K I T S C H — Cate's Blog

Monday, August 16, 2004

We care a lot about your upholstery. Yeah, you bet we care a lot!

I came upon the sad, bewildering story of the woman and the couch (and the fusing thereof) via Uncle Bob, among others.

It's horrifying in, oh, so many ways, but here's something else that's pretty scary. When I first went to this site on Saturday night, I saw an "Ads by Google" section that featured -- I kid you not -- three sites for slipcovers and one for a weight-loss camp.

So, for those of you keeping score:

Horrifying Ads by Google = 4
Sensitivity = 0

Today when I checked it out again? Two sites for weight-loss camps and two sites for dating fat chicks.

All right, then. I believe that brings our grand total up to, oh:

Horrifying Ads by Google: 8
Sensitivity: 0

Ouch.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

The stupidest story ever told

I have a guilty confession to make. I go through periods where I read romance novels. I know, that's really sad.

And I'm not talking about just any old romance novels -- some of which are quite well written, incidentally. No, I'm hooked on the nastiest cheap crack of the romance novel world: the Harlequin Presents from the late '70s and early '80s. And by "cheap" I don't just mean that I won't buy them unless they're selling for a quarter or less. Nope. I'm referring to the absolute dregs of literature.

These are the books where the reluctant heroine is forced to marry some rich guy she doesn't know in order to save the family business/estate/reputation from utter ruin. You know, that sounds an awful lot like prostitution to me, but the writers like to try to gussy it up and pretend that something noble and lovely and romantic is happening here.

The successful hero, at the ripe old age of, like, 32 is always devastatingly attractive, and the virginal young beauty can't resist his advances, even while telling herself she detests him. She can't reconcile the hatred she rightfully holds for his controlling, misogynist, possibly stalkerish and just plain boring personality with this strange new...tingling sensation she has, you know, down there when she gazes upon the well-formed thighs barely concealed by his stylish tan gabardine slacks, wisely paired with a black silk shirt that clings fondly to his chest hair.

Whew. Lordy! Is it a little hot in here, or was that just a run-on sentence?

So, inevitably, about 30 pages later, she decides that she must be in love with him. I mean, why else would she allow him to drug her with the probing of his rough, manly tongue or tweak her delicate rosebuds into submission? That would make her a woman in control of her own sexuality, and we certainly can't have any of that.

Yeah, icky.

Look, I know I'm not exactly going out on a limb by condemning 20-year-old Harlequin romances. Still, it's weird to think of this particularly toxic type of romance being published just a few years before I went off to a university where -- thank God -- no one I ever hung with was wearing any snug tan gabardine trousers.

It's also creepy thinking back to a few dates I had at the start of my freshman year with a man I'll call Mike Earthpig (no relation to aardvarks). When we eventually ended up back in my dorm room, I was willing to make out with him for a while but I really didn't like him enough to want our "bodies twisting together, burning up with heat." (That there's from The Stupidest Book Ever Written, which I promise to get to soon.) When I told Mike it just wasn't going to happen, he said, "You know, I could rape you right now, and you wouldn't be able to do anything."

Evidently a charmer, right? And somehow I doubt this loser was suggesting a bit of sophisticated role-playing either.

The worst part of all was that I didn't disable him with a swift kick to the groin. Hey, it was 1985, and I was stupid and young with bad self-esteem. What can I say? I'm sure the prevalent attitudes of the day also contributed to my dumb-assity, but I am willing to bet that the creepy Harlequin Presents I read when I was a teen made me think that this behaviour really wasn't all that horrific or warped.

(For the record, Mr. Earthpig left peacably, and that was our final date.)

She is beautiful in every single way

I'm currently on one of my Presents benders, and I just finished Patricia Lake's Fidelity from 1984. I will say, in Patricia's defense, that while there's no doubt this is a monumentally stupid read, it's not one of the most harmful ones I've ever encountered. At least the hero doesn't rape the heroine. ("Don't worry about me! It's okay. He loves me, and he's just, you know, kind of intense! Right? Right?")

And, fortunately, no one utters the phrase agapi mou. Now, I don't have a Greek-English dictionary in front of me, but based on my past perusal of the Harlequin Presents ouevre, I'm pretty sure that means "half-witted, obedient sperm receptacle."

That said, the obsessive use of the word "beautiful," and all the variants thereof, had me howling before I was even halfway through this crapfest. First the author as omniscient narrator reassures us that the heroine, Marie-Claire, is indeed beautiful (p. 16). I suspect this is mainly so that Patricia won't have to bother giving poor Marie-Claire even a trace of a personality. And why would she need one? She's beautiful, dammit! Everybody tells her so.

In fact, everyone tells her, on average, every 10 pages. That's right. That works out to, what, every five minutes or so of reading time? Her cousin tells her at least a few times, although this isn't Hazzard County and he doesn't show any signs of wanting to get into her Dazzy Dukes. He's just, like, telling a chick what chicks most want to hear, you know?

Some random geezer tells her he's happy to listen to her problems because he's "always kind to beautiful young women." How truly fortunate for her that she's not some fat, old, ugly bitch!

But most of all, the hero tells her, and tells her, and tells her again that she's beautiful. Quite frankly, he sounds a little mentally deficient to me, which makes it even harder to believe that he's a self-made millionaire (1984 dollars or just shoddy research?) who owns hundreds of luxury hotels and is only 35 years old.

Not that poor Marie-Claire will be booking a flight to Norway at Nobel prize season any time soon. After all, she sees Lee in the deserted pool area of one of his hundreds of luxury hotels, and he tells her with a "low, husky" voice, "You're very beautiful." He follows that up with a classic "detaining her, not by force but with a warning" wrist clasp that would have me smiling soothingly and politely while anxiously scanning the area for an emergency phone or at least a pool noodle to fend him off with, should he cross the line from "super-fucking annoying" to "dangerous."

Of course, if she ever demonstrated that she had even a smidgen of intelligence, he'd turn around and run like hell. Long words would probably work here. If she said, "Dude, your supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is showing," I'll bet he'd be so taken aback that she'd have more than ample time to escape.

She doesn't want to escape, though. She voluntarily goes on dates with him, and we're not even talking community service. And he certainly keeps her on the straight and narrow. When she suggests that a mutual friend, Rima, is "so nice," Lee gives her a gentle, psychotic, creepy reminder of what's truly important. "Yes, she is," Lee agreed, watching her intently. "But you're beautiful, Marie-Claire -- dammit, I can't take my eyes off you."

Ooh, goosebumps! Why can't Peeter act like this? One of our more romantic rituals is re-enacting the Adam Sandler mockery of Melrose Place's Andrew Shue on SNL, where he keeps slurring things like, "Amanda...I love you. When you're not around? I think about you."

Of course, that's really not far from the touching story of Lee and Marie-Claire, is it?

Oh, and the funniest part of all? Lee almost ran over her with his car. In a different country. Five years ago. When she was 15 years old. And he's been dreaming of her ever since. After all, she is beautiful. Didn't you get the memo?

As he puts it, "You took my breath away even then, with your beauty -- half-child, half-woman. You're even more beautiful now."

All right, just stop that. We fucking get it. And there are medications now to address that sort of thing.

You know, the more I think about it, I just can't recommend this book enough.