Merry Wanderer of the Night + weekly geeks

Weekly Geeks 2009-41

In honor of Halloween, this week's assignment is a guest post from our scariest Weekly Geek: Dark, of It's Dark in the Dark. (You can see a picture of him, all decked out in his new Halloween cape, here).

First I would like to thank the kind folks behind the Weekly Geeks for inviting me to emcee the Weekly Geeks on Halloween. It's a real honor.

There's a particular story about cooking that I've heard enough versions of that I think it must be an urban myth. In this story, the victim is, alternatively, a frog, a lobster, or an abalone. The story is that instead of dropping the victim into a pot of boiling water to cook them, you should place them in luke-warm water over a fire and they never notice that the temperature is rising until it's too late, and then BAM! they're dinner. I always imagine that if you were cooking two lobsters this way, one would eventually turn to the other and ask, "Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?"

Fortunately, I'm not going to find myself in a crock pot any time soon (at least not if I can help it) but lately I've been finding myself wondering if it isn't getting a little WEIRD and CREEPY in here. What with books about vampires (Twilight) and orphaned wizards (Harry Potter) in the mainstream, and a book about a child raised by vampires, werewolves, and ghosts (The Graveyard Book) being on the New York Times children’s best seller list for 52 weeks, it seems like maybe I'm right.

At the same time, I'm a real fan of the weird and creepy and I seek it out. So maybe asking me if things are a little weird in here is like asking a fish if the water feels a little wet today. Maybe my barometer is under water.

1) Tell us about something weird, unusual, terrifying, or creepy you've read lately.

2) Tell us what you think. Are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual, or less? If your choice for the answer to question number 1 was written in a different decade, what does it say about that era? Maybe you think that the weird and creepy is status quo. Or maybe we’re all like lobsters in a pot, and we can’t tell if things are getting hot in here.

Happy Halloween!

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Weekly Geeks 2009-41 + weekly geeks