The Undead Smart Set

Greetings,

I assume that most of the mortals among my readers, regardless of nationality, religion or geography are in some way entering the holiday season.  This is my favorite time of year for various reasons, most of them having to do with the “holiday fat” my meals will be putting on.  Extra padding (and the subsequent surfeit of  joggers in insufficiently illuminated public parks) is always good for the undead.

Other reasons, though, have less to do with the gastronomical, and more to do with the sheer evil of the holiday season, unrivalled at any other time of the year.  This is the time where greed, gluttony, and real, palpable loneliness decorate the streets with lights, signs and shoppers – all disguised as a celebration of religious or secular thanks.  If it had been designed by one of the undead, it would not have met its objectives quite as effectively.

Although worthy, none of these things moved me to write this column.  I wanted to talk about the misery of the holiday season and how to deal with it – something that might prove useful to the recently undead as well as thoose ridiculously short-lived humans among my readers.  More experienced undead will, of course, have learned most of what follows the hard way.

The first thing you need to avoid is to take stock of the year that just passed.  This is almost never a good idea, especially if you’re the type of individual who makes rash promises at the beginning of the year, and even moreso if – shudder – you wrote them down.  If you haven’t already done so, burn that piece of paper.  This year, like all years of depression, was probably worse than you imagined it would be, sonothing good is likely to come from a balance.

Sadly, we live in a world in which most people will have already begun to take stock of the year, made little pro and con lists and done other inexplicable things to try to make some sort of sense out of their lives.  In that case, what I recommend is the following: tear up the little list, erase the excel spreadsheet and repeat ”life isn’t supposed to make sense” one hundred times.  Your life is a collection of random events leading you nowhere except to your grave (and beyond, if you happen to run into the right kind of undead at the right time), and if you can’t deal with that simple fact, you aren’t going to find a lot of joy in your existence.

This might seem a tad harsh, but being undead gives one a very clear perspective.  In order to get here, we had to die violently – often at the hands of someone we trusted.  After that, we found that getting out of the coffin is hell on the fingernails and very dirty work as well.  Naturally enough, the new owners of the castle felt that rights passed on after you were dead, which essentailly leaves the recently revived corpse with two bad options: accept it and live off the countryside until you can accumulate enough gold to buy another castle (or, as in my case, a nice park-view apartment on fifth avenue) or evict your inheritors and take back what’s yours (which eventually ends up raising all sorts of issues with ungrateful serfs, village mobs, torches and pitchforks and leads back to option one).

If thinking about this.  I mean really thinking about this, doesn’t put yoour own life in perspective, I invite you to dwell upon the bubonic plague outbreaks in the 14th century for a second.  A lot of my current friends died in that plague, so I know what I’m talking about.  About half of Europe’s poulation was wiped out in a couple of outbreaks.  So ask yourself: did anything that happened to me in the last year (whether it be losing a job, ending a relationship, even being forced to spend time in New Jersey) which compares to half of everyone I know dying?  Really?  I mean, Rob and Mabel and Fred and Aunt Ellen and things getting so bad that Fido the poodle ended up in the cooking-pot?

I didn’t think so.

But if you’re still not convinced, I’ll try another track: OK, so you didn’t lose the five pounds you said you would.  As a matter of fact, you gained five more, and lost your boyfriend.  Well, it isn’t all bad.  Think of it this way: you’ll be all alone more often, much more likely to run into some member of the undead – and there will be ten more pounds of meat on your bones.

So don’t despair; get into the season’s spirit, and be charitable to the undead in your life (and they’re out there, even if you don’t see them all that often).

Happy holidays.

H

Greetings,

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Sundays in New York become very, very quiet (if you ignore the hordes of Midtown tourists, that is).  The reason for this is a tradition older than the world itself: football season – and both of the local squads with winning records, to boot.

It’s an amazzing transformation.  On sunday afternoons in august, you can harvest an entire Korean tour group to serve as appetizers in broad daylight and no one will notice.  The cops are not copping, the cabbies are not cabbing, and even the mafia boys are seated around the TV at the pasta emporium watching the double header on whichever network isn”t blacked out.  Life is good if your actions require a certain anonymity.

And yet, I have never been able to become enthused about the football as a sport.  Football is simply the latest incarnation of blood sport for the masses, a pastime which depends on violence and sheer physical strength.  As such, I must admit that it’s sorely lacking.  If you want a real blood sport, the first thing you need to do is remove the body armor.  And “Roughing the Passer” should, far from being penalized, be rewarded with an extra ten yards for the defense (also, style points should be awarded for creative mauling of blind-sided quarterbacks).

As you can likely surmise, my long history has led to my somewhat jaded attitude.  When you’ve watched gladiators in the colisseum and knights in a free-for-all (I can only assume that whoever said knights were chivalrous has never been hit in the gonads with a morningstar) you tend to come away unimpressed by guys who use helmets in unarmed combat.

But, as they say, you can never go home again.  So it’s time to accept that we live in a world in which agenda-driven panic-mongers want to make it illegal to ski without a helmet (!!!!!), and even auto racing has become a safe playground for spoiled mama’s boys and make the best of a bad situation.  It’s hard to find a sport where actual bravery is still required (and which, as a bonus, might leave some mutilated scraps for the discerning undead’s table), but not impossible.

Of course, everyone knows about Pamplona, so I won’t go into it here.  My only advice consists of one word: go.

Of the rest, I would say that motorcycle road racing rules the roost.  Yes, they wear helmets, but its hard not to respect guys that drive bikes at two hundred miles per hour on public roads, often in the rain.  The Isle of Man TT is still king, but some of the Irish races give it a run for its money.  Not particularly recommended for zombies, aas hitting a tree at that speed is likely to be as fatal as a head shot – even with a helmet.

And last, but not least, from the steppes of central Asia comes a sport probably invented by Genghis Khan for when burning down villages got monotonous.  It’s called Buzkashi, and involves groups of mounted maniacs attemping to hurl the carcasss of a goat across a goal line while using any sort of violence to keep the other team from doing so.  The mayhem is quite stunnning.

I can’t help but believe that anny of these sports would make much better TV than a sport which considers broken bones a reason to sit out the rest of the game.

I know I’d be watching.

Salutations,

H

Greetings,

As someone who’s seen it all over the past few thousand years, the most surprising thing isn’t that I’ve seen everything once, but how often I seem to see the same thing, over and over again.  History, in my opinion, doesn’t move in great cycles, it repeats itself once every generation as new teenagers ask the same questions.

I am always amused by how every generation believes, firmly, that it invented the out-of-control, call-the-cops and get-excommunicated-immediately party.  Ninety percent of people between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five would probably tell you that their parents were the sort of people whose idea of a good time was dinner, a movie and home by ten.  They would be hard-pressed to picture younger versions of their folks in a typical 1980’s cocaine blowout.  They’d probably have an even harder time with the image of their grandparents at Woodstock.

The reason each generation believes that theirs are the best parties, is because they are clueless (and mortal, which means that most of them can’t even begin to imagine what real parties are like!).  They feel that, having finally gotten beyond the bounds of childhood, they are doing things never before permitted to anyone else.

Hah.

Over the past few millenia, I’ve observed several truly golden eras of debauchery, and I feel that a list of the great eras of the party is justified.  Of course, I will limit myself to those parties at which an undead person would 1) not be ashamed to be seen at and 2) not cause a panic.  I’m certain there have been some enjoyable orgies among illiterate goatherders in unregarded rural villages in the Appenines, but we need not concern ourselves with them for the nonce.

I present, in order, the great party epochs you shouldn’t have missed if you were alive, or undead, at the time:

5) Babylon under the rule of Ishtar.  The energy of budding civilization – there were no rules for anything back then – great-looking city walls and the best setting for a garden party ever made the nightlife noteworthy.  The fact that the largest prostitution ring was run by the official religion (giving you an idea of what ‘morals’ meant back then) made it legendary.

4) Ptolomy’s Greece.  Have you seen the movie Caligula?  Yes?  Good.  Well, remember that they were Romans, and the Romans learned everything they knew from the Classical Greeks.  They stole their gods, their alphabet, and their ethics from the declining Helenes, but something was lost in the transition.  The Greeks remain the true masters of the decadent orgy.

3) The court of Louis XVI.  Talk about throwing everything at a party.  These people had the entire wealth of a nation to spend on their blowouts – and they did.  Each noble saw it as his duty to bankrupt his duchy too purchase wine when his turn to host the proceedings rolled around, and the dress code was strict: brand new clothes produced to that week’s fashion would get you in – anything else would get you sent around back to the servant’s quarters, although this banishment would likely only last until the inebriated nobles – male, female, undecided, undead, whatever - came around looking for something to add variety to the revelry.  It was a time of parties well worth losing one’s head over.

2)  Victorian England.  Let’s just say that neither Charlotte Bronte nor Jane Austen got invited to the good parties.  The late 19th century was a riot behind closed doors, and the upper classes went further and farther than anyone had dared before or since.  If I weren’t sworn to secrecy, you’d be shocked at the truth behind Jack the Ripper.  The only thing keeping this epoch from taking the top spot was their insistence on using opium-based drugs.  Not much of a party when one is too relaxed to stay upright.

1) The roaring twenties.  American Robber Baronesses meet the landed European gentry – and seduce it.  Women’s liberation finally brought what had been happening forever out into the open.  We were introduced to the vamp, the femme fatale and the powerful female figure, much to the distress of the middle class, who have always been the only ones to believe in morality in the first place (which is unsurprising, since it has always been a tool to control them).   Hard drugs and slinky dresses, impeccably dressed men and fast cars all performing to the beat of the foxtrot at twelve, and the tango at six - a prelude to other things.  If you moved in the right circles, prohibition was a joke – something that happened to strict churchgoers.  Black Tuesday robbed future generaions of the pinnacle of party – perhaps it’s just as well, because there was no way that generation would have survived much longer if they’d gone on like that.

Best of all, these epochs were undead-friendly, provided that particular undead didn’t smell and had gone to the right school.  Imagine popping into even the best party today, and asking if the house had an excess stable boy whose blood you might suck – your host would grow pale and mutter some lame excuse.  And you call that a party.

The bar has been set.  I expect all of you to strive to clear it from now on.

Regards,

H

Greetings once again,

For the summer season, I have decided to forego my usual habit of ignoring current social trends and give some advice in how to deal with newer developments. 

One such change that I’ve been observing over the past few decades is a tendency for certain individuals to take an alter-ego to fight crime.  This used to be confined to certain lurid forms of pupular entertainment, and was therefore beneath notice, but it has now started to spill over into what passes for real life among mortals, as can be seen here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da1ADqPplQ4&feature=fvst and here: http://www.worldsuperheroregistry.com/world_superhero_registry_gallery.htm.

I doubt that I need to explain how this affects the undead community.  Simply stated, you have died, you have been reborn in a form that is extremely difficult to damage (let’s be honest: how many bank robbers carry wooden stakes and mallets around with them?), and the temptation to don the costume and live the mediatic life is a strong one.

So you have, quite naturally, come here seeking advice.  My first thought would be simply to say: “don’t do it! Is your dignity worth so little?”, but then, undaunted by these words of wisdom, you’d simply look elsewhere, so I’m going to bite the silver bullet and make an attempt to help you make the smallest fool of yourself as possible.

The first thing to consider when choosing an alter-ego is the name of the character.  Calling yourself Hammer-man or Astrogirl will firmly position you in the mid-fifties and immediately cause any miscreants you encouter to lose all bladder control due to laughter.  This is effenctive in curtailing their activity, of course, but bad for dignity, which is much more important.  For the noughties, a more science-oriented name will do much better.  Perhaps GeneSplice Man might be a good one (especially for zombies – bits that fall off will be considered part of the costume), or The Avenging Geek (vampire pallor is similar to that of people who spend too much time in RPG sessions).  But however you go with the name, remember to stay away from the words “Super”, “Astro”, “Hyper”, “Atomic”, and especially “Bat” (this last one goes double if you are a vampire!).

As for the costume – where nearly all superheroes stumble, and badly – I have five words for you: when in doubt, wear black.  That’s it.  No yellows, reds (especially when combined with yellow) or electric blues for you.  Black is classic, tasteful and won’t go out of style, leaving you with no option but to change color every six months.

And skin-tight is out as well.  Most undead are not what my neighbors a hundred streets up in Harlem would call “buff”, so a revealing outfit will not help you look your best.  Loose is tasteful, useful for carrying equipment without having to wear a belt that makes you look like one of those poor sods that lugs two cellphones and an PDO around, and it can be tailored to make any shape look great.

Please take these tips into consideration.  If you won’t do it for your own dignity, do it for that of the rest of the undead!

Until we meet again,

H

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