Liven Up Your Writing with Zombies

"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."—Raymond Chandler

"When in doubt, have a man zombie come through the door with a gun brain in his hand."—Seth Grahame-Smith

A few years ago, a young man by the name of Seth Grahame-Smith made a ridiculous amount of money by taking Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice and adding zombies to it. Pride and Prejudice is judged by many to be one of the greatest novels of all time and certainly needs no improving upon. Unfortunately, because it is in the public domain, it may safely be subjected to such vandalism with impunity. As a writer, my first thought was that Mr. Grahame-Smith was an unprincipled hack, with little or no imagination or talent.

My second thought was, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Better late than never. Zombies are still pretty popular, so I have decided to take a leaf from Grahame-Smith’s—and Austen’s—book and use the living dead to further my own career. Part of my job as writer/editor at a tax software company is to write advertising copy for our products. I’m always looking for ways to liven things up, so that our customers will actually read our ads before they toss them in the recycle bin or delete them from their inbox. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to come up with anything interesting to say about tax software. Here’s an example:

As we go to press, we still don’t know if and when Congress will pass legislation to extend the AMT patch and Bush tax cuts. However, we have made it easier for you to predict the effect on your clients—whether or not the provisions are extended.

I considered giving you the whole paragraph, but I was afraid I might put you to sleep. Let’s see if we can add some interest by adding some zombies:

As we go to press, we still don’t know if and when Congress will pass legislation to extend the AMT patch and Bush tax cuts. However, as the entire country is being overrun by brain-eating zombies, it probably doesn’t much matter.

Now, isn’t that better? Here’s another example:

For a limited time, we are offering the following 2-for-1 special: purchase both the 2012 and 2013 versions for just $49. Call now to order.

Dull as yesterday’s dishwater. But adding a few zombies...

For a limited time, we are offering the following 2-for-1 special: purchase both the 2012 and 2013 versions for just $49. Call now to order. I mean right now. Because they’re coming to get you, Barbara. In fact, they’re already...

BRAAAINS!!!

...gives it a nice sense of urgency, doesn’t it?

Try it yourself. Take any piece of writing—your own or someone else’s (as long as they’ve been dead for at least a century; otherwise, you might find yourself at the wrong end of a lawsuit)—and sprinkle liberally with zombies.

Fun, isn’t it? And zombies aren’t just for prose; they go great with poetry, too. Here’s a little something I just dashed off with a little help from the late Emily Dickinson:

Because I could not stop for the living dead,
They kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And...

BRAAAINS!!!

Emily Dickinson (1830-????)

Angry Cows

This weekend marks the conclusion of "Shark Week," an annual event where the nice folks at the Discovery Channel try to scare the hell out of everyone so they can have the beaches to themselves during the hottest month of the year. At least, I’m guessing that's what "Shark Week" is about. I've never watched it. I don't need to. I’ve been afraid to go near any body of water—ocean, lake, river, or swimming pool—since seeing Jaws over thirty years ago.

However, lately I've been worrying less about sharks and more about cows. According to a recent study, you are twenty-seven times more likely to be killed by a cow than by a shark.

This doesn't surprise me. Think about it. Sharks have no reason to attack us. What have we ever done—what would we ever dare do—to make them angry? Cows, on the other hand, have been our victims for thousands of years. We herd them, milk them, breed them—not to mention slaughtering and eating them. As if that weren't enough, our young people subject them to all manner of indignities, from "mooing" at them from passing cars to unceremoniously tipping them on their sides.

No wonder they're angry.

They're also devious. Oh sure, they look sweet and docile, but looks can be deceiving. They're biding their time, waiting for the opportune moment to attack. As soon as your back is turned, BAM! You’ll never know what hit you. Cowboys knew this. I bet you thought they were armed with all those rifles and six-shooters to defend themselves against devious rustlers and hostiles. Not so. They were armed to defend themselves against devious angry cows.

If you want to avoid angry cows, you might want to avoid Great Britain, which seems to get more than its share of cow attacks. If you absolutely cannot avoid Great Britain (for instance, if you happen to live there), be sure to steer clear of pastures (no pun intended). Come to think of it, you'd do well to steer clear of pastures in any case. Even if you don't encounter any cows, you're certain to step in something you'd rather not step in. One way or another, those cows will get you. Like I said, they're devious.

Finally, in case you do find yourself under attack by angry cows, it might be wise to acquaint yourself with these survival tips.

As for me—I think I'll just stay in the house.

A Taste of Fort Wayne

A friend recently told me she was going to be in Fort Wayne, Indiana, this month. She knew it was my hometown, and she asked me about things to do there. I was hard pressed to give her an answer.

We seldom get back to Fort Wayne anymore. When we do, we spend all of our time with my Aunt Sheila—my only surviving relative there—and much of that time is spent eating. One thing among many that Loretta and I have in common: whenever we visit our respective hometowns (Fort Wayne for me, Buffalo for her) we always make time to visit our favorite restaurants.

Many of my favorite Fort Wayne restaurants are gone now. Fortunately Hall’s, one of the best, is still around. Hall’s has several locations throughout the city. The food is always excellent and reasonably priced. I recommend the strawberry pie—my Aunt Vonna’s favorite. If it’s your birthday, they will give you a cake—not a piece of cake, mind you—an entire cake, big enough for three or four people. (Once, when Loretta and I were in town on her birthday, I’m rather ashamed to say that we made the rounds with my aunts and scored a cake at each of several Hall’s locations.)

The one place I absolutely have to visit whenever I’m in town is Coney Island, on Main Street. In my opinion, they have the best hot dogs in the world, topped with the perfect blend of chili, mustard, and onions. And you can’t beat the price: $1.35 apiece—cheaper if you buy them by the dozen, as we usually do.

If you prefer burgers, Powers Hamburgers, on Harrison Street, have been grilling their delicious little onion-drenched sliders since my parents were kids. As a matter of fact, Powers, Halls, and Coney Island have all been around since my parents’ day, if not before. (Coney Island has been serving hot dogs in the same location since 1914!)

Of course, there are plenty of things to do in Fort Wayne besides eating, and one of these days, maybe I’ll get around to telling you about some of them. But right now, I’m getting hungry.

I wonder if Coney Island has mail-order service?

At Coney Island, Two Years Ago

Mother Was a Carny

Not really, but you have to admit that’s a catchy title. My mother did work at a ticket booth at the Kosciusko County Fair when I was a kid—a service she performed as a member of Tri-Kappa, the women's organization she belonged to when we lived in Warsaw, Indiana. Maybe that’s why I feel like the county fair is in my blood. This time of year, I always get an overwhelming urge to look at livestock, ride on a ferris wheel, and eat just about anything that’s deep-fried.

On days when my mother was working at the fair, I always went along and spent the day there. I visited the exhibits, ate fair “food” (not really food at all, just sugar and fat), and played a few carnival games—even though my parents cautioned me that they were all rigged. But most of my time and money were spent on the rides. My favorites were the ferris wheel and the paratrooper, which is sort of like a ferris wheel, except it’s tilted and your feet dangle. Once, when I was riding the paratrooper with a friend, one of my shoes flew off, hit the top of a tent, and bounced to the ground. My friend thought this was hilarious, but I didn’t see the humor in it—at least not until we were off the ride and I had retrieved my shoe.

We moved to Goshen when I was twelve, and I found the Elkhart County Fair to be much the same as the Kosciusko County Fair—the same exhibits, the same food, the same games, the same rides. One of my friends in Goshen was a wizard at the claw game. If you told him what you wanted, he could always get it—even if it was buried under a pile of other prizes. (His other singular talent was that he could belch louder than anyone in our school—possibly louder than anyone in the world. I assure you that I have never heard anything like it, either before or since.)

The Ventura County Fair opened this week, and I plan to go. I haven’t been for several years, but I expect it will be much the same as the last time I was there, and much the same as the county fairs of my childhood—the same exhibits, the same food, the same games, the same rides. There’s something reassuring in that. My tastes, however, are not the same. These days, I tend to spend more time looking at the exhibits and less time on the rides. But I will ride the ferris wheel, and I may ride the paratrooper, if they’ve got one.

If I do, I’ll make sure my shoelaces are securely tied.

Strange and Wonderful Dreams

Last night we watched the opening ceremony of the London Olympics (or at least as much of it as we could stay awake for). It was rumored that the show would include a gaggle (herd? flock?) of Mary Poppinses (Poppinsi?) doing battle with a giant Voldemort. This sounded so ridiculous, I had to see it.

Of course, it all made sense in context. It was part of the collective dream of hundreds of British children dancing on their beds. Hundreds of British children can produce some mighty strange dreams.

When I woke up this morning, I was having a strange—and wonderful—dream about my Grandfather and Grandmother Logue. They had driven to California to visit us—strange in itself, as my grandfather died when I was in high school, and my grandmother died several years before we moved here.

I asked if I could get them anything to drink, and my grandfather asked for a beer. I thought my grandmother would disapprove—as I recall, she disapproved of a lot of things—but she was nothing but smiles and hugs and "I love you's."

I went to the refrigerator and began to pour a beer for my grandfather and one for myself. I loved my grandfather. I was devastated when he died my senior year in high school. I regretted that I never got the chance to talk to him man-to-man. Now, I was finally going to get that chance.

Then I woke up.

Dreams can be strange and wonderful. They can also break your heart.

These dreams of you,

So real and so true...

—Van Morrison

Tales from the Cellar

This may come as a shock to people who have lived all of their lives here in California, but nearly all of the houses back east have a big room underneath the house. They call it a “basement,” and it’s where they keep the furnace, water heater, washer, dryer, and all of the miscellaneous junk that people in California keep in their garages.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have air conditioning. On summer days when it was too hot to play outside, we played in the basement, which was about ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house. Some of my friends had finished basements, with paneling, fluorescent lights, ping-pong tables and shuffleboard courts. Ours was just a plain, ugly basement, but we had lots of fun down there, playing games or building imaginary forts out of old blankets and sheets. It was never a scary place—except during the occasional tornado warning, or once when the sewer backed up.

My grandmother’s basement, on the other hand, was like something from a Stephen King novel. In fact, "basement" is too nice a word for my grandmother's basement. A better word would be "cellar," which means essentially the same thing, but sounds much scarier.

In the center, taking up half the cellar, was an immense, ancient, and terrifying furnace. It looked a lot like this...

Scary

In my nightmares, the furnace would grab at me with those huge, octopus arms as I tried to escape up the cellar stairs. Next to those stairs was an old washing machine, something like this one...

Scarier

I had nightmares about that washing machine, too—and with good reason. Once, when I was with my mother while she was doing laundry, I made the mistake of touching the electric wringer while the rollers were moving. It grabbed my fingers and pulled me in up to the elbow before my mother could shut it off. I must have been about four years old at the time, with more curiosity than sense.

I think it was about that same time that I found the gun.

In the northeast corner of the cellar, enclosed by plain, painted boards, was a small room. It had a wooden door held shut by a simple hook and eye, and inside were sturdy wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. My grandmother and aunts called it “the fruit cellar.” (Which made no sense to me; there was no fruit in there, and why would anyone keep fruit in the cellar, anyway?) Before he died, my grandfather had used the fruit cellar to store tools and spare parts. There were rows and rows of cigar boxes on the shelves, filled with all sorts of wonderful things: screws, bolts, washers, string, doorknobs, switches, sockets. And on the back of the top shelf, where I could barely reach it by using the lower shelves as a ladder, was a cigar box that held just one thing: a beautiful, shiny, black revolver.

It wasn’t until years later that I found out where the gun came from. One night, in my grandparents’ old neighborhood, the family had been awakened by the sounds of a police pursuit through the alley behind the house. The next morning, my grandfather had found the gun in the backyard. No doubt the criminal had thrown it over the fence to avoid being captured with it in his possession. My grandfather never told anyone what he did with the gun. Time passed, the family moved to a different neighborhood, my grandfather passed away, and the family forgot about it.

Until the day I came out of the cellar, waving it in the air and saying, “Look what I found!”

My mother and aunts screamed. My grandmother nearly fainted. I began to cry, not knowing what I had done to upset everyone. Someone—I don’t know who—carefully took the gun away from me.

You can imagine the nightmares that followed that incident.

Scariest

Drive-In Memories

I miss drive-in movies. When I was kid growing up in Indiana, they were our primary form of summer entertainment. The whole family could see a movie or two for a couple of dollars. But it wasn’t just a movie. It was an experience.

On drive-in days, we kids couldn’t wait for the sun to go down. We’d put on our pj’s, grab pillows and blankets, and jump into the back of the family station wagon. We’d arrive at the drive-in a little before sunset, find a good spot, and move the car forward and backward until it was at just the right angle so that everyone in the car could see the screen through the windshield. Take the speaker from its post and hang it on the driver-side window, and you’re ready to go. (Be sure you put it back before you leave. Every drive-in had its sad, headless posts, frayed wires dangling where someone had thoughtlessly decapitated the speaker in their hurry to get home after the movie.)

Before the show, popular music played through the speakers, and kids ran back and forth to the snack bar or played on the playground equipment in front of the movie screen. Then, when it was finally dark enough, the screen lit up: first an ad for the snack bar, followed by previews of coming attractions, and finally, the feature film—often a double feature. For a little kid, it was hard enough to stay awake through one movie, let alone two, which is why we wore our pajamas and brought pillows and blankets.

The Warsaw Drive-In was the only one in town, but Fort Wayne had three: the East 30, the Lincolndale, and the Hillcrest. On those summer weekends when I was visiting my grandmother and aunts, I would look through the newspaper, circle whatever movie I wanted to see, and my aunts would take me. I subjected them to some real turkeys. The worst, as I recall, was billed as a horror double feature but turned out to be soft-core porn of the worst quality (not that I’m any judge of porn—soft core or otherwise). It was an embarrassing experience for all concerned, and we took a solemn oath not to tell my parents.

During the 70’s and 80’s, it was hard to find a drive-in that wasn’t showing porn of the worst quality, but there were a few. A double feature of Willard and The Abominable Dr. Phibes stands out in my memory. I didn't have my driver’s license yet, so my mother took me (a true measure of her love, as she was never a fan of the horror genre). I also saw two of the greatest science fiction films of all time during this period: 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Blade Runner. I have seen both films several times since then, but nothing can compare with the impact of seeing them on an immense screen, surrounded by stars.

The last drive-in movie I saw back east was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Loretta and I went with her brother and his wife. (Our niece was there too, but she was still several weeks from being born, so she probably doesn’t remember it.) About five minutes into the movie, my brother-in-law, who could fall asleep in the middle of a bomb attack, was snoring loudly. Shortly after that, my sister-in-law began to whine about how uncomfortable she was. Loretta spent most of the evening swatting at mosquitoes. I seemed to be the only one interested in watching the movie, and I missed most of it, due to the snoring, whining, and swatting. I couldn’t wait for the video to come out so that I could finally find out what happened.

The Simi Drive-In was still open when we moved to California seventeen years ago. And it was open year-round, which was unheard of back east. We saw a double feature of Toy Story and Jumanji on New Year’s Eve. No mosquitoes, and because it was winter, the show started early enough that we had no trouble staying awake through both features.

The last movie we saw at the drive-in was Independence Day. It wasn’t very good, but seeing it under the stars made it somehow seem better. Now the Simi Drive-In, like the Warsaw Drive-In and the others of my childhood, has been torn down. In its place is a housing development, no different from millions of other housing developments.

And that's a shame.