I just finished reading this book the other day. Monster Island. It's hands-down the greatest novel I've read in years. Although I should note that I've read approximately two novels since finishing high school, so you should take that declaration with a grain of salt.

But really though! It's compelling! And exciting! You'll probably shrug it off and ignore there rest of this post when I tell you it's a zombie novel though. Yes, my love for zombies has grown past the confines of video games and movies and has now expanded to the world of literature.

This is actually the third zombie-related book I've read recently, though the last ones -The Zombie Survival Guide and Zombie CSU- were more reference books than anything else. Monster Island though, is a full-fledged novel with characters and plot development and all that good stuff.

I won't bother going into the plot, but I feel it's very necessary to highlight one of the parts of Monster Island that I found most interesting. There are essentially two main characters in this novel, and one is named Gary. Gary is a zombie. Sort of. He infected himself with the Epidemic, and hooked himself up to a ventialtor and a dialysis machine, keeping his brain intact evn when he died from the illness. Thus, while all other zombies are brainless eating machines, Gary's brain stays fully intact, saving his place as the smarted dead man in the world. It's really neat how Gary develops as an intelligent monster, how he learns the ins and outs of being dead, and how he interacts with the other characters. Gary is quickly developed as a sympathetic character, beaten down by the fact that if he'd waited a couple days he would have been rescued, but things slowly start to change once he realizes that being dead makes one very hungry. I won't go into any further detail, but at the end, I still felt kinda bad for Gary. He was very different from the dead man we met at the beginning of the story, but there was still a certain sadness about his predicament and his inability to master the art of being undead. Sorry, unliving.

But there's much more to enjoy here than the sorrowful tale of a half-zombie! The other main character is equally (if not more by the end) likeable, and even most of the secondary and ancillary characters have plenty of, well, character. The plot itself is pretty original, and serves up a few light twists. Nothing that will change your life, but more than enough to keep you anxious to turn the next page.

The book is relatively short, clocking in at a mild 282 pages, and the chapters are a scrawny 4 to 7 pages long, making for tasty, coffee-break-sized reading morsels. If my language is confusing, I like these attributes. I don't feel like reading a gigantic tome of a novel, and I hate setting a book down in the middle of a chapter. If the shortness of it is unattractive in any way, there are two sequels, Monster Nation and Monster Planet, but I haven't even read summaries of those two yet (though I'll say that I'm very much looking forward to them!). Monster Island is definitely a great way to spenad a little time, and I honestly haven't read any other book in my spare time that I would recommend more. So hit the book store (or library if you're cheap/uncertain) and pick up a copy as soon as you can.

As we have been doing for well over a year now, the girlfriend and I go out to the movies every Tuesday night to take advantage of Cineplex theaters' "Big Ticket Tuesdays" promotion. It's a simple matter of getting a free drink and popcorn to go with our movies, but it's a valued tradition, and I dread the day that it comes to an end. But this week was different! We went to two movies! She'd amassed more than enough points on her Scene card for two free tickets, so we took advantage of the freeness (you don't get a free popcorn and drink on Tuesday if you use your points on a ticket) on Saturday night and hit the theater for the second time that week.

On our usual Tuesday date night, we went to see the highly-anticipated "The Hangover". As huge fans of The Office, we (or at least I was) were pretty psyched to see Ed Helms go at it in a big screen production, and he did not disappoint. Even though he was playing a completely different character (the straight man, actually), you could still see so much Andy Bernard in him. But then again, just as much props go to his co-stars, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis, who were equally awesome. The woman has a gigantic crush on Cooper, and the crowning moment of the film (for me) was when he got the shit kicked out of him by a naked, effeminate Chinese man.

If you hadn't figured this out by now, "The Hangover" was absolutely the funniest movie I have seen in recent memory. In fact, I'm willing to label it the best movie I've seen so far this year. While the beginning plods just a little bit to get the premise going, it still keeps throwing jokes, slapstick, and one-liners at you to get things going ("Paging Dr. Faggot!"). Once the pace is set, the humour is cranked up as high as it goes, and I pretty much did not stop laughing until long after the movie was over. Whether it was Cooper consistently forgetting there was a tiger in the bathroom or the drive-by tuxedo shop, there was always something hilarious (and usually outrageous) going on, and I just can not praise this movie enough.

"The Hangover", in the end, I think would be best described as exactly what people kept telling me "Superbad" would be. I thought "Superbad" was excellent, but I never saw exactly why people found it impossible to stop talking about how great it was. But that's exactly how I feel about "The Hangover." I would gladly go see it again and again, like a late-nineties woman would "Titanic." I can absolutely see myself falling asleep every night watching this movie much like I did with "Bender's Big Score" for several weeks. Though now that I think about it, I doubt I'd actually be able to sleep while laughing so hard.

On Saturday night, she decided that it was time we see "Drag Me To Hell." Now, after seeing the Evil Dead trilogy, I've always been able to give Sam Raimi the benefit of the doubt, but after "Spider-Man 3" it got a lot harder. "Drag Me To Hell" did not register well with me the first time I saw the trailer. I just got the impression of another dull horror movie that would fail both to frighten and entertain, like so many I've seen recently ("Quarantine" and "The Unborn" to name but a few). I was not looking forward to it.

Oh dear lord, how I was wrong.

"Drag Me To Hell," in a word, was terrific. It was classic Sam Raimi, only with about a jillion times more budget to work with. While the story, setting, characters, and pretty much everything else were about as far removed from anything Evil Dead as you can get, I could not help but feel overwhelmed by the spirit of that series throughout the entire movie. It was a joy to watch from beginning to end, and I'd gladly recommend it to anybody who enjoys a hearty laugh with their creepiness.

That said, this movie was not the serious, dreary horror flick that the trailer plays it off as. It's actually incredibly funny, with a few scary parts in between the plot and humour scenes (Alison Lohman's face in the final scene will stay with me forever and be in my nightmares for the rest of my life). But the "horror" is just a device to bring in plenty of slapstick and gross-out comedy. And not in the terrible Wayans parody movie way, either. The fight scene between Lohman's character and the old gypsy woman is a riot and is worth seeing the entire movie for. The part where the gypsy woman loses her false teeth and starts gumming Lohman is quite possibly the funniest and most disgusting thing I've ever seen. When the demon is summoned into different characters near the ending is one of the most ridiculous scenes in the movie, but is entertaining and hilarious the whole way through.

The story is a bit flimsy, but you won't care once the credits start to roll. You'll walk away and talk about the parts that made you laugh the most, and you will feel entirely satisfied. The trailer and commercials do a terrible job of showcasing this movie. "Drag Me To Hell" is not a serious horror film. It is a lighthearted story of a cursed girl that never ever even thinks about taking itself seriously and even occasionally pokes fun at itself. It's also about having as many disgusting things end up in the main character's mouth as humanly possible. I loved it, and I gladly welcome Sam Raimi back into my good books for making it for me.

Hey guess what! I changed the logo banner so that it's no longer Christmassy. WOOOOO!

Being back from holidays is a pain in the ass. I've never been overly excited about work, but over the last few months I've gone from apathetic about it to downright loathing even the notion of work. Maybe it has something to do with my current place of employment, or maybe I'm just super lazy and hate work just a smidgen more than Average Joe. I'm betting it's the latter, but with a generous helping of the former. And lemon juice. Bitter, hateful lemon juice.

If there were one thing that could pick up my spirits enough to keep suffering through the long days without seriously considering burning the place down, I'm pretty sure it would be a toasted breakfast food with pictures of giant robots printed on it.

Holy shit! Kellogg's read my mind exactly!

I'll be the first to admit that they could use a little fine-tuning (getting the images in the center would be enough to please me), but these Transformers-branded Eggos make my day far more than they would a regular adult. Maybe it's because I'm more likely to love anything when giant robots are involved, but these are my favourite limited edition Eggos ever. And they don't even have chocolate. Or chocobos. But then again, there aren't a lot of breakfast products that feature chocobos to begin with. In fact, I'm not even sure why I mentioned chocobos in the first place. Maybe because the word looks so much like chocolate. Also, I've been reading Gamespite Issue 1 Vol.1, and like a third of its pages are Final Fantasy-related articles. So maybe I have an excuse for having chocobos on the brain.

Ahem.

Now that that little burst of randomness is over (hopefully), let's talk a bit more about these eggos. Obviously, the pictures weren't going to be as colourful and sharp as the ones on the box, but there were almost inexcusably low-quality. In all honesty, the pictures look worlds better in these pictures than they actually do. My camera must have some sort of anti-blur, colour-enhancing filter, because the pics printed on the waffles were both blurry and dull. Dull almost to the point where they looked like the ghosts of the images that should have been printed on the waffles. However much sense that makes outside of my head.

I know, I know, this is pointless picking because food that is supposed to look like things always turns out half-baked (hyuk). Just look at character-shaped fruit snacks. They never look like the licenses they're supposed to be representing. At least not enough that you'd be able to figure it out without previous knowledge of what they're supposed to be. So I guess I can't be too mad about the low-quality robot pictures on my eggos. Just moderately disappointed. But in the end, like I stated before, I would be more than happy enough if the pictures were centered.

Actually there's one more catch here. See, the waffles have that flat part in the middle where the Transformers guys are printed, and it's actually a Transformers Eggo killer. I dunno if it's just because the texture is wrong, but this phoney-baloney middle section makes the whole eggo taste like the notably inferior Eggo Pancake. It's a huge blow to the appeal of eggos, which may not be much, as they're just shitty frozen waffles, but like I said, the Egoo Pancake is much, much worse. I'd rather grind my tongue with sandpaper than eat eggo pancakes.

On the upside, I suppose you could at least cut them up and pretend they're really simple puzzles.