Hello everyone! I'm just back from France today, and I absolutely owe you a post about snails, art museum shenanigans, and a mariachi band. However this post is just a short one in order to update everyone who is not on the email list about the 50 Shades party game meet up happening this Sunday evening. I was absolutely planning to post my France recap (entitled "Is This Snails?" because I had decided that probably everything was made out of snails, including cups of tea, which I needn't have worried about because there IS NO FUCKING TEA ANYWHERE IN FRANCE) tonight, as I am currently sat in a hotel by myself for the express purpose of catching up the blog and the email and the twittering I've missed whilst I've been away. But then I got back from the trip and started unpacking, at which time I reached into my bag and ended up taking a massive chunk out of my finger with the razor blade I had carelessly thrown in there with no blade guard LIKE A DUMBASS, so right now I'm typing this with my left ring finger held up in the air because it really, really, REALLY fucking hurts. It's not a good situation. I bled through three plasters (Americans: plasters = band-aids) earlier.
ANYSUCK, I'll either post about France when I can type like a normal human being without screaming every time I touch something, or I'll bat my eyelashes at StereoNinja and try to get him to type it for me with me dictating, but I suspect he'll merely laugh at that suggestion.
So, the meet up! It's this Sunday the 10th. I've reserved a table at the Green Man pub on Euston Road in London for 5 pm because it's much easier to play table games with the use of an actual table. I've never been there, but it was suggested by one of you lovely folks, I can get there via tube, and they let me book a table online without having to speak to any strangers or pretend like I know what I'm doing. I can't wait to meet you all and I'll see you Sunday!
Friday, March 08, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
50 Shades Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
All right, all right, you guys. I'll get back to the reviews now. It had actually been so long since I read the three chapters I'm about to do that I had to go back and skim them all again to remember what my notes were about. I realized in doing so that just being extremely busy working on grad school applications and related moving issues wasn't the only problem I was having in sitting down to write this. I also just really don't even care. I don't think anything I write today is going to be funny because I don't care about the characters in the book. There's so much unending drama that it's ceased to be shocking in any way. She's made such a mockery of the BDSM lifestyle that I don't care to correct the errors anymore. Want to try out some kink? Then read these books and do the exact fucking opposite of every single sex scene she has ever written. That's my advice. Now, let's get this over with.
When we last saw our douchebags, Elliot had just proposed to Kate at the end of an entire chapter that was only written to foreshadow that scene. An ENTIRE CHAPTER of the book was just devoted to the antics of two characters we barely know and could not give one ounce of fuck about. And because the author thinks that suspense always involves dropping some half-assed bombshell at the end of a chapter (rather than, you know, writing a compelling fucking scene people actually want to read), that same shit continues at the beginning of THIS chapter as well. Here is the overly dramatic first paragraph of Chapter 14:
Anyshit, Kate says yes obviously and then there's drinking of the finest champagne, and then they all go clubbing at the most exclusive club in all of Aspen. I fail to see why she continues to tell us these things, I think by now we can all just assume everything is the best, most exclusive, most expensive thing imaginable unless we are told otherwise. The coat check guy looks at Ana while taking her coat and Christian gets jealous and then the hostess looks at Christian while escorting them to a table and Ana gets jealous. It is obvious that everyone wants to fuck up their marriage. The fact that both these people are paid to specifically make you feel welcome and want to stay there and spend your money can't possibly explain this sinister welcoming behavior. Christian orders water and tells Ana to drink it, which she immediately argues about because DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. Mind you, so far today Ana has had two glasses of wine and a margarita at lunch, three glasses of wine and two glasses of champagne at dinner, and she is about to have a third glass of champagne right now. Also keep in mind they are in Aspen which means they are at altitude, and one of the things that happens at altitude is you get dehydrated much faster. She should have been drinking water all day to counteract that anyway - the alcohol is not going to do her any favors in that department. Ana has an unbelievably reliable habit of mistaking concern for being controlling and being controlling for genuine concern.
So then Ana goes off to dance, and we get the only scene in this whole section that managed to incite any rage in me. Ana is dancing, with her eyes closed for some fucking reason, when she feels a pair of hands on her hips, which she assumes is Christian coming to dance with her. Except that it's not. It's some complete fucking stranger. I need to pause a second to tell you that this exact sort of thing is a huge pet peeve of mine. If some drunk jackoff comes up to talk to me in a bar, I will stand there and listen to him make a fool of himself all night long. But the second that guy tries to touch me uninvited he is going to push a button with me and I am going to lose control and make a scene until someone comes to remove him from the establishment. This is, in fact, just about the only way to get me to shout at a complete stranger in public. Touching someone who hasn't expressed an interest in being touched is NEVER ok. So when this happens in the book and Ana immediately turns around and slaps him across the face, I stupidly think to myself "Yeah! Finally something that makes sense. Go Ana!" Once again, I have failed to grasp who I'm dealing with, because James IMMEDIATELY ruins this by having Ana hold up her hand to show him her rings and shouting at him "I'm married, you asshole!" Because for some reason, the fact that she is married is the ONLY THING SHE SEES WRONG with this guy's behavior. I am not kidding you. Christian immediately comes to her rescue and punches the guy, which I am fine with, but Ana immediately starts to second guess both of them. Maybe a total stranger violating her personal space in a way that makes her uncomfortable isn't that big of a deal. Maybe she shouldn't have hit him. But she knows why she did it, and rest assured it's not because she has a right to dance in a club without getting groped by total strangers against her will. It's because she knew it would upset Christian, and the thought of someone being able to upset her husband made her really angry. It's not about her - her own safety and control over her body doesn't matter at all. It's only wrong because Christian might wind up wif a bad widdle feewing. FUCK YOU. FUCK. YOU. YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE. I AM ASHAMED TO SHARE THE SAME GENITALS AS YOU. FUCK YOU SO HARD YOUR VAGINA EXPLODES LIKE A GRENADE. YOU DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE ONE.
Ugh. So the rest of the chapter is, everyone goes home, and Ana is drunk, and Christian takes off her make up for her which for Ana is the most astonishing thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind, and then they go to bed without fucking because the Dead Kennedys. Ana wakes up in the morning at the start of Chapter 15 and the first thing she notices is that allegedly her palm is still red from when she slapped that guy exactly one time EIGHT FUCKING HOURS AGO. She is going to continue to complain about how much her palm hurts through the whole chapter. Unless she's made of glass this is complete and utter bullshit. After that there are seven pages of entirely forgettable sex. Literally. I have forgotten every detail about it and only remembered that it happened at all when I went back and skimmed the chapter to find out what my notes meant. Everyone gets ready to go home, which is boring, and then they do go home which is boring, and then there is a series of unbelievably pointless emails that are only there to show the passage of time and which I will read aloud to you in my next video because they are truly, bafflingly, without any sort of plot advancement or even context and are not interesting AT ALL and will somebody, PLEASE, take this woman's writing instruments away from her FOR THE LOVE OF GOD? Apart from another fake bombshell moment, that is seriously every single thing that happens in Chapter 15. The sheer number of trees that were felled in order to print this chapter as many times as it's been printed to date is a tragedy in and of itself. Let us all have a moment of silence for those poor trees.
Thank you. So at the end of the chapter we find out that Leila has appeared at Ana's office building asking to see her. I'm including that information with the stuff from Chapter 16 because that's where it fucking belongs - it is COMPLETELY unrelated to anything that happened in the rest of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 consists entirely of Ana's conversation with Leila, and then Ana's subsequent conversation with Christian. It is somehow miraculously EVEN MORE DULL than the series of "maybe we should have spaghetti for dinner" level emails that dominated the last chapter.
I have just paused in writing this for the last 20 minutes and alternated between rubbing my face in frustration and staring despondently at my notes because it's just so stupid I don't even want to think about it, let alone summarize it.
Ok so here's what happens. Leila shows up and she's got another ex-sub of Christian's with her called Susi, who had better fucking appear again later because so far she has been completely irrelevant, other than for Ana to point out that she and Susi look alike, which we already know from having established that ALL Christian's subs looked like her TWO AND A HALF FUCKING BOOKS AGO. Leila has come to her because she wants to see Christian, but he is ignoring all her attempts. She claims this is because she wants to thank him for helping her and paying for her art school. I have absolutely no idea why she couldn't just write that in a fucking letter. Leila also tells Ana that she was in love with Christian which we also already know because half of the last book was devoted to exactly that. Then Christian shows up, as we all knew he would, including Leila, which was her entire scheme to get to see him in the first place. Christian fires Ana's bodyguard, threatens to cut off all of Leila's school funding and lets her leave with Susi. During all of that Ana's internal monologue is entirely about how can Christian be so mean to this poor girl and oh he shouldn't have fired the bodyguard, that was so unfair! By the way, in the whole rest of the book she hates that particular bodyguard and she is always jealous of everyone who has ever slept with her husband, so none of that makes any sense, and the only note I write in that whole section is "I can't believe how insane this is." Then Ana and Christian argue about the whole thing and Ana wants him to admit that he cares about Leila and Christian claims that he doesn't have a heart and OH MY GOD EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THIS IS SHIT WE ALREADY READ ABOUT ENTIRE BOOKS AGO. In keeping with that theme, we also have some more demonizing of BDSM - the part about how all his subs look like his mother because kinky sex can't just be about kinky sex, it has to be a pathological sickness about wanting to punish his own mother, and the other part about how Elena was a monster and a pedophile who almost ruined his life and now that he thinks about it, maybe he didn't enjoy any of that kinky sex and it left him severely damaged - I can't even get angry about this anymore, this woman's understanding of that culture is as well developed as Wile E. Coyote's understanding of basic physics. Then they argue about going home. Then they do go home. Then they have sex. Then they send some more worthless emails. Then E.L. James does that thing that she has now done in seven out of the last sixteen chapters, which is to end the chapter on a bombshell that is entirely unrelated to the rest of the chapter in a futile attempt to add drama and intrigue to her thoroughly plotless story. Ana's dad has been in a car accident. DUN DUN DUN/DRAMATIC VIOLINS/COMMERCIAL BREAK FULL OF VIAGRA AND WEIGHT LOSS SUPPLEMENT ADS.
I am so bored right now. So bored.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention it before, but I am planning to live tweet my reading of a future chapter so you can see my reactions in real time. I'll let everyone know when I'll be doing it, so if you have the book you can follow along as I torture myself.
When we last saw our douchebags, Elliot had just proposed to Kate at the end of an entire chapter that was only written to foreshadow that scene. An ENTIRE CHAPTER of the book was just devoted to the antics of two characters we barely know and could not give one ounce of fuck about. And because the author thinks that suspense always involves dropping some half-assed bombshell at the end of a chapter (rather than, you know, writing a compelling fucking scene people actually want to read), that same shit continues at the beginning of THIS chapter as well. Here is the overly dramatic first paragraph of Chapter 14:
The attention of the entire restaurant is trained on Kate and Elliot, waiting with bated breath as one. The anticipation is unbearable. Silence stretches like a taut rubber band. The atmosphere is oppressive, apprehensive, and yet hopeful. (emphasis mine)Jesus Christ where to even start? There is more stupid happening in this paragraph than there are actual words in it. Really, James? The ENTIRE restaurant has stopped breathing because it is of paramount importance to every single person in the room whether this one total stranger will agree to marry this other total stranger? I find that unlikely. And even if they are that fucking interested, it's not because they are all so "hopeful", it's because at any given public proposal, at least a quarter of the people watching are hoping she'll shoot the guy down in front of everyone, because that is a much, MUCH more entertaining story. Also, could you please explain to me in some logical fashion how this situation can be both oppressive and hopeful at the same time? Because those things don't go together.
Anyshit, Kate says yes obviously and then there's drinking of the finest champagne, and then they all go clubbing at the most exclusive club in all of Aspen. I fail to see why she continues to tell us these things, I think by now we can all just assume everything is the best, most exclusive, most expensive thing imaginable unless we are told otherwise. The coat check guy looks at Ana while taking her coat and Christian gets jealous and then the hostess looks at Christian while escorting them to a table and Ana gets jealous. It is obvious that everyone wants to fuck up their marriage. The fact that both these people are paid to specifically make you feel welcome and want to stay there and spend your money can't possibly explain this sinister welcoming behavior. Christian orders water and tells Ana to drink it, which she immediately argues about because DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. Mind you, so far today Ana has had two glasses of wine and a margarita at lunch, three glasses of wine and two glasses of champagne at dinner, and she is about to have a third glass of champagne right now. Also keep in mind they are in Aspen which means they are at altitude, and one of the things that happens at altitude is you get dehydrated much faster. She should have been drinking water all day to counteract that anyway - the alcohol is not going to do her any favors in that department. Ana has an unbelievably reliable habit of mistaking concern for being controlling and being controlling for genuine concern.
So then Ana goes off to dance, and we get the only scene in this whole section that managed to incite any rage in me. Ana is dancing, with her eyes closed for some fucking reason, when she feels a pair of hands on her hips, which she assumes is Christian coming to dance with her. Except that it's not. It's some complete fucking stranger. I need to pause a second to tell you that this exact sort of thing is a huge pet peeve of mine. If some drunk jackoff comes up to talk to me in a bar, I will stand there and listen to him make a fool of himself all night long. But the second that guy tries to touch me uninvited he is going to push a button with me and I am going to lose control and make a scene until someone comes to remove him from the establishment. This is, in fact, just about the only way to get me to shout at a complete stranger in public. Touching someone who hasn't expressed an interest in being touched is NEVER ok. So when this happens in the book and Ana immediately turns around and slaps him across the face, I stupidly think to myself "Yeah! Finally something that makes sense. Go Ana!" Once again, I have failed to grasp who I'm dealing with, because James IMMEDIATELY ruins this by having Ana hold up her hand to show him her rings and shouting at him "I'm married, you asshole!" Because for some reason, the fact that she is married is the ONLY THING SHE SEES WRONG with this guy's behavior. I am not kidding you. Christian immediately comes to her rescue and punches the guy, which I am fine with, but Ana immediately starts to second guess both of them. Maybe a total stranger violating her personal space in a way that makes her uncomfortable isn't that big of a deal. Maybe she shouldn't have hit him. But she knows why she did it, and rest assured it's not because she has a right to dance in a club without getting groped by total strangers against her will. It's because she knew it would upset Christian, and the thought of someone being able to upset her husband made her really angry. It's not about her - her own safety and control over her body doesn't matter at all. It's only wrong because Christian might wind up wif a bad widdle feewing. FUCK YOU. FUCK. YOU. YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE. I AM ASHAMED TO SHARE THE SAME GENITALS AS YOU. FUCK YOU SO HARD YOUR VAGINA EXPLODES LIKE A GRENADE. YOU DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE ONE.
Ugh. So the rest of the chapter is, everyone goes home, and Ana is drunk, and Christian takes off her make up for her which for Ana is the most astonishing thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind, and then they go to bed without fucking because the Dead Kennedys. Ana wakes up in the morning at the start of Chapter 15 and the first thing she notices is that allegedly her palm is still red from when she slapped that guy exactly one time EIGHT FUCKING HOURS AGO. She is going to continue to complain about how much her palm hurts through the whole chapter. Unless she's made of glass this is complete and utter bullshit. After that there are seven pages of entirely forgettable sex. Literally. I have forgotten every detail about it and only remembered that it happened at all when I went back and skimmed the chapter to find out what my notes meant. Everyone gets ready to go home, which is boring, and then they do go home which is boring, and then there is a series of unbelievably pointless emails that are only there to show the passage of time and which I will read aloud to you in my next video because they are truly, bafflingly, without any sort of plot advancement or even context and are not interesting AT ALL and will somebody, PLEASE, take this woman's writing instruments away from her FOR THE LOVE OF GOD? Apart from another fake bombshell moment, that is seriously every single thing that happens in Chapter 15. The sheer number of trees that were felled in order to print this chapter as many times as it's been printed to date is a tragedy in and of itself. Let us all have a moment of silence for those poor trees.
Thank you. So at the end of the chapter we find out that Leila has appeared at Ana's office building asking to see her. I'm including that information with the stuff from Chapter 16 because that's where it fucking belongs - it is COMPLETELY unrelated to anything that happened in the rest of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 consists entirely of Ana's conversation with Leila, and then Ana's subsequent conversation with Christian. It is somehow miraculously EVEN MORE DULL than the series of "maybe we should have spaghetti for dinner" level emails that dominated the last chapter.
I have just paused in writing this for the last 20 minutes and alternated between rubbing my face in frustration and staring despondently at my notes because it's just so stupid I don't even want to think about it, let alone summarize it.
Ok so here's what happens. Leila shows up and she's got another ex-sub of Christian's with her called Susi, who had better fucking appear again later because so far she has been completely irrelevant, other than for Ana to point out that she and Susi look alike, which we already know from having established that ALL Christian's subs looked like her TWO AND A HALF FUCKING BOOKS AGO. Leila has come to her because she wants to see Christian, but he is ignoring all her attempts. She claims this is because she wants to thank him for helping her and paying for her art school. I have absolutely no idea why she couldn't just write that in a fucking letter. Leila also tells Ana that she was in love with Christian which we also already know because half of the last book was devoted to exactly that. Then Christian shows up, as we all knew he would, including Leila, which was her entire scheme to get to see him in the first place. Christian fires Ana's bodyguard, threatens to cut off all of Leila's school funding and lets her leave with Susi. During all of that Ana's internal monologue is entirely about how can Christian be so mean to this poor girl and oh he shouldn't have fired the bodyguard, that was so unfair! By the way, in the whole rest of the book she hates that particular bodyguard and she is always jealous of everyone who has ever slept with her husband, so none of that makes any sense, and the only note I write in that whole section is "I can't believe how insane this is." Then Ana and Christian argue about the whole thing and Ana wants him to admit that he cares about Leila and Christian claims that he doesn't have a heart and OH MY GOD EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THIS IS SHIT WE ALREADY READ ABOUT ENTIRE BOOKS AGO. In keeping with that theme, we also have some more demonizing of BDSM - the part about how all his subs look like his mother because kinky sex can't just be about kinky sex, it has to be a pathological sickness about wanting to punish his own mother, and the other part about how Elena was a monster and a pedophile who almost ruined his life and now that he thinks about it, maybe he didn't enjoy any of that kinky sex and it left him severely damaged - I can't even get angry about this anymore, this woman's understanding of that culture is as well developed as Wile E. Coyote's understanding of basic physics. Then they argue about going home. Then they do go home. Then they have sex. Then they send some more worthless emails. Then E.L. James does that thing that she has now done in seven out of the last sixteen chapters, which is to end the chapter on a bombshell that is entirely unrelated to the rest of the chapter in a futile attempt to add drama and intrigue to her thoroughly plotless story. Ana's dad has been in a car accident. DUN DUN DUN/DRAMATIC VIOLINS/COMMERCIAL BREAK FULL OF VIAGRA AND WEIGHT LOSS SUPPLEMENT ADS.
I am so bored right now. So bored.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention it before, but I am planning to live tweet my reading of a future chapter so you can see my reactions in real time. I'll let everyone know when I'll be doing it, so if you have the book you can follow along as I torture myself.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
How I Celebrated Valentine's Day
Right, so I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day or whatever, love, roses, blah blah blah. The bartender seemed to think it was also "sabotage your roommate who has to be naked on stage in four months day" and the house is now fucking full of candy.
As some of you already know, I hate Valentine's Day with only slightly less passion than I love Christmas. It's almost like it was specifically set up to be a no win situation. If you're single and sad about it, the entire day is like getting stabbed repeatedly with a magical dull knife called the Knife of Loneliness that turns your unhappiness into physical pain. If you're single and happy about it, tough luck pal, enjoy being excluded from absolutely everything today and by the way, just wanted to remind you that everyone else in the whole entire world is looking down on your personal choices because if you're happy AND single something is obviously wrong with you. Being in a relationship doesn't help you either. There are requirements that must be met: flowers, candy, an unreasonably expensive dinner, jewelry, or some particular combination of these things is expected of you and god help you if you get it wrong because not only does it mean you're not having sex tonight/this week/until your birthday and then only grudgingly but it is also obvious that YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ME AT ALL WAAAHHHHHH. That isn't love, it's extortion. And don't even get me started on how shitty it is to be in a long distance relationship on Magical Togetherness Day because there is no better reminder than a Skype chat that you are not actually anywhere near the person you most want to be near.
No matter what my relationship status is in a given year, Valentine's Day never applies to me: I don't like getting flowers because they're dead, I don't need or want jewelry and don't give enough fucks to ever wear any, I have anxiety attacks in large crowds and under no circumstances is it a good idea for me to go out to dinner that day, and if it's true you are what you eat I'm basically made out of candy to begin with.
My favorite thing from this Valentine's Day was my friend Erin's exchange with her girlfriend as she was rushing out the door on her way to work:
Girlfriend: Oh yeah, I forgot, happy Valentine's Day.
Erin: (stares blankly for a few seconds) Shut up.
The bottom line is, if you're not showing your affection and appreciation for someone every day without being prompted, you're doing it wrong, and Valentine's Day is not going to fix that.
Anyway, none of that is even the point. The post is called "How I Celebrated Valentine's Day", not "Why Valentine's Day is a Soul Sucking Waste of Time and Money Designed to Make Your Life Seem Way Worse Than it Really Is". And I celebrated Valentine's Day by doing the most awesome thing possible: I went to the 10th anniversary of Michelle L'Amour's Big Sexy Show at the Part West. Alone, because even if you do the most awesome thing possible you can't escape the fact of life that Valentine's Day is meant to remind you that you've failed.
The show was amazeballs because there is basically no chance for it not to be - it's called MICHELLE L'AMOUR'S BIG SEXY SHOW for crying out loud. And to be fair, while I did arrive and leave alone, I didn't spend the show alone, as I happened to sit next to the boyfriend of a girl I have class with who was also by himself because said girlfriend was a stage hand in the show. FYI, whenever someone asks you how you got interested in being a burlesque dancer, "Spite" is never going to be the answer they were expecting. Anyway, Cameron Esposito hosted, and if you've never seen her perform, I suggest you do so immediately. Michelle did the cutest number with pink balloons in which all of her clothes floated away. The Chicago Starlets did a super cool number with most of the girls dressed as french artists who were strategically holding up pieces of paper that covered the important parts of the other two girls (plus Michelle) who were otherwise not dressed at all. There was a magician and a belly dancer.
And then there was Mr. Gorgeous.
Michelle had told us that Mr. Gorgeous was going to be in the show a few weeks earlier. "He does this act...I can't describe it. He's about 6'4" and he has this chair....you're just going to have to see it." I honestly can't do a better job at describing it than that. He is a giant, and sort of clumsy, but in a completely deliberate way that is actually not clumsy at all, and is awkward in the most awesome possible way and he is THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND I CAN'T EVEN EXPLAIN WHY. Just go watch this and be amazed. And then when you're done, watch this one in which he is the Jolly Green Giant and OH MY GOD THE PEAS. He is a genius.
Anyway, the Big Sexy Show was big. And sexy. And great. And Valentine's Day still sucks.
As some of you already know, I hate Valentine's Day with only slightly less passion than I love Christmas. It's almost like it was specifically set up to be a no win situation. If you're single and sad about it, the entire day is like getting stabbed repeatedly with a magical dull knife called the Knife of Loneliness that turns your unhappiness into physical pain. If you're single and happy about it, tough luck pal, enjoy being excluded from absolutely everything today and by the way, just wanted to remind you that everyone else in the whole entire world is looking down on your personal choices because if you're happy AND single something is obviously wrong with you. Being in a relationship doesn't help you either. There are requirements that must be met: flowers, candy, an unreasonably expensive dinner, jewelry, or some particular combination of these things is expected of you and god help you if you get it wrong because not only does it mean you're not having sex tonight/this week/until your birthday and then only grudgingly but it is also obvious that YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ME AT ALL WAAAHHHHHH. That isn't love, it's extortion. And don't even get me started on how shitty it is to be in a long distance relationship on Magical Togetherness Day because there is no better reminder than a Skype chat that you are not actually anywhere near the person you most want to be near.
No matter what my relationship status is in a given year, Valentine's Day never applies to me: I don't like getting flowers because they're dead, I don't need or want jewelry and don't give enough fucks to ever wear any, I have anxiety attacks in large crowds and under no circumstances is it a good idea for me to go out to dinner that day, and if it's true you are what you eat I'm basically made out of candy to begin with.
My favorite thing from this Valentine's Day was my friend Erin's exchange with her girlfriend as she was rushing out the door on her way to work:
Girlfriend: Oh yeah, I forgot, happy Valentine's Day.
Erin: (stares blankly for a few seconds) Shut up.
The bottom line is, if you're not showing your affection and appreciation for someone every day without being prompted, you're doing it wrong, and Valentine's Day is not going to fix that.
Anyway, none of that is even the point. The post is called "How I Celebrated Valentine's Day", not "Why Valentine's Day is a Soul Sucking Waste of Time and Money Designed to Make Your Life Seem Way Worse Than it Really Is". And I celebrated Valentine's Day by doing the most awesome thing possible: I went to the 10th anniversary of Michelle L'Amour's Big Sexy Show at the Part West. Alone, because even if you do the most awesome thing possible you can't escape the fact of life that Valentine's Day is meant to remind you that you've failed.
The show was amazeballs because there is basically no chance for it not to be - it's called MICHELLE L'AMOUR'S BIG SEXY SHOW for crying out loud. And to be fair, while I did arrive and leave alone, I didn't spend the show alone, as I happened to sit next to the boyfriend of a girl I have class with who was also by himself because said girlfriend was a stage hand in the show. FYI, whenever someone asks you how you got interested in being a burlesque dancer, "Spite" is never going to be the answer they were expecting. Anyway, Cameron Esposito hosted, and if you've never seen her perform, I suggest you do so immediately. Michelle did the cutest number with pink balloons in which all of her clothes floated away. The Chicago Starlets did a super cool number with most of the girls dressed as french artists who were strategically holding up pieces of paper that covered the important parts of the other two girls (plus Michelle) who were otherwise not dressed at all. There was a magician and a belly dancer.
And then there was Mr. Gorgeous.
Michelle had told us that Mr. Gorgeous was going to be in the show a few weeks earlier. "He does this act...I can't describe it. He's about 6'4" and he has this chair....you're just going to have to see it." I honestly can't do a better job at describing it than that. He is a giant, and sort of clumsy, but in a completely deliberate way that is actually not clumsy at all, and is awkward in the most awesome possible way and he is THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND I CAN'T EVEN EXPLAIN WHY. Just go watch this and be amazed. And then when you're done, watch this one in which he is the Jolly Green Giant and OH MY GOD THE PEAS. He is a genius.
Anyway, the Big Sexy Show was big. And sexy. And great. And Valentine's Day still sucks.
Name That Stripper
So, one of the things that is going on in my life right now, which has recently been FILLED with things that have lead to my genuinely not having time to read and/or blog, is that I have made it into the advanced burlesque or "show" class and am preparing for my debut performance as a solo burlesque dancer at the end of June (something I am starting to think of as a marketable job skill given the advice I've received from all my UK peeps on the availability of actual jobs). There's a lot more that goes into this class than just showing up and shaking your ass around. For example there's developing a critical eye for performance (an ongoing homework assignment that basically involves watching ALL of the things), learning how to choreograph something that is not just standing there taking off your clothes whilst otherwise being exceptionally boring (something I am starting to notice a remarkable amount of now that I've developed a critical eye for performance by watching ALL the things), and, perhaps most importantly, deciding who you plan to be as a burlesque dancer (what your style is going to be, who is your character, how do you interact with the audience, etc.)
Part of that last thing is literal: our very first assignment in class was to start thinking about what our name was going to be. This is actually way harder than it seems because there's a lot more to think about than is immediately apparent. Your stage name should be all of the following things:
And then I remembered something important. I HAVE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE READING MY BLOG EVERY DAY AND THEY ARE ALSO CLEVER! So, with that in mind, I'm putting it to you guys: what should my stage name be? The best thing we've come up with so far is Bloomy Madd. It's ok, and you should definitely let me know if you like it, but I think you guys can beat that. What say you?
(StereoNinja adds that we'll give a free t-shirt to the person to comes up with the best name, however, that will probably seem like much more of an incentive when we actually design some t-shirts.)
Part of that last thing is literal: our very first assignment in class was to start thinking about what our name was going to be. This is actually way harder than it seems because there's a lot more to think about than is immediately apparent. Your stage name should be all of the following things:
- Reflective of the character you want to be. The very first thing the audience knows about you is your name, and it will determine what they expect to see.
- Not easily misconstrued. Michelle told us a story in class that I am not allowed to repeat here, but suffice it to say, don't pick a word that can be pronounced in several ways, especially if one of those ways is unflattering.
- Per Michelle, not something tired and overdone that practically every other burlesque dancer or stripper has done to death, i.e. anything using kitty or another variation of "cat", anything that starts with "Miss" (Miss Anthrope, Miss Demeanor - these are both actual names people are using. Seriously.), anything with "Von" or "Vaughn" in it, anything using the word cherry.
- Not already being used by someone else, or too similar to something being used by someone else. Either they will get VERY angry with you or you will constantly be mistaken for a porn star.
And then I remembered something important. I HAVE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE READING MY BLOG EVERY DAY AND THEY ARE ALSO CLEVER! So, with that in mind, I'm putting it to you guys: what should my stage name be? The best thing we've come up with so far is Bloomy Madd. It's ok, and you should definitely let me know if you like it, but I think you guys can beat that. What say you?
(StereoNinja adds that we'll give a free t-shirt to the person to comes up with the best name, however, that will probably seem like much more of an incentive when we actually design some t-shirts.)
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
No, Seriously, I Have A Real Excuse
OK, so I'm being a terrible blogger - I have a book review to finish by the end of this month and I haven't made a video since my birthday - but I do actually have a reason for once.
That reason is that my timetable for the life-rearranging I have been hinting at for months has been pushed up significantly, and I am scrambling to update my CV and also assemble paperwork and fill out applications for graduate programs with looming deadlines and write statements of varying lengths about how much I heart learning and why I specifically want to learn these particular things, and I can't devote my full attention to that and also make up new swears for you guys and expect to actually succeed at my ultimate goal, which I am happy to report, I can now state fairly openly (in as far as I don't think any of the people I haven't spoken to yet read this regularly, and if they do, hi, and sorry you're finding out this way), is to move to the UK.
That was an incredibly long sentence and is not indicative of the quality of sentences I am using in my position statements on any of these applications, I assure you.
Point being, my absence is legit for once, and that I haven't stopped writing; I'm just writing something else at the moment, and it is important. And also that I will return to normal very, very soon since I have to finish the book review by the end of February so I can give the stupid book back to its owner.
In the meantime, in an attempt to make this up to you, I took the liberty of googling "weird knitting projects" for you guys. The image search results are here. I am particularly impressed with the knitted turd about 9 rows down and this fucking insane corpse:
That reason is that my timetable for the life-rearranging I have been hinting at for months has been pushed up significantly, and I am scrambling to update my CV and also assemble paperwork and fill out applications for graduate programs with looming deadlines and write statements of varying lengths about how much I heart learning and why I specifically want to learn these particular things, and I can't devote my full attention to that and also make up new swears for you guys and expect to actually succeed at my ultimate goal, which I am happy to report, I can now state fairly openly (in as far as I don't think any of the people I haven't spoken to yet read this regularly, and if they do, hi, and sorry you're finding out this way), is to move to the UK.
That was an incredibly long sentence and is not indicative of the quality of sentences I am using in my position statements on any of these applications, I assure you.
Point being, my absence is legit for once, and that I haven't stopped writing; I'm just writing something else at the moment, and it is important. And also that I will return to normal very, very soon since I have to finish the book review by the end of February so I can give the stupid book back to its owner.
In the meantime, in an attempt to make this up to you, I took the liberty of googling "weird knitting projects" for you guys. The image search results are here. I am particularly impressed with the knitted turd about 9 rows down and this fucking insane corpse:
You're welcome.
Monday, January 21, 2013
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.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, January 14, 2013
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:
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.
Monday, January 07, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, January 04, 2013
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 shemeddle 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 thatred 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.
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
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
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.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
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:
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:
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.
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:
Thursday, December 20, 2012
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.
StereoNinja: and that is????
Me: The Enterprise. You lose 5 nerd points for that question.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
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?
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?
Friday, December 14, 2012
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.
Great big old sad face, y'all.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
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!
Monday, December 03, 2012
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.
Saturday, December 01, 2012
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.
Friday, November 30, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
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:
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
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
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
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