1408
yesterday two of my friends convinced me that at some point i had agreed to go to the movie 1408 with them. i am not sure under what conditions i had agreed to this, but i believed them because i am an idiot and a masochist.
i liked the movie. it is a good movie. once it's over. while it's still running, it is just psychological torment. i suffered through it the same way i watched creepshow when i was 10, the exorcist at age 14, and the shining at age 23. with a shield propped and held continually in front of my face. i have always been one of those people, and don't act like i am the only one, folks, i know there are a lot of us, for whom simply closing the eyes during the scary parts just isn't enough. i need a barrier. without the conveniences of home i.e. pillows, blankets, couch cushions, i had to settle for a stack of about 12 napkins which i had absent-mindedly pulled from the dispenser while i was nervously thinking about whether or not i really wanted to enter this theater. 12 napkins can't protect you from much, but it certainly is a lot better than the zero protection factor of simply turning your head to the side.
i wasn't quite as frightened as i thought i would be by the movie, overall. although there were comments like "okay, i am ready to check out of the hotel now." and "no no no, i don't want him to stick his head out the window." these uttered in a voice that might have made a nearby movie-goer wonder why someone has brought their 5 year old to the scary movie. but as we left i didn't have a lot of anxiety about going home alone. we all did, however, suffer the difficult-to-describe suspension of reality sensation that follows a viewing of a a film in the paranormal or supernnatural genre-- mind-fuck movies. you know, that sense that when you get outside, everything is just a little bit off. your senses are heightened, your perceptions are keen to abnormalities and everyone might possibly be a ghost or apparition. so when we left the movie and were driving on a fairly busy street, the woman who was standing on the sidewalk (not even at an intersection, just in the middle of a sidewalk) with a baby in a carseat sitting on the ground next to her, seemed especially peculiar. i am not sure if it is because such a vulnerable-looking situation demands to be interpreted as a set up for disaster in a horror film or if it really was just that weird. but it didn't help that just as i noticed the woman with the baby, obnoxiously loud ambulance sirens began to blare, nearly startling me into that kind of driver's panic that far too many people suffer--the kind where the sound of an emergency suddenly renders drivers of all other vehicles temporarily moronic so they look around desperately wondering what to do and actually do everything except the very simple basic rule: get out of the way and stay still. i totally almost became one of those drivers because the sound of the siren bouncing off of the walls of the large concrete buildings around me combined with my altered sense of reality made the sound attack my senses from all directions until i couldn't figure out how many sirens there were, where they were coming from or what the fuck i was supposed to do. and my brain was in movie plot mode, so the siren felt like foreshadowing for whatever terrible thing was about to happen to the baby sitting so innocently and perilously close to the 50mph traffic of the busy street. and why is that woman there with that baby?
because humans are creatures of indescribable foolishness, my two friends and i concluded that we should stay with the theme of the evening and continue subjecting ourselves to terror and anxiety. in a moment of intellectual weakness, i think it may even have been me who said, "let's go ghost-hunting." to be clear, i don't even believe in ghosts, but i am afraid of them. and, as i mentioned to my friend karol, if you see any ghosts don't tell them i said that, it seems like the kind of thing that would piss them off. anyway, we went online and did a quick search for a handy list of all of the allegedly haunted places in our state. then we took a little cruise around town to see a few of these places. not to see ghosts. because there aren't any ghosts. but to see the places where people say there are ghosts.
i saw a ghost three times in a building in which i worked for a few years. i don't think ghosts exist or if they do i don't think we can see them. i reconcile this in a way similar to my continued atheistic-christianity. really, when it comes down to it, it's all kind of one big mind-fuck, isn't it?
i liked the movie. it is a good movie. once it's over. while it's still running, it is just psychological torment. i suffered through it the same way i watched creepshow when i was 10, the exorcist at age 14, and the shining at age 23. with a shield propped and held continually in front of my face. i have always been one of those people, and don't act like i am the only one, folks, i know there are a lot of us, for whom simply closing the eyes during the scary parts just isn't enough. i need a barrier. without the conveniences of home i.e. pillows, blankets, couch cushions, i had to settle for a stack of about 12 napkins which i had absent-mindedly pulled from the dispenser while i was nervously thinking about whether or not i really wanted to enter this theater. 12 napkins can't protect you from much, but it certainly is a lot better than the zero protection factor of simply turning your head to the side.
i wasn't quite as frightened as i thought i would be by the movie, overall. although there were comments like "okay, i am ready to check out of the hotel now." and "no no no, i don't want him to stick his head out the window." these uttered in a voice that might have made a nearby movie-goer wonder why someone has brought their 5 year old to the scary movie. but as we left i didn't have a lot of anxiety about going home alone. we all did, however, suffer the difficult-to-describe suspension of reality sensation that follows a viewing of a a film in the paranormal or supernnatural genre-- mind-fuck movies. you know, that sense that when you get outside, everything is just a little bit off. your senses are heightened, your perceptions are keen to abnormalities and everyone might possibly be a ghost or apparition. so when we left the movie and were driving on a fairly busy street, the woman who was standing on the sidewalk (not even at an intersection, just in the middle of a sidewalk) with a baby in a carseat sitting on the ground next to her, seemed especially peculiar. i am not sure if it is because such a vulnerable-looking situation demands to be interpreted as a set up for disaster in a horror film or if it really was just that weird. but it didn't help that just as i noticed the woman with the baby, obnoxiously loud ambulance sirens began to blare, nearly startling me into that kind of driver's panic that far too many people suffer--the kind where the sound of an emergency suddenly renders drivers of all other vehicles temporarily moronic so they look around desperately wondering what to do and actually do everything except the very simple basic rule: get out of the way and stay still. i totally almost became one of those drivers because the sound of the siren bouncing off of the walls of the large concrete buildings around me combined with my altered sense of reality made the sound attack my senses from all directions until i couldn't figure out how many sirens there were, where they were coming from or what the fuck i was supposed to do. and my brain was in movie plot mode, so the siren felt like foreshadowing for whatever terrible thing was about to happen to the baby sitting so innocently and perilously close to the 50mph traffic of the busy street. and why is that woman there with that baby?
because humans are creatures of indescribable foolishness, my two friends and i concluded that we should stay with the theme of the evening and continue subjecting ourselves to terror and anxiety. in a moment of intellectual weakness, i think it may even have been me who said, "let's go ghost-hunting." to be clear, i don't even believe in ghosts, but i am afraid of them. and, as i mentioned to my friend karol, if you see any ghosts don't tell them i said that, it seems like the kind of thing that would piss them off. anyway, we went online and did a quick search for a handy list of all of the allegedly haunted places in our state. then we took a little cruise around town to see a few of these places. not to see ghosts. because there aren't any ghosts. but to see the places where people say there are ghosts.
i saw a ghost three times in a building in which i worked for a few years. i don't think ghosts exist or if they do i don't think we can see them. i reconcile this in a way similar to my continued atheistic-christianity. really, when it comes down to it, it's all kind of one big mind-fuck, isn't it?
posted by shelly at 7/23/2007 04:13:00 PM
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