Vampire Fight (edit)

^ I still love this picture even though bears don't factor into this column at all. Why is the bear fighting the vampire in the first place? Who cares--sick him, bear!^

I revised this one recently for the October issue of a local paper that I contribute to.

Since the month of October climaxes with Halloween, I decided to write something about ghouls—vampires, in particular. Unlike zombie lore, vampire lore doesn't appeal to me, and so I didn't bother to watch a minute of True Blood or Twilight for an answer to the confounding question about vampires I'll soon be posing. The vampire flick that really sent my mind motoring in circles was the TNT original movie The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice.


The Librarian is awful, but that hardly matters. It depicts the sci-fi adventures of a witty scholar who vacations in New Orleans, where he encounters a plot-line that's basically Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code. The main character shares the wry cleverness of Indiana Jones, but unlike Indy, he lacks prowess in both hand-to-hand and whip-to-sword combat. The librarian relies on a French vampire chick to save him from the attacks of the ex-KGB henchmen who factored into the plot somehow.

The film climaxed with an airborne tussle between Mademoiselle Vampire and Russian Dracula in a New Orleans bayou, and all the while, the librarian just bit his fingernails, shin-deep in a hurricane-ravaged puddle of his own urine. As the vampires grappled with each other, vanishing and reappearing twenty feet aboveground and exchanging punches, I became baffled by the nature of a vampire fight.

When two vampires duke it out, are they determined to sink their teeth into their rival's throat, or do they try to plunge a stake into the heart of the other one? Vampires kill by chomping throats, but they are killed by a stake through the heart. The paradoxical question is: When vampires fight, are they driven by their instinct for killing, or driven by the instinct to kill their opponent? Are they concerned with the only way they know how to slay, or are they concerned with the only way to slay their opponent? For my money, a vampire fight is a real mind-fuck of a stalemate.

It seems fruitless for a vampire to gorge on the jugular of another vampire because the ultimate goal of jugular-gorging is to convert a human into a vampire. A vampire on the hunt is basically an active recruiter for his own kind. There is no point in trying to convert somebody who has already been converted. That's why Jehovah's witnesses leave each other alone, choosing instead to pester all the rational heathens in their neighborhood.

Hypothetically, had Russian Dracula succeeded in turning his enemy's jugular into a geyser of Hawaiian-Punch, his victorious smack talk would've went something like this...

“Yeah, I sucked on that, bitch! Hope you enjoyed those centuries of devilry because I have delivered you from the eternal life of a vampire to...more of the eternal life of a vampire. Dammit, could we just arm-wrestle or something to settle this whole thing? Because I'm CONFUSED.”

Even zombies, the inept brethren of vampires, are smart enough to realize there is no sense in neck-gobbling one of your own. These vampires craning for each other's throats are just tracing the check-mark in a box that has already been checked.

Since I've provided reasons why a vampire biting another vampire's neck is preposterous, you might suspect that, by default, those Transylvanian terrors must break out the wooden stakes when they've got a score to settle among themselves. But that idea, too, can be refuted.

In simplest terms, do you know what sort of a vampire keeps a wooden stake handy at all times, stashed away in a pocket inside his cape or tucked into her lacy garter belt? A SUICIDAL vampire! A vampire brandishing a wooden stake is not a threat to innocent people; it's a monster's cry for help. Next to overdosing on bulbs of garlic, self-inflicted heart-staking has got to be the most common way vampires say goodbye to the cruel underworld.

If a vampire with a wooden stake is not suicidal, the alternative is that he's really stupid. When you've got superhuman powers, it's senseless to always lug around the thing you're vulnerable to. Underneath his red Speedo, Superman does not wear a nut-cup made of Kryptonite. The Wolfman is not equipped with holsters to hold revolvers loaded with silver bullets. The hero and villain in question value self-preservation, unlike a vampire with a wooden stake tucked behind his ear like a pencil.

It seems absurd to have a serious debate about non-existent creatures, but I vaguely recall that I once did that. A devout fan of True Blood and Twilight and probably the Eddie Murphy flick where he plays a vampire in Brooklyn told me that vampires can be killed by decapitation, too. She added that vampire fights typically end in this ghastly fashion.

The notion of killing a vampire by beheading it is nonsense. All make-believe ghouls should have but one fatal vulnerability, and decapitation is the hallmarked method of (re-)killing zombies. The creator of the vampire mythology screwed up when he declared that a bloodsucker can be killed by both a stake through the heart AND decapitation.

The vampire's susceptibility to beheading is worse than just unoriginal; it's also damaging to their stature. As the number of ways a monster can be destroyed goes up, the power of said monster decreases. The main reason why the expression “Life is fragile” is so profound is because death is caused in a multitude of ways for humans. From faulty parachutes to diabetes to backyard wrestling to jerking-off with a noose around your neck like that dude from INXS, we're a very eclectic and creative species when it comes to dying.

Monsters are special because they are so much more elusive of the Grim Reaper than we are. When we hear the somber news that someone we know has unexpectedly passed away, the first question we ask is, “How did it happen?” When a zombie is informed of the (second) death of a fellow zombie, there is no reason to ask this question because they already know how it happened: Decapitation, or obliteration of the brain, if you want to nitpick. When you double the number of ways a creature can be snuffed out, the creature becomes less frightening, more human-like, and more inclined to bitch about how fragile life is.

All this is to say that although beheading one's opponent is probably the ultimate goal in a vampire fight, and even though I'm disappointed in that conclusion, I'm happy to offer some evidence that vampires rank below zombies when it comes to fragility. Vampire lovers, if you insist that your favorite ghoul is also vulnerable to beheading, you're tacitly admitting that zombies—who are typically regarded as dumb and inferior monsters—are in fact tougher and more resilient than vampires.

So, the next time you read about Bram's Dracula, stick THAT in your heart and Stoker it. Logic rules. Zombies drool. And vampires suck.

Grunk Gets Ink Done

What’s up, bro? I’m thrilled you’re open so late. It goes to show: you never know when a freak like me is going to crave some fresh ink in the wee hours of the morning. Kudos to you, Skaz, for knowing what appeals to your customers.

Up until an hour ago, I had no pressing urge to get a tattoo tonight. Then I found a couple blue-and-gold pills on the men’s room floor after a Tool concert. On the way home, riding the el-train, all these rad ideas for tatts shot into my brain, one after another—real vivid, like beams of color in a laser-light show.

I could taste vibes, too—good and bad, one flavored like butterscotch and the other battery acid.

Anyway, I turned to my old lady—say hi to Skaz, Tina—and told her we had to stop at Fullerton ‘cause I was going to explode if I didn’t soon feel the throbbing buzz of the needle on my back. She understood.

I jotted down some ideas in this notepad. I mostly use it to doodle in. Get a load of this one. Pretty erotic stuff, don’t you think? Darth Mal motor-boating Wonder Woman. What really makes me hard is that you can tell they’re in love. For awhile I wanted this scene to be my next tattoo. It seemed like the perfect imagery for my relationship with Tina. But then I broke up with her and started dating another chick named Tina. And Tina here really has more of a Batgirl figure, as you can see. So I had to scratch that idea.

But that hardly matters when I consider the thoughts for tatts I committed to paper on the train. With your help, Skaz, I’ll have one of the following sights carved into my flesh.

Okay. For starters, how about a zombie in a wheelchair? Don’t you see?! It makes a profound statement about the frailty of human flesh. Whether alive or undead, man is eternally vulnerable—his Achilles’ heel persists. When it is torn, the human can no longer run or jump, much less walk, just as the zombie can no longer stagger. Both will require a wheelchair.

We all know the threat of a zombie takeover is a real one, and since I’ve been stockpiling cans of tuna and honing my technique with a Samurai sword I bought at a pawn shop, I intend to survive it. But once the epic battle is settled and the wounded undead are left to crawl feebly across the land, I will show mercy on my monstrous foes by helping them into wheelchairs.

The main drawback, I guess, is that the zombie uprising has yet to happen. When it does, I don’t want to be viewed as a zombie sympathizer by my brothers at arms. Sure. Generations later, our enemies in World War II are now our allies, but it wouldn’t have been cool to get a tattoo of an American, a German, and a Jap working together to straighten out a swastika symbol before the war even started.

Forget about the zombie in a wheelchair, then. That’s the price I pay for being able to foresee the big picture.

Plan B is to get a tattoo of the Grim Reaper sitting on the toilet. What better way to negate mankind’s fear of our timeless predator than to depict him in such a compromising state? My senior thesis in Philosophy was titled “Everybody Poops, Everybody Dies.” In it, I offered proof that “everybody” includes the cause of death himself, the Grim Reaper, who therefore poops just like the rest of us and ergo should not be placed on a black pedestal as a symbol that instills fear in mankind.

But now it occurs to me that Tina shot this idea down mere moments before we walked into this place. She pointed out that the Grim Reaper is only a skeleton, that he lacks the digestive tract required to poop. Damn. I guess I forgot about that crucial detail amid all the excitement of entering your tatt parlor.

Tina put it as simply as “Skeletons don’t have guts.” Perhaps that’s what my professor meant to say when he called my paper “incomprehensible malarkey.”

It’s a shame I’m not getting a tattoo of the Grim Reaper sitting on the toilet on my back. Now I have to go on being afraid of death because it’s philosophically correct.

All right, let me get my head together. The third time’s a charm, maybe.

Only you only get to read that third charm if you get an eBook copy of More Stories, and Additional Stories. Sure, it's a hard life, oftentimes cruel, made almost unbearable by the cruelty of the elements coupled with the callousness of humans, and me being greedy by asking for three bucks, which you probably don't want to give me, compounds the plight of existence, but I will promise everyone who maintains but a morsel of sacred hope throughout such this catastrophic life on Earth this one redemptive proclamation... shit, I forgot my train of thought. Redemptive proclamation?! Jesus. Who says things like that...

Everybody Be Cool and Listen Up

Hey everybody, I need you to listen up! Could everybody just be cool for a second? I've got something important to say. Excuse me, everybody in the hysterical prayer circle, I'm talking to you. Please...zip it.


Okay, my name is Hal Galboni and I'm an ex-cop. Now, I know some of you might have read about my termination in the newspapers. If so, all I would like to say in my defense is that some retarded children are excellent liars. That's it.

Ma'am, please. What's done is done and somebody needs to take control of this situation. It's dangerous out there.

Now, the first thing we need to do is get our heads straight and separate myth from fact.

Myth: Evil space aliens are real. So, you can just breathe easy on that one.

Fact: Zombies, vampires, prehistoric man-eating creatures from another dimension, and vicious birds like the kind featured in the Hitchcock movie Birds, are in fact real.

Hey, calm down everybody! We're just going over the facts here.

It turns out that zombies, vampires, the prehistoric things, and even the god-damn Hitchcock birds are as real as the blood splattered on old Mrs. Valentine's new blouse. The four sects of hellish monsters have inexplicably formed an alliance whose sole purpose is the extermination of the human race.

Damn it! Will you please stop crying, Mrs. Valentine? Somebody give her some whiskey, get her boozed-up.

As I was saying: Many of you have lost loved ones to the demonic monsters, literally seen them torn limb-from-limb by a prehistoric thing, or pecked in the face repeatedly by a Hitchcock bird, what-have-you. That is a horror that I can only hope not to imagine because, thankfully, all my loved ones live someplace far, far away.

Anyway, listen: If you happen to be one of the unfortunate souls who witnessed a loved one, or several loved ones, brutally killed by a creature that should not exist in a world created by a supposedly perfect being, the only remedy for you is vengeance. People, we need to launch a counter-attack. A murdered loved one whom you fail to avenge has every right to be disappointed in you when you meet again in Heaven, or possibly Hell.

Whoa, whoa! Hush up, prayer circle. Vengeance first, repentance later. Jesus, there's nothing like a little mention of the afterlife to get the religious nuts worked into a frenzy. There'll be plenty of time for praying after we've slaughtered a couple hundred of those ghoulish sons-of-bitches. Praying might save your soul, but it won't save your ass.

All right, then. Back to the counter-attack plan. I think there's a reason why all 14 of us fled the city to get away from those beasts and gathered inside this old fireworks stand by the highway. Hell, maybe God planned it this way. He might be looking down at us now, saying, "Okay. There's my team of ass-kickers. They're gonna defeat the demon creatures and then get to making babies to rebuild civilization, for it is my will."

And do you know what else? God blessed us with some weapons here. I have in my right hand an M-80 firecracker. In my left hand, a Roman Candle. We've got two boxes full of ammunition, too. Also, I have six lighters in my possession because I've been getting high constantly ever since I realized the end of the world is looming.

The time has come for the group to divide into two sects. Those of you who want to shoot Roman Candles alongside of me, you can come on up here and give your leader a high-five. The rest of you can just go right ahead praying to the same God that did this to us--no offense--or continue waiting for the grief counselor somebody called to finally show up. But keep in mind, on the odd chance the grief counselor is still alive, the man has got to have a very hectic work schedule.

Hey, that's what I'm talking about. Yes! (High-Five!) The lone wolf is alone no longer. You too? Excellent. (High-Five!) The rebellion's army is growing. Here, have a couple tokes on me, guys.

Ahem. Well, it appears that sides have been chosen. I'd like to thank and congratulate you guys for being my soldiers. Both of you.

Okay men, here's the thing to keep in mind: the enemy has dents in its armor. Vampires are nocturnal creatures. They sleep during the day. Do you two realize what that means? It means that during daylight hours we only have to contest with the zombies, the prehistoric things, and the Hitchcock birds. During the daytime, it's basically like three-on-three. You versus the zombies, other guy can handle the prehistoric things, and, by process of elimination, I'll be plugging my trusty Roman Candles up the asses of the Hitchcock birds.

We have about eight hours until daylight. Until then we need to carve up a bunch of wooden stakes. We can use the scrap lumber in the storage room and the Swiss Army blade Frank the bus driver used to slit his own throat. We'll make our way over to the Wal-mart three miles from here, stock up on guns and supplies, maybe even play Guitar Hero in the electronics department, just to take the edge off. And hey, speaking of taking the edge off, hand me back that--

Oh, shit. Shhh! Everybody hush up. Something's out there. Jesus, what kind of a monstrosity are we dealing with here? Zombie, mutated pterodactyl, or Hitchcock bird...either way, I'm going to blow its fuckin' head off. With a Roman Candle.

Hey, you! Open the door, will ya? This wick is burning like hell.

The power of Christ owns you like a bitch!

Schhhhooook!

Oh, shit. Shit! Does anyone have some aloe lotion to rub on his skin? Hey, don't yell at me. I could hardly see a thing through the thick mist. How was I supposed to know the monster outside was really the stupid grief counselor?

Musings on Ghouls

Originally printed in the Advance-Titan, this is an oldie, as evidenced by the reference to Donald Rumsfeld as the current Secretary of Defense. Do I need to get with the times? No, I simply need to write more original material.

Halloween season is upon us, which means spooky tales of apparitions and bloodsuckers will be told with greater regularity and deeper resonance. As far as I’m concerned, the prospect of spending a night in a haunted house is about one-hundredth as terrifying as never obtaining Social Security—living until the age of 110 and working fulltime until 108.

Ghosts don’t scare me and I’ll tell you why: you never read about a ghost hijacking a plane and crashing it into a building. Ghosts are melodramatic and harmless. When’s the last time you heard of a ghost bombing an abortion clinic or kidnapping a local girl?

While visiting the supposedly haunted house of a friend a few years back, I wandered from room to room belligerently taunting the ghosts, trying to ferret out the elusive spirits with insults. For twenty minutes or so, I walked around talking shit to thin air, but my teasing didn’t cause any paranormal retaliation. Finally, while pacing back and forth in the laundry room, obnoxiously muttering about how much it must suck to be trapped in limbo between mortality and the afterlife, my shoelaces were somehow untied with a forceful tug.

Did that instance frighten me into feeling stern reverence for ghosts? Hell no! Having untied shoelaces is a minor inconvenience; it’s not scary in the slightest. I can just picture that rascally ghoul rubbing his hands diabolically, sneering and, saying to himself, “Heh. That ought to show him.” What’s next? Is this sissified spirit going to flick my ear or steal one of my chocolate chip cookies? (Sarcastic shudder.)

Those of you who are deathly terrified of ghosts can’t deny that actual LIVING people are responsible for an overwhelming majority of the world’s wars, genocides, murders, rapes, stabbings, suicide bombings, hate crimes, thefts, child molestations, vicious beatings, vehicular manslaughters, arsons, callous insults, tittie twisters, closing-elevator-door snubs, vandalisms, plagiarisms, jay-walkings and “Now That’s What I Call Music!” It’s the living that freak me out. If you’re looking for a horrifying Halloween outfit, leave your Casper sheet at home and dress up like North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il or Ryan Seacrest.

Enough about ghosts; they don’t deserve an entire column’s worth of material. Let’s move on to vampires. Something about vampires just doesn’t add up to me. Given the fact that they don’t appear in reflective surfaces, isn’t it strange that they’re all so primly groomed and presentable? Without a mirror to use for reference, you’d think they’d all be slovenly doofs with boogers in their noses and bits of jugular stuck between their teeth. Instead of handsome men like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, contemporary depictions of vampires should resemble bedraggled misfits like Tim Burton and mug shot Nick Nolte—people who obviously haven’t dared to look at their reflection in years. Self-reflection is at the core of vanity, and vampires completely defy that.
A brief overview of ghouls just wouldn’t be complete without mentioning zombies. The living dead rank as my favorite breed of supernatural monsters, due in large part to my affinity with the film “Shaun of the Dead,” the video game “Resident Evil,” and my radiantly pale bare chest. (As a cost-effective alternative to lighthouses, my blindingly pallid pectorals could serve as a luminous beacon to ships gone astray on the high seas.)

To disrupt the stifling tedium of everyday life, I would heartily welcome a zombie infestation. True, destruction and casualties would be unavoidable, but let’s be realistic, when has humanity avoided destruction and casualties for longer than eight seconds?

I am neither exceptionally brave nor patriotic, but I’d sign up for the Army if the U.S. were involved in a war with a nation of zombies. Because in that unlikely scenario, you know you’re fighting for the right side. Murdering a sleuth of foreign people believed to be a threat to our ideals and lifestyles is likely to cause some nagging moral confliction, maybe even a hint of remorse. But there’s none of that limp-wristed, theatre-major ambivalence when it comes to zombies! They are intellectually stagnant, ghastly carnivores with no capacity for morality.
Suppose someone dear to you, such as your sibling, significant other or drug dealer, abruptly converted from Christianity to Islam, or perhaps decided to reject democracy in favor of communism. You’d probably feel bamboozled and disquieted, possibly even hostile, but would you resort to homicide? I doubt it. If, on the other hand, a loved one, such as your sibling, significant other, or drug dealer, converted from humanity to zombiehood, you’d be a cowardly fool not to bash their skull with the nearest dough roller you can find.

A crusade against a throng of staggering zombies is just what this nation needs to soothe the dissention that threatens to divides us. It would also mark the first time since World War II that we’ve engaged in warfare with beings even whiter than us.

For once, I’d love to be a part of the widespread jingoism that grips America in times of war. Think of the possibilities. Country singer Toby Keith would top the charts for twelve weeks with his infectious ditty, “Only Good Zombie is a Decapitated One.” FOX News would air crudely superimposed photos of zombies burning American flags and effigies of Bill O’Reilly, Colonel Sanders and Mr. T. and Conservatives and liberals alike would malign Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for evoking Benedict Arnold and switching his allegiance to the side of the undead. In this strange, hypothetical scenario, we’d tell ourselves we should’ve known something was amiss when he started devouring Chris Matthews at a press conference. But considering the pundit had just rudely pointed that the majority of our troops are being armed with cracked Wiffle-ball bats, we just smiled and mused, “Same Old Rummy.”

Oh, and speaking of certain members of the administration, they are also much scarier than ghosts.