All I know is, we started playing the Horrify the Twilight Noobs game (which is the best ever, and something you get to do once you've read the books: "No, he literally sparkles. It's not a metaphor. 'Like diamonds.' Have I told you about the vampire baseball?"), and I would lay something like "imprinting" or "suicide by public sparkling" on them, and I'd get this giant ". . ." in return. Like, three people, all stunned silent. And then they'd finally recollect themselves and go, "Okay... wait, let me get this straight..."

It's a two-hour conversation in which Rinna, Lady Chi and I discuss Harry Potter, Twilight, the Lexicon case, fandom, religion, sex, feminism, politics, racism, aging, depression, kittens, grammar, education, constructive criticism, community theater, and, my God, SHIPPING PREFERENCES. And also, Alan Rickman. Bonus feature: my Emmett Cullen impression.

Cleolinda's No. 1 unanswered question is a good one, though: What's it like doing it with the undead? "Was it like fucking a popsicle?"

Just when you're ready to break up with the Internet, forever, and take back the lingerie you bought it, you stumble on things that remind you that it's sort of good for something.

My favorite “Twilight”-related blog, the hilarious loves-it-and-hates-it-and-is-totally-obsessed-with-it “Cleoland,” at http://cleolinda.livejournal.com (note to readers: adult discussion and language sometimes exists on this particular blog, so don’t say you weren’t warned), puts it this way: “Yeah, it’s like, Bella wants to be a vampire but she doesn’t want to be a vampire before she’s had sex as a human, and Edward doesn’t want her to be a vampire but he wants to get married, but Bella doesn’t want to get married unless she can be a vampire, but Edward won’t have sex with her until they get married, and then you put the fox and the grain in the boat and you leave the goose back on the riverbank.”

Author and blogger Cleolinda Jones compiled several much-read commentaries on each of the Twilight books at her LiveJournal, and they're a joy to read — even more so than Meyer's bad-fanfiction-esque prose. (In case you're interested, her wiki works quite well as a Twilight guide for dummies — er, in this case, the lucky uninitiated.)

"It was at that point that I started getting the weird hate mail - comments that I should be 'put down', that I'm a 'loser' and a 'fag'. You haven't lived until you've gotten strange and inaccurate death threats from Harry Potter fans, I guess. That said, the funniest complaint I ever got was early on, from a Van Helsing fan asking how dare I make fun of this movie. I mean, of all the movies to champion . . . that one?"

Oh, also: apparently the book is mentioned in the Observer today, wherein a number of titles the Bible in txt-speak, the Odyssey in haiku) are accused of, basically, causing the downfall of Western civilization. I had no idea obliterating our cultural past could be fun and profitable!) Fortunately, I think if I'm reading this Very, Very Serious article correctly), my book gets off the lightest, because the reviewer admits that I'm going after "James Cameron and Mel Gibson, not Shakespeare and Dickens." Also, he concedes the hilarity of the results. That's a direct paraphrase, people. (LJ)

I get Total Film and I've found in the past its book reviews to be so inept that I don't even glance at them anymore. If the book's not about Star Wars or LOTR, they never give it over three stars. You got two stars anyway. The piece on your book is brief and quite mean. It begins with "You know the Abridged Scripts that Total Film run?",which basically tells you the entire review consists of 'we've done this first, and better, so keep buying our magazine, oh dear God, please, everyone reads Empire instead, and we have children to feed!'. (A reader on LJ)

And then Empire also gave the book a bad review, if I recall correctly. Bless. Can't find it at the moment, though.