Ain't drinking from no well.

I finally got around to reading It this summer. In part, because I knew I had some long plane flights ahead of me and I wanted to pack one book to save space so I wanted to bring as much book per book as I could. Also in part because I'd recently read A Wrinkle in Time. Now, both novels are about small groups of misfits teaming up using the power of the human spirit to defeat an otherwordly, unknowable entity called It that eats fear and wants to devour all those who resist It. I'm not dismissing the importance of maintaining faith and truth and forgiveness and love in today's world. But being aware of "[the themes of] cyclical violence, generational trauma, the respective fucked-uped-ness of both childhood and adulthood, and the fundamental horribleness of American history" as well as the necessity of not looking away from mundane, banal horrors and addressing all those things to help break the cycles and stop them from perpetuating into the future seems more salient for the world as it exists right now.

Also, I didn't need that much Jesus coming out of nowhere.

So I'll take book with the gangbang in a sewer and an actual Jew.

I saw the movie today. Coming right after playing through Bioshock made for a strange viewing experience. Monstrous shapes and sounds coming from pipes and bodies in all the wrong shapes and pure nightmares calling out and horrors rising up out of the water in the dark - yeah. I spent a lot of the movie going, "Oh, okay." Not quite the right context for being scared, but I was definitely impressed, and there were some shots and images that took my breath away for all the right and wrong reasons at once. The images were mostly what I'd paid to see, so in that respect, I got my money's worth.

I can't help but keep thinking about Stan. I'm absolutely certain that comes as no surprise to anyone. ( Spoilers for the novel under the cut. )