Choose Your Own Adventure 138: Dinosaur Island, By Edward Packard (1993)

If you'll read any dumb shit, go on to the next page.

If you'd rather toss this in the trash and then kick Edward Packard square in the dick, turn to page 63.

There's no denying that some of the Choose Your Own Adventure books are classics. The second one, Journey Under the Sea, for example, is fucking ill, with multiple, crazy plots and some seriously brutal endings. (IIRC, in one you end up with the bends after being ass-raped by mermen from Atlantis.) Sadly though, after a while the series really started to coast, and this one, #138 for Christ's sake, is just a lazy-ass ripoff of Jurassic Park, right down to the way the bad guy obtains the dinosaur DNA he needs to kick the whole thing off in the first place. His mind-bogglingly idiotic plan? Well, in some if not all permutations of the story it runs something like this:

1. Clone real, living dinosaurs
2. Make a movie featuring said dinosaurs, in secret, on the island where they're all contained (this movie would probably ultimately be released by the Asylum)
3. Blow up the dinosaurs so that no one else can obtain footage of them
4. Rake in one billion dollars in worldwide film rentals

Fun Fact: That was also the original script for Jurassic Park III

Oh, and did I mention the fact that the bad guy is willing to kill people in order to perpetrate this jaw-droppingly moronic, ass-backwards scheme??? Seriously, outside of the Remington Steele James Bonds, have you ever heard a megalomaniacal plan this goddamned stupid in your entire fucking life? Christ, even a child could come up with better uses for living, breathing dinosaurs (cf. various installments of Calvin and Hobbes). And as if that isn't bad enough, for a Choose Your Own Adventure this book is pretty niggardly when it comes to the chooses. Er, choices. One path, for example, is twelve pages long and you only get to make one choice along the way! Seriously, this installment is such a monumental hose job that it actually makes the copycat Time Machine series (where every choice was a winner, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings) look positively badass by comparison. It's no surprise that the kids who grew up with these books tend to cherish the early entries and even re-read them as adults, but the truth is I found this one on the floor at the thrift store, and they said I could have it for free. Seriously, Edward ass-Packard, if you were just gonna phone it in, why didn't you try choosing a new career instead?

Let's make this one little more interactive. What are your favorite (and least favorite) Choose Your Own Adventures? Bonus points for name-checking Twistaplot and/or Which Way Books.

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If you'd like to buy one of Mr. Satanism's books, turn to page 666. If you'd rather not buy one of his books, then fuck you.

Time Machine 24: World War I Flying Ace, By Richard Mueller (1988)

Okay, this book is just like a Choose Your Own Adventure™©®™, except it looks like we might have a problem before the adventure even begins:

Are you kidding me? What's the point of going back in time if you're not allowed to kill anybody or freak out the primitive dipshits in, say, medieval times or the 1970s? Next they'll be telling us we shouldn't get drunk or tap any historical ass either. Fuck that. If you ask me, there's only three rules for going back in time and here they are:

1. Don't kill anybody with the same last name as you
2. If you do anything to change the past -- even just stepping on one butterfly in dinosaur times -- the Nazis will win the war
3. Back to the Future Part III sucked ass compared to the first two

So fucking lame.

Anyway, this book wants you to find out who shot down the Red Baron (I'm pretty sure it was Snoopy, but you know historians, they always want proof and shit). So fine, I'm going back in time to solve the mystery... (You'll have to imagine the colored lights, or do like I did and drop half a tab before you start reading.) Okay, first it says I can take a pocketknife or some matches with me. How about a gun, you fucking assholes? And why can't I take both? There's seriously no room in the time machine for a pocketknife and matches? You goddamned idiots. Fine, I'll take the knife. At least then I can stab somebody in the throat if I have to. So I'm making all these choices, blah blah blah... It looks like they're trying to sneak some learning in here too, so you might want to watch out for that... Hey, they're giving me the option to go to a pub! Now that's more like it - this time travel shit is thirsty business. Now I'm at the pub and... Holy piss! The fucking Nazis are bombing it! I thought you weren't supposed to bomb hospitals and pubs! War really is hell I guess. At any rate, I manage to survive the bombs and I keep making choices and... Holy shit! I won! And on the first try too! Ha ha ha ha! Bow before Mr. Satanism! You've been owned, World War Part 1! Before I throw this away though I need to flip through and tell you what the worst way you could die is... let's see... Hey - there's only one ending! And there's no way to lose or die! Are you fucking kidding me???? What the hell kind of Choose Your Own Adventure is this??? I'll bet you any amount of money and/or pussy that the people who came up with this were all "If kids lose they'll have low self-esteem, so we'll make every choice a winner!" You know why kids today are such goddamned pussies? Because of shit like this. Seriously, I think this book might just be the fucking epitome of weak. I'll tell you what time it is, Time Machine - it's time to pull your head out of your ass and suck my fucking balls. Then we'll see who has low self-esteem.

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This book sucks it. Read one of mine instead.

She-Devil, By Lois Horowitz (1989)

The first thing the astute reader will notice about this novel is that the description on the back seems to say a lot, but doesn't actually tell you what the book is about. This is totally appropriate though, because as it turns out this book isn't about anything; it just rambles on and on for hundreds of pages, and to make the experience even more painful a good half of it is so clunkily written that it's literally difficult to read. Yup, this book wastes no time in sucking shit, and it's full of dumb mistakes, too. For example, it begins with this guy seeing a traffic accident on his way TO work, but in the next chapter he's late getting home because the accident happened on his way back FROM work. Proofread much, you lazy shits? And some parts are just insultingly stupid, like the assertion that, if a man is dead, there's no way to confirm who he was when he was alive, not even by showing his totally non-mutilated body to his own fucking wife or, I dunno, the guys from CSI: Des Moines or something.

All lies.

Of course the dialogue is laughably retarded. "Did you know that everyone has eight great-grandparents?" asks the main chick at one point. Really? She must be a mathematical savant to have figured that one out. This comes up, incidentally, because the main chick is into genealogy (clearly identifying her as both a tiresome bore and a superficial, empty-headed twat), and this, in turn, is important (in the loosest sense of the word, obviously) because, ultimately, this is a horror novel about genealogy, almost certainly the most un-frightening thing a horror novel could possibly be about. Unless you're a huge racist who's terrified of finding out that one of your ancestors was black, I suppose. Honestly, genealogy is so fucking pointless. I mean sure, after weeks of diligent research you could very well learn that you're distantly related to Benjamin Franklin or Elvira or something, but how will this change the fact that you're currently squatting in an abandoned trailer park and spent your last income tax return on meth, lottery tickets, and an abortion? The real literary crime here though is that this entire book is just killing time; nothing of consequence happens until the very, very end, and overall it feels like it was written by someone who's heard of horror novels, and has sort of an idea what kind of shit might go down in one, but has never actually read one in their entire fucking life. Seriously, stick to genealogy, Lois Horowitz, because writing books that aren't about who once fucked your drunken flapper grandmother back in the Roaring Twenties is obviously way, way out of your league.

Oh, and by the way, it was me. I fucked her. And she liked it.

Yep, granny was quite the dish in her day, a real Sheba
with gams up to her neck and a chassis that just
wouldn't quit. And how. Now you're on the trolley.

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Buy my books, ya piker. They're nifty; the bee's knees, don'cha know.

Stupid kids...

Christ, even kids this square should know that there's already a band called "Genesis". What a bunch of tools.

I'd totally fuck the brunette in the glasses though.

Women in Fury (1985)

The primary difference between real women in prison and movie women in prison is that people expect the latter to be at least borderline doable. This flick never got the memo though. Maybe they were going for realism or something, but trust me, with very few exceptions, nobody wants to look at the kind of ass that actually ends up in prison, which means that I spent the majority of this flick cringing and/or puking my balls out. I'm not kidding - every catfight, every tit, every instance of full-frontal, and every lesbian scene had me hurling harder (and further) than the last. Honestly, this entire flick was like some horrible Pavlovian experiment designed to make me hate sleazy movies. It got to the point where I was chugging entire jugs of water during the plot scenes, just so I wouldn't dehydrate. (Of course said plot is pretty slipshod too. For example, they can never quite decide if the main chick is doing time for first degree homicide, or second degree homicide. I know this movie goes down in some coconut-sucking banana peel republic, but even those coup-happy assclowns are generally organized enough to keep their trumped-up charges straight.) Frankly I didn't know how I was gonna make it through this one, but around the halfway point the prisoners finally revolt (if you ask me, they were already revolting, ha ha!), so at least there's some entertaining violence, plus a hilarious bit where someone shoots an obviously fake snake in the head. There are some brilliant lines too ("Whatever happens I'll let you know where to find me. Even if it's in Hell."; "Then come and get it, you fag-licking bastard!"), but ultimately the only one in fury was me, for wasting my time with this awful movie full of hideous, ugly bitches.

Oh, and just for the record, I'm fairly certain that saying someone is "in fury" is grammatically incorrect. You ineducated fucktards.

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For more movies about women, check this out.

Banshee (2006)

In this flick, a laughably "tough", professional car thief chick ganks a car from this crazy dude who subsequently kidnaps her boyfriend, cuts of his ear, and threatens to kill him unless she returns his ride, pronto. Way more effective than wasting forty bucks on The Club™. She steals the car back from the gangster she sold it to, but it gets banged up during a chase with this detective who just happens to be on the/her case, so the crazy dude cuts her boyfriend's whole head off and leaves it in her apartment, where the cops find it when they stop by to harass her. She manages to ditch the pigs, but then she loans her highly distinctive jacket to a friend, and when said friend goes to this rave it just so happens that the DJ there is the crazy dude, and he recognizes it. And this is even worse than it sounds, because it turns out that crazy dude isn't just a one-off murderer who gets a little uptight about his car, he's a straight-up serial killer who waxes poetic re: sound waves and keeps at least one victim's brain in his refrigerator. Oh, and he also likes to record the screams of the girls he kills, loop them into his mixes, and play them down at the club. He grabs the friend, and when the main chick shows up at the club looking for them, sure enough, he's playing the very track that has the friend's screams mixed into it! The main chick follows the killer to his secret lair (complete with a Wall of Evidence™. Two, actually, if you count the bodies.), where he traps her using a variety of remote-controlled funhouse tricks. Fortunately, it turns out that the FBI also has their eye on the killer DJ, due to an unrelated case involving illegally download music, so they barge in just in time and start shooting up the place. The main chick and the killer both manage to escape in the confusion though, and they end up having a car chase through the Holland Tunnel that results in a sixteen car pileup and ultimately leads to a final showdown featuring a flamethrower/samurai sword duel atop the Statue of Liberty.

Now, read that paragraph again and try to figure out where I started making shit up.

Seriously, this movie is absurd, but somehow the damn thing works, and this despite the fact that the main chick is an unbelievably shitty actress, not to mention kinda skanky. (Oh I'd hit it in a pinch, or under duress, but that's about it.) It moves along at a nice clip, it's never boring, the friend who gets kidnapped ain't bad looking, and there are actually a couple of subtle, badass moments ("He came back hot."; "My kids go to bed hungry. Understand?") and funny bits (the meth lab). Not exactly recommended (they really should've gotten someone hotter for the lead role, like maybe Natalie Portman, or Flo from the Progressive car insurance commercials), but tolerable enough if you've got nothing else on your plate. Like, you know, a life.

Hope your VD insurance is paid up.

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Hype hype hype hype hype.

Where in the world is Mr. Satanism?

Ask your mom. Swish! Rim shot! (Oh, I'd ask her about the rim shot, too.) Seriously, though, I've been hard at work on my next two books, PLUS I'm helping my uncle Harlan edit no less than THREE novels he wrote in the 1970's, updating them for the 2000's and preparing them for publication. And of course there's all those hot chicks I need to bang in the can, like Veronica. So, sorry I haven't been able to post anything lately. To make it up to the three of you who still check in once in a while, here's a bikini picture of lil' Veronica, who, tragically, has apparently gone missing. As always, if you know anything, keep it to yourself. And stay away from that vacant lot down the street from my place. There's nothing there for you.

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While you await my inevitable return, why not download one of my books? It's like 100+ updates, all at once, and trust me, at under $3.00 each, they won't exactly break the bank.