GEEK BEAT: Scary movies won’t scare me anymore

I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep living the lie. I’m gonna come clean.

I’m not the last of the Mohicans. I just said that so people would like me.

On another note, I’m also not as brave as I sometimes make myself seem in these columns. In fact, I can’t make it through a scary movie without having to go into the other room “to make more popcorn” whenever the music starts to swell a little.

I know what you’re thinking: “What a pansy.”

You’re right, although I prefer the term “total weiner.”

Now I’m not a total liar though. In real life, I’m actually fairly courageous. Some would venture to refer to me as “the man.”

And I’m not talking about using public restrooms brave; I’m talking Mario-level brave.

Sometimes if I’m walking around at night, I take a detour through the graveyard just to make sure the dead are staying where they should.

I’ve been known to yell potentially offensive words about tentacles at strange lights in the sky in an attempt to get abducted.

If you’ve got a haunted basement, attic or fridge, give me a call. I’ll be there with a Bible in my left hand and some nunchucks in the right to show those aberrations who’s the boss (in case you were wondering, it’s Tony Danza with me as second in command).

Heck, I’m even the entertainment editor here at The Statesman. It’s not all interviewing belly dancers you know. Sometimes I have to deal with ASUSU.

So, I’m no chicken, but ask me to sit through anything more terrifying than “Harry Potter and the Necromancer’s Frisbee” and suddenly I’ll have to “take a shower.”

Let me tell you, that water gets really cold when you’re trying to outlast a two-hour movie.

I’ve always been like this. Do any of you guys remember the Disney movie “Watcher in the Woods”?

I don’t, all I remember is my 5-year-old sister asking me why I was under the blankets.

Just like that strange smell in my high school chem lab, this is not all my fault. I have a very serious mental condition where movies and TV seem much realer to me than real life.

This is why for two weeks over Christmas break I thought I was a modestly hot blonde with a strange relationship with a giant gorilla.

Thank goodness “Narnia” came out about the same time. Being a lion is fun. Roar!

I’m not going to even get started on how confusing reality TV is for me. Is it reality? Is it TV? I honestly don’t know!

Another reason I struggle with scary films is that I often find myself in classic horror movie situations.

I walk home alone late at night. I have a strange compulsion to investigate noises in the bushes. Thank goodness I’m so ashamed of my naked body or I would have gone skinny-dipping and that would complete the triangle and I’d be some crazy guy’s mask right now.

Besides, real life is scary enough without adding extra horror to it. Badgers, for example.

However, I decided that now is the time to shake off the shackles of fear and stand up to Hollywood and be a man for once.

Like every other mature thing I’ve ever done, this was my wife’s idea.

She’s also never been a scary movie fan, but when she learned that I was an even bigger wimp than she was, she did what any caring woman would do in that situation: she started to torment me.

We are working on the problem, though. We’ve started to rent some scarier movies than normal. Next on our schedule, we were suppose to watch “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” but one of us chickened out (my journalistic integrity prevents me from saying who) and we got “Home on the Range” instead.

I didn’t have to get popcorn once. It’s not much, I’ll admit but it’s a good start. It’s given me the confidence to keep going towards my goal of someday making it all the way through “Gremlins.”

I know I can do it. If, while I work in the computer lab, I can swipe cards that have been in a back pocket so long they’ve permanently taken the shape of the owner’s butt, I can do anything.

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is a senior in computer science and has never seen the part of “Snow White” when the witch poisons the apple. Comments and general mockery can be sent to

steveshinney@cc.usu.edu.