In Which I Celebrate A Birthday, and My Own Poor Life Choices

So, about a year and a half ago, roughly 1 month after seeing the first movie installment of Stephenie Meyer's ill-advised Twilight "Saga" I decided it would be a totally awesome idea to read Twilight. Because, hey, the books can't possibly be as bad as the movie, right?

Oh god. Why.

Let's keep in mind that, at the time, I was taking an intensive block-week course in school, which meant that for 5 days I spent 9 hours sitting in a classroom, condensing a semester worth of work into, well, a week. And in that week, outside of my school hours, which, okay, I probably should have spent on doing readings or preparing for my tests, I decided to read Twilight. And then New Moon. And then Eclipse. And then Breaking Dawn. And the moral of this story is that I wasted a whole lot of hours that week reading an utterly horrible series of books, and swore to myself that they would sit on one of my bookshelves as a testament to my shame over having wasted such precious time and money on something so unworthy of even a few moments fo my time or pennies of my money. Giftcards poorly spent.

And then I was talking to this guy, we'll call him @SoupyToasterson. And he mentioned that, although he has a sick love for literature designed for teen girls (one of his faves is Alice, I Think, which I have to admit is totally ballin') he had never moved past the first few pages of Twilight, because it just hurt so much.

So, he tells me he's never read it. And so I decide, well, he needs to know what it's about. He Needs To Understand. If he hasn't seen the movies or read the books, he doesn't understand. He cannot comprehend just how horrible it is.

So I made a really bad life choice and re-read Twilight. I'd intended to follow it up by rereading the rest of the series, but given that it took me a month to finish one book, I couldn't force myself to read the rest. At least not yet. Because it hurt me, and I could actually feel my brain melting out of my ears.

But I mean, that's a total waste, right? Just reading it? I needed to do something, I needed to share my information.

Enter TwiShite.

Basically, I took the time after reading each chapter of Twilight to sum it up in a neat little package. Between 8 and 45(ish) words per chapter, to be exact. My mission was to show that you could sum it up, chapter by chapter, hitting all the major plot points, and come out of a 24 chapter book using under 1000 words. And, for the record, it came in at 753.  For those that are less mathematically inclined, that's a little over 30 words per chapter.

And then I divided it up, printed and folded and bound it, and now I have this perfect little book that basically ate my soul to make. Fun times.

Anyway, this book was included as the second part in @SoupyToasterson's birthday gifteroo, and is also doubling as a gift for everyone I know who has ever read Twilight, and everyone I know who has seen the movies and wants to get a refund for their time.

(Please keep in mind that I own none of the characters, "plot points," or, well, anything to do with Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Gladly.)

My personal favourite excerpts include:

Chapter 1:
Bella Swan moves to the miserable town of Forks, Washington, to live with her dad, Charlie. She meets Edward Cullen, who can't stand to be in the same room as her. Already, two boys, Mike and Eric, are crushing on her. She cries herself to sleep.

Chapter 10:
Edward gives Bella a ride to school. Bella and Edward decide they are dating, even though they don't even hold hands. They sit together at lunch and are in love. They decide not to go to Seattle.

Chapter 11:
Edward asks Bella a lot of pointless questions.

In Which I Celebrate a Birthday or Some Such Thing

So, I have this friend. Let's call him @SoupyToasterson. He is my not-so-local comic book guy, the guru of graphic novels, the dude who can convince me to read pretty much anything.

It's true. Thankfully, Guy has good taste, so I'm very rarely disappointed.

This is the guy who is celebrating his birthaversary with a pretty splendid Boy-Girl party RIGHT NOW, which is where I am. And ideally by the time he gets even close to seeing this post or the tweet that goes along with it (I'll figure out how I'll work THAT magic later), he will have opened his totally radtacular and quasi mystical gift. Which you all (Hi, Mom!) can see RIGHT NOW. Thanks to the magic of webcams and internets and this whole technology thing.

Ohmygosh.

So, I guess I should explain this a bit. A while ago, we had this conversation on the twittermachine. If you really wanted to track it down you could, but basically we have weird ideas and decided that an illustrated children's book about how unicorns are just stealthy horses should be made. Except unicorns are so stealthy they can't even be captured on a page. Hence why the Horse is there, and the unicorn is outlined with little stars. (We are awesome)

Basically, this is first "issue" as it were (the backstory to the issues to come, really) and it covers the story of a deep, resentful rivalry between, you guessed it, horses and unicorns. Or, one particular horse, and one particular unicorn, presumably fighting on behalf of all horses and unicorns. But you get the drift.

Anyway, Because it is his totally awesome birthday gift, and I wouldn't want to cheapen it by posting the entire thing online, you can take a look at the fancy cover (above) and maybe one day when I have my lapper at hand, I'll post another page. As a TEASER. But really, I'm probably never going to make another copy of this, and @SoupyToasterson will have a one of a kind comic book (which doubles as a COLOURING book and comes with crayons!) to call his own. Which involves gems such as a horse dressed up in spandex. And my very poor attempt to draw said spandex-clad horse.

Anyway, if you want to check out some party shenanigans, check out the soups and I on that tweetmadness, because I'm guessing that between us and the other party guests, we will be tweetin away about the ridiculous things that happen.

Inspiration for the Uninspired

Of all the SP questions so far, this one probably makes me the least comfortable. I tend to think of myself as a (relatively) creative person, but when it comes down to it, I don’t think of myself as an artist, and I certainly don’t think about where my Inspiration comes from.

I have no muse, I have no place to ponder and think of amazing things.

A friend of mine once told me that, for him, art was just what happened when he stumbled across God. Like, hey, I’m walking down this street, and if I’d stepped three centimetres to the left I’d still be walking, but because my foot landed exactly where it did, I’m suddenly struck with what feels like Divine Inspiration.

I have no source, no fool-proof way of coming up with ideas. Some days they’re there, others I am the least creative person in every room. Not to mention, there are days when my creative energies don’t go to art projects or the actual creation of items, but the creation of moments and feelings, or to writing a kickass research paper.

Either way, I think if I had to pin my inspiration on something, it’s just the random collaboration of people around me. Weird or funny things my friends do or say, a goofy grin or smirk I get for something I said or for nothing at all. It’s in taking a moment to realize just how fucking lucky I am to be surrounded by so many ridiculously amazing people.

Today I feel inspired- not to be better, but just to do something. Anything. To be the person that my friends seem to think I am.

Today I want to prove them right.