The Undead Smart Set

Greetings and salutations,

Moving with the right crowd when you aren’t really part of it can be done, but be aware that there are a whole number of social faux pas waiting to get you.  There are seemingly innocent ones like the fact that it simply isn’t all right to serve a sorbet between the fish and main courses, but there are other, less obvious ones as well.

One of the nice things about high society is that almost no topic is off-limits.  As long as you don’t descend to direct insults of the host, you can get away with pretty much anything.  This is a sophisticated crowd that likes to pretend that it has few insecurities and fewer hangups.  Trust me on this…  Or are you going to believe middle class writers pretending they know what they’re talking about?  The “Baron” in my name isn’t there for show, you know.

There is, however, one conversational error that is bound to get you shunned as a bumpkin yokel gate-crasher even before you finish the first sentence: the conspiracy theory.  If you go to the right party and say something like “I hear the government has made a deal with the car companies to keep cars from going electric”, you will soon notice that people, like the red sea under the influence of Moses, will move away from you almost like magic.  No, it isn’t your body odor, it’s your big mouth.

You see, most conspiracy theories will fall under the slightest application of logic, general knowledge or science (because they are usually made up out of the pipe dreams of people who don’t know any better) and the crowd around you is a well-educated bunch who spotted six flaws in your argument and decided that, amusing as it might be to shoot you down in great detail, it also entails the risk that someone might ssee them talking to you.

The few theories that don’t collapse under their own weight (I’d love to hear one) are even worse, because you are probably surrounded by people with access to the truth, so it’s a no-win for you: if you are wrong, you’re an idiot for thinking something so dumb, if you are right, you’re an idiot for making a big deal out of yesterday’s news.

The final category, as rare as hen’s teeth, is that in which you are completely right.  In this case, you’re also better off keeping your mouth shut, because the room likely holds at least one person who will want you dead after you blabbed.  Everyone will move away from you in order to be out of the line of fire.

By the way, don’t take this as permission to go around believing that the fact that people are out to kill you has something to do with your little pet theory.  Your pet theory is probably really dumb, and they are out to kill you to rid the world of your personality. 

This sometimes happens.  I have often tracked down and eaten some particularly idiiotic internet conspiracy theorist.  This usually leads to theories regarding what’s happened to them – and the theories are usually as laughable as the rest of the content on these sites.

Oh, well, at least it makes selecting victims less of a chore.

See you soon,

Baron H

Greetings,

So the global economy has melted down?  Well, I hate to tell you this, but it’s not the first time this has happened.  Many of you (at least most of my undead acquaintances) will remember the big crunch in ‘29, but even that one wasn’t really all that bad.  People standing in line at soup kitchens might seem atrocious in light of modern civilization and comfort, but it wasn’t always so.  There was a time when economic hardship in even the most civilized places meant great hairy men wandering the streets with battle-axes.  And welfare, far from being a state benefit, was something each individual was responsible for.

Having been present during previous economic dips – lttle things like the Potato Famine, the Dark Ages and the fall of Rome – I feel I can impart some wisdom in case the recovery that seems imminent doesn’t quite work out.  Please heed my experience, as I value my readers (even my mortal readers) and my technorati rating, and the scenarios I list below are easy to survive if you come prepared for them.  They will also help you avoid the more common types of social faux-pas in a post-apocalyptic world.

1) Economy affects law enforcement, cops are laid off.  Zombies see the chance and rise.

In this scenario, it is critically important that one not forget certain points of etiquette.  Zombies deplore being attacked with shotguns.  It ventilates their insides and exposes parts of their anatomy that were meant to be covered by skin.  There are much better ways to deal with zombies, and the best of them is to find someone whose consumption by the undead would make the world a better place.  For example, there is always at least one guy in the group with long sideburns or a woman who insists on wearing shoes that don’t math her purse.  Toss them to the zombies with my compliments.

2) Unemployment in Denmark causes most of their population to board longships and go a-Viking. 

This scenario is probably the easiest to deal with.  When you see the horde approaching, simply swing the stockade gate open and have your snootiest waiter meet them at the gate, say something like “Ericsson, party of seventy-five?” and escort them to a long table set for a full formal dinner.  They will not know which fork or glass goes with each course, and will be too embarassed to ask.  In the end, they will slink back to their smelly ships, after overtipping the waiter.

3)  Hunger in Canada causes a Yeti invasion.

The correct weapon for dealing with a Yeti is the Japanese Katana.  It gives sufficient reach while being adequately ceremonial.  It also explains why there are no Yetis in Japan.  Please don’t embarrass yourself by using the wrong blade.  I trust that none of my readers would even consider something as crass as a firearm.

4) Russian infrastructure colapses and caviar runs out. 

Despair.  There is no possible cure for this, and we are all doomed to a life of unwashed barbarians ruling the world.

And remember, anything can be met with an unimpressed raise of an eyebrow if you are prepared for it.  The truly poised individual is unruffled in any situation.

Cheers,

H

Greetings and Salutations,

It is not often that social reform is truly a significant issue for the undead.  Most vampires couldn’t care less whether their next victim was the scion of a noble line or the fellow who digs the latrines.  Zombies can’t even tell the difference.  Blood is blood and brains are brains.

And yet, it seems that change has caught up with us at last, although it took its time doing so.  Life went along swimmingly for a couple of thousand years without too many cares in the world.  Until a hundred years ago.  At this point, land reform and the industrial revolution had gained momentum to such an extreme that most of the population was relocating to cities, leaving the countryside sorely underpopulated.  It was a trend that began in western Europe, but soon spread . . . everywhere.

At first, I paid it no attention.  Humans, I thought, were in no danger of becoming extinct, and while they were around, there would be plenty of food.  But I was wrong.  My quality of life, and that of my circle, began to suffer enormously.  Zombies began to run amok in completely unsuitable underground labs.  Werewolves were seen in London.  Vampires gave interviews.

Read that last sentence again: vampires gave interviews.  It makes one shudder going, as it does, against everything that vampires stand for.  Vampires do not seek publicity.  We live in quiet opulence guiding the lives of our neighbors like puppeteers.  Any paparazzi unwise enough to come to our door becomes what we vampires refer to as “lunch”.

And yet it happened.  The question now is why?  I decided to investigate.

Months of looking into the habits and diets of the poor deluded undead who have behaved in such improper ways yielded nothing, and I would have been stumped had I not happened to be spending the week over at Count LeMort’’s country estate.  He was complaining that it was becoming nearly impossible to find people to farm his lands.  It seems that no one does this out of pure feudal spirit anymore, they all want money.  Of course, the count was having none of it, and large tracts of land lay fallow.

Those empty spaces made me realize what had happened, where our kind had gone astray.  Whole rural villages ideal for a moonlight attack lay empty, ruined.  The peasants had simply disappeared, moving to cities and towns, becoming factory workers and taxi drivers and *shudder* writers of science fiction novels.  And the undead who ate them had followed them.

As you know, cities are the very worst place for undead to live.  They are places where people dance till dawn (you know what happens when a vampire dances till dawn?  The sun fries us, that’s what!), pizza is considered food and you can’t even see if the moon is full with all the lights and smog.  Vampires lose the feeling that they own the night.  Mummies haunt the British Museum.  Werewolves, never the brightest fellows to begin with, end up even more confused and spend their time at the local Starbucks.  And zombies, of course, trash the nearest secret lab.

Stressful is what I call it. 

So I’m starting a motion to bring back the rural peasant (a sub-motion will be to outlaw pitchforks and torches – there is such a thing as too much of a good thing).  My proposal would be to take useless members of urban society such as music industry lawyers and the guys who build speed bumps and toss them into small hovels in rural areas. 

I shall let you know how it goes.

Regards,

H.

Greetings,

My loyal readers will be aware that I detest everything concerning popular culture, but I still feel obligated to point out that the following is not a top ten list, nor is it a top anything list.  It is simply a series of relevant points, and I would appreciate that you not degrade it with vulgar nomenclature.

As many of you know, I am closely associated with Daverana Enterprises - I have even consented to offer my thoughts for publication on their website on a periodic basis.  Yet I am not a writer – you may think of me more as a patron of the fine art of turning the various speculative genres into the mainstream.  I do this for various reasons, including a certain amount of self-interest. 

Essentially, I’m here to tell the world that we need more writers in the speculative genres and, in order to convince you to leave the dark side (you’re actually writing romance?  I scoff!) and join us, we offer this list of great reasons to become a writer of science fiction, horror or fantasy.

1.  As an author, you will immediately have a peer group.  Granted, this group will be divided into two distinct classes: writers of brilliant prose that editors will always choose before your own and whack jobs who write to purge their inner demons and like nothing better than to send snarky replies to friendly rewrite requests.  And guess which group editors will automatically assume you belong in?  But a peer group is always something to be thankful for.

2.  You will have fans.  This is the reason you write, isn’t it?  Fans are cool, especially when they dress up as one of your characters and / or drop by your house at three in the morning to ask you why you’re not working on your long overdue final novel in the series.  Such loyalty.  I recently saw quite a flap over this topic after a George R.R. Martin blog post, so you don’t need to take my word for it.

3.  Character building.  Nothing builds a healthy respect for how the real world works quicker than messages from editors saying things like: ‘we’ll be happy to publish your story as soon as you send us something we wouldn’t be embarrased to see on the same ToC as our names.’  Remember:  what fails to kill you can only make you stronger.

4.  Learning to follow instructions / computer skills.  You will soon come to see that every genre publication has a different set of guidelines.  You will learn how to save a file as ASCII, translate text into Japanese, and even measure wordcount with a ruler.  Computer skills are always in demand, especially in this economy.

5.  Quick revenge.  So they bounced your story?  Not to worry.  The average life of speculative fiction magazines is measured in picoseconds.  Odds are that the mean editor who didn’t like your story will be gone from his post (or have his post disappear from under him) very soon.  The day after is always a good time to remind him that, if his publication had bought your material, it would still be around.

6.  Helping your best friend get more girls.  This is important, as one can never do too many nice things for one’s friends.  The method is simple: as soon as a girl approaches at a bar (or as soon as you approach her), tell her that you write science fiction – this should immediately make your best buddy seem much more attractive to her.

I hope you’re convinced.  Join us as we push bad thrillers off the shelves around the world!

I hope to see your name among the ranks soon.

H.

Much of the mainstream media these past couple of months has focused on the worldwide financial crisis.  In their typical way, they seem to have completely ignored the effects of this crisis on the undead.  They didn’t run a single item on vampires with mortgages, ghouls with maxed-out credit cards or zombies who had had to adopt a different health plan due to the rising cost of duct tape.

This is enormously shortsighted of them because the only thing that we know for sure about mortals is that, one day, they’ll be dead.  That’s why we call them mortals in the first place.  And many of these newly dead mortals will find themselves unexpectedly animate. 

So how is this financial crunch going to affect us, the living dead?  Well, in the first place, the Old Monster isn’t going to be able to use many of the credit cards she takes from her victims.  She normally grabs people who are walking in her neighborhood, and anyone who’d willingly show their faces around there is probably ineligible for credit in the current economic climate.  She can still steal their change, though.

But how will it affect those of us with Park Avenue penthouses or chateaus in the French countryside (the readers I actually care about)?

To tell you the truth, I don’t think it will affect us all that much.  I remember back in the 1930s, I didn’t get hit too hard.  Of course, the price of gold actually went UP when the world went off the gold standard, and my Spanish bullion seems to have done well since then.

The newer undead may not know this, but gold is the best investment for our kind.  You don’t need to go for high returns when you have all of eternity to accumulate, and low return equals low risk.  As for those of you who put your money in Wall Street…  well, that’s what you get for bucking tradition.  Have fun recovering investmensts from Bear Stearns!  Even the Old Monster is smarter than that…

As for the rest of you, winter party at my place Friday.  I’ve got a couple of mailmen and a laundry delivery woman chained to the balcony railing, and a couple of Jane Does from the morgue in the fridge (ghouls have to eat as well!).

Attire is full evening wear, and anyone who doesn’t arrive in a chauffered Rolls will be pressed into service as a waiter.

Toots!

H

Holiday Greetings,

New York, as always has become a magical city in the holiday season.  Well, Manhattan below 112th street or so, anyway, and that’s all that I consider New York (this is a good way to find out if someone is worth speaking to: ask them what burroughs they consider to be part of the city – and eat the wrong answers).  The tree is up, the wind is blowing and the carolers…  Well, the carolers are fine, I guess, but they don’t come to my door any more, and haven’t since the fifties.  Whether this is because they have fixed spots around the city or whether word has gone around about my place, I’ve never bothered to find out.

Anyhow, the lack of carolers has turned into a bit of an issue because I had a couple of vampires over for dinner just after Christmas (they can’t come out of their boxes on Christmas because you never know when a maniac will chant a prayer at you or spray you with holy water), and had no fresh meat to give them.  I had to hire a group of mercenaries to kidnap a busload of Korean tourists.  Oriental food for the holiday season?  Well, one takes what one can get, and the vampires went away happy.  Also, I got to use the set of butcher’s knives that the Old Monster got me for Christmas – the OM may have her little quirks, but she certainly knows sharp objects!

So, before I go off to hunt for my New Years dinner – I’m thinking European cuisine this time (I can probably get it in the Park) - I’d like to remind you to point fireworks away from children (there’s more meat on grown humans), and remember to stay away from large buildings with spires, no matter how drunk you are.  Those places are unhealthy for the undead.

So have a happy or painful New Year (to each his or her own), and I’ll see you in 2009.

Hieronymous

Greetings and salutations,

I was recently enraged to see a blogger demolishing one of the more recent Robert Ludlum books.  He hated it, and was extremely vocal about it.  I would normally shrug and say that he’s absolutely right and that any doorstop thriller with latin letters in the title is little more than lowbrow entertainment akin to Big Brother.  If you read something like that, don’t come crying to me if it hurts your brain.

And yet, this blogger managed to get my attention because he snootily implied (actually it was more like a declaration than an implication) that the fact that Mr. Ludlum died in 2001 and the book was published in 2005 had had a negative effect on the quality.  Essentially, he said that dying had affected the quality of his writing for the worse.  Reading between the lines, he was saying that the publisher was milking the name of a best-selling author, now sadly deceased, to make a few extra bucks.

I have to take issue with this reviewer on a number of counts.  In the first place, the publishing industry needs to get money wherever it can.  If this means paying a ghost writer to write under an illustrious name, so be it – it’s a time-honored tradition (or did you think that Franklin W. Dixon has been alive and active since the dawn of time?).

My second problem with it is much more serious.  Simply stated, the assumption that a dead writer cannot keep writing is ridiculous.  Why does the reviewer assume that Mr. Ludlum has been replaced by a ghost writer (space considerations mean that I have no room to rant about the prejudiced term “ghost writer”)?  Why can’t he just accept that he’s joined the ranks of the undead, and is happily typing away, rotting fingers smearing the keyboard?

This kind of bigotry keeps many promising artists from letting themselves be converted to undead, and makes life so difficult for us.  Do you really need to be alive to write?  Or to answer the phone at a call-center?  Or to fly a Jumbo jet?  Of course not!  And yet, the undead are routinely passed over for these positions just on the basis of a few flakes of rotting skin and an insatiable appetite for human flesh.  The pitchfork-wielding peasants are just the icing on this cake of bigotry.

I applaud Mr. Ludlum for his continued dedication to his craft.  The blame for any lessening in the quality of his books can be placed firmly on the doorstep of the publishing house, which wants longer and longer books, quality be damned. May the skin on his fingers take forever to rot – he is a standard all the undead, be they vampires, zombies, ghouls or “various and sundry” need to rally behind.

Best regards,

Hieronymous

Greetings faithful readers,

As cold weather and low skies make the northern hemisphere a gloomier place, I’d like to take this opportunity to inform you that I am in Hawaii at the moment.  This isn’t, by any means a choice I would have made on my own.  I like cold, dark, gloom.  Ideal lighting for a midafternoon abduction and dismembering of a used car salesman. 

Hawaii, on the other hand has little to recommend it.  After a few hundred years, even the wittiest of undead humor grows thin (”My last meal disagreed with me.  So I ate him.  Har Har.” Aaargh!).

And yet, here I am, trying to avoid direct sunlight in a place where the sun seems to be permanently smiling on beautiful tanned bodies.  Not a place where the undead walk joyfully.  And the humidity is just hell on zombies – they get moldier and riper.  As you can imagine, I am here by invitation of the Big Island’s royal ghosts.  I’m currently sitting deep inside a natural cave formed by a lava floe, and my wireless access is patchy (what does it say about the world when you can actually get internet acces in a CAVE?).

Being here has, once more, gotten me thinking about the relationship between money and taste – mainly because I’m surrounded by tourists who were able to afford the price of admission, so presumably have at least some disposable income.

Most people hear the word taste and equate it with money.  Good taste seems to be something that everyman is not allowed to have.  Now, while I will be the first to admit that it is in short supply, and would like nothing better than to say that yes, it is the exclusive domain of those wha are well-to-do, I simply can’t do so with a good conscience (and before the moralists out there point it out, yes, I am a multiple mass murderer.  But it doesn’t affect my conscience, since they are only humans.  Lying about this or anything else, however, would be beneath me).

Now, while I’ve often been accused of being a snob about money, the truth is that I’m a snob about taste.  I would much rather spend my time with the ghost of a penniless maid who’s spent the intervening years haunting a library than even the most aristocratic vampire whose idea of elegance is a pimped Cadillac Escalade.  Hell, I’d rather spend time with the Old Monster than this particular aristocrat.  Earthy as the monster is, she is at least honest and unpretentious.

To those with even a modicum of taste, the above will seem obvious, a waste of a few hundred words.  But those of us who are here at the Aikanaka Reunión and Bloodbath, there is a single self-evident truth, a new first law of everything, if you will.  One that, when broken, will cause gods of the underworld to cry:  Zombies.  Flowered shirts.  NO.

I have seen things here that no undead was ever meant to see. 

Regards,

H

The age-old question of what to wear seems to come around with depressing regularity and seems to be exacerbated twice a year when designers put out their new Spring and Autumn collections.  I’ve always been a bit leery of these developments for various reasons.   

The first reason has to do with the fact that, since I lived in Paris in the final days of the monarchy, no excesses of fashion or decadence will ever impress me again.  Even now, hundreds of years later, I see cues from the court of Loius XVI being timidly revived.  Gold embroidery one season, pleated sleeves the next.  Mortals today are such wimps.  Old King Luey’s retinue used to use it all at the same time.  You could say they lost their heads when it came to fashion.

The second is that, being male, I’ve been a bit less victimized by this trend.  Despite moving in the best of circles and having to be on top of my game, I have found that about nine-tenths of my wardrobe survives unscathed from one year to the next.  There are some things that just can’t be worn next season, but they usually only lie fallow for a year or two before they can be shown in public again.

But the main reason is that the kind of place where I buy my work clothes has only recently begun to advertise their collections.

How so?  Well, it’s pretty simple, actually.  Most of my interaction with mortals, whether alone or at social events, tends to be of the spattering kind.  You would be surprised at the amount of blood that a human body can drop on clothes and furniture before the heart stops, and before the bits are ready to eat.  Before the invention of plastic sheeting (a gift from whatever powers look over the undead), my house was a hell of layers upon layers of waxed canvas.  Ugh.

A similar thing comes up with clothing.  It used to be that I would buy a year’s supply of blacksmith’s aprons every time I was in town, and discard them as they became soiled.  As you can imagine, wearing nothing other than this vest often left me in an undignified poistion, and was completely unsuitable for entertaining the neighborhood ghouls.

This sad situation changed in the second half of the 19th century, especially after the publication of the Marquis of Sade’s delightful little books (say what you may about his sexual tendencies, but his knowledge of human pain was sound).  Small, private shops began springing up in every major capital where leather goods with a little more panache were available for a price.  While most mortals assumed that the shops catered to the cruel and perverted among the aristocracy, the truth is that they would never have survived living off princes and high-end prostitues alone.

 Most of their trade went to the vampires, zombies and ghouls that were so much more common in the Victorian era than they aare now.  While living in gaslight London, I even met an evil mummy who’d escaped from the British museum, who’d dress only in the leather clothing supplied by a certain small establishment in whitechapel – he insisted that getting the blood out of his bandages was murder.

Which brings us to today, and the glories of having entire warehouse trade shows filled with leather clothing specifically designed to be comfortable while inflicting pain – and mortals still think that they’re the ones doing the buying. There are more or less dignified takes on each theme, of course, but therein lies the wearer’s taste.  I guarantee, you will see the entire range at any party worth its salt.

Before I go, I leave you with a warning about the dangers and pitfalls of the season.  Latex, no matter how sinister and shiny, is not in this season, and, if I had my way, never would be.

And as for yellow plastic raincoats, well, while they may be practical, they are something only the Old Monster would ever stoop to wearing.  Shudder.

Happy hunting,

Baron Hieronymous

Greetings, esteemed readers.

I’d like to thank my colleague in the abattoir for the opportunity to express myself on a subject that has long been near and dear to me: the mortal insult.  Don’t get me wrong, the Monster and I go waaaaay back, and she’d have to step much further over the line to get me overly angry.  Plus, I live in Manhattan, the only place on the planet where “screw you” has replaced “hello”.  So I’m not mad, just inspired.

But back to the main topic.  Looking over the Monster’s last post, I must admit that there’s a certain measure of crude effectiveness in the words, but – and this is important, so pay attention – they were obviously written in the heat of the moment.  This is just wrong.

In order to be truly effective, an insult must be delivered after careful consideration and days, in some cases even weeks, of preparation.  It is an art that needs to be studied carefully.  How much will you actually say, and what will you leave to open interpretation?  Who needs to be present when the insult is delivered?  How can you deliver the insult without looking crass?  Remember, the insult must not only diminish the opponent, it must also make the insulter look good.  It’s no use calling someone a rude name, no matter how accurate, if everyone else present thinks less of you for doing so.  And, the final moral dilemma: how much of the dirt that you have on your opponent should be included?  You might have to hold something back for later use.

Last, but not least, the insult must make the other person or ghoul so incoherent with rage that he or she can’t reply in kind, but must either remain silent or say something which, in the eyes of witnesses, will diminish them further.  You need to hit them where it hurts.

For example, were I to wish to respond to the monster’s post, I’d probably say:  “I’m sorry you feel that way.  I’d visit you so we can talk it over, but it takes ages to get the dust out of my clothes afterwards”, or “I need some advice, I noticed you’ve got green and orange curtains in the living room.  Have you found that they increase the victim’s pain?  Or do you use them to make your victims welcome death as an better alternative?”

This last line should be delivered, with a look of complete, innocent earnestness at the yearly gala with at least one member of Transylvanian royalty present.

Anyhow, if you’re moving in the right circles, you will be exposed to this kind of thing on a regular basis, and you need to know how to hold your own.  Think, beforehand, of one deadly insult to be delivered to each of your acquaintances at any given social event.  Memorize them.  Refine them.  And be ready to deliver them at the slightest provocation – especially if they launch a preemptive attack.  Good luck, dear readers, make me proud.

And there are extra brownie points for anyone who understood why I selected the title for this post.

See you soon,

Baron Hieronymous