The BEST things about Hallowe'en...

Halloween is great fun in so many ways. The fancy-dress parties, watching the religious zealots lose their shit, public drunkenness... I mean, what's not to love!?!

In fact, there is so much that I love about Hallowe'en, that I decided to do a Letterman-style Top Ten List. (Please the note the "high road" of not resorting to a Letterman infidelity joke. Thank you.)

So, here now is my...

Top Ten Reasons Why Hallowe'en Is So Friggin' Cool!

10. Month-Long Horror Movie marathons, (Piranha 2: The Spawning?)

9. Jesus Freaks in Downtown Salem are so easy to get going!

8. The ability to wear a mask into stores, restaurants, et cetera. It's like a License to Stalk!

7. The ability to carry a real sword in public without arousing suspicion. "No! It ain't concealed!"

8. Enough candy left over from the beggar-training to block a colon!

5. All of the Sexy Witch/Cat/Vampire/Maid/ Devil/Bunny/Slut costumes!!!

4. I can finally get rid of those eggs that I have been saving since Hallowe'en '06!

3. I can bury things in my yard at night and people think I am being "seasonally festive" and "fun!"

2. Victims come right to the door. No reason to rent a van!

1. So much really poor-taste blogging material!

And lastly, my Bonus Reason:

All of those great scares, spooks and surprises! Happy Hallowe'en!

The Pansification of Vampires

The forthcoming Halloween season has made me take note of a fairly recent trend that I find bothersome, namely, this pansification of vampires.

Lemme 'splain...

Nowadays, there seems to be no shortage of vampire movies or T.V. shows. And they seem to mostly portray these monsters as sexy, glamorous, desirable, supermen/women with terrific hair!

And worse than that, this “New Breed” of vampire seems more interested in finding true love than to tear a throat out, drink the blood and live another day. “Sensitive vampires.” I ask ya!

All too frequently, the movies have attempted to “de-monsterize” the vampire by taking away it’s lethality, either through drinking blood in a more polite manner, or from animals, hitting blood-banks, or the most common method, by having the hip and hot, young, a-list bloodsucker attack and drink only from bad people.

In any case, the attempted goal is the same: to make vampires into sexy, strong, fast, superhuman immortals, that it is okay to fall in love with.

Make me sick.

Vampires should be first and foremost MONSTERS! Look here at this side-by side-comparison to see just what I am talking about...

Oh! I could go on. I could go on all night...

... et cetera, ad nauseam.

The sensitive, love-lorn vampire tale has an obvious flaw in its story, however. First, the vampire must find its true love, and then win it. Soon thoughts will turn towards marital bliss. Not long after, family planning becomes a priority. And so it goes.

The unavoidable outcome is that the vampire becomes a family man.

And we've all seen how THAT turns out!

The Great Pumpkin?

Okay, maybe not great. In fact, it's probably not good. At All!

That is to say, it is not a good thing for a person to carve his own likeness into a Halloween pumpkin, (it just ain't right.)

Still and all, here you go! Wooooooo-oooooo!

Yes, there are people like me out there...

Scary stuff, eh, kids?

The Exorchick

When I first put this blog together just this past New Year, I posted, among other things, my "Chick Flicks" calendar for 2009. Thanks to my iPhoto program, I was able to actually have this calendar made pretty easily.

Although all of those images can be seen here at "The Original White Meat Calendar," I decided to put October's image up again because a) it is staring at me every day in my kitchen, b) this picture kinda cracks me up, and c) I'm a lazy bastard and I got nothing else at the moment.

So menacing...

The Black Lagoon

Christopher P. Toler, 10/12/09

Real Life #9

Originally published in The Salem State Log, way back on 10/24/1991.

Worse-Case Scenario Zombies

So, I'm sitting in a Chinese restaurant with my sister, Kerry, discussing certain tropical, rum-based cocktails, (but I won’t elaborate on those here, that is for the OTHER blog!), when Kerry tells me how she enjoys a really good Zombie. And that right there was all it took to kick-start my mind down a tangental path from which there is little hope of return. With Halloween looming on the horizon, I started thinking about the WORST possible zombies, and I don’t mean the the drink!

Now it is a known fact that Zombism can affect anyone, right? More specifically, anyone with a human brain. And all zombies are bad for you. But, as we have seen time and again, some zombies are much meaner and harder to destroy than others.

It is with this in mind that I compiled this brief, (but illustrated!) list of what I think could be zombie worst-case scenarios!

1. Edward Scissorhands.

This is really a no brainer. His gentle, tortured-soul demeanor gone, those snippers are now Freddy Kruger-ish skull can-openers!

“A little off the top?”

2. The Six Flags Guy. Already one creepy, little, troll-like creature, a taste for human flesh would really round out this character nicely. You know, now that I think about it, I am not certain that he isn’t already a zombie.

3. Sally Kellerman. I am sorry. For some reason, Sally Kellerman’s name always pops into my head for this type of thing. You can disregard this one and I’ll throw another on the list to make up for it. But still, I’d hate to run into her, dead or alive.

4. Yoda. Would a Jedi Master retain his ability to use the force after zombification? Would this constitute crossing over to the dark side? An angry, little undead Yoda would kinda look like a gremlin, wouldn’t he?

5. Cookie Monster.

At first, this might seem funny since Cookie Monster has no teeth, (from years of a steady diet of chocolate chips cookies, no doubt!), but never forget his capacity for gluttony! The damned bastard might ever swallow you whole! Digested to death by an undead muppet is not a pretty way to go...

6. Mayor McCheese.

When you have a massive cheeseburger for a head, you hear lots of “Eat me” jokes. Turn those tables and you get a beefy zombie with a serious axe to grind! The only way to disable a zombie requires damaging the brain? Well good luck finding it in this sandwich-headed politician’s five-foot-diameter noggin.

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce...

And lastly...

7. Chuck Norris.

Dead or alive, Chuck is badder than you. In fact, Chuck is the baddest Mofo on either side of the curtain of life. And Zombie Chuck can and will beat you down, humiliate you, eat your brains with a soup ladle, and then make you offer him seconds!

Well, that's all I've got for now. But this list is far from comprehensive. These are just the first seven that came to mind, the blatantly obvious ones. Please feel free to list others in the comments section below!

Bonus Zombie Survival Tip: When running to escape a horde of Zombies, it is ideal to be running with two friends; one who is a little bit faster than you and one who is slower. The faster one will be the first if you run into more zombies ahead, and the slower one, well, just don't let him carry the keys...

POLTERGEISTS?!?

Damn. October is only a few hours old, and this crap happened...

As I was buttering my toast with a teaspoon earlier today, a though struck me: “Where the hell are all my butter knives?” I had about eight of them in this flatware set. True, it is a few years old, but still, forks, teaspoons, tablespoons: all present, (with some acceptable loss to garbage disposal mishaps, o’course!), but butter knives? MIA!

There was no obvious rational explanation, so logic dictates that an irrational explanation must be at hand. I considered many, Oh, so many irrational explanations, (those who know me can vouch for the number of irrational ideas I can summon at will,) and the only one that makes sense, (in an irrational manner, that is,) is Poltergeists.

Sure, I also considered gremlins. But, after careful scrutiny, I believed poltergeists are the more likely culprits. The motif operandi just didn’t seem befitting of typical gremlin behavior.

A single butter knife was found later. It had been used most recently to tighten a screw in putting up a towel rack in the bathroom. This reinforces my poltergeist suspicions as the mischievous spirits sensed it’s most recent usage and believed it to be a screwdriver, not a butter knife, (it is a fairly well-known fact that poltergeists are incapable of abstract thought and random generalization.)

I decided to go out and buy more butter knives. However, these will be purchased not to replace their missing predecessors, but as BAIT!!! I would construct a device to capture the flatware abductors once and for all. But first, I constructed a night image, motion detecting camera mechanism to correctly identify the villain. From the images that I would catch, I could construct the appropriate trap.

I had more toast, buttering it with the former screw-driving knife to re-establish it’s flatware status, and baited my surveillance.

IT WORKED!

However, the situation is worse than I thought. My apologies to all those poltergeists out there. And to you innocent gremlins as well. The following series of photos proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that demonic possession is the cause.

Yep. As I always suspected. That cat is a susceptible host to one or more demons inhabiting his body and stealing my butter knives for some hellish purpose.

Time to bone up on on my exorcism rites, and fill the squirt gun with holy water.

This may be a long month.