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...Twilight.

There, I said it. About a gazillion teenage girls just had aneurysms.

To say the craze is insane is an understatement. It’s like saying “Star Wars” fans kinda liked the movies.

I’m sure author Stephenie Meyer is doing quite well for herself in that teenage girl-proof house she’s most certainly built for herself by now.

“Twilight” hits theaters today so maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some vampire reprieve. It’s a good possibility the smitten readers have gotten paper cuts trying to make out with their weathered
“Twilight” book copies. Maybe their onslaught of movie ticket purchases will even help bolster the economy for a while.

Until then, however, it’s sufficient to say “Twilight” is the new “Harry Potter.” What does a tween-struck movie about vampires and awkward high schoolers have to do with the book on wizardry and the boy with the thunderbolt scar? Nothing, really. It’s obvious that both series are about the things that go bump in the night and that females have written both series. Yeah, girl power!

But that’s not it. The secret ingredient is simple: Edward Cullen.

Mothers and daughters, grandmothers and great-grandmothers alike, swoon over the mere mention of the brooding vamp who will remain 17 years old for quite a while. Mix moodiness with a squishy, mushy caring side reserved for heroine Bella Swan and voila!

Out of this pretty obvious plot runs throngs of screaming, whimpering, googley-eyed girls ready to bite anyone who comes in the way of them and their bloodsucker.

The series’ storyline is so lovestruck that these girls have all fully bought into the mentality that a character such as Edward could step out of the books and sink his sexy vampire teeth into them at any second.

If it weirds you out that they’d like to be bitten, it’s OK; I’m freaked out too.

Don’t get me wrong; the books were good. They were creative and a definite escape from a summer’s worth of heavy reading. But there’s a difference between enjoying a book and developing obsessive behavior due to said book.

I don’t want to have to cite Merriam-Webster’s definition for “fiction,” but I have it bookmarked just in case.

So, Twilight fans, go camp outside the movie theater in anticipation of seeing your pointy-toothed lover muffin.

However, do beware that such devotion does award you the coveted title of “fanpire” – it’s like being a trekkie, but you’re a fan... of vampires.

So many jokes, so little time.

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