The Perks of Looking for Alaska in the Rye

Coming soon.

As soon as I can stomach finishing Looking for Alaska.









Don't hold your breath.

People are stupid when it comes to communication, huh?

Sometimes, when I know that one of my friends is going out for the night, I am at a total loss for how to get in touch with them if I really need them.

Should I send a messenger pigeon? No, I certainly don't have enough time to train one of those. How about a telegram? That'd be swell, but the Western Union is too far away. Man, I really need my friend right this minute... what would someone as hip and with it as he be using to communicate?

Texting? Of course! All the kids are talking about texting these days. Okay, now I just need to know what to text. His landline telephone? Oh drat, he's not home anyway. That little machine beside his rotary phone at home would print out the text I sent, but then he wouldn't see it until he got home. Hello? Operator? I need to get in contact with Mark Zuckerberg, on the double. Would you kindly relay a text for me for me? That's zulu uniform charlie kilo echo... hello? She hung up on me!

Well I've exhausted just about every option I have here... wait a tick... Mark has a cell phone! What if I used my cell phone to send a text message to his cell phone? Does that option exist? It does! Now that that's over and done with, I guess I'll get on Facebook...

Mark Zuckerberg is going out, text the cell if you need me!

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE, IF I WOULD HAVE JUST CONSULTED FACEBOOK I COULD HAVE SAVED MYSELF AN HOUR OF MAYHEM. HE POSTED FUCKING INSTRUCTIONS THAT CORRESPOND TO MY EXACT DILEMMA.

Conclusively... if your friends really require clarification about how they can get in touch with you, they might be so incredibly dense that they actually do need you. And how kind you are to let them know how to find you. You have a big heart, social network user. Ride on.

Secret Life of the American Victim of Abstinence-Only Education

Oh, the pressing issue of babies having babies. I have to assume that Secret Life of the American Teenager was created by Brenda Hampton to be thought provoking and encourage teens to make good decisions regarding sex. It does not, however, make any effort to imply that there is anything more to high school than fucking and talking about fucking very openly with your parents.




For easier digestion, I have broken down for you the reasons I loathe this series.

1. The title
Is there really any need to include the fact that Amy is American? What is that supposed to imply? Either that all American teenagers are secretly pregnant or that when we watch a program on ABC Family, we don't automatically expect it to be set in the United States, I assume. Spoiler alert, but nothing about the lives of these teenagers stays secret. Each one of them is more than willing to discuss their sex lives with their parents.

2. Inbreeding
Another thing that really concerns me about this show is the very small breeding stock the school seems to have. These characters seem pretty afraid to branch out into anyone who isn’t in the main cast.
-Amy is the main character. She gets knocked up by Ricky at fucking band camp, of all places.
-Ricky is a bad boy in foster care. I don’t know what promiscuous bad boys are doing at band camp, but whatever. I’m not to sure why he cares so hardcore for his baby instead of doing the bad boy thing and just punching Amy in the ovaries when she told him he was going to be a dad. Also he works in a butcher shop with Ben.
-Ben has an Italian stereotype for a father and is in love with Amy despite her, uh, baggage. Too bad he knocks up Adrian in the third season.
-Adrian must have serious problems because she enjoys casual sex. She somehow becomes best friends with her foil, Grace.
-Grace was a celibate Christian and preacher’s daughter until she decided to seize the day and bang Jack.
-Jack is also a preacher’s son. (What the fuck? Am I watching 7th Heaven reruns?) After he breaks up with Grace, he starts dating Madison.
-Madison is Amy’s Catholic friend. She's Catholic enough to try to talk Amy out of getting an abortion, but not nearly enough to keep her legs closed. (Oops, realism!) She is also arguably one of the worst actors on the show, second only to Ashley.
-Ashley is Amy’s younger sister whose acting skill could only be improved if she were in a coma.

That’s about it - new characters are not introduced enough. Well... kind of. Actually I’m starting to think that the network itself has a small breeding stock. During episode 304 the fucking YOUNGEST DAUGHTER FROM 7TH HEAVEN just pops on the screen. What is this fascination with minister’s children, Brenda Hampton? What does it mean?

3. The gimmick
Remember Degrassi TNG before the original characters graduated and went off to college? It went there. They hit every issue from homosexuality to eating disorders to teen pregnancy. Yes, no fewer than three pregnancies and one pregnancy scare happened in this series. But at least they were a bit spread out and had different outcomes (one abortion, one adoption, one teenage mom). No such luck with Secret Life. The first season, Amy is pregnant. This is the basis for the drama. The second season, Amy’s fucking mother (played by none other than... Molly Ringwald?!) is pregnant and is uncertain as to who the father is. What a delightful twist! Secret Life of the American Housewife! Okay, that’s enough accidental pregnancies for now. There are other plots for high school drama, right? NO. The third season revolves around Adrian’s pregnancy. 7th Heaven references withdrawn. Now I feel like I’m watching that Lifetime movie The Pregnancy Pact.

4. The lack of realism
There is nothing real about this show. After Amy’s pregnancy is revealed, Ricky and Ben start to compete. She’s in love with Ben, but having Ricky’s baby. And everyone knows this. If you don’t know this, you must be braindead, because the script is written to make sure this fact is mentioned no fewer than sixteen times per episode. So according to Brenda Hampton and the savvy writers of Secret Life, get pregnant, and as long as you’re pretty, boys will actually fight over you! The footage of the birth is pretty hard hitting too. Show your sixteen year old daughter the clip of all of Amy’s friends and family walking in and out of the delivery room, from the outside, to “Stand By Me” and I’m sure she’ll get that it’s in her best interest to keep her whore legs closed. Okay, but this is a family program. Obviously we’re not going to get to see graphic closeups of a teenager’s vagina, and many people are made uncomfortable by seeing women in labor. Besides, it’s after the baby is born that’s important, right? Once those kids see how boring and unhappy Amy’s life is as a teen mom, that’ll set them straight. Except for the fact that the children are almost never fucking seen. It’s all too easy to forget that both Amy and her mother have to care for babies because they’re shown to the audience maybe an average of once per episode. What you actually do get to see during your forty minutes of viewing will most likely be a) teenagers gossiping in the hallway, b) Amy’s parents tooling around in the kitchen disagreeing about how to raise their children, or c) Ricky and Ben disagreeing in the butcher shop.

5. Copious use of the word “sex”
If I processed all the scripts to every episode with a word frequency counter, “sex” would be the most common after “the” and “and”. Since when do teenagers talk about this like medical professionals or guidance counselors? It could only sound more unnatural if they were referring to it as “copulation”, or in the case of one of the preacher’s kids, we might get lucky enough to hear “fornication”. I was in high school fairly recently, and no one was having sex. However, plenty of people were fucking, and most of the shy ones were doing it. Actual quote:

"I wanna take you to a movie and sit in the dark with you and hold hands, maybe make out a little. I wanna go to a late dinner and eat food with you. Then I wanna drop you off at your house and kiss you goodnight, and then go home and think about having sex with you. But I'm not gonna have sex with you until I'm ready to have sex with you and that's that!"

You show her, whatever boy uttered this sentence!

Imagine how fucking surprised I was to find out that Brenda Hampton produced 7th Heaven. I. Hate. Television.

Best Worst Quotes from "Avalon High"

Meg Cabot is a #1 National Bestselling Author. The same woman who write The Princess Diaries decided to ruin one of my favorite literary traditions, the Arthurian legend, by writing a book in which all the characters from said legend are fucking high school students. Will Arthur Wagner is the quarterback at Avalon High, and his best buddy Lance plays guard. Ha. I get it. It baffles me that my local library put this in the adult section.

Now I'm not going to complain about how godawful and embarrassing this book was. I'll just present some examples straight from its pages that explain why Meg is so successful.

It's obviously linked to how "authentic teenager" her narration and description of high school stereotypes are.

It had always been my dream, of course, to start off my junior year as a new student in a high school in faraway state where I knew no one. Um, not?

And his friends hadn't looked like headbangers. They'd been wearing normal clothes, khaki shorts and T-shirts. I hadn't noticed a single tattoo or piercing on any of them.

Or could it be her amazing talent for physical description?

'Just give me your keys and I'll drive myself over.'
He looked appalled.

It was hard not to look at his abs, which were extremely six pack-like.

But it's best not to get too wrapped up in small details like this. Meg makes that clear a bit later in the book.

'He's even skipped football practice to do it twice this week. I heard he says he likes to go there to think. Think! Who even does that?'

I heave a great sigh and announce that the movie will premiere on the Disney channel this fall.

Sucky Summer Cinema

Sex and the City: the story of four women and their pet horse.
-Numerous clever fucks

Advisory: If your date wants to see "The Human Centipede", have a long talk with yourself about who this person really is.

-Roger Ebert

There aren't a lot of great summer movies for you to choose from this year. What you have to ask yourself is this: "How much I want to puke my pants at the movies?" You have to know analyze your taste in film and ask yourself which is more effective for this purpose. *Slight spoiler alert*

Will it be:

A. Watching an Asian man defecate into a woman's mouth, or

B. looking at Sarah Jessica Parker's face for 146 minutes?

If you chose A, go see The Human Centipede and seek therapy if you enjoy it.

If you chose B, go see Sex and the City 2, but do make sure you have a female escort unless you want your ass kicked. By me.

Disclaimer: I had the opportunity to see The Human Centipede in theatres and I loved it. I will not take my own advice and seek therapy because I would most definitely be prescribed medication that mellow my ability to hate sufficiently to write my blog. Cheers!

Secret Life of the American Victim of Abstinence-Only Education

Look out, ABC Family, Anniehilation is looking your way.

I'm not going to lie to you, I missed most of the second season. However, I was fortunate enough to see all its events montage-ed in the first episode of the third season. As soon as I have seen the most recent episode (302) I will be kind enough to provide a thought-provoking post about it.

Keeping You a Secret

I know it's not Anniehilation's job to rag on anything she dislikes. I'm here to rag on stupid things that everyone else likes. So why, then, am I going to review the Julie Anne Peters young adult novel Keeping You a Secret when we all know that most of the 13-18 year old crowd lacks the ability to read? Answer: To show just how much reverence people can have for a poorly written book. (I know that Twilight is the first thing that came to your mind, but that series has given me far too much material to organize for publication right now.)

Let's begin with judging a book by its cover. A blue image of a girls head leaning on a shoulder - the other face is mostly out of the frame but the lips that we can see definitely look like those of a girl. The tagline reads "Is it worth falling in love if you have to keep it a secret?" I was like, okay Peter, I'll bite. But was it worth reading this piece of shit to find out? Not really. But I'll be polite enough to indicate that this is where the *spoiler alerts* start just in case any of my readers feel like putting themselves through this.

Our main character's name is Holland Jaeger, and that is the only cool thing about this book. (Then again, if that's not a name that gives off the almost the same feeling as Aryan Nation, I don't know what is.) As we get to know Holland, we learn that she swims for her high school team, doesn't like having sex with her boyfriend but fulfills her obligations, is applying to Ivy League schools, and is not a likeable character in the least. Nobody in this entire book is likeable. The first thing that Holland did to piss me off was refer to her stepsister as a walking freakshow because she's "into Goth right now, which is just sick after Columbine." I sincerely hoped, for the author's sake, that it was the character who was this naive and not the author herself.

Anyway, guess what? Our all-American protagonist Netherlands Jaegermeister starts to get all tingly about Cece, the new girl at school! Here is the passage of realization, the entire inner struggle, that you get from the book that's been so applauded for its realism.

Ms. Fielding, in German class. I was so in love with her. I used to pretend I needed help so I could stay after school. She wasn't gay, I don't think. Just beautiful. And Leah. God. I had a torrid crush on Leah in sixth grade . . . My pulse quickened. Was I? Gay, I mean? If so, what was I doing with Seth? Maybe I was bi. That would explain it. An open heart, willing to give and accept love wherever it came from. The feelings, the stirrings, the awakening senses with Cece, though, I'd never experienced those with Seth. With any guy.

So how long did it take you read that paragraph? That, according to Julie Anne Peters, is exactly how long it takes to figure out you're gay. Did you notice how she even went through the intermediate bisexual stage before she went over to the dark side completely? That must be the realistic part. And since when does internal monologue sound like that? I can't quite remember the last time I thought to myself, "Am I? Hideous, I mean." Sorry, I just think the girl who is accepted to Stanford later in the book could have thought patterns a bit more coherent.

So moving on to Amsterdam Weinerschnitzel's girlfriend, well, she's a bitch. Cece has just transferred from a different school for "health reasons" - her health was endangered by all the gay bashers at her old school, you see. So instead of keeping things on the downlow and trying to get through the rest of school without dying, she wears a different lesbian-themed t-shirt every day and tries to start a GLBT club at school. To be clear, this isn't the part I hate about her. It's actually kind of noble. The thing is, when she's told her only chance to have her club at school is to make it a non-discriminatory Gay-Straight Alliance, she says no. According to Cece, straight people can't possibly understand the real issues. That's a pretty cunty thing to say when you're asking for acceptance.

So how does their relationship go down? Well, after Cece demands that the relationship be kept a secret for Holland's sake, it takes them about a minute and a half to fall "so unabashedly in love." Nothing about how different it is to have sex with a girl, no worries about who gets to wear the pants in the relationship, no feelings at all really. Why was Peters in such a damn hurry writing this book, I wonder? Now I know that some people believe that the gays don't really love each other and are just satisfying their perverted urges, but you will change your mind after you read Cece's profession.

"No, I only get up at the butt-crack of dawn so I can pretend we're having breakfast together at our lockers. I don't even have a seven o' clock class, you know. I dropped it after the first day . . . Then I have to haul ass down three flights of stairs to pass you in the hall between third and fourth period. And I stall around outside the restroom by the art studio so I can watch you walking down the hall. I'm late to algebra every day . . . I drive by Children's Cottage after school to see if you're there yet, to see if I can catch a glimpse of you in the window. I go by your house on the way to school. Sometimes from the library, I'd watch you guys leave for lunch. A couple of times I even followed you so I could maybe find out what you liked to eat." [hint: it's pussy.]

Look, if any young adults are out there, please listen to me. I don't care who says this to you, whether it's your brand new gay lover or a sparkly vampire or the guy you met on Craigslist. The appropriate response is running and possibly calling the cops, not swooning.

The secret love doesn't last long, obviously. Soon, Holland is outed to everyone at school, and those who hate her for it out her to her own mother. The important thing to know about Mama Jaeger is that her parents disowned her when she got pregnant in high school. Having vowed to give her daughter a better life, she attempts to beat the shit out of Holland and throws her out on her ass upon finding out that she's a lesbian. The whole situation is a little bit surreal though. I don't know many people who, if their mother was asking in a very serious and angry way whether or not you're dating someone of the same sex and sleeping with said person, would respond, "Well, actually, [*smirk*] we don't get a lot of sleep." I'm sure that helped her case. To make things even more confusing, Mrs. Jaeger is in the middle of frosting a cake when she confronts Holland. We never find out why. Holland wonders whose birthday it is, but she never finds out. Is this some kind of meaningful juxtaposition of the happiness of cakery and raging homophobia? I've seen the Ace of Cakes get pretty stressed over a deadline, but I have never seen someone frost a cake angrily. Where was I? Oh yeah. Holland has to move into a shelter for abandoned gays.

The best part is when homeless Windmill ThirdReich has to give up all her dreams now that her mother won't so much as look at her. She registers for community college just after finding out that she was accepted to Stanford, and begins working two jobs just to support herself. But I guess we're supposed to infer that it's all worth it or something because she's found love.

I am not saying that the book should have ended happily. Things like this do indeed happen, so I suppose that's where the realism comes from. But when it comes down to it, there's really no closure. Holland's life sucks, and it doesn't even necessarily suck for love. It sucks for the sake of a stalky high school girlfriend who she's known for two or three months.

If this book exists to teach gay teens anything, it's this: Don't come out until you're independent. Shit will get way too real. Be terrified of people's reactions.

So hopefully Peters wasn't trying for, "Be yourself no matter what!"