Stand back

So, my efforts to avoid a law prospectus have reached a critical point, where now I'm actually creating new ways to procrastinate. No longer are the old habits of random cleaning, napping, visiting and shopping appropriate, as I've entered a whole new galaxy of avoidance. There's no looking back now.

This weekend, I conceded to watching a scary movie with Jon. I don't watch scary movies based on the personal theory that as a rule, I try to avoid terror on a daily basis. I don't jump out into traffic for the adrenaline rush following survival, and I don't eat raw poultry to gamble with Salmonella. Scary movies seem similarly asinine to me. But, because every once in awhile I can let someone else have their way, I sat there and watched "The Strangers" from start to finish.

To date, I don't know if I've ever been more horrified. To summarize (stop if you haven't seen it and feel the overwhelming desire to crap your pants on the couch), a couple finds themselves in the woods, in a cabin, following a botched proposal on the part of the male character. As they awkwardly skitter around each other, a knock comes at the door. They answer, and some sketchball girl is vacantly staring at them, asking if "Tamra" is home. No Tamra in the house, so they send her away. The awkwardness continues, until the female character starts whining about how she wants cigarettes. It's 4am. In the woods. Any committed smoker would have planned for such an occasion and secured a backup supply, but no, no, not her. So the guy leaves to get her cigarettes. While she's in the cabin alone, that circus freak girl comes back and asks for her imaginary friend Tamra again. The female character sends her off again, and the creepiness continues to unfold as it becomes glaringly apparent that the weirdo on the porch is psychotic. So things go on and the guy comes back to find his terrified gf in the bedroom. The girl from the porch comes back with her freakish friends, only this time they have doll masks and weapons. Yadda yadda yadda, the mask people terrorize the two dummies that stayed in the house and in the end, they strap them to chairs and stab them. The end.

Notably, I screamed like a schoolgirl twice, prompting Jon to cover my mouth because he insisted that the police would come. I would have welcomed the interruption. And I cried. Three times, including a weeping session at the end of the movie because it was so wretchedly awful that my emotional response was limited to that of a startled puppy.

There you go. My first blog post. Copyright Andi McLame, 2008.