Flight (The New Moon Walkthrough Ch. 19)

"We made our flight with seconds to spare"

Have you ever been on a flight? Has anyone at any time ever gotten to the airport with seconds to spare and just made the counter? Oh you have? That's because it was pre-9/11 wasn't it. While I'm against shoehorning the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 into any story just for the sake of doing it, I'm also kind of for it when you reflect on how much it changed life in the US. Bill Maher openly declares that the security protocols instituted after 9/11 are less "war on terror" and more "war on travel." You can't just show up at an airport and buy a ticket with seconds to spare. You have to be there early, early early. Especially for international flights. Now, granted, two white girls from Washington State aren't exactly on the stop and frisk list, but their behavior would still raise some eyebrows. Besides aren't we missing something here? Like some explanation of where they are.

Last chapter ended with Alice and Bella taking off for Italy from Forks. Now, unless Forks has an international airport (it doesn't) we need some transition from where they were to where they are. Did they take the flight from Seattle or some other city? Is there a layover? I mean there has to be, no plane is going to make the trip from Washington to Italy without refueling. Odds are they stop in either NYC or somewhere in Canada. Ok, we're not there yet, but I'm willing to bet these details about flying aren't coming. Honestly at this point it would just make more sense if they borrowed from the George Lucas and the Muppets to "travel by map."

Alice does a curious thing while the flight is still ascending, she uses the phone, "Alice lifted the phone on the back of the seat in front of her before we'd stopped climbing, turning her back on the stewardess who eyed her with disapproval. Something about my expression stopped the stewardess from coming over to protest."

No that's not what happens at all, at least not in real life. The curious thing about this universe is that Meyer alternates between trying for realism with quasi-scientific explanations of certain things but then ditches all of that when she feels it convenient. The tidal pools from the first book showed at least some basic research into nature. Yet when it comes to plot convenience the real world doesn't matter anymore. If it were consistent, it would still be annoying, but at least it wouldn't be jarring. Here we are supposed to be getting the impression that Alice's phone call is important, too important to wait. She had plenty of time to make this call on their way to Seattle...or wherever so she uses the phone in the plane in defiance of every airplane's rule about not doing so.

It matters because the plane's phones won't work until the airplane is safely in the sky. The reason for this: radio transmissions have the capability of screwing up an airplane's radio tethering to from one control tower to another. Mythbusters proved this back in 2006. Shout conspiracy all you want, but no airline in the world lets you do it.*

The plane is in the air, Alice has hung up explaining that Emmet and Jasper are going to try and stop Edward from killing himself. His plan is a little convoluted and at odds with what we were told last chapter. Edward isn't going to ask the Volturi to kill him, he's going to force their hand by either killing a whole bunch of people or throwing a car through a window (someone saw Spiderman 2). Just like suicide by cop, he's going to expose the vampires and they are going to have to put him down.

That begs the question, who are the Volturi? It's exposition time! For around five pages we get the usual tired tropes about vampires: royalty, powerful, legions of guards, handpicked, yadda yadda. They are also old, three thousand years old in fact; why they are older than Jesus. As lords of vampiredom they enforce the rule, the only rule, the same rule that Woody and Buzz abide by--they can't expose themselves to the human folk. Despite the fact that they have no reason to hide. None at all. Just think about the world three thousand years ago. We're talking the end of the bronze age, the proto iron age is beginning. The Greeks don't even have their written language yet, (still using linear B-the losers) David is king of the Israelites which means weapon of mass destruction=sling, and the Zhou dynasty still has 800 years left in it. The point is that warfare is still a one on one physical affair and the vampires decided to hide from the world instead of setting themselves up as the godkings over humanity? Given their abilities they would have had no match. Perhaps one human gets lucky and cuts a head off or two, but that's it. He has to sleep sometime.

"Is planning to flout that in their own city-the city they've secretly held for three thousand years, since the time of the Etruscans."

Ah the Etruscans, the people that gave us the fascii, the bundle of reeds with an axe in it symbolizing the monopoly of the state over violence. (you can see one in the US Capitol building, it's a replica) Too bad the Etruscans weren't a civilization until the seventh century BC. Being accurate here, would actually make the Volturi seem more fearsome but whatever.

Alice discusses how dangerous and difficult this is going to be. Bella doesn't care because if they kill Edward, they'll probably kill her too and that's ok, because what is living without your sociopathic boyfriend who already dumped you? Alice, to her credit, gets angry, "Knock it off Bella, or we're turning around in New York and going back to Forks."

Ok, so the layover got mentioned. I wonder if it's an idle threat. Is Alice really going to sacrifice Eddie to teach Bella a lesson? Is there a way they can both die? These are the questions I want answered but am thwarted at every turn.

What's frustrating is that there are two side conversations that shouldn't be here in any respect. The first is that Alice mulls over turning Bella into a vampire. I suppose it's a long flight but given that Alice knows Bella's desire does it really make sense to get her hopes up? The second is more plot based.

Alice reports her visions of the future as soon as she gets them to Bella. Edward has asked the Volturi to die, they offer him a job with them because he's oh-so-special. Even though he really isn't, he has faulty telepathy. Then Edward begins to think of ways to expose himself as a vampire. The conflicting visions are good, because it represents the branching timeline given Edward's choice, that's actually-dare I say-clever. My issue is that I can't seem to fathom how far in the future these decisions are. We know from experience that Alice sometimes sees minutes ahead. I'm confused as to whether I should be feeling tension or despair. As they land we aren't told the time of day. It can't be day light out or else Alice is going to sparkle up the airport, but the sense of panic only allows us to assume that it's just Eddie that sparkles. It's too bad also that neither the Peretola airport nor the Sixt Autonoloeggio Firenze are international airports either. For that they are flying into Pisa at the Galileo Galileii airport.

This is important because they have to steal a car to drive to Volterra. They jack a yellow Porsche and now must speed down the highway to cross the forty miles in order to find and save Eddie from doing something incredibly stupid. It's not just the suicide either, it's his method. He's basically going to out every vampire in the world with this one act. All because he has some pain, selfish jerkoff.

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*Caveat. Certain airplines are attempting it, but very careful electromagnetic shielding goes into the plane to protect the cockpit. This is still in the experimental stage.

Can You Hear Me Now? (New Moon Ch. 18)

History time:

Back in 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola made a phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell labs. It wasn't just a normal phone call, if it were, I probably wouldn't be mentioning it. Motorola and Bell Labs (then owned by AT&T) were in competition to build the modern cell phone. When Martin Cooper made the call in 1973, he was effectively telling Engel, "we won." They had done it, built a phone that could be carried (sort of) around wherever a person went. This wasn't the first time, in 1946, a mobile telephone call had been made but the phone wasn't exactly portable, it weighed over 88lbs (40kg) and it was not a cellular phone but a radio telephone. The differences are minor but the point is that this technology is old.

Only within the last decade or so has the use of cellular phones become ubiquitous to the point that the United Nations has declared them to have spread faster than any other technology. This is evidenced by the fact that it seems more odd if a person doesn't have one than if they do. This will all be important in a little bit.

We are not doing the typical chapter summary this week. The reason is that I just realized exactly what the plot hinges on, what is now driving it, and it's utterly ridiculous. In brief here's what happens in the chapter that isn't the real important thing: Jacob comes over, yells at Bella for being a vampire lover, Bella explains that she loves Alice and isn't going to dump her* but can't they all be friends. Everything kind of works out, there's a scene where Jacob almost gets kissin' action until Alice gets a phone call. She looks scared.

Here's where we get going, keep in mind everything I said about the cell phone before.

In the first novel the vampires had cell phones. The poor Swans and Blacks even have Antonio Meucci's device in their houses. People have the ability to make phone calls in this book. I know that I keep hammering that position but I really want to be clear about that fact because it is very curious that no one even thinks to pick up the damn phone:

-Last chapter Alice told us that she had a vision of Bella jumping off a cliff. Instead of picking up a phone and calling her immediately she buys a ticket, gets on a plane, and comes down to save her--getting there too late. See what I mean? If Alice had simply had the vision (of which there are numerous problems but--I'm not going to get into that) then dialed up Bella to make sure she was ok everything would have been fine.

This is another problem I have, that I ought to have brought up earlier. Why did Alice have to break up with Bella when Edward did. I know it would be kind of weird, but Alice could have still been friends with Bella. Is Eddie the king of the Cullens? As much as I hate Ed and Bella, it might have been nice for Alice to continue to have her friend. It's not like Bella left Scientology and now the rest of her clan have to shun her (you can sub in Mormonism/Amish for Scientology there if you prefer).

Back to Alice not calling, maybe she didn't call because she saw that Bella was ok and just wanted to see her. It's a stretch because it goes against specifically what is said by her, but we can still pretend right?

Alice's phone call was preceded by a mysterious phone call that Jacob answers. What happens is this: the phone rings and Jake grabs it. By the way we are at Bella's house but it's the man's role to answer the phone. Jacob answers a few questions, then mutters a derogatory comment about vampires. What Jacob tells the person on the other line is that Charlie is not home, he's at the funeral.

This is the "plot." The person on the other line was Edward asking for Charlie. Why was he doing this? Because Alice told her family that she saw Bella die in the future, at which point she flew down. Edward, who apparently still cares for Bella but not enough to call her on the phone, called Charlie to offer his condolences I suppose--instead of doing anything at ANY POINT EARLIER TO STOP WHAT ALICE KNEW WAS HAPPENING. When he finds out the exact thing that he expected he hangs up.

At this point Alice gets a call from Carlisle. Here's where it gets stupid(er). Because Edward thinks Bella committed suicide, six months after they broke up, he is going to the Volturri (I'm not looking it up) to die. He's going to ask them to kill him, something he can't do himself for whatever reason, because he blames himself for Bella's suicide. This, despite the fact that it's been several months and she could have done so for any number of reasons (broken family issues, other people, realization that she's a horrible person) he can't live without her--even though he dumped her, moved away, and told her he was never going to see her again.

It's also been two days since Alice got to Bella's house. Upon arriving, why didn't she just call to check in, "hey Carlisle, yeah it's me. You know how sometimes I'm wrong with my predictions and don't see everything, well it happened again. Yeah Bella's fine, by the way I can't see werewolves in my visions and the Forks is overrun with trash now, those two statements aren't independent. bye bye."

The entire developing "plot" would be thus eviscerated. The phone call Alice should have made would have prevented Eddie from thinking Bella had died. No need to suddenly head to Italy to save him.

Never mind that the plan is stupid: couldn't they just throw a call to the Italians and let them know that Ed is operating under incorrect information, "Hey Viktor, yeah Alice Cullen. No, Cullen...C-U-L-L-E-N. Yeah, Carlisle's kid, sure whatever. Listen remember Edward, Edward. Kind of douchey looking, spikey hair, angsty for no reason...yeah him, the asshole. Listen he thinks his girlfriend whom he dumped committed suicide and thinks he's responsible...no six months ago...yeah he is self-centered...I know...listen, she's alive and fine...just let him know...I'll see you...I promise I'll visit...ok bye bye"

Boom. Book solved. Instead they have to go to Italy. Does Bella have a passport? She does. Why? Because she needed one to attend a failed attempt by her crazy mom to marry her boyfriend. Odd, that she would need a passport for that.

The thing about cellular phones now is that they have quick access to the internet, if you have the right model. Of course in 2006 they wouldn't have unless you had a BlackBerry or a Nokia Symbian, which was in the book was written. Why is that important? Because in 2006 you didn't need a passport to get into Mexico or Canada. All you needed was a valid ID, and a reason for doing so. The US used to have an open border policy which used to be a big deal given that the US/Canadian border was the largest unprotected border in the world. They stupidly changed that policy in 2009 to prevent...uh, something I'm sure. What I'm saying is that while having a passport let's you cross the border easier, it isn't essential and if you were only planning on going to Mexico for one thing you probably wouldn't grab a passport. Research Meyer.

All of chapter 18 could have been taken care of in two phone calls. Now, we have to chase Alice and Bella to Italy. Which, by the way, Bella decides to up and leave her father, who just loss a close friend, in the care of Jacob who doesn't have the time due to the hunting of Victoria. Nice girl.

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*American President Thomas Jefferson rewrote the bible removing all references to the supernatural, it would be interesting to do that with this series: what we would be left with is the story of a depressed angsty narcissistic girl who falls for a abusive sociopathic boy and his weird cult family. That would be the first book, the second would--as of right now--be about a love square between Bella, Jacob, Alice, and her ex-boyfriend whom we don't see anymore. Without all the vampires and werewolves it almost sounds quite compelling.

Alice, Oh Alice (New Moon Ch. 17)

At the end of the last book, I felt that only two characters were really worth being interested in. That is if they were two characters in a different story. One was Jacob, he seemed nice and genuinely caring toward Bella. So far, that has been maintained here but now he's pretty much a doormat for the narcissistic Bella. The other character was Alice. I liked Alice because she represented an interesting paradox, she was someone that could see the future and yet wasn't crippled by the boredom that knowing what was going to happen always did. She remained cheerful despite the crushing knowledge that the fate of her family was essentially in her hands. Now, because Meyer has run out of ways to use the primary and secondary characters that have occupied most of this book (I can't use the word "plot") she comes back to us.

Is this a good thing? Well, I'm torn here. Alice is waiting for Bella in her house. It's strange though because upon reading it was her I was filled with dread. One thing I have learned about this series, and this writer, is that the more we spend time with a character the more they will become less likeable. Bella, of course is ecstatic that Alice has returned, she no longer has to go slumming with the wolves on the reservation. They almost make out because Alice has forgotten to eat before she came over. And we're starting to lose Alice now...

Alice, who can see the future forgot to grab a little snack before hanging out with the delicious human. Seems like an odd omission for her. Alice however serves another purpose, and that is to move the plot along lest we become inflicted with twenty pages of Bella's groveling. She gets to the point, "Speaking of which, would you like to explain to me how you're still alive?"

For you grammar sticklers out there, yes Meyer is wrong. The question mark is incorrect. Question marks are to be used at the end of sentences that would be considered questions or requests. Not at the end of an imperative sentence in which one person tells another to explain something. Alice was being nice in her wording but that wasn't a request.

She is of course referring to the cliff diving earlier. The dive that she should have in no way survived. The fall yes, but the water no. A fishing trawler should have picked her up in their nets six months from now. Alice is angry, she yells at Bella for jumping off of the cliff, although she tends to view it as a suicide attempt. She gets some points in my book for yelling at her. It seems someone finally gets to call Bella out for her selfishness. Bella denies this, but can she honestly do so? During her free fall she was happy, during her under the sea moment she told everyone who matters (re: Eddie) goodbye. Alice is right to be angry with her although Alice didn't see the complete event. Her prescience missed the fact that Jacob pulled her out of the water, probably because Alice's foresight can only work on things that are possible and not plot contrivances.

"Someone pulled you out?"
"Yes. Jacob saved me?"

Alice sniffs her for some reason. In my version of this story Alice is self aware that she's in a story (because of the future) and remarks, "the god of this world is so stupid."

In the actual story though, Alice detects a bad smell. Now Bella is left with a decision, does she spill the beans on Jacob and the pack for being...well, an actual pack or should she clam up? She's dealing with the prescient Alice, so the odds are that she knows what Jacob and the rest of them are. But she doesn't know whether Alice knows. So she ought to just follow the moral of the story in the MAD TV short "Ragin' Rudolph"--to "always keep your fucking mouth shut."

She doesn't and her reasoning, "It was too hard to keep secrets, I decided. Jacob knew everything, why not Alice too?"

I've had this conversation with various people I know. It's not hard to keep a secret, you just don't say anything. That's it. It's not like a secret is pressure that needs to be released. There are only two reasons that people reveal secrets: the first is to feel important, to brag that they know something that no one else knew before they said it. This reason is hilarious when everyone already knew. The second is to kiss up to the person you are telling the secret to. As if to say "you are important so I'm going to let you in on something, and remember who told you." Bella isn't telling Alice, she's telling the Cullens and by extension Edward. Clearly she's doing this for reason number two.

Her other reason that "Jacob knew everything" is total bullshit. It's not the same situation. Jacob and the wolves knew everything before Bella was in the picture. They had it figured out on their own. Further, Alice should already know, but for some reason she doesn't and I bet I can guess why, but it won't make any sense.

It's the same reason that Laurent was killed by the werewolves. Meyer is going to claim that vampires' powers don't work on werewolves. Maybe one on one Laurent had a chance but there were five of them. She's going to limit the vampiric special powers on the wolves. Edward's telepathy, and the other one's emotional manipulation won't work on them. If that's the case, then it STILL doesn't explain Alice's blindness. Remember what James said at the end of the last book, Alice was psychic before she was turned.

Bella recounts the story up until this point, we are thankfully spared the recreation. Alice leaves to get clothes, although I'm not sure from where. I'm also curious because Alice claimed that she flew to Forks, yet she was driving Carlisle's car. Have they been hiding in the area the whole time? That would be both convenient and stupid. That's not the case because Alice was in Denali visiting Tanya's family, whoever the hell that is.

Charlie comes home. Charlie had something of a crush on Alice we found out earlier, so he's kind of happy to see her. Bella wakes up the next morning eavesdropping on a conversation between Alice and Charlie. Alice gets Charlie to go over everything that happened after the break up. It's a nice scene because it really does make us sympathize with Charlie as a father as he details his helplessness with Bella. It's also nice because for the first time we are dropped hints that he doesn't want Edward to come back.

A day or two goes by (shouldn't Spring break be over by now?) and the doorbell rings. Alice looks up then excuses herself assuming a lack of foresight is foresight itself. Bella puts it together, although this time she actually has the information to do so, "you can't see werewolves?"
-She grimaced. "So it would seem." She was obviously annoyed by this fact--very annoyed."

I'm annoyed too. It doesn't make sense but I've already covered why not two paragraphs ago. What doesn't make even more sense is that if we accept that she couldn't see Jacob rescuing her from the water, that meant that she saw Bella die and then that's it? Couldn't she have checked her future at a later date just to see if she pulled through?

Alice leaves before Jacob enters. Apparently werewolves and vampires can't be in the same room together. More likely I wouldn't want to see the two most likable characters become like everyone else in the same scene. That would be too much.

The Tyrant Lizard King (New Moon Chapter 16)

Despite the fact that the movie is almost 20 years old and contains some factual errors Jurassic Park still holds up in modern scrutiny. Amazingly, the movie's CGI is still as impressive as it was when I saw it in the theaters. I don't know if they were just way ahead of the curve but they still look better than the giant robots in Transformers. The factual errors that it possesses are tricky to categorize, the velociraptors in the movie were larger than the real creatures and they didn't have feathers. The discovery of the Utahraptor after the movie came out actually legitimized the exaggeration of the dinosaurs, and the feathers weren't discovered until after the movie came out either. These two errors are forgivable, sure Spielberg took some liberties by making the raptors more fearsome but it worked out in the long run and it's a movie not a documentary. The trouble in the movie lies not with scientific errors but toward the end.

Our surviving humans are trapped by two angry Velociraptors that have developed a taste for man flesh. The one raptor squats down getting ready to pounce when out of nowhere she (remember they are all female) is snatched by the jaws of the T-Rex. Where previously the T-Rex was announced by the impact tremors of its walk, now it has appeared unnoticed inside the atrium of the Jurassic Park visitor's center. It's a plot quibble, but an important one because it violates an important plot point from earlier in the movie. Although perhaps with all of the running and hiding from the raptors they didn't notice the tremors, it's a possible explanation.

What can't be explained is how in the world Bella hasn't drowned. Last week we left off with her cliff diving then carried off by a riptide. Her last words were "goodbye, I love you."

We pick up this chapter with her describing being banged off of rocks, which doesn't make that much sense since she ought to be being dragged out to sea, although she did mention something about the ocean bottom so there's probably rocks there. Then we get this, "Breathe!' a voice wild with anxiety ordered..."

So what happened here? Did the riptide pull her out of to sea into the path of a boat. Take a good look at the last part of chapter 15, she was screwed. Done for, kaput. She punched her own ticket there, but now someone has rescued her. Fine, but it better not be someone that we know is somewhere else. "Breathe, Bella! C'mon' Jacob begged."

As we say on the internet, GTFO. Nevermind the insane description of "the waterfall pouring from my mouth" to describe the drowning which is actually the opposite of drowning or the odd fact that Jacob's arm is hot in the water (again in violation of everything we know about thermodynamics). He CANNOT be there. She dove off the cliff, she was alone, the riptide carried her off. This is absolute bullshit. A random person in the water carrying her to shore where Jacob is would be implausible yet still possible. This is impossible. Don't give me the wolf thing either, because it's clearly human Jacob that is doing this.

Jacob and Sam are there on the beach. Sam wants to know how long she has been out, "A few minutes? It didn't take long to tow her to the beach." From our perspective here is what happened: Bella dives off the cliff surviving, even though she has no experience with doing so but some people just get lucky. The riptide carries her off. At the same time, Jacob could have only known that Bella was "at the beach" saw her in the water, swam out, grabbed her, swam back, then administered CPR. How long could that have taken? She ought to have brain damage.

As Jacob tells it, he was half-jogging toward the beach and found the tire tracks from the truck. Apparently there are no roads on the reservation. He heard her scream and then chased her out to sea. My whole issue with any of this is that it ignores what carried her out in the first place, Jacob apparently didn't have any trouble fighting the current. Since Bella made the point of describing to us that she was underwater the whole time she ought to have brain damage at the very least. I mean real brain damage from cerebral hypoxia, although the initial symptoms of mild hypoxia are interesting: poor judgment and uncoordinated movement. She's had that the whole time.

Could this whole book be explained by oxygen deprivation?

After rescuing her, we find out that Harry Clearwater--a character we've heard about but never actually met--has had a heart attack. I'm trying to figure out why I am supposed to give a shit, but then I remembered that we are getting toward the end of the book so we need a way to get rid of Charlie. I'm still wondering why he is even in this book.

Then we are "treated" to several pages of Bella opining on Romeo and Juliet and Paris. It's pretty lame and the obviousness of the metaphor Meyer is trying to force on us is about as subtle as an amputation. She wonders if Juliet (Bella) had just married Paris (Jacob) what would have happened?  May be Romeo would have moved on, or maybe the original gangsta would have up and dropped the young count. Bella/Meyer is right about one thing though: Paris only exists to give Juliet a confrontation, but Meyer ignores context again. Paris is only engaged to Juliet after she has married Romeo and Romeo has murdered Tybalt.

We find out that Harry has died. That's about it.

Jacob wakes up and worries about Bella, "don't worry about me.' I croaked."

Really!? She died? Awesome, although it's weird that it was written in the first person. It's like how Moses allegedly wrote Exodus but somehow was able to mention the place and time where he died. Although she's not dead, this was just another instance of Meyer over using the Thesaurus. Croaking would mean that she burped while talking? How appropriate.

The death puts things into perspective for her though, and she finally realizes that maybe attempting to commit suicide was a bad idea. She finally realizes that her life might have an affect on other people that care about her. Her solipsism might actually be disappearing at this point, oh character development where have you been.

Jacob drives her home where she laments upon the fact that she just might have to get over her ex-boyfriend. Could she betray her "absent heart to save my pathetic life?" I don't know what the phrase "absent heart" means, but I guess she's deciding on settling with Jacob. Yes, it's settling for her because she finds him attractive, enjoys being around him, and he treats her like a person. In almost every way he's equal or superior to Edward. I'm not weighing in on Jacob versus Edward as far as the movies are concerned, I'm weighing in on the fact that Jacob doesn't psychologically abuse her. Jake could be distant and unemotional but that would still make him superior because, again, the lack of abuse.

As Bella is thinking about this, she hears Eddie's voice in her head. This means her spidey sense is tingling and then Jacob scents a vampire. Jacob goes into war mode but before he can Hulk out he has to make a decision, "phase or get her out of here?"

We get his decision because we know what happened to Sam's wife, but "phase" is a noun. This is just bad writing, I get that she's trying to avoid using the same word over and over again but she hasn't used any synonym of transformation in twenty or so pages. It wouldn't be repetitive, plus it would avoid her sounding like an idiot for using a noun where a verb ought to be.

Jacob decides to drive away, but Bella sees the car and recognizes it as a Mercedes S55 AMG, Carlisle's car. Of course, it could be anyone's Mercedes but somehow she knows that it is Carlisle inside. Jacob doesn't understand, he's a straight Blood and Bella wants to go back because the Crips are back in town. Bella pleads with him, because she knows that the Cullens are back and that's more than she ever hoped for.

She's straight trippin', "Jake, it's not a war!"

Yes, actually it is. They have territories, treaties, everything. Jake gives up on her fleeing into the woods to get his pack, because there are new vampires. Curiously he remarks that he can't be caught on their territory. This doesn't make sense because haven't they been patrolling their territory ever since they discovered Victoria and Laurent a few chapters ago?

We get another non-sequitor wherein Bella remembers seeing an orange color in the water before she lost consciousness. That color must have been Victoria's hair. She was in the water the whole time too! I don't want to call bullshit again, but if she was there and the vampires have the advantage in the water (contradicting another myth about vampires and water) why didn't she just pull her down? End of book, end of misery...for me.

Inside her own house, the light turns on and someone is there waiting for her. I guess we have to wait until next week to find out...screw that: it's Alice.

Ethics (New Moon Chapter 15)

Ethics, for me is default philosophy. If someone asks me if they ought to be a philosophy major, after at first telling them no I ask them if they like to study ethics. The answer to this question is important, if they can't work through at least some of the basic problems of ethics they have no business in the discipline. Ethics has real world application unlike the theoretical and purely academic study of phenomenology or metaphysics. One of the principle ethical theorists, was, of course, Aristotle. In his Nichomachean Ethics he lays out two types of immoral person: the vicious and the incontinent. The vicious person is the one that is incapable of being moral. The moral choice to refrain from stealing or murder never enters into their head, they have lost the rational capability necessary to make a good choice. The incontinent, on the other hand knows the moral choice but then, for whatever reason (lack of will, cowardice, peer pressure, etc.) they choose wrongly. The important difference is that the incontinent knows they are doing wrong. Aristotle believed that the vicious individual was worse than the incontinent, but after reading this chapter I'm not so certain that is the case.

Spring Break is upon us, as Bella laments on Monday morning. This is a rather flippant observation from Bella given that we now know that she is going to bait in the trap that is being set to catch the vampire currently seeking her death. She also points out that this Spring break she is being hunted and last spring break she was being hunted as well, "I hoped that this wasn't some kind of tradition forming."

A word of advice to potential writers, don't point it out when you are reusing your own plot devices. It's not clever, it only proves that you are aware of it as well.

On Tuesday, less than a page later, we have a brief encounter with Mike and a monologue about how Jacob is in love with Bella. These are two distinct occurrences but cover the same ground. Jacob's feelings are known to Bella and it's obvious to everyone. Bella not sharing the feeling continues to string Jacob along, knowing that he will wait for her to come around since he said as much three chapters or so ago. This is where we come back to Aristotle. The problem for me is that this example sets up the counter argument. Yes, in cases of murder, it is worse to not be aware that it is wrong. However in this case, doesn't it make Bella more moral if she isn't aware of Jacob's feelings, or if she doesn't know that he will continue to bear the torch for her than the situation presented here? Especially when we consider that he is 16 and she's 18. Two years doesn't mean much when you are in your twenties or older, but at that age there are leaps and bounds of maturation that need to be accomplished. I have to go against "The Philosopher" on this one, she's much worse with the knowledge she has.

Back in La Push, the chapter jumps around pretty frequently and we are still on page 2 of it, we find out that Emily can bake a cake, "that would have won over a harder man than Charlie." Emily being a human female in this story serves only the one purpose in her existence, I've seen more female empowerment in porn movies at this point. The other point I want to make is that none of that makes sense. Why is she trying to win him over isn't she married to Sam? When did Charlie hate her or Sam? It's another file in the Charlie mystery: despite the glowing discussions of the Cullens in the previous book, Bella told us that he didn't like Edward. Despite what we know of Charlie and Sam Uley (that he called him to help find his daughter in the beginning of the book) somehow he's got to be won over by a cake. The cake thing also is insulting to men, just because a woman can bake doesn't mean we are going to fall for it. We're all not Homer Simpsons.

Jake and Bella have some lame getting to you know conversation that fills in plot details which would have been more appropriate a chapter or two ago. It concerns his lineage on both sides that was going to make him a werewolf no matter what. We also find out that they are faster than the vampires, and have blood temperatures above 108. I'm able, though not willing to accept that. It's the same as the sparkling thing for her vampires, it's an odd detail but it seems completely unimportant. Why tell us this? Jacob explains something, "I never get cold anymore. I could stand like this'--he gestured toward his bare torso--'in a snowstorm and it wouldn't bother me. The flakes would turn to rain where I stood."

I suppose that explains the cliff diving in the winter, but another tip for the writers out there--if you are going to add a detail like this, do the damn research. Just because he has a higher body temperature doesn't mean he can't lose that temperature. In fact if the snow is melting before it hits him, it means that he is losing heat at a ridiculous rate. That's not even an average understanding of how things like biology and thermodynamics work. And why is he standing there without his shirt on? They just left the house with a whole bunch of people in it.

Jacob wants to talk about the vampires, which makes sense as he is currently trying to kill one of them. So he asks about whether they had any other special powers than the mind reading. Bella is hesitant, "this felt like a question that he would ask of his spy, not his friend. But what was the point of hiding what I knew? It didn't matter now, and it would help him control himself."

Let me reiterate, Jacob is currently hunting a vampire and he wants to know--for his own safety and his brothers, what they are up against. He's hunting a vampire that he knows is trying to kill Bella, but Bella doesn't want to tell him because...I'm not sure why. She wants to hold on to the pain, she doesn't want to betray the guy who dumped her? Someone help me out here. Eventually, I suppose, she realizes her folly and tells him, "Jasper could sort of control the emotions of the people around him...And then Alice could see things that were going to happen. The future, you know, but not absolutely..."

Huh? Of the two abilities that she mentions, she downplays foresight. As in the one ability that might give Victoria foreknowledge of the trap they are setting she decides to mention that second. That would be like the Emperor explaining to Luke in Return of the Jedi that the trap he had set was based on superior tactical knowledge, firepower, logistics, oh and by the way I could kind of tell what was happening before it occurred but that's really not the issue here. I get that she has a death wish but if, as she claims, she cares for Jacob she might want to rethink her priorities.

The conversation ends with Jacob promising to take Bella cliff diving, yes cliff diving--he's going to take the person who claimed that she couldn't walk across a flat surface without falling jumping off a cliff. Those plans aren't going be fulfilled as the wolves have caught a fresh scent which they believe may be Victoria trapped between some mountain range. They've gone out for the kill, Bella shows some concern not realizing that it's five against one which worked pretty well for them with Laurent. That kind of irrationality is actually nice, because it's normal. I'm sure parents were worried when their sons flew bombing missions over Afghanistan, but the odds are kind of in their favor on that one.

What does Bella do? Try to kill herself of course, by going cliff diving alone. This brings back the voice, "No, Bella!' he was angry now, and the anger was so lovely." Yeah, lovely; but then again, I suppose that is the only real emotion aside from impatience that he did show her. It's revealing that she calls the voice her "delusion" but that being the case how can it give new information from before?

As she's being pulled into the riptide, the descriptions get kind of good. The disorientation, the cold. It's also nice that the oxygen deprivation leaves her content, the euphoria that you only get from CO2 poisoning or alcohol. She says goodbye and lets the current pull her away. Since we're only on page 362, I'm assuming she survives although we are in a corner on this one. Because unless the riptide pulled her right into a boat she's done for. The biggest concern is that this is supposed to be a heroic act, it's framed as such which is complete bullshit. Yet this woman is still a role model.