Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

The generally accepted rule of trilogies is that the third installment is almost inevitably the weakest. This makes sense: the first installment is bursting with new creativity, the second is able to refine things and boost them to new heights, and by the time part three rolls around, some degree of repetition sets in, and the excitements tends to wear off. Still, there are some advantages to being the third in a series: the groundwork has been laid, there is a certain comfort in the series' familiarity, and there is still plenty of room for improvement and exploration. And so, in this vein, we have Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones . It's definitely the weakest of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series (for reference, see my POWER RANKINGS of the first and second books in the series), but it's still wholly enjoyable. There are some uninspiring elements, to be sure, but the good parts more than make up for it. It's Return of the Jedi . And there&

Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with me knows that I have an extensive history of making decisions ranging anywhere from questionable to downright insane. Usually, I am fully cognizant of the consequences of these decisions, so when my wrist shatters or I find myself in a month-long depressive funk due to the ramifications of my choices, I am not so much awed by the after-effects as I am by the lunacy that allowed them to come to pass in the first place. The water bottles, though… See, oftentimes the most seemingly innocuous decisions, mere ripples in the ocean of choices we all make every day, end up creating a veritable tsunami of long-term effects when analyzed in hindsight. Nowhere has this been clearer to me than when I began pondering the ramifications of one of the most mundane decisions a person can make: I decided one afternoon to purchase a twelve-pack of bottled water at Safeway. On the surface, it seems almost impossible for the event to have any life-long s