Bumping Geese 8: The Girl Who Cried Monster

 Thanks for being patient during this brief hiatus we just had. This one took longer because the week I was meant to do this review, I came down ill and then Christmas happened and I was caught up in all the yearly traditions and activities.

But here we are, past that, new year creeping up on us, just around the corner, and I hope you've all had as happy a holidays as 2020 would allow. And I hope your travelling and socialising was kept to a safe and sensible minimum.

Now, you've waited ever so patiently for this one, so let's not waste any more time. 'Goosebumps' book 8: 'The Girl Who Cried Monster'

I don't know if there are Christmas themed Goosebumps books
This one is not.

There are a couple of things that make this book distinct. It is one of only a few, so far, that have been written in first person. It doesn't even try that hard to be scary, instead opting to be more of a children's adventure with slight horror elements. Unlike Monster Blood, which does the same, this book isn't complete crap. Or even mostly crap. The villain is an actual character, instead of a vague looming threat. That's unusual for the series, so far. Because it's not much of a horror, there's also not much mystery or suspense. The monster - and I hope it's not a spoiler to say there is a monster - is present and described in detail from very early in the story. RL Stine doesn't try to be funny, much, which is a rare relief. Uh, what else...

Oh yeah.

The twist ending is totally fucking nuts.

I imagine most of you along for this ride with me have either read the Goosebumps books, or are adults who are as mildly curious about them as I was when I started, and very few, if any of you, are going to read the books after reading my blog. But if you are - if that is what you are doing - then please stop reading this blog and go read the book first. I am going to spoil the ending, and regardless of whether or not the ending is good, whether or not it is a satisfying twist (and see the Monster Blood review for what isn't a satisfying twist), this twist is worth experiencing first hand, unspoiled.

You'll get one more warning before I spoil the twist ending.

So as the name suggests, 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' is just Aesop's Fable 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' but Goosebumps-ified. Modern (well, by 90s standards) suburban setting, a monster in place of a wolf, shitty parents, and an utterly bananas twist ending.

Our protagonist is Lucy, a young girl who likes making up stories about monsters to frighten her brother and trick her friends. But one day, she stays late at the local library and sees that the librarian, Mr Mortman, is a monster. Lucy tries to tell everybody that she has seen a totally real definitely actual alive and real monster, but of course they've heard her tell these stories for a long time, so they don't believe her.

At this point in 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', the real wolf eats the village's live stock and, depending on the version, the boy. But 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' goes off in its own direction here and we follow Lucy's adventure as she tries to first confirm what she saw - Mr Mortman turning into a monster - is real, and then prove it to her friends and family.

And here is also where we also run into the biggest problem with this story.

Mr Mortman isn't a good wolf. Some of the scenes in which he transforms are unsettling. He is usually observed while feasting on moths, flies, and even a small turtle, and that does kind of churn the stomach, but there's no indication he is a threat, and it isn't until near the end that he even knows Lucy is onto him. So there's very little at stake in this story. Lucy isn't in danger and her goal isn't to stop Mr Mortman or save anybody, it is just to make people believe her and stop calling her a liar. Even though she is a liar, and it just happens she is telling the truth this time.

And that also undermines the point of the fable this story is based on. Which makes this novel kind of hard to say anything interesting  about. It's an Aesop Fable without a moral. You know the first half of the story, and the second half, while a decent page turner, is also kind of sterile. There's no sense of danger, no suspense, no comedy (failed or otherwise), and unfortunately quite a bit of repetition of scenes of Lucy spying on Mr Mortman, seeing the same thing, getting scared, and escaping unscathed. That takes up most of the second half of the book.

And then the ending happens.

Lucy is finally validated when her friend Aaron also sees Mr Mortman transform into a monster. And backed by her friends' testimony, Lucy's family invites Mr Mortman to dinner.

And I'm about to spoil the twist ending of the story so if you want to know what the fuss is about, if you want to try and experience this wild wacky nonsense for yourself, go get a copy (the ebooks are cheap) and read it. The whole book will probably take you 20 minutes to read. These aren't dense or lengthy fiction. Okay. Warning over.

Mr Mortman arrives for dinner and makes small talk with Lucy's parents and then THEY FUCKING GROW FANGS AND EAT MR MORTMAN. It turns out that Lucy's family are all monsters, and they don't like other monsters living in their town, so when one does show up, they eat them. No monsters have shown up for some 20 years, so Lucy's parents didn't believe her until a non-monster corroborated the story. Lucy and her brother don't eat Mr Mortman because they're not old enough monsters to have fangs and eat other monsters, yet. That's also why Lucy's brother, a monster, is afraid of other monsters. He's not big enough to be the predator just yet. 

And Lucy and her monster family live happily ever after.

And...

What the fuck.

This is not a satisfying twist. Or rather, it shouldn't be. It has none of those good qualities I have described good twists having. It doesn't come with any suspense, just surprise - to use Hitchcock's language.

But it's so completely out of nowhere, so random, so over-the-top... I kind of love it.

Seriously, I can forgive the rest of the book's flaws for going all in for wild absurdity at the end.

But its such nonsense, and like most of the book, so undermines the point of the fable it is based on that it leaves me with very little to say about the rest of the book.

And you know, that's okay.

I called the ending absurd, a few paragraphs ago. And I meant that in the common sense of "wildly ridiculous". But in philosophy, the term 'Absurd' also has a more specific meaning. The Absurd is the desire for meaning where there is none, or where you couldn't understand it even if you found it. And philosopher Albert Camus suggests that we learn to be okay with the absurd, to recognise how it limits us, accept it, and go on with enjoyment in your absurd life.*

Absurdist art has been around a long time, and they tend to leave you with a sense that maybe this art could mean something, that there could be a message, but you could twist yourself in knots trying to find it and still come up empty handed. The play 'Waiting For Godot' by Samuel Beckett is a famous example of Absurdist Art.

And the way 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' presents itself as a re-telling of an Aesop Fable, but actively guts it of meaning, and swings radically into its out-of-nowhere twist ending does play out like a work of absurdist art. We think it should mean something, because of its fable origins, but ultimately, it seems it doesn't.

So I'm not going to dig deep on this one or reach for any greater meaning or message. I'm not going to squeeze a Marxist take out of it. I'm just going to laugh, shrug my shoulders, and say "that's fuckin' wild and I love it."

It's what Camus would want us to do.**

*This is an extremely simplified summary of Absurdism and Camus' work.
**Camus would also teach you about Absurdism, and I guess I'm doing that, too, despite saying I'm not going to read much into this one. Can't help myself, I guess.

Bumping Geese 7.1: Who Is Lindy Powell?

You'll remember that last time, I told you that Lindy Powell is the greatest monster in all of Goosebumps. Obviously I haven't read the entire series yet. In fact, since Goosebumps books are apparently still being written and published (something I did not know when I started) I may never finish reading the series.

BDG is goals

None the less, I am confident in saying that no monster, no villain, in the series will ever show more cunning and cruelty and such a frightening lack of humanity as Lindy Powell. But now that we have exposed her crimes to the world, we can punish her. Right?

But my question to you is, can Lindy Powell be punished for her sins?

I want you to do something for me. Imagine a ship. An ancient Greek trireme, we'll say.

Have a picture to help you imagine it

We'll say this ship you're imagining belonged to the legendary Greek hero Theseus. After Theseus is done being a hero, finished his life of adventure, and settled down to live out his days quietly as the king of Athens, his ship is placed in a museum for all to see.

Imagine this: The Ship of Theseus.

Over the next, I don't know, century. Let's say over the next one-hundred years, pieces of the ship begin to rot, and ship-wrights working for the museum replace those rotting parts. Plank by plank, sail by sail, over those hundred years, the whole of the ship has been replaced with new material.

Is this still The Ship of Theseus?

Why?

Why not?

If this ship is no longer The Ship of Theseus, when did it stop being so? Was it when on plank was replaced? Was it when the final plank was replaced?

Let us also say that after another century, some amazing technology is discovered that can restore all those rotten pieces of the ship to pristine condition again. This technology is used and all those pieces that were taken out of The Ship of Theseus are used to build a new trireme.

Which is The Ship of Theseus? Which is the original?

This is not an ancient Greek boat

This is a depiction of a human body. You probably have one just like it. A body with all the requisite number of organs, fingers, toes, nostrils, and at least one face (or you may have some perfectly human variation on these features). Are you your body?

Like The Ship of Theseus, your body is rotting and being repaired. Researches estimate that roughly every seven years, you have shed and regrown every cell in your body. The matter that makes up your body is changing constantly. So if The Ship of Theseus stops being The Ship of Theseus at some point during its repair, when did you stop being you?

If we punish Lindy Powell. If we sentence her to life in creepy child jail, and Lindy Powell is the sum of the matter which makes her, must she be released in seven years? At that time, has the Lindy Powell who committed those heinous crimes against her sister ceased to exist? Are you not punishing a new person for somebody else's crimes at that point?

Or if it doesn't take complete replacement - if The Ship of Theseus was no long The Ship of Theseus at the moment the first rotted plank was taken out and replaced, didn't the Lindy Powell who tortured her sister cease to exist the moment one of that Lindy Powell's cells died and flaked away from her body?

You might answer this by saying such base materialism is no way to define a human. A ship may or may not be the sum of its matter, but a human is more than that. A person might be kept in their body, you might say, but their essence is the sum of their life. When we talk about Lindy Powell, we don't mean "that collection of atoms arranged in that particular shape" we mean "that individual collection of memories, beliefs, life experiences, relationships, and emotions - well, maybe not emotions, given its Lindy - but definitely an entity that transcends their skin and liver cells."

And I would, on the face of it, agree. Certainly when I think of myself, I think of myself as a consciousness before a body.

But that doesn't actually resolve the question of The Ship of Theseus.

If Lindy Powell exists as the sum of her life, then isn't she, in every moment, experiencing new life and once again changing what it is that constitutes her? The Lindy Powell who plans to trick Kris into thinking her doll is alive is different to the Lindy Powell who is currently tricking Kris into thinking her doll is alive, who is different to the Lindy Powell who just tricked Kris into thinking her doll was alive, who is different to the Lindy Powell who tricked Kris into believing her doll was alive yesterday.

In every moment that passes, that equation that equals Lindy Powell has changed. The materials are different.

"No, not different!" you say. "Added to." And you make a good point. It is not so much replacing the sails as it is adding new sails. And maybe, so long as you are only adding new sails, the ship might remain fundamentally the same creation. It is a ship being infinitely built, but never rebuilt.

But haven't you ever forgotten something? Have you ever had a memory change over time? Have you ever changed your opinion on a food or a movie over time?

If we can assume that, other than being an inhumanely cruel monster of a child, Lindy Powell is still fundamentally human, and that humans do change our opinions, and that our memories are not like photographs but more like stories we tell ourselves a little different every time, then we do come back to that same problem.

How much of Lindy Powell needs to change before she stops being Lindy Powell? And if that transition is ever made, how can you be sure you punish Lindy Powell who is guilty of tormenting her sister and bringing woe to mankind, without ever punishing a Lindy Powell who did not?

Perhaps math is no way to resolve this. Minus a memory here, add a sail there. That's no practical way to define a person. Lindy Powell, perhaps is an idea. An idea of a dynamic but still ultimately temporally consistent person. Lindy Powell is who we agree, practically, who Lindy Powell is, who we understand her to be when we say "Lindy Powell is a danger to humanity and she must be stopped."

There are no public domain images of an idea, so here is one of a dog instead.

Okay.

But whose idea is that? All of us? Does the same idea of Lindy Powell exist in all of us?

You and I, we know in our hears that Lindy Powell is a vicious and conniving and merciless abomination who wears humanity like a mask and discards all sympathy and emotion at a callous whim. We share this in our understanding of the idea of Lindy Powell.

But put yourself in the shoes of her parents. Do what Lindy Powell cannot and try to empathise with them. Imagine you are seeing Lindy Powell as they do. They don't know the truth you know. They haven't read the book, or my review of the book. They think their daughter is a competitive but ultimately well meaning young girl with a talent for ventriloquism. That is the idea of Lindy Powell that exists in their mind.

And that Lindy Powell, as an idea, does not exist in our mind.

And what about the Lindy Powell who exists in her own mind? Does anybody believe they are the villain of their story? She is villain to us, but she might be the hero in her own mind. The idea of Lindy Powell that Lindy Powell has constructed is a third Lindy Powell.

And we can go on. While our idea of Lindy Powell might be most distinguished by disgust, and her parents' idea distinguished most by love, should Kris ever learn the truth, wouldn't it be safe to assume the the idea of Lindy Powell she possesses would then be most distinguished by betrayal? And wouldn't that revelation change the Lindy Powell that exists for Kris?

The person as an idea is no more static than the person as matter, or the person as metaphysical equation.

So who is Lindy Powell?

And if we can't answer that with any certainty, how can we punish Lindy Powell with an absolute certainty we aren't punishing somebody who is innocent?

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment in philosophy that's basically as old as philosophy. The version I've presented most resembles that used by Thomas Hobbes. Many philosophers have taken a stab at resolving it one way or another, usually with a lot more rigour than I have. But I didn't want to resolve the question with this blog, or even give you a rundown of how better philosophers than I have tackled it.

I just wanted to make you aware of it, and walk you through some of my initial thoughts about it. And I wanted to raise it in the context of crime and punishment because it's not an angle I see very often for this thought experiment.

And also I had to link it to Goosebumps somehow.

But even if you ignore that angle, The Ship of Theseus does prompt us to consider our sense of self in relation to time and consider what, fundamentally, makes us who we are.

All literature, even spoopy children's books, ask questions of us. That question might be as simple as "should Lindy Powell be punished for being a terrible person who torments everybody around her and has never known what it is to care for another creature?" but I link to think of small questions as the loose threads of the universe. You start pulling on them, and inevitably you start pulling on something much larger, and your questions evolve into very big questions like "What does it even mean to be me?"

And the big questions are often the most fun to try and answer.

Bumping Geese 7: Night of The Living Dummy

I need to stop writing these with a hangover.

Well...

Anyway...

Let's get into it.

Were ventriloquist dummies ever not creepy?

'Night of The Living Dummy' stars Kris and Lindy Powell. Two twin preteen girls who are always in fierce competition and rivalry with each other. One day, while walking through the in-construction house of their neighbours, Lindy spots an old ventriloquist dummy in a dumpster. She immediately falls in love with it and decides to become a ventriloquist.

At first Kris thinks this is super weird. Probably because it is super weird. But Lindy, it turns out, has a natural talent for ventriloquism and she begins putting on performances that wow their friends, neighbours, and family. Lindy starts doing shows at children's birthday parties, making herself some money, and even gets invited on TV. Kris is jealous of the attention Lindy is getting with her weird new hobby, and that jealousy peaks when Lindy's ventriloquist act even gets the attention of a boy at school Kris has a crush on.

Kris decides to try and get her own dummy and start putting on her own ventriloquism show. She asks if she can practice with her sister's dummy - which Lindy has named Slappy - but Slappy rebukes her, calls her ugly, even strikes her. Lindy insists she didn't do it, that Slappy acted on his own, but of course nobody believes her and her parents force her to apologise.

Kris and Lindy's father, known only as Mr Powell, finds a second ventriloquist dummy for cheap in a pawn shop, and brings it home for Kris. Now both girls have their own dummy and can do their own shows. Even though Lindy is more talented, has more practice, and seems to have a better grasp of comedy, Kris does okay for herself and even gets invited to perform, with her dummy Mr Wood, as MC of the school's spring concert. But none of this quite serves to quell the jealous rivalry between the sisters. Lindy is furious her sister is stealing her schtick, and Kris hates that Lindy is better than her and still getting more praise and attention.

But something far more sinister is afoot.

One morning the girls wake up and find Mr Wood posed in such a way that it is though he has been attacking Slappy, trying to choke the dummy to death. Another morning, Kris finds that Mr Wood has put on all her finest clothing, wrinkling them and ruining her outfit for the day. After a fit of frustration at being outdone by her sister, Kris throws Mr Wood hard against the floor, and that night, she discovers Mr Wood in the kitchen, all the contents of the fridge strewn across the floor, and among it all is Kris' favourite jewellery. Kris and Lindy both insist they had nothing to do with it, that it must have been Mr Wood all along. But of course their parents, who have been driven to wits end by their daughters' rivalry, do not believe the dummy is alive and threaten to punish them both and take both dummies away unless they begin behaving themselves and getting along. During the night, Kris is sure she can hear Mr Wood in the closet, demanding to be let out.

Kris sits frightened on her bed, sure her dummy is alive, but sudden unexpected twist! Lindy admits she was responsible for it all. The kitchen mess, the dummies fighting, the clothes, even the voice - Linday was doing it all just to frighten Kris. Kris is, of course, furious, and swears she will never speak to her sister again. And for a while, the girls continue to be cold to each other.

Then one day, just before the Spring Concert, Kris notices something she has never noticed before. A slip of paper in Mr Wood's shirt pocket. She unfolds it and reads what appears to be a short phrase of nonsense words. Nothing happens, and she puts the paper back in Mr Wood's pocket.

The Powell's elderly neighbours arrive and Mr Powell suggests the twins each do a short performance for the neighbours. Lindy puts on a great performance, as usual, but when Kris sets up to do her performance, sudden twist! Mr Wood seems to come alive again, all by himself, and insults the elderly neighbours. Kris swears it is not her, but of course nobody believes her and she is made to apologise. Lindy even scorns her for trying to pull the same mad-insulting-dummy that she had pulled with Mr Slappy, earlier in the story.

A similar horror occurs at the Spring Concert, but far worse. A nervous Kris sets herself up on stage, ready to begin, but once again Mr Wood seems to come to life and begin insulting one of Kris' teachers. When the teacher tries to stop the performance, Mr Wood suddenly projectile vomits a putrid green slime across the auditorium. A sticky, awful, and unexpected end to the concert before it has even begun, and, it would seem, an end to Kris' career as a ventriloquist. Her parents are too angry to even contemplate a suitable punishment, but they assure her this will be the last time she sees Mr Wood. Mr Powell plans to return it to the pawn shop the following Monday.

But Mr Wood has other plans. He well and truly comes to life that night and tries to escape. Kris and Lindy have a brief scuffle and fight with Mr Wood and subdue him and lock him in a suitcase. They drop the suitcase into a hole in the next door yard and bury him deep. It seems they have won, at last, but sudden twist! Mr Wood is back again the next morning, and he plans to make sure the girls suffer for their slight against them. He warns them he has great power and cannot be killed. And if the girls don't become his slaves, he will murder their friends and family, starting with the family pet dog, whom Mr Wood begins to strangle to death.

Another fight ensues and this time the girls carry Mr Wood out into the construciton yard, where two steamrollers are flattening the land, and they throw Mr Wood in the path of the steamrollers. Mr Wood is finally defeated for good, crushed to death by a steam roller.

The girls return to their home, to their room, the nightmare over at last. But sudden twist! Slappy comes to life and asks if the other terrible dummy is finally gone!

This book has twists like 'Welcome To Dead House' has moist things.

Just a whole lot.

But it is also a work which forms part of a broad and very old tradition in fiction, both horror and otherwise. The villain of this book is one in a long line of cunning, deceptive, manipulative, and frankly sociopathic evil master minds. Fu Manchu, John Sunlight, Lex Luthor, Hannibal Lecter, and now - well now as of 1993 - Lindy Powell.

Oh, and I guess evil living dolls are a thing to but, eh, whatever.

The real horror is Lindy, clearly the evil twin of the two, and an absolute psychopath. For much of the book, you think that Kris is kind of the bitch sister, always jealous, always bitter, always trying to outdo her sister. And Lindy, sweet innocent Lindy, is helpful and supportive of her sister, giving Kris tips on being a better ventriloquist, and just being rightfully proud of her own accomplishments, regardless of her sister. Sweet innocent Lindy.

But it's an act! Lindy isn't proud. Pride isn't an emotion Lindy can feel. All Lindy knows is the pure ecstasy of inflicting pain on others. Beneath that saccharine smile, Lindy knows she is driving her own sister into a agonising jealous rage. She knows that their parents, who she has wrapped around her fingers, will punish Kris when Kris inevitably lashes out.

And why would Lindy be proud anyway? She's not a good ventriloquist, she has a living dummy of her own! Not that she mentions this at all through the story. It is clear she has made a dark Faustian pact with Slappy. Together they will wreak havoc on the world, while Lindy builds fortune and fame from their partnership. But don't mistake me - in this arrangement, Slappy is Faust and Lindy is the demon Mephistopheles.

That's just one part of her scheme. The other, of course, is to make poor Kris question her own sense of reality, by fooling her into believing Mr Wood has come to life. No doubt an idea she had from her dealings with her own living dummy. And when Lindy seems like she has had her fun and revealed her scheme to Kris, only then does she plant the ancient spell in Mr Wood's pocket, knowing her sister will read it aloud and bring Mr Wood to life.

So long is this con, so convoluted is this plan, that even though Lindy risks losing her own dummy, even though Lindy has to help clean up the kitchen she trashed, these are all minor sacrificial pains that bring her closer to her own goal. She plays the helpful ally, in the climax, of course, but only because at last her goal is within her grasp. Together, she and Kris destroy Mr Wood, leaving Lindy and Slappy as the only ventriloquist act in town.

But not only that, all evidence of Mr Wood's short and violent life, all evidence that he was responsible for the slime and insults, is gone. The Powell parents think their daughter Kris might have genuinely lost her mind, and there is punishment yet in store for her, and she will never prove that she was innocent.

She will never prove that Lindy was the puppet master pulling all the strings right from the beginning.

Lindy Powell. The master villain. The greatest monster of Goosebumps series.

Forget the existential horrors of the cursed camera or the invisibility mirror.

Forget the iconic terrors of Slappy, Monster Blood, and the Haunted Mask.*

Forget the creeps seemingly designed to frighten me specifically in 'Stay Out of The Basement'.

Lindy Powell is the most frightening creation of RL Stine.

But, like, I guess haunted dolls are kinda creepy too. If you're into that. Whatever.

I'm doing an episode 7.1 for this one. I have a much bigger question to pose about Lindy Powell that demands its own blog space. So check back next week for that.

See you then. If you dare.

*I haven't read the haunted mask book, yet, but I understand it is one of the most popular/memorable ones.

Bumping Geese 6: Let's Get Invisible

Did you know 'Goosebumps' was adapted into a TV series in the 90s?

And did you know that the 90s 'Goosebumps' TV series is actually awful? I didn't.

But I do now!

Like the 'Goosebumps' books, the TV series is something I was aware of when I was a child and it was on TV, and I may have even watched an episode of two, if my vague memory serves, but I was never a fan. I never went out of my way to watch it, in the same way I skipped the books.

But also like the books, the 'Goosebumps' TV series is something that, in theory, I should like. As a child I watched the very similar TV series 'Are You Afraid Of The Dark?' and loved that. As I grew older, I discovered I loved similar horror anthology series like 'The Twilight Zone', 'Tales From The Crypt', and 'The Hunger'. And now I'm even a fan of the 'Goosebumps' books. So the show is, in theory, right up my alley.

Except that it sucks.

A lot.

I've only watched a handful of episodes, based on the books I have read so far, and while better books make for better episodes ('Monster Blood' continues its reign of ultimate suckitude right into its TV adaptation), they're still... not good.

In fact, they suck.

A lot.

So while I entertained the idea of repeating this project with the TV show...

No.

I'm not going to do that.

Because the 'Goosebumps' TV series sucks.

A lot.

Book 6 in the series, "Let's Get Invisible" on the other hand, is pretty good.

See this book cover? This is the cover of a book that doesn't suck.
Unlike the 'Goosebumps' TV series. Which does Suck.
A lot.

"Let's Get Invisible" is about Max ERROR 404: SURNAME NOT FOUND and his brother, Lefty, and friends, Zack, Erin, and April. One day, while hanging out with his pals, being the kind of foolish kids who, for some reason, don't want to watch the film 'The Terminator' (yes this is an actual plot point) Max discovers a hidden room behind a false wall in the attic of his home. All that is inside the room is an old, full sized mirror with a wooden frame and a little light hanging from the top.

For a bunch of 12 year olds, this wouldn't be all that exciting apart from the mystery of why the mirror is secreted away in a hidden room, but while Max and his buddies are goofing around with it, they discover that if you stand in front of it and turn the light on, you become completely invisible!

This is obviously kind of terrifying at first, not just for Max, who is accidentally turned invisible, but for his friends who lose track of him. Luckily, when they turn the light on the mirror off again, Max reappears and everybody feels a great relief. Especially Max who, the longer he stayed invisible, the more he began to feel weak and fuzzy, somehow distant from his friends and the attic, as if consumed by the light reflecting off the mirror.

Over the next few days, thoughts of the mirror consume Max. He can't sleep, and instead finds himself compelled to creep into his attic in the middle of the night and stare into it, urged to play with his invisibility but also aware that he has no idea how dangerous it might be, or if there is any danger at all. His brother Lefty, however, feels no such hesitation. After his first turn becoming invisible, he too becomes obsessed with the mirror and takes every opportunity to turn invisible and play pranks on his brother.

Max's friends Zack and Erin suffer the same obsession and, what's more, enter into a fierce on-going competition to see who can be invisible the longest, which really means, who can endure that awful feeling of being pulled away from the world that comes after being invisible for more than a few minutes. Max tries to warn them away from the mirror, and to stop their competition, but Lefty interferes to nudge them on. Max notices that his friends even seem to become somehow physically but subtly changed by their lengthy time spent invisible.

April, who was at first afraid of the mirror, is eventually pressured into trying it, and she too succumbs to its fascinating allure. 

But all their fun and games take a dark turn when, against his objections, Zack and Erin force Max to compete with them, holding him in place in front of the mirror before turning on the light and making him invisible. Even then they continue to hold him there and refuse to turn the light on. Soon enough, Max feels the sensation of being ripped away from the mirror, his friends, and the attic and into the light of the mirror. That feeling escalates until he is physically pulled through the mirror, no matter how he tries to resist. Max tumbles through a strange world of light, shapes, and colours, and then, in a white void, he meets himself - or rather, his reflection.

Max learns that his friends Zack and Erin have been replaced by their reflection, and now they're stuck in this mirror world. Max's reflection now plans to replace him. But Max shows an unusual resistance and is able to escape his reflection and flee the mirror world. But of course, when he escapes, his replaced friends try to send him back. Just when it seems too late, Lefty bursts into the room and accidentally breaks the mirror. The reflections are sucked back into the mirror world and the real Zack and Erin are freed. The nightmare is over.

OR IS IT!?

For we see the return of the 'Goosebumps' twist ending. As Max and Lefty play catch in their yard, and Max explains the terrible adventure inside the mirror, he notices that his brother, whom received the name Lefty because he is left handed, is throwing and catching the ball with his right hand!

This might be the best twist in the series so far. Not just because it is creepy, but because it is the only twist so far that has been in any way telegraphed. During the scene where Lefty accidentally breaks the mirror and the Zack and Erin reflections are pulled back into the mirror, the narrator notes that Lefty is holding into the door handle, resisting the pull of the mirror. By this time we also have noticed distinct and bizarre changes in Lefty's behaviour, suggesting he was the first to be replaced.

So even though I saw the twist coming, the fact that it was even possible to see it coming, makes it far more satisfying. Too many of the previous twists, even in the good books, have really come out of nowhere and as a result felt forced into the narrative without care or attention to the narrative's cohesion or development.

I dunno. It's really a vibe thing. I don't like twists that have no build up. They FEEL cheap to me. You mileage may vary.

But how about the rest of the book?

Well, like a lot of these books, the middle drags a bit. There's a lot of scenes that feel repeated, a lot of emotional beats that play again and again and don't feel like they go anywhere. But the escalation to the climax happens sooner, which gets you more engrossed as you read and means the slow parts aren't as long as they have been in previous books. So, again, we're seeing a marked improvement in RL Stine's writing as each book passes.

And this book is also creepy. It's not as terrifying as 'Stay Out Of The Basement' but, again, that book was basically custom made to frighten me. While there is really only one big horror moment, when Max goes into the mirror, the book taps into some genuinely frightening ideas and just lets them hover over the entire narrative.

The idea that somebody we know and love could be suddenly replaced is something we've seen before in horror. 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' is one of the most famous examples, and, to a lesser extent, this fear of replacement or change can be seen in the zombie genre. But the idea goes back even farther, to ancient legends of Changelings - fae children that are left in place of stolen human babies. There really does seem to be something primal about this kind of anxiety. It has existed within us for centuries.

Another sign that his is so deeply rooted within us is the aesthetic phenomena described as The Uncanny Valley. In simple terms, The Uncanny Valley describes a documented emotional response that all people have to seeing something that is mostly human, but wrong in noticeable ways. An android whose features aren't quite convincing, for example. It makes us uncomfortable to look at. It disturbs something deep within us. It's a phenomena that Max experiences in the book when he sees the reflections that have replaced his friends. They have become reversed and, in doing so, now appear wrong.

"Let's Get Invisible" also works on another level that is perhaps less universal, but one might argue is more visceral. It's another topic that is commonly explored by the horror genre: addiction.

Max, Lefty, Erin, and Zack all become addicted to the mirror. They obsess over it. It keeps them up at night. They stop wanting to go outside, to see other people, to do anything but play with the mirror. Max turns down food to spend more time with the mirror. And Max guards the secret of the mirror zealously. He is terrified of his parents finding it and taking it away from him. He lies about why he and his friends are spending so much time in the attic. Even when he knows his parents don't believe his lies, he keeps lying anyway, keeps going back to the mirror.

And the cost for indulging this addiction is that they literally, physically, become somebody else. It changes them into something... Well, something not quite human. Not quite who they used to be. While also trapping them forever deep inside the mirror, inside their addiction. The mirror completely consumes its users.

Addiction is another very human experience. People aren prone to addiction to varying degrees, but it's something we're all capable of. Our brains and our bodies are just built to be susceptible to it. Some things, once we have them, our bodies will crave them again, and sometimes those cravings become destructive.

And that's frightening. That is a loss of control. That is our ego succumbing to the id, our conscious minds being lost to base drives and animal instincts. One might say it is another kind of replacement. Another kind of inhuman substitution. Except it is all too human, and so all too possible.

I don't know if I've read any other children's books or seen any other media aimed at children that deals with addiction. I thought it kind of odd, while reading it, that RL Stine would take this approach. How relatable is this, as a theme, to the preteen audience?

But that's a foolish thought. Children are people. Preteens are still human. They experience the same humanity that we all do. And addiction is well documented amongst children and adolescents. Addiction to sugar, addiction to video games, there's even been studies into the disturbing trend of young people becoming addicted to pornography. This is absolutely something the intended audience of 'Goosebumps' faces in their life.

So, if anything, it's not weird that addiction is a major theme in "Let's Get Invisible". It's weird that it's not a major theme in more media aimed at young people.

This one dragged a lot more than 'Stay Out Of The Basement' and while I genuinely prefer a quieter, creepier kind of horror, the kind of horror that is more atmosphere and mood, "Let's Get Invisible" doesn't quite reach the heights I'd like of that kind of horror. So, it hasn't dethroned 'Stay Out of The Basement' as my favourite in the series, but it has definitely come the closest. It's creepy, it's engaging, it's thematically layered and complex. I'm glad to have read it.

The next in the series is the iconic 'Night Of The Living Dummy'. I'm eager to see if it lives up to its legacy.

Bumping Geese 5.1: Mummies and Marxism

 Last time, on Bumping Geese...

"Uncle Ben, as it happens, has discovered a new chamber in the pyramids. And by 'Uncle Ben has discovered' I mean the diggers and students working for him discovered it and he's taking the credit." 

"So, let's get something out of the way about here. With the exception of poor Gabe, every fucking person in this book sucks. They are just the worst."

"This blog is feeling a little long, today, and I have stuff to do. I did have a Marxist take for this one, but I don't want to take up too much of your time and we've had a lot of tangents already. If enough people ask for it (drop a comment down below) I'll come back to it..."

And now, out thrilling conclusion...

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed I haven't been particularly active this week. I think I've finally broken my social media addiction and, honestly, spending less time on Twitter is absolutely the healthier choice.

Unfortunately, this was accomplished my developing a replacement addiction to World of Warcraft and I just spent basically the whole week playing that. This is absolutely not the healthier choice.

But it is a big part of why there's likely not going to be a new Goosebumps review this week and while I'll instead do two next week. It is, after all, already Sunday.

But the other reason for the delay in a Goosebumps review is because I reread 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' this week. I didn't do this because it was an excellent, gripping, must-read entry in the series, but because there's a lot to talk about when it comes to this book.

'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' as a text doesn't have much to say for itself, but metatextually, we can use it as a chance to explore cultural appropriation, Orientalism, Colonialism, and global racial politics, for example. All of these things are fascinating and worthy subjects to explore and all of them are things I do not feel in the slightest bit qualified to dedicate a blog to.

But I am comfortable in taking the time to a Marxist hot take for this one, whether or not I'm qualified. And if it's going to be the subject of a whole blog, well, might as well go all in.

Photo manipulation is also something I am not qualified for
But would it surprise you to learn I already had a saved image of Marx ready for this?

What I don't want to do with this particular blog is preach. There are one-million-fucking-books in this series and I am sure I will have plenty of opportunity, as the weird-o I am, to use Goosebumps to explain why Marxism is correct and why you should also be a Marxist and seed the beginnings of revolution, one spoopy children's book at a time.

But for now, in this particular blog entry, is take a minute to clarify some basic Marxist principles. I am going to assume, for just a second, that you haven't read any Marxist literature, that you're not any kind of radical Leftist like me, and that the whole idea that we could get anything Marxist out of a spoopy children's book is a kind of silly idea.

And let me begin by saying: It is a silly idea. But I spent a lot of time studying literature and learning how to pull meaningful analysis completely out of my arse, and selling it in an essay. I need to do SOMETHING with that skillset, damnit, and here we are!

Anyway. Let's get Marxist!

Two Classes of People

The relationship between Uncle Ben and those around him, and between all those characters and the work of excavating and exploring a pyramid exemplifies an idea at the heart of the Marxist critique of capitalist society.

Uncle Ben is, in this scenario, what we call the Bu... Bor... The Berg... Boj.. Bougeoisioisieosiois... Damn it.

Uncle Ben is what we call the Bourgeoisie. A word which is a pain in the arse to spell for literally everybody. The Bourgeoisie are classically defined by Marxists as the people who "own the means of production". They are the boss. They are the owner of a factory or a store or some other business, or a significant shareholder in a company. The Bourgeoisie are one economic class in Marxism.

Marxists use the word Bourgeoisie as more-or-less interchangeable with Capitalist. And it is important to understand that for Marxists, a Capitalist is not just somebody who agrees ideologically with Capitalism. Anybody can, for example, adopt Marxism as an ideology and be a Marxist, but not anybody can be a Capitalist. Being a Capitalist - which, again, we're using as synonymous with Bourgeoisie - is a matter of economic class*. Capitalists can hold any number of ideologies. You can even be a Marxist and a Capitalist. The definition comes from the material fact that you own the means of production.

So keep that in mind for later when I get tired of writing Bourgeoisie and decide to just use the word "Capitalist".

Everybody else in 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb" falls into the second class in Marxism, what we call the "Proletariat". This group is basically everybody else** in the world. The Proletariat do not own the means of production, and instead work for those who do. Basically, if you work for somebody else and earn a salary or a wage, you are part of the Proletariat.

Proletariat is often used interchangeably with "worker" by Marxists but I, personally, dislike that. It muddies the water and makes the conversation hard because the truth is there are Capitalists who work. It is really important for everybody that we understand that the Bourgeoisie aren't all corporate billionaires who passively collect money from their tropical holiday house. The Bourgeoisie can and do work jobs and if they stopped, their businesses would fail and they would stop having money. And that is a lot like the Proletariat who, because they are wage earners, must work to earn money. But just because that is true, it does not make those working Bourgeoisie part of the Proletariat. We'll come to why in a little while.

Again, Proletariat is an economic class and not a matter of ideology. There is no shortage of Proletariat who believe completely and enthusiastically in Capitalism as an ideology and as a way of organising society, but they don't become Capitalists (in the Marxist definition), they are still Proletariat.

In 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' Uncle Ben has workers who work for him in excavating and exploring the pyramid, and so they are obviously the Proletariat. But for our purposes, we're also going to include Sari and Gabe as the part of Proletariat.

All right. So now we have the skeleton of the framework through which Marxists view society. Two classes. One who owns the means of production, and one who works the means of production. Why does this matter? Why do Marxists object?

Class Struggle

The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat are in opposition to each. We call this opposition Class Struggle or Class War. This struggle arises because the relationship is innately exploitative.

The Bourgeoisie, as owners of the means of production, make some or all of their money by exploiting the work of the Proletariat for their own profit. They do this by paying the Proletariat a sum of money, for their work, that is less than the total actual value of their work.

Is this sounding jargony, again? It is, isn't it. Let's have a really simple example. Don't think too much about this example. It is supposed to be illustrative, not to reflect a nuanced vision of reality.

Let's say you work in an office and your job is to sit at a computer and create documents that say "I am doing my job." You open it up a document, type that phrase, save it, repeat. Eight hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the day, somebody buys these documents for $10 a piece. Why do they do that? I don't know. Didn't I say not to think too long and hard about this? Ugh. Fine. They do it because they like to print these documents out and then throw them on a fire. That's just their kink, I guess.

Happy?

So you make these documents, and each one is worth $10. You work for eight hours, and you create, I don't know, ten of these documents an hour. And then at the end of the day you take home $640. What a fuckin' great rate of pay for an easy job. This is six figures a year. Damn, son! What a job.

But hold on. You might have noticed that if you create ten documents worth $10 each every hour for eight hours, then you've created $800 worth of value. What happened to the other $160?

Well, those are the company's profits. For every document you type, $2 of the value you created are taken and put into the company's bank account. And your boss, the owner of this company, pays himself $1 from every document. So at the end of the day, $80 of value you created goes to the boss.

Of course, you still get the lion's share. So what if the boss is taking that pittance?

But you don't work for him alone. Your boss has 100 employees all making these documents to sell. So at the end of the day, he has taken $80 from every one of them and he pays himself $8000 a day.

When we Marxists talk about the relationship between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat as being exploitative, this is at the core of that idea. Even if your boss is working beside you, even if they're typing ten of their own documents an hour, they still take home a piece of every one of their employees' value which they didn't earn.

And we can't forget about that other $8000 a day that is going back into the business' account. While you might say that money isn't being paid to the boss, that it is there to reinvest back into the company, maybe to hire more staff, maybe to pay for Friday pizza lunches, keep in mind that it is the boss that decides what to do with that money. A corporation is not a democracy and a corporation has no agency of its own. The corporate owners decide what to do with it. Which bank account that money is in is really just a technicality. It is the boss' money. He has complete ownership over $1600 of value, per day, that you the worker created.

The money that the Bourgeoisie takes is money that the Proletariat earned but were not paid. Even those Bourgeoisie who work, whether that's productive work like making documents-to-burn, or doing work like negotiating contracts with document-burning-kinksters to buy more documents, the fact that they are taking money earned by the work of others means that they are not part of the Proletariat.

They have not earned the total value of the money they are taking in, and they are getting that extra by skimming it off the top of those who work for them.

And allow me to take the time that this still isn't Marxist propaganda. Ask a Capitalist to explain how they make their money and if they're honest, they'll give you the same break down of how they collect money off the labour performed by their employees. They'll use different language and they may come to different ideological conclusions, but we'd both be describing the same basic principle. They probably wouldn't like the word "exploitation".

But in the end, we'd be describing the same relationship between two economic classes of people.

Hey, wasn't this about Goosebumps?

Yes. Yes it was. And now you've had your crash course on what all the words mean, let's look at 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' as an example of how class struggle might play out.

When we first meet Uncle Ben, we're told about his work in the Pyramid of Khufu and the discoveries he is making. I can't give page references because I'm reading e-books, but here is how it happens in the text (this book is written first person POV from Gabe, by the way):

'"Daddy’s discovered a whole new burial chamber,” Sari broke in before her dad had a chance to tell me himself. “He’s exploring parts of the pyramid that have been undiscovered for thousands of years.'

'... we archaeologists thought we’d uncovered all of the tunnels and rooms inside this pyramid. But a few days ago, my workers and I discovered a tunnel that isn’t on any of the charts. An unexplored, undiscovered tunnel. And we think this tunnel may lead us to the actual burial chamber of Khufu himself!” “Outstanding!” I exclaimed. “And Sari and I will be there when you discover it?”'

In this example, rather than talking about money explicitly, we're going to examine the more nebulous idea of who gets the credit for a discovery. Sari immediately credits her father for the discovery, but Uncle Ben is a little more sharing by saying it is a discovery made by himself and his workers.

The next day, Gabe, Sari, and Uncle Ben visit the dig inside the pyramid. When they arrive, a number of workers are already there working (RL Stine is vague on what the work actually is. I'm not sure he understands how pyramid exploration works but, to be fair, neither do I) and we see the dynamic between Uncle Ben (the Bourgeoisie) and his workers (the Proletariat).

'Uncle Ben turned to his workers. “So? Any progress today?” he asked. “We think we’re getting real close,” a young red-haired man wearing faded jeans and a blue denim work shirt replied. And then he added, “Just a hunch.”'

...

'After a while, three other workers entered the chamber, carrying shovels and picks. One of them was carrying some kind of electronic equipment in a flat metal case. It looked a little like a laptop computer.'

And to Uncle Ben's credit, he does get more personally involved:

'We both gave one last glance back to Uncle Ben, who was down on his hands and knees, picking away at the stone wall.'

Let's unpack this.

We can see in no uncertain terms that Uncle Ben is the boss here and there is a clear hierarchy between him and the works. He calls them "my workers", and when he arrives to the work site, they report to him. They are not all equals in a team.

Gabe and Sari both refer to the discoveries in the pyramid as something Uncle Ben is discovering, but we can see his involvement in the actual work is evidently pretty small. This is the only time we get any indication Uncle Ben is getting his hands dirty in the digging. If not for the kidnapping that happens, there's no indication Uncle Ben was even going to be at the pyramid the next day. He had a meeting at the museum scheduled for that day.

And you might say, "Okay, Carl, but just because two children are giving Uncle Ben all the credit, doesn't mean he is claiming it for himself. If we go along with you and treat "credit for discovery" as a stand in for the money that the Bou-- that the Capitalist usually takes from their Workers, there is no indication from Ben that he's going to personally take more than his share."

And you might be right. It is not until much later that Uncle Ben gives the game away.

At the end of the novel, after Gabe has used his mummy-hand-good-luck-charm to summon an army of the dead to crush his enemies, Uncle Ben is looking at the magical artefact, this happens:

'He took it from me and examined it closely. “Better not play with it,” he said seriously. “We must treat it carefully. He shook his head. “Some great scientist I am!” he exclaimed scornfully. “When I saw it, I thought it was just a toy, some kind of reproduction. But this hand may be my biggest discovery of all!”'

I'm sorry. What was that, Uncle Ben? Gabe's mummy hand might be whose biggest discovery?

And lest you think maybe I'm leaving out some part of the text where Uncle Ben gave the hand to Gabe as a present, or that its powers were unknown before Uncle Ben came along, here is how the hand is introduced to the story, way back at the start, while Gabe is alone in the hotel room.

'It was small, the size of a child’s hand. A little hand wrapped in papery brown gauze. I had bought it at a garage sale a few years ago, and I always carried it around as a good-luck charm. The kid who sold it to me called it The Summoner. He said it was used to summon evil spirits or something. I didn’t care about that. I just thought it was an outstanding bargain for two dollars. I mean, what a great thing to find at a garage sale! And maybe it was even real.'

Uncle Ben's contribution to this "discovery" is literally nothing. He just happened to be there and in a position of authority to claim it. And do you really think that if he's going to try to claim he discovered something Gabe has been carrying around all this time, he's not going to claim credit for what his workers inevitably dig up while he's not here because he's too busy letting his daughter and nephew get kidnapped by cultists?

And if you do believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Wrap Up (again)

The fact we're talking about credit for discovery and not money is - and I'll be the first to admit - a reason to call this an imperfect analogy. But the way Uncle Ben takes what those beneath him have worked for is still a close match to the exploitative dynamic between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. 

And if you feel a slight tinge of moral outrage that Uncle Ben could look his nephew in the eye and say "This amazing thing you have, I'm going to say it is mine and act like I discovered how amazing it is" because it is unfair, because that is a poor way for an adult to treat child they have complete authority over, then I'd tell you that response is reasonable.

And I'd then point out that the workplace, that the relationship between an employer and employee, between Bourgeoisie and Proletariat, is also a relationship with similarly one-sided power dynamic. That taking value that one person earned and giving it to yourself does look a lot like taking a child's good-luck charm away from them to benefit yourself.

And maybe, if you don't feel the same sense of outrage, even a little, maybe it's worth examining why that is.

And here I should stress, again, that this blog isn't for preaching. This is for education. I'm not going to tell you what conclusion I think you should come to from that examination of your own outrage of lack-of-outrage.

I'm also not going to tell you that Uncle Ben, or any capitalist, is a bad person because they are a capitalist. Marxist critique isn't actually about individuals. It's about the system. Marxists don't want to replace the mean-bad-exploitative-nasty bosses with nice-generous-buy-you-pizza-on-Friday bosses. We want to completely remove the role of Capitalist from society and once we've done that, ex-Capitalists are welcome to keep living their lives free of class struggle with us.

Uncle Ben just happens to be a Capitalist AND a bad person. But him being total shit is a coincidence.

*Marxists typically avoid the terms "lower", "upper", and "middle class" and may even hate those terms. I certainly do. These terms, in how they are commonly used, really describe an aesthetic of wealth and status and are not at all helpful. Marxists may use the term "working class" but that is synonymous with "proletariat" and not "lower class" as is commonly the case. Wealth exists on a spectrum and just like not all Capitalists are billionaires, some of the Proletariat are leading very comfortable lives with large salaries.

**Largely removed from modern Marxist discourse in the Anglosphere is the feudal class, or the monarchy. We have a lot less of them and they are of less importance in our context, compared to when Marx was writing. But the monarchy is another class that exists within the Marxist framework as separate from Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. This isn't hugely important for this discussion, it's just a thing you should know.

Bumping Geese 5: The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb

Last week I described Goosebumps as something I'm learning a lot about despite having zero passion for it. That might have sounded a bit harsh. It might make it sound like this has already become some kind of chore for me, rather than as the enjoyable part of the week that it is.

You see, while they are children's books, I really am just a big child. I follow every Spongebob social media page, I feel an immense pure joy whenever I re-watch the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", I think puns and slapstick are the best comedy, and I obsess morbidly over every mistake I made when I was 8 until I am overcome with shame and regret. I'm big, grouchy, pretentious child, but still a child at heart, none the less.

And for the most part, the Goosebumps books I've read have been entirely worth the time I've spent on them. If, like me, you have an lively inner-child and you're interested in the Goosebumps books I've reviewed, I absolutely recommend reading them. They're only a few dollars as e-books and they only take a couple of hours to read.

And now we've got that cleared up, let's talk about this weeks Goosebumps and my especially mild enthusiasm for it.

Anybody else think those bandages look too loose?

'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' is a story about Gabe, an Egyptian American boy on a holiday with his parents visiting Egypt for the first time. I just want to pause here to remark that it's really refreshing for the characters to be both explicitly POC in this book, and for the main characters in a story about Egyptian mummies to actually be ethnically Egyptian, even if still American. Kudos, Mr Stine.

So, anyway, Gabe is visiting Egypt with his shitty parents who won't buy their child a drink even though he's thirsty and they're in the desert. But after a long day of depriving him of water just because they can, they receive a phone call and have to cut their holiday short. You see, Gabe's awful parents are using this holiday as a chance to do some kind of business for their refrigerator selling business, and a meeting they had planned in Alexandria has been bumped forward a week, meaning they need to cut short their time in Cairo. Gabe is understandly upset that his parents have decided to suck quite so hard, but then they have an idea.

Dump the kid with his uncle!

And his cousin he hates!

Parents of the year.

But Gabe does like his uncle, and it means he can stay in Cairo and do Cairo things, and his Uncle - Ben - is an archaeologist working in the pyramids, so maybe he'll get to go inside a pyramid if he stays with his uncle. So Gabe agrees and his parents rush off, no doubt thrilled to be rid of their child, who they clearly hate, because they are terrible.

And a little while later, Gabe's terrible uncle and cousin, who, if we're honest, also seem like they hate Gabe, arrive at Gabe's hotel to look after him. Uncle Ben arrives in a mummy costume just to scare Gabe, and Sari - Gabe's cousin and Ben's daughter - find it hilarious when Gabe, who has been alone in a hotel room in a foreign country where he doesn't speak the language, abandoned by his parents, after spending the day dehydrated, this it's fuckin' hilarious when he nearly shits himself at the sight of a stranger in a monster costume walking unannounced and uninvited into his room.

After dumping some extra trauma on Gabe, Uncle Ben tells him he will indeed take Gabe to the pyramids tomorrow and when tomorrow arrives, they do indeed go to the pyramids. Uncle Ben, as it happens, has discovered a new chamber in the pyramids. And by 'Uncle Ben has discovered' I mean the diggers and students working for him discovered it and he's taking the credit.

It's all very fascinating, but once they're there, Uncle Ben gets distracted talking to his colleagues, so Sari convinces Gabe to run off with her and explore the pyramid. They do, but Gabe falls behind when his shoelace comes untied and he stops to tie it up. Once again abandoned by his family, he wanders blindly in search of Sari and eventually finds her. Or rather, Sari climbs into an empty sarcophagus, waits for a frightened and lost Gabe to stumble into the room, then bursts out at him to frighten him.

So, let's get something out of the way about here. With the exception of poor Gabe, every fucking person in this book sucks. They are just the worst. Like, this book isn't anywhere near as bad as 'Monster Blood', but everyone is as terrible as the little shit that was the protagonist in ;Monster Blood'.

And no, I don't remember that bastard's name. He will forever be remembered as "The little shit from 'Monster Blood', the worst Goosebumps book."

Oh, you don't believe me? How bad could they be?

So, after Uncle Ben finds them --

Hold on. One more tangent. Uncle Ben? Is RL Stine trying to force me to make Spider-Man jokes?

Well I refuse.

You can't make me.

Nah-uh.

Anyway. So, after Uncle Ben finds Sari and Gabe wandering the pyramid and probably wrecking priceless history, the next day Uncle Ben leaves them alone in the hotel while he goes to visit some workers who have come down sick, or maybe gone into shock after some unspecified incident at the pyramid. Sari, who still sucks, convinces Gabe to leave the hotel, against Uncle Ben's instructions, to go visit the Cairo museum. This being a thing Gabe was looking forward to doing with really anybody who would take him because he is desperate for anybody in his family to love him and show him kindness, it doesn't take much to convince Gabe. And so off they go, and are promptly kidnapped by Ahmed, one of Uncle Ben's colleagues whom they met at the pyrmids. Ahmed pulls the old "Your father sent me to get you because he is busy, get into my car and I will take you to him" schtick and Gabe and Sari fall for it, until they realise they're being kidnapped.

Luckily, they escape, and are able to run back to the hotel. A short while later, Uncle Ben returns and they tell him about Ahmed and the kidnapping and Uncle Ben, source of great wisdom that he is, says "I shall go and confront him at the pyramids and you should come with me, children who were his victim!"

And off they go.

Fortunately, this time Uncle Ben gives his children some beepers that will allow him to find them if they get lost. They each also have a torch all their own. And into the spooky pyramid they go.

And then Gabe notices his shoes are untied and stops to tie them up. He calls for Uncle Ben and Sari to wait for him, but the two are too busy arguing over something and so they don't hear and abandon him in the dark again.

Don't get me wrong. I feel for Gabe. I like Gabe. He has all my sympathy... But get some Velcro shoes, kid. Laces suck and you should have learned by now that they're a fool's game.

Oh wait. Gabe is 12 and can't buy his own shoes. His parents need to do that, and because they hate him, of course they would only buy him shoes with laces.

Yes. Yes I do believe if somebody ever buys you a pair of shoes with laces instead of Velcro, they hate you. They hate you as much as Gabe's parents hate him.

Sorry. I don't make the rules.

All right. So where were we? Oh yeah. Gabe is lost again. He goes running around looking for Sari and Ben. He doesn't use his beeper because he is sure Sari will make fun of him for being lost and scared again. Then the tunnel he's in just fuckin' collapses under him and he falls into a chamber full of mummies, mummy-making-tools, and a tar pit. Oh, and scorpions. And the scorpions just start going to town on Gabe's feet. They hate his shoes with laces, too... Or they just hate Gabe. Why not? Everybody else does.

Luckily, Gabe isn't there long before somebody finds him. Just before he falls face first into the scorpion nest, Sari finds him and grabs him, stopping him mid-fall. Unfortunately, it is Sari, so she's a total bitch about it, and also she's now lost and separated from Ben. And then just because the universe wants Gabe to suffer, both he and Sari are found by Ahmed, whom you may remember from a few paragraphs ago when he tried to kidnap them. Only now Ahmed is new and improved Ahmed With A Knife edition Ahmed.

Ahmed reveals that he tried to kidnap them to force Ben to leave his pyramid explorations. He also frightened the workers who fell ill, also to stop the exploration. Ahmed, you see, is the descendent of ancient Egyptian priestess Khala, who put a curse on all who would violate her tomb/mummy chamber. But this is one of those not-so-impressive curses where a direct descendant of the priestess has to be in the area, and know about the curse, and know about the violation, and agree to carry it out by murdering the culprits and mummifying them.

And, look, I don't want to tread on anybody's beliefs, but this is one weak arse curse and Ahmed is just a serial killer. Dude just wants to murder some archaeologists and any priestesses or ancient curses seem peripherally involved at best.

Before Ahmed can begin the murders, though, Uncle Ben shows up to rescue the kids and absolutely fails. Gabe, Ben, and Sari try to escape, but still fail. Ahmed gets tired of their shenanagins and decides that instead of the mummification plan, he's just going to push them into a boiling tar pit.

But at the last moment, standing on the edge of the tar pit, seconds from a painful death, Gabe reaches into his pocket and remembers his lucky charm. His special talisman he has carried this whole time. A treasure he picked up at a garage sale. A mummified hand called The Summoner, told to have the legendary power of, well, summoning. And what does it summon?

Mummies, apparently. Because Gabe holds the mummified hand up like he's calling on the power of Greyskull and Ahmed freaks out and then all the mummies in the room - victims of Ahmed and his ancestors - come to life and try to throw Ahmed in the tar pit. But only monsters are allowed to die in  a Goosebumps book, and Ahmed is a human, so after doing him a spook, the mummies let him go and Ahmed runs off. The mummies go back to sleep, Gabe and his family go back to the hotel and...

And nothing. Gabe's parents come back to Cairo and the book ends without a twist.

And so ends what is, by far, the least moist Goosebumps book in the series so far.

Really, everything in this book is so dry and sandy that it's like the four previous books stole all the moist out of this one.

And how is this decidedly un-moist book?

It's okay. Not the best. Not the worst. A solid "Sure" on the scale of "Pfft" to "Aww yeah!".

One of the things that is really interesting about this task of mine to read all the Goosebumps is that I get to see, one book at a time, how RL Stine has evolved as an author. All authors change, grow, and usually improve with time. Even though 'Stay Out of The Basement' is still the best book in the series so far, on the whole, the quality has been on an upwards climb and that is especially clear in this book because, as of 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' RL Stine has learned what a joke is.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I cannot stress hard enough to you how awkwardly, deeply, and amazingly not-funny RL Stine is. I genuinely don't think, that in 1992, when he started writing Goosebumps, he knew what a joke was. Characters would make jokes, and I'd know they were jokes because RL Stine would call them that in the narration, but they were not funny. They were not anything remotely resembling a joke. It was like he was taking his wildest, most desperate guesses at what counts for humour and screaming "IS THIS IT? HAVE I DISCOVERED THE FUNNY!?"

And no, Mr Stine, you had not.

Until now.

In 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb', RL Stine discovered puns.

And, fortunately for RL Stine, and for me, I am a giant grumpy pretentious child and I fucking love puns.

All right. I think that's it. This blog is feeling a little long, today, and I have stuff to do. I did have a Marxist take for this one, but I don't want to take up too much of your time and we've had a lot of tangents already. If enough people ask for it (drop a comment down below) I'll come back to it, otherwise, well, for this look back on a little story about mummies...

That's a wrap!

Bumping Geese 4: Say Cheese and Die!

So far I've been reading the Classic Goosebumps reprints line. These were published in the late 2000s and each of the books I've read so far include a brief Q&A with RL Stine in which he talks about the book, himself, and promotes a (at the time) upcoming line called horror land.

This gives me an additional insight into the series beyond just reading them.

So I'm rapidly becoming an expert on all things Goosebumps, a thing I have only the mildest of interest in. It's sort of weird to find myself so dedicated to something I feel absolutely no passion for.

Still. It could be worse. I could still be reading Monster Blood.

This is not the cover art for the version I read.
This is the cover art I remember seeing in the library as a child.

Fortunately, 'Say Cheese and Die!' is not Monster Blood. Not only does it not feature any monster blood, it's a pretty good book. I really liked this one. It's not 'Stay Out of The Basement'  good, but it's good.

'Say Cheese and Die!' is about Greg Banks, your ordinary 90s kid living an ordinary 90s life. One ordinary 90s day, he and his friends Shari, Michael, and Bird decide to indulge in some ordinary 90s entertainment by breaking into the neighbourhood abandoned/haunted house. But it turns out the house is not so abandoned or haunted, after all. It has become the squat of the local creepy vagabond known only as Spidey.

While Greg and his friends are picking through Spidey's garbage and possibly the antique belongings of whoever owned the house before Spidey moved in, Greg finds a hidden compartment with a polaroid camera. Greg, who enjoys both photography and apparently theft, takes the camera to play with and snaps a photo of his friend Michael, posed on the basement stairs. No sooner than he has taken the photo, the wooden beam Michael is leaning on snaps and he falls and injures himself. As this happens, Spidey returns to the house, and the friends must flee before they are discovered raiding the creep's home.

They escape safely - or so it would seem. But Greg is sure he sees Spidey watching them from the house. But that's not the only frightening discovery. The photo Greg took of Michael, now developed, shows Michael falling from the stairs, but Greg is confident he took the photo before the fall.

The friends shrug it off and go their separate ways, Greg keeping the stolen camera with him. When he gets home, he tests the camera again, this time taking a photo of his family's new car. Once again the photo develops wrong. The car in the photo is a wreck. Greg tries to shrug it off as some kind of defect in the camera, but the thought that this camera can take photos of the future, or perhaps causes a terrible future to occur, nags at his mind and frightens him.

Over the course of the next few days, Greg takes photos of his brother and his friends, even himself, driven by a morbid desire to prove the camera is not merely broken, but holds some kind of power. Each time he takes a photo, it shows his subject in terrible danger, or suffering a horrific injury. These frightful images even haunt his dreams. And sure enough, one by one, the terrible predictions of the photos come true. There are no deaths, but his father ends up in hospital after a car crash destroys the new car with him in it. Despite this, nobody is willing to believe Greg.

That is, until, he takes a couple of photos of Shari at her birthday - at her insistence - and instead of showing some horrific future for Shari, it doesn't show her at all. Shari does not appear in the photos Greg takes. And this too comes true! By the end of the day, Shari has vanished entirely.

Meanwhile, Spidey has begun his hunt for the missing camera. Greg spots Spidey following him around town, and returns home one day to find his room has been ransacked while the whole family was out. And I am sure there's a J. Jonah Jameson joke in here somewhere, but damnit, I just can't put my finger on it.

Camera. Spidey. Pictures.
I know the joke is here somewhere!

Shari is missing for a few days. Her family, friends, and the local police conduct a search of the town and the woods near her house, where she vanished, but Shari is nowhere to be found. Then, in a rage, Greg destroys the photos he took of her - the ones in which she did not appear - and as mysteriously as she vanished, Shari returns.

At last Greg's friends believe him about the camera, but all except Shari are too afraid to go back to the abandoned house with him and return it. So, in the final chapters, it is Shari and Greg who take the camera, on one not-so-ordinary 90s stormy afternoon, back to the neighbourhood abandoned house and place it back in the hidden compartment where Greg found it. At last the nightmare is over.

Except it isn't! Spidey finds them in the basement returning the camera and traps them. There, he explains that he, an evil scientist, invented the camera with a friend of his, an even-more evil wizard. But Spidey, whose real name is Frederick Fritz, stole the camera from his partner in... evil. As revenge, the wizard cursed the camera so that it would bring harm upon, and steal the soul of anybody who it took a photo of. The curse also made the camera impossible to destroy and I guess never run out of film. That's not said explicitly, but it's a fair assumption. Fritz decided to give up on his life of evil science and wizardry and hide the camera away forever, with him as its sole guardian. Alas, now that Greg and Shari know the secret of the camera, Fritz intends to keep them prisoner forever, so the secret never gets out.

A brief scuffle ensues and in the mayhem, the camera goes off, taking somebody's photo? But who.

Spidey, obviously, who immediately dies of fear for what the camera will do to him. Greg and Shari lock the camera away again and leave, putting the evil of the camera and of Dr Fritz to rest forever.

OR DO THEY!?

No. Because I know this book has at least two sequels and also it's not Goosebumps without a last minute twist ending. So as the novel closes, we see the two local token bullies stealing the camera from the house and running off into the spooky sunset to... Well, I don't know what they'll do. But RL Stine token bullies are almost as irredeemably sociopathic as Stephen King token bullies, so I'm sure it will be awful.

And I'm not going to say that is a highlight of Stine's writing. They are cheap, one-dimensional, throw-away secondary villains. Buuuuuut I got to admit, the idea of those two psychotic little shits with the cursed camera, stumbling arse first into its power, then terrorising the locals with it is a genuinely disturbing and frightening thought.

And that brings us to the important question. Is 'Say Cheese and Die!' a frightening story?

Well, there must be something scary about a cursed camera because this isn't the first time I've encountered it. 'Say Cheese and Die!' has a lot of similarities to the 2019 film 'Polaroid' directed by Lars Klevberg. The internet tells me that Polaroid was not well received, but I thought it was fine. 'Shutter' directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom in 2004 also heavily features photography as a horror motif. Spirit photography is a tradition almost as old as regular photography. So there must be something here. Do cameras frighten us?

Well, fear of technology is a common theme in horror fiction, but I think, when it comes to 'Say Cheese and Die!' and camera based horror in general, it's simpler than that.

Here is a quote from film maker Alfred Hitchcock.

"There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean. We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence.

"Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!’

“In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense."

Suspense and horror go hand in hand. 'Say Cheese and Die!' utilises the same kind of suspense technique Hitchcock is talking about. We, the audience (and, in this case, eventually the story's protagonist), know the camera has some kind of curse or power, we know that what the photo shows will happen, and that the photo always shows something terrible. So from the moment Greg takes the photo and RL Stine gives the description of what is going to happen, we the audience are watching every line for indication that the terror is coming.

When Greg gets in the car the first time, after he sees the photo showing it wrecked, we know something bad is happening. We hold our breath, our muscles tighten, we read about the car swerving into on-coming traffic and our mind screams "THIS IS IT! THE BAD THING!"

And it doesn't happen that first time. But we know it will, eventually. So every time we see the car in the story, we say to ourselves "Is this it?"

And because what we know is coming is horrible, and because we care about the protagonist, we fear for them. Suspense becomes fear. And that's what horror is all about. Making us fear.

So was 'Say Cheese and Die!" frightening? Not in the same deeply visceral way that I found 'Stay Out of The Basement' frightening. But, again, that book was the perfect blend of elements to make my skin crawl. But 'Say Cheese and Die!' is very effective. I was afraid for Greg. I was holding my breath as he got in the car, and as Bird stepped out into the baseball field after we see a photo of him laying in the same field, looking like his neck is broken. So yeah. This one was frightening. This one was good.

And once again, each book comes with just the one analysis. So since we've taken the time to break down the elements of good writing and the techniques of the craft, you'll just have to wait until next time for the politics.

Yes, yes, I know.

The suspense is killing you, I'm sure.

Bumping Geese 3: Monster Blood

 I had a dream I met R. L. Stine. He had heard about my endeavour to read all the Goosebumps books, to review and to analyse them, to catch up on a part of my childhood that never was. He was pleased by my decision and asked if he could help me. I told him he could give me a copy of all the books I still had to read, save me the cost of buying them all. He said he would, but they're out of print and he has no control over that. I thanked him, anyway, for his encouragement.

That's one of two Goosebumps related dreams I had this week.

At the start of the week, I began to receive questions about how far I was along with the next book, when this blog would be written.

So I guess this is just my life, now. It wouldn't bother me so much except, well... Friends...

'Monster Blood' sucked.

Nothing within the book resembles what is depicted here

'Welcome To Dead House' was a pleasant surprise. Flawed but engaging and creepier than I expected from a childrens' book. 'Stay Out of the Basement' was genuinely frightening and a marked improvement over the first book. 'Monster Blood' is what I was worried the series would be when I started reading it - uninspired childrens' adventure fiction masquerading as horror comedy but sorely lacking in both horror and comedy.

'Monster Blood'  is the story of Evan... Evan Ro.... Even Robbins? Roberts? Hold on.

Evan Ross. The Goosebumps wiki tells me his name was Evan Ross, which is handy, because apparently I've already begun the process of purging everything about this book from my memory.

Anyway. 'Monster Blood' is the story of Evan Ross, a young lad who goes to stay with his great aunt Kathryn while his parents look for a new home in Atlanta, where his father is being transferred for work. Kathryn is an eccentric crone and completely deaf. She also doesn't speak sign language or read lips, so she mostly just talks at people and to herself. And to her cat. She's a childless widower and Evan takes a quick dislike to her and her home. He is forced to sleep in a camping cot set up in her office, she has no TV, no toys, and Evan isn't interested in any of the books on her shelves. Worse still, her cat is a mean spirited animal that provokes Evan's pet dog Trigger, prompting Kathryn to force Trigger to stay outside for the duration of their stay. Topping it all off, Evan quickly gets the attention of the neighbourhood bullies, the Beymer twins.

The only respite for Evan is found in a friendship with Andy, a high-spirited girl from the neighbourhood. Andy shows Evan the town and takes him to a local toy shop, where Evan finds and purchases an old can of toy slime - basically silly putty - called Monster Blood. Evan and Andy have a good time messing around with the goop on the first day. While they're playing, Trigger steals a chunk and eats it, to Evan's chagrin, but the dog seems okay. The following day, though, Evan notices that the Monster Blood appears to be growing, and it tries to consume anything that touches it, including people. Trigger also begins growing at an alarming rate, eventually becoming the size of a pony.

Evan tries to conceal the sinister growing goop from his aunt by storing it in a series of increasingly large containers, even gives a chunk to Andy to take home. But Andy faces the same problem with her share of the Monster Blood. Eventually Evan tries to ask his aunt for help, writing a plea for assistance on some note paper, but Kathryn thinks it's a joke. Evan and Andy try taking the Monster Blood back to the toy store, and to the shifty shop-keeper who seemed reluctant to sell it in the first place, but the store has closed in the few days since they visited.

The novel climaxes when the Monster Blood, now as large as a large man, seems to come to life and begin terrorising Evan, Andy, Kathryn, and the Beymer Twins, consuming anything and everything it touches, trapping it in the depths of its slimy, oozy, bouncy core. And it sure is bouncy. The climactic scenes see the Monster Blood shape itself into a bouncing sphere so that it can chase down the protagonists.

And then, somehow, it gets even more ridiculous. Spoilers.

In the final moments, it is revealed that Aunt Kathryn put a spell on the Monster Blood when Evan and Andy brought it home. She bewitched it so that it would drive Evan away, or kill him in the process. Why? Because Kathryn herself is also bewitched. She is under the control of Sarabeth, her pet cat, who is actually an evil shape shifting witch who has been dominating Kathryn for decades, and wanted Evan gone because she feared Evan would find out.

It's all sort of unfortunate because Evan is as thick as a stack of bricks and would never have noticed if Sarabeth didn't send the Monster Blood after him. So that, and the pony sized Trigger, become Sarabeth's undoing, and the Monster Blood ultimately consumes her, undoing all her magic and ending her reign of terror over Kathryn. It is a twist that comes out of nowhere, feels completely out of place, makes no sense, and makes everybody involved seem like kind of a dunce. It also immediately creates a lot of questions and narrative inconsistencies that the book never bothers to answer.

I can't help but feel that whole summary reads as kind of dry and boring, but in my defence, that's what the book is. So far, the Goosebumps books I have read all have a similar narrative pace, and that pace is a slow burning fuse on a tonne of dynamite. The books start slow, drip feeding you spooky scenes, fake-outs, and foreshadowing, then it all comes to a sudden climactic peak of frantic and tense action and confrontation with the horror.

But 'Monster Blood' falls flat by being not scary or tense at all. In 'Welcome To Dead House' the first and second act are slow, and not much really happens, and there's a lot of quiet mystery about the house and the town, but that mystery presents as spooky ghost children and mysterious voices from the closet.

In 'Monster Blood' it's just dull scene after dull scene of Evan watching the Monster Blood grow bigger and nothing else happening.

But that's not even the biggest problem I have with 'Monster Blood'.

The biggest problem is that I had to spend 130 pages with Evan Ross, who may just be the most unlikeable protagonist in any book I have ever read. This little shit is ungrateful, judgmental, and condescending to everyone around him. He is utterly miserable from the first pages. While Andy is a delight - funny, caring, honest, personable, assertive - Evan seems to go out of his way to bring her down. Really, Andy deserves a better friend and Kathryn deserves a better nephew.

I hated every moment I had to spend with Evan. 0/10. Would not recommend. Would not inhabit his point of view again.

And yet...

And yet I do feel a touch of sympathy for Evan.

Evan may have opened the can of Monster Blood, may have wilfully bought it and played with it, but he didn't create it. He didn't set it upon the world to grow, consume, and destroy. Evan was a victim. But worse yet, for a long time, Evan was the only one who could see that the Monster Blood was an issue.

Kathryn doesn't believe him. Andy, for a long time, thinks it's maybe weird but no big deal - or at least not her problem. There's a scene in which Evan takes Trigger to the vet and the vet, seeing this over sized dog, declares it to be unusual but perfectly healthy. The vet runs some tests, but decides to wait and see if there's anything to actually worry about.

In a way, for a lot of the story, Evan is very much alone in conflict with this terrifying unnatural force of destruction set on infinitely growing and consuming everything it touches.

And here in the year of our lord, 2020, I suspect there's a lot of people who can relate to that.

And those people are Marxists.

Yes, it's that time.

When I first mentioned that I was considering reading all the Goosebumps books, I was asked for the Marxist take on Monster Blood. Why Monster Blood specifically? No clue. But here we are.

If you didn't pick up on the very subtle analogy I was crafting above, the Monster Blood bears some striking and frightening similarities this capitalist hellscape we've all come to understand as the world we live in. Its only goal is to grow and consume, and the only way it can do that is to destroy everything it touches, to treat nature, people, objects all alike as food. And it doesn't matter that Evan opened the can, that Kathryn set its growth in motion, that Sarabeth thought she was in control of it - all of them would ultimately suffer as the Monster Blood's victims. Likewise, it didn't matter that Andy and the Beymer twins really had nothing to do with it, that they were bystanders. Everybody. Everybody is in the Monster Blood's destructive path.

And Evan knew. And he tried to warn everyone. He was the first to suffer. He was the proletariat at the receiving end of exploitation, understood what was happening to him, saw what would happen to all, and tried to warn the world of the terrible future ahead.

In the year of our lord 2020, we can now see that the end game of the class struggle is the destruction of the planet. Capitalist exploitation and the pursuit of infinite growth will not only continue to cost the workers their lives, it will inevitably turn back on the capitalists and destroy them. All the wealth in the world won't save them. They can own every piece of property on Earth and none of it will mean a thing when the Earth is a dry, burnt, lifeless husk. In class war, there are no victors.

And maybe, just maybe, the only solution here is revolution. We Marxists must unite as... A giant bewitched dog... And we must crash tackle a shape-shifting capitalist witch into a blob monster... You know. The blob monster that is Capitalism and that's... Currently threatening our deaf great-aunt who... I guess is... Middle-management? Also, now she can lip read, even though we made a big deal of how she couldn't before?

And then after the revolution, Andy... Who I think is, like, a politically unengaged liberal... Wants to take a piece of the capitalism home as a souvenir but when she goes to pick it up, it has mysteriously vanished...

Okay, fine. Look, it's not a perfect metaphor. What do you want from me?

'Monster Blood' is a boring book with a miserable protagonist in which nothing happens for too long, and when it finally does happen, it's a farcical non-sequitur both narratively and tonally. Sure, I can make a Marxist analogue out of anything, but even Bob Ross would produce an occasional sub-par landscape if all you gave him was a palette of Cadmium Yellow Shit.

Whatever. I'm going to go read 'Say Cheese And Die.'

At least I never have to read a book about Monster Blood ever again...