Nope, not an injury.

And I didn't get a tattoo.

Yesterday, just before I left physio, the physiotherapist put a big tape "X" on my lower back, so whenever I tried to slouch the tape would tug and remind me to straighten up. Worked so well that I put a large Band-Aid on this morning to serve the same purpose. There is more give to a Band-Aid, but it seems to be working.

Also, I have duct tape if need be.

Anyway, I've had a few bad days and am still in the "be careful" stage, so I've reconsidered my decision to start riding again for now. But correct posture? Is in fact a good thing.

So. Twilight.

Half the people I know on the Internets are reading this series, and I think I have to get in on the fun. The copy at my public library is checked out and I am like eightieth on the holds list, and I have technical issues with the ebook...

So it looks like I might actually purchase this sucker. Dang.

I can tell myself it is an exercise in learning how not to write a spine-chillingly creepy relationship between two young characters. This is useful because Jordy, the main character in the Kowalski story, is not supposed to be creepy about his girlfriend Vanessa. It's not a big problem in this story because she's at home and he's in Texas, so she participates mostly via telephone calls. And Jordy is too worried about, you know, people getting killed all around him to have much time for creepy thoughts.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure I can avoid creepiness without such research. Jordy is not by nature inclined to try to control Vanessa's behaviour, and she is not by nature inclined to put up with that shit.

But hell. Even the excerpts people are posting all over the Internet makes this look like a creepy, creepy book. The author has said the no-sex-no-drugs story is an attempt to represent "the good kids who play by the rules." Based on the excerpts I really wonder whether her definition of "good kids" means ill-humoured and self-centred ones like her female lead, or controlling stalkers like her male lead.

I should add here that I have never really gotten the bad-boy thing. No, really. Heathcliff gives me hives and Wuthering Heights is not romantic in that way. Yes, I know--I am all about the dirty rock stars. Thing is, my initial interest in dirty rock stars began when I fell for Bruce Springsteen, who had the dual benefits of being attractively scruffy but also, inarguably, a fundamentally decent person.

[Oh, okay. I had the misfortune of seeing the movie Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band when I was eleven or so. And yeah, the villain band (revealed at the end of the movie) were represented as Aerosmith playing "Come Together" at the height of their filthy, drugged-out period. And I immediately sat up straighter and thought, "Wait, what's this?" and promptly rooted for the Future Villain Band, who were so much cooler than the good guys. But that was an abberation. And also, you know, Aerosmith. I don't agree that the devil has all the best music--hello, U2 and the aforementioned Bruce Springsteen!--but he certainly has a lot of it!]

So my thing is, I have nothing against "good kids who play by the rules," but the the kid in the excerpts I am reading doesn't strike me as a particularly shining example of being a "good kid." (We'll let the vampire off the "good kid" hook because--vampire!) She's uncharitable, unkind, and mentally inert.

I suppose the question is, whose "rules" do the kid characters play by? By my standards a sexually active dope-smoker who is actively kind to other people is a better example of a good kid than someone who stays within all the lines prescribed by adults but resents the hell out of everyone around her. (Yeah, I know--a lot of adolescents do go through a period of generalized angst... but this kid doesn't seem to care about or be interested in anything. Almost diagnostic for pain-in-the-arse kid rather than good kid, at least in my book!)

And, in an outburst of common sense rarely seen on the Internet, the major gripe people seem to have about this book is the way it makes it okay for the girl to be controlled by the boy. A whole lot of people have addressed this much better than I can (and cleolinda's is really damned funny) but I also appreciated the Amazon citizen reviewer who remarked that she has no fear of her daughter getting mixed up with a vampire, but she doesn't want her getting into a relationship with one of the zillions of selfish controlling abusive bastards that populate the world. When you think about the messages books send to "good kids"--well, that's a real fucking doozy.

To get back to my initial point, I could say I'm reading this for the how-not-to points. That's a lie. I want to read it for the snark.

But I have a feeling some of the things I'll get out of it won't be strictly amusing...

Regarding rules and the following thereof: I had a bit of an epiphany while working on this latest story. (Ask any writer: you learn more stuff by writing a story, including stuff about yourself.) I was one of those rules-obeying kids who worried a lot about conciliating figures of authority so they would like me. And when I started trying to create Jordy, who is not like me, one of the things I knew about him was that he has no doubt about whether the important people in his life love him. But the thing is, I kept expressing that in my mind as, his parents love him in spite of his various flaws and the fact he doesn't live the type of life they do. And at a certain point I looked at the character, and I looked at the source material for the character, and I realized that the character's loved ones do not love him in spite of his flaws--they love him because of his virtues. Which led me to think harder about his good points and how they are expressed. Because it turns out that it is entirely possible to be a person who doesn't live the way your parents did, or think the way they do, and still have respect and affection for them. The difference between being a rebel and just being your own person may be at least partly a matter of attitude, and also possibly courage. Which was an interesting thing to discover about the source material for Jordy, and it's kind of cool to try to get that across in the character.

Yeah, I've been reading the Fugly blog, and I know she would disapprove of a ranch where large numbers of foals were bred every year and sold as infants. I suspect PMU action, frankly. (And if so, congratulate them for not dumping all their mares when the market crashed.) But also, congratulate them on trying to produce good-quality babies: these foals' daddy is Foothills Beau Dunit, a point-earner in reining and quarter horse shows. He's an own son of Hollywood Dun It and out of a daughter of Colonel Freckles. And a few of the mamas that I looked at are daughters and grand-daughters of some very famous horses.

All of which means there is no need to ever breed Mitzi. if I ever get a bad case of baby fever and can afford a second horse, nice babies are not so hard to find.

And just look at their little Hollywood Dun It faces!



( Further Dunit babies here! With the faces! )

( As read at the 1906 meeting of the American Library Association--for my fellow librarians. )

Also, observe my userpic: anyone who has ever read about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi knows that a mongoose is a sort of small furry reference librarian.