Twilight Zone

Today, I am mostly angry about Twilight.

I was shopping at the weekend when some chubby goth chick flounced past me in the Biscuit Aisle, wearing a "TEAM EDWARD" t-shirt, although it read a bit more like "TEEEEAAAM EDDDWARRD" on account of her ample frontage. I shook my brain in dismay; nerd T-shirts weren't cool when they were Star Trek, they weren't cool when they were Red Dwarf and they definitely weren't cool when they were Buffy. T-shirts about boychick-bodied sparklepire borderline-paedophile cradle-robbers (face facts; she's a teen and he's hundreds of years old. I'm thirty-seven and I get creeped out by seeing eighteen-year old page three girls) and outright-paedophilic wolf-boys pass so far beyond "not cool", they cause an overflow error in the coolness registers of the universe.

Oh well, everyone to their own taste, thought I. Onwards and upwards, live and let live (except for Live and Let Die, which was the only cool post-Beatles thing Paul McCartney ever wrote, even with the horrible honky-tonk "what-does-it-matter-to-ya?" part that breaks my brain).

I go home with my pitiful haul of groceries and settle down for some telly. Next thing I know, I'm seeing a Twilight-themed advert for... for.. Volvo cars.

I cannot record with any exactitude my precise thoughts at this juncture as I am trying to keep the adult content to a minimum.

Apparently in the films, head glitter-fiend Edward Cullen (I have to look these names up, you know) drives a Volvo. A Volvo. That's how you know he's hundreds of years old, he drives a Volvo.

Acting on the often-disproved principle that there's no such thing as Bad Publicity, Volvo have actually got on board with the whole Twilight business and have branded marketing campaigns running, hence my thirty-second Outside-Context Experience.

Yes, that's how you know Vampires aren't cool any more; they drive Volvos.

And that's how you know you aren't cool any more; you like Twilight.