Tuesday, August 16, 2005

that's when I reach for my chihuahua

Here's yet another article about how YA authors, publishers, and presumably librarians are ruining teenaged girls' lives.
Here's the author's email address: janet.shamlian@nbcuni.com

And now, for the fun part. In honor of the recent rash of hysterical "news" puff pieces (during a fucking war, no less) about trashy teen fic, I bring you a List Of Things I've Never Done, Despite Their Occurences In TeenJessy's Favorite Books. As a fun game, try to figure out what the books are!
  1. gotten kicked out of multiple boarding schools
  2. hired a prostitute, then just want to talk
  3. had sex with a prominent scenester quite a bit older than me
  4. taken ecstasy than had sex with my bicurious best friend
  5. shut myself up in a wardrobe
  6. had sex with a vampire, then follow him all the way to New Orleans, causing my xboyfriend and his best friend to follow us, in an attempt to abort the vampire fetus
  7. been a gay male HIV positive serial killer/cannibal
  8. steal from my parents' Native American friend to make gifts for my bandmates so that they could play their instruments without fear on stage
  9. take on an army that has successfully invaded Australia
  10. think my missing memories, actually caused by sexual abuse, were created by alien abduction OR misread my childhood sexual abuse as love and become a trashy hustler (anyone seen Mysterious Skin yet? I'm dying to know how the movie adaptation is!)
  11. moved to NYC to follow my modeling career dream, only to be taken in by a pimp at the bus station
  12. become a vampire
  13. begun a romantic relationship with my brother, the only boy I've seen since puberty, since our mother locked us in the attic
  14. followed my dreams of an elderly black woman to the midwest, after everyone else I knew died of some weird flu thing
  15. tried to catch some bananafish
  16. rode the rails around the country, doing migrant farm labor and collecting folk songs and women

I think we all get the idea.
Actually, the hardest part of this was remembering, past the basics, what some of my faves were.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

despite the fact that only teenagers read it, flowers in the attic is not ya fiction...let me add that i have never died of any debilitating diseases, fallen in love with a boy who's just here for the summer, or joined a coven of witches and save my mass town from an evil witch that came back from the 1600s...oh, and i've never been a perfect size six with blond hair and blue-green eyes like my slightly naughty twin sister, and i haven't joined a babysitting club, despite the fact that i wanted to before my first babysitting experience...

t. (who else?)

Shane said...

1. "Mysterious Skin" came and left here after a week, otherwise I would've seen it.
2. Have you seen this?: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_2934810
I got it from Neil Gaiman's blog, and he comments on it here: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/08/any-stick-to-beat-dog-with.asp

cara said...

I have never accidently time-traveled, taken up residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had a boyfriend named "Ned", died after a bee sting, or done any of the million badbadbad things in the RL Stine/Christopher Pike books that I insisted on reading.

Of course part of the problem may be that I read "adult" books rather young. Even so, I've never been institutionalized, lived in Williamsburg, been incarcerated in a Stalinist labor camp, or been a vampire. Obviously I'm just not learning enough from my reading materials.

PoBaL said...

The list of us that are specifically not vampires, despite what we read as innocent, impressionable teenagers, must be a mile long.
And that's just amongst my friends.
And, of course, the biggie that none of us has ever done, despite every 9th grader being forced to read it: I have never taken something that would make me unconscious to bring my love (that my family hates) to my funeral, only to have him miss the message and kill himself, so that I have to kiss him for the leftover poison.
Dumbass Shakespearian teenagers, for real.