THE DAY THAT TWILIGHT DIED

so the end of the 'twilight' 'saga' ended today. i honestly had completely forgotten that the fourth and final installment of stephanie meyer's abysmal vampire quadriology hit stores at 12:01 a.m. this morning, much to the delight of all the sad and lonely girls all across the country. this can only mean one thing: the senseless death of hundreds of trees.

now yes, i did graduate with an english degree, but i really don't consider myself an literary elitist or snob. i don't think 'ulysses' is the greatest. book. ever. i thought 'the kite runner' was just silly silly. and i maintain that 'white oleander' is possibly the single most offensive book i've ever read, maybe the most offensive book ever written. i love sci-fi books. i enjoy pulp. i adore douglas coupland. i'm not off the belief i have to love whatever the 'critics' tell is me 'literature.' i'm all about a enjoyable reading experience, regardless of genre of subject. so i'll try to read anything.

so i did try to read 'twilight' last winter [i wrote about it here]. what a dreadful, horrible book. i'm still to this day nonplussed at its popularity. i'm even more nonplussed those self-professed feminists who eat this stuff up. that's an insult to feminists. but i digress. so, i got about 200 pages into 'twilight' before i couldn't read another word of meyer's clunky, painful, and woefully edited prose [and talk about unintentionally funny! that was its only redeeming value.] i've read more elegant writing on bathroom stalls. i'm so not kidding. i pointed out some of meyer's more egregious passages to some friends who ultimately had to agree with me that meyer's has no clue what she's doing. plot? who needs it. characterization? an afterthought. depth? puh-leeze. it was all about hot people, fantasies, and wish-fulfillment. in other words, a massive, stinky turd.

well, when i hoped on the computer this morning, one of my local yahoo news headlines was about what was surely a cadre of sad and lonely girls camped out at the BYU bookstore, dressed in vampire garb, i'm sure, eagerly counting down the minutes until 12:01 so they could read all about bella swan [i'm not making that up] and the perfect-in-every-way edward cullen [did i mention he's also abusive? 'he hits me because he loves me!' yeah. sure.].

being the curious fellow i am, i went over to amazon.com to see what the fangirls were saying about 'breaking dawn.' imagine my glee when much to surprise the book was being absolutely massacred. i've never seen so many 1-star reviews for anything on amazon before. i read a lot of passages like, 'what the hell were you thinking, stephanie?' 'this is the worst book i've ever read,' 'the day that twilight died,' 'the kingdom has crumbled,' 'meyer destroyer her characters,' 'the twilight haters have been vindicated,' 'trash,' 'horrible,' 'disappointed,' and 'i want my money back.' someone so far as to create a myspace page called 'burning dawn.' from the looks of things, the CULT OF MEYER will be taking their torches and pitchforks and making a march on the meyer complex at any moment now. hey, fangirls, i could've have told you six months ago that 'breaking dawn' would suck doughnut holes. all you have to do is look at the cover. it has all the symbolic subtlety of an atomic bomb. why's the Big White King so prominent on the cover? why is the little red pawn in the background? c'mon girlies, think about it. what does it mean? think really hard and you'll get it. your head ain't just a hat rack. use it for petey's sake.

now the rest of the world is finally starting to figure out what i've been saying for almost a year: 'twilight' is a con, a fraud, and most of all, a big, fat, smelly turd. and no matter how hard you try, you just can't polish a turd.

FAIL.