Audio Review: Pygmy

Listened on 8/22/11 and 8/26/11

2 Stars - Recommended Lightly / Not as intro to author

8 Hours (7 discs)

Oh Chuckie P. You and me, I thought we had a good thing going?! I thought we had an understanding, a mutual love thing going on? We had our first date with Invisible Monsters. Remember how I fell head over heels for you but didn't want to appear too easy at the time, so I allowed you to wine and dine me with Survivor a week later?

How could you do this to me? I mean, after all the great times we shared, and late nights we had, reading Diary and Haunted, Choke and Lullaby until the sun came up...? Sure, I wasn't terribly impressed with Stranger Than Fiction, but I thought we worked through that. Was it something I said? Something I did? Help me understand what would make you treat me this way.....

Ok.. ok.. I admit that I was kind of unsure about Pygmy. I had questioned for years whether or not it was a part of you I wanted to expose myself to. It seemed like a part of your personality that I was better off not knowing.

But when I saw the audio book sitting there, on those sad Borders bookcases, marked down to 40% off the original price, I couldn't help snatching it up and taking it into the car with me. The fact that I've had less than favorable experiences with audiobooks should have also warned me away from your book.

Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment.

But, all of that aside, I can't help but wonder if this was all just an elaborate test of my love, and if so, did you anticipate me failing horribly? Were you trying to rid yourself of me completely? I bet you didn't expect me to finish it, did you? I imagine you and your buddies took bets on just how far I would make it... $10 bucks says she doesn't get halfway... $30 bucks says she won't make it past the first disk... How much did you lose, Chuckie? Huh? How much? Did it surprise you to hear that I listened to every single, painful, nearly-indecipherable sentence?

And that poor poor narrator! How he managed to speak for 8 hours in that god-awful broken english you wrote in is a mystery to me. This is enough to break anyone, I think:

"Tongue of operative me lick, licking, touching back tooth on bottom, molar where planted inside forms cyanide hollow, touching not biting. Not yet. Tooth wet smooth against lick of tongue. Swallow, spit, say counting, one, two, counting on fingers of hand until six. Tell passport man, to be exchange student with host family six month.

Passport man strike paper of book with ink, marked good to enter nation. Slide passport book returned to this agent. Man say "Welcome to the greatest country on Earth". Press button and doors allow way inside, accessing target family to harvest." - and this example, one of the more decipherable moments in the book!

Smartly, you may have assumed I would cringe at hearing this terrorist agent speaking in abstract present tense, referring to himself in broken third person. If that didn't turn me off, I am certain you thought I would run screaming from the whiz bang nasty anal rape scene that takes place within the first few chapters, didn't you? Or how about the part where pigdog face brother and cat sister discuss with little Pygmy their mothers obsession with dildo's? I bet you thought I wouldn't have stuck around to hear that part....

But I did. I hung in there. I suffered through all of the Comrade this and next now that. I listened to the flashbacks that clarified just how this little hater came to be, he and his comrade terrorist soldiers who were sent from their country into ours to infiltrate and destroy our kind. I listened to that sexually depraved misfit plotting how he would impregnate his host sister to spread his seed and infect us at a deeper level. I did. I hung in to the very end. And I hated nearly every minute of it.

But Chuckie, my dear. My dear sweet Chuckie P... I forgive you. I do. I will try to put this all behind me. I will clear my mind of this horrid, disgusting, insane side of you. It may take some time... but I think my wounds can heal. They will heal. And when they do.... my signed copy of Damned will be waiting.....