forever if.

You’re so busy making maps with my name on them in all caps

In the church below, Mass was beginning with the sound of a pipe organ. The melodious chords of a hymn drifted up into the bell tower. The music annoyed him. “But not so frail and weak as to prevent him from slaying Hadriel and gravely wounding you?”

Cassiel squirmed, struggling to sit up. “The… the space was cramped and there was blinding smoke. Please…”

The music from the church below came to an end and the murmuring of prayer began.

Thomas E. Sniegoski, “The Fallen”

The shortest hymn ever written. Or the slowest conversation ever had.

I know just what I did to deserve this

I’m reading that book about a half-human-angel boy named Aaron and the story goes like this: a group of angels who were supposed to be guiding protectors to humans on earth started guiding entirely something else into them (oh hey, I just had an Eternal flashback) and became the Fallen.

Somewhere, a poverty-stricken old man with cataracts who lives in a dirty hut (prerequisites for a true prophet) produces a prophecy about an angel-human offspring bridging the gap between god and the disgraced angels.

Another group of angels come flying in to destroy everyone who had sex and everyone who got born because of that sex (angels don’t eat or drink but their penises work), and opposing factions start calling each other names and chopping off body parts with flaming swords. Aaron then turns 18 and sprouts black wings and tribal tattoos, and he - okay, whatever, you’ve totally read this in some other shape or form. POINT WAS.

All the angels, good or evil or anything in between, disgustedly (and repeatedly) refer to humans as “primitive apes”. Humans, created by God’s own hands, in His likeness. I THINK EVERYONE IN THAT UNIVERSE IS OVERLOOKING THE GREATEST INSULT TO GOD HERE.

200 pages to go.

(I’M SO SORRY I KEEP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS BUT IT’S ALL I’VE BEEN DOING. That’s going to stop though; I’m writing my resume tomorrow YES I AM WATCH ME TYPE LIKE A GUN.)

So bring me a second or bring me an hour; bring me the world in a tear

Okay, so I gather there must exist a rule in Southern Vampire Mysteries that only Sookie Stackhouse is allowed to have an attractive and/or powerful boyfriend. TRY OTHERWISE AND BE PUNISHEDDD, either by:

a) Death
Thou shalt not be distracted by romantic relationships when there be Sookie, or allowed to be made happy by anyone but Sookie, so oops, Maria-Star, Alcide’s new fiancee, and Dawson, Amelia’s awesome boyfriend, you gotta die.

(Tara married JB and so far JB hasn’t got mutilated or stabbed, but he’s stupid and uninfluential so that’s probably keeping him safe from Charlaine Harris’s scythe.)

b) Antagonism
If Sookie could have five men in bed with her at the same time without the threat of reader backlash, she totally would have them all. As it were, she can’t, and C. Harris has to turn Alcide, Bill, Sam and Calvin loose. BUT FEAR NOT FOR YOUR PLACE IN THEIR HEARTS, SOOKEH. Any new girlfriends they procure are either petty bitches (Debbie, Selah), spies (Tanya), traitors (Jannalyn, Lorena), or crazy maenads (Callisto); all girls that the men, who at their very core remain Sookie’s diehard admirers, will eventually shun.

Tara, the only other human woman to attract a vampire’s attention, gets herself in a relationship with an undead abusive asshole. NOW SAY YOU’RE SORRY FOR TRYING TO ONE-UP SOOKIE IN THE VAMPIRE BEAU DEPARTMENT.

In family matters, Sookie’s brother Jason is a manwhore with nary a steady relationship but when he finally marries, the wife is a bitch AND she dies. I’m a little confused with Jason’s situation because he cannot be a desirable mate for Sookie (OR CAN HE) but I suppose that if Crystal was perfect, she would’ve usurped Sookie’s importance as The One Woman in Jason’s Life (their parents and grandparents are dead) so there, BE GONE, CRYSTAL AND YOUR UNBORN CHILD, *SLICE*.

c) Irreversible Unavailability
Sookie’s cousin is the King of Hot (Claude), and he’s gay because if Sookie can’t have him, no other woman can, HA. (Claude and his twin sister Claudine are pureblood fairies and totally delicious to vampires, but Claudine is pretty much asexual and when she does get pregnant, it’s by an off-page fairy but she dies too anyway so whatever, YOU ARE SO PREDICTABLE.)

Meanwhile, Sookie starts off with Bill (first vampire to appear, therefore most powerful at that point), follows up with Quinn (a weretiger that everyone fears and respects), and finally, settles with Eric (vampire sheriff). Flirts with Alcide (werewolf packleader) and toys with Calvin (werepanther community leader), finds out that she’s the great-granddaughter of not just any ol’ fairy but a fairy king, and therefore, by the tenth book, acquires exclusive protection from every major supernatural clan that exists.

THERE IS SOMETHING GOING ON HERE THAT SMELLS LIKE SABOTAGE.

It must be possible to write a vampire love story without being overly Mary Sue about it, come onnn. It’s not even about every attractive and powerful man out there adoring Sookie, that’s always something that I can secretly enjoy, but the standard modus operandi for handling supporting female characters is not cool, okay. Strike one, Harris >:(

Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen

So, I’ve been reading Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries a.k.a. True Blood and I’m on the fifth eBook now and have probably earned another +200 in eye power along the way, but it was gooood. I can totally self-insert without needing to self-throttle every few pages, hi, Bella. But one more time I have to read about Sookie’s “white boat-necked t-shirt and black Reeboks” and Sam’s “halo of reddish-gold hair”, I will… just have to suck it up. Bummer :(

I’m also rereading Lev Grossman’s Codex and it’s still as stupid as it was three years ago. If there exists any literary significance hidden under zero entertainment value to defend its worthiness, you’ll just have to take my face and push my nose into it. But everything was very well described. On a second thought, the laborious detail was probably why it irritatingly oozed so slowly like honey from a spoon.

Before all that, I read Robert Ludlum’s The Ambler Warning which felt like watching some really boring movie while half-sliding off the couch, then Nicholas Sparks’s True Believer which okay, I totes adore predictable love stories (ERIC/SOOKEHHH) and I also believe that somewhere someone is enjoying an epic love like that, but IDK, the way Sparks handles romances? Trite. THERE, SAID IT. Fiction’s a tough sell.

Douglas Preston’s Tyrannosaur Canyon read like crack, and John Mortimer’s Quite Honestly was kind of funny but led to by the characters’ strange thought processes and the first half of it I was just like, HUH BUT WHY, before I was all, oh wtf, HAHA.

Worse, those last four books were stuck together in a Reader’s Digest abridged compilation, and whoever was in charge of making it so had wielded the editing axe like a drunken hero and chopped off all transitions, it seems like, so things progressed in that abrupt start-stop splutter YouTube’s audio makes when my computer decides to be lame and freezes up the browser.

Last Friday, I bought Thomas Sniegoski’s Fallen and Leviathan, which is about an angel-human hybrid boy. I SWEAR IT’S NOT A KINK. Also brought home The Time Traveler’s Wife because it finally costs RM32.90 instead of 44.90 (I’ll out-wait you, MPH, I will), and Love in Time of Cholera because someone died falling off a mango tree while chasing a parrot.

My father thinks I should be reading books with title keywords “Rich”, “Money”, “Now”, and I think so too. Oh, real life :(

I was thinking about the The Little Mermaid today, and how sweet it was that King Triton gave her legs :’)

Last Wednesday, I had lunch with Jacqui and Marina, and watched Karate Kid after. Jackie Chan ♥. A couple of days later, I was lunching with my mom when I felt a sudden rush of camaraderie (or self-destruction, in retrospect) sweep over me, and I asked, “would you be angry if I told you I went to the cinema?”, and she stared at me and said, “I would be very disappointed because I thought you had obeyed us all this time.” OH SNAP. Then she added, “did you go?”, and I said, “I’m not saying,” and that was that, by golly maw.

Hey, I’m chatty today. I better post before I start spilling anything inappropriate lolwtf.

Well, you done done me and you bet I felt it

This one is a heavenly-looking young man. He’s tall and muscled like a swimmer or a statue by Michelangelo. No, not a statue, nothing so mundane, so common, as a mere masterpiece. More like its inspiration.

— Cynthia Leitich Smith, “Eternal”

OH SNAP, SMEYER.

It’s tragedy when the morning cries and you don’t know why

I bought Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Eternal today. It was sealed and I couldn’t take a peek, but… “A fallen angel; A vampire princess; Can their love be ~ETERNAL”. TELL ME THAT DOESN’T SOUND PROMISING.

Then I went home, opened the wrap and -

I may be heaven-sent, but I’m not perfect.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT PERFECT, YOU STUPID GODMADE ANGEL. STRIKE ONE.

I watch my girl slip the oversize Dallas Cowboys T-shirt over her pink bikini panties and turn in for the night.

WHAT’S THE SETTING, THE PLAYBOY MANSION? STRIKE TWO.

That sounds perverted, I know. But I’ve always watched her dress, undress, shower, and bathe.

DO ASSUAGE MY HORROR BY SHARING MORE OF YOUR VOYEURISTIC ACTIVITIES. STRIKESTRIKESTRIKESTRIKE. SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE, STEPHENIE MEYER, SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO POP CULTURE.

Then there was that one blessed weekend last August when the air conditioner broke. She spent a full day in bed, buck naked, reading Tolkien under the ceiling fan.

A BLESSED WEEKEND? A BLESSED WEEKEND?? WHERE’S YOUR SUPPOSED INDIFFERENCE NOW, YOU SLIMY LITTLE WINGED SEX FIEND. PLUS, CLASSIC CASE OF “PLEASE DON’T THINK MY CHARACTER IS A BRAINLESS SLUT; LOOK, SHE READS *INSERT BOOK BY DEAD AUTHOR*!”.

WHAT. IS. THIS.

HOW CAN SO MUCH FAIL BE IN HALF A PAGE. COMPREHENSION ERROR ERROR ERROR.

Edit: Smith is “regarded as an expert in Children’s Literature by the press” (Wikipedia, 2010). WHAT IS THIS UNIVERSE THAT I’VE WOKEN UP IN.

Leaving Cheyenne (1962)

“All right,” I said. “Hold your horses. I don’t want to be poor. But you can not want to be poor and still not care whether you’re rich or not.”

“Yes, and them’s the kind of people that never accomplish nothing,” he said. “They’re just damn mediocre. If you’re gonna try at all, you ought to try for something big.”

LARRY MCMURTRY

It deserves its own post.

EPICCCCC.