My Obsession with Edward Cullen Obsession: Random Musing about Twilight and the Power of Books

I don’t like lazy arguments. To read articles that mention how Twilight is a terrible influence ‘just because’ really annoys me; how do these authors expect to be taken seriously if they don’t try to ask the questions, however difficult they might be?

You all know by now my opinion of Twilight and following my obsession with everyone’s obsession with Edward Cullen (here, here, here and here).

Twilight and Harry Potter have been compared numerous times. One of the things they both have in common is the attacks they have come under. Harry Potter was said to encourage children to turn to magic, and Twilight is being said to turn girls towards an unreasonable view of love.

I personally think that an innocent curiosity about magic is something most children have. I personally had it, and every friend that I had was just as curious about it than I was (some more so than others). Since we were all carefully monitored by our ever-present parents, we knew that magic wasn’t real, and, after a summer of pretending to be magicians, we got over it.

The effect of Twilight on one’s opinion about love and relationships is a lot harder to handle. First of all, the population targeted, female tweens and teens, aren’t exactly the easiest to talk to; they are dealing with intense changes in their bodies and their lives which make it very difficult for them to express what is going on.

Second of all, love isn’t something easy to talk about with your parents. The idea that you were born out of something else than a cabbage patch can be a little gross (for lack of a better word) for girls that age. And, let’s be honest, even if you have the greatest parents in the world, they are not the first one you are going to turn to when, at 14, you have a huge crush on a boy that will barely give you the time of day.

So what does this mean? Is Twilight a work of the devil or, perhaps, of Harlequin, intent on building a long term audience of heartbroken females who will search forevermore for their Edward Cullen? Although the idea does evoke an amusing image of Satan himself running away from millions of copies of the Twilight book, I don’t think that’s quite the case.

Fact of the matter is that there are very few (if any) books that only bring about bad things. Any book can bring about positive or negative effects. Just think about it. The Holy Bible, which preaches some of the most beautiful lessons on peace and love, had brought so much war and death because of the way people chose to interpret it.

However blasphemous this might sound, it’s the same with Twilight (not that it’s anything like the Holy Bible!). So while some people are arguing that it’s creating the false ideas of what a man should be like – i.e. ‘perfect’ Edward – it could also inspire girls to be strong without losing their femininity and inspire boys to become that ‘perfect’ person.

Again, it depends on the way it’s used. We tend to dumb down teenagers, expecting them to do nothing more but hang out in malls and obsess about stuff. But the teenagers I have taken the time to talk to have shown incredible insight, if only we give them the chance to do so.

Reflections on NaNoWriMo08

Well, it’s over – I have written 50’000 words and created a brand new novel, Dead-Alive. I’m very happy with the first 40’000 words (most of which have already been published on this blog), the last 10’000 need some major editing. Is there a NaNoEdiMo (National Novel Editing Month) coming along by any chance?

I’m glad I participated in NaNoWriMo; the fact that I found out about it after it had started and just signed on without quite knowing what I was getting myself into made it all the more exciting. However, because of this very reason, I also lost many opportunities to truly learn from the experience.

Lessons for the month?

• Do challenge yourself by participating in such online events

• Do push your limits to the extreme

• Do sprain your ankle right before you have such a challenge to do, because since you will have nothing else to do, you will manage to get all the writing done

• Don’t share things unless you are certain of the outcome

• Don’t make promises you can’t keep, and

• Don’t underuse the resources that are available to you.

In short: it was exhilarating to be accompanied by so many people, some writing with me, others reading my story, others doing both and others who, while doing neither, were sending me emails of support and encouragement. The instant messaging at all hours of the night trying to get out of a writing rut was also a lot of fun. I would definitely encourage anyone who is even mildly interested in writing to get into it next year!

Until then, keep writing (and visiting Sahar’s Blog)!

More obsession with Edward Cullen obsession: Touched by a vampire

This article is absolutely amazing. While again I might not agree with all of it, the argument is flawless. Enjoy!

Touched by a vampire

Preteen girls — and their grown-up moms — are sinking their teeth into Stephenie Meyer’s gothic “Twilight” books by the millions. Move over, J.K. Rowling.

By Laura Miller

(…) No wonder the media has heralded Twilight as the next Harry Potter and Meyer as the second coming of J.K. The similarities, however, are largely commercial. It’s hard to see how Twilight could ever approach Harry Potter as a cultural phenomenon for one simple reason: the series’ fan base is almost exclusively female. (…)

Bookstores have been known to shelve the Twilight books in both the children’s and the science fiction/fantasy sections, but they are — in essence and most particulars — romance novels, and despite their gothic trappings represent a resurrection of the most old-fashioned incarnation of the genre. They summon a world in which love is passionate, yet (relatively) chaste, girls need be nothing more than fetchingly vulnerable, and masterful men can be depended upon to protect and worship them for it.

The series’ heroine, Bella Swan, a 16-year-old with divorced parents, goes to live with her father in the small town of Forks, Wash. (a real place, and now a destination for fans). At school, she observes four members of a fabulously good-looking and wealthy but standoffish family, the Cullens; later she finds herself seated next to Edward Cullen in biology lab and is rendered nearly speechless by his spectacular beauty. At first, he appears to loathe her, but after a protracted period of bewilderment and dithering she discovers the truth. Edward and his clan are vampires who have committed themselves to sparing human life; they call themselves “vegetarians.” The scent of Bella’s blood is excruciatingly appetizing to Edward, testing his ethical limits and eventually his emotional ones, too. The pair fall in love, and the three books detail the ups and downs of this interspecies romance, which is complicated by Bella’s friendship with Jacob Black, a member of a pack of Native American werewolves who are the sworn enemies of all vampires.

Comparisons to another famous human girl with a vampire boyfriend are inevitable, but Bella Swan is no Buffy Summers. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was at heart one of those mythic hero’s journeys so beloved by Joseph Campbell-quoting screenwriters, albeit transfigured into something sharp and funny by making the hero a contemporary teenage girl. Buffy wrestled with a series of romantic dilemmas — in particular a penchant for hunky vampires — but her story always belonged to her. Fulfilling her responsibilities as a slayer, loyalty to her friends and family, doing the right thing and cobbling together some semblance of a healthy life were all ultimately as important, if not more important, to her than getting the guy. If Harry Potter has a vampire-loving, adolescent female counterpart, it’s Buffy Summers.

By contrast, Bella, once smitten by Edward, lives only for him. When he leaves her (for her own good) at the beginning of “New Moon,” she becomes so disconsolate that she resorts to risking her own life, seeking extreme situations that cause her to hallucinate his voice. This practice culminates in a quasi-suicidal high dive into the ocean, after which, on the brink of drowning, she savors visions of her undead boyfriend: “I thought briefly of the clichés, about how you’re supposed to see your life flash before your eyes. I was so much luckier. Who wanted to see a rerun, anyway? I saw him, and I had no will to fight … Why would I fight when I was so happy where I was?” After Edward returns, the only obstacle she can see to her eternal happiness as a member of the glamorous Cullen family is his stubborn refusal to turn her into a vampire: He’s worried that she’ll lose her soul.

Otherwise directionless and unsure of herself, Bella’s only distinguishing trait is her clumsiness, about which she makes frequent self-deprecating jokes. But Bella is not really the point of the Twilight series; she’s more of a place holder than a character. She is purposely made as featureless and ordinary as possible in order to render her a vacant, flexible skin into which the reader can insert herself and thereby vicariously enjoy Edward’s chilly charms. (His body is as hard and cold as stone, an ick-inducing detail that this reader, for one, found impossible to get past.) Edward, not Bella, is the key to the Twilight franchise, the thing that fans talk about when explaining their fascination with the books. “Perfect” is the word most often used to describe him; besides looking like a male model, Edward plays and composes classical music, has two degrees from Harvard and drives several hot cars very, very fast. And he can read minds (except, mysteriously, for Bella’s). “You’re good at everything,” Bella sighs dreamily.

Even the most timorous teenage girl couldn’t conceive of Bella as intimidating; it’s hard to imagine a person more insecure, or a situation better set up to magnify her insecurities. Bella’s vampire and werewolf friends are all fantastically strong and fierce as well as nearly indestructible, and she spends the better part of every novel alternately cowering in their protective arms or groveling before their magnificence. “How well I knew that I wasn’t good enough for him” is a typical musing on her part. Despite Edward’s many protestations and demonstrations of his utter devotion, she persists in believing that he doesn’t mean it, and will soon tire of her. In a way, the two are ideally suited to each other: Her insipidity is the counterpart to his flawlessness. Neither of them has much personality to speak of.

But to say this is to criticize fantasy according to the standards of literature, and Meyer — a Mormon housewife and mother of three — has always been frank about the origins of her novels in her own dreams. Even to a reader not especially susceptible to its particular scenario, Twilight succeeds at communicating the obsessive, narcotic interiority of all intense fantasy lives. Some imaginary worlds multiply, spinning themselves out into ever more elaborate constructs. Twilight retracts; it finds its voluptuousness in the hypnotic reduction of its attention to a single point: the experience of being loved by Edward Cullen.

Bella and her world are barely sketched — even Edward himself lacks dimension. His inner life and thoughts are known to us only through what Bella sees him say or do. The characters, such as they are, are stripped down to a minimum, lacking the texture and idiosyncrasies of actual people. What this sloughing off permits is the return, again and again, to the delight of marveling at Edward’s beauty, being cherished in his impermeable arms, thrilling to his caresses and, above all, hearing him profess, over and over, his absolute, unfailing, exclusive, eternal and worshipful adoration. (…)

Need I add that such statements rarely issue from the lips of mortal men, except perhaps when they’re looking for sex? Edward, however, doesn’t even insist on that — in fact, he refuses to consummate his love for Bella because he’s afraid he might accidentally harm her. “If I was too hasty,” he says, “if for one second I wasn’t paying enough attention, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I’m with you.” As a result, their time together is spent in protracted courtship: make-out sessions and sweet nothings galore, every shy girl’s dream.

Yet it’s not only shy girls who crush mightily on Edward Cullen. One of the series’ most avid fan sites is Twilight Moms, created by and for grown women, many with families of their own. There, as in other forums, readers describe the effects of Meyer’s books using words like “obsession” and “addiction.” Chores, husbands and children go neglected, and the hours that aren’t spent reading and rereading the three novels are squandered on forums and fan fiction. “I have no desires to be part of the real world right now,” posted one woman. “Nothing I was doing before holds any interest to me. I do what I have to do, what I need to do to get by and that’s it. Someone please tell me it will ease up, even if just a little? My entire world is consumed and in a tailspin.”

The likeness to drug addiction is striking, especially when you consider that literary vampirism has often served as a metaphor for that form of enthrallment. The vampire has been a remarkably fluid symbol for over a hundred years, standing for homosexuality, bohemianism and other hip manifestations of outsider status. Although the connection between the bloodsucking undead and romance fiction might seem obscure to the casual observer, they do share an ancestor. Blame it all on George Gordon, aka Lord Byron, the original dangerous, seductive bad boy with an artist’s wounded soul and in his own time the object of as much feminine yearning as Edward Cullen has been in the early 21st. Not only did Byron inspire such prototypical romantic heroes as Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester (a character Meyer has listed as among her favorites), he was the original pattern for the vampire as handsome, predatory nobleman. His physician, John William Polidori, wrote “The Vampyre,” a seminal short story that featured just such a figure, Lord Ruthven, patently based on the poet. Before that, the vampires of folklore had been depicted as hideous, bestial monsters.

Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula was the English bourgeoisie’s nightmare vision of Old World aristocracy: decadent, parasitic, yet possessed of a primitive charisma. Though we members of the respectable middle class know they intend to eat us alive, we can’t help being dazzled by dukes and princes. Aristocrats imperiously exercise the desires we repress and are the objects of our own secret infatuation with hereditary hierarchies. Anne Rice, in the hugely popular Vampire Chronicles, made her vampire Lestat a bisexual rock star — Byron has also been called the first of those — cementing the connection between vampire noblemen and modern celebrities. In recent years, in the flourishing subgenre known as paranormal romance, vampires play the role of leading man more often than any other creature of the night, whether the mode is noir, as in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series of detective novels or chick-lit-ish, as in MaryJanice Davidson’s Queen Betsy series.

The YA angle on vampires, evident in the Twilight books and in many other popular series as well, is that they’re high school’s aristocracy, the coolest kids on campus, the clique that everyone wants to get into. Many women apparently never get over the allure of such groups; as one reader posted on Twilight Moms, “Twilight makes me feel like there may be a world where a perfect man does exist, where love can overcome anything, where men will fight for the women they love no matter what, where the underdog strange girl in high school with an amazing heart can snag the best guy in the school, and where we can live forever with the person we love,” a mix of adolescent social aspirations with what are ostensibly adult longings.

The “underdog strange girl” who gets plucked from obscurity by “the best guy in school” is the 21st century’s version of the humble governess who captures the heart of the lord of the manor. The chief point of this story is that the couple aren’t equals, that his love rescues her from herself by elevating her to a class she could not otherwise join. Unlike Buffy, Bella is no hero. “There are so many girls out there who do not know kung fu, and if a guy jumps in the alley they’re not going to turn around with a roundhouse kick,” Meyer once told a journalist. “There’s a lot of people who are just quieter and aren’t having the Prada lifestyle and going to a special school in New York where everyone’s rich and fabulous. There’s normal people out there and I think that’s one of the reasons Bella has become so popular.”

Yet the Cullens, although they don’t live in New York, are rich and fabulous. Twilight would be a lot more persuasive as an argument that an “amazing heart” counts for more than appearances if it didn’t harp so incessantly on Edward’s superficial splendors. If the series is supposed to be championing the worth of “normal” people, then why make Edward so exceptional? If his wealth, status, strength, beauty and accomplishments make him the “best” among all the boys at school, why shouldn’t the same standard be applied to the girls, leaving Bella by the wayside? Sometimes Edward seems to subscribe to that standard, complaining about having to read the thoughts of one of Bella’s classmates because “her mind isn’t very original.” But then, neither is Bella’s. In a sense, Bella is absolutely right: She’s not “good enough” for Edward — at least, not according to the same measurements that make Edward “perfect.” Yet by some miracle she — unremarkable in every way — is exempt from his customary contempt for the ordinary. Then again, by choosing her he proves that she’s better than all the average people at school.

Such are the tortured internal contradictions of romance, as nonsensical as its masculine counterpart, pornography, and every bit as habit forming. Search a little deeper on the Internet and you can find women readers both objecting to the antifeminist aspects of Twilight and admitting that they found the books irresistible. “Sappy romance, amateurish writing, etc.,” complained one. Still, “when I read it, I just couldn’t put it down. It was like an unhealthy addiction for me … I’m not sure how I could read through it, seeing how I dislike romances immensely. But I did, and when I couldn’t get ‘New Moon’ I almost had a heart attack. That book was hypnotizing.”

Some things, it seems, are even harder to kill than vampires. The traditional feminine fantasy of being delivered from obscurity by a dazzling, powerful man, of needing to do no more to prove or find yourself than win his devotion, of being guarded from all life’s vicissitudes by his boundless strength and wealth — all this turns out to be a difficult dream to leave behind. Vampires have long served to remind us of the parts of our own psyches that seduce us, sapping our will and autonomy, dragging us back into the past. And they walk among us to this day.

How many movies does one have to watch before one gets it?

I just spent the evening watching some delightfully scary stuff and I have to say, thank goodness people will never learn. Seriously, how many scary movies have to be produced before people understand that when you are in a car and hear a weird noise, don’t go out to investigate – turn the dratted thing on and drive away. Same thing with a weird noise coming from inside the house – instead of investigating, barricade yourself in and wait either for daylight or the cops.

Then again, if people did that, we wouldn’t have scary movies…

My obsession with Edward Cullen Obsession: Love Bites

It’s interesting how intense the reaction to Twilight is, not just in the teen fan base (advice: be ready to plug your ears while you are watching the movie on the big screen). There are many articles, both journalistic and academic, on Twilight, it’s meaning for our culture and it’s potential effects on our society. Here is an interesting one; although I found its tone sometimes grating and the author a bit harsh on some of the issues presented, I really liked the analysis she did (even if I don’t agree with all of it.

Love Bites: What Sexy Vampires Tell Us About Our Culture

Pop culture vampires have always reflected cultural anxieties about sex. “Twilight”, the new teen box office blockbuster, is no exception.

By Sarah Seltzer , RH Reality Check. Posted November 28, 2008.

Teen vampire flick and pop-culture juggernaut “Twilight”, like “Mama Mia!” and “Sex and the City” before it, shattered records this weekend and made female moviegoers hard to ignore.

“Twilight” is far from a feminist triumph, though: it’s been interpreted by more than one as a purity allegory perfectly tailored for a (hopefully fading) era of abstinence-hype and hand-wringing about “hook-up culture.” With a heroine who yearns to both be ravished and bitten, and a hero loath to rob her of either soul or virginity, the “Twilight” plot arc sells a pseudo-empowering fantasy (men as the sexual and moral gatekeepers, leaving women free to express their desires) while wholeheartedly embracing patriarchal norms.

The film somewhat mitigates the book’s rabid antifeminist message, providing more room to chuckle at the smoldering pouts of its young protagonists (whether that campiness was intended is unclear) and downplaying the extent to which human Bella’s singular fixation with vampire hunk Edward precludes everything else. But the basic storyline of “I won’t bite you, it’s for your own good” can’t be changed. It’s the core of the tale. (…)

This not the first time vampires in pop culture have been a perfect expression of the currents and anxieties of their time. In fact, one might argue that that is their purpose.

With immortality, a killer instinct, and a life on the fringes, Vampires are a perfect conduit for musings on the human condition.  “Vampires have long served to remind us of the parts of our own psyches that seduce us,” writes Salon’s Laura Miller (in a superb analysis of the “Twilight” books). But the metaphor is often less existential than that, as the vampire bite is easy shorthand for sex. Vampirism allows consumers to take vicarious pleasure in rule-breaking couplings, while also justifying phobias about sex-because the seducers do have lethal fangs, and their condition is quite contagious.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the most prominent sire of today’s fictive undead, was a repository of post-Victorian fears: syphilis and shifting gender roles. Thus the book is full of bizarre sexualized imagery that equates gender-bending with evil. Hero Jonathan gets attacked and nearly bitten by a gang of wanton vampiresses. Lucy, an ill-fated flirt, juggles three suitors; by story’s end all three of them must stake the undead Lucy in a scene that critics compare to a gang rape. Mina, the less transgressive woman in the story, is forced to drink blood from a wound in Dracula’s chest, a reverse-breastfeeding image that emphasizes the feminine qualities of the Count.

The entire book feels like a last gasp of Victorian purity — as well as an anticipation of the sexual revolution that was around the corner. It’s probably no coincidence that the first film version of “Dracula” was a huge hit just as the Depression ushered out the Jazz Age and its socio-sexual upheaval. (…)

Indeed, pop culture vampires have always adapted to rapidly shifting sexual politics. A film remake of “Dracula” in the late 1970s (starring Frank Langella) gave the Count a real romance with Lucy, no longer a doomed Edwardian flirt but instead an independent woman. In her history of vampires, Nina Auerbach describes this new Lucy as “everything a feminist vampire should be. Her romance with Frank Langella could be one of the swoonier inserts in Ms. Magazine. He loves her strength and self-assertion … ”

Lestat (in books from the 70s onward) is a rule-breaking iconoclast (even a rock star) whose lack of gender preference when it comes to victims and vampire companions give bisexuality that familiar terror-and-titillation combination. In the 1994 filmInterview With the Vampire, more than a few reviewers noted the AIDS metaphors now found in a story conceived before the disease was known. adaptation of

In the 1990s we had Buffy, a kick-ass vampire-slayer struggling both to save the world and grow up — all while wearing hip, form-fitting outfits. She’s the embodiment of the third wave feminist ideal, and the field of feminist criticism of Buffy is an intensely crowded one.  Her very human struggles to “do it all,” rid the world of demons, take care of her friends and family, and maybe meet a nice soulful vampire, interrogated the limitations of the “girl power” mantra and gave the world a truly multi-dimensional heroine. Buffy’s protracted love affairs with two male vampires-Angel and Spike-range from sublime to abusive to egalitarian, reflecting the complex dynamics of sex and power in the modern world.

Today we have the HBO series True Blood, whose lusty vampires have started drinking fake blood, and are struggling for social and political equality. Comparisons to both racial and sexual civil rights battles are unavoidable, but the fact that some members of this oppressed minority don’t want their rights — they just want to eat humans — complicates the metaphor.

And then there’s “Twilight”. If Buffy was the teen vamp tale of the Clinton years, “Twilight” is definitively its equivalent for the Bush era. Rather than kicking ass, “Twilight‘s Bella stumbles into danger, excusing her vampire-love-interest Edward’s creepy protectiveness. Sigh.

It’s unfortunate that the story, like the past decade has been, is so old-school. But before we feminists concern-troll “Twilight’s” besotted teenage fans, let’s remember this: the part of the formula that appeals so widely is not the story’s morality, but rather its adolescent hunger. It’s the sexual budding, the fraught glances across the cafeteria, the craving to be singled out, and in Dana Stevens’ words “the grandiosity that can make self-destructive decisions feel somehow divinely fated.” It’s teenagedom. Edward gives younger girls a chance to express their nascent desires en masse, loudly.

Just as Dracula’s reactionary plotlines failed to bring back Victorian mores, “Twilight’s” unfortunate gender roles will join abstinence-only on the trash heap of history. Some of its screaming young fans will grow up to be sexually empowered, some won’t, and some won’t end up fancying men (dead or undead) at all. But they’ll all share the fact that “Twilight’s” dangerous liaison turned them on. And that’s what Vampires, even sparkly ones, are for.

Justin Timberlake’s inspiration: The King of Pop himself

Don’t understand what is going on? Look no further!

There seems to be many people out there who are willing to read and learn about what is going on so as to be able to take action. Absolutely brilliant! But there are as many people who just don’t where to start and don’t have many resources to turn to.

All I have to say is thank goodness for Google, YouTube and blogs!

To understand the basics of the present financial crisis, here is a little (amusing) video I was sent a couple of minutes ago. Of course it doesn’t explain everything, and certainly doesn’t go into the deeper reasons behind this problem, but it’s a great place to start looking.

Enjoy!

My obsession with an Edward Cullen-obsessed world

Apparently I’m not the only person who has noticed that so many teens and tweens are suffering from OCD – read, obsessive Cullen syndrome. It seems to be a disorder only two things can cure: time or something else to obsess about.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be anything in the near future to respond to the needs of a hormone-laden, angst-ridden generation of female teens and tweens. It seems that Hollywood might have a (very) short memory when it comes to catering to that niche. As Joal Ryan explains:

Film.com’s Eric D. Snider, who last spring warned smug fanboys to take Twilight seriously, says no matter how many times a chick flick hits, Hollywood is surprised—”as if they’ve never heard of this strange niche demographic known as women before.”

“Then they get all excited about making more movies for women, and then they forget all about it and go back to making movies about giant robots,” Snider says.

As a writer, I have to say that pleases me; hopefully another book will take the place of Twilight and create yet another reason for all these teens and tweens to visit this delightful place called a book store.

Canadians for a Progressive Coalition

Definition of a Coalition Government: A coalition government includes members of different political parties and normally appears during crises such as war or political breakdown.

Let’s bring some unity into federal politics!

Five Geeky things to do this Holiday

Now this is what I call a fun-filled holiday!

Five Geeky things to do this Holiday

By Charlie Sorrel

The orgy of spending that is The Holiday Season begins in the US this weekend. Family, food, gifts, the whole daunting shebang.

Sure, you might enjoy spending the four-day weekend locked up in the house with the in-laws and stuffing yourself with leftovers, but why not escape? Here we give you five suggestions for healthier, cheaper, nerdier and, above all, funner things to do this holiday.

Get Nerdy in the Kitchen

Face it. You’re going to have to cook a turkey, so why not make it fun? Deep frying is dangerous but gives a crispy skin, a Turducken is, well, it starts with the word “turd”, so we’ll skip that, and you can even chop out the breastbone and flatten the thing for the grill (fast and juicy). There are many alternative turkey methods, but the main thing you need to remember is the temperature.

A probe thermometer is cheap, and it’s the only way to know when the bird is done. Turkeys have thin parts, thick parts, flat bits and round bits, so estimating the time you need is wildly inaccurate. An probe plunged carefully into the thickest part of the meat will tell you when the meat is just juicy, but not overdone. When the readout hits 161ºF, pull out the roast and let it rest for 15 minutes and carve. If you have a thermometer with an alarm that can summon you from the den, then that’s just gravy.

Make a Camera

You could buy a new Canon 5D MkII, as we suggested earlier today, and escape the family for a day of shooting. Better still, especially if you have kids, is to make a camera. Yesterday we posted a guide to building a giant camera from an old flatbed scanner, a magnifying glass and a stack of black cardboard. This will keep you from getting bored, keep the kids out of trouble and, best of all, you can escape into the den later to “process the images”.

Read the rest of this post here.