Wednesday, December 22, 2010

"Light" is Found in Twilight and Bud Light - Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

My friend Val was on Facebook going through the same guilt cycle all of us Late To The Party/Brain Cell Having Twilight readers go through. For those not familiar, it goes something like this:
  1. Twilight enters your universe. Someone gives you a copy, or throws it down in disgust in shared living space, whatever. You pick it up.
  2. (OPTIONAL) Allow it to sit, gathering dust and being shunned, for several days/weeks/months.
  3. Have minor hissy fit along the lines of "oh WHATEVER, I'll just get it over with so I can get this crap out of the house."
  4. Read entire book in three hours.
  5. Deny having read book or change subject when it comes up for four days to a week and a half.
  6. Finally snap and moan to your friends, "WHY did I read it all? Why why why?" in the kind of tone usually reserved for eating an entire bucket of Halloween candy after a slow kid-traffic year.
  7. Realize that all of your friends have gone through this same shame spiral.
It's a real problem, but the good thing is that based on the Law of Probability alone, your chances of being the only person in your friend group who has gone through this are extremely slim. If somehow you manage to be the only person who has read it, you should immediately buy a Cosby sweater and get a mustache tattooed on the side of your finger, claim you read it ironically, and commit yourself to full hipsterdom for about two years (minimum).

So I hopped on Val's Facebook to be like "yeah, Mom left her book club copy laying around when I was on spring break in Florida and I couldn't resist," but then I had a stroke of brilliance and wrote:
It's because they're like cold Bud Light on a hot summer day. You know you're wasting your life drinking/reading them but they go down so fast and before you know it you've pounded down all the books/a thirty rack in four hours.
I kind of threw that out and then clicked away, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized...oh my God, Twilight IS Bud Light. Think about it.

Full disclosure: Just looking at that aluminum bottle makes me want to drink it. Those aluminum bottles are proof God loves us and wants us to be happy with our sub-zero, 0 Kelvin beer. Even though I KNOW it's Bud Light in there, the glorious cold beverageness promised by those cans gets me past the grossness of Bud Light. That is POWER.

They both, as established previously, are satisfying in a very abstract, objective way that has nothing to do with their actual beer- or literatureness. They're both shallow, cheap, American-made minor crimes against humanity. When indulging in either, you know you should be consuming something of much better quality from Europe or Russia or something, but these are available and much easier to consume. Both items sacrifice taste for cheap thrills, be those thrills the ability to drink more beer for less calories or sub-romance-novel writing featuring abusive teen relationships. Both names involve the word "light" despite being the monikers of clear forces of darkness.

What does this mean?

I can only assume that it is part of a massive conspiracy aimed at speeding up the complete decay of culture in America and someday the world. Luckily, most people outside America have the sense to turn their noses up at both of these items, so the evil plot is encountering resistance, but I think the signs are clear, people: we must resist the Evil Forces of Dumb by reading good books* and drinking good beer**. DO NOT AFFORD THE IDIOCRACY A SINGLE INCH!!

* If you need help, start with The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. You want the translation with the black cat sitting in front of a red sunset.

** Support your local microbrew!

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