The Secret Angst of Cookie Monster Addict Revealed

How can they be so callous? Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn't suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don't call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And the obnoxious red Grover—oh, what his name?—Elmo! Yes, Elmo live all day in imaginary world and no one call him monster. No, they think he cute. And Big Bird! Don't get me started on Big Bird! He unnaturally gigantic talking canary! How is that not monster?

Read more: McSweeney's: Cookie Monster ... Asks: Is Me Really Monster?

Put down the book and pick up a sandwich

The blogosphere is abuzz today with news of what Random House has done with the bastardized "updated" re-release of Sweet Valley High, and I'll feel lonely and left out if I don't chime in with my $20 (inflation, donchaknow) on what it all means to me.

I have fond memories of trips to the library in my pre-teen years (my dad didn't believe in buying books when we could borrow them, which is why I also have sad memories of being the odd girl out at the school book fair every year, and probably also why my home is now overcrowded with books that I own and refuse to part with), hunkering down between the aisles with a SVH, the next two in the series lying in my lap waiting to be checked out, and getting lost in the Valley of Sweetness while my mom took her time trying to hunt down some books my dad hadn't already read. I also remember trying to hide them from my mom so she wouldn't open one up and accidentally land on a page where Jessica came onto Bruce until he felt her up, or Todd mistook Jessica for Elizabeth and like, totally made out with her, because, scandalous!

These books were my 90210, my OC, my Gossip Girl, way before any of those shows were twinkles in their makers' eyes. Did they make me feel inferior as I compared myself to the "perfect size 6" twins and their sunny, drama-filled lives? Sure they did, but I had enough of being made to feel inferior by just about everybody around me at the time, anyway, so I didn't much let that part get me down. For me, it was pure escapism. I lived vicariously through those twins. I identified more with Elizabeth, naturally, because I was just that much of a goody-goody, but I wished so hard that I could be more like Jessica, until she inevitably almost got date-raped, and I'd be thankful I was more like Elizabeth again. Sweet Valley High = good times.

I don't think I'm outraged by the changes--Elizabeth's blog instead of newspaper column, a Jeep Wrangler replacing the prized Fiat Spider their daddy gave them for their Sweet 16, and, most notable/controversial, their downsizing to a "perfect size 4"--the way some fans are, but it does make me sad. I agree that it's kind of insulting, both to my generation and the younger generation these changes are aimed at, the idea that the '80s era references are so far beyond today's young readers that they won't be able to relate unless they see their own world, their own hobbies and pastimes and slang, because, ew, who wants to read something set in their parents' era? All I can say is that I'm glad they didn't pull this crap with Judy Blume--or, even worse, Anne of Green Gables--when I was a kid, and that I actually got to learn a thing or two about the people who existed before me and that the universe existed before I came to be in it.

As for the downsizing, whatever. I'm more inclined to think it's keeping up with size-inflation than making the twins' so-called perfection even skinnier. If anything, comparing today's size 4 to 1983's size six, that would mean the girls actually put on a few pounds. Which would not be a bad thing. Teen and pre-teen girls today need to have this pointed out to them, I believe, because the LAST thing that they need is more encouragement to starve themselves. Dear young girls of today: it's OK to eat a sandwich. The Wakefield twins eat, too. Or at least they would if they were, y'know, real.

Napolean Dynamite, eat your heart out

If this doesn't make you smile, you're either way too old or way too young to get it.



SEVEN!

Via Miscellaneous, etc.

Twenty years of wracking my brain finally laid to rest.

Today I finally tracked down the title of a movie I've been trying to find out for decades. Of course, most of my "research" consisted of randomly trying to describe it to people and hoping they'd remember, which wasn't as effective as it sounds. I did this with my husband when we first started dating, and he was positive it was Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, but I was just as positive that wasn't it.

After reading yesterday's Vine over at TN, it occurred to me that somebody, somewhere on the Internet must have tried to track down this same movie at some point. That began hours of obsessive searching through 1970s horror titles and synopses (to the detriment of my NaNoFiMo word count), until finally I followed a link to The Flick Chick, where on the second page I found my not-so-holy grail of movie titles: The House of Seven Corpses. I'm 99.9% certain that this is the movie. It was the dead cat that cinched it for me.

When I was an impressionable grade-schooler in the early eighties, my dad and I had a regular Saturday night ritual of watching the local "Creature Feature" together in the dark. A lot of those movies were pretty forgettable, but this is one that I remember scaring the living crap out of me. I don't even know if I could finish watching it, I was so terrified. Of course, now that I'm all grown up and jaded, I'm sure it will inspire more giggles and groans than anything, but even so, it is now at the top of my Netflix queue. And that's one less mystery that will keep me awake at night from now on.

I went for a drive on my lunch hour, just to get out into the sunshine for a while. I was actually on my way to Wendy's to get some chilli when an impulse took over and got me to turn onto a residential street to see what kind of houses were back there. Eventually I ended up by the river, near where I used to live when I made a genuine stab at inedependence that one time, so I decided to go check out my old neighborhood.

They completely rennovated my old apartment complex, y'all, to the point that it was almost unrecognizable. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It needed some updating. But for some reason they took down all the balconies. Including my old balcony, where I used to hang out with Mitzi the wonder chihuahua and Vanilla the persnickity ice cream kitty. We'd mock the squirrels and gawk at the other wildlife that gathered in and around the pretty little stream that ran past below.

I have a lot of memories of those particular beloved pets that are set on that balcony. Like how I fixed it up with plastic chicken wire all around so that they could go out there and sun themselves without falling through the railing, but then Mitzi was too afraid to walk out there because she could see through the deck slats to the ground. Or how they both freaked out and went nuts when a family of racoons invaded our balcony to steal some dog treats I'd left out there. Hours spent just sitting and reading and watching nature with Mitzi in my lap and one watchful eye on Vanilla to make sure she didn't try to make a break for it over the railing.

I've been talking up the possibility of moving back there to Matt, in case we can't find a house that we're both happy with in our price range; but I realize that what I really loved about that apartment was my little balcony. Now that balcony's just as gone as those pets are. When I saw its absence I almost cried.

Not-fun things (and some fun things, too)

Know what's fun? Waking up at 2 AM feeling like somebody's jabbing a hot poker into your eye, that's what's fun. Wait, no... that's actually the opposite of fun. Stupid allergies. And my eye is still swollen. Bleah.

Know what else is not fun? Disillusionment destroying nostalgia, in the form of watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and really paying attention for the first time instead of merely having it on as happy holiday background static and realizing what a sexist bigot is Santa Claus. I always kind of understood that about the reindeer, but I can forgive them, because they're deer. But that is not a Santa I'd want as a role model for my kids. "Jingle jingle jangle, I'm so jolly! Now get your bitch ass in the kitchen, mama, and knit a cozy to cover up that abomination's red nose. Ho ho ho, what a freak. He can't pull my sleigh because he's different." Sheez.

And don't even get me started on Yukon Cornelius, chasing the newly crippled Abominable Snowman over the cliff just because he could. Yeah, you're lucky Bumbles bounce, you insane suicidal bastard.

At least Hermy the elf turned out to be delightfully snarky, so I'll overlook the fact that by the end he's pulling teeth and opening up a practice with no formal dentistry training whatsoever.

Speaking of awesomely un-PC cartoons of yore, Cityrag has a list of links to online videos of the animation industry's selected 50 Greatest Cartoons (via Boing Boing). It's a hard list to argue with, although I would have given The Rabbit of Seville a higher slot.