Party Game Review

As I mentioned previously, StereoNinja bought me the Fifty Shades party game for my birthday, and I thought it would be a good idea to familiarize myself with it a little bit before I brought it to Birmingham and London to torture the rest of you with it. Which I filmed because of course I did. THIS IS GOING TO BE EPICLY BAD YOU GUYS. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET ALL OF YOU.

More Video Goodness

StereoNinja finished editing my last batch of spare notes last night, which I uploaded to YouTube in the middle of the night because I had dance class earlier in the evening and then promptly came home and slumped to the floor in a heaping pile of pain and exhaustion. I had assumed advanced class was called that because it will culminate in solo performances where we each take off all our clothes to music at the end of June, as opposed to the beginning and intermediate classes where you just take some of your clothes off as a group in class instead of on stage. What it actually means is "HAHAHA you think those abs are in pretty good shape, do you? Let's see if you can do all these exercises without literally breaking into two pieces then you weak, stupid fool." To be fair, pain and exhaustion were a welcome change from how I felt after my "Tricks of the Tease" class on Monday night, which is when we did nothing but turns for an hour and Madame Spinny McVomitpants over here (thad be me) ended up sitting out the last 15 minutes of class to avoid painting the floor with my dinner.

None of which is the point, really. The point is the latest Fifty Shades video is up on my YouTube channel now:

and it should be followed in a few days by the video where I review the Fifty Shades of Grey party game that we are all going to get together to play in March when I'm back in the UK. And holy god, you guys, it is hella ridiculous.

Tonight is bar night so I'll be reading the next batch of chapters and probably tweeting about how much I'm not enjoying myself. Please go out and enjoy yourselves tonight on my behalf.

Birthday Wrap Up

HOLY CRIZAPPLE YOU GUYS. Thank you SO MUCH for all the amazing birthday wishes here and on Twitter, especially since I barely reminded anyone about it this year! And also greetings to my birthday twins Lola Cherry Cola and Cat Spinster - I hope you both had as wonderful of a day as I did. Because I did. You know why? Because StereoNinja bought me the stupid Fifty Shades party game we're going to be playing at the UK meet ups and you guys, YOU GUYS, it is FUCKING TERRIBLE. I made a video for you of me opening and examining the contents of the box. Let me tell you something, it is a fucking scene inside that box. Unfortunately it won't be ready for a few days because my esteemed video editor is doing actual work that he gets paid for, but that and the spare notes from 11-13 will be up soon.

Other things I got for my birthday:

• Books (good ones, not this "erotic" novel crap)
• Dalek socks (which I hope won't exterminate my toes)
• A giant Reese's peanut butter heart that I plan to crack open and eat the peanut butter out of with a spoon (THERE'S NO WRONG WAY TO EAT A REESE'S DAMN IT)
• A pirate Santa (I'll say that again. Pirate. Santa.)
• Drunk with my coworkers Thursday night, a night that culminated in my patented sleeping on the bathroom floor move, a raging hangover all day Friday, exactly zero desire to drink on my birthday, and no posts over the weekend (sorry). Also there were feathers EVERYWHERE.

VERY IMPORTANT NEWS

While I was in Cleveland a week ago, after a long day of visiting family and watching three hour long musicals and having dinner with a friend of my stepmother who told me she read all three Fifty Shades books in one weekend while I bit my tongue until it bled, I made a video of my spare notes from Chapters 9-10 in my parents basement. It's not my best work, I have to say - I was tired (see previous sentence), I really didn't have a lot of notes from those chapters because almost nothing happened in them, and I found a giant fish pillow which was very distracting.

 

 I promise the next one will be better. I have deliberately left some things out of my review because I wanted to yell about them on camera. And James packed the last three chapters with sentences that are so poorly constructed they should be taken out behind the shed and shot. It should be a good time.

In completely unrelated but VERY VERY important news, SATURDAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I think I may have already gotten my best present already - the hockey strike ended this weekend and it seems there will be some games this year after all, great news since I have serious concerns about being able to watch hockey next season and it might be my last chance. Then again, StereoNinja is being very secretive about something he's mailed to my office, so maybe not. I hope it's sex toys. And of course, if anyone out there could convince Hannah Hart to tweet me a personal birthday greeting you would make my entire life. But just so we're all clear, the important part of today's post is that everyone is made aware of my upcoming birthday. Saturday.

50 Shades Enraged

I read and review Fifty Shades Freed so you don't have to.

It's gotten to the point where I am now doing actual work in order to avoid reading, writing, or thinking about this book. I am also concerned about not being funny any more because I am so weary and sad from reading this that I'm struggling to even find the rage. At least I was until I read Chapter 11.

The chapter opens with Ana returning home from her day at work to a confrontation with Christian over why he flew home early from New York. It was, he says, because she went back on her word about staying in that night. "Is that how you see it?" she asks him with genuine fucking surprise, before explaining she didn't break her promise, she merely CHANGED HER MIND, because she's a woman and therefore has to behave like an ignorant, inconsiderate douchebucket by simple biological imperative. Holy fuck, NO, Ana, if you PROMISE to do something and then turn around and immediately do the EXACT OPPOSITE of that, THEN YOU HAVE GONE BACK ON YOUR FUCKING WORD. That is how that works, and while we're at it, how about not throwing your entire gender under the bus to justify the fact that you are a MASSIVE UNWIPED ASSHOLE.

The conversation goes on, I can't be bothered to get into the stupid details, and continues over food in the kitchen which involves a great deal of Christian spitting wine into her mouth (backwashing - the sexiest way to serve beverages!) and afterward he takes her into the playroom for the sex scene I had been warned previously would enrage me. It didn't disappoint on that front. Christian attaches her to some restraints on the wall and then starts systematically winding her up and then stopping right before she comes. Orgasm denial, in my opinion anyway, is SUPER FUCKING AWESOME. It is something that is next to impossible to do to yourself, especially to the degree it reaches in this scene, and it builds you to a point of intensity you would be hard pressed to get to on your own. It is sort of a gift in that way. It doesn't necessarily have to be about D/s either - plenty of people incorporate this to some degree into their play whether they otherwise have an interest in kink or not. Ana doesn't see it that way, however, and she safewords to get him to stop. My reaction to that was specific to my own experience and basically amounted to ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU'RE GOING TO MISS THE BEST PART YOU TWATSICLE. But that's my own preference and therefore not something to get enraged about. Everyone doesn't like the same things and if orgasm denial isn't Ana's cup of tea that's fine for her. What I got enraged about was her (and by extension E.L. James') reasoning. She didn't safeword because she wasn't enjoying herself, she did it because she saw it as some kind of sinister plot. "This is not love. This is revenge." she thinks to herself. She follows this up with statements about how callous a thing that is to do to someone, and reminding Christian that she is not his submissive (she's his WIFE! They are mutually exclusive!) and to stop treating her like one. As for Christian, well, Ana is right, he WAS deliberately being awful to her to punish her for worrying him the day before. Of course he was, that is the only reason why someone would want to do this. Orgasm denial is a tool of vengeance and is only ever used by VICIOUS HATEFUL MONSTER PEOPLE WHO ARE EMOTIONALLY DAMAGED. Not only that, but Christian's aftercare is absolutely fucking atrocious. He spends just about all of it trying to justify his going too far - she is just so frustrating that he couldn't help himself. The fact that she's been hurt is ALL HER FAULT. SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO? Every single word in this entire scene is wrong, wrong, wrong in the greatest way it could possibly have been wrong, and I am sick and tired of reading scenes like this that vilify and fundamentally misunderstand BDSM and its practitioners in a book that is allegedly about exploring one's kinks. FUCK YOU, JAMES. I WANT TO USE THIS BOOK TO GIVE YOU A THOUSAND PAPER CUTS AND THEN DROWN YOU IN A BATHTUB FULL OF LEMON JUICE (note to Mrs. Sizemore: We should totally make this a level in Shiv and Lemon) YOU DISGUSTING, MISINFORMED CUNT YODELER.

GOD.

Anytwat, in Chapter 12, we learn a little bit more about Christian, in that he wasn't born in Seattle, he was born and subsequently adopted in Detroit, which coincidentally is where Jack Hyde is also from, except since this author is fucking insane and also foreshadows everything, it's going to turn out not to be a coincidence at all. In fact, at first I thought Jack Hyde might turn out to be Christian's birth father, but he's not old enough. Still in bed in the playroom, Ana and Christian have the same tiresome conversation they've had a thousand times about how he needs to be less controlling and she needs to be less defiant, and they both continue to lie to themselves and each other about how they are going to change their ways. Afterwards they fall asleep for a while until Ana awakes to the sound of Christian having a nightmare. She wakes him up and they fuck immediately in order to solve the problem, as you do. Then they go back to bed in their own bedroom, only for Ana to wake up again at 3 in the morning because Christian is not in the bed. The ability of both of these people to be hyper aware of their surrounding environment while asleep is astounding. She finds him at the piano again, playing a sad song and wonders whether she's done something to upset him (while she was sleeping?!?) like a good little abuse victim. She hasn't; he's upset because he dreamed that Ana was dead and now that he's awake his whole world is crumbling around him because WHAT IF SHE DIES? When I was in Florida a couple weeks ago, I dreamed that one of my best friends and the kindest human I know shot me in the head in cold blood. I was a little disturbed when I woke up, but I didn't run to the police and get a restraining order because IT WAS JUST A FUCKING DREAM, NOT A PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE. When they wake up the next day, all is well between them again and Christian decides they should go to Aspen for the weekend. And since Ana had recently complained that she never gets to see her friends, he has invited Kate and Elliot, and also Ethan and Mia to accompany them. I notice that these are the two friends she has who happen to be dating his siblings and are therefore on some sort of "approved" friend list - Jose, of course, is not among the group. They are taking Christian's private plane, natch, and Ana bristles when she sees Natalia, the flight attendant. "Why does she make me uncomfortable?" Ana wonders. "Maybe it's that she's a brunette. By his own admission, Christian doesn't usually employ brunettes because he finds them attractive." No, Ana, she makes you uncomfortable because every single person who has a vagina makes you uncomfortable since you are a lunatic who sees sex crazed vagina monsters trying to fuck your husband around every corner. And really, Christian? You have to employ only blondes to avoid seducing and/or raping your entire staff? I find it weird that you have so little self control that you simply can't hire brunettes, especially since you maintain such stringent control over every single other facet of your life. Also, I suspect the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission might like a word with you about the basis of your hiring decisions.

During the flight, Kate has the nerve to ask Christian questions about the whole Jack Hyde business, which he answers while getting steadily more angry with her, and while Ana sits next to him in terror because oh no, what if Kate's questions upset him? I think to myself that he could always just, you know, decline to talk about it, but this is now how life works in E.L. James' magical fairyland of crazypants nonsense - he has to keep answering questions he doesn't want to answer because he has to be angry constantly, and Ana has to ask a completely irrelevant question about Hyde's age (32) because Christian has to have a jealous freak out that his wife had even a single thought that wasn't about him. Is this woman really an actual functioning member of society? Because she writes like she's never interacted with another human being in her entire life. Nell would do a better job at writing interpersonal communications than E. L. James for crying out loud.

The group lands in Aspen and heads for Christian's (and also Ana's as he points out CONSTANTLY) house, a scene which is mindbogglingly over-described, and contains a conversation about how Christian is never going to teach Ana to ski lest she Sonny Bono herself, and Ana's fucking insane musings on the fact that Gia Matteo remodeled the house, and ohmigod what does it mean? This entire chapter is pointless and only exists in order to foreshadow the STUNNING (No. Not even. Shut up, James) event on its final page, which I can't imagine has anything to do with the overall "plot" of the "story". By the time James is done bludgeoning her readers over the head with gigantic hints about what is about to happen, the final scene reads like a punchline to a very dull joke. So, LET THE FORESHADOWING BEGIN! Hey, did you guys notice that something weird seems to be going on between Kate and Elliot? Ana did! She has no idea what it is. Are they fighting? Should she meddle in shit that's not her fucking business ask? Let's keep reading and see! Christian takes Ana on a tour of the (their!) house, during which she mentions how uncomfortable it makes her that Gia did work on the house and that Elliot used to fuck her, as if any of those things are some kind of predictor of how nice their weekend will be. Christian, for reasons unknown (oh who am I kidding, the reason is that James is barely literate and lacks any ability to tell a compelling story), tells her that in actually, Elliot has fucked not just Gia but half of Seattle. She's shocked because Elliot is so innocent looking! How can a man that looks like a choirboy have ever had sex with (gasp!) multiple people? Ana, if a person's looks were any sort of indication of how much sex they were having, then Ron Jeremy wouldn't have a career. Jesus you're annoying. Anyway, now Ana is concerned because ohmigod does Kate even know? And ohmigod what does it mean? Let's keep reading and see!

At lunch, the group makes some decisions about how to spend the day. The girls are going shopping even though two thirds of them aren't big on shopping but no one can ever resist Mia! The boys are going fishing because THAT IS SOMETHING MEN DO. But wait! Elliot needs to go buy a watch battery first. Which is a weird thing to be sorting out during a weekend in Aspen, but whatever. I ASSURE YOU THIS IS NOT A CLUE. Also Elliot seems sort of distracted. I wonder why? Let's keep reading and see! The girls go shopping and Mia has Ana buy a cocktail dress the size of a napkin for clubbing later. Then, while Mia and Kate try on their own selections, Ana has a little peer out the window. AND GUESS WHAT SHE SEES? She sees Elliot going into the jewelry store that is conveniently for this asinine story located directly across the street from where they are shopping! I wonder if maybe he went to the jewelry store looking for that watch battery? Or maybe for some other reason? Let's keep reading and see! OH NO! You guys! When he comes out of the jewelry store, who does he happen to be with but GIA MATTEO! They exchange a completely chaste and unsuspicious goodbye, which makes Ana extremely suspicious. What is he doing with THAT BITCH? What is she doing in Aspen? Is he having an affair? Is this a pathetic red herring thrown in by James to throw us off the trail? Should she tell Kate? Just what in the actual fuck is going on here? LET'S KEEP READING AND SEE!

After shopping, Ana finally asks Kate what the shit is going on. Kate doesn't know. Elliot seems really distracted lately. By the way, she is in love with him. Like "let's get married and make tons of babies" in love (which Ana describes as her "happily ever after" because it is completely impossible to live a complete and fulfilled life without a husband and a litter of spawn. Duh). His preoccupation is a mystery. NO REALLY, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S ABOUT TO HAPPEN. They manage to run out of wood for the fire, and Ana goes to the garage to get more where she runs into none other than...Elliot Grey! Oh no! What should she do? Should she confront him about what she saw? Demand that he explain what's happening with Kate? Mind her own goddamn business and shut the fuck up? Say nothing, but think judgmental thoughts about how anyone who has had sex with more than one person is obviously a terrible human being who can never, ever be trusted? She goes for the last one while having a conversation about whether or not she should ride a  trail bike.

When the other boys get home from fishing (Elliot never made it; he had "things to take care of" in town, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?), Ana and Christian go upstairs to take a bath, where Ana confronts him about having seen Gia in town...with Elliot. Christian informs her Gia also has a place in Aspen and reiterates that she and Elliot are just friends now. For realsies. He knows there's nothing going on - Elliot is way into Kate. "In fact, I know he's pretty stuck on her," Christian says with real conviction, almost like he knows something we don't know. Does he? Let's keep reading and see!

Ana gets dressed in her napkin and the stripper heels she also bought at Mia's insistence and then asks Christian for his approval. I had written in my notes when she bought the dress that he would never let her wear that out of the house, based on his freaking out in the past that she wore a sundress out of the house on a sunny day, completely forgetting for a moment that the characters James writes can never be expected to behave in the way she has previously established. He's not exactly happy that his wife's back and legs are exposed in a way that ANYONE could look at, but she looks beautiful, so it's cool.

The story cuts to a scene in the restaurant they've chosen for dinner that evening. As they wait for dessert, Ana notices that Elliot seems sort of nervous, laughing too loud and saying things that are slightly weird. Oh no! Have they had a fight? Was it over that red herring woman? LET'S KEEP FUCKING READING SO WE CAN SEE AND END THIS TEDIOUS ABORTION OF A CHAPTER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Suddenly, in a COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED MOVE THAT EVEN SYLVIA BROWNE DIDN'T SEE COMING, Elliot gets out of his chair, drops to one knee, and GUESS WHAT YOU GUYS? NO I MEAN IT GUESS. YOU ARE GOING TO BE SO FUCKING SURPRISED I SWEAR TO FUCK. IT IS, LIKE, THE CRAZIEST PLOT TWIST EVER WRITTEN. He gets down on one knee and proposes to Kate! I KNOW RIGHT? And on that bombshell, the chapter ends.

I wish there was a safeword I could use to make this book stop torturing me.

50 Shades Irate

I read Fifty Shades Freed so you don't have to.

I just want to quickly mention that I got a book for Christmas from StereoNinja called "How Not To Write A Novel". I'm only a few chapters into it, but so far, every mistake that's been outlined has appeared somewhere in the Fifty Shades books. Every. Single. One. I'm mentioning this because one piece of advice in particular: "PLOT: Not just a bunch of stuff that happens" is exactly the note I would have sent to E.L. James if I'd been sent this manuscript for possible publication and it made me laugh so hard I was actually sore from it the next day.

All right, I suppose I've stalled on doing this long enough. So.

Chapter 9 begins with Ana waking up to find Christian wrapped around her "like ivy", which she informs us is what she always wakes up to when they've had a fight, so I assume she means "how I wake up every single fucking day". She thinks it is a romantic expression of how much he needs her. I think he's trying to kill her in his sleep.

At breakfast, Christian informs Ana that he needs to go to New York, sparking - GUESS WHAT? - an argument about whether or not Ana should come with him because OMFG SAFETY! or stay in Seattle and work because part of having a real job is you don't get to only show up whenever you feel like it. Speaking of safety, Ana suddenly becomes very concerned because oh my god, what if he's taking the helicopter to New York because remember that one time when someone messed with it and it crashed? Remember that? Ermigerd it was, like, so scary! Once again, I am absolutely shocked by Ana's lack of knowledge about how helicopters work, i.e. they are SHORT RANGE AIRCRAFT with very low airspeed as compared to an airplane and therefore would never be used to fly all the way from fucking Seattle to New York City, which according to Google (note to E.L. James: Google is that thing people use to find stuff out instead of just fucking guessing. MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY IT YOU LAZY DICKBAG) is a flight distance of 2408 miles. I did some math (of course I did): At the top speed of Christian's particular helicopter, that's a 13.5 hour flight. At its normal cruising speed it's more than 15 hours. That is not counting having to stop SIX FUCKING TIMES on the way to refuel given that it has a range of just under 400 miles. I don't expect her to know all of that, but I do expect her to have seen at least one fucking episode of M.A.S.H. in her lifetime, or at the very least to realize that until she met Christian, she'd never heard of people flying in helicopters, only airplanes, so it would be logical to assume that it is generally the more efficient method of transportation. Christian explains that much more succinctly than I just did, and also tells her that Charlie Tango is back to being a safe aircraft because "Five people have been fired because of that." He doesn't explain which five people, but if Christian handled this situation the way he handles every other situation in his life, I'm quite certain it was just the first five people he ran into when he was angry, and probably not the people who were in charge of security at the airfield or the person who did the last pre-flight safety check. The point is SOMEONE WAS PUNISHED AND THE PROBLEM IS THEREFORE SOLVED.

Which brings us to the beginning of what I didn't want to write about. "That reminds me," says Ana immediately following the news that five people were most likely terminated without cause, "There's a gun in your desk." After which we learn (or re-learn) the following things:

• The gun is fully loaded,
• and there's no safety on it (which Christian doesn't realize until she tells him).
• The gun belongs to Leila.
• Christian despises guns, supports gun control legislation in Washington State, and disapproves of Taylor "sometimes" carrying one.

If the last thing is true, than the first three things, as we've come to expect, don't make any fucking sense. If he hates guns so much, when he took Leila's off her, why didn't he turn it in to the police? They would be more than happy to take in guns you don't want to keep them off the street. And when he didn't do that, why did he instead decide to leave it fully loaded and to put it in his unlocked desk drawer? WE KNOW HE HAS A SAFE. At any rate, since it appears he's going to have a loaded gun in the house against everything he claims to believe in, Ana wants Christian to learn how to use it properly, and Christian wants no part of it, because somehow ignorance is the best way to improve this already terrifying situation.

Anyway. Christian gets on a plane for New York, and about five minutes later Ana starts panicking because he hasn't called her yet and OH NO WHAT IF HE'S DEAD? I myself am a natural worrier, but I'm pretty sure if I thought my entire world was crumbling around me every time someone I loved left the fucking room the stress would have killed me a long time ago. PLEASE DIE, ANA. I AM BEGGING YOU. Sadly, Christian's plane has not gone down in a fiery blaze of epic incompetence, and he calls her while the plane is still taxiing to the gate, because he promised to call her as soon as he landed. "See? He does what he says he's going to do," is what her increasingly abusive subconscious tells her. I rarely bother to tell you guys what either of her alternate personalities are saying, but in this case I felt like it made a nice counterpoint to what Ana's about to do. Because Ana has agreed to have a drink with Kate, something Ana originally told Christian was going to occur at the apartment because, again, SAFETY!, but she has now decided they should go out to a bar instead. Christian badgers her into a promise that she'll have her drinks with Kate at the apartment after all. The minute Kate arrives at the office and says she'd rather go to a bar, Ana ignores the promise she JUST made, and immediately heads to some bar with Kate, telling the security team of three that they would just have one drink. This never ends well and I write in my notes "over/under 1.5 pages for when the shit hits the fan." Being the most irresponsible and inconsiderate woman on the entire fucking planet, one strawberry mojito turns into four strawberry mojitos, she doesn't bother to eat any food at all to counter this sizable alcohol intake, and she's missed five calls, one text message, and one email from her alarmed husband whom she promised not three hours ago that she wouldn't do exactly the thing she just fucking did. This point goes to Christian.

At the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next one (Drama! Intrigue! Stuff that happens!), Ana and her bodyguards arrive home to find security guard Ryan standing over an unconscious Jack Hyde. I write two notes in quick succession: "Swiss Cheese Security strikes again!" and "I don't have words for how stupid this is." Ryan explains how everything went down: He was monitoring the security camera when he saw Jack Hyde get in the service elevator (wearing gloves so we would know he's up to no good), and decided to LET HIM GET IN THE APARTMENT so that Ryan could tackle him and be the hero of the day, or as he put it, "That way I knew we'd have him." No, you didn't know that, turdbrain, he could have had a taser and incapacitated you immediately, or had his gun drawn (he had a gun, we'll get to that) and shot you the second the elevator door opened, or he could have been a master of Taekwondo and beat the ever loving shit out of you before you had time to think "Oops", or any number of various scenarios in which you lose because you had no knowledge of what you were dealing with, and then you would be dead and a psychopath would be loose in the house. CAN YOU EVEN SPELL SECURITY? HOLY FUCK YOU ARE DUMBER THAN ANA. As he's explaining this COLOSSALLY STUPID decision, it suddenly occurs to him that *maybe* they should think about tying the intruder up. OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU STEAMING BOWL OF MONKEY JIZZ, HOW IS THAT NOT THE FIRST THING YOU DID? Ana goes to get some cable ties with great embarrassment because everyone in the world knows that cable ties are only used for dirty sex and that can be the only reason why there would be some in the apartment. When she returns, she notices Jack's gun laying on the floor right fucking next to him because Ryan the rocket scientist didn't know that it might be a good idea to kick it out of the reach of the deranged man he just deliberately let in the apartment. AND THEN I realize with a sickening feeling in my stomach that Ana is not only smarter than Ryan, she's actually the smartest person in the entire room when she asks "Should we call the police?" and four professional motherfucking security guards blink at her in confusion because they GENUINELY DON'T KNOW if this situation warrants involving the police, and they can't get Taylor on the phone to ask him. I write "Entire security team doesn't know how security works." Ana's wisdom (I am sick to my stomach from writing that phrase) prevails and the police come over and ask a bunch of police questions, telling her she'll have to come down to the station later to make a statement, because James' entire knowledge of how the police work is based on television shows. In reality, you can generally make a statement anywhere that contains both a detective and a piece of paper.

After a few more attempts at getting touch with Christian, who she believes isn't picking up the phone because he's angry, even though everyone else on the fucking planet knows he's on a plane coming back there because she can't follow through on a single thing she ever says to him, she goes to bed. When she wakes up, Christian is sitting in a chair next to the bed watching her sleep, and she is confused that he's back already, and I stab an icepick into my ear because Ana is incapable of learning ANYTHING from past experiences. Apparently Christian has never been so angry with her in their entire relationship (which, just to reiterate since I haven't said it in a while, is roughly 5-6 months long), and we can tell this because HE DOESN'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH HER. She even gets in the shower with him but he pushes her away. Ana is immediately convinced that this means he isn't attracted to her anymore. She says "I gasp as the pain sears through me." I can't wait to see how much self-loathing and jumping to conclusions she'll do the first time he tells her he's too tired for sex. OH MY GOD HE'S TIRED? HE MUST NOT LOVE ME ANYMORE.

Ana goes to work for no real reason since she spends the entirety of the day emailing Christian repeatedly. For some reason it is very important to her whether he flew back from New York early because he couldn't get her on the phone while she was out with Kate, or because he heard about Jack breaking into the apartment. GUESS ANA. GUESS WHICH ONE IT IS. She is also angry at things that haven't even happened yet, because she thinks Christian won't tell her what Jack has actually been charged with, something he wouldn't be able to keep from her if Ana knew how to use a fucking computer since that information is a public record. She has also convinced herself that she was right to go out with Kate last night, since IF she'd been at home she would have been in much more danger. You know, since accidentally being in the right place at the right time makes you retroactively right in the first place and therefore justifies behaving like a complete shitpencil. I can't even follow what the "plot" of this book is anymore. I have never read a longer series of random stuff that happens which does nothing to advance the story and doesn't even try to make any sort of logical sense. I need someone who read these books and enjoyed them to sit down with me and explain to me what, in the ACTUAL FUCK, they found compelling about this story because every single word of it so far sounds like it was written by a horny fifteen year old school dropout on crack.

Some housekeeping: If you've emailed me about meeting up to play the board game when I'm back in the UK in early March, and I haven't emailed you back yet, please be patient - it's Christmas and I've been running around like a crazy person since I got back from Florida. For those interested who didn't see my comment after that post, my email address is now in my blogger profile. We are trying to find some place that everyone will be able to get to, and since we have people who want to come from Scotland and  London and just about everywhere in between, we are looking at places that are roughly in the middle of the country (Birmingham? Nottingham?) I WILL respond to everyone who emails because I think, somehow, we all NEED for this to happen. I think I will also bring Cards Against Humanity in case the Fifty Shades game gets too terrible and we need to say horrible things. Or maybe we can find a way to combine them?

Also, StereoNinja finished editing the spare notes video I made on vacation. Sorry that the first part was so out of focus, but I make up for it by repeating "That's not how you suck a dick" about 97 times. You're welcome. You can watch it here:

The Final Frontier

Me: [My boss] just gave me a model NCC-1701 to build.

StereoNinja: and that is????

Me: The Enterprise. You lose 5 nerd points for that question.

Bad Idea, Good Idea

OH MY WIENER YOU GUYS, THIS ACTUALLY EXISTS: Fifty Shades of Grey Party Game

Apparently, you win "inner goddess" tokens when you answer a question right. I DON'T UNDERSTAND PEOPLE AT ALL. StereoNinja and I spent the morning brainstorming a better game with better questions than the example cited in the product description: "Light-hearted and fun questions such as 'Who is most likely to have a hidden tattoo?' ", which as far as I can remember applies to exactly no characters in these books so far. It went like this:

me: Maybe we should invent a better version of it
"your husband is an abusive asshole, go back three spaces"

StereoNinja: haha I like that
you don't know what the internet is, lose a turn

me: HELICOPTERS CAN FLY AT NIGHT?!?!? Pay each player $200 for having to listen to you

StereoNinja: you use your teeth when giving a blow job. go back to start.

me: that should get you kicked out of the game

StereoNinja: or the other players are allowed to punch you directly in the mouth

me: you meet a black person! roll again!

StereoNinja: haha

Here's the thing though: This has given me the BEST IDEA. I've been talking about meeting some of my UK readers one of the times that I come over (I was far too busy on this last trip, sorry everyone!). I'm back in February (dates TBD), but I am thinking, how about if we pick a place to meet up for drinks and I will bring this game and we can play it and make fun of it and swear a lot? Because I really don't think I can get away with NOT reviewing this game (just like I know I'm going to be forced to see the eventual movie to tell you how bad it is), but I need some people to play it with. I think it would be hilarious. Who's in?

Delay

Hey everyone - I read some chapters last night and was all set to write you a nice little ranty review with lots of rage and burning hatred, but then some shit went down this morning and it seemed like posting sarcastic comments about how much Christian sucks at guns would be in exceptionally poor taste today, so I'm going to post that on a different day. Instead I'm going to head home and sort out my vacation photos so I can illustrate some of the nonsense I got up to this last week. I'll post the next review over the weekend.

Great big old sad face, y'all.

Hiatus

Hey you guys! I haven't forgotten I have a blog or anything, I'm just on vacation. StereoNinja and I decided it was cold in Chicago so we have escaped to Miami for a little while. There will be stories about our crazy times with the Word Whore from Air Out My Shorts, a douchebag art dealer, shenanigans at Walgreens, and hotel remodeling (aka fights with security). There will not be any stories about Christmas dildos. We also made you a video of my leftover notes from Chapters 7 and 8 in which I give good but vague advice on how to perform oral sex. Also StereoNinja bought me a camera light for Christmas so now everyone can see what my face looks like, so there's that. Back soon with more reviews my little candy canes!

Oh Holy Fuck

As she always does, H-Town reminded me this morning about our favorite Christmas song ever. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

50 Shades Drunker

Happy December everyone! StereoNinja has painstakingly edited the drunk video I made of my spare notes from Chapters 4-6 of Fifty Shades Freed into something resembling coherency. He had to cut out some excellent points I had about how Ana is not James Bond because while my point was good, my explanation was unintelligible, and also a part with a REALLY inappropriate show and tell. There's also a link to a page from the show How Stuff Works which contains an alarming number of identical phrases to what E. L. James wrote about Versailles, which makes me very suspicious that she just copied and pasted the entire paragraph. I'm going to organize my notes from Chapters 7 and 8 and record that video tonight or tomorrow. Anyway, enjoy, and I apologize in advance for using the word cunt about 47 times.

On BDSM And Writing About It (Or About Anything)

So there's a discussion going on in the comments of my last book review about an interview of E. L. James on BBC news this week and I had more thoughts than I could fit in a reasonable length comment so here they are.

James says that she read a couple of BDSM books that sparked her curiosity. I wish she had cited what particular books she'd read, or even what kind. Reading BDSM erotica is not the same as reading a BDSM how to do it guide, and as someone who doesn't know anything about it, I'm not even sure whether what she read really was BDSM and not some general erotica that had one spanking scene in it, or even an old copy of Cosmo she mistook for an actual book. But let's say she did. Reading two books is not a whole lot of research, particularly if you are going to go ahead and expand that limited knowledge into three books of your own. There are many facets of BDSM and people have many wide ranging and varying kinks. There is no one size fits all in the community. If she had done any real research, there would not be lines in these books about how Christian didn't have to have detailed conversations with his former subs because they were already experienced and knew what to expect. There would not be lines about Christian having to rub the feeling back into Ana's hands and feet all the time if she had done any reading about safe play (in fact, Ana wouldn't have been bound with cable ties to begin with, that is so dangerous). There would not be a line in Christian's contract that referenced maintaining a risk-free environment. There is no such thing. One of the things that greatly concerns me about these books are the number of people who claim is has changed their lives sexually. If these books caused them to seek out GOOD information about these topics, great, I'm happy for them. But I am also hearing a lot of people defend the quality of these books by saying how much they hate to read, but these books were GREAT! If the people saying that are the same people saying the books changed their lives, I am worried that a lot of people out there are going to wind up getting seriously hurt both physically and emotionally. Which in turn will perpetuate the stereotype that BDSM is sick and wrong and a desire for it indicates that one was abused at some point, or became broken in some sort of traumatic way.

 James says that from those handful of words, she became interested in what would happen if someone who wasn't into BDSM and knew nothing about it met someone who was. Again, if she was REALLY interested in how that would play out, doing the research to find out instead of making up some bullshit in her own head based on the stereotypes she holds about what kind of person would want to do this would not have been that hard because guess what? That happens ALL THE TIME. Seattle based sex-advice columnist Dan Savage (who I would recommend reading to anyone looking for sex positive advice of any kind) frequently points out that there are two kinds of people in the community: those who have always been that way and always knew that about themselves, and those who met/dated/married/fell in love with someone who had those interests and tried them out for their partner and discovered that they really really liked it. It happens a lot, and it happens a lot largely because of the stereotypes about people into BDSM. Because many people grow up with a lot of shame issues involving their kinks due to the way those kinks are perceived by society, and for many people it isn't until much later on in their lives - often after getting into a serious relationship or getting married - that they feel comfortable enough with themselves to come out about their kinks to a partner. So it turns out that scenario James was wondering about is actually pretty common. The woman lives in LONDON. It would not have been hard to find people who had been through this and ask them about it. All she would have to do is google BDSM sex clubs in London, email the contact person who runs it, and ask for help. Most people would have been happy to help educate her. They're good at it, they do it all the time with people who are new to the scene. For her to have written the story that she did in the way that she did it is horrifyingly irresponsible.

James also tells us in the interview that she didn't outline the story at all, that it just "came spilling out" of her. That really couldn't be more obvious. The story follows no logical progression whatsoever and often rambles on for pages and pages about the same thing whenever James got stuck on an idea. But she also makes a comment that when writing without an outline, all you have is what came before in your own story, and on that point I need to call bullshit on her. Because that statement would be true if she had bothered to go back and look at what she's written before, but it is painfully obvious that she doesn't. I have never read a book before whose main characters had such astonishingly inconsistent personalities. Even if you are writing without an outline, once you have established a character, you need to stick with the traits of that character. You can't write a Christian who maintains a mindblowing amount of control over every minute facet of his life, and then suddenly have him squirming and uncomfortable and unable to handle the situation without help when an architect doing work for him makes a pass at him. I'm not sure George R. R. Martin writes with a particularly detailed outline given that his planned trilogy is now going to span seven books (so far), only five of which are finished to date despite the fact he's been writing them for over 20 years. There are dozens of characters he has to keep track of, but every single one of those characters behaves the way the reader would expect them to behave because he thought about who all these people were and what defined each of them as a person before he started writing about them. The story grows out of the way those established characters interact with each other, not the other way around. To decide - on the fly, because you have no outline and no plan - how you want the story to go and then constantly contort your characters to behave in completely different ways from how they've acted before in order to fit some idea you had is a horrible way to write about anything.

The other thing James said in this interview is that she is "embarrassed" because so many men have now read her private fantasies. There would have been a very simple solution to that if the author weren't the real life embodiment of her fuckwit character Ana Steele, which is that if she had a fantasy she didn't want strange men to see, she shouldn't have WRITTEN IT DOWN IN A BOOK AND PUBLISHED IT.

Carol Of The Belts

I haven't talked nearly enough about how it's almost Christmas. Guess what you guys? IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS! Please enjoy this dose of Christmas cheer from Here Come The Mummies:

CHEESE

StereoNinja: What are you doing?

me: Boiling water

StereoNinja: tea?

me: Ravioli!

StereoNinja: oh I love ravioli
I think it is my favorite pasta

me: Depends what is inside, but yeah, ravioli is awesome

StereoNinja: meat
or mushroom

me: Today we have two kinds
Beef and Parmesan

StereoNinja: YES

me: And mozzarella and tomatoes

StereoNinja: NO

me: You don't like cheese ravioli?

StereoNinja: I do
I'm just not keen on mozzarella

me: NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

StereoNinja: it's a boring cheese

me: It's good with other things. It doesn't overwhelm everything with cheese taste

StereoNinja: exactly
it's very mild

me: I love it

StereoNinja: I like cheese that gets up, punches you in the face and then sleeps with your wife

50 Shades Furious

I read and review Fifty Shades Freed so you don't have to.

The hardest thing about reviewing this book, more so than the first two books, is the fact that nearly every scene has multiple things wrong with it, or shouldn't have happened at all, but most often both. It is getting increasingly hard to not write five paragraphs for any one of hers and explain both why the event would never have occurred at all, AND all the overlapping things that were ridiculous once it did. Also, since Christian and Ana are always both wrong for different reasons, I feel like I should maybe start keeping score of who was the least wrong in every argument so we can see who wins at the end (spoiler: it won't be ME). Keeping score of who is "winning" tends to be extremely harmful to relationships, but this relationship is going nowhere anyway, and frankly I just need something else to do besides scribble notes in all caps and do all the research the author should have done but didn't, otherwise I'm going to hurt someone and I don't want it to be me.

We start off Chapter 7 with Ana explaining that the mysterious saboteur in the server room is Jack Hyde, followed by Christian being pissy with her for knowing what her FORMER BOSS WHO TRIED TO RAPE HER looks like. Though in his defense, the way she describes that she knows it's him - the "line of his jaw", the "shape of his shoulders" - does make me wonder why she was examining him in such minute detail. But hey, maybe she was trying to memorize his build so she could give an accurate description of her assaulter to the police, and she just never got to because her idiot husband never bothered to tell the police. Advantage Ana. Anywhore, Barney in security positively identifies Jack Hyde using facial recognition software (in no universe does a company in Christian's line of work need any such thing unless he's secretly running a casino) and then assures Christian he will "also scan the city CCTV and see if I can track his movements." I almost wanted to give this one to James since she does live in a country that has CCTV everywhere, but it took me 5 whole minutes to do the research so no dice. Seattle has no city wide CCTV coverage. The state of Washington has traffic cameras on major roadways throughout the state, and I found a mention on Boing Boing about someone protesting the CCTV cameras that had been installed at four public parks in the city, but it was from 2008 and there hasn't been a word about it since. This is a good example of what I was talking about above: He can't check the city CCTV because it doesn't exist, but EVEN IF IT DID, you still can't (legally anyway) just hack into the city's CCTV system to track the movements of one specific person. You would need to inform the police who would then either use the CCTV or not at their discretion to find him IF they felt it was warranted. Knock it the fuck off, James, Christian isn't the goddamn Batman.

Ana then goes off to make sandwiches for them (sub sandwiches because HAHA GET IT?), which is where Christian finds her and makes some dumb comment about her being barefoot in the kitchen. Ana asks if he meant to add "and pregnant" and this is the first time it dawns on them to discuss whether either of them wants to have children and when. Three weeks AFTER the wedding. This discussion is short, and then they move on to the much more important topic of the plans for the new house. Fab, guys, you will make awesome parents. Ana asks if Christian wants to put in a playroom and he is completely taken aback by the question. Not because his sexually ignorant wife made such a bold suggestion, but because "this will be a family home." And god in heaven knows, you simply can't have kinks AND children at the same time. You know what? I'm actually fine with that particular stupidism, it just gives me one more fabulous reason to avoid breeding.

The next day, Ana goes to work ("You know you don't have to do this," Christian reminds her for the 423,346,348,936th time) and everyone but her assistant and the moron at the door are treating her with barely disguised hostility, which for once she has enough social awareness to know is because she was handed a job she didn't earn and isn't qualified for because her husband owns the company. Speaking of her husband, an hour after dropping her off he emails her to complain that his first email bounced back to him because she hasn't changed her email address yet. Which is because she didn't want to change her name and hasn't told him, but that doesn't make it any more reasonable to expect that the first thing she would do after three weeks away from a job she's only just learning how to do is to make fucking sure her email has her magic new married name attached to it. She responds to his email telling him she doesn't want to change her name at work and she will explain why later on at home. She doesn't get an email back and assumes this means he's ok. Honest to fuck, I don't understand how she can be the one married to him yet I know him about a trillion times better. You are in so much trouble, Ana.

The reason for his lack of a response becomes clear a couple hours later, when Christian (I am fucking serious, you guys, what in the shit does this man actually DO?) storms into the office to chew her out over this point. In the course of this, he manages to refer to her as an "asset" in need of "rebranding" and that he likes to stop by the companies he owns to keep management sharp and "wives in their place." IN THEIR PLACE. IN THEIR MOTHERFUCKING PLACE. I honestly don't give a shit whether Ana's argument is stupid or not, she has won this contest already (my contest, she has no hope of winning autonomy from her husband at her job). Not that I'm not angry with her. Because oh no, not wanting to change her name has hurt Christian right in his tender little feelings! She never wants to hurt his feelings! He just showed up to your job to put you in your place and call you an asset as if you were actual property that could be owned. FUCK his feelings. Fuck his feelings with an entire goddamn rose bush. Other completely retarded statements he makes during this argument:

• "I want everyone to know that you're mine."/"It's not enough." That she MARRIED him. She married him and it is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST SEW HER TO YOUR SHIRT LIKE A MERIT BADGE SO EVERYONE WILL KNOW.
• "I want your world to begin and end with me." Followed almost immediately by genuine shock that she feels suffocated. You could not be more suffocating if you held a plastic bag against her face with a pillow on top of it and a rope around her neck and you are underwater AND ALSO IN SPACE.

He goes on to explain that in addition to coming by to "deal with my errant wife" (Jesus fucking fuck), he also wanted to tell her that he was planning to change the name of the company to Grey Publishing (presumably because he just likes to see his name written on things since there is no real marketing reason to do this) and that in a year's time he's going to give it to Ana - as a wedding present. By the way, this is a wedding present she's going to spend the rest of this chapter and the next one repeatedly trying to explain to him she doesn't want. She has her dream job now, she doesn't know how to run a company, she doesn't WANT to run a company, she doesn't want anything at all to do with this plan. None of which matters, because Christian is on a roll now, trying to bribe her to do something she doesn't want to do by insisting that she do ANOTHER thing she doesn't want to do. But he's sure it will all be fine and here's why: "You are also the most well-read person I know." Because CLEARLY having read several books makes a person with no business experience and who couldn't find her head if it wasn't attached to her neck qualified to run a fucking company. How in the name of Lindsay Lohan's skidmarked underpants have you had any success in business EVER if these are the sort of business decisions you make? Where did you acquire these amazing skills, Christian, Enron? Why do I get the feeling that if anyone took a look at how your companies actually operate they would find nothing but fraud and waste and breathtaking corruption? Because I have not seen you make one single sound decision about anything business related AND you have time to STALK YOUR WIFE ALL DAY LONG EVERY SINGLE DAY, so it seems like the only way you could have built an empire like this is through fraud, crime, or suspiciously good luck (which is likely to turn out to be fraud or crime).

Sorry, I got a little off track there. Anyway, she eventually gives in to all his demands, but she's still angry about it when they get home  ("I thought we had sorted all this in your office." CHOKE ON A DICK) so they fight some more even though the outcome will ultimately be the same, mainly because James wants to have Christian say more misogynistic and patronizing things since SEXISM IS SUPER FUCKING ROMANTIC: "Don't be mad. You're so precious to me. Like a priceless asset, like a child." FUCK YOU CHRISTIAN, I HOPE YOU GET TEABAGGED BY A GANG OF ELEPHANTS.

Chapter 8 consists of three things: Ana behaves like a psycho, Ana gets off playing Tune In Tokyo, and Christian gets a haircut. Or if you look at it another way, one thing: Amber wonders if jumping out her third floor bedroom window will kill her or at least put her in a prolonged coma. Gia Matteo is the architect Christian and Ana have chosen to remodel their new house. She is, of course, one of the finest architects in all of Seattle if not the world. Ana despises her because she is obviously trying to steal Christian, but she doesn't want to fire her because her drawings are breathtaking. Even in terms of first world problems this isn't a problem. Guess what, Ana? There are other architects, and you have enough money to hire any or probably ALL of them. Fuck, you could probably afford to have Frank Lloyd Wright exhumed and have his body reanimated so he can build you a pretty house. HIRE SOMEONE ELSE. She's not going to consider the most obvious option though. No, instead when Gia comes over to discuss the drawings, Ana is going to dress like a tart, because hey lady, two can play the "I am a desperate slut with no self esteem" game! Certainly the most mature way to deal with people who dare think you have an attractive husband. This scene is one of the finest examples of "everything is wrong with it" I have ever seen. James has really outdone herself with this one. Because for starters what's about to happen would never actually happen. I don't care how good an architect you are, if you behave grossly inappropriately toward your clients, let alone right in front of their wives' faces, you will no longer have any clients. So when Gia comes in and virtually ignores Ana while getting uncomfortably close to Christian and flirtatiously touches his arm, I am once again reminded that E.L. James isn't going to let plausibility get in the way of writing the soap opera she wants to write. But even if you can suspend disbelief that the scene even exists, what happens in it STILL doesn't make sense. When Gia touches Christian, who we know from two and a half books worth of nauseatingly frequent reminders HATES TO BE TOUCHED and must CONTROL ALL THE THINGS, his response is to timidly take a step away from her, say nothing at all about it, and wait for Ana to come stand in between them, giving her a relieved look at being "rescued". THEN, when Christian leaves the room for some urgent matter with Taylor, Ana goes into full on jealous psychopath mode and threatens Gia several times to stay away from her man OR ELSE. And then another thing that would never happen happens: Gia becomes terrified of Ana and suddenly starts to treat her with respect. In real life, no commission is worth having to deal with an unhinged crazy bitch who has hallucinated some sort of threat to her marriage, and certainly not the greatest architect since god, and a real life Gia Matteo would have said "fuck this shit" and walked away from the job. The only thing that could have made this scene any more preposterous is if they got into an actual Jerry Springer style cat fight (it comes close though - Ana thinks to herself at one point "Yeah bitch, mine" which is exactly the kind of thing you would hear on Springer, but she doesn't say it out loud).

After that debacle and another several pages of the same argument about her name they've had twice already, Ana decides that Christian needs a haircut so she's going to do it all super romantic-like and drags him in the bathroom to sensuously wash his hair, which is when I make a horrified choking noise in my throat and write "please god no, don't do this." The haircut doesn't go so well at first because they haven't fucked in FIVE WHOLE MINUTES. The hair washing is interrupted by Christian who is overwhelmed with lust over it, so he ties Ana's hands behind her back with her underwear and more or less gives her a titty twister until she comes everywhere. While this is happening he tells her how beautiful her breasts are and how he's going to fuck them someday. I'm not sure why that day isn't today and actually right now, but I'm in better shape than Ana is over that statement: What the hell does that mean? she wonders. Oh my god, I hate you. Ok, fine, you've never done that before, but you are having sex ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE, you must understand the mechanics by now, you should be able to sort this one out yourself without breaking all three of your brain cells. When Ana comes (the second time) while sitting on Christian's magical Boner of Ecstasy, she starts crying, which she does pretty much every single time she has an orgasm, and frankly I hope she drowns in her emo, emo tears. Especially after she thinks "After all our arguing today, my frustration with him, his with me - we still have this." Holy bananas do you suck at life. Hey, at least we have sex since the rest of our relationship is fucking terrible!

Once Ana's teargasm has subsided, she remembers that the whole point of this exercise was to cut Christian's hair, so she goes down the hall to his study to get some scissors and two things happen. The first is that she happens to see Taylor and Mrs. Jones kissing and HOLY SHIT IT IS EXPLOSIVE NEWS. Just to Ana, though - Christian already knows and points out that they are both adults and single and free to do whatever the fuck they want. But Ana just can't wrap her head around this because - no, for real this is her ACTUAL reason - "I always thought Mrs. Jones was older than Taylor." The woman ALWAYS has to be younger, how else will the man be able to romantically treat her like a helpless child? YOU ARE SUCH AN ASSHOLE ANA. The second thing that happens is while going through Christian's desk looking for scissors she finds a gun. Fully loaded. In an unlocked drawer. Despite multiple attempts on his life, a high speed car chase, and a mentally unstable ex stalking them, Ana is totally perplexed about why Christian would have a gun. I am only perplexed by the fact that every other sentence out of Christian's mouth hole is about how he is so afraid of anything ever happening to Ana, and keeping a loaded weapon in an unlocked drawer in an unlocked room in an apartment housing at least two other people besides Christian and Ana that has already had its security breached once by a woman who was so disoriented she couldn't even wash herself is pretty much the definition of asking for an accident to happen in which Ana gets killed. In fact, the only law of gun safety he hasn't violated right here is that he apparently doesn't sleep with a loaded gun under his fucking pillow. YET. P.S. This is the second gun you've mentioned in this alleged love story, Ms. James...you DO know that the stereotype of "every single American owns a gun" is not actually true, right? Right? Ana doesn't mention the gun to Christian when she goes back to finish cutting his hair, because if there's one thing they are both good at, it's never ever discussing anything important until it becomes a fucking crisis. Instead the chapter ends with her cutting his hair, another argument about her running a company, her fundamentally misunderstanding something he said earlier in a way that makes him panic, and frantic, desperate sex that solves everything. So, basically EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING AS EVERY OTHER SHITTY PAGE OF THIS SHITTY ASS BOOK OF SHIT. SHIT.

Oh, the tally for these two chapters is Ana - 2, Christian - nil (I am counting the half dozen fights about the same fucking thing as just one long extra stupid thing).

More Lame Excuses

I've started writing a couple different posts for today, but one will never be finished in time (the next review, which will only cover two chapters because HOLY BALLS ALL OF THE STUPID), and the other one I got 90% finished with before I realized I wasn't emotionally prepared to post that announcement yet (or maybe I am, but I need to talk to a few more people so they don't find out the news from my blog instead of in person because they will be maybe not so pleased if I tell the entire internets first). So basically, you get a new review tomorrow!, a new video maybe tomorrow, but definitely soon (it's being edited), and a major life announcement whenever I stop dragging my feet and tell my family anything that goes on in my life.

In much more important news, there are ONLY 47 DAYS LEFT UNTIL MY BIRTHDAY.

Factory Of False Hope

So the Browns beat the Steelers today for the first time in years and only the third time in their last 25 meetings. Which I'm happy about, but, you know, not actually happy, just Browns happy. Because the hardest thing about being a Browns fan is that over time you will learn to never, ever get excited. They will let you down in the end if you give them enough time. With all the other sportsball teams I follow, when my team has a lead I can relax and enjoy the game. When the Browns have a lead, I can't enjoy anything because I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I spent all of the last three minutes of today's game with my eyes squeezed shut and my heart pounding with anxiety wondering how they would screw it up. They didn't, and I got to be genuinely happy at the end of the game. For about 12 seconds. Until it dawned on me we have to play them again on their home field in a month and Ben Rapistberger will probably be back by then and oh yeah, I'm a Browns fan. Let's try to enjoy it (well, Browns enjoy it) while it lasts, other Browns fans, before we go back to this:

Meaningless Post To Make My Quota

I made a video today after getting drunk with StereoNinja which may or may not make any sense. I tried watching it, but I was gesturing a lot and it was making me dizzy since I was still drunk. Then I passed out. Then I woke up in the middle of the night from Fringe nightmares (I KNEW IT) and remembered that I didn't get around to posting anything for today. Then I wrote this crappy explanation and (hopefully) went back to sleep. Worst NaBloPoMo post ever. But a video is coming, so there's that.

Damn You, Science Channel

I've spent almost the entire day today watching Fringe on Science Channel, which is really, really stupid because this is exactly the sort of show that will give me nightmares. After I collapsed from making dinner for five hours and then eating the crap out of it yesterday, I spent a good part of the evening watching Dark Matters, also on the Science Channel, which I got completely obsessed with last season even though it scares the shit out of me. So basically, the Science Channel is stealing my days and is probably about to steal my night as well. If that show about extrasolar planets is on tomorrow I might end up fused to the couch forever. DAMN IT, SCIENCE, STOP BEING INTERESTING.