The Host Redux Chapters 21 and 22

Chapter 21
Named

Blah blah blah humans are bad bad creatures blah blah they should be nicer and love each other blah blah.

Jeb's sudden face-wide grin reminded me, strangely, of a pouncing cat.
I don't think those two things have anything to do with each other.

“Is that the only other place?” he asked when I fell silent, trying to think of anything I'd missed. “Are the See Weeds”–he laughed once at the pun–“the only other aliens?”
Ha ha ha CUZ IT'S FRIGGIN' HILARIOUS. Here's my dad's favourite joke: A mushroom walks into a bar and buys drinks for everyone. The bartender goes, "Why are you buying all these drinks?" and the mushroom goes, "because I'm a fun guy." Get it? Fungi? It's almost as hilarious as Smeyer's little joke there.

Side note: I'm transferring to York University in Toronto and I have to take a natural science. I was like, "shit!" because I hate science and plus I already took my first year natural science at U of S. But there's this sweet looking class called "Life Beyond Earth." You get to learn about what it takes for life to exist beyond Earth and about how people surivive in space. Essentially, you get to learn about aliens and space. It sounds AWESOME.

“What about the little green guys with the triangle heads and the big black eyes? The ones who crashed in Roswell and all that. Was that you guys?”
They're grey, dumbass. Plus, the Roswell aliens are way awesomer than these pansy little shits here who apparently just want to be convenience store clerks. And I wouldn't describe their heads as triangle shaped. Hasn't this kid seen Signs?

“How did you come here, then–if you weren't the little green guys, who were you? You had to
have bodies to move and stuff, right?”
“Right,” I agreed, surprised at his grasp of the facts at hand.
So Jamie's a little genius because he realizes that parasites need a body to move? Okay, then.

Side note: I just got a call from a telemarketer or some shit asking for Mrs. Tarwoski. People CANNOT pronounce my last name, even though it's fairly straightforward. It's long, but if you sound it out you'll be fine. I've heard Tarwoski, Tarnowski, Tarnowedzedki, Tarno (and then they gave up), and I've seen every conceivable spelling. Also, no one can ever spell it right EVEN IF MY LAST NAME IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. It's a little annoying.

So Wanderer tells us about the Spiders, who have three brains: one for each segment of their bodies. Apparently Smeyer doesn't know that spiders only have two tagmata (body segments). I don't mind people getting something wrong that requires extensive research (the physics of wormholes, for example) but what really bugs me is people not bothering to confirm something that you can find with a few quick clicks and Wikipedia.

Brilliant, the most incredible minds we'd ever come across, and each Spider had three of them.
She then goes on to say that they have three brains. A mind is different from a brain. I'm so desensitized to her lapses in logic that I can't even work up a credible outrage anymore.

Okay, what the hell is up with this infodump about spiders? It compeletely jars the reader and screws up our perception of the "plot."

I stopped short, midsentence, when I saw the crystalline sparkle on Jamie's cheek.
He was staring straight ahead at nothing, his lips pressed in a tight line. A large drop of salt
water rolled slowly down the cheek closest to me.
So, apparently Smeyer has some kind of boycott against the word "tear."

These were not the tears of a child, and that made them more profound–made it more sacred
and painful that he would cry them in front of me. This was the grief of a man at the funeral for his entire family.
I thought he was like, twelve.

“They called me Wanderer,” I whispered.
"They call me MR. TIBBS!" Side note: we used to have a male goat named Mr. Tibbs (not sure if he was named for that movie). He was kind of the goat equivalent of a eunuch. I'm not sure if he was sterile or what, but he was put in with the does. Mr. Tibbs was really tame and when my brother and sister and I were little we used to ride him around. Other than riding him, my favourite memory of him was when my parents put the bucks in with the does to mate with them (and we watched, for some reason. I had a strange childhood) and one of the bucks mistook Mr. Tibbs for a female and was chasing him around trying to mount him. It was hilarious.

Jeb's all, "Wanderer is too long for me to say, so let's call you Wanda!" I refuse. Partly because I dislike the name, but mostly on principle.

Chapter 22
Cracked

Why doesn't she just mention that Melanie's still alive inside? They may not all believe her, but at least it will plant some doubts in their minds. And I use the term "minds" very, very loosely.

“How many eyes?”
“Twelve–one at each juncture of the leg and the body. We didn't have lids, just a lot of
fibers–like steel wool eyelashes–to protect them.”
You know, call me crazy, but I thought spiders had eight legs, not twelve. Maybe these are special magical mutated spiders that have twelve legs and three tagmata.

“So did ya eat flies, like a Venus flytrap? I'll bet you did–or maybe something bigger, like a
bird–like a pterodactyl!”
Since when is a pterodactyl a bird?

“Yeah,” Jeb told him enthusiastically, “but not the lizardy kind. They're [dragons] all made up of jelly. They can fly, though… sort of. The air's thicker, sort of jelly, too. So it's almost like swimming."
Okay, I'm not an aeronautical engineer or anything, but I'm not sure about the physics of this planet.

“Harder than the place with the frozen air and the claw beasts?” he asked.
Those are the things that are like Tauntauns. It's almost as if Smeyer has never had an original idea in her life.