But I don’t actually blame Meyer, since Stoker, and then early Hollywood were truly more instrumental in giving us this image.  I guess it’s too late to try to get the unwashed to understand this (contrary to popular belief, people have not been getting dumber in the past few years.  Almost every mortal on the planet has been an imbecile since I can remember, and that’s more than a few centuries), but I can at least make an appeal to the intelligent readers out there.  Both of you should probably be able to catch the gist.

Vampires are not glamorous by nature.  We are just, to take a horrid neologism and apply it, regular guys.  In order not to let the side down, it is imperative that we understand and follow the rules of etiquette.  We might not have any of the olfactory disadvantages of zombies, or the aural handicaps of banshees, but we do need to work – imagine if we let ourselves go.  We’d all look like Nosferatu!

Still, this aside was not the main thrust of this particular post (although I remind you that etiquette is always the most important thing – be you mortal or Aikanaka).  I wanted to talk about documentary channels.  

It used to be that the people who watched The History Channel, or Nat Geo, were a bit snobbish.  Intellectuals who were too good to share the same mind-numbing programming that everyone else seemed to enjoy.

Now it seems that the executives at these places have either realized that that market was too small or have succumbed to the temptation of going after the brain-dead hordes.  So you get reality TV, Celebrity Biographies and, worst of all, a whoole slew of programs with names like Ancient Aliens and Paranormal Encounters.

This last one is worrying.

Now, as a member of the undead community, I am all for a bit of information and greater understanding.  But, when you put every kook and whacko who can shake off the effects of the drugs long enough to do an interview on the screen and let him ramble, you are creating a dangerous precedent, which gets even worse when you treat it as credible evidence.

This isn’t documentary filmmaking.  This is shameless pandering to the lowest common denominator disguised as documentary.  Documentaries shouldn’t be stealing their ratings from the audience for Big Brother.  And I certainly can’t condone the way these fictionistas portray ghosts!

But the true reason I gnash my teeth whenever these subhuman programs come up is that I am one of those who were among the original target.  I will gladly watch a documentary about napoleon for six hours, but give me an episode of Ancestral Aliens, and…  well, let’s just be thankful that vampires can’t throw up.

But one of the keys to good etiquette is that one must not fight emerging trends, but find a way to incorporate them.  So I’m thinking of starting a program to portray undead as they really are.  I can sell it to one of these channels.

And I can eat any executive who declines.

And with no sparkliness whatsoever.

Salutations,

Baron H

Every time I talk about humor, I’m asked whether an ancient vampire really ought to be broaching the subject.  After all, there are few things less funny than a monster who eats people unapologetically.

This is simply untrue.  Being alive (or undead if you prefer) for so long means that the centuries can seriously drag if you don’tmanage to find something to laugh about.  In addition to this, vampires tend to be brilliant (evil, of course, but brilliant), and a lack of humor has always been the hallmark of the weak-minded and insecure.  One might almost say that it is an exclusively human trait.

There are some groups - particularly militant groups in extremist causes (or, even worse, causes that are “just”) - who seem to be unable to spot the fact that they have, through the spewing of rhetoric, become caricatues of themselves.  We all know who they are in today’s world, and I’m not going to turn this into a fight about specific issues, but I was extremely well-placed to watch them in earlier ages.

So, without further ado, I give you the five people (or grups) with the least sense of humor in recent history:

5)  The Temperance Movement in the United States.  I was already ensconced within my Park-view apartment in the years before Prohibition was enacted, so I was able to observe first hand the behavior of the members of the Temperance Movement.  There is a strong temptation to say that this movement was made up of dry, dusty old bats, but – being a vampire – I have too much respect for bats.

Let’s just say that these are the old maids and parish preachers who created the template for activism in the US, and are probably responsible for keeping alive the tradition that people can only be completely right or completely wrong, and those in the wrong are to be vilified.

Despite being completely ridiculous (a free country under Islamic prohibition of alcohol?), they were completely unable to see the humor in their actions.  All in all, I’d say that they were people who badly needed a drink.

4) Catherine the Great.  Most of my time in Russia was spent in the years just before and during her rule.  Russia is a bit of a humorless place at the best of times, but things got a bit extreme when Catherine was on the throne.

The main issue is that the one thing we all wanted to do is to publish an anthology of jokes about the fact that she’d deposed her own husband to gain the throne.  Some of the jokes were classics, all of them were off-color, and poor Peter III did not come out of them looking good (of course, he’d been killed in the deposing, but that just made it better).  If Catherine had had any sense at all, she could have secured her legacy by allowing these volumes to be printed.

Or perhaps, if Peter was really that bad in bed, she should have agreed to marriage counseling.

3) Benito Mussolini.  After the passing of the eighteenth amendment, I moved back to Europe, just in time to watch the ascension of fascism across the continent.  While that kind of thing was natural enough among the orderly Germanic tribes, or plodding agrarian Spaniards, it simply did not work for Italians.

Italians, you see, are not fascists.  They are not communists.  They really don’t care about politics one way or the other.  They care about wine and seafood and sun and love. 

So picture poor Mussolini.  Here he was with a shiny new dictatorship, trying to convince people to wear khaki shorts and march in lockstep, and here was everyone else, worrying about cars and olive oil.  Not a situation designed to make him feel secure on his throne, and one that completely robbed him of any sense of humor.  I don’t think he wanted to get involved in the war, but was unable to stand it when the Germans laughed at him because he didn’t have a Poland to play with.

2) Joseph Stalin.  Same war, opposite band, and yet another Russian who had a complete inability to laugh at himself.  Find an old photo of the man and look at that mustache. 

Did you laugh?  Of course you did.  So did I.  It’s impossible not to laugh at that mustache.

He sent me to Siberia for it.  In winter.  There were three entire Gulags filled only with men and women who’d been unable to control their mirth at the lip foliage.

Which brings us, finally, to…

1) Torquemada.  This one is personal. 

Torquemada is my big disappointment of the list.  He had so much potential, so much to live for.  Some of his methods were new to the world, of a cruelty I had never seen in all my centuries.  He was my one true friend among the people on this list, and one of the few mortals I (or any vampire) could truly learn from and admire.

But just when I thought he was a force to be reckoned with, he showed an apalling lack of a sense of humor.  It so happened that, after a long night of gambling for alcoholic forfeits with his undertorturers, a sinister group of hooded men who would have been excellent poker players (the hoods made it impossible to read their tells), we decided to set fire to Torquemada’s carriage, drive it around the complex and then sink it in the moat.

Oooh, boy. 

Anyone with an ounce of humor would, eventually have realized that it was hilarious, wouldn’t he?

Oh, well.  As far as I know, I’m still considered a fugitive from the inquisition.  The humor of it is that, in this case, everything they’re accusing me of – and much more – is completely true.

So, I’ll see you soon,

H

I’m often asked by my mortal friends (and yes, I do have friends that are mortal, and we’ll get to that in a moment) whether I ever feel guilty about eating intelligent beings.  While this is a question I’d recommend that you never ask of one of the undead, especially one that you’ve learned enjoys the taste of your particular species, it does have an answer in my case.

You see, I don’t actually eat humans.  I eat only sheep, albeit sheep that are genetically identical to homo sapiens sapiens.  Yes, when I tell the people who ask the questions this, they also give me a blank stare and think about padded rooms, so I’ll explain further.

You see, most of the people on the street, and in the cars, and in the living rooms wiith the TV turned on (especially this last group), aren’t really intelligent in any true sense of the word.  An intelligent creature – whether mortal or undead - is characterized by its ability and willingness to observe the world around it, analyze it critically and come to independent conclusions.  That is the only real test of intelligence.

Now I ask you to do the first of these things: observe the world around you.  Would you really say that the bulk of humanity is behaving this way?  Let’s have a look at the way they act.

Most people (as measured by independent observers), watch TV at night when they get home.  What do they watch?  Well, if there’s a reality show of some kind on, they’ll watch that.  A one-hour drama might be their next choice, while comedy comes in third (although they seem to prefer watered down sitcoms that don’t satirize things overmuch.  Satire and irony require brain cells).  Even the channels that used to air documentaries are now focusing on reality shows. 

Why do they act this way?  Well, perhaps part of it is to avoid using their brain, but I actually think it’s mainly due to the fact that everyone else does it.

Marketers are well aware of the nonthinking nature of the general public, of course.  They know that, given a little information and told that something will make them more attractive, consumers will flock to their product in droves.  This is why there are still large numbers of commercials on TV, despite the fact that no one wants to watch a commercial.  The truth is that marketers, who on the on the whole are not stupid, have data that shows that advertising works.  People will pay huge sums of money for something they don’t need, just to belong to a group that didn’t even exist before the commercial.  A decent ad campaign can convince folks of anything.

But it goes deeper than consumption patterns.  The way society is constructed seems to be pushing people into less and less critical thinking.  In my day, when you wanted to make a living, you put together a band of peasants and invaded the village in the next valley.  Now, you work for years at a job you hate, because that’s the responsible thing to do.  Of course, even calling peopel ‘peasants’ can get you in trouble nowadays, as I found out at a restaurant last week.  I had to ambush the entire staff afterwards and eat them just to feel better about myself.  Social pressure has made individuality seem like a bad thing – while commercials celebrate it every day!  The irony is delightful, but I’d hate to be alive right now.

It used to be that the world of publishing was immune, in a certain measure, to this kind of thing.  Books cater to consumers who read by choice, and so, in general terms, are about a hundred times more intelligent than the average TV audience.  However, lately, I’ve been seeing some disturbing trends here, as well.  Even the small houses, the ones that have to take risks to compete against the bland uniformity of the big houses.  I’ve been hearing things like: “oh, yes, that story or novel…  It was funny as hell, but a bit insensitive.”  Humor is always insensitive and cruel, if you want PC, join Time Warner or something.  The fact that Daverana is willing to go out on a limb is one of the main reasons I have acceeded to being their lifestyle columnist (well, that and the fact that one can’t let the Old Monster dictate what people think – the world would go to hell in a handbasket).

As we see, most people are motivated in their actions by the need to fit in, the need to use their brain as little as possible and an instinctual knowledge of what is right and what is wrong in society.  Some of you might be shaking your heads at this point, saying that this kind of activity is reprehensible, but I beg you not to.  It is perfectly all right to act this way.  There are plenty of creatures, part of an absolutely respectable flock, that act this way all the time. They are a delight to have around, and make this world a better place.

They are called sheep.

And my answer to the above question is invariably: “I only eat mutton.”

Those of you who aren’t fit for my table wiill be easily able to read between the lines and know what the advice is for today’s column.  I advise the rest of you to bathe in barbecue sauce and smack yourselves with meat tenderizers.  It’ll save time in the long run.

Until we meet again,

H.

There are various reasons for the fact that my first post of 2010 is in February as opposed to January.  The first two (minor reasons) have to do with the fact that we a) undead are in no hurry, so a couple of months is nothing to us and b) that I was in a relationship with a mortal that didn’t quite work out, so I lost a bit of time while I worked out the details of the feast I was going to throw in her honor; she was a hit with my friends, as was the garlic sauce she attended the dinner in.

The main reason, however, has nothing to do with that at all.  Yoou see, I’ve been feeling a little guilty over the fact that most of my previous posts have specifically been aimed at helping people deal with everyday situations that arise.  I seem to have forgotten that my function, in death as it was in life, is not to be a force for good, but a force for evil.  I live in New York, after all, and have a reputation to maintain.

So, with that firmly in mind, I have decided to write my 2010 resolutions on the first days of February.  The reason for this is that all the people who made resolutions on New Year’s day have probably already broken them, so this will remind them that they are just worms with no discipline (I apologize to my zombie readers who might be offended at the mention of worms).

So, with no further ado, here are my resolutions for how to make the world a worse place in 2010.

1) Send in a script for a new reality show to the good folks at the networks.  This one will follow a group of schoolkids in the bible belt as they become progressively dumber and more confused as the battle for what is right and proper education rages on.  One day, they will be taught one thing, and the next, they will see the polar opposite.  This will definitely go on the air as the it will appeal to both conservatives and liberals.  Eventually the ratings will go through the roof, as the poor kids will wind up so confused and misguided that they will end up almost as stupid as the average TV audience.  And remember folks, an audience that can relate to the characters on the screen is an audience that won’t change channels!

2) Donate money to a cause run by fanatics, but stipulate that the gold (I don’t trust this newfangled paper currency) can only be used for PR and advertising.  What more could we want than another group of true believers with no sense of humor or capacity to understand the concept of “middle ground” with more money to get their vew across.  Perhaps some group that thinks indoor plumbing is an offense against the gods of native people might work.

3) No more giving werewolves bottes of Head & Shoulders for their birthday.  This is just mean, and the fun of it wore of a long time ago.

4) Hire a zombie to haunt the pyramids.  I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but with airport security the way it is, it wwa always tough to get zombies on airplanes.  But now, I hear they have Twitter in Egypt, so I’ll tweet for local candidates interested in the position.  And then I’ll wrap the winner in bandages, place him in a crypt and sit around watching CNN until the story comes on.

5)  Take a trip to Borley.  Haven’t been there in years, and the ghosts are starting to get unhappy with me.  Stakes and galic have been mentioned ina couple of their more recent communiqués.

6)  No more eating garbagemen.  This is actually the one I’m mot likely to stick to.  These guys are tasty, easy to pick off the street and always do for a quick meal, but they give me gas.  Oh well, guess I’ll pop in to McDonald’s if I need a quick bite.

Like all resolutions, we’ll see how these go.  In the meantime, be good.

And if you aren’t good, please be certain to invite me along!

Regards,

H

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

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

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

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

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

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