Dearest hand-wringers,

What’s the matter, somebody spook you? A filmmaker give you one too many jump scares? There, there.

It’s pretty unfair you have to watch movies you don’t like as part of your job. But go ahead and cry it out and write your pained columns. Everyone likes to complain about the parts of his or her job she or he hates the most. Of course, plumbers sometimes have to clean septic tanks, and you don’t see them crying to the heavens, wondering why the government has allowed septic tanks to be placed in backyards across the land, but let’s face it — they’re heroes. If I ever found myself trying to fix a septic tank, I would definitely cry, climb out of my beshitted situation, thwap my wet brown gloves to the ground, and tell whatever homeowners there were to just move to a city already and be a more eco-responsible (before writing to my representative to outlaw rural life entirely).

I’ve been reading a lot about why horror is a bad thing and about how Paranormal Activity 4 is terrible and awful and pointless.

I’m not a weatherman, but I’m pretty sure the general quality of Paranormal Activity 4 was forecast by its three predecessors, but I get your point. I see what you’re saying. How could you have known really? Also, average kitchen life should only be reported with such dry realism in French New Wave films. Nevermind that the rhythms of this particular franchise fly in the face of the frenetic splatter of the Saw franchise, as well as general assumptions about audience attention spans in general.

Kids, these days! They like … all sorts of stuff. So hard to pin them done so we can make a consistent criticism, so just … waaaaaaah.

But you didn’t want to go. I know. The voices at work made you do it–the voices of your bosses.

In other news, you wanna know what I did today? I don’t like spicy peppers–hate ’em, they give me all sorts of stomach trouble. But today I said heck with it, Subway’s offering jalapeños so I will have them load my sandwich with jalapeños. Man, did I not like it. So I yelled at the sandwich guy. I asked him, “Why do you have this shit here? This shit ruins sandwiches! What kind of crazy organization is this?!” And I threw the rest of that footlong right in his face. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, where people like to put shit in sandwiches that just makes them painful to eat. It’s abusive.

Then I went home and turned on Fox News. I don’t know why. It made me feel ill, watching that crap after all that spicy food, so I went out to Navy Pier and bought a ticket on the Wave Swing ride. My vomit went in all sorts of directions. Why do people let obviously ill people ride such things? I’ll never know. I made the guy I puked on give me a refund. What a jerk he was to let me on without a warning. I mean, he did warn me; he asked me if I was feeling well, but he shouldn’t have operated it to begin with, me being in the state I was in.

I had to chew a habañero just to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth. You realize how hot those things are?! Man! And they sell them in the supermarkets with NO WARNING!

I had a kid once, but I didn’t know really what it was going to be like, having it for a whole week, so I left it by the side of the road. I hope someone picked it up. Otherwise … man. Who knows what happened to it!

Wonder if it grew up to like spicy peppers. Or if it even grew up at all.

My point is, I’m grateful you’re looking out. It’s good of you to take the role of a human public service announcement, warning us of such dangerous genres in the broadest possible terms. It’s like I wish someone had warned me from embracing rap music, or free verse poetry–some things should just be nipped in the bud before we end up haplessly stumbling into them.

Someone’s gotta watch where I’m going.

Lovingly,
Kristopher