Nice Try, Universe. Nice Try.

A week or so ago I put up a poll:

I am currently in-between books. Should I get the new Stephen King novel?

• No. Time travel be damned, remember your vow. For the love of God, remember Under the Dome.
• Yes. It will probably be fine and the universe has better things to do than to try and trick you into reading another crummy novel, anyway.

The results are in! Four votes of “yes”, and four votes of “no”. Well, that figures. Thanks for nothing, Internet.

I am leaning toward “no” anyway because of Siun-Kelan's comment about one of his books “The Cell”. I read that book, too, and she has an extremely good point. I went to Wikipedia and found a list of his works and discovered that all the way back to the third book of the Gunslinger series I swear to never read his stuff again only to break that vow every three years or so at which point the promise is reaffirmed.

You know, I might have the same deal going on that Lewis Black has with candy corn...

I spend an above average amount of time trying to solve puzzles, especially those of the type that are in the sidebar on the right. I really, really love a good challenge. I try the Kryptos puzzle every now and then even though I feel I am seriously outclassed by the worldwide efforts underway 24/7 to crack the code. I have devoted an embarrassing amount of time to the Kahn's Cons puzzle even though an Internet search seems to indicate I am the only one on the planet trying this one, forcing me to assume that I am the only one that has not been let in on some sort of twisted inside joke. :)

What does this have to do with Stephen King? Well, while looking through today's WIRED posts I found this:

A&E released seven exclusive videos from its upcoming mini-series Bag of Bones, with a catch: to access the videos, first solve a series of increasingly difficult puzzles hidden in the lines of text complementing an online photo essay, Dark Score Stories. … Puzzles are integrated into the experience through messages hidden within each photo essay. Bold letters in the website’s introductory message instruct readers to “go down left side” for clues to seven increasingly difficult challenges.

Increasingly difficult challenges? Say, that sounds really interesting... I think I'll just cli... Ah, ah, ahhh, Mr. King! I don't think so!

As the saying goes “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”