I finally rented Paranormal Activity so I can see what weaker mortals think of as scary.  I can’t watch it with Mrs. Lizard Kind around.  She actually gets scared by old Twilight Zone episodes with Burgess Meredith.  I have to wait for her to go to bed before I watch it.  Which is the perfect time to test its mettle against my own.  That time when shadows come out of hiding.

I appreciate scary movies.  I enjoy scary movies.  But I am not scared by scary movies.  Know why?  Because they’re not real.  Few things scare me outside of the three C’s.  They, of course, being Cancer, Credit Debt, and Circumcision.  I am especially not frightened by movies that deal with “ghosts.”  Ghosts are right up there with aliens and bigfoots (bigfeets?) in terms of unbelievability.  If I saw a ghost I would ask it one question:  what religion should I join?  Because if ghosts are real, then there is an afterlife, and I need to stop fucking around.  But I’m not too worried about that happening because ghosts are bullshit and people who believe in ghosts need to review the three C’s.

Part of my resistance to horror movies comes from my family.  By that, I mean, if you grew up with my family few other things would frighten you either.  Horror movies were my cartoons when I was a kid.  Well, horror movies and then actual cartoons were my cartoons.  Also, I went to really tough schools.  Kids at my school would ask you if you believed in Dracula or if you believed in the Wolfman?  No matter how you answered, you ended up getting punched and then sat on.  If you cried, you had to smell someone’s farts or get punched and sat on again.  I learned the way to avoid this was by using their own fear against them.  Which means I ran home and told my mother and then they had to deal with HER.  Once someone had been exposed to my mother’s rage, they never came near me again.  Sometimes they moved.

If Paranormal Activity can actually undermine those emotional scars by frightening me, I will be quite impressed.  Here I come ghosties.  Do your best.

Is anyone else ancient enough to remember watching this?  It was 1972, people!  Recognize.