Monday, October 30, 2006

As Halloween Approaches!

More Halloween Linkage!

Cool news on the cenobyte front! Fangoria has announced a remake of Hellraiser. Now normally, this shit would piss me off. I mean, c’mon! Hellraiser? Must the studios – once again – rehash a brilliant horror flick, water it down to a harmless PG-13, and rape a beloved piece of horrordom?!? I was about to fly into an uncontrollable psychotic rage when I saw this, but then I saw that it was being written by Clive Barker himself. Well, I guess tht makes it all right then, doesn’t it? (And on a side note, what the fuck happened to Clive Barker? I love Barker for his madness and for some of the greatest and most original horror in the last twenty or so years. That said, I remember he was a fairly handsome, thin Englishman with a beautifully twisted imagination, excellent writing ability, and deliciously horrifying artwork. Have you seen him lately?!? He’s a horribly squat man with a hoarse voice, almost cartoonishly yellow teeth, and complexion that looks like that Eastern European presidential candidate who was poisoned a few years back. I’m baffled…)

Exterminate! Exterminate! Those cool cats at Evil Mad Scientists are at it again. If you remember, I posted up a link to their wickedly cool Cylon pumpkin. Now they’ve gone and done a carved Dalek pumpkin. I’m going to have to add these guys to my links list!

I’ve two links to assholes who take themselves waayyy too seriously. The first is a scientist who goes to great length to explain why there’s no scientific way vampires, zombies, and ghosts can exist. The second link is to a group of psychologists with their panties in a bunch because Halloween perpetuates stereotypes and stigmas against the mentally ill with “haunted asylums” and portrayals of serial killers like Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers. Jumping Jesus on a fucking pogo stick- what is wrong with you that you can’t look past your stupid agendas and enjoy Halloween for the wondrous, imaginative holiday it is?!? I’ve a message for these dumb asses: you’d best hide when I take over the world with my undead zombie army because I find your lack of faith…disturbing. Congratulations! You just made it to the top of Doctor Zombies “Must Die” list!

This is fascinating and, frankly, reeeeally sexy. Ms. Dewey has become my new search engine! You KNOW that the geeky part of me is trying to figure out a way to make it voice interactive so I can have my own, hot, computer - like the computer on the Enterprise - just with a hot chick to LOOK at. Woo-hoo, Ms. Dewey! (And thanks to my friend Christine for sending me this link. It can be said that Doctor Zombie is merciless to his enemies and magnanimous to his friends, so Chrissy will be made the Queen of Australia when I take over the world. She will, of course, have to be made into an undead zombie, but she gets to rule friggin’ Australia. It’s a small price to pay , but over all, I’d say it’s a win/win…)

And in the same, although mostly drained and collapsed, geeky vein: Vertigo Comics has made some of the first issues of their better comic books available on line. I’m especially excited about HellBlazer. The Constantine movie was great and, although Keanu Reeves dida good job, I think it came out at a time when the world had had enough of old Kanoo (as my brother Richie pronounces his name). Along the same lines, I’d love to get a copy of the first Hellboy. I happened to DVR the Hellboy cartoon this last weekend and I really liked it. I know it was mostly a prelude to the new Hellboy movie, but I loved the first - - so it’s okay. Zombie Boy loved it also. I don’t care what anybody says, the creature at the end of Hellboy the movie is the single best representation of the unwholesome and alien visions of HP Lovecraft ever put to celluloid. It gives me gooseflesh and shivers thinking about the dark perfection of the Elder Ones and Outer Gods. Brrr… Any way, I digress - back to the comic. I expect I will be utilizing the color printer at work and rediscovering the joy of John Constantine…

One last Halloween link, I promise! Here’s the official site of Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Monster Mash! Revel in the cheesy graphics and craptastic flash web design! Marvel at the poorly rendered sound effects! Hire Bobby Pickett to sing The Monster Mash at your next Halloween party because, apparently, when your whole career is predicated on one novelty song, you can’t even score a booking at the local rib cookoff. It’s sad really… and the Doctor would like to go on record and say that The Monster Mash is one of his favorite Halloween related novelty songs.

That’s all for now, my lovely undead minions! 2 ½ hours to go until Halloween officially begins and I’ve some last minute adjustments to make to various, nefarious, evil contraptions I’ve brewed up in my lab deep beneath the bloody stage of the Midnight Theater of Terror! I’ll update later this week as I will be otherwise occupied with the various stalking and rending of warm, bloody flesh!

Happy Halloween!

Thursday, October 26, 2006

A Special Day

So - - October 26th is a special day for Mrs. Zombie and I. To understand why, you have to understand mine and Mrs. Zombie’s history. Let me explain…

Mrs. Zombie and I met way back in the eight grade when Mrs. Zombie was a young single girl, and I was a young, single zombie. There was an immediate attraction between us and I did what one did in the middle 80’s when a boy liked a girl. I asked her to ‘go out’ with me. In fact, we were in our mutual friend Wendy’s basement at a party, dancing to In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins. (It was about the time that the song was experiencing a resurgence in popularity because of Miami Vice). Anyway, I looked into her beautiful hazel eyes and asked her if she’d be my girlfriend. She said yes immediately, and we exchanged Mizpahs. For those of you who don’t know, Mizpahs were necklaces that were two parts of a heart with some cheesy biblical quote on them. The boy wore one, the girl wore the other, and you were officially branded as “Going Out” with somebody.

It was a halcyonic time for Mrs. Zombie and I. We were a couple, we made out, we went to dances together, she let me get to first base… all the usual stuff. Unfortunately, it would all come to an end as summer neared. Her and I disagree on the particulars surrounding who broke up with whom, but suffice it to say, we went to rival high schools and went our separate ways.

The thing is, we both kept running into each other. For example…

*** I get a high school job at the local Sears store and I’m walking through the stock room, where I run into Miss Zombie. She had just started working there also.

*** One night in High School, I’m sitting in the local Dairy Queen with my then girlfriend, and in walks Miss Zombie. We had a conversation, and I pissed off my then girlfriend for ignoring her to talk to some gorgeous blond basketball/volleyball player from our rival high school.

*** A couple years later, I’m at Bowling Green State University, rushing across campus with my face buried in a copy of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, when I bump into this girl, knocking her books out of her hand. I apologize and bend over to help her pick them up, and I realize it’s Miss Zombie!

Now, not being one to ignore these odd convergences of coincidence, and feeling a weird sort of dizzy happiness because she’d never really been out of my thoughts, I say, “Hey! What are you doing here?” She goes on to tell me, much to my chagrin, that she’d transferred to BGSU to be nearer to her fiancee. Sigh.

“That’s great,” says I, “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you around…”

So, fast forward ten or so years. Miss Zombie’s husband has left her and she decides to go on a trip and do some soul searching. “What,” she asks herself, “is good in your life now? What in the past has made you happy?” And it is during this time of quiet introspection that she realizes that Dr. Zombie’s always sort of been in the back of her mind. She resolves to track me down and find me once her divorce is finalized, although she’s convinced that I must be married and in another state by now.

Not a week later, she runs into an old friend. Remember I mentioned how I first asked Miss Zombie out? In our friend Wendy’s basement? Phil Collins? Sound familiar?

Anyway, this friend happens to be the same Wendy and Miss Zombie asks about me.

“Oh!” Wendy says, “I work with him now at Company X! Do you want his phone number?”

Two days later, I return from lunch to find a phone mail message. It’s Miss Zombie and we make plans for coffee.

We met on a rainy, stormy fall day. I arrived first and was drinking a cup of herbal tea when she walked into the coffee shop. I caught my breath and felt that same dizzy, giddy feeling I’d felt years earlier. I knew right then that she was going to be my wife. She said she knew at that moment also. We were caught up in the iron grasp of destiny and fate and we realized that our love was meant to be. It was right, it was pure, and we had traveled across oceans of time to be with one another.

It was October 26th 1997 and it was some 15 years after we’d first met one another.

8 months after that, we were married.


So, Mrs. Zombie - - I love you baby. You are the bright spark of goodness in my otherwise dark and evil heart. You were and are my destiny and I will always love you.

Happy anniversary…

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

I'M your Boogeyman...

More Halloween links!

Outside of Romero’s Holy quatrain, my favorite film is John Carpenter’s Halloween. This 1978 work of genius was actually, until The Blair Witch Project, the highest grossing independent film of all time. I don’t know what it is about this movie that I love so much. Whether it’s Mike Meyer’s relentless evil; Carpenter’s creepy, and yet chillingly appropriate, score; or Jamie Lee Curtiss’ breathtaking performance; I LOVE THIS MOVIE. And so, as it’s that time of year, here’s some Halloween viewing for your pleasure!

Also, and thanks to, the AMC Monsterfest link - - I found a preview for 8 Movies to Die For from After Dark Films. On the weekend of November 19th, the will be hosting HorrorFest, which is basically a weekend of eight movies that they claim are “too scary for theaters”. Here’s a link to participating theaters and a preview. Looks really kind of groovy! Unfortunately, they don’t have any theaters here in Ohio. If you live near any of these theaters, this would be well worth a look see. I may consider loading up the Blue Zombie and road tripping, which leads to an interesting question. Since I’m doing movie reviews on the site, and I seem to have something of a following, I wonder if I can apply for press credentials to these sort of things? How cool would that be! I would love to do a press junket. I may need to look into this…

You’ve heard of Google, but have you heard about Googhoul?!? This is a spooky little link to Halloween related entertainment. Just plug in your zipcode, and it gives reviews and info on local haunted houses, attractions, etc. NOTE: I did do a search of my area and it seemed that some of the reviews were skewed by the management of the Haunted Houses themselves… so peruse with a grain of salt and read the actual comments from users. Neat little tool…

Here’s a great blog from Retrocrush with the worst halloween costumes of all time! What’s great is that the costumes are soooo circa the 70‘s and 80’s. I may be dating myself here, but those were the best costumes… you know, the highly flammable plastic costume that fit over your clothes and the vision impairing, poorly ventilated, hard plastic masks? Sometimes I wonder why more of us DIDN’T make it out of the harrowingly unsafe 70’s…

I found this story on MSNBC… It’s a list of the ten coolest horror movie killings. I agree with most of them (with the exception of the Friday the 13th flicks – Gods how I hate those movies!). An interesting list with some good choices. Of course I might have thrown a couple of different ones on there but that’s the wonder of being a horror movie fan - - there’s all kinds of us out there, and we may not all agree… but we all love the gore! And, on that note, I wanted to mention that the writer is truly a horror fan. You can tell by his choices. The Hitcher with Rutger Hauer is a great addition to the list and gives the writer some credibility, but it is the reference to Day of The Dead and Joe Pilato’s death scene that shows the writer’s pedigree. Day of the Dead is, arguably, the worst of Romero’s Dead films; and only a true horror fan would acknowledge how great a scene it was when the zombies tore Pilato’s character Captain Rhodes in half. Classic!

And, on that note, dear reader… I’ll leave you with Captain Rhodes immortal line from Day of the Dead - - “I’m running this monkey farm now, Doctor Frankenstein…and I want to know what the fuck you’re doing with my time!!!”

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Do Not Adjust Your Dial...

Just a quick update in preparation for the upcoming Samhain!

I’m like a puppy who’s piddling on the floor with anxiety. Mrs. Zombie is none too pleased about it, but there’s always going to be some piddling around Halloween time. “Don’t worry your pretty little head,” says I. “It won’t stain… well, not as bad as the blood stains at least…”. Zombie Boy and Wolf Girl helped myself and Mrs. Zombie decorate the front yard for Halloween last weekend. We’ve got the graveyard, spider webs, coffin, various body parts, and pumpkins strewn amid the real dismembered corpses I actually have buried in the front yard. We’ve also got some awesome spooky blue flood lights set up. I’ll try and post up some pictures this week…

Mrs. Zombie and I will be visiting a haunted house this weekend and I’m really excited about that. We’ll most likely check out the one on the link I put up on Thursday. I’ll of course let you know on Monday how it was.

On the Midnight Theater of Terror front, two great movies are coming out this week that I’m really, really jazzed about. The first is the DVD release of Slither. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to see this flick! It was at the the theaters here for only a week or so, and as I’m too busy and too broke to go to see flicks at the theater, I often have to wait until they show up on DVD. I’ve been anticipating this one for a while. I’ll be renting it this weekend and writing a review soon…

Also, Saw III comes out. Mrs. Zombie, in deference to the spooky season, has been dying to see some horror flicks and, as she never wants to watch them any other time of the year, I do every thing I can to indulge her when the whim strikes her fancy. So, this last weekend, we watched Saw together. I’d of course seen it before, but she hadn’t and she loved it! I watched it again and realised how much I loved it. Another great movie and, hopefully, another great sequel will be found in Saw III.

Of course the DVR will be running overtime taping things on AMC Monsterfest. This is the 10th year of Monsterfest and I’ve got to give some serious thanks to AMC for doing this every year. They make Halloween awesome by playing some of the best horror movies in October. Now, if they’d only have a consistent horror movie night on Fridays or Saturdays - - like in the hey day of 70’s and 80’s horror host shows. Sigh. One can only hope…

Also, remember that the Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror is on November 5th! Check out the awesome job they’ve done with the Simpson’s site!

And, finally, this how-to has been making the rounds on the internet and I loved it because, quite simply, I’m a geek. Mrs. Zombie, Zombie Boy, and Wolf Girl will be going to get pumpkins on Saturday and I’m half tempted to try this… I can hear Mrs. Zombie sighing in exasperation already…

Good night, dear reader… I’ve got to go sharpen my instruments in preparation for the coming trick or treaters… Muuuhahaha!!!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Of Cannibals and Monkeys...

Just a quick update of some cool links I found.... they're all sorta Halloween related...

The first is an article from the third world country that is New Orleans . Man oh man does this appeal to Doctor Zombie's dark side. This dude commits suicide and, when the cops find his body, they find a suicide note in his pocket saying he killed his girlfriend. The cops rush to his apartment to find that he's strangled and dismembered the poor lass - - and what's left of her is cooking in the oven. My question is this: What happens to the stove when the landlord re-rents the apartment? Think about THAT the next time you rent a furnished apartment... Also, apparently, this guy and girl were featured in several articles as die hards who stayed in N'awlins throughout Katrina and the aftermath. Pictures and articles about the two can be found here and here.

Side note about the girl: She was pretty hot. Get it? Hot? As in, fresh from the oven?!? Hot?

Oh, never mind…

Here’s an article about the about the top 13 Haunted Houses in the US. This is actually a really good list and it features one huanted house from Ohio. Man, it's been a while since I was last at a haunted house, which is funny, because I used to go to at least one every year from the time I was like 10 or 11. The last time I went to one was back right after I left college for the first time. My brother Phil and I drove down to Kent State University to visit my friend Kristin and we decided to go to one as we sat around drinking and planning to visit the local pubs. (Phil and I used to spend a lot of time at Kent when Kristin was still going there, as my poor, abused liver can attest to.) Anyway, we loaded up a couple of cars with Kristin and some of her sorority sisters and headed out to one that Kristin had heard good things about. Phil and I wound up killing a twelve pack of Sam Adams Pumpkin Ale on the hour or so ride there and were skonched by the time we got there. What I remember most about the night was that it was a cool, clear October night. There was a hay ride out to this forest and maze at the back of this farm and, although it wasn't scary, the ride was well worth it. I remember sitting in the trailer as the tractor pulling us chugged along. The crisp October air smelled of leaves and the coming winter. Overhead, there was a full moon. It's was the perfect representation of all that is October and autumn. Sigh...

Finally - - Dear Gods!It's a monkey arms race! Don't they realize that once one side escalates, the other side has to escalate too?!? It's this sort of one-up brinkmanship that leads to nuclear monkeys. Once that happens, the UN will have to step in and impose sanctions or something. It's horrifying, next thing you know they'll be throwing orangatans and chimpanzees at one another. They better watch it... mutually assured monkey deterence only goes so far before Charlton Heston has to get involved...

That's all for tonight, dear reader. I've got to finalize some plans for the eventual zombie apocalypse.

Unpleasant dreams...

Monday, October 16, 2006

Groan...

So in my English Lit class, we're gearing up to begin reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I was a bit apprehensive at first as I'm, quite honestly, not as strongly read in 17th century British Literature as I would like to be. Truth be told, I prefer American Literature (from all periods), Elizabethan Drama, Victorian British Literature, and the Modern Irish writers (Joyce, Wilder, et al...) to 17th century romantic lit. It's just a preference, you know?

With that said, I can honestly say I never went out of my way to read any of Austen's works. I just never got around to it, although I knew I should have...

So, as I need this class and an A in it to help my grad school chances, I decided I'd better get a jump on the reading, especially considering it is a largish sort of book. My decision to get a good read in beforehand is also motivated by the fact that my professor's passion and specific field of study focuses on the emergence of the novel specifically as it pertains to 17th century literature. When she mentions the upcoming Austen section of the syllabus, I can see her get all dreamy eyed and wistful. I suspect she masturbates to Pride and Prejudice.

So, anyhow - I started reading Pride and Prejudice and it is with all of the motivations previously mentioned borne in mind that I have this to say...

Dear dark pagan gods! Please strike me dead!

This is horrible! Hell is a room where one is forced to read Jane Austen for all eternity, without the benefit of alcohol or a gun with which to shoot oneself in the eye. I would prefer screwing a large caliber .45 into one of my eye sockets and pulling the bang switch with my booger hook than having to sit throught the next 45 or so chapters of this shite!

"He is just what a young man ought to be," said she, "sensible, good humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manner! - so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!"

"He is also handsome," replied Elizabeth, "which a young man ought likewise to be, if he can possibly can. His character is thereby complete."

"I was very much flattered by his asking me to dance a second time. I did not expect such a compliment."

And on an on and on and on...

It's like an episode of MTV's My Super Sweet Sixteen, only with better diction. Same nattering, self absorbed brats - - but better scripting.

That sound you hear? Yeah, that's me screaming in agony.

Reading 17th century British romantic literature is the literary equivalent of having someone dose your drink with a roofie. You're out, having a good time with your friends, and then you pick up Jane Austen. You start reading as you take a sip on your Jameson's and soda and the next thing you know you find yourself waking up bleary eyed, confused, and inexplicably naked in a shabby hotel bed. After checking that your kidneys haven't been cut out - you look around in shame and confusion, not understanding how you got there, but knowing in that dirty, violated way that you will most likely need to go to the hospital for the inevitable rape kit. Later that night, after showering three or four times you scrub your skin raw to get the horrible touch of Austen's inane social prattle off of your skin. Eventually, you turn off the shower, get off of the bottom of the tub where you were curled up in shame, and stagger to the toilet. When you pee, fire ants come out.

No, wait... I'd prefer that to reading this dreck.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Deviance and Political Insurrection

Here’s some interesting stuff I’ve been meaning to blog about, but have been unable to because of work and school and shtuff…

The first is this link I found to an article about making the case for Libertarian Democrats. I’ve said before that, although I consider myself a liberal, I do find that, idealogically, I tend to come out as a Libertarian. However, the Libertarians, in my opinion, aren’t as Liberal as I like. Yeah they talk a good talk and all, but they are still, at their core, conservatives with a knee jerk fear of the evil, commie, liberal, tree huggers. Bear in mind, I’m talking about the established, ‘official’ Libertarian party here. This author, though, makes a great argument for a political idealogy that I could get behind 100%. Just interesting reading really…

And also on the political front, this just pisses me off! Yeah, yeah, yeah… I get that it’s illegal to make threats against the President (no matter how much of a dumbfuck retard he may be), and I get that the Secret Service is charged with investigating threats against the president. But, seriously, isn’t there someone in DHS or the Secret Service smarter than a box of hammers and with operational authority to look at a Myspace account from a 14 year old girl who is posting about how dreamy Jake Gyllenhall and Ewan McGregor are and realize that she is, in fact, not any risk to Dubya? I mean, seriously? (By the way, better send the Secret Service to my door, I’d almost go gay for Ewan McGregor. It’s all about Renton from Trainspotting and Obi Wan.). I’m reading more and more about these sort of gestapo tactics from the current administration and I’ve said it before… don’t think for a minute that what you put out there on the internet is safe from Big Brother’s eyes. Despite the fact that I every time I say or write something that is politically subversive, and even if I preface said political insurrection with a disclaimer saying that I was saying it satirically, with no intention of following through with it, and that it is simply an expression of my first amendment rights; that’s no promise that goons from George W.’s personal hit squad won’t put a bullet in my head anytime soon. I obviously don’t mean what I’m typing. Really. Sigh. We’re still in America, right?

I pulled this sight off of my brother Curt’s site. I just found it pleasing and that it appealed to my geekish nature. Make sure you check it out.

I spent over an hour on this site and it is one of the best trivia games I’ve ever seen. What’s amazing is that it’s from the site for Dark M&M’s. Essentially, it’s a painting done in Middle Ages/Renaissance style and every item in the painting is a representation of ‘dark’ or horror movies. You click on the picture, type in what you think it is, and it blacks it out if you get it right. Some are obvious, others are obscure. Of course, being the horror movie freak that I am, I couldn’t shut it down until I finished it. How many can you get?

I’m jealous of Phronk! Phronk’s another blogger I’ve met and correspond with. He’s a groovy Canadian cat who’s pretty damn cool. Anyway, I’m jealous because, apparently, he’s become friends with Alan Parsons. Yes, that Alan Parsons. I’ve got to say this is really , really cool. I’m showing my age here but, back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when I was college, I listened to tons of the Alan Parsons Project. It’s just that college thing. You know, where you start listening to obscure or ‘arty’ music because you’re in that whole intellectual, arty place college inevitably puts you in? I’ve gotta say, Alan Parsons got me laid quite a few times back in college - - and damn if Phronk’s not his buddy now. I’m jealous! (And, since I’m giving props for the limited, but decidedly freaky sex I had back in college.. I wanted to throw some additional thanks out to Peter Gabriel, The Cure, Pink Floyd, Sting, and Tori Amos. If not for you, I’d have never gotten any sex in college. Thank you!)

Another Blogger I read frequently must have gone and done something horrible and terrifying on his blogger site. Apparently, Butchie’s blog is now considered obscene by my work’s internet filters and I can’t read him while I’m supposed to be tending to the interests of one of the top three insurance companies in the US. So, whatever it is you did on your site Butchie, bravo! I’m certain it was depraved, perverted, and completely offensive to morality and humanity. I guess if I need help determining what’s gay - - I’ll just have to do it from home now…

And finally - make sure you check out Tarr and Fether's site in my list of links! They now have some streams of their shows available. Check those whacky, and yet disturbingly morbid, psychos out!

That's all for this evening, my lovely, rotting, undead minions... I'll be spending the weekend sequestered in the Theater of Terror watching old horror movies, eating Habanero Doritos, and drinking Great Lakes Brewery Nosferatu. Unpleasant dreams...

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Getting Spooky!

It's that time of year! The time when the air turns colder, and the leaves start to change. It's the time for pumpkins, shorter days and longer nights, and things going bump in the night!

It's Autumn!

Which can mean only one thing! Halloween is coming!

For obvious reasons, Halloween is my all time favorite holiday. And, in preperation for it, I decided to put together a list of my favorite Halloweenish songs. I'll probably spend the next couple of days tracking down copies of these songs and I'll be making a mix CD so I can have my own kooky, spooky soundtrack for the upcoming Samhain.

Doctor Zombie's Halloween Music Mix!!!
Halloween Theme – Composer: John Carpenter
Every Day is Halloween – Ministry
Moon Over Bourbon Street – Sting
Pet Semetary – The Ramones
This Is Halloween – Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack
Vampire Erotica – Inkubus Sukkubus
Caravan of Emotions – Sven Vath
The Carnival Is Over – Dead Can Dance
Blood, Milk, and Sky – Rob Zombie
Malignant Fracture – Front Line Assembly
Are We The Sinners – Leather Strip
Trick or Treat - Sneaky Bat Machine
Halloween – Siouxsie and the Banshees
Spooky Music – Rome Burns
Bloodletting – Concrete Blond
Vampire’s Kiss – Midnight Syndicate
In The Hall of the Mountain King – Composer: Edvard Grieg

In fact, I'm so excited about the upcoming All Hallow's Eve that, once I've gotten all of the songs together and burned them, I'll even be willing to share! Drop me an email at darkmuse-AT-core.com, with your address, and I'll burn and mail you a copy too!

I, of course, can't make any promises that there won't be any subliminal messages imbedded on the cd that say things like "Kill and eat your neighbor!", or "Tattoo 'Property of Dr. Zombie' on your ass!"...

Unpleasant dreams, dear readers!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Riding the Bus

So I learned some important things today.

As I've mentioned, I started back to school this fall in an attempt to finish my bachelor's, go to grad school, and finally get off my ass and decide what I want to be when I grow up. (For the record - - I want to teach English Lit and writing at a college somewhere).

Anyway, because it was in the sixties today and it looks like winter will be here soon, I decided to wear my Utilikilt one last time before I put it away until St. Patty's Day. Besides, I'm already the old weird guy in a sophomore level English class with a bunch of bright, but life experience deficient, nineteen year olds. If they can't handle me in a kilt, whilst discussing James Joyce's Dubliners, screw 'em! They can use a little Irish culture from an angry, unrepentant, undead, Fenian bastard such as myself!

The problem arose when I got downtown. If you've never been to Cleveland, let me preface it by saying that we've been recently named the #1 poorest city in America (Take that Detroit! We're number one! We're number one!). So, the area that Cleveland State University is in is right on the edge of a blighted, urban wasteland. And this is the area I need to traverse in order to get to school.

This strange and post-apocalyptic landscape is full of decaying warehouses, ghetto housing, and remnants of a once thriving early twentieth century industrial giant. Now, it looks like the Saturday after a limited nuclear exchange, complete with shambling, bleary eyed survivors in the form of the economically disadvantaged who scratch out a living amidst the squallor. And they all end up on the bus that runs back and forth down Euclid Avenue, bouncing and jostling in potholes and cracks in the road made worse by a city that has neither the money nor the desire to repair them. It's funny really, Euclid Avenue was once called the "The Most Beautiful Street in the World" But now it is an infected, dying, cancerous shell.

And that bus I mentioned? Yeah. I ride it every other day...

You see, on my own poor front, Mrs. Zombie and I are pinching pennies to pay for my decision to go back to school. Soooo, rather than pay eight dollars a day parking at the University two days a week, what I've started doing is parking at Mrs. Zombie's work at East 105th and Euclid and taking the bus down to East 19th. This works well because it's free and secure parking at Mrs. Zombie's work, and I'm already paying $25 a semester as part of my tuition for a free bus pass.

Which brings me to my adventure in Celtic wear...

Things I learned today:
- When you're the only white guy on a bus - in a kilt - it helps to have a shaved head, earings, and a goatee like Scott Ian's from Anthrax.
- Cultural wear or not, older people will still stare at you like you're a sexual deviant.
- When worst comes to worst, and an angry looking gang-banger sidles up to you to ask why you're wearing a skirt, look him right in the eye and say, "I'm a mixed martial arts cage fighter and I'm on my way down to the gym to train for a fight." Can you believe he actually bought it?!?
- Nineteen year old college girls are fascinated by kilts and will pester you endlessly about whether or not you've got anything on underneath. I opted to plead the fifth. Is it sad that any interest by nineteen year old college girls warms the undead doctor's heart? Not that I'd do anything, it's just nice - ya know?
- When you're waiting for the bus, other people on other buses and cars will point at you and laugh. They can laugh now; but I promise they'll all be sorry when I take over the world and use them to feed my undead zombie minions! We'll see who's laughing then.
- I don't care what anybody says; sitting in an empty room on a plastic college desk, in a kilt, and farting, has to be the funniest...sound...ever.
- Not having to unzip anything to pee rocks. Just flip the kilt up and go. It's good to be Irish.
- Mrs. Zombie gets mad when you come into her work in a kilt. I'm not sure why.
- When Mrs. Zombie tells you to close her office door so her coworkers and clients can't see her kilt clad dork of a husband, it is not good for the marriage to show her the cool farting trick mentioned earlier. Especially after having had chicken wings and a couple beers the night before.

Cead Ma Failte!!!