For the past two days I've been reading Brian Keene's The Rising, a zombie-driven horror novel whose author, according to the cover, was worthy of a past issuance of the Bram Stoker Award. The book, I must admit, is entertaining, fast-paced, and - thematically - very similar to the recently reanimated undead film Dawn of the Dead, which I also enjoyed. (It's probably hard to do a decisively original take on masses of flesh-eating zombies, but - hey - if you like the concept in the first place, who cares?)

Starting yesterday morning on the bus, I've been reading The Rising on and off for about 8 hours now, and there's been little to break my momentum. Until a few paragraphs ago. The line I'm about to quote, I think, is certainly one of the worst (and funniest) bits of writing I've seen offline in a long while. On page 168 of the Leisure Horror Paperback edition of his novel, Keene starts the third full paragraph on the page with:

Jason's bladder let him know with a sense of urgency that he needed to pee.

Gee. I'm glad Jason's lungs weren't urgently telling him that he needed to whizz. Or, my, just think how wonderfully cool it would be to write this in my journal:

Jamie's bladder imparted to him in earnest that he really should send the $25 check off to the DMV to renew the old, sun-bleached Mazda's registration.

or,

Jamie's bladder, the source of all his knowledge, dutifully and sagely translated the Sumerian text to its host with elan and aplomb.

or,

Lacking patience, Jamie's bladder decided it was time to go it alone. Pushing its bloated sphere forcefully against the thin flesh just below the navel, it pushed through its captor and hopped gaily onto the linoleum floor. Before Jamie or Trinity (the cat) could catch it, Mr. Squishy (as the forlorn bladder had dubbed itself) bounced cartoonishly to the lavatory and promptly gushed, loudly whizzing, its contents into the toilet bowl. Hey, if that didn't get Jamie's (or Trinity's) attention, Mr. Squishy had no clue what else would.

or,

Shrieking like a little girlie girl, Jamie's bladder, in Hans-and-Franzish fashion, urgently wailed, "Hear me next week, understand me yesterday, or piss all over yourself now -- you've got to pump me out!" Hearing his organ's scream and feeling the subsequent clenchings of rippling bladder-muscles did it, sending Jamie careening for the bathroom with a sense of urgency the world has never known.

OK, that's all I'm good for. So, unless my bladder convinces me to write more detailed biographies of its needs, I'm going to go back to reading The Rising.

Oh, and to anyone reading this...please do contribute your own "bladderisms" in the comments section. It'd make my and my bladder's day!