My first paying job was at a public library, and I worked that job for almost four years. In that time, I had a lot of exposure to the Twilight books, mostly via people asking me where they were.* Initially, my instinct was to dislike the books just because I was sick of hearing about them, but after I read the series, and the icky feeling wore off, I kind of fell in love with them. This wasn’t because of the writing, which is horrendously purple, or the characters, who (with a few notable exceptions) are abhorrent, or the underlying themes, which make me want to watch Skins just to be contrary. I enjoy the Twilight books with the kind of glee that can only come from reading something ovary-crushingly fucked up (see Cleolinda Jones’ recap of Breaking Dawn for a near-perfect example).

When I ask a lot of guys I know (not all, but a lot of them) why they Don’t Like Twilight, they don’t explain that they find the prose awful, or the characters unlikeable, or the message detestable. They say it’s because “the vampires sparkle.”

Now, there are no hard and fast rules about what makes a vampire a vampire, aside from the blood-drinking thing (and that’s not really necessary either—the vampires from Peter Watts’ Blindsight are cannibals). Even the “No Sunlight” rule is a 20th century invention. Any writer who chooses to introduce vampires into their story is going to have to pick and choose what traits they want for “their” vampires. So if Stephenie Meyer really, really wants to make her vampires sparkle, she can go right ahead. Edward the Sparklepire’s meebling about what a monster he is becomes doubly hilarious when he’s wearing the kind of body glitter most women (and a lot of gay men) would kill for.

I explain all this to the guy friends, and they adamantly reply, “vampires do not sparkle.”

See, in modern pop culture, the classic vampire is a masculine power symbol. The vampire is sexually potent. He has mesmerizing power over people (especially women). He easily, and happily, disobeys the laws and breaks the taboos of humanity because they are weak and he is not. His interaction with these weak humans he has power over is penetrative: fangs into the neck. He doesn’t require your love, only your deference.

(The same rules apply to female vampires. Vampire lesbians!)

So when men see this masculine power symbol being in any way feminized (by, say, sparkling), their reaction is immediate and vehement. All of us, men and women, are still ruled by the principles taught to us in elementary school. Tattling, sucking up to the teachers, and being into “girly stuff” will get your ass kicked. When girls get their gross girl cooties all over a masculine idol, it’s diminished in the eyes of those who revered it.

That’s not to say that all men think this way. MovieBob, a male critic, did an excellent review on the unpleasant implications of the Twilight series’ approach to sex, and a significant amount of guys read into the books and movies on the same level. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Stephenie Meyer’s work, excellent reasons. But “the vampires sparkle” is the most superficial and telling of them.

*Incidentally, the answer to that question was never, “on the shelf,” because the queue in our hold system was so mind-bogglingly long that no book with “Stephenie Meyer” on the spine ever stayed in one branch for more than an hour.

Shown: the Dragon Age II announcement.

In the late 80s, there was a show on ABC called thirtysomething. It lasted for four seasons, all of which consisted largely of bland, uninteresting, unlikeable white people screeching, “but what about my needs?” for an hour a week.

That’s what the Bioware forums remind me of sometimes.

I live in the valley, at the bottom of a hill. Absolutely none of the property around my house is zoned for retail, so if either I or my brother want to buy snacks we have to hump it up the hill to the Husky station at the top of a pair of aging wooden stairs, flanked by crazy homeless people and other, more harmless but no less crazy homeless people.

My brother, Mac, was up there buying stuff yesterday when the cashier took a look at the name on his receipt.*

Cashier: McConnell? Are you related to Carson?
Mac: … She’s my sister.
Cashier: I still have the scar on my arm from when she hit me with a rake.

In my defense, I was seven.

*Mac never uses cash for anything. He will put three dollars on his debit card. It makes me crazy, which is probably why he still does it.

As soon as my video capture card arrives in the mail I’m going to be starting a new series. Watch this space.

The Tuesday before I left for Palm Springs I went wandering around the city with one of the few friends I kept from high school, Teddy.

This is Teddy.

We brought cameras.

Teddy and I started out in downtown Edmonton. We eventually ended up at the Muttart Conservatory (“How did we get here?” “I was following you.” “I was following you!“). So we decided to just cross the river again and go to my house.

There’s this footbridge near my house.

This is the footbridge.

The bridge has been there for ages. When I was a kid, we’d watch the Canada Day fireworks from this bridge.* If you wanted to, you could play the theme from “Hockey Night in Canada” – the proper one – on its floorboards. And, of course, there’s the graffiti.

This is the graffiti.

Generation upon generation of shitheads have carved their names into this bridge. Anyone of any age who says they haven’t, at some point in their lives, scratched something into the rails is either not from around here or a damn dirty liar. I saw “Michaelangelo wuz here” chiseled into a bench once.

It’s pretty much the best bridge ever.

*I really should go back to watching the fireworks from the bridge. Every time I go to the Legislature grounds on Canada Day I run into the same guy who used to go to my high school, drunk off his ass and making a nuisance of himself. I don’t know how they keep finding me.

So, anyone who knows me knows that Sock Dreams is pretty much my favourite online store of all time.* Well, I’m surfing around today when I come across a black minidress with built in garters.

“Hey,” says I, “that’s a pretty cool dress.”
“Hey,” says I, “how come it’s only $24?”

And then I took another look at the dress.

“Oh,” says I, “it’s because there’s no fucking fabric in it.”

This is not so much a dress as the idea of a dress. My crotch gets cold just looking at the thing.

I still kind of want it.

*This is in no way an attempt to get free socks.**
**Unless it works.

Hugs and kisses,
cancerbaby

I had this conversation with my brother just now as he was playing Dragon Age:

Me: What, you started over?
Mac: I’m glitching my way up to level 25. Then I’m going to import to Awakening. I want to try an Arcane Warrior.
(seconds pass)
Me: This is going to take a while, you realize.
Mac: No, look, this area is for levels 3 or 4 and I’m already level 12.
Me: The game auto-scales. It doesn’t matter.
(more seconds pass)
Me: You can just start a new character for Awakening, you know.
Mac: I know, but I don’t want to be level 1 in Awakening.
Me: You won’t. You start at level 20.
Mac: Well, I don’t want to be level 20 in Awakening.
Me: The game auto-scales, it doesn’t matter!
Mac: It matters!

This is the real idea behind RPGs. It’s not about fighting monsters, or huge epic worlds, or being a big damn hero. The point of playing RPGs is to take little numbers and make them bigger. That’s the appeal. Everything else is just decoration.

He’s still at it, by the way.

Oh, my poor darling website. I have neglected you so. Here, have one of these:

Teddy Edwards drew this. He will be famous one day.

That tap-tap-tap-tap noise is the sound of me NEVER SLEEPING AGAIN.

Creepy factor aside, this is one of the coolest toy-sculpture-things I’ve seen in my life and I kind of want one. I’d take it to parties with me*. It would be my new best friend.

I’m posting this at night because if I’m not sleeping, then neither are you.

*especially if brownies had been ingested at said party.