Midwest Chick's Place

Okay, so I’m sitting in the drive thru at Micky D’s this morning and the car in front of me, which was driven by a woman about my age (let’s say above the 40 year old demographic and leave it at that), had some odd cursive-type writing on the rear window. 

It said “Look after my heart.  I left it with you.” and on the other side of the window it said “Twilight”. 

I honestly couldn’t figure out whether to laugh, to be sad, or to ram her because such stupidity should not survive in our society.

Look, I am an avid (voracious actually) reader and I think I was ahead of the curve on this vampire stuff, but at least I was reading Saberhagen and Yarbro and Hamilton (before she went through her crisis that turned her books from interesting and fun reads into stuff I’m embarrassed to read in public).  I was reading Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books years before they got their own HBO slot.  An acquaintance of mine writes, for a living, paranormal romance starring vampires and I buy her books to notch up her New York Times numbers.  So it’s not like I haven’t been there/read that.

But I absolutely cannot stomach this Twilight stuff.  And the fact that women my age are going ga-ga for barely post-adolescent schlock romance starring glittery metro-sexual teens is beyond pathetic and is frankly very creepy (I imagine a cadre of Mrs. Robinsons out there lusting after 16 year old boys).  Additionally, the paranormal romance genre has crept like a fungus out of the romance section and has almost overwhelmed my beloved sci-fi/fantasy section at the bookstore.  I am hard pressed to find a book that does not have a frickin’ vampire lurking SOMEWHERE in the plot.

So I’m posting this youtube video again (I think I saw it at The Breda Fallacy long ago).  It’s how things should be in the genre.

And Buffy staked Edward.  The End.   Now can I have some elves back in my books?