Let's discuss crappy young adult novels, shall we?

Remember when I said I occasionally liked to read crap? Well. All right. This post is about crap. Now, I think there are young adult novels that are sophisticated, funny, well written, thought provoking, etc. (The Jessica Darling books come to mind, as well as the Hunger Games trilogy, His Dark Materials, the works of Maggie Stievfater.) And then there is the crap. Don't get me wrong--I like crap. Every now and again you want Chef Boyardee beef ravioli with spreadable meat, not handmade gnocchi in a bolognese sauce simmered for half a day.

Yes, I have read the Twilight books. Yes, I own them. Yes, I went to the midnight showings of the films (but laughed heartily throughout). I kind of love to hate them. Or I love to hate myself for liking them. My relationship with Twilight is very complicated, more so than that between Bob and Leland Palmer on "Twin Peaks." (Obviously Bob is the Twilight in this scenario.) I read Twilight soon after New Moon had been published, so it was fairly early in the series' growing popularity. There were no movies, there was no Breaking Dawn of Crap, there was no ZOMG RPATTZ SQUEEEEEEEEE frozen dildos etc. I came to it pure, man. I had no idea what the story was about--no clue there would be vampires. Why does the good-looking guy hate the new girl so much? Why does he disappear? Why did he ... OMG HE JUST STOPPED A VAN WITH HIS HAND. ARE THEY KISSING? THERE IS KISSING OMG.

To put it mildly, I enjoyed the shit out of it.

Then the tweens had to come and ruin it all. But whatever, it happens. I mean, HOW DARE the intended audience for a book REALLY LIKE THE BOOK and BUY THINGS AT HOT TOPIC RELATED TO THE BOOK, THEREBY STIMULATING THE ECONOMY? I mean, HOW DARE THEY?

(Actually, what ruined it for me was the third book, with its PRE-MARITAL SEX IS BAD, MMMKAY, BECAUSE IT WILL STEAL YOUR SOUL LIKE WAYYYY WORSE THAN BECOMING A VAMPIRE, BECAUSE WHILE GOD MAY HATE DEMONS, BOY OH BOY DOES HE HATE SLUTS EVEN MORE, but that's a story for another time.)

Like I said, it's complicated, me and Twilight. I regret hooking up with Twilight after prom.

But now I'm reading Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush, Hush, a book I highly suspect is a retooled fanfic of Twilight. I have a feeling Fitzpatrick did a find/replace with "vampire" and put in "fallen angel." Here are other bits of evidence:

See, the covers are TOTALLY different.

•  Mysterious, weird, cocky yet hotttttt boy takes sudden interest in the brainy narrator.
• They start interacting when they're made partners in biology. (Side note: MY GOD, DO HIGH SCHOOL KIDS TAKE ANY OTHER CLASSES THAN BIOLOGY? FIND ANOTHER CLASS! THERE ARE NICE CLASSES, LIKE HISTORY! MATH! ENGLISH! SPANISH! BAND! CHEMISTRY! I MEAN THERE'S A WHOLE UNRESOLVED SEXUAL TENSION THING BUILT RIGHT INTO CHEMISTRY, CATALYSTS, DENATURIZING PROTEINS, UMM ERLENMEYER FLASKS ...)
• Brainy narrator is woefully uncoordinated.
• There is a strange situation involving a speeding car and a body slamming against it, wherein no one is hurt. And MAYBE IT DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN ZOMG.
• There is an awful lot of "X pinched the bridge of his/her nose." Classic Meyer.

However, there are several important differences:

I mean, the fonts are, like, really seriffly different.

• The dreamy ZOMG mysterious vampire in Twilight is named Edward. The dreamy ZOMG mysterious hotttt guy in this book is named ... Patch. Yes, you read that correctly: PATCH. Are you fucking kidding me? Is he a stray dog with a comical patch of dark fur over his eye? Is he a rag doll? Is he the main character in a perfectly dreadful film with Robin Williams as a comical children's oncologist (because if you think cancer is funny, children's cancer is even MORE funny)? There is nothing sexy about "Patch." Nicotine patch? No. Pumpkin patch? Unless you have some weird fetish not yet documented by the DSM-IV, no. Eye patch? Well, maybe, if you like pirates, like, a lot. But pirates? I don't know. They are mostly not sexy except for Jack Sparrow. On the whole they are ill groomed, have poor dental hygiene, and possess questionable morality. Soul patch? Um, just, no.
• The plain, brainy, yet everyone-wants-her narrator in Twilight is named Bella Swan. In this book, her name is Nora Grey. Same number of syllables, but note that the last name of the former is a NOUN, and the last name of the latter is an ADJECTIVE in the BRITISH spelling.
• Edward the vampire can read minds. The mysterious hot boy can put thoughts in the brainy yet somehow irresistible narrator's head. See? It's totally different.

I'm actually only about a third through the book, so I don't know what else there may be. This may be all. But I wonder if the title is repetitive (Hush, Hush; not just Hush) because it is basically a copy of something else. Maybe it should be called Hack, Hack. Or Plagiarized, Plagiarized. Or Twi, Light.

However, if I come across any mention of "chagrin," "dust moats [sic]," "dazzling," or "favorite kind of heroin," I am out. Out, I tell you.

OMG I just realized they both have baseball.

I'm done.

"War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!": My uterus as ruled by Big Brother

What do George Orwell's 1984 and my uterus have in common? They both live in Crazy Logic World! This is what I've learned about sex in the last year and a few months.

• Sex does not lead to babies.
• Getting probed by a dildocam and having perfectly timed sex does not lead to babies.
• Taking fertility drugs, getting probed by a dildocam, shooting myself up with pregnancy hormone, and getting my partner's jizz shot up into my uterus with a catheter does not lead to babies.
• Doing the previous causes other people to make babies, as if I am a voodoo doll for the fertility of everyone else in the universe.
• I really should get some kind of commission every time I do a fertility cycle, because someone else is going to get pregnant (this does not include fertile 16 year olds, because they get pregnant no matter what, even with this mythical "sex" thing). 
• Oral contraceptives are like x-ray specs: they don't actually work (because of the first bullet point--sex does not lead to babies), they are difficult sometimes to claim as a tax-deductible expense, depending on the state in which you live, and they can make you dizzy. 
• In order to get pregnant, I need to take oral contraceptives first. 
• Wait, whut?

So this is what happens when you are about to start your first IVF cycle (pending insurance approval). You bleed. Then you need to take oral contraceptives. "It's not for contraception," says my RE. "No shit," I say back. Because, come on. Once again: James Carville's bald pate. Nothing's going to grow in there. But apparently you need to take the Pill so your ovaries can have a rest, as if your ovaries are capable of expelling eggs without shots and prayers and sacrificial chickens. But whatever, it was $5. They may as well be Tic-Tacs. But I will take them dutifully starting on CD3 in order for my ovaries to go on sabbatical. 

Then I get to take something called Lupron, which makes me sing a song I like to call "The Lupron Dance." I'm not sure if that is one of the listed side effects.

Then, the fun needles and drugs part comes in, that is, if the insurance request goes through. If it does not go through, I will see if I can sell one of my kidneys or maybe a lobe of my liver. 

But if it all does succeed, I feel I have given my future child a gift: the gift of knowing that sex had nothing to do with his or her conception. SCIENCE! Babies are made with SCIENCE. Not with rutting. Everything you learned in the fourth grade is a lie, including that nonsense about the United States switching over to the metric system. 

Stop trying to make the metric system happen! It's not going to happen!

The lengths that I will go to

Hi! I swore I would never blog again, but oh, the things I will do for Megan McCafferty. See, La McCafferty is one of my favorite authors ever, and I've read a lot of good shit, like Russian shit, French shit, British shit, the Great American shit, etc. I've also read a lot of crap (different from shit), so maybe you shouldn't listen to my taste in books, but mostly I read the good shit. And HRH McCafferty writes the good shit. I never knew that my heart had room for another fictional character after Mr. Darcy, but then came Marcus. Marcus Flutie. Don't you love how his name sounds, the way your lips and teeth come together on the "F" of "Flutie" the same way you'd love for him to nip your lip? The way your tongue darts forward for the "L," hoping to meet unknown warm and wet?

Soon enough, Marcus Flutie had pulled a baby cuckoo maneuver in my heart, pushing out the little Mr. Darcy feelings in my heart-nest and replacing them with his own. Now my heart is filled with nothing but Marcus Flutie, as far as fictional characters go. He is the Alpha, the Krispy, and the Omega. He is the Barry Manilow toilet seat, the empty Danon yogurt container, the lip gloss all over your face after a public bathroom macking session. He is the master of the lasso dickery. He is, simply, Marcus.

And now that the Jessica Darling books have come to an end, Dame McCafferty has undertaken a new endeavor: Bumped, a "funny, dystopian" two-book series about a world in which the only people able to get pregnant are teenagers. Anyone who has seen the endless MTV marathons of "16 and Pregnant" knows that the American teenager is ridiculously fertile. Producing no semen of my own, I feel as if even I could probably get an American teenager pregnant just by baking her a quiche. This story is particularly pertinent to me as I am in my mid-thirties and as barren as James Carville's shiny pate. I've been undergoing fertility treatments that have, to date, made me only fat, cranky, and childless.

I don't know where the story will go, but I do know that I want to read it as soon as possible, which is where you come in. Her Holiness the McCafferty has said she will give away ARCs of Bumped to people who blog about the book. LOOK AT ME, BLOGGING ABOUT THE BOOK!

I'M BLOGGING! I'M BLOGGING! ABOUT THE BOOK!

PRE-ORDER THIS BOOK! BUY THIS BOOK! WILL ALL YOUR WORLDLY POSSESSIONS TO MEGAN MCCAFFERTY!

And now, a tap dance.

*tappity tappity tappity*

Thank you, and good night.