i love/hate scary stuff!

Excuse me while I make a sour face at my mom's defense of her use of the word "snuck" in her last entry. >:^( I don't like that word. I don't like a lot of Americanisms, actually. Maybe I read too much British literature, but whatever. I like "sneaked" and I'm sticking to it. You've just witnessed the English nerd in me rear its little head.

And speaking of words, literature, etc, I just got done reading The Worthy by Will Clarke. Now, I had a good impression of Will when he sent us a signed copy of the book, along with a bookmark and a bunch of little ghost erasers. I was also pleased that it was sent in a giant lime green envelope. So, since I'll pretty much read anything that I can lay my dorky little hands on, I picked up this book immediately. I got three pages in and I knew I was going to enjoy it.

Let it also be known that I purchased Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk about a week ago when Mama and I stopped off at Border's after seeing The Descent, which -- okay, look, can I just say that going into undiscovered caves is a really bad idea? There's probably a reason it's undiscovered, like all the people who've tried to map it HAVE BEEN EATEN. Yeah, more on that in a minute.

So, I get this book and I've been wanting it for a long time, but it wasn't in paperback until a few months ago and for some reason I'd been having bad luck with hardback books (the spines keep falling apart or some other annoying thing), so I wanted to wait for paperbook. I started Haunted a few days ago and generally when I start reading anything by Palahniuk, I don't put it down until I've finished it. But then I started reading The Worthy, and yeah, let me just say, that book is pretty much the shit. See, I'm kind of a sucker for books that are all fucked up and stuff. I think I'm a little morbid, and that probably also has something to do with the fact that I laugh at the most inappropriate things.

Will, if you're reading this, let me just give you some fucking props, dude. Usually when a book is set in the South, it's written by someone from Massachussetts or something and everyone down here who reads it is all like, "Whoa, way to get that wrong." Kinda like when a movie is set in New Orleans or somewhere in Cajun country and everyone talks like they're from Georgia. The Worthy was pretty much awesome. I know I should've expected that because you don't just get a review in the New York Times for no reason, but then again, you never know. Awesome job, man. You described Baton Rouge and Shreveport (specifically Fairfield Avenue) in an awesomely impressive way. See, I like detailed, flowery writing just as much as the next person, but I tend to get sucked into writing that's, you know, real.

So, that's it for The Worthy until I get time to write a proper review. Now I'm gonna move on to The Descent which was seriously the best horror movie I've seen since the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I've been a cave once, but it had been explored enough to have a track with cars for tours, so I didn't have much fear of blind, slimy, humanoid creatures who eat people. Pools of blood and skin and guts didn't seem prominent, either. But look, if someone takes me to go exploring some cave, they better have a map of where to go, the exact time it takes to get there, and where all the exits in that cave are located because if they don't, then fuck that. No way am I going risk getting my intestines snacked on while I'm still alive by a demon that can scale walls and makes the most horrifying noises.

I'm pretty easily scared. I'll jump during pretty much all horror movies, even if they're not all that good, but I'm never like, terrified throughout an entire movie. Any movie with that much tension is A+ in my book. And the ending was brilliant. Go see it. It's certainly not a waste of $5 or $7, depending on what time you go to the theatre. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get my mind off of creepy cave shit.

p.s. Speaking of caves, there's this really fantastic hoax website about a caver who discovers something in a cave that probably shouldn't be there. It's got pictures and everything. If blogger wasn't being such a bitch, I'd show off my awesome [read: simple] html skills and put the link behind a word, but this site apparently has a goddamn vendetta against me, so this is it: www.holyshiite.com/caver/