The plot of The Ruins is B-movie simple.  A group of young people on vacation at a Mexican resort meet a German tourist whose brother has gone missing.  They, along with a Greek who has taken a liking to one of the American girls, decide to go looking for the missing German by following the directions he left his brother in a crudely drawn map; a map that leads to an abandoned archeological site deep in the jungle.  Once there, the group of young people realize they are trapped and that something inhuman is preying upon them.

I won’t give away the nature of Scott Smith’s bogeyman, but in some ways, it’s the least important aspect of the book.  Like any good horror fiction, the monster is the blunt knife used to peel away at the characters’ psychological layers.  Smith gives the reader elegantly constructed glimpses into the interior life of each character as their shared circumstances become increasingly desperate and horrific.  This is a bleak, bleak story that does not treat any of its flawed characters kindly.  No roller coaster of fright here, but rather a slow, inexorable descent into the depths. 

Next up, Frank Portman’s acclaimed debut King Dork.  I’m also reading Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, my first Discworld book.

I’m a little surprised at how quickly I’ve beaten back this latest viral invader.  I don’t know if it has anything to do with me deciding to not screw around and getting myself put on antibiotics right away (and I know antibiotics are not going to be effective against a virus, but I figure I might as well not give the little bastards the opportunity to breed something more pernicious).  Or maybe it is all the karma you guys have been flying my way.  Either way, I’m glad my throat has stopped feeling like it’s being dragged across some neglected country road.

I do need to find a new primary physician, though, which is going to be a hassle.  This time, I want to choose a doctor based on a method that doesn’t involve throwing a dart at a list of names.  Maybe I can get some references from my genetically similar comrades. 

For your late Friday evening enjoyment, here’s a video of some crazy gimp getting all extreme with his wheelchair.  I’m starting a pool on how long it will be before this sort of thing becomes another event on ESPN’s X Games, complete with wheelchairs tricked out with the logos of corporate sponsors.  And when that day does come, I’m so gonna pimp myself as an agent to these kids and, like any good sports agent, my 10% commission will be spent mostly on cocaine and call girls.

I’m feeling rather icky right now, so this is going to be short.  As I always say when I get these bothersome respiratory infections, send me your positive karma.  I’m not sure I believe in karma, but I’m enough of an egotist to get a kick out of the knowledge that complete strangers are wishing me well.  Or at least I hope you are.

I spent a few hours fiddling with Ubuntu tonight.  I managed to successfully set up partitions and configure a dual boot system, which gave me a minor sense of victory.  It took forever to get the OS to recognize my adaptive hardware (mostly because I failed to distinguish between the letter “O” and the number “0” when editing a config file, which apparently was sufficient to completely crash Linux).  I finally figured out what I did wrong and managed to get Ubuntu to recognize my hardware.  Then I try to load up the built-in on-screen keyboard.  It spits back at me a head-scratching error message.