dawn saves the planet, part one!
hey everybody! how are all of you guys?
i'm still sick and life has been kicking my ass, but i've recently discovered the immense healing powers of dawn schafer bashing. so i invite you all to join me in this wonderful healing process and read as i let my rage flow in...
this was the only cover i could find a picture of, and holy shit did it make me laugh.
especially the close up. fuuuug..
anyway, onto the horror that is...
DAWN SAVES THE PLANET
brought to you in part by jahnna beecham, malcolm hilgartner and the letter F.
what words begin with the letter F, class? Fuck and Fail come to mind...
Chapter One
this book starts off with a question:
"do you think kids can save the planet?"
hmmm…let me ponder that a moment…well, maybe. but not if the kid in question is a certain dawn read schafer.
but we'll get to that soon enough. for now, i'mma let dawn herself answer.
'"yes, of course!"' she tells us she was practically shouting, and since she is a shrill harpy on a good day, i'm assuming she busted a few eardrums just now. of course, before she told us her answer, she let us know that the rest of the SMS students that were in her class 'just sat there like lumps staring at her' (meaning the teacher who asked the question), because of course, a BSC member always has to be the smartest person in the room, but still think it's okay to not only dump on but ostracize the real brains -- e.g. janine.
so dawn decides to waste our precious time by introducing herself to us. dawn, we know exactly who you are. you are the hellbeast harpy of stoneybrook, and we fucking hate your guts. but do go on, tell me all about yourself! no, i'm not falling asleep, i'm just closing my eyes for a spell, your cornsilk hair is blinding me.
i'm sure no one cares what lies dawn is spinning about herself right now anyway.
i can sum it all up real quick: intro to dawn (yawn), intro to mary anne, and the long, long tale of The Great Romance. p.s. she thinks her house is haunted. the end.
dawn tells us that even though she and mary anne are 'totally different in many ways' there is a fuckton of shit that they agree on and she knows that if mary anne were in mrs. gonzalez's class with her, she would say, "i agree with dawn. we can save the planet if we all pull together!" after removing the straw she's been using to suck dawn's ass with, of course.
dawn tells us that after she made her 'announcement' in class, mrs. gonzalez 'folded her arms in front of her and smiled', then borrowed mary anne's ass sucking straw for a moment before saying, "dawn is right. you can help save this planet, even if you are young. a good place to start is in your home, or school, or town."
yes, children, saving the planet is easy. you don't even have to go any further than your own backyard.
dawn girlcrushes over mrs. g, telling us she's very cool and has 'long dark hair that she wears in a thick braid down the centre of her back', then tells us that she starts pointing to various posters she's put up over the blackboard.
'"i've listed things that are going wrong with the environment at this very moment. dawn, would you read them out loud?"' because of fucking course she picks dawn to read them. god.
dawn says that all of the kids in the room turn to look at her, and i roll my eyes. alan gray does me one better and crosses his eyes at her. good. stupid bitch should have people making faces at her 24/7. she tries to ignore him and reads the posters.
'"acid rain and air pollution."
"invisible gases are released by cars that burn gasoline, and power plants that burn coal." mrs gonzalez explained. "these gases can mix with water and make it highly acidic. when these gases get into rain and snow clouds,the acid falls back to earth, destroying trees and polluting the water in our lakes and rivers. air pollution also makes it difficult for us to breathe."
"vanishing animal life," i continued reading.
"as more and more people are born," mrs. gonzalez said, moving down the centre aisle of the class, "more and more forests are cut down to make room for them. the areas where wild animals can live are replaced by homes and stores, and the animals become extinct."
i wrinkled my nose as i read the next heading [of course she did. well, i'm sure everyone around you has permanently wrinkled noses, since you smell like fucking ass] "too much garbage."
"when people throw things away, the garbage gets buried in the ground or thrown in the ocean." mrs. gonzalez stopped by my desk and crossed her arms. "pretty soon there won't be any more room for our garbage. so what can we do about it?"'
blast dawn into space! that would eliminate about fifty metric tonnes of garbage!!
ahem.
'once again i raised my hand. "recycle."'
no…no shit, really?!?! i have never heard of THAT before!! what is this recycling of which you speak??? please dawn, assplain.
oh, dawn can't. but mrs. gonzalez can, after sucking dawn's ass some more and telling her she's right, of course.
'"recycling means reusing paper and glass and aluminum over and over again." mrs. gonzalez returned to the front of the class and tapped the last poster. "and the final heading is what?"
"water pollution," i read.
mrs. gonzalez nodded. "every living creature depends on water to survive. but our oceans and rivers are polluted by garbage, and much of the water we drink is being wasted. we need to keep it clean."'
word, woman. i live right next to a huge river that is basically toxic. it's fucking depressing. human beings as a whole are the assholes of the planet.
ahem.
anyway, mrs. g tells them that their assignment for the entire grade period is to pick one of the topics that was discussed and "design a project that can help save our planet." good luck. it's 13 years since this book was written and we're not any better off, as far as i can tell. so…WAY TO FAIL, DAWN!!
the room is a-buzz with these kids talking all at once and 'announcing' which categories they're picking. dawn lets us know that a a couple of kids in the back of the class are groaning. ah, the back of the class, where the burnouts and delinquents are always situated in the movies. i'm guessing since these books run on stereotypes, the back-o-the-classers in this book are burnouts and delinquents too.
apparently all of these childrens are so loud that mrs. g has to shout so they can hear her last announcement (everyone is fucking announcing shit in this chapter!!), which is that they have a week to come up with an idea for their project and to write a brief description of what they plan on doing. then the bell rings and it's the end of class, but sadly, not the end of the chapter. damn it.
this gif sums up pretty much this whole book, tbh.
dawn's brain is 'already clicking away' with thoughts of her project and she spends the next hour thinking about ecology when she should be focusing on her social studies class. i guess she learned fuck all about the french revolution that day. no wonder these girls are so ignorant when it comes to other cultures, etc. they zone out constantly during their classes.
dawn says that with so many possibilities to choose from, it's gonna be hard to pick just ONE project, yo. so she decides to rant to her friends about it at lunch. which is really just an excuse to info-dump on the reader, it seems. ah, just kristy and claudia for now. so she makes yet another fucking announcement (holy shit, what's with that in this chapter?!?) to them as she sits down at the lunch table. "guess what? i'm going to save the planet."
brb, ~~ROFLMFAO!!~~ nice work dawn. nice work.
but this is priceless:
'claudia just blinked her dark eyes at me and said, "it's about time."'
HAHAHAHA!!!
'kristy took a big bite of her (ick) hamburger and cracked, "i was going to save it but i have a big softball game this afternoon."'
i love how she's always inwardly gagging and whatnot over her friend's food choices. fucking cunt. no one is forcing it down your throat, so just shut your yap.
'"you two think you're so funny." i swatted at kristy, who was grinning at me from across the table.'
so, you reached all the way across the table to "swat" her? really?
anyway, she tells her friends that she MEANS it. she IS going to Save The Planet ™. because since they started studying ecology in her lover mrs. g's science class, she's found a cause worthy of a crusade. dawn, i would not be so angry with you right now, if you hadn't FAILED.
'"she's asked us to come up with an independent project--"
"to save the earth." a voice finished from behind me.'
this previously unknown speaker is introduced to us as one stacey mcgill. who is 'balancing' a carton of yogurt and a 'small' salad on her tray. she sits next to kristy and says she's got the same project as dawn, and whines that they only have a week to come up with something but her mind is a total blank.
which segues into dawn gushing over how 'absolutely gorgeous' stacey is and describing her in loving detail, so i guess she has more than one girlcrush. move over mrs. g!! she says that stacey is also 'very thin' and explains that her unnatural thinness is partly caused by the strict diet she's on because of her diabetes. so, what with that description of her lunch, as well as her being described as 'absolutely gorgeous' and 'very thin' we get a very clear message: thinness equals absolutely stunning. also, it helps if you have fluffy blonde hair and blue eyes. i fucking hate these books. so anyway, she keeps info-dumping about stacey and i just skim like crazy for anything even remotely relevant.
ooh! outfit description! dawn says that of all the BSCers, she'd have to say stacey is the coolest dresser and tells us what she's wearing today: 'floral leggings, a pink shirt with big sleeves, and a long vest covered in antique pins. a black fedora with a red cloth rose was perched on top of her shoulder length hair.'
i don't even know what to make of that outfit. O_o
claudia tells stacey not to worry about not having an idea for her project yet, cuz she's a math whiz, so science 'should be just as easy'. stacey is like, "durr, math and science are different subjects, dumbo!"
claudia derps: "not to me, they both make me crazy. they both involve numbers and words you can't pronounce and things you have to memorize." and mary anne appears with logan and whines not to even mention memorizing because she thinks she just bombed a spelling test. waaaaah!! and logan is all like, "yeah, right mary anne considers missing one question bombing a test." and they mock janine? really?
so mary anne passive aggressively pokes logan in the ribs and he clutches his side and howls, "ow! she got me!" ha, logan, you're such a pussy.
so they spend the rest of lunch talking about tests. yawn. and how disgusting the hot lunch is, as per usual. except this time claudia is the one making cracks, for some reason and calls it "green slime". dawn thinks about her science project during all of this and the rest of the day as well. she's got a bee in her bonnet about the environment, and it has not only invited it's bee friends, but they are now building a hive. dawn is officially obsessed.
mary anne has job sitting for the perfects, oops, i mean perkins, so dawn goes home alone and heads right for her bedroom to consult with the ghost of jared mullray about her plot to Save The Planet ™., or something. she tells us she's going to make a list and how this is something she does on the regular to help her deal with Important Issues, such as who to invite to the dance or what to wear on the first day of school. yes, those are truly pressing issues, dawn. i'm sure saving the planet is almost just as important as a dance partner or an outfit.
the chapter finally ends with her writing down a very loaded question:
HOW CAN I SAVE THE PLANET?
Chapter Two
of course chapter two starts out with dawn fretting over the time and the possible wrath of kristy, why? well, it's 5:20 on a meeting day, of course! because the beginning of pretty much every single baby-sitters club book ever written takes place on the day of a damned meeting, just so they can hit us over the head with a chapter two by four.
so she's busting her ass bicycling to claudia's house while inner monologuing the usual chapter two nonsense about the club's history, etc, as well as the histories of the fucking club members. BORING! funny how even in a book about saving the planet and recycling, etc, they have a balls to waste so much paper on this fucking bullshit. how many trees gave their lives for useless chapter twos, ann?!! HOW MANY?!?!?!
which made me want to check something -- they talk in this book about only using recycled paper--don't worry, we'll get to that part--so i checked a couple of my BSC books to see if THEY were printed on recycled paper. NOPE! BOO ANN!! BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! ahem.
fucking hypocrites.
anyway, so dawn gets to the meeting right on time. she ran into claud's room and 'collapsed' on her bed just as 5:30 hit, but of course, kristy still gives her the stink eye as she's 'gasping for air'. dawn basically tells her kristy can give her all the stink eyes she wants, but she can't fucking say a word because she WAS on time. kristy calls the meeting to order and says, "as you know, today is dues day." just so jessi can crack this joke: "i think we should all chip in to pay for an oxygen tank for dawn." oh, har har, jessica.
oh course dawn has to drama-queen it up, 'i put my hand over my heart and said dramatically, "if i die now, please tell the world i died happy because i was on time to the baby-sitters club meeting.' which earns her a swat from the long arm of kristy. who is somehow able to swat dawn, who is on the bed, from the director's chair. she's stretch armstrong in disguise, i'm guessing.
oh, and the other girls cracked up. whatever. they get a call and claudia answers with this sick little gem, "hello, baby-sitters club. your kids are our business." *shudder* that earns her one of kristy's Looks ™ because apparently that wasn't professional???? all right…but i can totally see kristy answering the phone the exact same way at a meeting, just saying.
it's mrs. barrett who needs a sitter for the next afternoon. only kristy and dawn are free, so kristy very magnanimously grants dawn the job, stating it is because dawn lives closer to the barretts. uh huh. so dawn feeds us the "i used to call the barrett kids the impossible three, but now i totally don't, i just totally do every time they are brought up in any way, shape or form, but for reals, you guys, i swear these are some of my favourite clients!!!" line.
the phone rings off the hook for the next twenty minutes. god, this chapter is a frigging snorefest.
apparently stacey doesn't get to finish collecting dues until the meeting was just about over. and dawn is sadfaces or grumpfaces or something about not getting to discuss her plans to Save The Planet ™ with the club, she decides she'll just have to cram her ideas and opinions down their throats tomorrow. she tells us that that ended up being okay, because the Really Great Idea didn't come to her until she had her baby-sitting job with the barretts.
Chapter Three
so of course chapter three starts out with her sitting job with the barretts, because we ALL must bask in the glory that is dawn. pow is woofing around because he's a dog. the kiddies dressed poor pow up in a baby's bonnet and they also somehow tied a plastic bottle around his collar?? even dawn says he looks miserable. suzi says, "come here, you bad dog. you're supposed to take your nap now." whatever suzi, leave the damned dog alone. dawn kneels down to hug suzi, i'm assuming she does this to show the reader how much she totally loves these NOT-Impossible Three, assuming it will make us stop wanting to smack her every time she refers to them by that obnoxious and bitchy slur. it's not working, dawn. she asks suzi if pow is giving her trouble. no, dawn, i think suzi is the one giving pow trouble!
suzi nods and tells dawn that she's playing house and pow is her baby. buddy comes bursting out the front door wearing a cowboy hat and chaps. watch out, buddy. don't be wearing them chaps around logan, he'll get ideas and the end up buying his own, except buttless. he's gotta win over the guys on the track team again, after all. as well as any remaining badd boyz.
buddy flings a loop of clothesline around dawn's shoulder and shouts that he "got" her. instead of flipping out on him, i guess because he's not using a toy gun, she plays along and pretends to be scared, '"oh, no!" i cried, pretending to be scared. "what's going on?"
"i'm the sheriff," buddy declared. "and you're under arrest."'
buddy, please, for real, make a citizen's arrest!! get this crazy bitch locked up in the pokey for a few days at least, damn it!! i'll buy you all the toy guns your violent little heart desires!! do it for the good of your country, buddy! we're counting on you!!
'"no, she's not." suzi put her hands on her hips and faced her brother. "dawn is going to play house with me and pow."'
DAMN IT SUZI. HE WAS DOING A SERVICE TO HIS COUNTRY! AND READERS WORLDWIDE!! DAMN YOU CHILD!!!!!
marnie starts shouting for dawn from inside the house, then races down the stairs and runs out the front door to hug dawn around the knees, somehow without falling down and going boom like most two year olds i've seen run and/or try to take on stairs at that rapid pace. nope, she doesn't even fall down the stairs. i would've at that age. whatever. dawn bends down and picks her up, praising her and crediting her for possibly breaking up the fight being Sheriff Buddy and Mother Suzi. snore.
dawn begins to once again internally monologue about how she used to call them the impossible three. like the twatstain that she is. they were impossible because their house was a bit of a mess and the kids were still upset about the seemingly recent divorce of their parents. wow, that is like, TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE. YOU SHOULD TOTALLY KEEP DUMPING ON THEM FOR HAVING A NORMAL REACTION TO A TRAUMATIC EVENT. bitch. whatever dawn, i fucking hate you. how dare you judge these kids or their mother???? you're 100000 x more impossible than these three kids, their mother, jenny, lou and jackie rodowsky combined. you skank.
dawn stops telling us how impossible the family used to be to lust after mrs. barrett as she appears in the front hallway, 'looking as if she had just stepped off the cover of some fashion magazine. i'm not kidding, she was absolutely gorgeous.' yeah, you just keep on girlcrushing there, dawn.
mrs. b lets her know the kids have been looking forward to seeing her all day. why???? i don't know. dawn replies that she's been looking forward to seeing them, too and she's got a surprise in her kid-kit she wants to show them. i wonder…does it have something to do with…THE ENVIRONMENT?!?!
suzi gets all excited and hops up and down shouting, "oooh, i want to see!" hold your damn horses, there woman, or sheriff buddy will have to lasso you, too.
buddy says he wants to see first and marnie 'chime[s] in' "me, me" so dawn, getting the exact reaction she wanted, which was to have all of the kids simultaneously fawning over her and begging, says they'll go into the living room and she'll show all three of them. mrs. b puts on her jacket, gives dawn some instructions and says bye to the kidlets, then is out.
soon all four of them are sitting around the kid-kit, you'd think she'd brought something super amazing, like the dead sea scrolls or some shit. buddy is actually utterly disappointed when he pulls out the bag that contains this amazing! wonderful! awesome! totally worth letting your mother leave with barely a passing glance for! surprise.
'"it's a book."
"but not just any book." i said mysteriously. "open it up and tell me what you see."'
i hope buddy straight up backhands her after opening it. because this was a crazy fucking amount of over dramatic and over exaggerated build up.
suzi opens the book and 'squeal[s] with delight. "stickers! i love stickers."
buddy tried to sound out the words written across the top of the big vinyl-coated page. "mah-reen werrrrld." he looked up at me with a grin and repeated it. "marine world."
"that's right buddy," i said. "good job."'
i'm rolling my eyes. it's become like a nervous tic of sorts when i read these books. i'm always rolling my eyes.
she tells us the book is actually a fold-out map of mah-reen werrrld and that it shows several ponds, a walkway, blah blah blah, IT SHOWS MARINE WORLD DAWN, stop wasting words describing a fucking map. you're killing ALL OF THE TREES with all this worthless horseshoe. at least my ranting about your wastefulness is digital.
rest assured: No Trees Were Harmed During the Making of This Snark.
she asks the kids what kind of animals they see, which suzi answers: "fish. whale. seal. hippo-lota-mess." dawn corrects her, while laughing at her. '"i think you mean hippo-pot-a-mus." suzi nodded solemnly. "that's what i said."' take that dawn! suzi don't give a FUCK.
buddy holds up a dolphin sticker and asks dawn what kind of animal it is, so dawn can answer the age old question: what are dolphin? how it do?
she says dolphins are one of the smartest creatures in the ocean. suzi asks if she means they can do tricks.
"yes, but they also communicate with each other and us. in dolphin language, of course."
technically dawn, all animals communicate with each other and humans. my cat communicates her ass off all the time, especially when she wants food, which is always. so hush, dawn, the grown ups and their cats are talking. go sit in a corner. i got claudia to make you a dunce cap, it says "dawnce." see, sometimes caludia's spelling makes PERFECT SENSE.
sorry needed to go to my happy place for a minute...
anyway, buddy says he wants a dolphin. good luck, kid. i hear there aren't many o'them left. and they aren't meant to be pets. dawn just asks where he plans to keep his pet dolphin. suzi suggests the bathtub. dawn tells her a dolphin is way too big to live in a fucking bathtub, and it needs room to swim. then she decides to freak out the kiddies:
"here's something sad about dolphins. did you know that a lot of them die just because we like to eat tuna fish?"
that tuna fish line stayed with my my whole damned life, by the way. luckily, i've never been able to stand tuna anyway. the smell of it makes me feel sick. but unlike dawn, i don't turn into the fucking food gestapo just because someone happens to eat tuna around me.
'buddy looked at me skeptically. "what's tuna fish got to do with dolphins?"
"well, some fishing fleets use nets that accidentally trap millions of dolphins every year. and the sad thing is that the fishermen could catch the tuna without using nets, but they don't want to."
"how come?" buddy demanded.
"they say it's too expensive that way."
"that's not fair." he protested.'
suzi wants to know how dawn knows all of this, 'cupping the sticker gently in her hand.'
'"i've been studying our planet and animals that live on it in school." i pointed to the marine world sticker book. "that's why i bought this book. half of the money i spent on it will go to the save the dolphins fund."
buddy leapt to his feet. "i want to save the dolphins."
"so do i," suzi said joining him.
"me, too!" marnie sprang to her feet and grabbed suzi's hand. the three kids hopped up and down chanting, "save the dolphins." (it sounded a lot like, "save the doll's fins.")'
'"you can save them," i said, excitedly.
they quieted down and suzi asked, "we can? how?"
"well, first of all, we can write to the tuna companies and tell them we won't buy their tuna if they keep hurting the dolphins," i explained. "look, i'll write the letters and you guys can sign them,"
"yea!" suzi squealed so loudly that pow started barking. the baby bonnet had fallen over his eyes and, as he barked, he struggled to knock it off his nose with one of his big paws.'
that last bit, i'm sure, was added for comedic effect. whatever. so, she's asking these kids to take part in the threatening of companies with a boycott? maybe ask mrs. b first, dawn. ya know, since she is their mother. you might want to make sure she's cool with this.
so dawn pulls the bonnet off of pow's face and holds up her hands to quiet suzi. i'm yawning already and i'm picking this up from last night. this bitch still tires me out.
dawn tells them that there are like, TONS of things they can do to Save The Planet ™ and help the animals in the sea. buddy asks what and dawn lets us know that she'd checked several books on 'ecology and our planet' out of the library and had looked at them during lunch, so…'the ideas were still fresh in [her] mind'. which is good, i guess, because now she can start recruiting childrens for the crusade. '"well, we can start by making sure the garbage dumped in the ocean doesn't hurt the fish and animals."
how about not dumping fucking garbage in the ocean, period? what the fuck is wrong with humanity?!?
'"i never throw my garbage in the ocean," suzi said, putting her fists on her hips and looking indignant. "that's littering."
i couldn't resist giving her a hug. "i know you don't, but some big companies do. come on," i took her hand. "let's go in the kitchen and i'll show you what gets thrown in the water."'
i gotta stop here for a second and say, i appreciate what they originally set out to do with this book -- educate readers/kids on recycling, ecology, etc, i'm assuming that's what they set out to do anyway -- but they lose so many points for making dawn a self righteous and hysterical nazi about it all, especially later on in the book, that they end up with minus one hundred thousand trillion points.
anyway, the kiddies 'trot[ed] obediently after [dawn]' and she says the first stop is the kitchen counter where she points to the plastic rings on a six-pack of soda. she tells them that the rings are really dangerous to fish and animals because when they float in the water they look like food, "then sea turtles swallow them, which is harmful to their insides. seals and birds, like pelicans and seagulls, get them caught around their necks. even fish can get tangled in them."
the seagulls in our area are like, totally domesticated. they fly around in huge groups looking for fast food scraps people have dropped near the wendy's and multiple mcdicks and the like. some people--i'm not naming names in order to protect identities *cough*--have been known to feed them french fries. it is like something out of the alfred hitchcock movie, 'the birds' when you see them all descend on a fast food restaurant parking lot. so. many. seagulls.
anyway, back to the book.
'"but what can we do about it?" buddy asked earnestly.
i opened the top drawer by the sink and pulled out a pair of scissors. "clip the rings so there are no circles for animals to get caught on."
"i want to do it!" suzi cried, reaching for the scissors.
"no, i do," buddy said stubbornly.'
dawn says she realized she'd have to think fast to find suzi 'another chore'. she comes up with an idea after doing a quick scan of the room and seeing the garbage can. she tells suzi to go through the garbage and pull out every can she finds. ew dawn, is it sanitary or safe to get a little kid to go diving through a garbage can to do that? for all you know, there's shit in there that could hurt her or make her sick. kids are always putting their hands in their mouths and shit, god. ever heard of e. coli? salmonella? be smart, bitch.
dawn finds a paper bag 'that had been tucked between the refrigerator and the wall' and gives it to suzi, telling her to put any cans from the garbage in there, so they can recycle the aluminum. how's about getting the kid some gloves? or i dunno, searching the garbage yourself? ugh.
then they add this, which was supposed to add a cuteness factor: '"we're going to take it for a tricycle ride?" suzi asked, squinting one eye shut.'
eye rolling forever.
'i couldn't help laughing. "no. recycle means to use things over and over again." i pulled an empty juice can out of the trash. "if we don't throw this away, it can go back to the factory and be used again and again. but if we toss it out, then it floats around our oceans, hurting all those innocent sea creatures."
suzi dove for the trash basket. "i'm going to make sure every single can is re-tricycled."
"good for you!" i couldn't believe how much fun it was to teach the barretts about ecology. we spent the remainder of the afternoon talking about ways we could save our planet, and the animals on it.'
this book is like one huge lesson. i loved it when i was a kid, probably because my mind just refused to acknowledge the last few chapters.
okay, so i'm going to try and get through the rest of this chapter quick.
she tells the kids to turn off dripping faucets to save water. to recycle plastic bags--i'm guessing she means ziploc bags, because she's talking about the bags that the kids cheese and nut sandwiches are in--by cleaning them and reusing them. blah blah. she says that buddy, suzi and marnie were 'such eager students' that it gave her an idea: 'if the barrett kids were this anxious to learn about ecology, maybe other kids in the neighbourhood would be, too. what if i taught an after-school ecology class to the kids i babysat for? it would be the perfect project for mrs. gonzalez's class, and best of all, it would be fun!'
she says after she left the barretts that afternoon, she once again, couldn't stop thinking about her project. she says she knew getting all of the childrens to one location and teaching the class would be a lotta werrk yo. she was gonna need some help. so she calls stacey after dinner and tells her about her Great Idea ™. "kids, of all people, should know how to save the planet. after all, it's going to be theirs the longest."
hate to tell you this, dawn, but you're a kid too. so you can stop this whole old lady speech about the children being our future. you are a child and if you are our future, i'm fucking scared.
stacey somehow has a big enough straw to suck dawn's ass all the way from her house and tells her it's a terrific idea and that she found the perfect book. '50 simple things kids can do to save the earth.' i gotta consult with the oracle of the internet and see if this is a real book. brb.
well, i think it must've been, because barnes and noble has this version: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-new-50-simple-things-kids-can-do-to-save-the-earth-earth-works-group/1016123704?ean=9780740777462
titled, 'the new 50 simple things kids can do to save the earth', which is apparently a revised edition of the original.
dawn tells stacey she thinks she's seen it at the library and makes note of the title. "great! so we have our textbook and our project, and it's only tuesday. we're way ahead of the rest of the class."
so, i guess we either didn't see her asking stacey if she'd like to be involved, or she's just assuming she will.
stacey says there's only one problem: does she think mrs. g will let them work on the project together, since they are in different classes?
of course she will. this is the BSC. they're always given exactly what they want.
dawn says she'll talk to mrs. g first thing in the morning. and tells stacey to bring the book and start thinking of how they'll put the project together. see? even dawn knows that there is an unspoken law that says these bitches will always get their way.
end of fucking chapter.
--
i learned a very valuable lesson while writing up these first three chapters and that is that snarking a dawn book is very much like this:
i love you, data. <3
so there will be a part two in the near future! hope you are all doing well. thanks again for being so awesome and commenting on my kristy snark! i hope you all enjoy this one too. :D
p.s. if there isn't already a 'dawn wangst' tag, we SO NEED ONE!!
p.p.s. damn it, none of the animated gifs seem to be working, dunno how to fix that. derp. #havingaclaudiamoment :c
i'm still sick and life has been kicking my ass, but i've recently discovered the immense healing powers of dawn schafer bashing. so i invite you all to join me in this wonderful healing process and read as i let my rage flow in...
this was the only cover i could find a picture of, and holy shit did it make me laugh.
especially the close up. fuuuug..
anyway, onto the horror that is...
DAWN SAVES THE PLANET
brought to you in part by jahnna beecham, malcolm hilgartner and the letter F.
what words begin with the letter F, class? Fuck and Fail come to mind...
Chapter One
this book starts off with a question:
"do you think kids can save the planet?"
hmmm…let me ponder that a moment…well, maybe. but not if the kid in question is a certain dawn read schafer.
but we'll get to that soon enough. for now, i'mma let dawn herself answer.
'"yes, of course!"' she tells us she was practically shouting, and since she is a shrill harpy on a good day, i'm assuming she busted a few eardrums just now. of course, before she told us her answer, she let us know that the rest of the SMS students that were in her class 'just sat there like lumps staring at her' (meaning the teacher who asked the question), because of course, a BSC member always has to be the smartest person in the room, but still think it's okay to not only dump on but ostracize the real brains -- e.g. janine.
so dawn decides to waste our precious time by introducing herself to us. dawn, we know exactly who you are. you are the hellbeast harpy of stoneybrook, and we fucking hate your guts. but do go on, tell me all about yourself! no, i'm not falling asleep, i'm just closing my eyes for a spell, your cornsilk hair is blinding me.
i'm sure no one cares what lies dawn is spinning about herself right now anyway.
i can sum it all up real quick: intro to dawn (yawn), intro to mary anne, and the long, long tale of The Great Romance. p.s. she thinks her house is haunted. the end.
dawn tells us that even though she and mary anne are 'totally different in many ways' there is a fuckton of shit that they agree on and she knows that if mary anne were in mrs. gonzalez's class with her, she would say, "i agree with dawn. we can save the planet if we all pull together!" after removing the straw she's been using to suck dawn's ass with, of course.
dawn tells us that after she made her 'announcement' in class, mrs. gonzalez 'folded her arms in front of her and smiled', then borrowed mary anne's ass sucking straw for a moment before saying, "dawn is right. you can help save this planet, even if you are young. a good place to start is in your home, or school, or town."
yes, children, saving the planet is easy. you don't even have to go any further than your own backyard.
dawn girlcrushes over mrs. g, telling us she's very cool and has 'long dark hair that she wears in a thick braid down the centre of her back', then tells us that she starts pointing to various posters she's put up over the blackboard.
'"i've listed things that are going wrong with the environment at this very moment. dawn, would you read them out loud?"' because of fucking course she picks dawn to read them. god.
dawn says that all of the kids in the room turn to look at her, and i roll my eyes. alan gray does me one better and crosses his eyes at her. good. stupid bitch should have people making faces at her 24/7. she tries to ignore him and reads the posters.
'"acid rain and air pollution."
"invisible gases are released by cars that burn gasoline, and power plants that burn coal." mrs gonzalez explained. "these gases can mix with water and make it highly acidic. when these gases get into rain and snow clouds,the acid falls back to earth, destroying trees and polluting the water in our lakes and rivers. air pollution also makes it difficult for us to breathe."
"vanishing animal life," i continued reading.
"as more and more people are born," mrs. gonzalez said, moving down the centre aisle of the class, "more and more forests are cut down to make room for them. the areas where wild animals can live are replaced by homes and stores, and the animals become extinct."
i wrinkled my nose as i read the next heading [of course she did. well, i'm sure everyone around you has permanently wrinkled noses, since you smell like fucking ass] "too much garbage."
"when people throw things away, the garbage gets buried in the ground or thrown in the ocean." mrs. gonzalez stopped by my desk and crossed her arms. "pretty soon there won't be any more room for our garbage. so what can we do about it?"'
blast dawn into space! that would eliminate about fifty metric tonnes of garbage!!
ahem.
'once again i raised my hand. "recycle."'
no…no shit, really?!?! i have never heard of THAT before!! what is this recycling of which you speak??? please dawn, assplain.
oh, dawn can't. but mrs. gonzalez can, after sucking dawn's ass some more and telling her she's right, of course.
'"recycling means reusing paper and glass and aluminum over and over again." mrs. gonzalez returned to the front of the class and tapped the last poster. "and the final heading is what?"
"water pollution," i read.
mrs. gonzalez nodded. "every living creature depends on water to survive. but our oceans and rivers are polluted by garbage, and much of the water we drink is being wasted. we need to keep it clean."'
word, woman. i live right next to a huge river that is basically toxic. it's fucking depressing. human beings as a whole are the assholes of the planet.
ahem.
anyway, mrs. g tells them that their assignment for the entire grade period is to pick one of the topics that was discussed and "design a project that can help save our planet." good luck. it's 13 years since this book was written and we're not any better off, as far as i can tell. so…WAY TO FAIL, DAWN!!
the room is a-buzz with these kids talking all at once and 'announcing' which categories they're picking. dawn lets us know that a a couple of kids in the back of the class are groaning. ah, the back of the class, where the burnouts and delinquents are always situated in the movies. i'm guessing since these books run on stereotypes, the back-o-the-classers in this book are burnouts and delinquents too.
apparently all of these childrens are so loud that mrs. g has to shout so they can hear her last announcement (everyone is fucking announcing shit in this chapter!!), which is that they have a week to come up with an idea for their project and to write a brief description of what they plan on doing. then the bell rings and it's the end of class, but sadly, not the end of the chapter. damn it.
this gif sums up pretty much this whole book, tbh.
dawn's brain is 'already clicking away' with thoughts of her project and she spends the next hour thinking about ecology when she should be focusing on her social studies class. i guess she learned fuck all about the french revolution that day. no wonder these girls are so ignorant when it comes to other cultures, etc. they zone out constantly during their classes.
dawn says that with so many possibilities to choose from, it's gonna be hard to pick just ONE project, yo. so she decides to rant to her friends about it at lunch. which is really just an excuse to info-dump on the reader, it seems. ah, just kristy and claudia for now. so she makes yet another fucking announcement (holy shit, what's with that in this chapter?!?) to them as she sits down at the lunch table. "guess what? i'm going to save the planet."
brb, ~~ROFLMFAO!!~~ nice work dawn. nice work.
but this is priceless:
'claudia just blinked her dark eyes at me and said, "it's about time."'
HAHAHAHA!!!
'kristy took a big bite of her (ick) hamburger and cracked, "i was going to save it but i have a big softball game this afternoon."'
i love how she's always inwardly gagging and whatnot over her friend's food choices. fucking cunt. no one is forcing it down your throat, so just shut your yap.
'"you two think you're so funny." i swatted at kristy, who was grinning at me from across the table.'
so, you reached all the way across the table to "swat" her? really?
anyway, she tells her friends that she MEANS it. she IS going to Save The Planet ™. because since they started studying ecology in her lover mrs. g's science class, she's found a cause worthy of a crusade. dawn, i would not be so angry with you right now, if you hadn't FAILED.
'"she's asked us to come up with an independent project--"
"to save the earth." a voice finished from behind me.'
this previously unknown speaker is introduced to us as one stacey mcgill. who is 'balancing' a carton of yogurt and a 'small' salad on her tray. she sits next to kristy and says she's got the same project as dawn, and whines that they only have a week to come up with something but her mind is a total blank.
which segues into dawn gushing over how 'absolutely gorgeous' stacey is and describing her in loving detail, so i guess she has more than one girlcrush. move over mrs. g!! she says that stacey is also 'very thin' and explains that her unnatural thinness is partly caused by the strict diet she's on because of her diabetes. so, what with that description of her lunch, as well as her being described as 'absolutely gorgeous' and 'very thin' we get a very clear message: thinness equals absolutely stunning. also, it helps if you have fluffy blonde hair and blue eyes. i fucking hate these books. so anyway, she keeps info-dumping about stacey and i just skim like crazy for anything even remotely relevant.
ooh! outfit description! dawn says that of all the BSCers, she'd have to say stacey is the coolest dresser and tells us what she's wearing today: 'floral leggings, a pink shirt with big sleeves, and a long vest covered in antique pins. a black fedora with a red cloth rose was perched on top of her shoulder length hair.'
i don't even know what to make of that outfit. O_o
claudia tells stacey not to worry about not having an idea for her project yet, cuz she's a math whiz, so science 'should be just as easy'. stacey is like, "durr, math and science are different subjects, dumbo!"
claudia derps: "not to me, they both make me crazy. they both involve numbers and words you can't pronounce and things you have to memorize." and mary anne appears with logan and whines not to even mention memorizing because she thinks she just bombed a spelling test. waaaaah!! and logan is all like, "yeah, right mary anne considers missing one question bombing a test." and they mock janine? really?
so mary anne passive aggressively pokes logan in the ribs and he clutches his side and howls, "ow! she got me!" ha, logan, you're such a pussy.
so they spend the rest of lunch talking about tests. yawn. and how disgusting the hot lunch is, as per usual. except this time claudia is the one making cracks, for some reason and calls it "green slime". dawn thinks about her science project during all of this and the rest of the day as well. she's got a bee in her bonnet about the environment, and it has not only invited it's bee friends, but they are now building a hive. dawn is officially obsessed.
mary anne has job sitting for the perfects, oops, i mean perkins, so dawn goes home alone and heads right for her bedroom to consult with the ghost of jared mullray about her plot to Save The Planet ™., or something. she tells us she's going to make a list and how this is something she does on the regular to help her deal with Important Issues, such as who to invite to the dance or what to wear on the first day of school. yes, those are truly pressing issues, dawn. i'm sure saving the planet is almost just as important as a dance partner or an outfit.
the chapter finally ends with her writing down a very loaded question:
HOW CAN I SAVE THE PLANET?
Chapter Two
of course chapter two starts out with dawn fretting over the time and the possible wrath of kristy, why? well, it's 5:20 on a meeting day, of course! because the beginning of pretty much every single baby-sitters club book ever written takes place on the day of a damned meeting, just so they can hit us over the head with a chapter two by four.
so she's busting her ass bicycling to claudia's house while inner monologuing the usual chapter two nonsense about the club's history, etc, as well as the histories of the fucking club members. BORING! funny how even in a book about saving the planet and recycling, etc, they have a balls to waste so much paper on this fucking bullshit. how many trees gave their lives for useless chapter twos, ann?!! HOW MANY?!?!?!
which made me want to check something -- they talk in this book about only using recycled paper--don't worry, we'll get to that part--so i checked a couple of my BSC books to see if THEY were printed on recycled paper. NOPE! BOO ANN!! BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! ahem.
fucking hypocrites.
anyway, so dawn gets to the meeting right on time. she ran into claud's room and 'collapsed' on her bed just as 5:30 hit, but of course, kristy still gives her the stink eye as she's 'gasping for air'. dawn basically tells her kristy can give her all the stink eyes she wants, but she can't fucking say a word because she WAS on time. kristy calls the meeting to order and says, "as you know, today is dues day." just so jessi can crack this joke: "i think we should all chip in to pay for an oxygen tank for dawn." oh, har har, jessica.
oh course dawn has to drama-queen it up, 'i put my hand over my heart and said dramatically, "if i die now, please tell the world i died happy because i was on time to the baby-sitters club meeting.' which earns her a swat from the long arm of kristy. who is somehow able to swat dawn, who is on the bed, from the director's chair. she's stretch armstrong in disguise, i'm guessing.
oh, and the other girls cracked up. whatever. they get a call and claudia answers with this sick little gem, "hello, baby-sitters club. your kids are our business." *shudder* that earns her one of kristy's Looks ™ because apparently that wasn't professional???? all right…but i can totally see kristy answering the phone the exact same way at a meeting, just saying.
it's mrs. barrett who needs a sitter for the next afternoon. only kristy and dawn are free, so kristy very magnanimously grants dawn the job, stating it is because dawn lives closer to the barretts. uh huh. so dawn feeds us the "i used to call the barrett kids the impossible three, but now i totally don't, i just totally do every time they are brought up in any way, shape or form, but for reals, you guys, i swear these are some of my favourite clients!!!" line.
the phone rings off the hook for the next twenty minutes. god, this chapter is a frigging snorefest.
apparently stacey doesn't get to finish collecting dues until the meeting was just about over. and dawn is sadfaces or grumpfaces or something about not getting to discuss her plans to Save The Planet ™ with the club, she decides she'll just have to cram her ideas and opinions down their throats tomorrow. she tells us that that ended up being okay, because the Really Great Idea didn't come to her until she had her baby-sitting job with the barretts.
Chapter Three
so of course chapter three starts out with her sitting job with the barretts, because we ALL must bask in the glory that is dawn. pow is woofing around because he's a dog. the kiddies dressed poor pow up in a baby's bonnet and they also somehow tied a plastic bottle around his collar?? even dawn says he looks miserable. suzi says, "come here, you bad dog. you're supposed to take your nap now." whatever suzi, leave the damned dog alone. dawn kneels down to hug suzi, i'm assuming she does this to show the reader how much she totally loves these NOT-Impossible Three, assuming it will make us stop wanting to smack her every time she refers to them by that obnoxious and bitchy slur. it's not working, dawn. she asks suzi if pow is giving her trouble. no, dawn, i think suzi is the one giving pow trouble!
suzi nods and tells dawn that she's playing house and pow is her baby. buddy comes bursting out the front door wearing a cowboy hat and chaps. watch out, buddy. don't be wearing them chaps around logan, he'll get ideas and the end up buying his own, except buttless. he's gotta win over the guys on the track team again, after all. as well as any remaining badd boyz.
buddy flings a loop of clothesline around dawn's shoulder and shouts that he "got" her. instead of flipping out on him, i guess because he's not using a toy gun, she plays along and pretends to be scared, '"oh, no!" i cried, pretending to be scared. "what's going on?"
"i'm the sheriff," buddy declared. "and you're under arrest."'
buddy, please, for real, make a citizen's arrest!! get this crazy bitch locked up in the pokey for a few days at least, damn it!! i'll buy you all the toy guns your violent little heart desires!! do it for the good of your country, buddy! we're counting on you!!
'"no, she's not." suzi put her hands on her hips and faced her brother. "dawn is going to play house with me and pow."'
DAMN IT SUZI. HE WAS DOING A SERVICE TO HIS COUNTRY! AND READERS WORLDWIDE!! DAMN YOU CHILD!!!!!
marnie starts shouting for dawn from inside the house, then races down the stairs and runs out the front door to hug dawn around the knees, somehow without falling down and going boom like most two year olds i've seen run and/or try to take on stairs at that rapid pace. nope, she doesn't even fall down the stairs. i would've at that age. whatever. dawn bends down and picks her up, praising her and crediting her for possibly breaking up the fight being Sheriff Buddy and Mother Suzi. snore.
dawn begins to once again internally monologue about how she used to call them the impossible three. like the twatstain that she is. they were impossible because their house was a bit of a mess and the kids were still upset about the seemingly recent divorce of their parents. wow, that is like, TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE. YOU SHOULD TOTALLY KEEP DUMPING ON THEM FOR HAVING A NORMAL REACTION TO A TRAUMATIC EVENT. bitch. whatever dawn, i fucking hate you. how dare you judge these kids or their mother???? you're 100000 x more impossible than these three kids, their mother, jenny, lou and jackie rodowsky combined. you skank.
dawn stops telling us how impossible the family used to be to lust after mrs. barrett as she appears in the front hallway, 'looking as if she had just stepped off the cover of some fashion magazine. i'm not kidding, she was absolutely gorgeous.' yeah, you just keep on girlcrushing there, dawn.
mrs. b lets her know the kids have been looking forward to seeing her all day. why???? i don't know. dawn replies that she's been looking forward to seeing them, too and she's got a surprise in her kid-kit she wants to show them. i wonder…does it have something to do with…THE ENVIRONMENT?!?!
suzi gets all excited and hops up and down shouting, "oooh, i want to see!" hold your damn horses, there woman, or sheriff buddy will have to lasso you, too.
buddy says he wants to see first and marnie 'chime[s] in' "me, me" so dawn, getting the exact reaction she wanted, which was to have all of the kids simultaneously fawning over her and begging, says they'll go into the living room and she'll show all three of them. mrs. b puts on her jacket, gives dawn some instructions and says bye to the kidlets, then is out.
soon all four of them are sitting around the kid-kit, you'd think she'd brought something super amazing, like the dead sea scrolls or some shit. buddy is actually utterly disappointed when he pulls out the bag that contains this amazing! wonderful! awesome! totally worth letting your mother leave with barely a passing glance for! surprise.
'"it's a book."
"but not just any book." i said mysteriously. "open it up and tell me what you see."'
i hope buddy straight up backhands her after opening it. because this was a crazy fucking amount of over dramatic and over exaggerated build up.
suzi opens the book and 'squeal[s] with delight. "stickers! i love stickers."
buddy tried to sound out the words written across the top of the big vinyl-coated page. "mah-reen werrrrld." he looked up at me with a grin and repeated it. "marine world."
"that's right buddy," i said. "good job."'
i'm rolling my eyes. it's become like a nervous tic of sorts when i read these books. i'm always rolling my eyes.
she tells us the book is actually a fold-out map of mah-reen werrrld and that it shows several ponds, a walkway, blah blah blah, IT SHOWS MARINE WORLD DAWN, stop wasting words describing a fucking map. you're killing ALL OF THE TREES with all this worthless horseshoe. at least my ranting about your wastefulness is digital.
rest assured: No Trees Were Harmed During the Making of This Snark.
she asks the kids what kind of animals they see, which suzi answers: "fish. whale. seal. hippo-lota-mess." dawn corrects her, while laughing at her. '"i think you mean hippo-pot-a-mus." suzi nodded solemnly. "that's what i said."' take that dawn! suzi don't give a FUCK.
buddy holds up a dolphin sticker and asks dawn what kind of animal it is, so dawn can answer the age old question: what are dolphin? how it do?
she says dolphins are one of the smartest creatures in the ocean. suzi asks if she means they can do tricks.
"yes, but they also communicate with each other and us. in dolphin language, of course."
technically dawn, all animals communicate with each other and humans. my cat communicates her ass off all the time, especially when she wants food, which is always. so hush, dawn, the grown ups and their cats are talking. go sit in a corner. i got claudia to make you a dunce cap, it says "dawnce." see, sometimes caludia's spelling makes PERFECT SENSE.
sorry needed to go to my happy place for a minute...
anyway, buddy says he wants a dolphin. good luck, kid. i hear there aren't many o'them left. and they aren't meant to be pets. dawn just asks where he plans to keep his pet dolphin. suzi suggests the bathtub. dawn tells her a dolphin is way too big to live in a fucking bathtub, and it needs room to swim. then she decides to freak out the kiddies:
"here's something sad about dolphins. did you know that a lot of them die just because we like to eat tuna fish?"
that tuna fish line stayed with my my whole damned life, by the way. luckily, i've never been able to stand tuna anyway. the smell of it makes me feel sick. but unlike dawn, i don't turn into the fucking food gestapo just because someone happens to eat tuna around me.
'buddy looked at me skeptically. "what's tuna fish got to do with dolphins?"
"well, some fishing fleets use nets that accidentally trap millions of dolphins every year. and the sad thing is that the fishermen could catch the tuna without using nets, but they don't want to."
"how come?" buddy demanded.
"they say it's too expensive that way."
"that's not fair." he protested.'
suzi wants to know how dawn knows all of this, 'cupping the sticker gently in her hand.'
'"i've been studying our planet and animals that live on it in school." i pointed to the marine world sticker book. "that's why i bought this book. half of the money i spent on it will go to the save the dolphins fund."
buddy leapt to his feet. "i want to save the dolphins."
"so do i," suzi said joining him.
"me, too!" marnie sprang to her feet and grabbed suzi's hand. the three kids hopped up and down chanting, "save the dolphins." (it sounded a lot like, "save the doll's fins.")'
'"you can save them," i said, excitedly.
they quieted down and suzi asked, "we can? how?"
"well, first of all, we can write to the tuna companies and tell them we won't buy their tuna if they keep hurting the dolphins," i explained. "look, i'll write the letters and you guys can sign them,"
"yea!" suzi squealed so loudly that pow started barking. the baby bonnet had fallen over his eyes and, as he barked, he struggled to knock it off his nose with one of his big paws.'
that last bit, i'm sure, was added for comedic effect. whatever. so, she's asking these kids to take part in the threatening of companies with a boycott? maybe ask mrs. b first, dawn. ya know, since she is their mother. you might want to make sure she's cool with this.
so dawn pulls the bonnet off of pow's face and holds up her hands to quiet suzi. i'm yawning already and i'm picking this up from last night. this bitch still tires me out.
dawn tells them that there are like, TONS of things they can do to Save The Planet ™ and help the animals in the sea. buddy asks what and dawn lets us know that she'd checked several books on 'ecology and our planet' out of the library and had looked at them during lunch, so…'the ideas were still fresh in [her] mind'. which is good, i guess, because now she can start recruiting childrens for the crusade. '"well, we can start by making sure the garbage dumped in the ocean doesn't hurt the fish and animals."
how about not dumping fucking garbage in the ocean, period? what the fuck is wrong with humanity?!?
'"i never throw my garbage in the ocean," suzi said, putting her fists on her hips and looking indignant. "that's littering."
i couldn't resist giving her a hug. "i know you don't, but some big companies do. come on," i took her hand. "let's go in the kitchen and i'll show you what gets thrown in the water."'
i gotta stop here for a second and say, i appreciate what they originally set out to do with this book -- educate readers/kids on recycling, ecology, etc, i'm assuming that's what they set out to do anyway -- but they lose so many points for making dawn a self righteous and hysterical nazi about it all, especially later on in the book, that they end up with minus one hundred thousand trillion points.
anyway, the kiddies 'trot[ed] obediently after [dawn]' and she says the first stop is the kitchen counter where she points to the plastic rings on a six-pack of soda. she tells them that the rings are really dangerous to fish and animals because when they float in the water they look like food, "then sea turtles swallow them, which is harmful to their insides. seals and birds, like pelicans and seagulls, get them caught around their necks. even fish can get tangled in them."
the seagulls in our area are like, totally domesticated. they fly around in huge groups looking for fast food scraps people have dropped near the wendy's and multiple mcdicks and the like. some people--i'm not naming names in order to protect identities *cough*--have been known to feed them french fries. it is like something out of the alfred hitchcock movie, 'the birds' when you see them all descend on a fast food restaurant parking lot. so. many. seagulls.
anyway, back to the book.
'"but what can we do about it?" buddy asked earnestly.
i opened the top drawer by the sink and pulled out a pair of scissors. "clip the rings so there are no circles for animals to get caught on."
"i want to do it!" suzi cried, reaching for the scissors.
"no, i do," buddy said stubbornly.'
dawn says she realized she'd have to think fast to find suzi 'another chore'. she comes up with an idea after doing a quick scan of the room and seeing the garbage can. she tells suzi to go through the garbage and pull out every can she finds. ew dawn, is it sanitary or safe to get a little kid to go diving through a garbage can to do that? for all you know, there's shit in there that could hurt her or make her sick. kids are always putting their hands in their mouths and shit, god. ever heard of e. coli? salmonella? be smart, bitch.
dawn finds a paper bag 'that had been tucked between the refrigerator and the wall' and gives it to suzi, telling her to put any cans from the garbage in there, so they can recycle the aluminum. how's about getting the kid some gloves? or i dunno, searching the garbage yourself? ugh.
then they add this, which was supposed to add a cuteness factor: '"we're going to take it for a tricycle ride?" suzi asked, squinting one eye shut.'
eye rolling forever.
'i couldn't help laughing. "no. recycle means to use things over and over again." i pulled an empty juice can out of the trash. "if we don't throw this away, it can go back to the factory and be used again and again. but if we toss it out, then it floats around our oceans, hurting all those innocent sea creatures."
suzi dove for the trash basket. "i'm going to make sure every single can is re-tricycled."
"good for you!" i couldn't believe how much fun it was to teach the barretts about ecology. we spent the remainder of the afternoon talking about ways we could save our planet, and the animals on it.'
this book is like one huge lesson. i loved it when i was a kid, probably because my mind just refused to acknowledge the last few chapters.
okay, so i'm going to try and get through the rest of this chapter quick.
she tells the kids to turn off dripping faucets to save water. to recycle plastic bags--i'm guessing she means ziploc bags, because she's talking about the bags that the kids cheese and nut sandwiches are in--by cleaning them and reusing them. blah blah. she says that buddy, suzi and marnie were 'such eager students' that it gave her an idea: 'if the barrett kids were this anxious to learn about ecology, maybe other kids in the neighbourhood would be, too. what if i taught an after-school ecology class to the kids i babysat for? it would be the perfect project for mrs. gonzalez's class, and best of all, it would be fun!'
she says after she left the barretts that afternoon, she once again, couldn't stop thinking about her project. she says she knew getting all of the childrens to one location and teaching the class would be a lotta werrk yo. she was gonna need some help. so she calls stacey after dinner and tells her about her Great Idea ™. "kids, of all people, should know how to save the planet. after all, it's going to be theirs the longest."
hate to tell you this, dawn, but you're a kid too. so you can stop this whole old lady speech about the children being our future. you are a child and if you are our future, i'm fucking scared.
stacey somehow has a big enough straw to suck dawn's ass all the way from her house and tells her it's a terrific idea and that she found the perfect book. '50 simple things kids can do to save the earth.' i gotta consult with the oracle of the internet and see if this is a real book. brb.
well, i think it must've been, because barnes and noble has this version: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-new-50-simple-things-kids-can-do-to-save-the-earth-earth-works-group/1016123704?ean=9780740777462
titled, 'the new 50 simple things kids can do to save the earth', which is apparently a revised edition of the original.
dawn tells stacey she thinks she's seen it at the library and makes note of the title. "great! so we have our textbook and our project, and it's only tuesday. we're way ahead of the rest of the class."
so, i guess we either didn't see her asking stacey if she'd like to be involved, or she's just assuming she will.
stacey says there's only one problem: does she think mrs. g will let them work on the project together, since they are in different classes?
of course she will. this is the BSC. they're always given exactly what they want.
dawn says she'll talk to mrs. g first thing in the morning. and tells stacey to bring the book and start thinking of how they'll put the project together. see? even dawn knows that there is an unspoken law that says these bitches will always get their way.
end of fucking chapter.
--
i learned a very valuable lesson while writing up these first three chapters and that is that snarking a dawn book is very much like this:
i love you, data. <3
so there will be a part two in the near future! hope you are all doing well. thanks again for being so awesome and commenting on my kristy snark! i hope you all enjoy this one too. :D
p.s. if there isn't already a 'dawn wangst' tag, we SO NEED ONE!!
p.p.s. damn it, none of the animated gifs seem to be working, dunno how to fix that. derp. #havingaclaudiamoment :c