down the sidewalk at night, and you see a black man walking towards you on the same side of the street, do you cross the street?" A yes-answer is supposed to indicate that you have an ingrained fear of blacks, as evidence of personal or societal racism. Have you ever noticed that they always use a black man in the example and not a black woman, though? I think that if they used a black woman in the question, then less people would say that they would cross the street. This question is meant to serve as a litmus test for racism but it also serves well as a litmus test for sexism.
The thing is, everyone is going to have at least two sets of stereotypes applied to them; one for their sex and one for their race. They could have more if they are, for example, gay or handicapped, but it seems that two would be the minimum that anyone would face. The problem with the "black man" stereotype is that there are a number of stereotypes about African Americans that are also stereotypes about men; notably, that they are more violent, more likely to commit a crime, more callous, and more preoccupied with showing dominance to those around them. I feel that, because there are two traits for which the same set of stereotypes are applied to black men, these stereotypes are compounded.

Most Hilarious Misuse of an Apostrophe Ever

2009-06-13T21:36:00.001-07:00

I remember when I was a kid; every Christmas, Dad would break out his Love Tools and… wait, what?

Which operating system is right for you?

2009-06-09T22:02:00.001-07:00

Here’s a little flowchart I made, for people who are thinking of buying a new computer but aren’t sure which operating system to get:

Sorry if it’s hard to read; I can upload a larger version if necessary.

Anti-Troling

2009-05-27T17:21:00.001-07:00

    I'm going to introduce a new fun activity on the internet; a new way to mess with people with ideology-centered message boards. I call it "anti-trolling." Anyone who's been on the internet for awhile is probably familiar with trolling; the act of going to a message board or chat room and saying things solely for the purpose of annoying and harassing everyone there or to provoke an argument. Anti-trolling is sort of like acting in the opposite of that, but with the same effect.
    Basically, I got the idea when I noticed that a lot of message boards considered anyone who disagreed with the ideology of the message board to be a troll and usually banning them. So, since it's usually so easy to get banned while disagreeing with a community, I wanted to see how easy it was to get banned by agreeing with it, fervently and aggressively. For instance; if it's a right-wing message board, you can act like the most jingoistic, liberal-hating, belligerent conservative that you could imagine, and talk about things, like how you think that it would be a good idea to round up every member of the Democratic Party and shoot them, etc. Then, sit back and watch while people with moderately left-leanings opinions are all banned for trolling, while you get away with idiotic post after idiotic post. It's fun.
    There's only certain kinds of message boards that this works for, however. First of all, it has to be a community based around an ideology (which you will aggressively embrace). That ideology could be political ("the Iraq war needs to end now") or non-political ("Twilight is the best book series, evar"). Secondly, you'll want to pick a message board that's heavily moderated, and has a tendency to ban people for officering opinions that clash with the above-mentioned ideology.
    For my anti-trolling experiment, I chose the previously-mentioned "I Blame the Patriarchy" message board¹. It was great until I eventually did banned and then the message board shut down soon after. I didn't actually end up getting banned for the wacky-ass ideas I was submitting on the board, but because they somehow found out that I wasn't who I was pretending to be. But oh well, guess I'll just have to be more careful next time.

¹: This link is to the old message board, which I would frequent. Iblamethepatriarchy.com links to a new(?) one, but it’s not loading for me.

Culture Lag

2009-05-26T12:02:00.001-07:00

   Have ever noticed that the world doesn't tend to work in the same way as it does in the media? Take high school for instance. Based on any movie or TV show you may watch about high school life, you may be lead to believe that there's a rigid caste system for popularity, with the cheerleaders and football hotshots ruling the school with an iron fist. You may be lead to believe that every student falls neatly into an easily identifiable clique; jocks, nerds, goths, etc, and only keeps friends within that specific group. All these perceptions about high school life, in my experience at least, are completely false. There is no real hierarchy of popularity, no social royalty. All the cheerleaders I knew were very nice an approachable (actually, it tended to be the geeky girls who were the most stuck up and superficial, but I digress). There were no well-defined social groups; everyone just had their own little list of people that they were friends with.
   And yet, throughout much of my time in high school, I still tended to believe that social politics in high school functioned like they did in the movies, despite the fact that I could see for myself that this wasn't true. This might be how high school used to be, but I was seeing it as how high school currently was. Basically, I believed these facts about high school to be currently true, because they were previously true. It's a phenomenon I call Culture Lag.
   Here's how I think it works: the people of one generation experience something (for example, high school) in a certain way. They then go on to produce media which portrays things how they experienced. The next generation then watches that media and begins to think that things work how they are portrayed in it, rather than how they actually experience it. Thus, people are basing their perceptions of reality on other people's (previous) observations, rather than their own.

Attractiveness index

2009-05-18T10:39:00.001-07:00

    Society tells us what to find attractive in possible partners; this is really no secret. Society tells us that for a woman to be attractive, they must be thin, large-breasted, and feminine. Men must be muscular, confident, and masculine. There is, of course, nothing objectively true about these standards. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone has their own opinion about what is attractive, or at least they should.
    I've noticed that over time, people's natural tastes tend to become polluted by the standards of society at large, so that their preferences start to match society's. I have tried, at least in myself, to reverse this process as best as I could. How, you ask? I basically try to subtract society's preferences from my own, to get a better idea of my own natural attraction. When I find someone attractive, I ask myself how attractive I find them. Then I consider how society's standards would view them and subtract (or divide; it's not an exact science) that from how attractive I found them. The resulting degree of attractiveness, I call an "Attractiveness Index," and I try to use this when considering whether I'd like to date someone (with a higher index being better).
    It sounds unnecessarily complicated and calculating, but it's actually quite simple. If you find someone to be hot, but society would deem them to be absolutely smoking hot, then it seems that your natural attraction to them is actually pretty low, and that you find them attractive is based mostly on society's standards, so they would have a low index. On the other hand, if you find someone attractive but society at large finds them completely unattractive, then it's pretty clear that your attraction to them comes completely from yourself, and not from society imprinting itself on you; they would have a high attractiveness index.
    I behoove you, the reader, to also adopt the practice of choosing people with high attractiveness indexes, as it will be beneficial to both you and to society at large. You'll fin yourself to be happier in your relationships, as you will end up with people who you find attractive based on your preferences and not society's, so your attraction to them will be strong as it is more personal and runs deeper. It will be better for society at large, because if more people begin seeking out partners based on their own innate attraction rather than society's standards, it will result in less homogeny of what people find attractive, which will mean that sought-after-ness will be more evenly distributed across all kinds of people. The less-homogeny thing will also benefit you personally, because it will result in less competition for people that you are attracted to, if they don't meet society's standards.
    In case you're wondering about the methodology for creating this, it basically comes down to the assumption that our apparent attraction to someone (how attractive we think they are, without really thinking about it) will be an average of society's view of how attractive they would be and our own inherent attraction to them (untainted by society's views). So, given the first two values, we can extrapolate our inherent attraction. Here's a chart:

My own pet theory on why you see more male musicians.

2009-05-05T22:39:00.001-07:00

Edit: Blogspot cuts off the right half of the picture; be sure to click on it for full view.

*Not based on actual data.

Types of Privilege

2009-04-24T23:58:00.001-07:00

You hear about privilege a lot in gender, identity, and ethnicity politics. Privilege entails certain abilities, benefits, and well.. privileges that society gives specifically to various groups but not others. Describing a privilege means naming the group who benefits from it and it's specific effect (this article will focus on the latter). It's generally characterized as a bad thing, and it is a bad thing (for the most part). Pretty much every kind of privilege entails some kind of problem with society. However, that doesn't mean that the actual terms of the privilege are a negative thing. Allow me to explain:
The way I see it, there are four kinds of privilege. The first would be what I call "positive privilege." Like all kinds of privilege, this is includes some kind of benefit that's placed on only certain groups in society. The nature of the privilege though is some kind of good and positive benefit, which should really be bestowed on everyone in society. For a good example of positive privilege, travel back in time 100 years to the early 20th century, when only white men could vote. It was obviously bad that this right was restricted to a small group, but the right to vote itself was a positive thing - something that should have been extended to everyone. So, voting was a positive privilege.
The second kind of privilege would be the opposite: negative privilege. That is to say, a privilege that is only bestowed on a small group, but really no body should have it. For example, let's say a friend of yours is the child of a very influential person (say, a senator). Your friend goes out drinking one night and tries to drive home afterwards, only to be pulled over by a cop. When the cop realizes who your friend's parent is, they immediately decide to let them go without so much as a warning, despite the fact that they were clearly unfit to drive. Being able to drive while drunk (and get away with it) is a privilege that no one should have. Therefore, negative privilege.
There are some kinds of privilege that can't really be imagined as "everyone having" or "no one having." They only exist if they're restricted to a certain group. These are the third type, which I call "comparative privilege." The best example of this that I can think of is the gender wage-gap. National surveys say that, when you average out the wages for all full-time workers in America, women tend to earn about 80 cents for every dollar that men earn (or, men earn $1.25 for every dollar women earn)¹. This kind of privilege really can't exist in a way that everyone can have it or no one can have it. It would be impossible for everyone to make %25 more than everyone else, and it would also be impossible for everyone to make 20% less than everyone else, because there needs to be a separate group making a different amount of money for the gap to exist. The benefits that one receives from this kind of privilege only exist comparatively, and not absolutely.
The last category of privilege is probably a controversial-sounding one, but here me out. It's "justified privilege," and it does exist. There are some kinds of privilege, that are based on merit (rather than race, gender, class, or any other group one is born into) and also just make sense. For instance, people who don't know C# probably isn't going to be chosen for a job as a C# programmer. If you never bothered to learn Spanish, you're probably never going to be hired as a Spanish teacher. And only people who can cook are realistically going to get hired as chefs. These are all examples of groups of people receiving a certain benefit for being in that group; they're all privilege, but each one of them is a privilege that should exist. They are justified privileges. Of course, with every example of a privilege, it's completely up for debate whether it's justified or not (as is true with all these categories) It bares repeating, though: any privilege based on a group someone was born into is never going to be justified.
In addition to the types of privilege, I believe that there are also 3 levels. From most-significant to least, they are: legally-enforced, socially-enforced, and non-enforced/symbolic. The first, legally-enforced, involves any sort of privilege that is written into law. This would include, for example, any kind of restriction on who is allowed to vote.
The second level is socially-enforced, and (as the name would imply) includes privileges which are not legally put into law, but exist because of how people act and the expectations they hold. It's not (I'm fairly sure) illegal for men to wear dresses or skirts, but the expectations that they don't and the reactions that people give to men wearing them generally act as a deterrent that prevents men from dressing in that manner.
Non-enforced or symbolic privilege is a kind that doesn't really effect you in any tangible way, other than to subject you to certain ideas or stereotypes. This includes things like how people of your sex/religion/ethnicity are portrayed on TV, or gender-specific language. Granted, these kinds of privilege can create shifts in public perception that can lead to socially-enforced privilege, but they don't (in and of themselves) really effect how you live your life.
I offer up these classifications of privilege as a better way to understand and think of ways to react to it, but they do not work as perfect cut-and-dry categories; which type of privilege one is dealing with is certainly open to opinion. And there are some grey areas between the different levels of privilege as well (for instance, if the law is written in such a way that it would create equality, but courts always ignore it in favour of passing on their own biases, is that legally-enforced or socially-enforced privilege?). However, I believe that that descriptors I have given in this article provide an accurate way to mentally organize privilege, and that their scope covers all instances of privilege that I can think of (though I'm always willing to entertain suggestions that I've missed something). Here's a chart:

¹: There’s a lot of different estimations out there on exactly what the pay gap is, ranging from 70% – 98%. I’m just using 80% for simplicity’s sake.

Dworkin’s Razor

2009-04-09T12:59:00.001-07:00

I was reading a thread on the I Blame the Patriarchy forum about men who start dating those life-sized dolls, and I noticed everyone had their own comment about why the men did this. None of them had anything to do with crippling social anxiety or anything like that They were all something along the lines of "having a woman who couldn't say 'no,'" or a way to have sex with a female body without having to deal with a female mind, or just being able to rape without ever getting in legal trouble.
They all seemed to be be explanations that were sex-based and usually involved some heavy hatred of women on the part of the men owning the dolls. It really puzzled me how these forum-goers could come to a conclusion without doing any research, be so wrong, and be so sure of themselves.
Then it dawned on me that they just have another way of thinking; it explains so much of what people said on that forum. I call it Dworkin's Razor, and it consists of the idea that: whenever there are multiple explanations for something, the explanation which implies the most hatred and discrimination against women is always the correct one.

Words for Asshole

2009-04-06T16:29:00.001-07:00

There are many ways to call someone an asshole. If they're a guy, you can call them a dick or a douche bag. If they're a woman then you can call them a bitch or a cunt. Either way, you can still just call them an asshole (although, like many gender-neutral terms, it is more often used for guys). All these words, when used as a pejorative, have basically the same meaning: that the person in question is self-serving, cruel, callous, greedy, or just generally evil. Yet, the connotations of the words are so different.
The most obvious difference is the gender difference. Cunt and bitch are used to describe women, which makes sense because they mean "vagina" and "female dog," respectively. Dick makes sense for men because it means "penis" (or a male nickname). What about douche bag, though? It's a female hygienic product, so it's kind of a mystery that it's used to refer to men. I guess it could be to create more of a gender balance in the number of words. Dick already provides a lot of permutations, though: dickhole, dickface, dickweed. It's kind of unique amongst these words. Cuntface? Bitchweed? You just don't hear it.
Another stark difference is the level of offensiveness. Obviously, cunt is the most offensive of these. Calling someone a cunt and calling someone a dick are basically the opposite-gender equivalents of each other - they're both words for genitalia that also colloquially mean asshole - and yet the former is so much more offensive than the latter. I'm not really sure why this is; possibly just a result of the fact that it's used less-often.
I've seen lots of people try to "reclaim" the word bitch, and re-invent it as a compliment. I've even seen a positive backronym create for it: "Beautiful Intelligent Talented Cute Hot." I'm against this reclamation. If someone calls you a bitch and clearly means it as an insult but you respond as though it were a compliment, then you're just being an idiot. I'm generally against people responding to the literal wording of what someone says when it's clear that the intended meaning is different, like back in elementary school when you asked your teacher if you can go to the bathroom and she'd say "I don't know, can you?" That's kind of the same thing that someone is doing when they interpret being called a bitch as a compliment, except it makes less sense because they're not using the literal meaning; they're using some crazy, made-up one. "Bitch," unlike other words that have been reclaimed like "queer," wasn't a slur against every member of a certain group but rather an insult against someone's personality. Plus, reclaiming the word bitch wouldn't really change much. If someone wants to say that a woman is an asshole, they'd just call them an asshole. Or cunt.

The Stupid Rancher Problem

2009-03-29T13:33:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about the smart cow problem and how it relates to DRM and piracy, and there's a parallel issue present which I like to call the "stupid rancher problem." Think of it this way: a number of ranchers all share a single field for their cows to graze in, and each rancher controls one gate to that field. Now, all it takes is one rancher to leave their gate unsecured, and the cows will be able to open it and all escape. In this sense, there's no incentive for the rest of the ranchers to put much effort into securing their individual gate, because it's not the strongest gate that the cows need to get past; it's the weakest. To put it simply: only one dumb rancher needs to leave the gate open, then everyone's cows can escape.

How does this apply to DRM you ask? Well, imagine that you're the copyright holder for some kind of intellectual property. Say, a song. There are many ways that your song can reach the consumer: CDs, Vinyl, the Radio, A music video on TV, iTunes, Amazon, and any number of other online distribution services. Now, even though some of the companies that distribute your music may assure you that they have the most advanced anti-piracy measures in place, it doesn't really matter; your music will just be grabbed for piracy from another source. Leaning on a rancher to make the strongest gate even stronger will do nothing but waste your time and theirs. The cows are just going to leave anyways through the gate that's already open (which, in this case, would be CDs).

The Big Transgender Post

2009-03-26T14:57:00.001-07:00

This article expects you to have a basic understanding of terminology surrounding the transgender movement, but in case you don't, here's the one-paragraph summary: "Sex" refers to one's maleness of femaleness in the physical sense (ie; your plumbing). "Gender" refers to someone's mental sense of identity of being male or female (what you consider yourself to be or "identify" as). "Female-to-Male" (or FTM) refers to a transgendered¹ person who was born with a female body but identifies as a male. "Male-to-Female" or MTF would be the opposite of that². A person who's not transgendered is called "cisgendered."
I don't really have a blanket acceptance for all transgender issues nor a blanket denial of them. It's a little more complicated with that, so I'm going to list some statements that would generally be used to describe what the transgender rights movement supports, then whether I consider then true or false and why. If any of the issues require further clarification or support after this, I'll write a separate article for them.

A person is a man³ or a woman based on what they identify with. Sort of. Like many discussions, this one comes down to a matter. Here, we have two different definitions for man,* one stemmed in gender, and the other stemmed in sex. The exact wording that I most often hear for the gender-based definitions is that a male is "anyone who identifies as a male." The sex-based definition I like to use is that someone is male if they're "phenotypically male," that is to say if they've grown male reproductive organs.
As far as which of these is correct, they both are to some extent. Some people, when they say "male" are referring to someone who identifies as male, regardless of gender. At the same time, some people are referring to anyone who has a male sex when they say it. Really, in a way, these are two separate words that just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same way. So, they're both useable definitions.
My position, though, would be that the sex-based version is more useable. The reason for this being mostly that it's the meaning that most people are thinking of when they say male, and most dictionaries would agree with it. There are also some inherent problems with the gender-based definition, probably the greatest of which is that it's a circular definition; it includes the word "male" in the definition for "male." It also implies that anyone who doesn't speak English can't really be male, because they probably wouldn't identify with a word that they don't even know. I know this sounds like I'm being pretty ridiculous in my interpretation of this definition, but when a definition doesn't create any meaning in a word besides the word itself, then it's just not a good definition and opens itself up to these problems.
I can also see how people might see the gender-based definition as sort of a "straw-man," but that is honestly the definition I've heard most often offered by people who consider maleness to be gender-determined. Still, I'm also willing to listen to other definitions if any readers have another one to offer.
A transgendered person feels a strong compulsion to express their gender which they cannot help. Sure. I mean, I don't have the experience of being any of the people out there who say these feelings are so compelling, so who am I to disagree with them when they tell me how they feel.
A person should be allowed to wear the clothes and then present themselves in such a way that reflects their gender identity. Yes , with a caveat. This is all about being honest with yourself. If you a person feels that their gender compells them to wear a skirt instead of pants or visa versa, then more power to them. There's really no harm in dressing to express. I put a caveat in here though, with regards to dressing in order to convince people that your sex is something it isn't. I've noticed a pre-occupation amongst transgendered people with their ability to "pass," or present themselves in such a way that no one guesses their sex. This is different than dressing in a certain way for the purposes of self-expression; it's dressing for the purpose of creating an idea in other people's heads, and a false idea at that. I'm not saying that this should be illegal or anything like that, but there is a moral obligation not to, as it is dishonest.
Transgender people should be free from violence and harassment because their presentation doesn't match up with society's proscription for how people of their sex act. Absolutely. There are very few things in this world that someone can do to warrant violence against them, and choosing not to fall in with society's gender roles is not one of them. Anti-transgender violence is also (I've heard) one of the factors that pressures transgendered people into hiding their birth sex, for their own safety. So any act of violence against transgendered people for anger over dishonesty about sex is having the opposite effect intended.
A transgendered person should be able to use the bathroom, locker-room, or similar facility which corresponds with their gender. No. This goes back to the first issue I brought up, about what makes someone a man or a woman. The reason that we have separate facilities for men and women has nothing to do with self-identities or gender roles and has everything to do with bodies. Being nude is a very corporal thing. In our society, we have this pervasive idea that seeing a nude person who has the same kind of body as oneself and being seen nude by people of the same kind of body is really no big deal, but seeing or being seen by a member of the opposite sex is something to be avoided, or at least reserved for people one is intimate with. Now, one can certainly argue that this idea is pointless or wrong or whatever. It's not my intention to defend this idea as something necessary, but rather just to point out that it is there and that it is the basis for why we have "men's" and "women's" facilities. So it only makes sense that how we divide people into these facilities should follow along corporal lines. Also, there are some single-user, unisex restroom out there; an idea that I'm totally in favour of.
Transwomen should be allowed to attend the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Yes, but there's more to it than that. for those of you who've never heard of it, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (or MWMF) is an annual music festival built around female artists and has had a long-running rule of only allowing "womyn-born-womyn" to attend. Recently, they started agreeing to sell tickets to transwomen, but informing them that they are violating the spirit of the festival. Then, they eventually just dropped the rule altogether, but I feel it's still an issue worth discussing. I could probably write a whole post on the MWMF, but I'll try to keep it brief here. Preventing transwomen from attending the festival was wrong and discriminatory, but it wasn't wrong because doing so didn't recognize them as women; it was wrong because trying to limit the festival to only women in the first place was bigoted and discriminatory. There has been a noticeable movement in the transgender community to try and gain access to the MWMF, but they're not doing it by saying that they should end their discriminatory admittance policy, but rather that they should just revise it so that transwomen aren't excluded. The thing about how the transgendered movement has treated this policy, is that they've implicitly said "It's okay that you discriminate; you're just discriminating wrong." The fundamental difference between the MWMF and the places mentioned in the above issue is that a music festival has nothing to do with one's sex or body, so it doesn't justify to exclude people based on their sex or body.
A transgendered person should be allowed to marry someone of their birth sex (and opposite their gender). Yes, but same with cysgendered people. I'm definitely in favour of marriage equality (see previous post), so I don't think sex (or gender) should be a factor that prevents anyone from getting married.
A person should be legally protected from being discriminated against for employment, based on their gender. I agree. A person shouldn't be disqualified from a job because of their gender, their sex, or whether or not the two "match." The reason being is that none of these things have any baring on a person's ability to work. There are a few jobs that would count as exceptions (e.g. stripper), but these really are just small exceptions and shouldn't allow discrimination in other positions.

¹Some people have a problem with using "Transgendered" as an adjective. I am not one of them.
²Of course, there are more categories out there than "male" or "female," but I'm trying not to over-complicate thing
³For brevity's sake, I'm just going to be talking about how this argument applies to whether or not someone is a man. Everything in this section can be applied to whether someone's a woman, as well.

Paradigms for right and wrong love

2009-03-17T12:52:00.001-07:00

I find it amusing that opponents of same-sex marriage will often put up some kind of slippery-slope argument against it saying that if we broaden our definition of marriage, surely even broader definitions, including things like polygamy and marriages to children, will follow. I find this amusing, because a great deal of these people support using the bible as a guide to what kind of marriages we should have, and the bible is pretty pro-polygamy, and pretty lax on the whole adult-child relationship thing, too. Marriage as a system of ownership is also a pretty common theme in the bible.
There have been plenty of articles written on how the bible is a poor standard for what kinds of marriage should be allowed, but has anyone ever taken a look at other standards, not just for marriage but for what divides "right love" and "wrong love" in general?
Probably the most common description for what makes right love (or at least marriage) is the "one man and one woman" paradigm. This has the downfall of allowing things like marriage as a system of person-ownership. I shouldn't really call this a paradigm either, because it's more of a laundry list of qualifications than an idea about being wrong or right. I mean, there's no inherent morality surrounding the idea of there a single man, or about there being a single woman. This idea looks less like a paradigm for right love and more like the shortest way to describe marriage that doesn't include the three most obvious kinds that society finds unpalatable (same-sex, polygamous, and child marriages).
Of course, I should point out that support for one of the three kinds mentioned above doesn't necessitate support for the others. When people believe that acceptance of same-sex marriage will lead to acceptance of polygamy or pedophilia, they seem to generally run on the assumption that proponents of same-sex marriage support an "anything goes" standard. From my experience they're mostly wrong in that assumption, which is good because otherwise we would see widespread support for forced marriages, polygamy, and child marriages.
A standard that I think is much more common in the pro-gay-marriage camp is the "two consenting adults" (or, less commonly, the "two or more consenting adults") standard. This one is pretty good, but it has the same problem as the "one man and one woman idea" in that it' not really a paradigm so much as a list of qualifications. It also has the problem of allowing for marriage-as-ownership and similar scenarios, as long as both parties say they agree to it. Really, aside from allowing same-sex marriages, this set of qualifications is almost the same as the "one man plus one woman" set. I want you to think about that for a second, because it really highlights how these both fail as paradigms. One of them allows a type of marriage that the other doesn't, but neither of them really includes any justification for why they fall on the side they do.
   Now, you know I wouldn't bring up this subject unless I had my own paradigm to proscribe, and I do. It can be described in one word: equality. For any relationship or marriage to be right, good, and healthy, it must be equal. The equality paradigm would exclude polygamous relationships, because they carry in their composition the implication that a man is worth 4 (or however many) women, while a woman is worth 1/4th of a man. The equality paradigm would also exclude pedophilic relationships, because an adult is at a fundamentally higher position in society than a child. It would also exclude bestial relationships, because a human has a much higher position in society than an animal. This applies to more than just the members of the relationship but also how they act towards each other; any relationship where one person acts as the ultimate decision-maker is unequal. Forced, coerced, and ownership-based relationships would also be excluded, for obvious reasons.
    What this paradigm would not exclude are opposite-sex relationships or same-sex relationships. Nor would it exclude couples who like to engage in S&M, assuming that what they do is decided based on the mutual enjoyment and consent of both parties.
    Now why is this the best paradigm, you ask? Aside from not including the negative kinds of relationships that I mentioned the above paradigms imply, it's also based on a pretty good ideal that a lot of people seem to be quite fond of. When you love someone in a romantic way, you put them on equal importance as yourself and you become partners. "Partners" in relationships means the same thing that it does in business; they don't become your boss and they don't become your subordinate. They become your partner - your equal - and treating them like your equal will keep the relationship healthy. Plus "Marriage = Equality" it's much snappier and fits on a bumper-sticker better than "Marriage = Two consenting adults," don't you think?

Underdog’s Advantage

2009-03-09T23:34:00.001-07:00

I've noticed a little trend in arguments, that the person with a less-popular opinion will tend to have an advantage in an straight argument against someone with a position that the majority of society holds. This is because the person with the unpopular opinion has likely spent more time thinking about their position and how to defend it. Where-as someone with an opinion that's shared by most of society will not see as much of a need to defend it, and so wont spend much time thinking about it. It has nothing to do with the less popular opinion being more correct or better thought out; they just have more of a motivation to do research and come up with support for what they believe.
A good example is the belief that the Holocaust didn't happen. Most of you reading this now probably believe that the the Holocaust did happen, and probably feel fairly passionate about that belief as well. Yet, you've probably not spent much time thinking (or researching) how to argue this opinion against someone on the other side of the issue. Someone who believes it didn't happen, on the other hand, probably realizes they're in a small minority with that opinion, and so anticipates that they'll have to defend their belief a lot, and has put more thought into how they'll defend it. Because they've put more thought into it, they'd probably be able to argue fairly well against you on the subject. This is the underdog's advantage.
The advantage starts to go away if more people begin subscribing to the minority belief, and it starts getting more recognition. At that point, enough chatter begins in the media and in social situations that people actually begin thinking about their beliefs on the subject and coming up with reasons to support it, or at least memorizing slogans. This is when the issue becomes controversial.
An issue becomes controversial when enough people support the minority side of it. An issue isn't controversial (basically), if you can bring it up with someone you don't really know and expect that their beliefs on it will side with your own. It is controversial, if you can't really make that assumption. For instance, "Women should have the right to vote," is not a very controversial statement. "Same-sex couples should have the right to get married" is.

Cube Staircase

2009-03-01T18:24:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, when arguing a position, people will use a string of points, where-in each point supports the one following it, but does not end up supporting the subsequent point after that. If you look at these arguments as a series of short “Because A, then B” statements, then each one of them as an individual is sound, but the argument as a whole is not.

The reason it’s not sounds is because, although each points supports the one after it, it does so in such a way that doesn’t support the following points. Here’s an example:

I’ve heard that this vacuum is powerful enough to pick up a chair; so, this vacuum sucks really hard. If any product sucks really hard, you shouldn’t buy it. So, you shouldn’t buy this vacuum.

It’s true that a vacuum is powerful enough to suck up a chair, that it sucks really hard. And it’s also true that if a product sucks really hard, that you shouldn’t buy it. However, these aren’t true using the same sense of the phrase “sucks really hard.” In this example, the conflation is really easy to spot, but people often sneak these into their arguments in a more subtle way.

Here’s another way to think of it: imagine a staircase, made out of cubes. Each cube is placed off-center from the cube below it, but in such away that its weight will still be supported and it wont fall off.

Now imagine that a few more blocks were added on, and each block supports the block above it in the same way, and if you look specifically at any two sequential blocks, they will seem to support be supported. However, each block will support two-or-more blocks above itself, and over-all the structure is unsound, and would fall down.

Arguments work in the same way. Each piece of evidence given needs to support the point which relies on it, but also every piece which relies on that one and so on.

Irony

2009-02-18T21:03:00.001-08:00

The word “irony” has a different meaning from how it is usually used. Usually, when we say something is ironic, we mean that it holds an amusing coincidence. The actual definition is something closer to “using a word for it’s non-literal meaning.”

The fact that we often us a non-literal meaning for the word irony is ironic as well. Not in the literal sense, though; it’s ironically ironic.

On feminism (and masculinism).

2009-02-11T15:17:00.001-08:00

Feminism is an interesting word. It means many different things to many different people. To some, feminism is almost synonymous with the legalization of abortion. Others may consider those values completely incompatible. I've heard feminism often described as "the radical idea that women are people," an idea that's hardly been radical in my lifetime. If I were to provide a definition for how I see it, it would be that feminism is the desire to remove from our society the cultural and legal inequalities between men and women which negatively effect women. Certainly, there will always be argument over what these inequalities are and how best to get rid of them, but I believe at the core are the things I stated above.

     I used to think that feminism accounted for any desire to remove inequalities between men and women. I would rail against many discrepancies between how males and females were treated, and I wondered why other self-described feminists didn't rally behind me. Mostly, it's because I would rally behind ideas that would benefit men, but not so much women. Feminism doesn't take into account the needs and problems faced by men. It's not because of some inherent sexism within feminism; it's just not what it was made for. That was my misunderstanding of feminism.
     On the other end, you have ideologies which want to make the world a better place for women, but to do so by creating inequalities (or at least strengthening existing ones) rather than destroying them. People in this camp will usually wave the banner of feminism, or "radical feminism." Of course, any ideology that supports any kind of inequality between men and women isn't really feminism (as per my definition). Because it so often self-describes as "feminist," however, I like to call it faux-minism¹. I've run across a lot of this mindset on the internet, mostly because I'm an internet masochist and like reading sites catered towards people I disagree with.
    One such site is a little chestnut called "I blame the patriarchy"; a nice little blog and accompanying message-board. This place is a goldmine for off-the-wall, no-holds-barred misandry, and it will probably serve as my whipping boy for some future blog entries, but I digress. Faux-minist writings that I've seen seem to avoid the idea that they're creating inequalities with sort of a "blank check" attitude towards them. That is to say that: they see the inequalities and discrimination against women as being so great that they could not be overcome in the foreseeable future, and that anything that makes things better for women, at the expense of men, could never shift the balance enough to set things so that they favour women overall, but would rather only move society closer to the (distant) middle-line of equality. I'm kind of half-making this up; I've never heard it actually described to me like that. It's more of a general impression I get from reading a ton of blog posts. I don't believe that society is really that stacked in men's favour (which is a post for another day), but even if it were; counteracting inequalities with more inequalities doesn't "balance things out." It's clumsy and inaccurate and just creates a more complex web of separate roles.
      Most Men’s Rights blogs I've read suffer from the same problem, but with reversed genders. They seem to have an unhealthy interest with restoring traditional gender roles and the nuclear family, thus restoring previously weakened inequalities. Given the fact that the modern men's rights/masculinism movement was basically created to be a mirror movement of feminism, it seems logical that qualifications for what counts as masculinism is the mirror of what counts as feminism: any idea that seeks to remove inequalities which negatively effect men.
     There's a middle ground, as set of changes we could make in society that's both masculinist and feminist, that removes inequalities and benefits both men and women. Removing violence and similar tough-guy ideals from society's idea of what it is to be a man is one example of this.
     Even with the presence of common ground, though, there seems to be a weird kind of animosity between many feminists and masculinists, as though they were each other's enemy. I don't know why, though. Both camps have similar goals of ending sex-based discrimination; each one is just better at seeing and attacking different kinds of discrimination. After all, the most visible kind of discrimination for anyone is the kind against a group that person belongs to.
    If feminists are trying to remove some kind of inequality, it is not the goal of masculinism to stop them; or visa versa. Eventually, if both parties keep removing inequalities against themselves, the barriers between men and women might not be so present.

¹ Why does the French word for “fake” make such better portmanteaus than the English one?

Nomenclature of sexuality

2009-01-28T16:44:00.001-08:00

    It really perplexes me as to why we use the words "gay" and "straight," or any synonyms there-of. Why do we classify sexuality into categories of "like the same sex" or "likes the opposite sex"? These seem unnecessarily convoluted and weird. We use the same words to describe a man who likes men, as we do for a woman who likes women. We call both these kinds of people "gay," yet they seem like the complete opposite in their preference.
    A few years ago, I decided to stop, or at least limit, using reflexive terms for sexuality (previous post aside). It just makes so much more sense to me to describe someone as "liking women" or "liking men" rather than "liking their own sex" or "liking the opposite sex." After all, you're supposed to be describing what kind of person someone is attracted to; you shouldn't muddle it up by using phrases that are based off of what kind of person they are.
    It's like, if you decide to have dinner with a friend and you ask them what kind of food they're in the mood for, and then they answer, "the same kind of food I had last night." When you ask someone a direct question, ideally they should give a direct answer, not one relative to some other bit of information. "Mexican food," is a better answer than, "the same kind I had last night." In the same way, "I like women," is a better answer than, "I like people of my own sex."
    Unfortunately, I'm still definitely a minority in using this system. There aren't any convenient, monosyllabic words that I can use to describe someone as liking men or liking women. I could make some up, but people would have no idea what I'm talking about, and if they asked I'd basically have to explain my who position on reflexive language to describe sexuality. And I'm not very fond of using made-up words to shoe-horn my opinions and rants into conversations. I guess the words "virisexual" and "gynosexual" are accurate, but they're way too long for everyday use, and still have the same probably of people having no idea what I'm talking about.
    Maybe I'm being overly-logical about this whole thing, but there are other reasons that it would be nice if people adopted non-reflexive language about sexuality. For instance, if use the same word to describe a man liking men as we use for a woman liking men, then it might help us to see (at least subconsciously) that these attractions are not so different. Non-reflexive language would better highlight the inherent sexism in saying that it's okay for women to like men, but not okay for men to like men, or visa versa. I wont go as far as to say that our system of language is what allowed homophobia to take root in society, but I certainly think it made it easier.

I’m not saying that we should totally throw out the words “gay” and “straight”; they are still useful when speaking in a broader sense, and you’re using the word to describe both lesbians and gays, or both straight women and men. However, when you’re talking about a specific person’s sexual preference, it just makes so much more sense to me to use non-reflexive terms for sexuality.

Of course, this whole rant doesn't really apply to the phrase "bisexual" (or "pansexual"), because it already describes a person’s sexual preference, without relation to their own sex.

I don’t get homophobia.

2009-01-27T22:14:00.000-08:00

I never really get homophobia. Like, I don't get what would instill in people this desire to rally against homosexuality. I know a lot of it can be attributed to religious fundamentalism and the notion that it's immoral. Still, there are plenty of things that are generally considered immoral and the bible forbids (e.g. lying) but you don't see widespread political movements against them. Some of it may be the result of some kind disgust at the thought of two men (or women) having sex, but most people aren't that in a moral outrage knowing that our parents have had sex (how else would we be here), or that people who they find ugly have sex; we just choose not to think about it. I don't really know why people feel the way they do; like I said, I don't get homophobia.
One thing I do notice about homophobia, though, is that the majority of it seems to come from straight men, and be directed towards gay men. This doesn't make any sense to me. It seems that gay guys make your life better in pretty much every way, if you're a straight guy. If you're a straight guy reading this now, you're probably thinking I'm full of crap. Hear me out:

Dude, imagine for a second that you're going on a camping trip with two other guys and two girls. Those odds kind of suck for you. If everyone is single, and looking to hook up on this trip, then one of the guys is going to get left out, and it could be you. Lord knows the other guys are going to try their hardest to make sure it's not them. And even when you do are hitting it off with on of the girls, you have to worry about the other two guys trying to swoop in and kill your game. Bottom line, it's going to suck. Now, imagine the same situation, but both the other guys are gay. Suddenly, you don't have any competition. If both the other guys sneak off to do your own thing, that leaves you alone with the two girls. Suddenly, this situation is looking a lot better, right?

Basically, the thing that makes gay guys great for you is that they're not straight guys. You can still hang

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out with gay guys and be their friends; despite what you see on TV, there are gay guys who like watching football, or playing Halo, or whatever typically manly activity you might be into. The main difference, though, is you don't ever have to worry about your girlfriend cheating on you with them, or leaving you for one of them, or about them horning in on your action when you're flirting with some girls at the mall. See what I mean? Better.

Tomatoes are vegetables

2009-01-21T21:51:00.000-08:00

Tomatoes are Vegetables.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You heard from your textbook/biology teacher/girlfriend/dad/wherever that tomatoes are fruits because they have seeds. I'm going to get to that in a moment. First, I need to talk about the fact that the great Tomato Debate is, at it's core, a linguistic one. That is to say, the argument really boils down to definitions; in this case, the definition for "fruit" and the definition for "vegetable" (I think we can all agree on what we would define as a tomato).

Now, about tomatoes being fruits because they are seed-bearing ovum. If you were thinking this when you started reading this article, you were right. Tomatoes are fruits, because a fruit is "the developed ovary of a seed plant with its contents and accessory parts..."¹. You'll find a pretty similar definition in most dictionaries. So, by the dictionary definition, tomatoes are fruits.

However, tomatoes are also vegetables. Look up "vegetable" in most dictionaries, and you'll find a definition along the lines of any plant or part of a plant which is harvested for food by humans. Random House defines it as " any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food..."² So, according to the dictionary definition, Tomatoes are vegetables along with all other edible fruits and things like rice, peanuts, sugar, and soy. Not mushrooms, though.

So, tomatoes are both fruits and vegetables, right? Well, kind of. You see, both the definitions I gave you just now are sort of general definitions for "fruit" and "vegetable." Words can, however, have a general definition but also a completely different definition, for use in special situations. For instance, the word "virus" refers to (in general) a type of non-living microbe which uses the cells of living things to reproduce. However, in the area of computer science, "virus" takes on a completely different definition, and no longer refers to a microbe or a physical thing at all, but rather digital information which is designed to make a computer run instructions that would cause unwanted damage. This is a special-case definition of "virus."

And, I propose that when someone asks "are tomatoes a fruit or vegetable?," they're asking for a special-case definition of both those words. First, because the question implies that a tomato is one or the other, general definitions which overlap as much as "fruit" and "vegetable" do probably aren't the right choice. Second, because the categories of "fruit" and "vegetable" conjure up images of the classic Food Pyramid, and the boxes which appear on them. Often, when someone asks about tomatoes being a fruit or a vegetable, they're asking which Food Group it belongs in. And the Food Groups "fruit" and "vegetable" have different criteria than the general definitions of "fruit and vegetable." If they didn't, then every food we ate that comes from a plant would be in the Vegetable Group, and (needless to say) that is not how the Food Pyramid works.

So, which Food Group do tomatoes fit into? Well, they are savory and not sweet, they contain low amounts of fructose, and they are usually eaten as part of dinner rather than desert. For these reasons, I would argue that they are in the Vegetable Group. Furthermore, the USDA (the department responsible for creating the Food Pyramid) list tomatoes on their Vegetable page but not on their Fruit page. I'm having trouble finding an official list of foods that belong in each group for the "classic" Food Pyramid (the one without stairs running up the side), but a picture of said pyramid on the USDA's website contains something that looks distinctly like a tomato in the vegetable section.

So, for these reasons, I believe that the tomato falls squarely in the Vegetable Group of the Food Pyramid, and not the Fruit Group. If you choose to accept Food Groups as the appropriate method for which to determine if a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable (which is the method I would prescribe), then it's a vegetable and not a fruit. If you choose to use the general definitions to decide, then it is both a fruit and a vegetable. QED: tomatoes are vegetables, no matter how you look at them. They are, however, only sometimes fruits. Here's a little chart to summarize things:

1: fruit. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fruit (accessed: January 21, 2009).

2: vegetable. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vegetable (accessed: January 21, 2009).

About beliefs and loyalties

2009-01-21T01:07:00.000-08:00

This blog will talk a lot about politics and opinions and you may find that my opinions are the same as your own sometimes, but don't expect to find a mirror of your own beliefs here. I notice that many people, when they read political blogs, usually look for ones that simply repeat their own opinions back to them. I probably wont be doing that. I might, but it's unlikely. My own views don't mesh exactly with the platform of either major party in America. If I were a self-aggrandizing pundit, I would probably describe myself as a Rebel, a Maverick, or some kind of bastion of independent thought. I'm not, though, so I'm just going to say that I'm a moderate, albeit a left-leaning one.

Things I say that don't coincide with your own views; I hope that, while you question them, they cause you to think about things in a different angle than they have previously. And things that I say that you do agree with; well, I hope that you question those as well. People really do have a nasty habit of letting ideas and supposed facts that support their beliefs into their head unchecked and unquestioned, while putting up a nearly impenetrable barrier for any idea that might disprove one of their core beliefs. The same is true for people's political affiliations, and saying anything wrong about those.

Don't believe me? Try this: go up to someone you know is a republican, and start talking to them about a made-up probe being conducted on a Republican representative about something illegal but not indicative of corruption (like illegal gambling, or possession if marijuana). Chances are, they'll defend this representative to you, perhaps saying that the probe is unjustified and an invasion of privacy. If you try the same thing with a democrat about a democratic representative, they will do the same thing. If you try talking to someone about a probe against a member of the party they don't affiliate with, they will have the opposite response, admonishing the representative and probably saying the probe is necessary, etc., etc.

The thing is, people have this mental filter. If they hear something that doesn't correspond with their own beliefs or loyalties, they will mentally meet everything they hear with an argument against it. If they hear something that supports their own platform of beliefs, though, they will accept it almost unquestioningly.

There-in lies the problem. You should never let any idea into your head unquestioningly; you should always critically examine what you are told. Even if it supports what you already believe, don't just accept it as face value. Look that gift-horse in the mouth.

It is with this in mind that I ask you to ready my blog. If I say something that makes you nod and say "that's right" to yourself, then stop. Go back, and read it again, asking yourself how my biases (and yours) may be tainting our view of things, and pushing us away from reality. Ask how what I'm trying to prove to you and how I'm trying to prove it, and ask whether my proof really supports my conclusion and whether my conclusion is really true. Don't let your filter down for me (or anyone), even if I'm echoing your own opinions.
On the other hand, if you find me writing something you completely disagree with, I hope you'll consider it and evaluate it fairly.

Hello World

2009-01-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

I cannot think of a more auspicious day to begin my blog.