N S

socary

Noises

2 Garett Svensen,

2 Production Editor

© There’s a passage in a Charles
Stross novel where the bad guys are
trying to spook the protagonist with
a creepy fog and spooky noises. But
he isn’t having any of it: “It’s the sort
of tactic that might stand a chance of
working if I was a little less cynical,
or if they had enough imagination to
make it, oh, you know, horrifying, or
something. Luckily for me they don’t
seem to have grasped the difference
between a Sam Raimi movie and
standing by your dad’s hospital
bed trying to work up the nerve
to switch off the ventilator.”(The
Fuller Memorandum) Horror comes
less from environmental cues—fog

y machines and jump scares with an

E orchestral sting—and more from the

(2 dark, uncertain spaces within our

1, Psyche.

Lo]
5 David Wong (not his real name)
= understands these dark spaces
3 intimately. He writes hyperkinetic
y tales of the supernatural, like Stephen
F King on speed, endearingly full of
dong jokes that left me not wanting to
turn out the light when I put the book
down. Somewhere in the stories of
meat ghosts, possessed intravenous
drugs and interdimensional spiders
is a heart beating fast with existential
panic.

Fear of loss is at the core of the
horror of the books. Loss of loved
ones, loss of self, loss of sanity, loss
of ability, et cetera all the way down
to fears of job loss and the sudden
pang of dread of lost keys or wallet.
The fear is sudden and horrific,
usually tailing a lighthearted moment
or dong joke. Death comes easy and
often, and is horrifying enough due to

~, circumstances, but the real terror is in
y the passages that explore identity.

Wong manages to include an
essential horror element, oft neglected
by the shock-scare crowd in his two
books: social commentary. John
Dies at the End is in many ways a
meditation on the existential crisis
facing youth in these uncertain
days. This Book is full of Spiders
examines our cultural fascination
with the apocalypse and zombies, but
more importantly, what they mean to
us deep inside. The books are rip-
roaring tales that hit the scary bone
(JDATE more than TBIFOS), but
offer a perspective on the infectious
hopelessness pervading youth culture
today.

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Is Customer
Service Dead?

Jasmine Bhatti,
Exernal Coordinator

What happened to corporations that
actually care if you’re satisfied or not?
There was such a thing as customer
appreciation, once upon a time. Have
all of the big box stores forgotten
who walks in their doors and actually
provides them with all their funding?

It seems when you call in for
customer support, what you actually
get is a long wait list. You hear
“your call is important to us,” about
a million times but it doesn’t seem
to actually come across. These
companies must have enough money
to employ more customer service
staff.

When you do get through to
someone, it goes from transfer to
transfer. Sometimes, you get a real
gem of an associate who hangs up
on you. Don’t misunderstand me,
sometimes you actually get to speak
with someone that knows what they’re
doing. However, I have found that
rare.

Companies like Telus must be
making far too much money, if they
don’t care what their consumers think
about their product or service.

Here’s my recommendation: take a
stand. If you’re not satisfied, speak up.
Call, and call again. Become a pest. If
they don’t care, then make them care.
There is always an alternate option.
Bad customer service shouldn’t be
accepted at all.