The Pregnant Goat

Out in the boonies where my mother lives, there's a ranch where people raise and sell llamas. It's only a few blocks from my mom's house. Every time I go visit her, I walk over to the llama ranch to see the llamas. They're really beautiful and graceful, and they have such big eyes and long eyelashes. They look very intelligent, and they're curious--they all come over to look at us when when we go by to look at them!

The people with the llamas also have a herd of goats. This time the goats were even more interesting than the llamas. They were totally pregnant. I've never seen anything quite like this pregnant goat. She looked like she'd swallowed a flying saucer. It was kind of disconcerting, actually.

And a Lump of Coal

This is a Nintendo DS Lite, and my little sister wants it. She is not a brat, she is not spoiled (in fact, she's deprived, in my opinion) and she did not throw herself onto the floor of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory screaming that she had to have it. She mentioned it to me when I saw her last, a few weeks ago.

I e-mailed our father to ask if he had already gotten it for her, in which case I would have gotten her some games for it. There are age-appropriate games for this thing, with such titles as "Build a Bear Workshop", "Hamsterz Life" and "Charlotte's Web."

Our dear father responded saying that she doesn't need this game, that she already has the "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome, and that even if she had this game (meaning if I buy it for her) they will probably not let her play with it, because she doesn't need to "zombie out" in this way. My dad fancies himself a non-consumerist hippie, but only when it's convenient for him. Please, they live in an affluent neighborhood where white people and a handful of Asians who don't want to live around people of color and poor people go to live, and her mother drives a Mercedes. Hypocrites! The last time I saw my sister, her hair was a rat's next, uncombed, her pants were five inches too short and her shoes didn't match anything else she was wearing (none of it matched, actually). Why not get her some cute clothes? Soon enough she will have to deal with breasts, bras, body issues, and ugly office-appropriate clothing.

I'm hardly saying they're neglectful parents... they're just so out of it, so cheap (they can WELL afford the stupid Nintendo DS), and they dress her so goddamned ugly.
It's really a shame. And at my age (no longer in my twenties, shall we say) and my dad's (61) I can't exactly go off on him the way I'd like to. I'm old, he's old... I can't really just tell him where to shove his granola. My poor sister. Shall I give her a ball of homespun wool (I can pick the little fuzzies off my rug and save them for this) and two sticks to knit with as her educational, non materialistic Christmas gift?

I have half a mind to go out right now and buy an overpriced, hot pink velour sweatsuit that says "SPOILED JUICY BRAT" or "HOTT JUICY KID" (or some such nonsense) on the back and send it off to her... WITH the Nintendo DS Lite. In pink.

Twilight

I've just finished reading, in rapid succession, the three novels in the "Twilight Series," a vampire teen love story/thriller by author Stephenie Meyer. I thought it was a trilogy, but apparently there is another novel in the works.

Twilight has a cult following, and is quite a phenomenon. (A movie is forthcoming.) It taps into a lot of the romantic fantasies that make people tick, I think. There's a gorgeous guy (Edward) who is mature (he's something like 100 years old, though physically he's stuck forever at age 17), rich, generous, protective and hot. The female protagonist, Bella, is sort of the classic heroine of romance novels: smart, beautiful but she doesn't know it, stubborn, headstrong yet vulnerable, kind of unemotional with most people, but of course extremely passionate with the guy she's in love with, and so forth. I think that's the gist of the romantic plot, but there are many twists and turns, and the novels create and describe the magical/supernatural realm in ways that really pull you in! They're very fun to read... Freud be damned... and adolescent literature is still a genre that I love.
Although a lot of adolecent lit does have sex in it (did that start with Forever, in 1975, by Judy Blume?), the Twilight series (SPOILER ALERT!) doesn't. It's a big sexual tease, actually!