zonkered.net

Having a hideous day at work, but this is making me smile: Things to Do When I Am The Vampire.  My favorites:

3. The Hero will come armed with holy water, a cross and a stake. I will come armed with a 5.56 mm assault rifle and grenades. If the Hero has to cross open ground, there is no better way to reach out and touch someone than with a sniper rifle.

52. Although firearms are useless against me and the concubines they work quite effectively on the Hero and his friends. Therefore all concubines will be armed and taught to shoot. They will use hand and fang in attack only as a last resort.

63. As cute as the Vampire Slayer is, there are other girls just as cute who are not capable of destroying me.

The Smart Bitches have even more hilarity.

I have a sad addiction to category romance novels – categories being those thin books available for sale in a grocery store near you. I started reading them my freshman year of college when the local More 4 (later EconoFoods) was as close as I could get to a bookstore, and while I have managed to kick the habit for extended periods of time in between then and now, I still have a weakness for them.

This is why I have two Harlequin Presents novels coming tomorrow from Amazon.  Part of me kinda feels ashamed.

More so than other categories, and definitely more so than full-length romance novels, a Presents novel is likely to be so cliched it’s like following a recipe:

1 overbearing, tempestuous rich hero. Typically Italian, Spanish, Australian, British, Greek, or a mythical desert sheik.

1 innocent/probably somehow wronged heroine. Bonus points if she’s a virgin or badly maligned ex-girlfriend of the hero. Further bonus points if she’s an innocent virgin but the hero arrogantly disbelieves this because she’s so worldly or beautiful

1 exotic locale

1 element of illogical drama! Examples include the ever popular SECRET BABIES, coerced marriages, boss/secretary romances, and the afore-mentioned innocent virgin believed to be experienced thing.

Stir to combine and cook for 100 hundred pages, or until Happily Ever After has been achieved.

No, I have no idea why I keep reading them either. They’re the literary equivalent of a cheesy daytime soap opera, and equally addicting.

What I find hardest to swallow about the whole Misha hoax is that so many people believed it.  A four year old girl raised by wolves and trekking 1900 miles to find her parents?  And no one wondered if maybe it was fiction?

Sometimes I wonder.