Today's Topic #1: A Holiday Song Promoting Things Both Larcenous and Unethical.

Have you ever really thought about the lyrics of "The 12 Days of Christmas"? It's pretty bizarre stuff. First of all, half of the gifts bequeathed by the narrator's True Love are birds (swans, partridges, turtle doves, etc). Everyone knows that pets make terrible presents. They require a lot of responsibility, and it's not fair to the animals in question if their owners turn out to be too flaky to take care of them. The other half of the gifts from the song are people. Actual people. Are we talking about human trafficking here? How do you think the eight maids a-milking feel about being purchased for some random chick's Christmas gift? They're not thrilled, I can tell you that much. In fact, the only proper gift in the whole song is the set of five golden rings. (Even that is rather questionable. I've always suspected the rings were stolen.)

Today's Topic #2: Zombies.

A few nights ago I had another dream about zombies. This time I was in an enormous house, and there were a bunch of other people with me. We had managed to contain the zombies within the upper and lower level of the house, but of course zombies can't just be content with what they have, so they were trying to break through to where we were. We set out to fight them, arming ourselves with items from the kitchen. I killed several zombies with a small paring knife and also with one of those little pokey things that holds your corn-on-the-cob (more effective than you'd think). The interesting thing is that this is the first time I have actually fought back against zombies in a dream. Typically, I catch one glimpse of those brain junkies lumbering toward me and immediately bolt in the other direction. I guess now that I'm pregnant the stakes are higher?

Today's Topic #3: Happy New Year.

Ahem. Happy New Year.

So you know how there are sleeper Cylons on Battlestar Galactica? How they looked and thought and worked just like everyone else, until one day when a switch flipped on in their heads and activated them? It was a scary thing to watch. They started to think back on all of their memories, and it seemed like their personalities had split in two, carrying on paths that were parallel to each other without ever quite intersecting. Boomer, for example, was programmed to shoot Adama in the face, which ticked him off royally and pretty much ensured that she would never work in that town again. And it wasn't even her fault, because the hard-wiring took over.

Well, here's the thing. I'm like a sleeper Cylon. But for babies.

A few months ago something happened to my brain. Something strange and unprecedented. I began thinking about babies on a near-constant basis. You've got to understand, I've never had much interest in having kids up to this point. They were cute enough, but I didn't really want one in my home. Now, I watch myself reacting to babies, and I think: what . . . the . . . frak. How did this happen? I always figured all that stuff about the biological clock was more myth than reality. Guess I was wrong. Not only does the clock exist, it's ticking loudly enough to be heard from space. For real. Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, dolphins are becoming disoriented and ramming into rocks.

Okay. This is what it's like. (And don't bother saying I'm crazy . . . that's common knowledge at this point.) It's as if there's this whole other voice that's sharing opinions with me, whether I want them or not. It's like with Joan of Arc, or Son of Sam, or the head growing out of that guy's stomach in Total Recall. I'll be sitting there watching my Metalocalypse ("Toki, is this the food library?"), and a voice in my head will suddenly pipe up and say, "awwwww, babies." Out of nowhere. The screen in front of me may be filled with blood and gore and diamond-encrusted codpieces and maybe a cokehead clown or two, and all I can think about is babies. And then I tear up, just a little bit. Because babies are awesome. Somewhere in my brain, Snarky Karen is shaking her head in disbelief. What's happening to me? Have I landed in the Manchurian Candidate or something?

Here's what I dreamed about last week. I dreamed that I went to the River of Babies, and I watched all the little babies swimming by. (Seriously, I used to dream about making out with Jon Stewart.) Then I reached down with my big fat butterfly net and scooped one of them out, so that I could take it home with me. It's true. This insidious alien presence has infiltrated my dreams, turning them all icky and saccharine.

You may be wondering, what does Nick think of this latest development? Has he perhaps boarded his space ship and headed for Mars in order to escape the ravening, baby-obsessed Cylon I've become? Fortunately, he has dealt with it like a champ, which is to say, he's adjusting to the idea while teasing me mercilessly. Tuns out he's a secret toaster-lover.

I leave you with this parting question: What's up with the 9-month waiting period on babies? I'm an American, and it's my constitutional right to have a baby now. Will someone please talk to the Supreme Court about this?

We aren't born hating mimes. I'm convinced of this. It's something that is a learned behavior, like coordinating your clothing or eating haggis. So whence cometh the mime-hate of late? Why am I hearing mime-hating jokes? Why am I hearing urban legend-type stories about mimes who slash, dismember, and kill? There are whole websites devoted to mime-hate. Mime-hating clubs. Is it because they refuse to talk? Is that what makes them seem somehow warped and unnatural to us? Like maybe they have telekinetic powers or something? I could understand if it were clowns. Clowns are the mime's sinister cousin. Clown-hating is a perfectly common, perfectly respectable pastime these days, and the explanation for it is a simple one--extreme creepiness. On the creepy scale, clowns rate somewhere between Jason Voorhees and those twin girls from The Shining. Have you noticed, by the way, that clown-hating is kind of a generational thing? Boomers have no problem with clowns. A Boomer can see a clown and not be disturbed in the slightest. He or she might even respond with laughter and merriment (presumably, this is the clown's goal). It's Gen X'ers and younger who have taken issue with Ronald McScary and his terrifying henchmen. But I'm straying from my original question, which is: why do we as a culture hate mimes so much? Is it just a natural outgrowth of the clown thing, a sort of Jungian color-bleed of our psychological laundry?

I suspect it's because mimes always seem to be up to something. Clowns just seem like raving lunatics, prancing around and making balloon animals and squeezing bicycle horns. At least you know what you're getting with clowns. Mimes, on the other hand, always seem to have an agenda . . . and that agenda always has something to do with a box. Getting into a box, getting out of one, moving the box around, etc. What is that about? Are they helping their invisible friends move? Are they making some sort of commentary on the human condition, pointing out how we create obstacles for ourselves where none exist? Are they re-enacting Office Space? Seriously, what's the rationale behind all this box business? It just makes them seem shifty, like maybe they're planning to stab us with a shiv while we're focused on the "box". I think if the mimes would just set up a press conference sometime to explain it to us, they could probably set our collective minds at ease.

Oh wait. Mimes don't talk. Guess we'll never get an answer.

This morning I saw a transformer blow. I had just parked behind the coffee shop when I looked across the street and noticed a bright blue light glowing near the top of a utility pole. It was amazing—I'd never actually seen blue fire before (which is probably for the best, seeing as how blue fire is VERY VERY HOT). The flame got larger and larger, and it was blazing out from the box in a corona of ethereal blue tendrils. It really was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. In fact, I was so fascinated that I didn't even think to move; I just stood there, mesmerized. I do remember having the presence of mind to estimate the distance between myself and the pole, determining that I was at minimal safe distance if it should happen to fall in my direction. I also considered taking a picture with my cellphone for posterity's sake. All at once there was a tremendously loud pop, like when you're too close to the place where they set off the fireworks, and the transformer went KA-BLAMM-O. I hunkered down by the car, and my right ear (the one turned toward the explosion) began to ache a little bit. Ouchie.

Nick and Paul pointed out that this sort of delayed reaction might not serve me well in the event of a zombie apocalypse. If you're being charged by a throng of ravenous zombies, they said, it's probably best not to stand in awe of the spectacle. Here's how that scenario would go down:

Me: Well, would you look at that! I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before. Those guys running toward me look like zombies. But they can't be. Zombies aren't real...unless they are? I wonder if they're virus zombies or radiation zombies. Man, those guys can run! And look at their shredded clothes, just like in all the movies. That one kind of reminds me of Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible...arrrrggggggh!!!....

Zombies: Nom nom! Nom nom nom!

Sigh.

What can I say? Guess I've got some training to do.

I don't know about you, but I can't watch television for more than five minutes without seeing a Spangles commercial. These ads always have a folksy, low-production kind of quality to them, as if they want you to believe that all the actors are local. They all feature a particular product, like the Western burger or the breakfast pita, and the promotion involves some sort of cutesy, themed scenario, like little kids dressed up in cowboy hats. Some of the commercials feature 50s-style songs that are disgustingly singable and tend to stick with you, like a wad of chewing gum on the underside of your brain ("M-m-m-mudslide!"). And the commercials are everywhere, infiltrating the membranes of our culture like some sort of virus. What's the reason for this juggernaut of kitsch and unpleasantness? Well, after copious research and a good deal of creative problem solving, I have arrived at an explanation. It is not, however, for the faint of heart, so I'd suggest that anyone prone to fainting be seated immediately. Ready? Okay, here it is: the invention and mass-promotion of the Spangles franchise is one of the preliminary stages in an imminent alien invasion.

Whew. There, I said it. You know that dark-haired woman who appears in nearly every Spangles commercial? The one with the ponytail? She's the supreme commander of the aliens. No question in my mind. She seems cute and benign, but trust me, one day soon we will see a Spangles commercial in which she unmasks herself. The tentacles will unfurl, the mucus-coated alien body will reveal itself, and then things will change for the human race. "Do not be afraid," she will intone, in a deep booming voice that is no longer modified by the voice box. "We are now in control of all your cities and nations. We have converted all your government buildings into processing centers, and we expect everyone to report to the nearest one within the next few days. You will not be harmed. Please do not resist. Dissent = disintegration. Thank you for your time." Soon after, we'll see alien propaganda and the institution of thought control. We'll see billboards that read "OBEY," and our only recourse will be in the form of Rowdy Roddy Piper and a 20-minute fight over sunglasses. I, for one, am not looking forward to this eventuality.

Do you still desire proof? Silly, stubborn readers. Perhaps the truth is not as self-evident as it seems to me. Perhaps it takes a bit of conjecture, a bit of imagination to arrive at this conclusion. Well just stay with me, and I shall lead you to the realm of truth, terrifying and devoid of temperature control as it may be.

The decor of Spangles is all about 50s/early 60s nostalgia. It's a tribute to the playful allure of that decade, the whole Pleasantville thing, in which everyone wears poodle skirts and no one talks about icky subjects like segregation. The interior of the restaurant is crammed full of framed pictures representing that era. Every flat surface is covered, just as every single nook and cranny is inhabited by some article of period memorabilia. There's a napkin dispenser on the table? Better jazz it up with some Elvis magnets! There's a railing by the condiment bar? Better candystripe it like a barber pole so when people see it they think: "Fun! Wow, I'm having fun!" Yep, all this stuff is supposed to be entertaining, but it's just too much, like that nightmare I had where Frankie Avalon was trying to suffocate me with a pillow. No human being could have settled on a design scheme like this. You'd have to have crazy, multi-faceted insect eyes to absorb it all, which is the first reason why I believe aliens are responsible. The other reason is that there is no thematic consistency between the items themselves. Part of the 50s/early 60s thing is the innocence factor, and yet there are plenty of oddly risque things in close proximity to more traditional ones. There is a portrait of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson placed right beside a movie poster for Reform School Girl. A photograph of The Four Letterman hangs just above a photograph of Marilyn Monroe in a bra. It's bizarre and haphazard, as if the person (or creature) who designed the place had no sense of the accepted aesthetic of the era. We've all been exposed to enough period kitsch to do a better job than this, so it's clear that no human being could be responsible for it. Well, possibly a feral child, but certain intellectual elements of the composition make this an unlikely explanation (feral children are not skilled at exercises in taxonomy). So, yeah, it all comes down to aliens. And they did a lot of research, I'll give them that. They learned enough to know that this particular period of time is one of the most celebrated eras in American history. They have embraced this mystique in order to gain our trust.

What is their ultimate goal? Do they mean us harm, or have they simply embarked on this elaborate form of infiltration so as not to startle us when they make themselves known? I have no way of knowing. But if science fiction movies have taught us anything, it's that there's a strong possibility they are here to destroy us and take all our stuff. Why the restaurants? Well, the first explanation that comes to mind involves a fundamental alteration of the contents of that steak burger you just wolfed down. After all, if they're planning to establish permanent residence on our planet, it's more convenient for them if we've all eaten each other up first. Or, it could be that the restaurants function as particle-displacing mechanisms that can "beam" their patrons to a nearby mother ship for closer scrutiny, perhaps sending them back to the exact moment they were taken and erasing their memories so that they remember nothing of the experience (especially the probe). Perhaps they want to replace us with pods so they can use our bodies as fuel. Or perhaps they realized that in order to dominate our world without our objection they need to make lots and lots of money. If they play their cards right, they could be as prolific as Starbucks within the next few years. They could overthrow every other restaurant in existence, at which point they might begin introducing soma into our burgers so that we are docile when they make their big move. Who's to say, really? They're aliens. They could do anything.

So the next time you see a Spangles commercial—and it will be soon—let it serve as a reminder to be vigilant. The dark-haired queen of the aliens is coming, and she has steak sauce.

I see that ad for The Lake House, and all I can think about is that hideous chunky turtleneck Keanu Reeves is wearing. I want to look away, but I can't. I'm obsessed with it, so I just sit there and watch with the sort of grim fascination usually reserved for slasher films and presidential elections, and when at last the sweater appears—in all its hateful glory—I feel my blood run cold. That sweater is anathema to me. It's appalling, and I can't even say exactly why.

As a general rule, I don't wear these types of sweaters because they make me feel slightly suffocated, but it has never before bothered me when another person chose to wear one. So what, you may ask, is so terrible about this particular sweater? Well, I can tell you that part of it is my personal distate for men in turtlenecks. Something about a man in a turtleneck looks affected and unnatural to me. I mean, what are they going for? Casual WASPiness? Hoping to be scouted for a J. Crew modeling contract? I don't like it. And I think Nick had the right idea about Keanu's sweater situation when he said it was probably the result of the actor bringing a piece of clothing from home, believing it would be perfect for the character. But this was a mistake, and it was the mistake of Director Alejandro Agresti to permit it on the set.

Aside from issues of fashion, however, I really couldn't pinpoint my reasons for disliking the sweater. Maybe it's because the turtleneck looks like a living organism that is about to swallow Keanu's head. I don't know. I just know that looking at it fills me with quiet dread. It's like someone used the Necronomicon to open a portal to hell and this sweater is what came out of it.

If you still don't get what I'm saying, try reading Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" again and substitute the words "Keanu's sweater" for "the old man's eye." Then perhaps you'll understand that the sweater must be stopped, for its every fiber is infused with evil. A pox on this film for unleashing such horrors on the world.

Stay tuned: The Superman Returns review will be incoming soon. Men in capes = good. Men in turtlenecks = suffering beyond measure.

Last night Lawrence had yet another werewolf invasion. We survived it splendidly this time, although a few out-of-towners ended up in the hospital with minor contusions. How was it, you may ask, that we managed to defend ourselves successfully against an assault by such dangerous creatures? Well ever since the infamous raid of 1863, in which William Quantrill and his men burned the city to the ground, people here have been a bit anxious about guarding our borders. Determined that such an attack should never again occur without warning, our forefathers went and hired themselves a town crier. This tradition has continued through the years and is still in practice today. In essence, this elected individual is the caretaker of the city. He or she volunteers to live in a tent outside the city limits and alert everyone when there is an imminent threat. It's a system that served us well last night—when the town crier came riding into town on his Vespa, shouting over a bullhorn about a coming werewolf attack, we had just enough time to fortify our homes and cast a smattering of protective voodoo incantations. Then a massive thunderstorm rolled in, and out of the storm came werewolves. It was an impressive sight. Each werewolf was at least seven feet tall, and there were at least three hundred of them, running in formation like some sort of crazed football team.

Interesting Sidenote: Hundreds of years ago in Kansas, werewolves used to roam the plains in massive herds, just like buffalo. However, their continued existence has been jeopardized in recent years by the vagaries of fashion. This season in particular I've been seeing a lot of sweaters that have been trimmed with a swatch of real werewolf fur. (This type of fur has got a lovely silky quality to it, and the sheer bulk of it makes for a dramatic appearance.) Look, I'm not going to preach at you, but I can tell you that I just wouldn't feel right about wearing a holiday sweater trimmed with werewolf fur unless I had killed the beast myself in self-defense. If that ever happens, though, I will wear the pelt as a badge of honor. Like a Viking trophy.

At any rate, the werewolves in our town were tough critters, and it took a mountain of silver bullets to bring them down. Cheers to those paranoid militia guys, whose massive armamentarium finally came in handy. But the episode has gotten me thinking. This whole werewolf thing has some serious philosophical, even ontological, implications. What goes on in the mind of a werewolf? Unlike vampires, who are actually dead (and therefore more likely to harbor a somewhat perverse worldview), werewolves are living human beings who simply transform into monsters whenever Andy Williams sings "Moon River." With this in mind, what sort of attitude would the afflicted have toward their own humanity? That is to say, would their behavior while 'wolved' be voluntary? Would they retain the same sense of conscience that is present in their human form? Do they know what they are doing? One could say that they just do what they do, and they should not be blamed for their violent deeds any more than an actual wolf should be blamed for killing a rabbit for food. But this relies heavily on assumption. The real question is, can it be proved empirically?

A Brief Experiment to Determine Whether Werewolves Have Free Will

Question: Do werewolves have free will?

Hypothesis: Werewolves do not have free will.

Methods: Standard inquiry—each werewolf was asked to fill out a questionnaire designed to analyze his or her life choices, as well as to participate in a thrice-monthly phone survey.

Results: More than 90 percent of participants responded to the inquiry by shredding the paper questionnaire, growling in a menacing manner over the phone, and attempting to devour the individuals who had been sent to collect the results. The remaining 10 percent defecated on the questionnaire.

Conclusion: Clearly, these werewolves don't experience free will, or they would not have exhibited such hostility in the presence of our researchers. I mean, who doesn't respect the scientific method? Crazy werewolves, that's who.

So there you have it.

If you're really looking for information about werewolves, of course, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence throughout history. (This is often referred to as "lore" by those who have never witnessed a swarm of these creatures in their hometown.) But in the arena of pop culture, werewolves are a somewhat neglected subject. They are not as hip as vampires, and they don't have the comic appeal of zombies. All they really have going for them is that that they can grow lots of hair and ingest epic portions of meat. By itself, this behavior is not particularly impressive—most people know somebody like this who isn't a werewolf at all, just a slob. If you examine the times when werewolves do appear in the media, however, you'll observe an interesting trend. The original, definitive werewolf role was played by a barely pubescent Michael Landon (I Was a Teenage Werewolf). This iconic figure was recreated years later—letterjacket and all—by both Michael J. Fox and Michael Jackson. From this we learn a very important fact. All werewolves are named Michael. Naturally, this doesn't mean that every man named Michael is a werewolf (although this is probably the case). It just means we should keep a close watch on anyone with that name. Consider the following:

1. Michael Douglas (Wall Street werewolf)
2. Michael Madsen (redneck werewolf)
3. Michael York ("do you bite your thumb at me" werewolf)
4. Michael Crichton (Jurassic werewolf)
5. Mike Tyson (ear-fetish werewolf)
6. Michael Rosenbaum (kryptonite-slinging werewolf)
7. Michael Jordan (athletic werewolf)
8. Michael Caine (aristocratic werewolf)
9. Michael the Archangel (holy werewolf, Batman)
10. Michael Meyers (British werewolf with bad teeth)
11. Michael Myers (werewolf who lives down the street from Jamie Lee Curtis)
12. Michael Ian Black (sarcastic werewolf)
13. Dangermike (guy-I-went-to-grad-school-with werewolf)
14. Michael Bolton (sucktastic music werewolf)

Whether or not we are ready to acknowledge them, werewolves are a part of everyday life, especially for those of us living in the heartland. They are a fearsome species for sure, but with a little preparation they can be dispatched with minimal casualties. My advice: get yourself a town crier. Have a good supply of two-by-fours on hand. And remember, although a certain beer company may advertise its product as "the silver bullet," it's better to use actual ballistics in a time of werewolf crisis. (Unless of course your goal is to get so trashed you pass out and sleep through the attack. Then beer is just the thing.)

Peace out.

The Rolling Stones are on tour again. Can you believe it? These notorious bad boys are well into their 60s, and yet they are embarking on another cash-infused circuit around the country. Once again, Mick Jagger will strut around a stage, his lips still puffy from those childhood bee stings, and regale the audience with "Jumpin' Jack Flash" for the one hundred millionth time. Their musical inspiration may have languished somewhat in recent decades, but their unflagging stamina and determination defies all logic. There is only one conclusion to draw:

They are the Undead.

Please know that I'm not talking about zombies. As you all know by now, I love zombies. Zombies are funny. They are like cavemen with rheumatism, lumbering about in search of brains, brains, brains (the reason for this is that most of them have the IQ of a Beernut). Any society that is able to avoid stupid, panicky mistakes should be able to deal with a herd of marauding zombies in short order. No, what I'm talking about is vampires. Vampires are smart. They are the Mensa brats of the monster world, and if they are organized, they can pose a serious problem to the survival of the human race. This is why we must keep a very close eye on the Rolling Stones.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the implementation of certain screening procedures on their tours seems to confirm my view. At all shows, for example, concert-goers are being frisked upon entry to the venue. They are not being checked for cameras or traditional weapons, however. Instead, their pockets are emptied of crosses and other Christian memorabilia. Those who have eaten garlic in the past few days are forced to wear a neon wristband. Bottles of water are examined closely, and one young man was even ejected from a concert not long ago when it was thought that he was wearing a clerical collar. It's all very sinister.

Of course, this is a difficult theory to prove. One certainly can't go by their appearance. Vampires are typically youthful looking, but every member of the Stones looks like Phyllis Diller after a combine accident. It's my guess that the youth effect wears off a few hours after the blood is consumed; however, I have no credible information to support this conjecture. And then there's the issue of why they are driven to tour at all, when so many of their peers are donning white socks and shuffleboarding in Florida. Some might say that their persistence is due to a sense of immediacy gleaned from their advancing years. Perhaps they keep rocking because at their back "they always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near." It's possible. But I think it's more likely they're out for blood.

Here's a quick vampire checklist for reference:

Do the subjects emerge only at night?

Check.

Do the subjects live a generally decadent lifestyle?

Check.

Do the subjects revel in the seduction of young, adoring women who might be utilized as blood sources?

Check.

I think it's pretty clear from the checklist that my assumptions are correct. Why haven't we heard about this before? How could a secret of this magnitude be concealed from the American public? Well, as I think we've seen, the public is predisposed to believe only those facts that jive with their pre-existing schemas about the world. The Rolling Stones are a beloved institution, and it will be tough to convince people that they mean us harm. But this is exactly what all persons of conscience must do, because until the nation awakens to the danger, this malevolent crew of vampires will continue to prowl the nation, feasting on the blood of innocent music enthusiasts.

Please help. Call 1-800-MICK-IS-UNDEAD, and find out what you can do today. Operators are standing by.

Saturday afternoon, Nick and I were feeling pretty bored. It was hot outside, and our usual industrious spirit (haha) had gone the way of the parachute pant. This is how we ended up anchored to the sofa for hours on end, watching John Carpenter's Body Bags on television.

We'd never heard of this movie, but how could we not give it a chance? After all, we're talking about John Carpenter, the man who brought us the Halloween films, Escape from L.A., Big Trouble in Little China, and—my personal favorite—They Live. This is a man with vision. True, it may be the sort of vision you'd have if you drank a bottle of Jagermeister and visited the Mutter Museum, but it's vision, nonetheless.

Body Bags is presented in a narrative format and features three horror vignettes. The first one includes Louis from Revenge of the Nerds (who is apparently the dad on Lizzie McGuire). The second one stars Mike Hammer (yes, I know that's not his real name). And the third one...well, the third one has Luke Skywalker. The narrator, a deathly pale coroner played by John Carpenter himself, introduces each segment with the kind of campy, comic enthusiasm that should be familiar to anyone who has ever watched Tales from the Crypt or any of those other late-night gems. Morbid puns abound.

The first segment was classic hitchhiker-brand horror stuff, depicting a young woman who runs the graveyard shift at a remote gas station. As she's showing up for work, she just happens to hear on her radio that there is a serial killer loose in the area. You don't say! Overall, this segment is so predictable you feel like you could almost quote the actors' lines along with them. But this familiarity got me thinking about why it is that certain horror devices work on our brains in the first place. After all, most horror films hash over the same-old storylines: haunted house, vampires/zombies, possessed dolls, teenagers out camping by the lake, etc. Every year, a deluge of horror films pours into the theaters fitting one of these existing formulas, and people flock to see them each time, even though they offer very little in the way of innovation or originality. You'd think people wouldn't be scared by this stuff anymore. But watching this tired old serial killer premise, I realized that these stories are using known techniques to grab at something primal in our brains. One of the most effective techniques a horror film can utilize is the creation of a safe place for the hero or heroine (in this case, it was the gas station booth), which is a fulcrum for the viewer's sensation of danger. It all seems rooted in the childlike need to have someplace that is protected, a home base that you can touch in order to be impervious to all harm. The brilliant thing about this is that by creating this one sanctuary where you believe with all your heart that no harm can come to the character, everything outside its perimeter seems that much more terrifying. We see the tiny gas station booth glowing like a beacon of safety in the midst of utter darkness—an architectural triumph of good over evil. And when our heroine is forced to leave her impenetrable fortress, as we know she will have to sooner or later, the viewer knows instinctively what's at stake. (I know it's weird that this is the kind of stuff I think about when watching horror films, but I can't seem to help it.)

The second segment of Body Bags was about Mike Hammer's thinning hair. This was by far the funniest segment of the three, and a good portion of it was spent just showing this character as he tries to camouflage his thinning locks using everything from comb-overs to spray-on hair. In desperation, he finally visits the office of a doctor who has been advertising a revolutionary method for permanently regrowing natural hair. (The doctor is the villain from Time Bandits, and in my experience, his presence in any film is shorthand for EVIL.) When Mike Hammer inquires about what is in the revolutionary new formula that will be applied to his follicles, he is told simply, "it's patented." Danger, Will Robinson! But Mike Hammer doesn't give this a second thought. He undergoes the procedure, and the next morning, he unwraps his bandages to find he has grown a mane of long, rock-star hair that reaches to his waist (the style he selected was called "the Stallion"). I won't give away what happens next, because you might want to see it for yourself. Haha, who am I kidding? None of you are ever going to watch this movie. So here's what happens. The new hair changes Mike Hammer's life, just as he hoped it would. But before long, it's growing abnormally quickly and sprouting from weird places, like his nose and inside his mouth. Also, the tips are twitching in an oddly lifelike way; when he trims his hair, he hears these weird little shrieks. Finally, he wakes one morning to discover hair growing all over his face, including on his forehead and under his eyes, and he storms into the doctor's office, demanding an explanation for what has happened. This is when Dr. Sinister calmly says to him, "you earthlings are so predictable." What, what, what?!!! That's right, there are a bunch of aliens on earth, and the only thing they can eat is human brains. They implanted these freaky parasitic worms onto Mike Hammer's head so as to harvest his gray matter more easily. The reason he had hairs coming out his nose, mouth, and forehead is that these little wormy parasites had already grown through his brain. Zoinks!

The third segment, set somewhere in the South, begins sort of like Major League and finishes up like Stir of Echoes. The easiest way to explain the gist of this section is to tell you about this weird, pulpy novel I read as a teenager. It was called "The Hand of Cain," and in the book, a murderer's hand was surgically implanted onto his brother's wrist. As you might expect, the brother found that his new hand made him want to kill people. This is almost exactly what happens in the movie, except that it's an eye and not a hand. At the first, successfull baseball player and family man Luke Skywalker gets in a car accident (whoah, just like real life!), and he loses an eye. After the transplant of his new eye (which is a generous donation from a man who was just executed for multiple murders), he starts seeing freaky things and digging in the backyard for hours at a time. Eventually, he decides killing people would be a rather good idea. Now, Luke and his wife are a religious pair, and I figured out pretty quickly that we were headed for a fantastic biblical tie-in with this whole eye thing. The movie did not disappoint in this respect. At the very end, Luke looks meaningfully at a pair of garden shears. The next moment, we see drops of blood spattering on the pages of an open Bible. The camera closes in on the page, revealing the passage: "if your eye offends thee, pluck it out." Didn't see that coming. HAHAHAHAHHA. Yep. Campy campy campy.

Well that's about it. John Carpenter's Body Bags is mild-schlock, Saturday afternoon horror fare. I'm not recommending it—I just wanted to tell you about it. If you want a film that's actually interesting, complex, and provocative, you should watch Melvin Goes to Dinner.

Several years ago, I met a certain individual at a New Year's party hosted by one of my friends. We'll call this individual "Joe." Joe seemed intellectual and nice, but there was no particular reason why I should remember him (he wasn't one of my drunken crushes or anything), so once I got home from the party, I pretty much forgot about him. Since then, however, I have been troubled by a peculiar and unsettling phenomenon, the cosmic ramifications of which are too great to even fathom.

Joe is everywhere.

It's true. Joe is in the coffee shop, he's on the street corner by the library, he's walking into the library just ahead of me. Sometimes he is walking out of the grocery store at 10 a.m. just as I am going in to pick up some picnic supplies. He's never in the same place twice. It's uncanny. He's like a benign-looking character in a Bergman film whose presence is somehow meant to symbolize the hero's mortality.

Now, don't be too hasty to chuckle at me, Gentle Reader. I know very well that once you become aware of something, you're more likely to notice it in the future. If someone tells you that your lucky number is three, you'll start to notice threes nested everywhere in the tapestry of your life: in your phone number, on your tax form, in the number of dog bites you've gotten in the past month. You don't notice the fours, because no one told you to look for fours. A friend of mine recently told me the same thing happened with him and the band Sleater-Kinney. Once he found out about them, he couldn't go outside without seeing a flyer or hearing someone mention them. It's really just a matter of what your brain is attuned to. But please believe me that none of this can account for the bizarre frequency with which I see Joe. Lawrence is not a big town, but there are enough people here that most of the time you are surrounded by strangers. I may casually run into one of my friends once every few months or so; and yet Joe, who has no significance in my life except as a curiosity, seems to crop up every time I grab a slice of pizza or step into a bookstore.

This unnerves me, but not for the reason you would imagine. I'm not worried that Joe is stalking me, or anything. He probably doesn't even remember who I am. I just worry that maybe my life is actually a movie and that maybe he is the director (a la The Truman Show), surveying things from the sidelines. I worry that his presence means my life isn't what I thought it was, that maybe what I've always thought of as free will was really just me trundling along a predestined path, toward a dismal and inexorable end.

What's that, Gentle Reader? I'll have you know I'm not taking any meds at all, except those given to me by the overlords to suppress my staggering intelligence. I mean seriously, how could you even suggest such a thing? Are you paranoid or something?

So last night Nick and I watched Carnival of Souls, one of my favorite movies of all time. As usual, I was properly spooked (it may be low budget, but it's artfully creepy), and Nick had taken on his usual role of Mystery Science Theater film critic, which is what he does when we watch horror films. This is to keep me from getting too absorbed in the movie (sometimes I have a problem separating fantasty from reality—I know this surprises you). And although this little comedy routine is ostensibly for my benefit, it's clear to me that he just doesn't want me keeping him awake all night going "What's that? Did you hear that? Something's wrong—go check the kitchen. Oh my god, Jason Voorhees was here!" at which point he'll have to explain to me that what I'm looking at is a plastic pasta strainer, not a hockey mask. It's all kind of a fun diversion, but Nick doesn't seem to agree. Sometimes he's gone when I'm watching the movie, and then he has to deal with the repercussions anyway. The night I watched Ringu, I didn't sleep at all. I couldn't even turn the lights off I was so scared. I just sat there in bed with my Gameboy and a desk lamp on, turning toward the door every few seconds to make sure the girl with the Andie MacDowell hair wasn't shambling out of the television.

I'll admit it; movies have a bit too much power over me.

So that's why Nick was doing his joker routine again last night. "Heh heh, check out her hair," etc. As the film progressed, I was staying within the recommended limits of terror. Then came the denouement, when Nick said something fantastic. If you haven't seen it, there's a segment where the heroine is running through an abandoned pavilion in the desert, being chased by ghouls who keep popping out from behind things. Nick said, "what is this, a Beatles movie?" and I seriously almost peed my pants laughing.

All great discoveries are inspired by moments like these, so now I've decided to conduct an experiment that I think may be of great benefit to humanity. I'm going to sync up Carnival of Souls with A Hard Day's Night, and see what happens. You've all heard the business about The Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon, right? Well, trust me, this will be better. I don't know what brilliant things may arise out of this, what knowledge I may be able to glean about the human psyche and the purpose behind human existence. But the possibilities are infinite, because in the crawl space between laughter and terror, there is a tiny rat with glowing fur named Illumination. Scientia est potentia!

You will be able to find my exhibit on Table 3, between the homemade battery and the volcano model.

In a new book, The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a goodly number of the people we see on the street, in restaurants, at family reunions even, are sociopaths. That's right—sociopaths. Traditional estimates of sociopathy among the general population have averaged about one percent, but Stout claims that these are outdated, partly because scientists previously assumed only men were capable of sociopathy. Instead, she estimates that around four percent of the people you encounter (i.e., 1 in every 25 people) are sociopaths, meaning they are incapable of compassion or empathy and are entirely lacking in conscience. They are not capable of experiencing authentic attachments with others. Basically, they are creepy zombie people who live only for themselves. Now keep in mind, the behavior of sociopaths is not necessarily violent, just deceitful and manipulative, so don't expect people to clue you in to their diagnosis with anything as obvious as a murder spree. Mostly, sociopaths just enjoy controlling others and making them jump. Does this sound like anyone you know?

Let's apply the data:

When you're in a theater, at least 4 and as many as 8 people are sociopaths.

When dining in a capacious restaurant, there may be as many as 10-12 people who are sociopaths.

At the ballpark, at least 1,600 of the people in attendance are sociopaths.

Three people in my high school band were sociopaths.

Of the total number of registered Kansas voters, 67,774 are sociopaths (which explains a lot).

At a large wedding, 20 people will be sociopaths.

If you've ever known a La Belle Dame sans Merci or a Casanova, he or she may have been a sociopath.

Eight people at my previous place of employment were sociopaths. I can tell you exactly who they were, too.

At least one person in every orchestra is a sociopath.

According to the formula, there are 21 sociopaths in Congress, but I'm going to guess that the real number is much, much higher.

Of the extras used in the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 800 were sociopaths.

Statistically speaking, you are probably a sociopath. I will no longer be lending any of you money.

—three sticks of doom

It takes a lot of guts to use a Johnny Cash song in a zombie movie, but Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead does it, and does it well. Imagine scenes of rampant carnage, wanton destruction, and the occasional close-up zombie glamour shot, all set against the folksy backdrop of "The Man Comes Around," Cash's famed song about the End Times. Brilliant, in my opinion. And this is just one example of the kind of detailed craftsmanship that makes this film so fun, gruesome and, ultimately, watchable.

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 remake of the 1978 George Romero film of the same name. It was skillfully shot, with lots of long, angled camera shots that create a sense of the surreality and . . . well . . . wrongness in everyday landscapes. The result is that you're a little creeped out before anything at all has happened, and of course, that's just how the filmmakers want you to be. We follow a small group of survivors as they take refuge in a local mall, and the film expertly captures the incongruous experience of walking through this shrine to capitalism with the persistent drone of zombies trying to get in. Even zombies love the mall, you see. Dead or no, they're still Americans.

The group is composed of Sarah Polley (a nurse), Ving Rhames (a cop), some generic-looking guy who sells TVs at Best Buy (the laconic cowboy-type), Mekhi Phifer (an ex-con), and his pregnant wife (a pregnant wife). They arm themselves with the best weapons they can find in the mall (croquet mallets and what-not), before encountering three security guards who are vigorously defending their little fiefdom. The guards are led by the ruthless, arrogant, semi-mulleted CJ. (Oh, and by the way, CJ has a character arc. A character arc in a zombie movie, aren't you impressed? Usually I find that character development is to horror films what caviar is to ham sandwiches—you just don't see them combined that often. But then I discovered CJ and his amazing character arc. Now, I'm not saying that Dawn of the Dead is a Bildungsroman in the classic style or anything, but I do think a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t is in order.)

The funniest thing to me is that this film seems to take place completely outside the common mythology of zombies. None of the characters are able to recognize the zombies for what they are, even though the creatures have all the traditional characteristics associated with the recently demised.

Guy #1: "What are they?"
Guy #2: (dramatic pause) "I don't know."

Um . . . they're lurching around with their arms held out in front of them, groaning and feeding on human flesh. Is this really a tough one? Also, the characters can't seem to get a handle on how zombie-ism is transferred. At one point, a wide-eyed Sarah Polley proclaims, "I think it's the bites!" Oh, you think? It must be all that medical training that helped you make that jump in logic. I mean, just because everyone who is bitten turns into a ravening zombie himself . . . .

There are no real explanations for the plague, although the televangelists have their ideas about it. Gay marriage. Abortion. The usual suspects. People are supposedly misbehaving worse than usual, and now "Hell is overflowing." Go figure.

While stranded in the mall, our group spends a lot of time up on the roof, gazing down at the sea of zombies. While up there, Ving Rhames befriends a guy named Andy, who owns the gun shop across the street. For awhile, the men use whiteboards to play chess. And when they're bored with that, they play "Hollywood Squares," a game where one of them writes the name of a famous person on the whiteboard, and the other has to pick off the zombie in the crowd who looks like that person. Jay Leno . . . Burt Reynolds . . . Rosie O'Donnell . . . you get the idea.

This movie goes places that zombie movies have never gone before. Part of it is the extremely convincing gore shots (not for the faint of heart), but mostly what I'm thinking of is the craziness that occurs with regard to Mekhi Phifer's pregnant wife. She gets bitten during one of the attacks, and he keeps her sequestered in one of the baby supply stores, where she gets progressively more ill. Eventually, she dies, gets zombified, and starts going for his jugular. Determined to save his family unit, Mekhi straps his wife down and delivers the baby himself. I think we all know the result . . . zombie baby! Hilarious, growling-grinning zombie baby! It's a little like the lizard baby in V, but even more funny, if you can imagine that. Anyway, the trio gets out of hand and has to be dispatched, and an Old West-style gunfight ensues. Great stuff.

I won't give away any more of Dawn of the Dead, because you need to see it for yourself. You get to hear some great music, like "Down with the Sickness," performed by Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine, and the closing credits bring you the Jim Carroll punk anthem, "People Who Died," which has never been put to better use. See it today.

Coming soon: a review of Shaun of the Dead. (sinister laughter)

Way back in January, when my site had only been up for a few days, I noticed something odd in my daily usage logs. Something called a "Googlebot" had crawled my site. Somehow, through all the chaos and pablum of the internet, it had found my infant site—barely cleansed of its amniotic fluid, in fact—and indexed it. This was kind of cool because it meant that my site would show up in Google searches when you typed in "Karen Vaughn solitude" or "Nudist Colony of the Dead" or just "Terrible Movies." Huzzah for that, right? But the image that kept insinuating itself on my brain was that of a tiny, heinously creepy insect creature, brushing its sticky little legs and feelers on every page of my site. I couldn't help it. The Googlebots creeped me out.

How did the Googlebot find my site? It was still a wallflower then, clinging self-consciously to its glass of punch while everyone else danced. No one had linked to me yet. No one but my family and Nick even knew it was there. And yet somehow, this odd, roving, not-quite entity had discovered my hiding place and forced me out on the dance floor, alongside the cool kids with the feathered hair. It was disconcerting. A neon sign reading "Big Brother" was illuminated in my head.

I think it's partly the name. Googlebot. It sounds too much like nanobots, those freaky little futuristic mechanisms that are supposed to crawl around through your insides and attack cancer or syphilis on a molecular level. Now, I'm fully prepared to accept these medical marvels, although I don't relish the idea of robot armies re-enacting the Battle of Hastings in my liver. My real is that they would go all Skynet and turn against the people they were meant to help. Maybe they'd start demanding "protection money," and if you didn't pay up in a timely manner, they'd convert all your white blood cells into refried beans or something. Maybe that's what I'm afraid will happen with the Googlebots. Sounds implausible? Well, so did the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine when it was first invented by Leonardo da Vinci in the late 1500s.

Googlebots also call to mind that terrible 80s film (not a Great Terrible Film, just a terrible film) with Tom Selleck in it. I think it was called "Runaway," and there were these robot spider assassins that scuttled all over the place and attacked Gene Simmons from KISS. They almost got Tom Selleck, too, but his mojo saved him. Are these really the sorts of things we want prowling around our sites, indexing us and making us join the collective against our will? Is resistance, in fact, futile? Maybe I should launch an investigation into the nefarious Googlebot Illuminati, which no doubt control every aspect of this fractured world we live in.

Or maybe I should just lay off the Neal Stephenson for awhile.

#10. Convert to Shinto.

#9. Be caught with a little boy.

#8. Publicly acknowledge his blood bargain with Lucifer.

#7. Sell the Statue of Liberty to Colombia for a couple kilos of Bogota's finest.

#6. Host a pharmaceutical company shopping spree at the Federal Reserve building.

#5. Die.

#4. Use the Force to strangle his top admiral on national television.

#3. Accidentally nuke a third-world nation out of existence, then blame the mistake on intelligence failures, then shrug the whole thing off with a good-old Texas guffaw.

#2. Kill the firstborn son of every family in America.

#1. Trick question. Apparently, Bush could do any of these things and be re-elected. Way to go, America. You make me real proud.

It all started because I'm planning to dress as Leela from Futurama for Halloween this year. I have been scouring Google Images for pictures, looking for examples of Leela's wardrobe. So far, I've pulled together the basic outfit—white tank top, black pants—and I've even made my own arm band thing out of gray/blue felt and Velcro. The hardest part will be figuring out how to fashion Leela's trademark single eyeball into something that will fit on my head and look right, but that will also be transparent enough for me to see through. But don't worry about it. I'm a smart girl, and I'm sure I'll figure it out.

In the process of doing this research, however, I uncovered more naughty pictures of our dear Leela than I could ever have imagined. These are mostly amateur drawings of Leela in sexy lingerie, in a variety of Barbarella-style outfits, or just plain-old buck naked. There is also a startling amount of fan fiction, detailing exactly what it is that Leela and Fry do behind closed spaceship doors (hint: it's not spot-cleaning the computer panels). I guess this shouldn't surprise me, but it does. The sheer volume of it, anyway.

Note to the perpetrators: What kind of lives do you people lead? Regular girlie pictures are not cutting it, and now you have to expand your repertoire to include cartoons? The Internet should be a place for fun, whimsy, and a smattering of factual information—not a place where people objectify animated women (this is the point where I pretend I've never heard of manga). It's just disturbing and wrong. Please stop it. You're giving me the creeps.

So I've decided that I'm done with all of this depravity. I'm done with the Internet. If these sickos are going to impinge on my sunny little cyberworld, I'm just going to take my ball and go home. I can make do without it, right? Right? I mean, I can probably still find that library card in the bottom of the utility drawer. I don't need to check the news sites every morning. And I'm sure it won't be a big deal when I can no longer instantly check the cast of any given movie on imdb.com (I can live without knowing whether the girl who played Cusack's ex-girlfriend in Better Off Dead is the same girl from the Highlander TV series). I guess I don't even need to do my blog anymore.

Okay, so yeah...I've decided. It's over, folks. Maybe I'll do one last post so you can see the completed costume, but that'll definitely be it. Then I'll be done. I can get on with the rest of my life, and all you disturbed citizens out there can resume your lurid speculations about the cast of Teen Titans.

Sickos.

I walked into the store today and saw a zombie there
With green detritus in her teeth and flowers in her hair.
Inquiring first about her health, I asked her one thing more,
Then tipped my hat to Zombie Girl and went on with my chores.

I walked into the bank today and saw a vampire there.
Drops of blood leaked from his fangs and gore was in his hair.
I introduced myself at once and asked him something grand.
He gladly answered, said 'good-bye', and left with cash in hand.

I went to Dairy Queen today and saw a werewolf there
With wildness in his bulging eyes and gobs and gobs of hair.
I bought us each a cone, then posed the question of the day.
He whispered soft into my ear and blithely walked away.

The question that I asked these three (if you'd like to be told):
I asked them all what frightened them, what made their blood run cold.
What monstrous thing could spook such beings, and activate their fears?
They each replied without a pause, "the thought of four more years."

(Brought to you by Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves in Support of Kerry. This ad is not paid for or endorsed by any candidate.)

The new Exorcist movie is going to suck. I'm sure of it, and I'll tell you why. William Friedkin will not be directing it, and William Peter Blatty will not be writing it. Renny Harlin is the director of Exorcist: The Beginning, and if his previous films are any indication (Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea), there will be lots of sinewy, muscled men and women who must take their clothes off for reasons of safety. In other words, this newest foray into demon possession may be a deliciously bad flick, but it definitely, absolutely, positively will not be a good one.

Believe it or not, I only saw The Exorcist about four years ago, when they re-released it into the theaters. I figured the film would be so dated, so hokey, that it would have very little effect on me. Maybe I could even laugh my way through it. Turns out, the only truly funny thing was how sorely I had misjudged this movie. It did, in fact, scare the hell out of me.

Mostly, I attribute The Exorcist's longevity to the unusual combination of intellect, emotion, and deft eeriness cultivated by the film. The story is engaging on a number of levels. First of all, there's a lot of humanity to it. The characters are fully dimensional; they are much more than the typical robotic caricatures, which make such a shallow impression that the audience doesn't care when Jason or Freddy catches up to them. (Most horror films these days are like flashy little vehicles that run on carnage and produce an enormous stench.) Second—and this surprised me—this movie is as much about class disparities as anything. We see a working class priest, who doesn't have the funds to place his senile mother in a good nursing home. She ends up in an asylum instead. Later, we see a wealthy actress bringing her disturbed daughter to every specialist in the country, searching for answers. The girl is treated with the latest technology, and the doctors all have an enlightened approach toward mental health. It's like the two families are living in different times. But then comes the great equalizer—Satan. Makes me wonder if anyone has ever included a discussion of The Exorcist in their dissertation on the principles of Marxism.

Sure, the head spinning around looks silly—it's been parodied too many times not to—but there's such a sense of menace hanging over the film that you can never even relax enough to emit a nervous laugh. Most artfully, the movie toys with your anticipation, exploiting the underrated conceit that what you can't see is always scarier than what you can. This is what my nightmares were like as a child—something not quite glimpsed that disappears around the corner, disembodied laughter, a feeling of wrongness when you walk into a room. The demons in your own imagination can torment you better than whatever gory abomination the filmmaker throws onto the screen. Good horror films make you do it to yourself.

Other movies and books that have scared me enough to keep me awake at night include:

Stephen King's rapturously creepy novel, Pet Sematary. Again, the effect is largely due to the emotion that fuels the characters' choices. All of us have lost pets and relatives, haven't we? In the depths of grief, wouldn't we have done anything to have them back, even if we knew they wouldn't be the same upon their return? This emotional resonance gives the story a sense of inevitability, like a runaway train that always ends at the same terrible destination.

Ringu. This is the Japanese horror classic that inspired the American film, The Ring. Ringu was outrageous and funny, especially in translation. But then there was that tape . . . . The tape that causes all the ruckus in the film is full of bizarre, surrealist images, and although these images are not logical, they are nevertheless disturbing on a primal level. Sure enough, when I got in bed that night, I could not stop thinking about that gangly girl with the long hair combed over her face, crawling slowly towards—then out of—my television screen. When the lights went out, I imagined her crawling through the living room, hallway and, finally, the bedroom. So I stayed awake. I played Tetris until the sun came up again. And I'll admit something further. When a full seven days went by without incident, I breathed a secret sigh of relief.

This business with the TV recalls a lesser known horror film, Videodrome, starring Debbie Harry and directed by David Cronenberg. The plot in a nutshell: there's a snuff TV show called Videodrome that causes hallucinations and brain damage in the people who watch it. Also stars a young James Woods as the bumbling everyman who must stop the people behind this abomination. Oh, and there's a character named Bianca O'Blivion. Doesn't get better than that.

Kubrick's The Shining. I've heard that Stephen King hated—I mean really hated—this movie. The focus on alcoholism as the true killer wasn't there, and he thought Nicholson was way over the top. The first may be true, but the film certainly gives a grimly accurate portrait of what it means to be in an abusive family, depicting everything from the excuse-making to the violent, irrational outbursts. Even before the crazy sets in, it's clear that Jack Torrance is pretty disturbed. So when you hear the Dysfunctional Trio is going to be holed up together in the hotel of doom, you just know it's going to be bad bad bad. It's this set-up that makes the hotel scenes so alarming. In particular, the twin girls scared me; the blood pouring from the elevator scared me; the naked woman in the shower scared me—even more once she was covered with pustules and boils; and the scenes where Jack stares off into space with a demented grin on his face scared me. It's all classically creepy, except for the part at the end where Shelley Duvall runs around the hotel in a panic and seemingly stumbles onto the set of Evil Dead: 3 1/2. How did that crap with the skeletons get in there? Did Kubrick owe somebody a favor? This kind of effect is much more at home in a movie like Mars Attacks!. As for Nicholson being over the top? Not on your life. Well, okay, maybe. A bit.

Jay Anson's Amityville Horror. This book frightened me enough that I had to stop halfway through. To this day, I have not finished it. The stuff with the pig, the blood oozing from the walls . . . . you know what? I'm not going to finish this item, either.

Event Horizon. I cannot express how terrified I was on first watching this film, especially since I was expecting it to be a happy-go-lucky space adventure movie. (Danger, Will Robinson!) It was promising to begin with. There was the regal Laurence Fishburne, the willowy Joely Richardson, the pudgy Sam Neill. But then the movie went to hell. Literally. Before I knew what was happening, the screen was filled with gore and ghosts and corpsesicles. There was a commander inexplicably speaking in Latin while his crew tore each other to pieces ("Liberate tutame ex inferis"). About the time Sam Neill's wife showed up without any eyeballs, I shut my own eyes as tightly as I could, thinking this would somehow lessen the terror. It only made things worse. The sounds from the screen collaborated with my brain to project the nightmare of the century onto the back of my eyelids. In the end, I was so spooked I had to sleep on my neighbor's floor.

About a year ago, the SciFi channel started broadcasting this film incessantly, and I made a point of watching it every time, hoping overexposure would blunt its effect on me. This homemade therapy has had some effect: namely, I now know the dialogue by heart, and I can avert my eyes during the gory, evil-universe scenes I don't wish to see again.

But I still can't watch it alone.

Me zombie. Name Orwell. Me born long time ago, die, then go into ground. One morning, terrible noise wake me. Like God fingernails on big chalkboard. (Me literary—want write poem book one day.) Me stand up in graveyard, see other zombies standing, too. Moon out, and air full of green fog. Music play like at carnival. Weird.

"What do now?" me ask.

Other zombies shrug. "Guess eat brains."

Me know you curious, but please no ask why eat brains. Taste good—what can say? Flavor like peanut buster parfait. Good for body, too. Everything growing zombie needs. Except zombies not grow. Me stretch truth to make story good. Me next Mark Twain.

So me and zombie friends go to town at night, eat brains. We not want hurt people. Give brains, and no one get hurt. Why make so hard? No run, no scream, no tear hair and claw at face. Give brains. You no use them anyway. What? Why we here? We not know. Give brains.

Sometimes miss mother. Sometimes miss body—having organs that not fall out when Orwell run. Miss TV box, too. Since dead, have no depth perception. See only two dimensions, like dog. Cruel. Cruel is life of zombie.

Me hope meet pretty zombie girl one day, so can raise zombie kids. Me know one zombie girl now, but zombie girl not like Orwell much. Zombie girl only make smiles at zombie with big muscles. Zombie girl is shallow tramp. Orwell say too much. Orwell not misogynist. Only little sad. Orwell sorry.

Must go now. Must water garden with tears (this how poem makers talk). Not forget, please—when see Orwell in house at night, will know what must do. Give brains.

Check out my brand-spanking new 404 page! Now, in glorious Technicolor! With croutons!

There once was a derelict bus;
The ghosts drove it each night at dusk.
It roared and it reeled,
Then came back to the field,
As if it had always been thus.

Did you know that a Dracula amusement park has recently opened in Vlad the Impaler's homeland? It's located in Snagov, Romania, near Bucharest, and it's where the remains of Vlad Tepes are said to be buried. I know nothing else about it, except that I want to go there very, very badly. It's only a zillion times cooler than that brain-dead Oz amusement park they keep trying to build in my beloved eastern Kansas (may Dorothy rot in hell). My guess is that the Dracula park will be a Universal Studios sort of gig, complete with goofy rides through haunted castles and lots of irritable teenaged staff persons standing around in capes and plastic fangs.

If they do decide to cater to the movie-going crowd, a nice, respectful tribute to Bela Lugosi is mandatory. I'm thinking rock opera here, with Fosse-style choreography and libretto by Sondheim. I'd also like to see a ride where tourists can hang with an animatronic Kiefer Sutherland, before riding motorcycles to an abandoned hotel and making Jason Patric eat maggots. For the more literary traveler, how about an all-vampire production of Willa Cather's O Pioneers!?

Now that I think about it, this project really throws into sharp relief the considerable deficit of knowledge we humans have about our blood-sucking friends. What would really be helpful for the Dracula park is a series of workshops that disseminate information about real-life vampires, especially how one can deal with them in a tight spot. Mainly, I'm talking about self-defense scenarios. For example:

You're walking home from the burger joint after enjoying a malted with your friends. You realize it is almost 9 o'clock, and thinking how angry Father will be if you arrive after curfew, you take a short-cut through an alley. Suddenly, your poodle skirt catches on a nail, and you lose your balance. There is a rush of wind, a blur of motion, and before you know it, two sharpened incisors are pressed against your neck. What's a girl to do?

Let me say first that I have nothing against vampires. Some of my best friends are vampires. But there is a family of them living next door to us, and although they are quiet and mostly keep to themselves (except the daughter, who keeps blaring old Kenny Loggins tapes—talk about sucking), I'd sure like to know how to defend myself in case they decide to get belligerent. Is there an authoritative source for information about vampires? Perhaps a Compendium of Occult Knowledge or an Encyclopedia Satanica?

What follows is an abbreviated list of things I'd like to know about vampires. If anyone knows the answer to any of these questions, please let me know.

1. Does holy water burn like acid or just cause the skin to melt?
2. Does silver do anything at all?
3. How about garlic? Anathema, or just another garnish?
4. Are vampires able to conceive and give birth, or are they end-of-the-line mutations (like mules)? If they do pop out babies, what comes out when they are breastfeeding?
5. Is La Magra real? If so, does he love the little children, all the children of the world?
6. How do vampires live in Alaska, where the sun is out for six months at a time?
7. Is it more conducive to learning if vampires attend separate schools, or is integration better?
8. Is Tom Cruise actually a vampire, posing as a human, posing as a Scientologist?
9. Do vampires prefer a certain brand of car or truck?
10. Russian legend says that vampires are obsessive-compulsive, and that if you throw a handful of nails onto the ground in front of them, they'll have to stop to count them all before continuing the chase. Is this true, and does it work with Tic-Tacs?
11. Are vampires heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or Morrissey?
12. Does the Catholic church actually sponsor an elite team of vampire hunters in the Southwest? Can I join them?
13. Is there a provision concerning vampires in the Patriot Act?

A man sits holding a violin against his heart, the bow resting on his lap. His hair is a little wild—just as you might expect from a musician—but his expression is all seriousness. It could be anyone's great-grandfather. The photograph was probably taken around 1900, and it's a classic example of the style of portraits done at the time. In fact, there is only one thing unusual about it—the ghost. Above the man's head and off to the left is a blurred oval of light. If you turn your head slightly to the side, you can see that the dark markings in the oval form a human face.

Think this sounds creepy? You should see it in person. This is just one example from a collection of "spirit photographs" that are on exhibit at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. Spirit photography began about 1860, when the camera was still a novelty and people were fascinated by its potential uses. It was theorized that, with regard to the spirit world, the camera could see and record what the human eye could not. Hundreds of these pictures were taken between 1860 and 1920—beautiful and ethereal pictures, in which spectral figures of varying clarity appear in close proximity to the subject. In one, a young man sitts in a chair with a shadowy female figure behind him. She is holding an anchor across his chest. In another, a middle-aged woman grimaces for the camera while the shape of a child attends her.

It's incredibly cool.

The notes at the exhibit were pretty coy about the methods used to produce the photographs. They didn't say the specters were real, and they didn't say they weren't. Some of the pictures are clearly just double exposed; some were probably done with long exposures. But with some of them, you just can't figure out how the photographer could have done it. And I don't think I would really want to know, any more than I would want to ask David Copperfield how he made the Statue of Liberty disappear (or how he got that great novel written about him, for that matter). It's more fun to look and imagine that the ghost above the musician's head is his lost sweetheart, dead from cholera, whose love was so powerful that she is bound to him forever. Or maybe he's the one who killed her, and she is haunting him as punishment, disturbing his sleep and driving him to madness.

Some of my favorites were taken by three relatively recent photographers: Francesca Woodman, Mike Kelley, and Ann Hamilton. Francesca Woodman took surreal, largely autobiographical pictures, the most striking of which is "Self-portrait (Talking to Vince)." In this photo, the photographer tilts her head back as a coil of what looks like liquid rises from her mouth and lifts toward the window. It's astonishing—a visual depiction of voice. Ann Hamilton took pictures by placing a canister of film with a tiny hole poked in it into her mouth. When she opened her mouth, the film would be exposed, resulting in eerie, smudged images of people's faces. Mike Kelley demonstrates the notion that poltergeists produce a type of ectoplasm that can only be captured by the photographer's lens. He photographed himself with streams of this ectoplasm coming from his nose, his eyes rolled back into his head as if he were having a seizure. These images are the most visually arresting in the entire exhibit, and the violence Kelley captures fits in with his theory that while ghosts come from outside the body, and are therefore cold, poltergeists are the result of conflicting energy within a person, and are therefore hot and kinetic.

Anyone within driving distance of Kansas City should beat a path to this exhibit before May 23rd, when it disappears back into the ether. Below are my own quick and dirty attempts at spirit photography. Enjoy!

"Self-Portrait with Ghostly Basketball Player"

"Marsh with Hidden Face"

About five years back, I made a trip to San Diego for a job interview. I did my best online search and located what I thought was a decent hotel in the middle of the trendy Lamplight District. Believing that this was a nice area, with funky shops, I didn't think twice about plunking down 60 bucks a night for this hotel, even though it was not a chain and I couldn't find any customer reviews of it.

Let's pause for just a moment. I realize now that the red flags should have been flying like at a military parade in Communist China. But at the time, I didn't have much firsthand experience with cost-of-living disparities across the country. Turns out, of course, 60 bucks in California is barely enough to buy an all-soy hot dog, and what it gets you in terms of living space is even less appealing.

This hotel (which I shall call the Nitwit Hotel, so as not to shame them) had bars over all of the windows. The building to the right of it was a bail bond office, and to the left—a pawn shop. The parking garage seemed reasonably safe, although the entrance was so narrow that maneuvering my rented Ford Fiesta through it was like navigating a birth canal the wrong way.

Nevertheless, I put aside concerns about the exterior of the hotel, muttered a brief ecumenical prayer, and went inside.

As I scanned the lobby, my first impression was that it looked just like that hotel from The Highlander, where that guy with the safety pins through his neck stayed. You might recognize this caliber of hotel from movies, particularly Big and Twelve Monkeys. I had never seen anything like it. It was extremely shabby and run-down, more spacious than it looked from the outside, and the threadbare red carpet throughout the lobby made it look like an old theater. Then I saw the hooker on the stairs. This woman was the quintessential hooker, complete with torn fishnets, a strip of lycra/spandex functioning as a skirt, and an embarrassment of rouge. She looked like she may have been asleep. Across the lobby, an old woman sat in a bathrobe and a terrycloth turban—Sunset Boulevard meets Skid Row. She had a cigarette in her hand, and I knew instantly that she lived there. This was one of those hotels where people just lived.

I locked myself in my room and considered what to do. I knew I could go elsewhere, but I had already paid the entire sum in advance, and I had a strong suspicion that negotiating to get that money back would bring me nothing but trouble. So I bit the bullet and stayed. It was not as bad as you might think.

Several knobs from the sink faucet came off when I first grabbed it, and the sink itself was small enough that water splashed all over the floor if it was turned on even a little. There was an ancient TV set, but the electricity was on only from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. After that—no lights, no hair dryer, no nothing. I slept on top of the comforter, although it was probably even less clean than the sheets. When I called my parents to tell them I had arrived safely, I did not mention the surroundings. To this day, I don't think they know the full extent of the experience. (Hi Mom!) And incidentally, I had to pay a $20 phone connection fee before the guy at the desk would let me place a call.

But wait! There's more!

At night, there was a great deal of shouting, mostly from the hallway. I peered out the peephole at one point and saw one guy pass a tiny baggie of something to another guy. The butt of a gun was visible in the back of the first guy's jeans. This was not an especially comforting sight, so I tiptoed back to the bed and tried not to cry.

The next day, I did my best to be unobtrusive in my business suit (ha!) and ended up attracting the attention of everyone I encountered on the way out. It's not that I looked super-wealthy or anything—I just looked fantastically out of place. One older gentleman, who sported a pair of polyester pants with vintage stains, eyed me like a vulture as I passed through the lobby. His inscrutable expression unnerved me, and I pledged to snag some pepper spray before the day was out. When I returned, I honestly expected the room to have been ransacked, or to find a note on the doorknob saying: "You have been sold into white slavery. Have a nice day." Nothing happened, though, and I felt a little bad about having thought such things. But, really. Can you blame me?

I stayed a total of two glorious nights in my own Hotel California, and I have to admit, it felt kind of like an adventure. No, Victor Kruger was not actually staying in the next room, but he might as well have been. (I kept listening for sounds of swordplay, followed by an exclamation of triumph, "There can be only one!") As it turns out, I did not take the job in San Diego (what with that cost-of-living business, the salary was not nearly as impressive as I imagined). But I like to think that my memories of the Nitwit Hotel have broadened my mind in some fashion, as well as serving as an enduring cautionary tale about making purchases online without any reference or research. After all, this ain't a WYSIWYG world. What fun would that be, anyway?

How many more times must I endure this nonsense? As if the music box debacle wasn't enough, I now have another instrument ascended from the fiery pits of hell to torment me. What's at work here is a conspiracy of Dantean proportions.

Last Halloween, to complete my costume as Angus Young, I purchased a bright-red child's guitar. This is the type of device where each fret is a actually button that you press down, and each button plays a note, just like on a keyboard. If you pull the whammy bar, you hear a snarling, Yngwie Malmsteen-type guitar lick. In other words, the guitar required no strumming and, really, no skill whatsoever. This was great, because I only wanted it as a prop, in order to fully emulate that little trademark hop he used to do back in the day. (Perhaps he still does this? I don't know. Truthfully, I never liked AC/DC's music all that well, although I do like the idea of a British band attaining iconic status in beer-guzzling, flag-waving Middle America. They weren't exactly the ambassadors of culture that, say, the Beatles were, but still. Props for "Hell's Bells.") Anyway, it was great fun, the costume was perfect (people I didn't know were shouting "Angus!" from across the street), and later on at the outdoor showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show we attended, I nearly froze my million-dollar legs off in those maroon shorts. Overall, a smashing success.

Flash forward to a few nights ago. I was at home alone, preparing to head off to the gym, when I heard a sound emanating from the office. It took me a second to pinpoint the exact location, and then another second to realize it was that infernal guitar, playing of its own accord (although not "a chord," since the thing was only capable of playing one note at a time.) I slid open the closet door, and sure enough, there was my toy guitar, rockin' out as if Hendrix himself was plucking the strings with his spectral teeth.

I was trying not to freak out (yes, still a fraidy-cat), so I called Nick and held the phone up so he could hear it. I told him it had started on its own, and that I wasn't even in the room when it began.

"Did it fall against something?" he asked.

"Not that I could tell."

"It must be a poltergeist then," he said. I told him to shut up, but I had already started to think the same thing. Now, I've seen Amityville Horror, and finding out that the whole thing was a fraud didn't make the idea of haunted houses any less scary for me. Especially the whole business with the pig and its glowing red eyes. So all of a sudden I was thinking about that movie, while the rogue guitar played maniacally in the background, providing its own spooky soundtrack. It even crossed my mind that someone might have been murdered in our apartment. "Well, I'm taking the batteries out at any rate," I said as calmly as I could. By this time, though, Nick had picked up on the fact that I was pretty unnerved, and he was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. He was no help at all.

Just then, the music stopped. I set the guitar on the kitchen counter while I fumbled with the tool kit, trying to find a screwdriver small enough to loosen the battery cover. I tried every single one, but none of them would fit the tiny screw. Meanwhile, the guitar had started playing again, but this time it sounded weirder and more demonic than before. It kept skipping from lick to lick, catching halfway and making a bizarre growling noise before launching into the next one. About the time I was considering setting it outside for some hapless child to find, it abruptly shut off again.

Not sure what else to do, I went ahead to the gym. When I got back, Nick had somehow managed to get the back off. My little guitar looked kind of sad, like a partly dissected cadaver, its batteries spilled out on the counter like black and silver guts.

Even in that condition, though, I half expected it to start playing again.

I don't know why the guitar began playing out of nowhere. Maybe it happened because the batteries were about to die, and this was a sort of swan song, a final grasp at beauty before imminent dissolution. All I know is that it didn't go quietly into that good night. In fact, it was a rather noisy affair when I went all Paul Simonon on it out in the parking lot the next morning.

I think I can honestly say that I've gotten over the anxiety about this incident. It was funny, and I realize that, as always, I overreacted. However, if my old flute starts playing on its own one of these nights, we're moving out of this Burial Ground Apartment Complex faster than you can say shallow grave.

Apparently, some exhibitors have been accused of putting hairpieces on their show cattle at the Ohio State Fair last year. What this means is that they took excess hair from the cow's body—from other cows, even—and strategically glued it to other spots in order to give the animal a more healthy and proportional appearance.

What were these people thinking? Who was the first one to say, "I know. We'll spruce up the old girl with a specialty coiffure." And don't they realize there are truckloads of products out there designed for hair re-growth? There are pills of all sorts and applications of medicated cream. There's even a product that, when sprayed on the scalp, makes a creepy, cotton-candy nest of wispy hair. (This is the commercial you see just before you realize you've stayed up entirely too late. It was shown briefly in Goodfellas.)

Really, though, I'm more worried about the precedent. Now that this line has been crossed, what sort of bovine cosmetics will be attempted next? Grecian Formula for the Anguses? Silicone udder implants for the Jerseys? It's gone too far, I tell you, too far. This ridiculous beauty standard that these cows are asked to live up to—no cow can achieve it, okay? All it does is make them feel bad about themselves, to the detriment of all cows.

I'm trying to imagine what this last-minute beauty session must have been like—a pit crew of men armed with tiny tubes of glue and buckets of shorn cow hair, painstakingly applying it, clump by clump, as if preparing a float for the Rose Bowl parade. Ah, the adrenaline, the smell of sweat, the fevered rush of creation. One of them, perhaps, whispering in poor Bessie's ear: "You'll be the prettiest heifer there ever was . . . this contest is yours . . . those other cows don't have half the class you have in your hind hoof . . . ." What pride they must have had in the finished product, in the glorious specimen of cowhood they had manufactured. The shapely hip, the smooth withers—truly a vision of bovine grace.

It takes a special kind of twisted to do something like this. But then, we are talking about the Ohio State Fair. I have a feeling that even if these guys had not been found out, they would have eventually gone to the police anyway, just so they could have someone to impress with the skillful way they perpetrated their very, very weird crime. I can see it now. The lead perpetrator limps away from the station, just as it dawns on the special agent that the entire story was fabricated using details in the room. Can it be? That coffee mug says Holstein on the bottom. And that picture on the wall? It's of an obese woman with a black and white wig. "Noooooooooo!" the agent screams, shaking his fist at the sky.

I'm telling you, don't mess with these guys. They'll flip ya.

Alright, I give up. What exactly is this? I've encountered it on more than one occasion while facing down the business end of a soup can, and I can't help but wonder: if this is the pretty, corporate name for this particular facet of the chicken market, then what in the world did it start out as? I mean, there are PR people in billion-dollar suits making up digestible euphemisms for all the unsavory products and processes that end up on labels in your neighborhood ALDI (What? Your neighborhood doesn't have an ALDI? Ok, Richie Rich, just substitute "personal shopper" and keep reading.) If THIS is the best name their slick spin doctors could come up with, what in God's name is really going on at the chicken factories? Is there some sort of Pink Floyd nightmare machine that turns the Little Red Hen into sausage? Has the torture rack used in the days of Savonarola been revived for use in the poultry industry?

I suspect that this question is best left unanswered. There are lies we must tell ourselves in order to function in the world without losing our minds, and I imagine that if the truth behind mechanically separated chicken were made known, all the peoples of the world would rise up and strap Colonel Sanders himself to the rack. (Here, I refer to Colonel Sanders as a commercial entity, not an individual—I'm sure the man behind the bucket was finger-lickin' fabulous.) Truth is, I'm probably better off thinking my chicken nuggets come from willing avian donors. Or better yet, synthetic chickens. Robot chickens, even. And if the robot chickens develop consciousness and march on our cities? Well, I guess there's always potted meat, which, I've been told, is grown in faerie gardens and harvested by Oompa Loompas. No harm, no fowl.

Okay, so I'll admit up front that I'm a fraidy-cat. And I'm not talking about being afraid of mundane things, like flying and rappelling. This kind of stuff is not a problem. I'm talking about genuine, irrational, boogeyman-gonna-get-ya kind of fear. I have a healthy imagination, and it doesn't take much to get it spinning out of control. Especially late at night.

A few months ago, Nick told me he heard some weird, tinny music coming from one of the trash bins in our complex. I told him it was probably a broken music box, but he disagreed. It couldn't be that, he said, because the sound "just wasn't right." Later that day, when I was coming home from the gym, I heard the music, too. I went over to the trash bin, and right on top, sitting atop a discarded pizza carton, was a broken music box shaped like a piano. I was quite pleased with myself. Ha, I thought. I'll show him. So I picked up the music box--carefully, so as to avoid touching any other garbage--and I brought it inside. Now, you'll remember that I said the music box was broken. Its lid was missing, which is why it was playing its little song in the first place, so I depressed the knob in the middle and placed a few pieces of tape over it. The music stopped. When Nick got home, I pointed it out to him right away, so as to demonstrate my superiority. He shrugged, and said "Well, how about that." This was not at all the reaction I wanted, so I went into another room to pout and forgot completely about the music box.

We went to bed.

We fell asleep.

DEE-DUR DEE-DUR DEE-DUR DUM! You may remember this from every third grader's piano recital. It's Beethoven's "Für Elise," and at 3 in the morning it sounds like the devil is skinning a water buffalo in your living room. It was the most sinister thing I'd ever heard, and I went flying into the living room to turn it off. Keep in mind that I had just woken up out of a nightmare into this craziness (maybe the noise CAUSED the nightmare, I'll never be sure), so I was in the kind of disoriented post-nightmare state where your fear sensors are all cranked up and everything around you looks inordinately suspicious. What used to be a regular old mirror becomes an EVIL mirror. That ordinary ventriloquist's dummy in the chair becomes an EVIL ventriloquist's dummy. You get the idea. In addition to that, horror movies have virtually ruined the music box for me (those cute chime-y melodies always seem to presage the appearance of a psycho-killer or a psycho-killer's ghost). So I used up an entire roll of tape securing that stupid knob and set the box down again. But when I got in bed, I couldn't stop thinking about the EVIL music box, just sitting out there like an EVIL cobra waiting to strike. EVIL Beethoven was still running through my head, taunting me. So I got up again and, still in my PJs, carried the music box out to the dumpster. I set it carefully back onto the pizza carton, at which point I heard voices from down the road and began to panic. In my paranoia, I felt sure these people were coming after me. I sprinted back inside and quickly locked and bolted the door, half-crazed from the adrenaline surge.

So yes. I'm kind of a fraidy-cat. But only in the middle of the night. And only if I perceive a clear and present danger to my health and well-being. Like, say, a broken music box or something.

Incidentally, Für Elise was also featured in that irritating McDonald's commercial a number of years back. You know, the one with that bratty little girl ("I ... will eat French fries ... and not save any ... for my dumb brother..."). This Pavlovian conditioning has worked so well that even now, every time I hear Beethoven, I think of short, slender stalks of atomized potatoes marinating in animal fat.