Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Picks

Coming on the heals of my "why the Twilight movies suck" post, I found this article on Stephanie Meyer's website. It is from 2007 when they first decided to make a movie and before anyone was ever cast. Stephanie goes into who she imagines for each roll in her best-case-scenario. She includes pictures and everything!

You will note that on her list of Edward suggestions is Jackson Rathbone, who plays Jasper (and looking much better with his real hair than that ridiculous blond one he wears). I've been telling people that he would have made a better Edward than Robert. Apparently he auditioned for Edward, but didn't get the part. boo!

Also note that Stephanie makes the point (several times) that she had NO SAY in who was cast. I think she should have had some say, but I'm guessing no one knew how big this would be. If she had known, she could have held out for some control.

My Beef With The New Moon Movie

I went to the movies to see New Moon the other night with my friend Jess. We waited until Saturday to avoid the huge crowds of the first two nights. I did feel that New Moon was a better movie than Twilight was, but it still couldn’t hold a candle to the book.

I truly feel sorry for those who haven’t read the books. I don’t know how anyone could truly understand what was going on in the movies without first reading the books. There is just too much information in Stephanie Meyer’s books to fit into a two hour movie. And while I think that NM did a better job of this than T did, I still feel that the average movie-goer is really missing out on the true Twilight experience. I have compared the movies vs. the books to seeing the shadow of a person and believing that was their true self…not even seeing the actual person. So much is missed by those who don’t read the books.

I really do love the Twilight books. While Meyer’s isn’t the best writer (technically), she is a great story teller. I quickly fell in love with Edward Cullen and was right there with Bella at every heart-wrenching moment. (hey, my newest cats are even named Cullen and Bella!). The movies, however, leave much to be desired.

Twilight
I have two main problems with T (the movie): Time and Robert Pattinson. I’ll get to “Rob” in a minute.

Time – You may wonder what in the world I’m referring to…unless you both read the book and watched the movie. Then you probably understand exactly what I’m talking about. The movie does a terrible job showing the passage of time. To anyone who hadn’t read the books, it would seem as if Edward and Bella only knew each other for a short time. It really seems to be just a matter of a few days to a few weeks at most. How in the world could two people fall so deeply in love in such a short time? This is the movies biggest downfall in my opinion. I’ve spoken to many people (mostly students) who only watched the movie, and they just didn’t get why these two people would have such a strong connection. And why would you? The passage of time is shown in just a few clips of the movie, without any real explanation that a significant amount of time is passing.

The other major problem I have with the movies is Robert Pattinson. I have to admit that I just don’t get it. I fell in love with Edward, and Robert Pattinson is no Edward. He is nothing like Meyer’s describes in her books. Vampires are supposed to be better looking than any movie star or model, and yet they couldn’t even come up with a good-looking movie star. I won’t go so far as to say that Rob is ugly, but he does have a smooshed in face and a very crooked nose, not to mention the fact that he usually looks either half asleep or completely high in all his pictures. I’m not even going to get into the fact that he’s not a very good actor (neither is Kristen Stewart, the girl who plays Bella).

A few quotes from the book:
“…their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.”
“…their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.”

Several of my students have asked who I would choose to replace good ol’ Rob. That’s a tough question because I don’t know who the unknown actors are. To be able to really search for an actor on the internet, you have to either already know who they are, or they need to be famous already, and I know that the studio wanted unknown actors for these roles. Besides, I’m old and anyone I can come up with is probably too old to play the part anyway.

But by all means...judge for yourself...

Bathe much?

The face of an angel...what kind we don't know.

And this is Robert dressed up, so we know he's supposed to look good here...

Beyond my hang-ups with Robert as Edward, I also have major problems with the make-up people for the Twilight movies. According to Meyers the vampires are supposed to have beautiful skin. Like porcelain. Not like caked-up 80 year-old women. I think they would have been better off just changing the actors skin coloring with CGI effects. You can tell that they are covered in make-up and it makes them look more like a corpse at a funeral than a beautiful angel.

These problems with the movie wouldn't bother me this much if I didn't love the books as much as I do. I highly recommend the books, but don't watch the movies without reading the books. You won't have any idea the true nature of these timeless characters.

My Superiority

Okay, so maybe I'm not actually a superior being, but...

I am one of those people that has very specific views and opinions. But it's worse than that. I find myself thinking that anyone who disagrees with me on most subjects is either stupid or ignorant.

I'm sure that's a really bad way to think, but I can't really help it. I chalk it up to that fact that my opinions and beliefs are so strong. AND that it's a family trait. Bad genes I guess (or good, depends on how you look at it).

Let me give you some examples:

• Politics - although, to be fair, most people who have strong political feelings think that people who don't think as they do are stupid.
• How to raise children - Yes...I KNOW I don't have kids, but that doesn't mean that I don't have to deal with the fall-out of terrible parenting on a daily basis as a teacher.
• Religious beliefs - I believe what I believe because I believe it's right...so there!

Those are some big ones, but basically any opinionated topic, I believe I'm 100% right and everyone else is stupid or ignorant. Sorry.

Why I Can't Sleep At Night...or...Wolf Spider Babies

So did you read the title for this post? Really...that does say it all. However, I will tell you a long and convoluted version of what my post title really said oh, so succinctly...

Rewind to Saturday night: As I snuggled down into my covers on that chilly fall night, I noticed what I perceived to be a hairball on the covers over my chest. My cat, Bella, has long hair and has a tendency to shed large hairballs. I flicked the covers to move the hairball...and watched it scuttle away. SCUTTLE!!! Hairballs aren't supposed to scuttle.

The lights were still on, and I looked down and saw a giant spider sitting on my Kindle. It was HUGE and brown. My first inclination when I see spiders is to get a tissue and pick up the spider, squishing it in the tissue before throwing it away. There was no way I was doing that with this big of a spider. It was every bit of 3 inches across. Before I could get something to kill it, the spider went under my bed.

Now, I don't keep a bunch of stuff under my bed. At the time there was a duffel bag and a clear, plastic comforter bag. However, I couldn't find that spider anywhere.

I was understandably freaked out. I hadn't been able to really inspect the spider, but I remember it being all bumpy looking and wondering to myself if those were baby spiders on its back...but I dismissed that as crazy-thinking.

Fast-forward (although we're still in the past here...) to Monday night. As I was pulling back the covers and checking for spiders, the huge spider came out from under my covers (MY COVERS!!) and stopped at the edge of the bed. As I went to go get a shoe (the tissue method was out), my cat jumped at the spider and it went under the bed...again. I got on my knees with my Converse in hand, but still couldn't find the spider. I then spent a restless night sleeping, but that was nothing compared to what was coming.

I started talking to people at work about my spider problem. Work reactions did not make sleeping any easier. Then I did the worst thing possible...I Googled "large brown spider". I found a spider website and couldn't really find anything that looked like my spider. The closest thing was a Wolf Spider, but it just didn't look big enough or bumpy enough. Then I found it...

Oh, yeah... A wolf spider with babies all over its back! BABIES! Around 100 spider babies! Oh my gosh!

Now I really couldn't sleep. What if all the babies decided to leave the mother ship? Every time I laid down, I would imagine those baby spiders crawling all over me! It's been terrible. I keep thoroughly checking my bed. I mean, this spider thinks my bed is its house! I did find a wolf spider trapped in my tub Thursday morning and killed it, but I'm sure it wasn't as big as that mother spider with all the babies.


I decided I was going to have to bomb the house if I didn't kill or catch (I'm afraid to try to kill it because I doubt hitting it with my Chucks is going to kill all those babies!) the spider in the next few days. So, I picked up a bug and spider bomb (3 actually) at Wal-Mart tonight. I'm going to try to bomb the house while I'm at my parents' house tomorrow. At least it'll make me feel better!

Wish me luck!

The Perils of Online Ordering

I hope to never have to order things online for other people ever again.

My father is getting ready for his annual elk hunting trip and wanted me to find him a specific hand-held GPS online. Dad doesn't do the internet and Mom has a hard time ordering stuff online because of their slow dial up connection. That meant that Dad asked me to find and order the GPS for him. As if finding one and going back and forth as to if he should get a refurbished one or a new one (he went with the new one), wasn't enough trouble, he then wanted me to order one for his buddy that was going with him. I guess Ted also can't get online and order stuff for himself. Ted wanted a refurbished one, which meant I had to order from two different sites.



Fast forward a week later...neither GPS had arrived. Dad was in a panic. I told him that his could take up to 8 business days, so he wasn't too worried, but Ted's should have arrived already. Well, it gets worse... When ordering the GPS units I had to create an account on each site. I decided I didn't want to get emails from these places, so I put the accounts under my Dad's name and email. Only I got the email wrong. I thought his and Mom's gmail account was the same as their Socket (their service provider) account, but it wasn't. So I ended up having all the order and tracking info sent to an email address that we didn't have access to. Yep...stupid, I know. I didn't realize what kind of problems that would cause or I would have double-checked the email address or just used my info.

I didn't even save the web site addresses of the places I bought the units from. I had to go into the history of my computer and try to figure out which sites I bought from. I looked up the contact information and gave the numbers to my mom so she could call them. But she waited until today...almost 2 weeks after I originally ordered them. One place she couldn't get a hold of, but the other said that the order was canceled. She neglected to figure out which order was which. However, I was supposed to re-order it.

After doing some more research (and to make a long story short..er), I found out that I was mistaken on the two sites that I had used and as to which was which. Both sites had canceled the orders for various (stupid) reasons...which I would have known about if there hadn't been the whole email address debacle.

I was so frustrated. I was mad at myself for the whole email problem, then I was mad that Dad didn't just order his own stuff. I was mad that Mom didn't ask more questions when she called the company.

In the end, we got them re-ordered and they'll be here in time for the guys to figure them out (hopefully) before they leave for Colorado.

I hope I never have to do something like this again!

Ms. Fixit and the Weird Smells

There has been a weird smell in and around my kitchen for several days now. The smell reminded me of mouse urine. Yep...mouse urine. I'm not even going to go into how I know what that smells like, but I have cats that like to bring in mice to play with...sometimes the mice escape. 'Nuf said.

I decided to take everything out of the pantry, get rid of any out-dated food and clean everything. Add to that the fact that the middle shelf in the pantry has been about to come crashing down at any minute because of a screw that is loose, and it was time to do something about the pantry. I took all the food out a shelf at a time.

Here's the Before Pantry

Here's the stuff from my bottom shelf

Here's the stuff from my middle shelf - along with the shelf!

Here's everything that's getting thrown away.

When I went to figure out how to fix the shelf that was about to crash onto the pantry floor, I found that it wasn't because the weight of the food, but because of shotty building. Apparently the builder who put in the shelves tightened the anchor too much and put a huge hole in the sheet rock. Instead of replacing the sheet rock like he should have done, he just put a small piece of wallboard over the hole and screwed the shelf onto that wallboard that was about 1/8 inch thick. The ONLY thing holding up the shelf on that side was the second screw.



I was soooo... mad. Why in the world anyone would think that would actually hold any weight for an extended period of time. What a lazy way to fix something.

It took me awhile to finally figure out how to fix it. I tend to be a fix-it person. I always work to fix things myself. I tend to be a handy-woman. The ability to fix things without the proper tools or supplies is one of the genes I've gotten from my dad, so I got out the toolbox and started digging through it to find some way to fix the shelf without having to move all the shelving braces to a new spot in the wall. In the end, I just got a new anchor and used it along with the aforementioned piece of wallboard.

The "After" look

After getting everything put back into the pantry, I decided to mop the floors. It was while mopping the floors that I finally figured out where I think the smell was coming from. I just turned the heater on this week, and remembered that I hadn't cleaned the filters yet this year.

The filters actually looked like they hadn't been cleaned in over a year. I don't know when the last time I cleaned off the filters was, but it's done now and I'm hoping the smell is gone with the dust!

UPDATE: After cleaning the filters, I've decided it wasn't the filters that was causing the smell. It was two sacks of nonburnable jars and cans that I had in the pantry. I'm waiting for a good time to drive them down to the dump. I didn't want to put them on the back porch because animals get into them. I didn't think they would smell because the jars had lids and the cans were rinsed out. Or at least I thought they were rinsed out...

Please Tell Me Why...

I have a question to pose...why do students not care about their grades? I mean, that has to be the only reason they don't do their work after I spend days explaining how to, then give them a handout that explains how to (just in case they forgot or weren't listening), then give them a book that explains how to and THEY STILL WON'T/DON'T DO THE WORK!!!

Honestly...why? I just don't understand. My students are working on their research papers. Today their notes and works cited were due (150 points) at the beginning of the hour and 90% of the students didn't have them done. I gave them until the end of the hour (my plan all along), but after 7 days of computer time to research and work on notes, most were still completely unprepared. How hard is it to look at the text citation information given to you (via the database source; this is information like: author, title, publisher, etc.) and compare it to the instructions for putting it in MLA format. It is literally just plugging your information (which was provided for them; they didn't have to go find it themselves) into the provided format. This takes no English abilities. It's just following instructions. Regardless if a kid ever plans on having to research anything ever again, they do need to know how to follow instructions.

I HATE research paper time...more than the kids ever will. It is full of whining, complaining, me having to end up doing part of the papers myself, and, of course, the grading, grading, grading. Why these kids think I do it for fun is beyond me. As if!

So, if anyone out there has any suggestions as to why kids act this way or how I can combat it or fix it, let me know!

I'm A Reader Again!

I love to read. I always have. My earliest childhood memories always include me reading something. I would escape my own life and become someone else by just opening the pages of a book.

I still love to read, but somehow I have relegated reading to that 10 minutes right before I go to bed. Every once in awhile over the last few years, I would get a hold of a really compelling book and read for hours at a time. Most of the Harry Potter books were read strait through with only a short nap to sustain me through the hours of reading. However, that was not the usual, and 10 minutes a day was just not enough for me, and so I have been feeling the pull of reading.

There are still times when I want, need, or simply, love, escaping my own life and becoming someone else. Maybe this is why I tend toward Fantasy and Regency fiction. I love the regal lives of the British aristocracy and the glimpses of life among the elves and faeries. Both are totally opposite of my small town reality.

I have been reading much more lately, spending an average of 45 minutes a night reading. And I'm loving it! Today, when I got home, instead of turning on the TV and vegging out to relax from work, I turned on my Kindle and spent almost 2 hours finishing the book I was reading.

I've been taking advantage of all the free Kindle books on Amazon. I have to be careful, because many of them are the first in a series that are designed to suck you in so you purchase the rest of the books in the series. I love a good series, but I don't want to have to be buying that many books. Still, there are a lot of free Kindle books out there by new authors or authors who want you to be introduced to their genre or style of writing and are willing to give away a few books to do so. I am actually starting a series right now, but with the first book free and the other 2 under $4 each, it's still a pretty good deal if I decide to read all three books.

I have gotten skunked a time or two with the free books. There are a few that I never read past the first chapter or so, and one that I read all the way through waiting for it to get good (it never did), but I've discovered some great books as well.

So, if you're a reader who has lost your way, pick up a good book and start reading again! There are lots of sites to help recommend good books, or just take a chance. Sometimes, a book IS as good as its cover suggests!

I'm Getting Behind Again!

Sorry folks (all 3 of my readers). I've been getting behind in my posting again. I keep thinking of things to write about, but not when I'm around my computer.

Let me just talk about how I'm having to treat one of my classes like a bunch of little kids. Our school is a consolidated school and isn't in the middle of either town. Because of that, the drivers are not released at 3:00. Instead, they are held in classes until all the buses have gotten well away from the high school. This is probably due to the fact that teenagers are terrible drivers, especially when getting away from the place they dislike the most!

I have always felt that this 12 minutes or so was the kids' time and I just let them talk among themselves as long as it didn't get out of hand. Not this year! This year my 7th hour class has about 5 boys in it that are good friends. Their idea of being a good friend is to constantly harass, bully, put-down and make fun of each other. Which would be fine...if they weren't doing it in my class. It is hard enough to keep them from doing it during class time, but it was impossible once the bus riders had left the room.

I'm not sure why boys (and these are worse than any I've seen before) feel it is necessary to put each other down and make fun of each other all the time. There's a lot of "mama" jokes and calling each other names...all in the sake of fun. Add into the mix that these boys HATE English.They are country boys through and through and do not see any need for English class. "I speak good English, what do I need that class fer?"

Anyway...they were behaving terribly during this down time. After some consultations with the principal and vice principal, we decided the class should be kept busy, even though class was over.

I have chosen SSR (Sustained Silent Reading). During SSR time, there is absolutely NO TALKING! And no grade, so it's not like they are doing an extra assignment that the other students who ride a bus don't have to do. Boy do they HATE this. None of these kids are readers to begin with. I am even reading with them.

I gave them a week to get used to the idea with me shushing them and reminding them not to talk before I finally wrote two boys up (discipline referral) on Friday for talking (one was trying to ask me a question). SSR = NO TALKING! They are even more fired up about it now. But they were good today. They grumbled, but once I told them that we were starting and the anyone who talked would be written up, they all started reading (or at least pretending to read).

I've told them if they can go a reasonable length of time (I'm thinking 2 weeks), without causing troubles in class, I will consider doing something besides SSR at the end of the day. They have yet to be able to go a full day without someone talking smack to someone else.

Teachers just aren't paid enough. As it is I spend countless hours preparing lessons and grading papers, but it's discipline and classroom management issues like these that really show we're not paid enough. Just because your "little angel" is fine at home, doesn't mean that they act the same way when in a room with multiple hormone producing kids their age!

Technology In A Classroom Without Computers?

I love technology. I may not be super experienced with new technology, I manage to get by. I am currently working on creating a wiki page for my English classes as well as a Twitter site. I wish my kids were as excited about technology as I am. It is hard to get them excited about it when they have limited access to computers at school.

I have two student computers, neither of which are even hooked up. I may go ahead and hook them up, but it's such a waste of space considering how slow they are. There are a few computers (6 if they all work) in the library. The kids can go in there before school, but they don't like that because they have to be quiet. We have a computer lab, but the students aren't allowed in there without a teacher (although they often do anyway).

Many of my students are able to access a computer at some point in time during the day, but some do have to make the extra effort to do so. I'd guess that about 60% of my kids have internet access at home, with a few more having computers without internet access.

None of the tech issues stop me from trying to bring technology into the classroom. I have a teacher web site that I pay $30 a year for even though the kids never use it. I'm going to make my honors students use the wiki page though. I have to finish it, then test to make sure it won't be blocked on the school computers. I'm going to post a new question each week that the students will have to comment on. They will have a week to log on, so they should be able to find time and a computer at some point in the week.

I have also started a Twitter account for just my English classes. I'm going to post updates about upcoming assignments and due dates. I'm pretty sure Twitter is blocked on the student computers, but they can access it at home if they want to use it. I think it would be a really cool way for kids to get reminders on when assignments are due.

We'll see how all of this goes. I've had technology ideas like this before that go to the wayside because it's too hard for the kids to participate.