Turkey Day

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow for most of you (it's Thanksgiving for me on Saturday because this is England and no one has the day off). Happy Thanksgiving!

McDonald's - Not Made Of Lips And Assholes

I don't know if this is happening in the states, but McDonald's is running a series of television commercials (and maybe radio commercials - I don't know, I only listen to the BBC or podcasts like a proper nerd), which could very easily have the tagline "McDonald's - Not as gross as you think". They go like this: Hey did you hear that rumor about how our fries/chicken nuggets/hamburgers are grown by a mad scientist in a lab/made out of slime and boogers/dehydrated genetically modified turd juice? None of that is true! Our food is made out of food, like, real food, we swear. We can prove it: here's a picture of a guy in a field holding up a potato. See? Eat at McDonald's! Tell your friends!

McDonald's, this is probably not your best advertising idea. First of all, no one who is over the age of twelve and/or a paranoid conspiracy theorist who just knows your entire existence is just a government plot actually thinks chicken nuggets are made out of throbbing lumps of faceless, organless meat piles, no matter how much their eight year old nephew insists that's what he saw on his school field trip to an industrial chicken farm. That kid is a pathological liar, just like the rest of them. Second of all, people in general are gross and would continue to eat your swill even if they believed in such demonstrable nonsense. The problems I would like you to address in your advertising (if you insist, because I do genuinely think you'd be better off continuing to pretend that eating at McDonald's is how most happy marriages start or that spontaneous parties frequently break out there for no discernible reason) are these: Why do your hamburgers taste like burnt plastic, and how do you justify serving children a box of food for lunch that contains enough calories to last them two days? Yes, I know they have parents, but their parents might be morons, or just tired from having to haul their fat kid around all day. Besides which, "they failed worse" is rarely a winning argument. Seriously though, the problem is less that people think the way your food is made might be gross, and more that the taste of your food actually is fucking gross. Also? You're going to set off the conspiracy theorists who maybe haven't heard those rumors because if you're spending that much money to convince people those things aren't true, then they obviously are true and WHAT ELSE ARE YOU HIDING?

Just, you know, think about it. And quit giving little kids diabetes.

Buying Apples in Essex Is Entirely Rational, So Shut Up.

You know your partner digs you when you announce that you need to go on a two hour drive for the purpose of buying apples, and his response is to book you into a bed and breakfast nearby.

For a country that is essentially one massive farm dotted here and there with cities, there seems to be dearth of decent farm shops, at least within a reasonable, non-crazy person distance of where I live. I recognize, of course, that growing up just south of Cleveland as I did, my access to Mapleside Apple Farm, where my family went at least once a year to buy Halloween pumpkins and a massive amount of baking apples for pies, and where I had at one time planned to get married, gives me a very biased opinion of what constitutes a "good" farm shop. Nevertheless, I feel like a farm shop where I ask "What apples do you have that would be good for baking?" and the woman sitting in the doorway of the dingy, decrepit barn that serves at the "shop" scowls at me and says "That one" while pointing at the only box of apples visible in the entire place could probably be topped. So I googled my face off, and the only thing I managed to find where they seemed to both know shit about apples and also grow more than one variety was a fruit farm whose address is listed on their website as being "near Frinton-on-Sea". I insisted on going.

"Near" Frinton-on-Sea is just over two hours away from here and halfway around the M25 (Hi, Americans. The M25 is an orbital highway that goes all the way around London, has only two rest stops, and is constantly rammed with traffic. Sometimes people don't know where to get off and go around and around it in circles until their family reports them missing to the police.), and as we left shortly after getting home from work without having eaten anything, we decided to stop for dinner in Colchester on the basis that it was a place we had both heard of. Turns out, Colchester is the oldest Roman city in Britain and was once the capital of Roman Britain. We had Italian.

The bed and breakfast StereoNinja booked us into for the night was not in Frinton-on-Sea, mainly because there is nothing IN Frinton-on-Sea. We stayed instead at the Chudleigh in Clacton-on-Sea, the most English bed and breakfast in all the world. When we called them to say we'd be in rather late, the woman's response was "Oh, yes, we just beginning to worry about you!" as though we were people they actually knew. The whole place smells like your grandparent's house in the best way possible and despite its recent renovation, the decor appears to have time traveled there from the 50's. It is amazing and has the world's fluffiest pillows. At breakfast the next day, when I ordered shredded wheat and toast, the woman serving breakfast spent a good ten minutes trying to convince me to order "something hot" because what I had ordered is apparently "not breakfast". StereoNinja had a plate of meat which seems to have been an acceptable choice. I'm going to be staying there every time I go to Clacton-on-Sea now, which will be a lot because it is the most perfectly stereotypical seaside town in all of the world, or as I described it to StereoNinja, "It's like Venice Beach without all the assholes and stupid crap."

The Park Fruit Farm is exactly what it claims to be: a fruit farm. And the farm shop I had such high hopes for is in a relatively small and nondescript barn, BUT that barn has a wide variety of apples, all of which have actual information about when they grow, when they're ready for use, how long they keep, what their apple heritage is, what uses they're good for and their flavor profiles WHICH IS EXACTLY HOW YOU SHOULD SELL APPLES. And! It smells exactly like Mapleside's farm shop, which is exactly what I wanted in a farm shop without realizing it. AND! They even had apples I KNEW, because they grow several varieties of apples that originate in America INCLUDING Johnagolds, which is one of the apples I used for pies back home. AND! fresh pressed applejuice, which StereoNinja managed to drink a quarter of the jug we bought before we even made it back to the car.

The whole trip was a resounding success really, and I'm already trying to figure out how to trick StereoNinja into going back there all the time. In the meantime, I'll just be over here making ALL of the pies.

The Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises

I'm in the midst of a recovery day, my friends. There has not been so epic a weekend since the Epic Austin Weekend of Boobs and Cake. I am in actual physical pain due to its awesomeness and am also having a small existential crisis, and that is the result of only one of the three, THREE!, fantastical events in a roughly 30 hour period.

I would begin at the beginning, but I feel a need to explain something first. I noticed back in autumn that homesickness seemed to be at its worst during times that are important to your culture but just a regular day where you live now. For example, I suspect that Canada Day, for a Canadian who now lives in Spain, is probably kind of a bummer since no one is saying "Happy Canada Day!" or pouring maple syrup all over their naked bodies (is this what you do on Canada Day? I don't know, I'm not omniscient). I felt it a bit at Halloween - because people do Halloween here, but not like it's done in America where everyone goes insane - but when it really jumped up and kicked me in the cunt was on Thanksgiving, which in this country is just known as "Thursday" and everyone goes to work just like a normal day. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbors, but it was on Saturday, not Thursday, and they were all very excited about this novelty dish I made called "cornbread" - I mean, they raved about it (because of course they did, it's CORNBREAD) which was very nice, but delighted surprise is not a typical reaction to cornbread at Thanksgiving dinner. Also there wasn't a shitty Cowboys game going on in the background. It felt weird.

Having experienced this once already, I decided that I would try to head off the "boo-hoo everyone is having fun but meeeeee" feels by having a 4th of July party. Unfortunately this is the time of year that literally half the country goes on holiday so most of our closer friends couldn't make it and also our neighbor The Commodore, so called because he recently became commodore of the nearby yacht club, stole all of our neighbors and took them to a ball at said yacht club, so it ended up being a much smaller affair than I had intended. BUT! It actually worked out great because the people who did come were my American study buddy (hereafter known as the academic) from my masters program and his English husband, my childhood friend the turk, who now lives in London with her English husband, and another American classmate from my program who I don't have a blog name for yet. We did it up American style, with burgers and brat(wurst)s on the grill, florescent yellow mustard, America shaped cookies, buckeyes*, and an enormous pasta salad. I have never seen people so excited about a pasta salad. It's not like pasta salad doesn't exist here- I've eaten some from M&S myself. But it seems using an entire package of pasta to make a party snack is uncommon here. This arrangement turned out to be perfect. We sat in the garden (these people all live in the city and were absolutely knocked the fuck out by the sheer volume of wildlife available a mere 40 minutes from London) drinking beer and/or wine and/or margaritas playing rounds of Cultural Differences and debating the proper pronunciation of words. One I didn't know is the word skeletal is pronounced here as skhe-LEE-tal, which by the way is wrong as evidenced by the fact that He-Man's nemesis is not called "SkeLEEtor". Eventually it got dark (i.e. spiders were starting to surround us) and we went indoors to tell childhood stories of terrible camp songs, fencing lessons (the turk and me, 5th grade) and archery. In the midst of this we saw some flashy lights outside and upon opening the door realized they were accompanied by exploding sounds...IT WAS FIREWORKS YOU GUYS. WE GOT TO SEE FIREWORKS IN ENGLAND ON THE 4TH OF JULY. Having achieved a perfect day, I took some people back to the train station, the academic and his husband (potentially Mr Coffee???) stayed overnight and I went to bed happy and exhausted.

StereoNinja and I got up very early the next day and rudely left our guests to fend for themselves, because we had tickets to the British Grand Prix and it is well known that driving to and from Silverstone on race day is a colossal clusterfuck. Now, I know nothing at all about F1 or any racing really, mostly because I don't have any real interest in cars or going fast and in my country the popular racing to watch is NASCAR, an interest I find fucking hilarious in other people. Conversely, prior to my converting him into an ice hockey fan, F1 was literally the only sport StereoNinja followed or gave a single fetid shit about. I haven't been exposed to his F1 fandom however, because we don't get Sky on principle so he can only watch about one out of every three races which makes it hard to follow. I was excited to go because he was excited and because I got to do a new thing, but my excitement had little to do with with the race itself. We got there and inhaled a shitty hamburger before finding our seats in the grandstand. Which is about when the Red Arrows started flying their impossible formations of awesomeness, complete with red white and blue smoke and a fucking heart that they drew in the sky. I got some sand or something in both my eyes.

And then it was race time. I was all ready to experience my first F1 race and excitedly awaited the first time they would go flying past me. I wound up waiting a long time, since 58 seconds in there was an enormous crash that knocked three cars out before it had even really started and damaged the barriers to a degree that took and hour to replace. But eventually the race got underway again and...You guys. The last thing I needed was another sport to follow, particularly another sport that it was difficult for me to be able to watch due to limited availability. However. FORMULA ONE IS FUCKING AWESOME. It wasn't even a particularly good race as it was clear from about halfway through who the winner was going to be and the only thing in question was who would win the battle for fifth place. But. For serious. Driving inches from each other at those speeds, making a play to get past someone in a corner by breaking later, which is pretty much challenging them to a game of high stakes chicken...I don't know how these cars can even go that fast with how much their balls must weigh. Next thing I know I'm reading in the program about innovations in engine design and strategies for dealing with the new limit of 100kg of fuel per race. So apparently I'm now both a racing fan and burgeoning petrol head. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.

The race ended with with a British racing driver as the winner making everyone mad with joy and patriotism, and me bewildered at myself and realizing that I had a sunburn for the first time in over 10 years (it's all coming back to me now. Having a sunburn SUUUUUUUHHKS). StereoNinja and I hightailed it back to the car in order to drive all the way to London to see Ben Folds with the Heritage Orchestra at Barbican. I've seen Ben Folds with an orchestra before. What I had not seen before was Ben Folds' new piano concerto which he'd spent a year writing and which was a highly unusual mix of classical and modern styles. Nor had I seen him lead an entire orchestra in a spontaneous episode of Rock This Bitch. For the uninitiated, Rock This Bitch is a thing that happens at many Ben Folds shows in which someone in the audience waits til a quiet moment to shout "ROCK THIS BITCH!" and then Ben Folds makes up a song on the spot containing the words "rock this bitch" that is completely different from any version of Rock This Bitch he's played before. This is not the first orchestra he's convinced to play Rock This Bitch with him, but it is the first time I'd seen it live, so I can pretty much go ahead and die now. If you'd like to be ready to die also, here's a video of the whole process:

Once Ben Folds had finished blowing my fucking mind again, we headed home. After a concert, an F1 race, and a brilliant party, I was completely exhausted (also crispy and pink as all fuck) and not looking forward to going home and cleaning up the mess we'd made on Saturday. So imagine my total fucking delight when we finally got home only to find that the guests we had abandoned in our house had cleaned up absolutely EVERYTHING before they left like a couple of magical party debris erasing genies, thus making the entire thing into a PERFECT weekend. Or indeed, the Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises.

Update: I have just remembered another conversation from my 4th of July party between the four Americans that occurred when the turk mentioned she had gone somewhere that had REAL rye bread and the other three of us all sat up and went "Get out. Seriously? With the seeds and everything? WHERE? WHERE IS THIS RYE BREAD?" The reason we all reacted so strongly is that we've all had a common experience, shared I suspect by almost all Americans living here, of having ordered a sandwich on rye or rye toast somewhere and being served instead with bread that is actually white bread and pumpernickel swirled together. Listen, because I cannot stress this enough: that is not rye bread. There's not even any caraway seeds in it, which while some real rye bread doesn't have caraway seeds either, that kind of rye is pointless. If there is one food I miss from America more than any other food it is rye toast to go with my omelette. Without rye toast, an omelette is just eggs with some other shit in it. Rye toast is the shit, man.

I now return you to you irregularly scheduled self deprecation and spider freak outs.

*These were specifically for the benefit of the turk since as a native Ohioan she was the only one likely to have had them before. If you don't know what a buckeye is, as far as I can tell it is a nut (or seed? I'm too lazy to google which one it technically is but I think of it as nut) that is either exactly the same as or indistinguishably close to a conker. The tree it grows on is the state tree of Ohio and it is the mascot of the state's largest institution for secondary education, The Ohio State University. Somewhere along the line, some total fucking snack genius got the idea to make balls of candied peanut butter and dip them in chocolate, which is both delicious and looks exactly like a buckeye. Despite not encountering them before, the group ate the crap out of them and now I don't have any more.

Cockles And Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh

Having seen the weather report in our area for last weekend (a month's worth of rain in 48 hours), and having failed to remember to plan anything for a trip to Prague (remembering stuff is not StereoNinja's forte and my ongoing depression battle is fucking with memory type things - I'm feeling quite a bit better by the way), StereoNinja and I decided on a last minute escape to Dublin for the weekend. (It's a good thing we did - while the flooding did not return to the levels it was at when our only road got swallowed by the Thames, we found out from neighbors that the power was out to the island from late Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. Everything in our house from the oven to the the heating is electric. It would have been like camping and as previously explained I do not camp.) And I'm kind of in love with it now.

I had never been to Dublin before, and StereoNinja had never managed to go there while also having a good time. Since I really don't know a lot about Ireland, I didn't have any real expectations of what it would be like. What it is like is awesome. Without travelling anywhere else on the Earth I haven't already been, I will say with total confidence that Dublin has the friendliest cab drivers in the world. Seriously, apart from one or two guys (we took cabs EVERYWHERE because we decided to escape rain by going someplace that was also pissing down rain because we're imbeciles) every cab driver wanted to know all about us and what brought us to Dublin, professed to adore America, gave informal city tours complete with history about buildings (which sometimes have no windows because England used to tax windows so they just built them without any because fuck you), gave solicited and unsolicited advice on what we should see and where we should drink, and generally rounded fares down to avoid anyone have to deal with coins which I thought was great because I despise them.

I was a bit worried before we got on the plane about whether there would be anything for me to eat there. Since I don't like potatoes, and the stereotype of Ireland is that everything is made out of potatoes there, I was somewhat concerned that I might starve to death. This turned out to be entirely unfounded. The restaurants in Dublin are universally spectacular, based on the fact that every time one of us said "Do you want to just go in here?" the food there was so good I had to be restrained from humping it. Maybe the best Italian restaurant I've ever been to in my life was in Dublin (amaretto tiramisu you guys. AMARETTO TIRAMISU). We went to a french place for lunch and I loved it, and if you remember I wouldn't eat much of anything when I was in actual France.

We also partook of Dublin's many museums. Recommended for nerds: The Science Gallery at Trinity College, currently running the "Fail Better" exhibit - a collection of inventions that didn't work, but which led to advances in science or some other positive contribution. Recommended for sheer hilarity: The Ireland Natural History Museum, which seems to basically be a room full of taxidermied animals of varying age, quality, and disrepair. The fucking massive extinct deer skeletons near the entrance are singularly impressive. The basking shark hanging from the ceiling, if I'm being kind, has probably seen better days. To be fair to the museum, the upper and lower floors of it are currently closed, but on the other hand it is severely lacking in any information on the animals apart from their name.

Deer: huge; impressive.

Basking shark: c'mon, man.

Our first cab driver, upon hearing that we wanted to go hear some real Irish music, directed us to the Brazen Head, which is self described as the oldest pub in Ireland. It was described by the cab driver as "nearly a thousand years old". It's actually a little over 900 years old, but I suppose "nearly a thousand" is correct depending on where you're rounding from. We met a nice German kid there, but did not meet the Brazilians who were also in the house. I know they were there because of the gregarious and extremely drunk Irishman who kept shouting at them, "BRAZIL? BRAZIL? THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN DUBLIN ALL THE WAY FROM BRAZIL?" There was a little group in the corner playing, who unfortunately had a broken amplifier and were therefore mostly drowned out by the noise from the table of vapid, oblivious women who were all talking at once AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and failed to notice either the music or the collective death stare of literally everyone else in the room. That was until an enterprising guy at the next table started a shushing campaign that grew until the ENTIRE pub would hiss at them every time they got out of hand.

We also checked out the Guinness Storehouse, home of all things Guinness. For those of you Americans who have been to the Budweiser brewery in St. Louis, just, no. The Storehouse makes that place look like a miniaturized Lego model of a brewery, it is that massive. Additionally, when you get up to the top where your free pint of Guinness awaits you, not only do they take the time and care to draw you a lovely shamrock in your foam, but the 360 degree windows that make up the walls of the room give you an aerial view of the entirety of Dublin and beyond, all the way to the mountains in one directions and all the way to the sea in another. Of course, I used the opportunity to text Cap and taunt him because I am an asshole sister.

Enjoy your beer, insignificant speck of a human.

Dublin, with its abundant cabs, myriad of pubs, river flowing through it, cool stuff to do, nice people, great food and many college students, reminded me quite a lot of Chicago. Except for this one thing that happened that made me realize how spoiled Americans are. Because one thing we have precious little of in America is domestic terrorism. When bombs go off at the Boston Marathon or Oklahoma City or the Atlanta Olympics, they are weird, isolated things that shock us because it is not a thing that happens in America, so infrequently in fact that we don't even think about it and take that for granted. Meanwhile, in Dublin, in our first cab on the way to the hotel, the very friendly cab driver/tour guide/historian said to us, "This is a great area right here. It used to have statues absolutely everywhere, on all these corners. But of course the IRA blew them all up." And he said it with such casual resignation, because stuff used to blow up there - a lot - and that was his normal. So, you know, be aware of how lucky you are and shit, because you could think that all your statues blowing up is normal.

ANYBUTT, I fucking LOVED Dublin, as evidenced by everything that came out of my mouth while we were there was prefaced by "Next time we come, we should..." and that's just not something I typically say because I am of the television generation and easily bored. You should totally go there if you like doing things that are fun and/or being around nice people. You should probably also be okay with a bit of rain and own an umbrella.

Shove It, Popeye

 I am sitting on the counter in the kitchen. StereoNinja is about to fry some spinach because everything he eats is gross.

Me: I guess I should help you or move. I'm practically sitting on the spinach.

StereoNinja: You look like you'd rather sit on it than eat it.

Me: Well it looks more comfortable than delicious.

England: They Have Stuff Too

Here's another example of "little differences": Last night, StereoNinja and I went to dinner at a steak restaurant called Cattle Grid. It was the most American thing I've encountered since I've been here. Now, I have no evidence that its intention is to come off as American, but it absolutely fucking does. It has a very American decor to it, authentically, not "this is what we imagine America looks like" decor, a menu that list its beef and pork dished under the headings "COW' and "PIG", enormous American sized portions of things including a massive rack of barbecue ribs the likes of which I have never seen here, onion strings which I have also never seen here before and which caused me to actually audibly gasp when they were offered to me and a highly American looking desert menu meaning we didn't order any because StereoNinja couldn't get a cheese plate (also that whole thing about the giant portions). There were only two things that gave it away. One was a completely disinterested server - not a bad server, just a man who was clearly not working for tips. The other is a thing that keeps happening to me every time we eat somewhere which is StereoNinja has to remind me to properly arrange my cutlery. Because unlike America, where they are watching you and waiting for you to slow down, or coming by to refill your drink since it's free refills ALL THE TIME in Fatassland, and they ask you while they're there "Can I take your plate?", the only way to have your plate cleared here is to align your fork and knife right next to each other across your plate. If you leave your utensils either on the table or strewn about your plate all willy-nilly in the wrong configuration, you will be sitting there waiting for the check (cheque) for hours. It's like the Bat signal for "I have finished my meal." And I ALWAYS forget.

Right so, anyway, not my point. What I actually meant to do right now was write about some of the things I love about being here, because I feel like all I've done is complain so far, and it's really not that I don't like it here, it's just that it's not home yet. So here's a few things that I think are fantastic that you have thus far dropped the ball on, America:

Roast dinner. Yeah, ok, we have roast dinners in the U.S., but there are certain designated days for them which are Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of the year you just are like "Oh won't it be great when it's Thanksgiving and we'll have roast turkey again?" Yeah, um, yer doin it wrong. Because it is Roast Day here EVERY SUNDAY. You can make a roast at home or you can go to a carvery or you can go round someone else's house - whatever. Oh and another thing: Yorkshire puddings. Get in on that, Murica, you are missing out.

QI. There is not a show being produced right now on American television that I am aware of that is nearly as awesome as QI. A show that is funny AND has Stephen Fry AND you get to learn cool stuff? It's like an arrow of joy aimed straight at my little nerd girl heart. I am particularly overjoyed when there's an episode that has either Bill Bailey or Jeremy Clarkson who say they funniest things and know some of the weirdest shit. And I lose my fucking mind every time I actually know the answer and shout things at the television like "NO! It's because it has a three foot long tongue!" or "Oh my god, I know this one! IT'S A THING FOR EXTRACTING BOOGERS FROM A CORPSE!"

Road signs. I find the road signs here to be generally more helpful than the ones in America. Like, coming up to a roundabout or a slip road (this is an on or off ramp), there will be a sign with a picture of the exact roundabout or shape of slip road you are about to encounter. But that's not even what I like about them. The best thing about the signs is how ambiguous they are if you don't already know what they mean. Before I started driving, I started making up my own meanings for some of the ones I thought were funny.

Windsocks are dangerous

WARNING: Killer duck

Sad wiener

No perspective

I didn't make up a meaning for this, I just want to vandalize it and make it into a centaur.

Beware of men with giant umbrellas

Caution: Bra in the road

SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER.

See, so some stuff is great, but it's not gonna get me a slice of Pequod's or an episode of Tosh.0.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME

The closest car park to Shepard's Bush Empire (where They Might Be Giants played last night) is at the Westfield mall, and since they have a discount for showgoers at that venue and there's food inside, we decided that's where we should park.

I'm not a shopper. This is known. Before yesterday I hadn't even been to a mall in years. There really aren't malls in Chicago, or at least, not away from Michigan Avenue, and even those ones aren't malls in the way that suburban people understand them. Even if there were though, if I have a choice between ordering shit online and having it delivered to my house without interacting with anyone else or going to a shopping mall and having to fend off shop girls trying to "help me", be personable at the cashier's desk and fighting a tide of strangers in the open areas who always seem to be moving en masse in the direction opposite mine, I am always going to chose to stay the fuck home.

Imagine my surprise, then, when we walked into the Westfield mall last night in search of quick and cheap food and I discovered I felt something I haven't felt since I got here - I felt like I was at home. Because while I haven't been to a mall in years, I did grow up in the suburbs, and I got dragged to the mall by parents and friends ALL THE TIME. I understand shopping malls. I know how they work. It felt familiar. It felt American. It felt...right. I found myself eating a quesadilla and wondering when I could go back there and walk around. Not to shop - I really and truly HATE to shop and will do almost anything to get out of it - I just want to go and wander around and, I don't know, just be there.

I'd noticed a similar feeling on the way to Gary Numan the night before, when we'd stopped for food at services (Americans: rest stop) and I'd gone straight over to the KFC. In America, I would never have done any such thing. There's no reason to eat chicken if it's not going to be from Boston Market, and there's not really any reason to get fast food at all that isn't from either Chipotle or Potbelly. KFC is not even on my radar. I couldn't even tell you where to find one. But here, I find myself thinking "I'll go to KFC" because I know exactly what I'm getting into with that decision (by the way Americans, popcorn chicken is ALWAYS on the menu here. It's not a limited time thing. Though this is offset by the fact that there's no honey mustard (a reader commented that I can steal some from Domino's but I haven't tried it yet).). I've probably had KFC about half a dozen times since I've been here. Prior to that, I hadn't eaten there in AT LEAST 10 years.

I don't even know who I am anymore.

Cake or Death

I made cupcakes and cookies for my class on Thursday, which was in no way an attempt to impress people with my baking skills or distract anyone from the my crappy presentation/uncontrollable shaking. My friend ate five of them and wrote a nice compliment on my notes for my presentation:

Now if I could just change how my professor feels about me talking in class I'd be all set.

Let The Posting Begin

So it's NaBloPoMo starting to day, which seems as good a time as any to remember that I have a blog which has an audience that I enjoy entertaining.

I thought I'd start with an update to get that out of the way and force me to (mostly) write real posts going forward. Many of you were touchingly concerned about my financial situation. After an extraordinary number of phone calls and bombarding them with every document I could possibly think of, I have finally got PayPal to reinstate both of my accounts and lift the withdrawal limit on my UK account, so I can now get at my money, at least temporarily until I start actually sending it and they block everything again. I've also been able to pay back StereoNinja who had to front me the money to buy my car because of the whole my money was stranded issue. I bought another MINI because it seemed like a bad idea to be learning to drive a new car at the same time that I was learning a new road system, particularly since I live in between a terrifyingly busy roundabout and a terrifyingly narrow bridge and I was thoroughly convinced I was never going to be able to leave the island at all. I named him Basil to make a point about the difference between a person's name and a herb that goes on your pizza. It hasn't gone well.

I had been under the impression that moving here wouldn't be a terribly big adjustment, given that I've been coming here almost exclusively on holiday for years and I thought I knew the culture pretty well. But having knowledge about a place and actually living it day to day are two very different things. For example, the other day the toast got stuck in the toaster and despite the fact that I am perfectly aware that the voltage running through the walls here is twice as much as it is in my home country, StereoNinja ended up more or less vaulting the countertop to prevent me from trying to fish the toast out with a knife. Not that you should fish things out of the toaster with a knife in America either, but it's far less likely to kill you.

I've also struggled with doing the shopping. For the benefit of other Americans who may be considering moving here, allow me to give you a few tips:

• If you ask for tomato sauce, you will invariably be given ketchup. Even though it says ketchup on the bottle and not tomato sauce. If you actually want tomato sauce you'll have to look for a package that reads "tomato passata" and it will be in a box, NOT in a can. Knowing this ahead of time could save you an hour or more.
• The bread here is delicious, but the reason it is delicious is that it's not made almost entirely of preservatives, so if you're buying a loaf of bread, you better be prepared to eat all of it in about 2 days or else feed it to some ducks. Or swans. Feel free to come over - we have both.
• The powdered sugar you're looking for is called icing sugar and no one knows what you're talking about if you say frosting.
• The things over by the milk that say "milkshake" on the side in no way resemble a milkshake. Similarly, anything that says lemonade is actually Sprite. There is no actual lemonade here.
• Hot dogs come in a can. Make of that what you will.
• There are a ton of different kinds of sausage for sale. None of them are the sausage you are looking for.

School has also started. In typical fashion, on a course made up almost entirely of women, I've managed to befriend three people, all of whom are men. So far I haven't been shouted at for any of my t-shirts, although I was worried on Wednesday about the "I should be in the kitchen" one I was wearing. Fortunately I ended up sitting behind one of my new dude friends and no one noticed. I've also managed to use the phrase "bitches be crazy" without any adverse consequences. Though I should probably stop pushing my luck.

So that's what I've been up to so far here. Stay tuned all month for daily posts that may or may not be more interesting than this one!

Is This Snails?

The trouble with trying to travel anywhere with me (for that matter, the trouble with trying to have a meal with me at home) is that at 35 years old I still have the palate of a child of 6. If it's not made out of pasta or bread I probably don't want it, and if it contains words I can't pronounce or sounds in any way exotic there is absolutely zero chance you are going to get me to put it in my mouth.

StereoNinja took me to Paris in March after finding out I had never been there, and while this was still in the planning stages I had decided, based on exactly no evidence or research whatsoever, that there was absolutely nothing to eat in France that wasn't made out of snails (except perhaps crepes, but those sounded suspicious to me in their own right because they've been described to me as "like a pancake" except they are not a pancake and why can't I just have a pancake? Plus they are probably stuffed full of snails) and I was probably going to starve to death. StereoNinja insisted both that this wasn't remotely true and French cuisine is some of the finest in the world, and that even if it were true, snails are delicious and I would love them. They are drowning in butter and garlic, he reasoned, which is what I drown practically everything I eat in, so there should be no problem. I countered that I would prefer to enjoy my butter and garlic without massive boogers floating in it.

In the end I managed to avoid eating any snails. In fact I ate very little of anything, not because I was being an obnoxious child, but because there are specific times designated for eating in France, and good fucking luck to you finding a single open restaurant if the time you are hungry is outside of those appointed times. What I did manage to find to eat was a Mexican restaurant just down the block from our hotel, because when you go to France for the first time in your life, it makes complete sense to eat food that you can get on practically every corner of the city you actually live in, but of better quality and 1/3 of the price. I didn't care - fajitas are something I know for a fact I don't hate and I wanted a friggin margarita (I drank four). Besides which, I now get to tell the story of how StereoNinja took me to France and I insisted on eating Mexican food the entire time.

We also spent a day in the Centre Georges Pompidou because StereoNinja is an artist and also CULTURE. Unfortunately, being surrounded by "culture" isn't something that typically makes me behave like a grown up in public. This day was no exception. It started with this kid who clearly fancied himself some sort of artiste as evidenced by his skin tight bright blue trousers and jaunty hat, which someone must have told him was the uniform. He was walking around looking very very serious about things and nodding solemnly and I was doubled over laughing. There was also a pink painting with a couple of dark vertical slits:

I refused to believe this painting wasn't called "Two Vaginas".

a giant room filled with ceiling high rolls of what appeared to be burlap, which looked for all the world like the back room of my uncles' floor covering shop where they keep all of the giant rolls of linoleum (this room caused me to turn to StereoNinja and say "I'm sorry but I really don't understand 'your people'."), and several phallic sculptures, every one of which I made StereoNinja take a photo of me pretending to suck off:

Evidence that I should not be allowed in public.

Not pictured: maturity.

For some reason I was far better behaved at the Moulin Rouge despite being completely surrounded by boobies and drinking half a bottle of champagne, apart from the fact that there was one male dancer who bore a striking resemblance to my date, and I kept referring to him as "Young [StereoNinja]", much to Old StereoNinja's irritation. I'm really not sure why he likes me. I'm starting to think he's not a real ninja*.

*OR IS HE?

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

Things I Learned This Thanksgiving

1. My least favorite knife to cut myself with while cooking is a serrated bread knife.
2. The Jets suck even worse than I thought, and I thought they sucked giant purple donkey balls.
3. Eating 900 pounds of food makes me too tired to get drunk. I'll do it tomorrow.
4. Getting drunk is a weird chore anyway.
5. Jason Bourne is delicious.

Thanksgiving Eve And Responsibilities

Many apologies for the very late (ok, fine, backdated, but only by like half an hour - if I were in California right now this would totally count) and mostly substanceless NaBloPoMo post today. It's the day before Thanksgiving here in America, or as I like to call it "Practice Christmas" (I am the only person who calls it that as well as the only person who thinks it's funny), which meant that after I got home from work I needed to bake a pie, cube some bread, clean the dining room, and take Jason Bourne swimming. I should point out that Jason Bourne is what I named our turkey this year due to his being super fucking awesome but having no idea who he is.

WHAT IS TREADSTONE?!?

 Depending on how much of a cheeseball you are, you may find that name not quite as hilarious as what I named my turkey last year, Tennille. Right before he went in the oven I set the bottle of Captain Morgan I was drinking next to him so I could take a photo of The Captain and Tennille. Tennille Two wouldn't have worked for this turkey though since the only rum I have in the house right now is Sailor Jerry*. ANYWANK - Jason Bourne went swimming for a few hours in a pool of brine I lovingly made him so he can be all nice and juicy when I cook his awesome ass tomorrow, assuming he doesn't somehow reanimate in the middle of the night and kill me with his amazing headless turkey stealth. My point is I had a lot to do, as I will tomorrow, so that post will probably be some rambling bullshit just like this. THE GOOD NEWS IS that I plan to get drunk at dinner and then do some reading after the bartender goes to work, which is likely to lead to a video of the result. If we're very lucky, StereoNinja will be able to garner a few minutes that make sense and where I'm not making out with the camera lens and then you guys will get to see it. He is a genius. Though not a real ninja**.

One other Thanksgiving fact for you guys: The number of times I will have to see Planes Trains and Automobiles to be able to watch it without crying at the end is somewhere between infinity and whatever is bigger than that.

*Also that would be funnier if I spelled it Tennille Too. Shut up, I'm really tired.
**OR IS HE?

Please Don't Hit Me.

I am ready for Christmas now.

And yes, I know that Halloween was less than a week ago, and that all of my American readers are telling me to get off it because it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but it's my blog and I LIKE GLITTER and I'm ready for Christmas so shut up.

There's lots of reasons why I am entirely prepared for Christmas fully nine days before the 40 Days of Christmas even starts. For one thing, the bartender was foolish enough a few weeks ago to mention that when he was a kid they always had a white Christmas tree with all red ornaments on it and that's his favorite. Since I (currently) have eight Christmas trees, but none of them are white OR decorated all in red, this is CLEARLY a veiled request for me to BUY ANOTHER TREE. I would be a terrible, terrible roommate to let his Christmas memories die by filling the apartment with trees that are all the wrong kind.

I have also been online looking at the new houses they have this year for my Christmas village. It's almost like they knew I wasn't a fan of any of the houses that came out last year, because new this year there is a dance studio AND a music store AND a library AND an accessory set of some kids playing hockey! (I miss you, Blackhawks.) ARE THEY READING MY MIND? And the timing is perfect, because I just bought a new upright freezer (since there's never room in the normal freezer because the bartender is CONSTANTLY making soup) and it didn't fit under the table in my kitchen as I had expected it to, so now it's in my room next to my two dressers (one of which I may or may not have bought specifically to have room for more houses in my Christmas village), so obviously I should buy all three of those houses so the freezer doesn't feel left out.

Also, now that I have a freezer, it means I can make SO MANY MORE Christmas cookies than I have in recent years, which is also perfect timing because last year after Christmas my dad gave me his old cookie press since he doesn't make those particular cookies anymore, so now I can make as many delicious little bows and wreaths and trees as I want. So even if you think all my other brilliant reasons are complete bullshit (which they're NOT), you have to concede that it is not unreasonable for me to be yammering on about Christmas this early because COOKIES YOU GUYS.

50 Cries Sadder

H-Town and amberance read Fifty Shades Darker so you don't have to.

H-Town: oh my god, fuck this book in its stupid dumb fucking face

me: oh my god this book

H-Town: KILL IT WITH FIRE

me: every time I read this I notice my face is hurting after. I think I am making monster faces the entire time

H-Town: lol

Chapter 18 begins with Christian (driving Ana’s car since she can’t be trusted to drive it herself) and Ana on their way to yet another surprise. They pull up to a massive fucking house in a massive fucking yard that is right on the coast. The house is old, but opulent. She makes a point of telling us there are four crystal chandeliers – in one room. They go out to the balcony and the view of the Sound nearly knocks her over. Turns out Christian is thinking of buying this house (from the realtor who Ana is instantly jealous of because she smiled at Christian, natch). You know, for when they are married. Assuming they are getting married. She hasn’t answered him yet, and we have been reminded about it on every fucking page since four chapters ago because he keeps trying to demand an answer from her.

me: So we left off all the way back at them looking at that house

H-Town: yes I love that she describes how he puts down the window in his car as he drives up to the house stupid stupid descriptions
also, how does one smile ironically?

me: I'm not sure. I should learn so I can smile ironically at this book

H-Town: I know how to smile demonically, because that's what I do when I think of hunting down EL James

me: her description of the sky is equally bad

H-Town: yes, the field - she wants to lay down in it and look at the sky. And I want to run over her with a tractor

me: "vermilion hues bleed into the cerulean sky, with opals and aquamarines"
I wrote "you're going to lose those crayons up your cooz"

H-Town: HAHAHAHA
her blood is pooling DOWN THERE in a lovely deep bronzey red
gross
sorry
OH AND THERE ARE FOUR CRYSTAL CHANDELIERS
I took that as sort of a "Fuck you" to all readers who don't live in a house like that

me: yes, so the obvious thing to do is tear the whole thing down and start over (“I want to buy it, demolish it, and build a new house – for us,” says Christian before going on to explain that he wants a house more eco friendly and sustainable. Or you could just go BUY A SUSTAINABLE HOUSE.)

H-Town: I KNOW
"I want to rebuild it eco"
wtf Christian
that is not at all Eco
you stupid bag of body wash

me: Oh you mean I can renovate what’s there to be more eco? I had no idea
you have INFINITE MONEY

H-Town: "I'll have to ask Elliot."
YOU ARE DUMB
EL James is dumber than 100% post-consumer waste
also, come on Christian, if you're really into being green, you wouldn't have 700 giant houses and 400 gas-guzzling cars
 
me: correct. maybe just get the one Prius and be done with it

H-Town: the sexiest Prius ever
0-60 in 15 seconds
AW YEAH
anywhore
she goes, "Christian, you had me at the meadow."
you mean the meadow he just said he was going to build a horse paddock in?
because he just shit on your field
FUCK OPEN SPACE, I WANT TO BE GREEN AND BUILD ON IT
ECO HORSES!!! THEY RUN ON HAY!

me: LOLOL
which she then called horses 4-legged fiends of Satan?

H-Town: horses aren't evil
they're lovely
spiders are eight-legged fiends of Satan

me: EXACTLY
so then let's go the club and celebrate your stupid promotion that you somehow forgot about even though it just happened 6 hours ago (Christian specifies “one of” his clubs. Because, you guys, he is so rich oh my god. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that yet.)

H-Town: also, the Mile High Club
REALLY?
I jumped out the window when I read that

me: I know, I wrote NO IT IS NOT FUCKING CALLED THAT

H-Town: as if no one's going to get that joke
seriously, that's like calling a restaurant Hooters
it's not exactly subtle

me: The bartender used to work at a gay bar called Manhole

H-Town: haha, I remember him saying that
HEY GUYS, WANNA COME TO MY NEW RESTAURANT CALLED "SEXY TITS AND CUNT LAND"?
YOULL NEVER GUESS WHAT IT'S LIKE!!
tell him to change the name of Tai's to "Sexy Tits and Cunt Land"

me: I would totally drink at that establishment

H-Town: same here
anyway, now they do a stupid no-panties dinner
blah blah seduction with seafood (Christian makes her take her panties off before dinner and then refuses to touch her at all while they’re eating. We are then subjected to six – SIX – pages of detailed descriptions on how they sexily ate food at each other. It is not sexy. It is fucking ludicrously irritating.)
I'm such a square, I was all, "I hoped he washed his hands before touching his slacks."
Think of the dry cleaning!

me: my only note from that whole 6 pages was "oh my god make this stop"
"I suck the hollandaise sauce off the asparagus"

H-Town: yeah, I wrote "HA HA Why talk about issues when we can just bang?!"
because she almost said that exact thing

me: OH THAT"S RIGHT
"issues, schmissues" is what she said
awesome
you are obviously carefully considering this marriage

H-Town: let's just screw, that will solve any problems we have
and then later, "Let's not talk about my weight. I like being slim."
You are not slim, you are starving.
People in Darfur eat more than her.
*goes to hell*

me: Karen Carpenter was a face stuffing fat ass next to Ana

H-Town: Kate Moss is all, "Hey, maybe eat a cracker."

me: a talking broom was like "you should really put on some weight"

H-Town: The fake skeleton in my anatomy class was all, "Eat a goddamn sandwich, you waif."

me: A guitar string told her she should get some help for her disorder
then more elevator tension (Christian fingers her in the elevator with other people around who don’t notice, then Ana makes a joke about having never had sex in a car which obviously makes Christian angry with her. By “obviously” I mean because he gets angry for no goddamn reason every time she figures out how to string together a complete sentence, not because anger in that situation would make any fucking sense. Then they barely make it back into the apartment before desperately fucking on the table in the foyer.)

H-Town: INTERCOURSE
then she goes to work, right?

me: oh right, in a low cut skin tight red dress (I’m not sure why James points this out since no one tries to rape her later. Force of habit I guess.)

H-Town: she says something about how the day flies by
and I wrote "Oh how the day flies by when you are not at all qualified for the job you have."

me: she's George Costanza with the Penske file

H-Town: hahaha
and now we've arrived at one of the stupidest things EVER

Ana goes out for drinks after work with Jose, who is in town to deliver the photos Christian bought so no one but him can ever look at Ana. Ana keeps trying to get in touch with Christian, but he refuses to respond to her. She assumes this because drinks with Jose has made him into the Hulk once again. She would probably be right under normal circumstances, but that day is not today. Instead she gets a phone call from Christian’s brother informing her that Christian and his helicopter are missing. Chapter 19 starts with every person Christian has ever met in his life gathered in his apartment, all terrified because he is obviously dead and the authorities have called off the search. Mind you he has only been missing for eight hours, an amount of time that would not even trigger a search unless the person missing is 7 years old. It is also all over the news. Ana spends most of this chapter in a trance, staring at the fireplace, lamenting about how she can’t go on without him, and recalling everything he’s ever said to her. Included in Ana’s thoughts here is the line “And we don’t know where he is.” Thank you, Einstein, I had no idea that’s what “missing” meant.

me: oh my fuck

H-Town: he goes missing
FOR EIGHT HOURS
EIGHT GODDAMN HOURS
no one would've gone looking for him yet

me: the last note I wrote for chapter 18 was "good. maybe he's dead."
especially no one would have gone looking for him and also ALREADY CALLED OFF THE SEARCH

H-Town: apparently you should never go missing in the northwest

me: Noted

H-Town: because they just give up very easily
they're all rapists, but you can hide pretty easily, I guess they stop looking

me: well I’m not going there anyway since everyone is a rapist
"I'll be nothing without him"
Jesus, you could try being an individual

H-Town: also, you can't just step out for a few minutes, because they'll put you on TV as missing and you'll be all, "Dammit, I was just going to get some takeout."

me: yes but this was because it's CHRISTIAN GREY, H-Town

H-Town: EVERYONE KNOWS HIM
the world mourns

me: if it was a lesser man like the President they'd wait and see first

Turns out Christian is alive and well, which we find out when he walks through the door and is startled to find that his entire family is upset that he was missing because he is a bad bad man who doesn’t deserve love. His explanation: The person he was flying with had never seen Mount Saint Helens so he decided to do a quickie fly by (which I’m pretty sure you can’t do without registering a flight plan, but whatever) when all of a sudden there is a fire in the tail and both his engines and the electronics all died (or he cut them intentionally because of the fire, it varies from page to page because E.L. James has the attention span of a frightened gerbil on cocaine). He manages to land Charlie Tango and put out the fire, but now he is in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, so he and his companion walk for four hours (he claims it take four hours because she’s wearing heels. No woman alive would walk through the woods in heels for four hours, she would take them off and keep an eye out for pointy sticks) until they find a road, by which time both their cell phones have died. In the course of him telling this story, and then later in the next chapters, it is foreshadowed no less than six times that all those malfunctions happening at once might mean the helicopter was sabotaged.

H-Town: and two remarkably stupid quotes from this chapter
"oh the feel of this warm, vital, sensual man beneath my fingers."
and
"you are my talisman, Ana."
You are a fuckstick, Christian.

me: the whole series of events:
everything that can break on a helicopter breaks at the same time

H-Town: but there's intrigue!

me: somehow there is not time to radio for help before shutting off the electronics

H-Town: they let on like someone did it!

me: no cell phone reception
walking for 100 miles
then cell phone dies
...if someone I was dating gave me that story after going missing all day my first reaction would be "Yeah right. Who are you fucking?"

H-Town: speaking of silly
The baby just got home from the library and immediately removed her dress
she's now in her shoes and underwear

me: that's my girl

We had to end the conversation here because H-Town was rudely interrupted by people who want her to do work, but the only thing left in the chapter now that Christian is home and safe and Ana doesn’t have to throw herself off a bridge is that since it’s after midnight, Ana tells Christian he can open his birthday present. It’s a stupid piece of shit tourist keychain of the Seattle skyline with flashy lights. On the back of it the flashy lights are blinking the word “YES”. SIX FUCKING WEEKS SHE HAS KNOWN THIS ASSHOLE. You know what? Fine. Fucking marry him so this whole thing can end in a murder suicide and I can stop reading this.

50 Sobs Harder

H-Town and amberance read Fifty Shades Darker so you don't have to.

H-Town: I read Chapters 3 and 4 last night
and hated myself

me: I kept yelling out loud at it.

H-Town: When I put it down last night I told A-Town "This is one of the stupidest books I have ever read."
She asked me to share some examples of why it sucked
And I held up the entire book

In Chapter 3, Ana goes to work and is shocked, SHOCKED, when her boss asks her to do actual work. She has email conversations with Christian that read like junior high notes passed in class both before and after actually doing it. In the latter series she e-mails from her work account how bored she is and Christian points out that her work email is monitored, though not before sending a bunch of sexual innuendos to that same address. Ana, of course, had NO IDEA that companies monitor corporate email accounts.

H-Town:Chapter 3
the Shit Show continues
I love that when she gets in to work and her boss has work for her to do, she gives him a "horrified expression"
OH MY GOD, WORK!
AT WORK? THIS IS CRAZY

me: HOLY SHIT IS THAT WHAT THEY MEANT BY "WORK HERE"?

H-Town: Life is so hard, Ana.
And yes, you giant fucking idiot, work monitors your email.
and your internet usage
so I'm sure all her visits to IAmVeryDumb.com are noted

me: well at least we know she won't get in trouble for watching porn

H-Town: THERE'S PORN ON THE INTERNET?
says Ana.

me: That too, but I feel like her first question would be "What's porn?"

H-Town: Is it like corn?

me: if it has anything to do with food I'm not interested

After work she is invited out for drinks by Creepy Boss, and is relieved to find out other people are going too. She tells them she'll catch up with them because she needs to make herself pretty for when she meets up with Christian later. Jack asks her what she wants to drink to which she responds "a beer" as if that narrows it down AT ALL. Bartenders must fucking hate this girl. She emails Christian to tell him where they will be, which is a bar across the street called, no lie, Fifty's. I hate everything.

On her way to the bar she is waylaid by a pale and monumentally sad girl who looks a startling amount like Ana. The girl has a bandage on her wrist that everyone in the entire universe except for Ana can tell is from a recent suicide attempt. She knows Ana's name and tells her she "just wanted to look at" her before creepily disappearing into the night. Ana tells exactly no one about it. OK SURE.

H-Town: Post-crapper, we get some random Ghost Woman on the street

me: oh she's going to be a thing, I can FEEL it

H-Town: Look, if something that weird happens to me, everybody in the bar's going to hear about it
"Dude, you guys, some crazy ghost chick cornered me outside just now!"

me: Her stalker is going to have to protect her from her other stalker

H-Town: at some point they're all going to look up and find them all stalking each other at the same time
they'll all be in the bushes outside each other's houses

At the bar, Creepy Boss corners Ana and gets way too close to her while asking her uncomfortably inappropriate questions. She can't handle this or tell him to back the fuck up because all women can't stand up for themselves and need a man to take care of them. Luckily, the far more terrifying Christian has arrived to save the day like he's fucking Mighty Mouse.

me: oh by the way
"he looks edible"
i wrote next to it "He's made out of ice cream!"

H-Town: not that she would eat him
he could be made out of yogurt and she wouldn't eat him
since that's all she eats every five days

me: oh see i think the opposite. if all food was made out of Christian she'd be a giant fat ass
she worships him, it'd be like communion for her

H-Town: wait
Christian
communion

me: DUDE

H-Town: FULL CIRCLE

me: good, can we stop reading now?

H-Town: the line about her boss mentally assessing the fine specimen of a man in front of him
my notes: KILL

me: similarly, all the women are checking him out and she's like "DON'T LOOK AT HIM"
protip:if you want NO ONE to EVER look at your man, try dating a troll!

H-Town: I hope she pees around him to properly mark her territory.

Christian and Ana leave the bar and are picked up by Taylor, who begins driving them to Ana's place. Ana is embarrassed because he can hear them talking, even though the only thing that has been said at this point is "Hi". Meanwhile, Christian is giving her a "scorching, panty-combusting look." Jesus fuck.

me: I got so excited when she wrote "panty combusting" because I couldn't wait to make fun of it with you

H-Town: YES I wrote that down too

me: MY PANTIES EXPLODED
I HAVE SHRAPNEL
DOWN THERE

H-Town: maybe her panties are combusting because something dark is pooling
DOWN THERE

me: right? Does she excrete gasoline?

H-Town: Hi, I'm Ana Steele. When I'm having a particularly hot day, I make sure to wear my Depends flame-retardant underwear - both because I'm around a panty-combusting kind of guy, and because I'm a bit "retardant" myself. HA HA.
goes to hell

Christian has become enraged - again - by the behavior of Creepy Boss. I'm conflicted about it because he's right, but for all the wrong stalky, possessive reasons. He begins repeatedly threatening to have him removed from his position if he so much as looks at her wrong. Ana thinks he can't possibly do that. OH BUT HE CAN, ANA. HE CAN.

H-Town: and then we find out he BOUGHT HER COMPANY

me: OH MY GOD
My note was "FUCK THIS SO HARD"
"oh well, I was wanting to get into publishing anyway" (seriously, this is how he justifies this to her)
"I'm sure Kindle is just a phase"

H-Town: Well, he is into Blackberry

Ana is legit mad that he went out and bought her company, behind her back no less. But only until he smiles at her. Because if he's smiling at her, everything is right in her world so, hey, no harm, no foul, right? RIGHT? I loathe her. They get to her apartment planning to have dinner together but there is no food of any kind in the entire house. Like, at all. For fuck's sake, even I have pasta in the house and I eat candy bars for breakfast.

H-Town: and Ana goes "Am I a grown-up? Sort of?"
No, you are dumb.
You should be a grown-up, but you have the mental capacity of a tape measure.

me: so many things in this scene, I couldn't even get a handle on it
like "OH EM GEE we haven't screwed in almost forever!" (This is Christian. "I haven't fucked you in a while - a long while.")
a week
it has been EXACTLY one week

H-Town: SEX DROUGHT
She was in bodywash withdrawal

me: YOU BETTER GET BANGING BEFORE SOMEBODY DIES

H-Town: And of course she has no food in her apartment
"What's a fr-frij? a Fridge?"

me: I thought that was just for all the alcohol I'm constantly drinking

H-Town: I keep my computer in there.

me: and a vile of my emo, emo tears

H-Town: I also keep my snowqueen's icedragon in the freezer

They go out shopping because they need more wine and, you know, FOOD. Then they try to make dinner, but it's hopeless because they haven't fucked in A WEEK you guys. HOW COULD ANYONE BE THINKING OF FOOD AT A TIME LIKE THIS? Christian gives up and tells her to put the chicken in the fridge, which Ana thinks it the absolute sexiest thing anyone has ever said, so they go to her room for some boring sex that I would have called anti-climatic if EL James had any idea how to build tension in a scene.

H-Town: "Put the chicken in the fridge."
that's so seductive

me: my chicken/fridge note was "OOOOO THE SEXY TALK"

H-Town: PUT THE CHICKEN IN THE FRIDGE
panties explode

me: like the Fourth of July
my only note from the actual sex was "still can't say vagina"

H-Town: INTERCOURSE
aaaand scene

After a mind genital numbingly boring sex scene, they go back to that whole dinner thing they abandoned earlier. They also go back to their argument about him buying the company she works for. He tells her that he will, in fact, buy ANY company she tries to work for, no matter what it is. He calls this "protecting her".  I call it "ultra stalking" though that doesn't seem nearly strong enough.

me: Chapter 4 -Stupidity Strikes Back
immediately, first words of the chapter "As sanity returns..."
NOPE
TRY AGAIN

H-Town: Still dumb!

me: "so if I work somewhere else, you'll just buy that company too."
"TOTES"

H-Town: "Also, I bought the Totes Company."

me: I was thinking work for the government, he can't buy that
but he probably can

H-Town: Maybe he'll play a game where every word she says for the next five minutes, he'll go buy the related company.
I farted! BOOM, just bought Gas-X

me: I'm tired! I just bought Sealy, Tempurpedic AND Sleep number

H-Town: I took a dump! Great, I'll buy whomever published this book!
ICEBURN

me: icedragon burn

She gives up arguing with him because this is not really something she needs to be concerned about at all, and offers him some ice cream for dessert. Ice cream is SO FUCKING SEXY though, they decide to go to her room and fuck it instead of eating it.

H-Town: During the sexy food time I wrote "This is the anti-horny."

me: I liked "Oh it's cold"
IT'S ICE CREAM
I also wrote "STOP WASTING ICE CREAM"

H-Town: So they do it again and she calls herself "the sorcerer's apprentice"
and I want to die. Again.

me: was she trying to entice the Harry Potter market with that shit? If so, I want some quidditch sex, like, RIGHT NOW

H-Town: hahaha
would you like...a BROOM STICK?

me: I'll bludger your quaffle
where's the snitch?
DOWN THERE

H-Town: anyway, after more boring, LITERAL vanilla sex, she finally brings up crazy ghost chick.
HA HA I FORGOT.

me: of course it's Leila.

H-Town: I wonder if she's....got him on his knees...Leila
lamest joke ever

me: because you did it wrong. it should have been
i wonder if she's...(puts on sunglasses)..got him on his knees
YEAAAHHHHHH

It's the same girl that put BritBrit on his iPod. So you can tell just from that she's CLEARLY going to be unstable. Christian knows exactly who it is as soon as she mentions it. Turns out Leila was "the situation" he had to rush home from Georgia about. It seems she saw a photo of Christian and Ana in the paper, LEFT HER HUSBAND over it, came to Christian's home and slit her wrist in front of his housekeeper. By the time he got back to town, she had checked herself out of the hospital and disappeared. She now seems to be stalking Ana. I've got twenty bucks right here that says by the end of this series she will have threatened Ana's life with a knife or a gun.

The next day, after a sex scene James mercifully implies but skips describing, they have a weird conversation about her working out with his trainer (oddly "Claude" the body building, foreign, ex-Olympic contender somehow isn't a threat, but Creepy Boss and Jose that she's never been interested in for one second are his mortal enemies), and she mentions that she needs to deposit the $24,000 check he gave her when Taylor sold her Beetle so she can buy a car. This is when he tells her that Taylor stopped by last night and dropped off her Audi. Ana loses her shit and tries to give him the check back. When he won't take it, she rips it triumphantly into tiny pieces. Once again, she had underestimated how completely fucking insane he is. His next move is to immediately get on the phone to someone at his office and demand that they deposit $24,000 directly into her bank account.

me: ok, so my favorite part is coming up
favorite = largest amount of rage

H-Town: where she tears up $24,000?
or the "I know your account #" (actual quote from Christian when she discovers this fact: "I know everything about you." HE IS TOM CRUISE CRAZY. RUN, ANA, RUN.)


me: ALL of it

H-Town: then RAGE MAKE OUT
I just tore up $24k! LET'S BANG

me: I really, REALLY wanted her to shout at him "I'M NOT YOUR WHORE"
and then he'd be like "OH YEAH?"
and then fuck her while sticking dollar bills in her ass

H-Town: HAHAHAHAHA
and then after all they they just go get a haircut
crazy stalk money thing, rage kiss, haircut time!

me: I laughed out loud that he owns a chain of salons. so hard
It makes NO SENSE
the publishing I can MAYBE see because his company deals in some vague media things, but WHY THE FUCK would he own a salon?
I'll tell you why
Because everywhere he takes Ana, he owns it, no matter what
want a beer? owns the bar
need an oil change? owns the Audi dealership
need a new stove? owns Sears
I wrote in my notes "He owns everything in Seattle. He's like Biff in Back to the Future 2"

H-Town: now there's a reference

me: and then I started yelling to the bartender "I OWN the police!"
because that's the one line I remember from that whole movie
which, he probably does own the police
that's how he finds shit out so easily

H-Town: hahaha

me: she needs to pull a Katie Holmes is what she needs to do
get a prepaid phone, a lawyer in another state, and wait for him to go to Iceland
which he's probably going to buy any minute now
"I've always wanted to get into the volcano market"
"Snow is big right now. Ima buy all of it"

H-Town: "I hear ice is melting. I wanna get the last of it...AND MELT IT ON YOUR HOO-HA."

me: and she'll be surprised that it's cold

H-Town: Ice is cold? WHAT?
panties explode

The salon Christian inexplicably owns is mega high end, natch. Everyone that works there is gorgeous, especially the stunningly beautiful woman who appears to be running the place. Shit's about to get real for Ms. Anastasia Steele, you guys.

me: so the big bombshell. did you see it coming? did she do enough foreshadowing, or did you need some more?

H-Town: remind me

me: there's a woman at the salon
an OLDER woman
and she's beautiful
and Christian OBVIOUSLY KNOWS HER
WHO COULD IT BE?
I have been waiting for this moment.
all my notes said was "OH SHIT Y'ALL"

H-Town: it is ON

me: I WILL CUT A BITCH
shit's about to go DOWN
or not
she'll probably just be polite and then break up with him for no reason and cry for five days while starving herself to death

H-Town: and listening to the iPad

Yep, it's his ex-Domme, the evil child molester, smiling warmly at her like a total bitch. Here James spins the wheel of similes and decides that the realization hits Ana "like a wrecking ball". Fuck me, I wish it had literally been a wrecking ball. I would pay money to see that moron get hit with a wrecking ball.

50 Screams Louder

H-Town and amberance read and review Fifty Shades Darker so you don’t have to.

Me: LET'S DO THIS

H-Town: I started at the very very beginning of the book
Because even her BIO is poorly written
"Former TV exec, wife, and mother..."
Is she a former wife and mother?

Me: haha yes, she was a wife and mother, but she quit

H-Town: also, on the copyright page
Did you see this part?
This was earlier serialized as "Master of the Universe"
wtf
Isn’t that He-Man?
He-Man should sue

Me: BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL

H-Town: BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULLL....I'LL WRITE A SHITTY NOVELLLLLLLL!

Me: oh shit, maybe that's why his name is Christian Grey!

H-Town: CONSPIRACY

Me: also explains why she never eats, she's obviously Skeletor

H-Town: Also, her pseudonym at that time was Snowqueen's Icedragon
Makes me want to burn a renaissance fair
It’s like she's just putting together every FAIRIE name
snowqueen fairiefacedragonslayerwench
Also, we now know her editor's name is Janine.
People of England, get to it, find every woman named Janine and scream in their faces til you find the right one.

Me: I was so happy to find that out. It will be so much easier to track her down in September

H-Town: Janine Cantedit of Craptacular Publishing, Inc.

Me: "Thanks to my editor Janine, and congratulations on passing English as a Second Language level one!"

H-Town: ok, onto the actual book, I suppose
How hilarious is it that we can find stuff to destroy and we're not even in the text yet?

In the prologue to the book, Christian is having a nightmare about his childhood. He is hiding under a table and watching while someone beats the shit out of his mother while repeatedly screaming at her that she is “one fucked up bitch.” He wakes up in a cold sweat just as the man finds him hiding under the table.

Me: right, so, the prologue

H-Town: big ol' wtf

Me: Christian is having a dream about his childhood...in first person?
Who narrates their dream to themself?

H-Town: He's troubled, Amber, he can do whatever he wants.

Signed,

H-Town [redacted]
CEO of Stupid Bullshit Crap

Note: In the e-mail volleys they send back and forth, Christian’s signature is on every single one of them. Except sometimes he changes words in it to suit whatever conversation they are currently having.

H-Town: I bet it's through the power of Greyskull that he can do that.

Me: oh shit, I totally meant to start this conversation by yelling at you "YOU ARE ONE FUCKED UP BITCH!"
sorry, my bad

H-Town: haha
That's like my coffee every day
I don't drink coffee, I just have you greet me

Chapter 1 begins with Ana’s first day at her new job, then quickly cuts to Wednesday after it’s been explained that she is the most sad girl ever.

H-Town: Her boss' name is Jack Hyde.
My notes: "Come the fuck on."
I'm surprised she didn't make his middle initial L.
Jack L. Hyde
SO MYSTERIOUS AND CRYPTIC

Me: It's only the first chapter, it might still happen

H-Town: my inner goddess is begging me for that to happen
So I punched her in the vagina.
And yes, I am enjoying the foreshowing
(airquotes)
Oh no, he seems so interested in her, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN?

Me: I’m sickly pleased that it followed my first prediction that he would be a creepy mofo

H-Town: no men in this girl's life are uncreepy

Me: never go to Seattle, apparently it is full of psychos
She is super naive though, maybe it's just her. "This dummy will be an easy mark"

H-Town: true dat
"This girl never eats, I can offer her a carrot stick and she'll do whatever."

Me: seriously. It’s Wednesday. Since Friday night she's had: one cup of yogurt

H-Town: I know!
I eat all the damn time
I'm like a hobbit
I have elevenses and twelveses and all that shit

Me: I am eating a sea salt chocolate bar RIGHT FRIGGIN NOW

H-Town: Christian should've given her an app that just yells, "EAT A FUCKING SANDWICH" every hour
I like that when she goes home, EL James makes sure we know that Ana turns on her flat-screen TV.
Who cares?
Also, she then makes a statement about how she needs some noise in the vacuum.
THERE'S NO NOISE IN A VACUUM
Hasn't she seen the movie posters for Alien?

Me: you will eventually stop noticing that kind of superfluous detail because it happens so much

H-Town: Oh, and numb and feeling pain at the same time.
Now Ana is magic. Or has some shitty novocaine
I like how she said her cycle of life thus far was "wake. work. cry. sleep."
I wrote in my notes that that is how you probably described your life while reading the first book in this series.

Me: it is, it is
Except I ate food more than once a month

H-Town: Also, line of the chapter: "His mom, the crack whore?"
Hahaha

Me: my source tells me she's pretty much always going to be referred to as the crack whore

H-Town: How many friggin times did she use the word "murmur" in the first chapter?
8 million, that's how many.
Speak up, dammit.

Christian sends her an e-mail at work reminding her that Jose’s gallery opening is tomorrow and offering her a ride to Portland.

Me: the premise of how they get back together is only slightly more plausible than how they met in the first place

H-Town: I was surprised it happened so quickly
I thought we'd be stuck with boring whiny chapters for a bit before she finally took him back

Me: well, there is NO depth to the character at all, so it had to be that way
Otherwise it would have been multiple chapters that just said "wake. cry. work. sleep."

H-Town: two pages of WAAAAH
Then a page of "NOW WE'RE TOGETHER! BODYWASH! 50!"

Me: I am also crazy annoyed that she STILL is surprised every time he finds her
"How did he get my work e-mail?"

H-Town: Magic, Ana. Magic
That's how the internet works
There's a snowqueen and she has an icedragon who's good at IT

On Thursday, Christian and Taylor pick her up from work so Christian can fly her to Portland in the helicopter. They also argue about food since it’s obvious she hasn’t eaten in nearly a week.

H-Town: Oh my god, I was so excited when I found the first reference to bodywash
I felt like I'd officially arrived in the world of shit that is this series of books
and I notice we both wrote "avuncular"? (The line was “He gives me a warm, avuncular smile that makes me feel safe.” DICKS. EAT THEM.)

Me: NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT

H-Town: EL and a thesaurus, sittin in a tree
A-V-U-N-C-U-L-A-T-I-N-G
first comes infatuation
then comes conflaguration

Me: then comes me, with a butcher knife and so much rage

H-Town: hahaha
The part where they're starting up the helicopter and he's checking everything first. She thinks, "He's just so competent."
I wrote in my notes
Holy shit, he's flying a helicopter, I HOPE SO

Me: Also right there, "Desire pools dark and deadly in my groin."
You should probably get that checked out
Deadly? Like syphilis?

H-Town: nothing should really be pooling down there

Me: oh do you like how the helicopter is called Charlie Tango?

H-Town: No, I do not like it.

Me: "This needs to have a helicoptery sounding name....Spinny Blade Thing? Go Fastintor?
Oh I know, Charlie Tango"
Which I think is what Dancing With the Stars is called in Vietnam

H-Town: HAHAHA
Yeah, it's a radio call sign for the letters C and T
Let's pretend it means something else, like Cunt Taco
Oh, there is one part of the book (so far) that literally (yes!) made me laugh out loud.
A-Town came downstairs to find out what I was laughing at
I laughed for 5 minutes
"Desire explodes like the Fourth of July through my body.”

Me: LOL

H-Town: I was almost in tears
A-Town threatened me if I woke up [the baby] with my laughing
First of all, EL, you're British.
Second of all, I just pictured a bunch of really tiny fireworkers, like sparklers.

Me: "Desire explodes like the Fourth of July through my body and I look down and realize I've blown up my fingers with a bottle rocket like a dumbass."

H-Town: Those are my notes for Chapter 1

Me: I had a few more from Jose’s art show

The centerpiece of Jose’s art show is seven enormous close up photos of Ana in various displays of candid emotion. She wasn’t warned about this at all, and Christian is absolutely enraged when he sees them.

H-Town: GIANT PHOTOS OF ANA

Me: Right. How could she possibly not have known he was taking pictures of her all up in her face?

H-Town: because her eyes are so sunken
She can't see

Me: and then Christian being all NO ONE BETTER LOOK AT PHOTOS OF YOU EVER
IMA BUY ALL OF THESE SO NO ONE CAN LOOK AT YOU EVER AGAIN

H-Town: I hope he puts them in the dungeon so they can stare at them during sexy naughty time
or play a fun at home game called, "Pin the food on the non-eater"

In Chapter 2, they leave the art show after only half an hour at Christian’s insistence because he is furious at Ana for hugging Jose. They go to a restaurant to eat and talk about their relationship, where Christian orders the waiter around like the complete asshole he is.

Me: oh and I didn't write it down, but that kiss in the alley

H-Town: he had to put his hands on his knees, it was SO INTENSE

Me: like he just ran a marathon! (James’ description)

H-Town: I'm surprised he didn't order Taylor (god help me, I know their names) to bring an oxygen tank and have it at the ready for such passion

Me: speaking of Taylor
He picked her up at work before the helicopter ride in in Seattle, and then he shows up to drive them around in Portland?

H-Town: yeah, that is bizarre
Taylor has a magic carpet
a 70tb Mac iCarpet
I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT, AMBER
I'm so upset that you didn't know that, I will now enter this phase:
wake, sleep cry, work, cry, pee, work, sleep, pee.

Me: we'll come back to Taylor
First, the dinner

H-Town: I hope the waiter spit in his food.

Me: "fuck the menu, bring me a steak and a goddamn salad"

H-Town: He probably would fuck the menu.
Well, after first passionately kissing it and becoming out of breath.

Me: he has issues with menus. His mommy was a Denny’s menu

H-Town: haha
I meant that he has to be in control.
"Hello sir, welcome to our restaurant."
"WHERE ARE YOUR MENUS?! I WANT TO FUCK IT INTO BRINGING ME A STEAK!"

Me: All problems can be solved by fucking them
So she hasn't eaten in five days, and now she's on her second glass of wine
GREAT IDEA

H-Town: Something tells me Ana isn't very smart
UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR

Me: well and why isn't Mr Control ALL the Things ordering her a damn water?

H-Town: he's too busy fucking the menu and wearing bodywash

Me: so, why didn't you use your safeword?
An entire page of her thinking "Gee, I wonder if maybe this was all a misunderstanding. Maybe if I’d used my safeword, none of this would have happened." YOU THINK?

H-Town: HURR DURR

Me: and then her steak comes and she's like "oh yeah, I’m not that hungry I can only finish half of this”
If I didn't eat for five days I’d be like "fuck some steak BRING ME AN ENTIRE COW"

H-Town: I would've been gnawing on Charlie Tango

Me: he wouldn't have been able to fuck the menu, I’d have eaten it immediately

After dinner, Taylor picks them up to drive them back to Seattle. They haven’t finished talking about their relationship, so Christian asks him to listen to his iPod while he drives so he can’t hear the conversation they’re having.

Me: so back to Taylor
What kind of a jackass puts headphones in to listen to their iPod while they're driving?

H-Town: someone who wants to get into an accident

Me: and Christian’s all "no it's cool, he can't hear anything." GREAT IDEA
"I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul"

H-Town: then he took a myspace-angled photo and uploaded it

Me: OH MY FUCK HOW ROMANTIC WHERE DO I FIND AN EMO STALKER I WANT ONE TOO

H-Town: *turns on Linkin Park*
Also, Christian needs to stop running his hands through his hair

Me: no. He can never ever stop. His hair is like angel pubes, it is the best hair ever

H-Town: angel pubes
vomits everywhere
EVERYWHERE

They decide to get back together because of course they do. Since they already have a driver listening to music with headphones on, it doesn’t seem that unreasonable when Ana undoes her seatbelt and climbs into Christian’s lap in a moving car. He explains a little bit about his childhood, specifically that when his mother killed herself, he was alone in the house with her dead body for four days before someone came and found him there.

Me: hey, do you think the bodywash thing and the stinking four day old corpse of his mom are related?

H-Town: Hmmmm
Well, she was a crack whore
Have we mentioned that?

Me: he's like Lady Macbeth, he washes and washes but the putrid never comes off

H-Town: that simile is so far beyond EL James
Also, at this point, I think EL James has just created a big wheel of similes and she spins when she needs one.
Here are three I wrote down from Chapter 2 that were within 3 consecutive paragraphs
"anxiety Richter scale"
"shrouded in Oregon darkness" (notsomuch a simile, but awful)
"like a computer crash"
"like a huge bowl of dicks that EL James should eat."
ok, I made that last one up myself.
Oh, I forgot to say this, but when Christian said, "You told me you loved me in your sleep" I wrote in my notes
"She said that in her sleep, ass."
Man, if people held us to what we say in our sleep, this world would be a purple monkey dishwasher

Me: hahahahaha

H-Town: Also from my notes, when she says to him "You're just like an island state."
The rage, it boiled.

Me: He is a rock
He is an iiiiiiii-iiiiiiilaaaaaannnd

H-Town: lol
Bodywash Island
which is part of the Menufuck Archipelago
near StupidShitGoddessistan
on Planet Bowlofdicks

Me: the Crackwhore Atoll is just across the bay

H-Town: Crackwhore Atoll
My coworkers are staring at me now

Me: when we are done talking about this I might try to draw a map

H-Town: oh my god YES

In a completely out of character move, Christian has Taylor drop Ana off at home and doesn’t stay with her or get all rapey. Before she goes he gives her a “mysterious” package that is only a mystery to Ana. In it is all of the things he’d previous bought her, plus a new iPad. The iPad has a note attached telling her the reason for the iPad is that he’s put a playlist of songs together that will tell her how he feels - Jeff Buckley, Thomas Tallis, Snow Patrol, Nelly Furtado, and Coldplay are among his selections. She fixates on the Coldplay song while she contemplates whether or not Christian wants to have a relationship with her, even though he did nothing but tell her he did over and over again for the entire first two chapters of the book.

Me: so she gets all her stuff back...plus a new iPad
Now, is this because EL James doesn't know what a thumb drive is, or is it so we can be absolutely, positively sure that Christian has more money than god?

H-Town: hahaha
The book became an Apple advertisement for a few pages

Me: Coldplay.
You know what would have been awesome instead of that? It would have made the whole book worth it
Air Supply

H-Town: oh my god yes

Me: If she had checked out the playlist and it started with Making Love Out of Nothing at All I would have loled to death. TO DEATH

H-Town: that would've been so awesome

Me: and then some Meatloaf

H-Town: Aaand I would do anything for love...
Celine Dion
Oh man, imagine if he'd put this on there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvGY-dUyMfU
I would've exploded like the Fourth of July

Me: "He would do anything for love? Does this mean he wants to be with me?"

H-Town: "And does it mean he'll drive a motorcycle through the wall of a huge mansion?"

Me: I think he has to. It is his destiny

H-Town: the scent of bodywash floating behind him

Me: with his angel pubes flowing in the wind

H-Town: Apple hardware crashing down around him
With Charlie Tango being flown by Taylor and a steak in the background

Me: he drives it through the wall with all the giant Ana photos
IT'S A METAPHOR

H-Town: that she would then explain
And Ana still wouldn't get it
And then Ana would say she feels like someone's been watching her lately. It'd be Jose, and he's been two inches from her face with a camera.

Me: And then Christian gets off the bike and stabs him over and over in the face screaming DON'T EVER LOOK AT HER

H-Town: He would stab him with Taylor's 70tb Apple iCarpet
and as Jose died, an app would pop open and remind Ana to eat a fucking sandwich.

Me: ......and scene

H-Town: yes
*wins multiple book awards*
it should be a graphic novel, though
all that deserves to be drawn, not IMAGINED

Me: no doubt

H-Town: Anyway, this is the crapfest I was looking for.
Expecting, really.

-----------------
So to summarize, in the first two chapters of the book, Ana's boss is as creepy as everyone else, she still never eats anything and cries constantly, Christian is still a possessive stalker, and James is still very worried that we aren't convinced Christian is rich or Ana is a self-depreciating nitwit. You know, I could swear I've read this book before...

p.s. Please bear with me as I'm still working on the format for these reviews so that it will both give you the plot and illustrate that H-Town and I are BFFs because we are fucking mental. And please enjoy this map I made you of Menufuck Archipelago (sorry about my handwriting, I'm a lefty and also on three hours sleep):