There needs to be some kind of international organisation that right-thinking people can join and talk about how fucking scary ET is. Not being scared of that thing seems like it has to be a mass hysteria kind of thing, it requires ignoring so many basic survival impulses.

Last Valentine's day our local planetarium and Knowledgeum equivalent did an adults only evening opening, with alcohol and local grad students doing 'the science of getting laid' type stuff and so on. It was great fun, but literally all I could think of all evening was "then me and my friend were about to press it,…

I've been planning to re-read Pet Sematary for ages, but I keep nopeing out before the animal/human deaths that kick off the plot. The supernatural stuff, fine, but I just can't do real world sad stuff any more.

That was the book that got me into Steven King. I'd read some of his stuff as a teen, and bounced off pretty hard, then in 2005-ish I was stuck in a flat in Sheffield for a weekend with no entertainment other than a copy of Gerald's Game (I was on 24 hour call for work, so couldn't just go out). I don't know whether…

I think it's being used clumsily here - in fact I think the paragraph really suffers from its inclusion - but not inaccurately. As usage of 'mansplain' has caught on it's definitely started to be used for all 'a man explains something patronisingly to those he perceives as inferiors' instances, not just male on…

There's a theory that I've seen argued fairly persuasively by a few historians that Carroll's sexuality was pretty normative and that most of the creepiness to modern eyes is a result of well meaning Victorian attempts to manage his image. Crudely speaking; that if you burn every letter or diary entry about how much…

A few years back Kris Straub (the writer) put out a a great little book of creepy short stories/vignettes in a similar style, 'Ichor Falls: A visitor's guide'.

Why is everyone shitting on The house That Dripped Blood in the comments here? It's great! The weird way Geoffrey Bayldon says 'cinema' in the cloak segment is worth the price of admittance all on its own.

I love horror, but I'm incredibly jumpy and come from a country with no tradition of interactive 'haunted houses' as a thing. First time I went into an American one I thought it was going to be like a ghost train but with walk through tableaux? So, yeah, long story short it wasn't like that at all and I passed out.

Not just in Black Mirror. David Cameron the actual current prime minister actually fucked a (dead) pig (at university).

Actually, that's a slight lie. I do now know that the Captain is in charge, but that is literally just because of Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I think it's one of those things it's easy to have a blind spot about. My own knowledge of the command structure would basically go: 'private is lowest, and then the Sergeant is the shouty one in the army, and the police don't have generals so I guess the sergeant is probably in charge?'

I was genuinely surprised how happy I was when I heard they'd reconciled. Never thought of myself as somebody who gets emotionally invested in the private lives of celebrities.

Conjure Wife is an incredibly good book. One of those books where you almost wish you'd never read it because you won't get to experience reading it for the first time ever again.

People use 'insect' to mean tiny and unthreatening too. No shortage of people who are scared of bugs.

That film is one of the biggest pieces of shit *the world* has ever seen. Almost thrillingly terrible film.

That book frustrates me so much. The first third or so is some of the best stuff he's ever written, but the bulk of the book is just gash.

Oh god, I've never been able to re-read the book (or even think about it) without thinking that, even though I know it's not the damn point.

Eh, it's just a basic extension of finding masks or any other facial covering/blurring scary surely? Not crazy original, but it's not like it relies on bandwagoning jumping to be popular. It's sparking the same neurons as being scared of the dark, or lost in the woods. Something normal changed slightly in a way that…

Me too, for my sins. In fairness they feel like a completely different set of skills (or in the case of RB 'skills') and rewards. The feeling of finally succeeding at something that I've been struggling with on the guitar is an entirely different type of fun to that of playing RB.