It's Incorporeal Vengeance Week!

Reminder: October 28-October 30th is an open “vengeance” period for all licensed incorporeal entities. Any human beings or related physical entities who have run afoul of the dead or generally incorporeal are advised to make good on all pacts and make reparations for all indiscretions by midnight of October 27th at the very latest.

Due to the sequester, local governments will not be providing any assistance or clean-up related to such massacres.

For non-physical entities who cannot rise from the crypt or claw their way into reality for vengeance by October 30th, there is an additional grace period extending to November 28th. Applicants must have at least two signed evaluations from the government-recognized Spiritualists and Theologians List in order to qualify for the grace period. The government apologizes for the grace period closing on November 28th, but we need those department stores unhaunted for Black Friday.

To our citizens of fleshy substance, remember:

• Practice respectful rites!
• Make good on your pacts!
• Avoid unnecessary transgressions against the memories of the arcane!
• Get a costume together for the Halloween Parade of Relief on the 31st! We sure hope to see you there!

Horror Writers Donating Blood

It'd be great if Horror authors would agree to donate a pint of blood for every one they spilled on the page.

A nasty wound? That's one donation to the Red Cross.

You fridged the lead's girlfriend? How clever. That'll be six pints.

Most phlebotomists I've talked to recommend donating only once every two months. At two pints, that's only one literary murder per year. You'd have to make it count.

Alternatively, for humorous Horror writers, it's ten thousand paper cuts per year.

Another alternative would be putting your Horror novel on layaway. You've just got to kill five people? That's going to take you almost five years. Of course, some authors strive five years in writing a good scare, so you could earn your way to your body count by the publication date. Heck, if your publisher drags its feet, you may have a few pints of credit by release, for that sequel.

You may, however, resent the laws of Horror sequels being bloodier. You may buck convention to save yourself a few pricks and cases of lightheadedness.

Blood donation is something more people would do if they thought about it. It actually does save lives, and every year some region has blood shortages. In my case, I didn't do it regularly until this year. Why? Pure ignorance and laziness. I never thought about it, despite seeing ample footage of public shootings and having friends who worked as EMTs. I deserve no quarter for not getting around to it until a blood mobile literally parked in front of my hotel.

Feel free to write a story about a blood mobile pulling up in front of a hotel. Anyone could climb out. The outcome, though, may cost you.

Bathroom Monologue: The Cutting Edge of Football

The following is an experimental product to be sold only to the most adventurous professional NFL team.

Do you think it’s odd that it’s illegal for a ball carrier to kick or punch the defense, which is empowered to tackled and injure him? Surely a few well-placed blows to the opposing team would greatly reduce the pain a Running Back suffers over the course of a season. Yet he is not permitted even the slightest physical altercation against attackers.

To my best scrutiny of the NFL’s rules, he is allowed to wear protective clothing. This includes armored chest pieces, thigh pieces and helmets, all meager, if well-intentioned, defensive gear for a collision with an attacker. But as the best Americans have often pointed out, the best defense is a good offense, and to protect the most important parts of your offense.

Consider the benefits of a chest plate covered in knives.

Not truly covered – only six protruding from the pectorals and shoulders would dissuade many linebackers from most high-speed physical contact. If tackled, the attacker would surely get the worst of it, but preliminary testing in high school football programs suggests an 86% decrease in general tackling. And good luck stripping the ball of a Running Back who’s impaled the pigskin on his left boob.

Detractors will say this is illegal, immoral, or ruining the game. They say this about every advancement in personal safety. I say if you’re going to dress like a Raider, then dress like you mean it. You’re protecting your players and keeping the NFL on the cutting edge.

Bathroom Monologue: Big Brother and his Faithful Five

Established in 1948 to defend our country from a world in stark peril, they are the First Family of National Security.

Big Brother: a born leader, Big Brother's skin is as invulnerable as his righteousness. Possessed of the superhuman strength to keep the nation aloft, he is on constant patrol to prevent his countrymen to prevent them from harm. Only those who do wrong have anything to fear.

The Unknown Soldier: he's been slain in every foreign war, he'll fall in every one to come, and he never ceases to inspire. Where is he buried? Where is his tomb? It is in all our hearts. He'll sacrifice for so long as we are at war – and we have always been at war against injustice!

Interrogirl: your safety is always on her mind – and so are you! The world's foremost telepath is constantly scanning brainwaves for signs of danger from her maximum security detention center.

The Prism: a technopath of the highest order, he knows what friends you'll add to that app before you've even downloaded it. Never forget to add him!

Together these five stand vigilant on every frontier of conflict. They're on distant shores, on our streets and in our homes, keeping the world exactly as it should be. They make justice count – to five!

Bathroom Monologue: 992 + 992 = ?

We begin by acknowledging that “2” is not a real thing. It is an incomplete idea, a description, a modifier of real things. Two people are real; remove the people, and the number ceases to be. The people continue to be without the number, even when they are a divided pair of ones.

Then consider the number of things to which “2” can apply. Two people. Two battleships. Two bunches of grapes.

Consider also that “addition” is a floaty concept. If you move two bunches of grapes over next to two more bunches of grapes, you may well have four bunches of grapes. If two of the bunches grow tangled as you mush them together in a sloppier addition, they may well become three bunches of grapes. More common in my produce experience? You throw four bunches of grapes together, a few twigs snap, and one bunch breaks into two. This leaves you with five bunches of a grapes as the result of adding two and two.

Thereby, 2 + 2 = 5.

We’re not asking much.

Bathroom Monologue: Star Wars Episode VII - Genocide of Ewoks

The Empire was not long on Endor before it fell. The Ewoks had never had much contact with the outside universe, and so never saw the foreign plagues coming. Every cuddly creature that Luke, Leia and Han danced with that night was dead within a week of the Death Star’s destruction – not from combat, but from highly predatory diseases their immune systems had never seen.

Overburdened by suddenly having to run an interstellar government with numerous pockets of skepticism and resistance, Princess Leia and her freedom fighters can hardly divert many resources to help the Ewoks. Yet those who do venture to Endor bring still more suffering, swarming with their own planetary diseases, or have come to Endor only to make a profit under the auspices of the new “democracy.” When the Ewoks fight back against mercenaries who abuse them, the local settlers are quick to label them savage. They did defeat the Empire, after all.

C3PO ventures into the plague-stricken Ewok masses with a message of peace, hoping that its lack of biology will spare them further infection. Their only salvation is to move off of their ancestral grounds and head west, where new legislation swears they will always have domain. Supplies seem to come in equal number to the raids, and orders continually push the Ewoks off their reservations, until their previous way of life is but a tall tale that even their most optimistic children doubt ever existed. Their numbers are plummeting, their lands are strip-mined, and no one remembers how to dance.

This is what you guys wanted when you bitched about Return of the Jedi, right?

Bathroom Monologue: Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Exit to DOS

Between Jack Thompson’s crusade against videogames and the home console depleting arcades, the shop where Ralph and Vanellope live is about to close. Times have simply passed them by, though only one character knows it. Fix-It Felix Jr. is on his rooftop to witness the store manager lamenting the death of the arcade.

Very Biblical.

Felix is horrified at the coming genocide, but overhears one glimmer of hope: Noah’s Big Game Hunter, the oldest game in the arcade, has the highest score anyone has ever gotten on any such machine, and will be adopted with a power supply by a fanatical gamer. Felix realizes that if he evacuates all the characters into Noah’s Big Game Hunter, they won’t have to be powered off and euthanized.

But the citizens of his apartment building are too complacent to their existences, sure their hero will just fix it. His wife, Sergent Calhoun, fears for his sanity, and all the other machines in the arcade think he sounds like a madman. They’ve only ever seen machines deactivated for malfunction, and they’re all in top shape. Vanellope von Schweetz is hardly about to relinquish her newfound kingdom. The Street Fighters toss Felix out on the street.

With nowhere else to go, Felix desperately explores Noah’s Big Game Hunter itself. Not since the early arcade wars have outsiders visited, and they native hunters and beasts are quite militant to outside incursion into their homeland. If Felix does evacuate the other machine-populations here, it will mean decades of war. He narrowly escapes the machine-world to discover that Calhoun had a vision of her own, and believing in Felix, has victoriously marshaled her game’s soldier population and his own, in a sunny show of unity, to “re-settle” Noah’s Big Game Hunter.

How can Felix Jr. fix this? His father would have known.

This would be a bold direction for the Wreck-It Ralph series. It’s a liberal re-telling of Noah's Ark, The Book of Exodus, and a parable about Israel and Palestine. It will also introduce many new characters so we can sell toys.

Bathroom Monologue: Treat Our Troops Better Than Sports Stars

He is not wearing a helmet.

It was recently brought to my attention that soldiers make less than football players. By “recently,” I mean “every day,” and by “my attention,” I mean something closer to “preaching to the choir.” I believe if you substitute those in you’ll get a sentence almost as ugly as the war in Afghanistan.

What really came to my attention for the first time was how much the Military Industrial Complex would like turning wars so profitable that purple-heart winners were essentially pro-athletes. It is an enormous industry that creates riots almost as dangerous as sports. One imagines the leaders of the Military Industrial Complex would love to institute a draft, especially if they got the first-round picks.

That’s how we wind up paying our boys in uniform better, my fellow pacifists. College recruiters, high school recruiters, even talent scouts sniffing around middle school paintball games. NBA 2K13 and Madden? Pfft. Call of Duty already outsells both of them, so wait until we have rosters of real soldiers with stats updated every week. You’ll have to negotiate with the families of KIAs as to whether you can keep their likenesses online, but it can probably be written into their SBP.

It begins with better television access. If there’s Monday Night Football, then surely we can have the Wednesday Night Warzone. Three hours to storm an Al Qaeda training camp, filmed from the safety of satellite and helmet cameras. You can’t let the terrorists win – because if they do, they get a monetary bonus. Nobody likes a suicide bomber with gold teeth.

And teams! You’ve got the Army, Navy, Marines – they were the sixth team of SEALs, after all. If ratings drop, pit them against Blackwater, or any of our allies in the War Against Terror. Intra-conference wars should be expected in a regulation season. A station – much more commercial than the Armed Forces Network – devoted to arm-chair quarterbacking the peacekeeping mission in Sudan or Darfur or wherever Congress says we can send soldiers once it means creating jobs in the entertainment industry. We’ll get more weeks than the NFL, and unlike the current wars, newscasts won’t feel the need to gloss over losses or skirmishes abroad. It’ll be part of the Sports Round-Up.

We’re talking merchandising on every piece of equipment our soldiers need, and endorsement deals out the ass. Parents will never have to fear their enlisted kids are underarmed again, because companies will be killing each other to supply the teams. Every marine will get a signing bonus just for putting on a Halliburton micro-weave vest. They’ll be annoyed by the amount of gear they have to touch, don and sign – most of which they won’t use, but instead hand over for charity auctions. You know, to drum up cash for good causes.

Bathroom Monologue: Wholesale Magic Carpets

“Please stop buying magic carpets from Amazon. Hoarders who locked their magic carpets away in tombs were bad enough, as most such people were early adopters who paid premium prices in the hopes of displaying them in public and improving our profile. But this website, it’s offensive. They sell our carpets for half of what they paid, and now no one buys magic carpets anywhere else. Everyone has two, and wants the next model, and what does Amazon do? It tries to extort lower profits out of us – they have no love for the craft, for the ethereal loom, for the prestige of the magic carpet. And these buyers, they don’t see my carpets as amazing means of flight anymore. They see them as overpriced. There is a petition on the web, with ten thousand signees who say I am unfair for charging so much. My profession, once vaunted, is now something I can barely make a living at. It’s enough to make a wizard collude with Apple.”

Bathroom Monologue: New Department Signage

The location is a posh New York City mega-boutique, a spot too big to hold real style while too rebellious to turn profit of anyone but those who pursue true style. It boasts unique department signage. For instance, on your left as you enter the door you might notice the sign hanging from the ceiling boasting a man in his underwear (he is clearly an abdominal model) yelling the word “Fuck!” The word “Fuck!” is in a word bubble, and is the only word on the sign. His department would feature rugged jeans, flannel shirts and sundry overpriced hats. This is, of course, Men’swear.

Bathroom Monologue: TiMechanics Repitch

Introducing TiMechanics-brand time machines!

Tell your aunt how you feel before the old bat died!

Getting bad grades? Take that Earth Science exam as many times as you like!

Forget an item at the store? Now you can go back with the coupon, and pay attention to catch the clerk looking down your blouse this time!

And the best thing is that TiMechanics brand time machines are up to 67% accurate*, the most reliable on the market.

TiMechanics: where every second is precious.

*TiMechanics brand time machines may result in chronal dislodging, schizophrenia, and/or accidental transportation to the Pleistocene epoch. If you are mauled by a sabre-toothed cat send defective TiMechanics merchandise and proof of purchase to TiMechanics Headquarters at 0 Washington Avenue, New Washington, circa 2801. Consult an estate attorney before using TiMechanics. Warranties voided by paradox.

Bathroom Monologue: Who Reads Anymore?

Sure, you could write your book. But who will read it? It’s got to have the philosophy, the big ideas that are touched upon without going too deep. You don’t want to alienate readers by writing over their heads.

Now if you want a movie deal for this populist philosophical masterpiece, go SciFi. People have been paying Orson Scott Card for years just to mess up trying to make a movie out of his stuff.

On second thought, it’d sell more if it was Fantasy. Preferably Medieval Fantasy, with swords and magic everyone gets.

If you really want it to sell, though? Make it YA. YA Fantasy? They will snort it off the page. People stand in line for teen-friendly make-believe.

The only way you could top a good YA Fantasy is by… well, not writing a book. Movies, Youtube ads, iPhone games! That’s where the real money is. Because who reads anymore?

Bathroom Monologue: Designer Genes, Redux

Muscle is hard to build and easy to lose. Meanwhile fat is easy to build, and while it is supposed to turn into energy, is hard to get rid of. But one pair of Tyrex's designer genes will switch this inefficient paradigm in time for bikini season.

Tired of your appendix rupturing when it's never done anything to help? Tired of testicles being so sensitive that one whack prevents you from being able to flee a threat to your masculinity? Or maybe you've always wanted magenta skin. When you look at all the stupidities of the human body, it's hard to believe in evolution at all, let alone an intelligent designer. Fortunately, Tyrex is here to help.

There is a mild-to-moderate risk of sprouting additional appendixes when using Tyrex. Women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant should not use Tyrex (seriously, we're tired of fertile women suing us). Normal side effects include liver failure, morbid obesity, spontaneous belief in backwards reincarnation and magenta skin. Talk to your physician if you have asthma, heart conditions or swelling of the ankles. Otherwise, just get this stuff already. Ask your pediatrician about Tyrex Chewables (patent pending), because let's be honest, trying his best is not enough. You want a winner, and we will give him to you.

Bathroom Monologue: SmartShop Shoppers

Welcome SmartShop shoppers.

You already rely on SmartShop for the products your family needs.

No one beats our produce, and we’ve got all the fashion to keep you cool this summer.

But did you know there are now even more ways to save at SmartShop? We’ve slashed the everyday prices on over four hundred brands your family loves.

So why not spend more? Why not spend all your money at SmartShop?

Your kids will stop loving you if you don’t bring home Dark Berry Mountain Dew.

What do you need that money for, anyway?

You need food. You need clothing. You need a trendy car-mount for your cellphone.

You’re a modern person with modern person needs.

Modern people don’t need money.

Did you know ten out of ten modern people die? You can look it up on the internet.

Try our free WiFi station by the SmartShop Service Desk.

You can’t keep your money when you die. You can look it up on the internet.

If you died today, wouldn’t you want your kids to have all the food, clothing and Dark Berry Mountain Dew they deserved?

It’s something to think about. SmartShop recommends you think about it while you browse our newly extended Used Movies Aisle.

And thank you for being a SmartShop shopper.

Bathroom Monologue: Mancers, OR, An Order of Wizards

Necromancer, Pyromancer, Geomancer – these get too much attention, as though they make up the whole of magic. There is a substantial industry, a veritable economic biosphere, supporting the flashy varieties of magicians. For instance, from whence do all these old fogeys get their durable robes? Macraméncers. It’s difficult work, knitting fabric that has comparable Armor Ratings to chainmail. And every generation sees more wizards, despite all of them being bearded and wrinkled shut-ins. How do they manage to populate so? Romancers, the aetherial dating service for people who hold wands more than hands. Surely you’ve encountered that tragic necromancer who seeks to bring his lady love back from the grave, yet zombie hugs are seldom. There’s even a wizard for that least common form of couples counseling: necroromancers. These, and every other stripe of magical servant you can find in The Yellowed Pages.

Bathroom Monologue: The Vampire Mirror

"Not polished silver and glass; this model features a liquid crystal screen with twelve discretely embedded micro-cameras registering heat, air patterns and ambient coloration. If you have crumbs in your beard or your mascara is running, all the better, for these are tangible and scannable clues as to how you look. Using processors that would make Steve Jobs blush and software typically reserved to FBI suspect sketching technology, it auto-fills details of the human body based on what’s most likely to be there. Is it real time? Not yet, for now it’s surreal time, but even our first-generation technology is sensitive enough for Dracula to floss using its reflection."

Bathroom Monologue: John’s Mass Effect 3 Ending *SPOILERS*

JACK in control of a biotic high school was hilarious, so why stop there? After not dying in the final battle because they played no visible part in it, Jack has to expand her school. She buys what used to be Manhattan for some shiny beads, since its previous owners are dead and can’t really prove who owned what anymore. She hires GRUNT as her new Gym teacher, TALI for Computer Education, and GARRUS of the grand calibrations for Mathematics. So subsidize their education system the kids manufacture the caustic Turian and Krogan food since, you’ll recall, those races are now stuck here and can’t eat anything we do. Menu options are divided into healthy “Paragon” and more expensive but more entertaining “Renegade” sections. McMordin’s soon spreads into the first post-apocalypse fast food chain, with trillions of enthusiastic customers, though the sign outside “ONE MILLION REAPERS GOT SERVED” never changes.

Bathroom Monologue: Introducing Wartsinol

It’s done. The missus has brought your little bundle of joy into the world, and you’ve driven them home. Now the joys of parenting wear on you: the crying without cause, the shrieks for feeding at 2:00 AM, and the vomiting on suits that cost you two weeks salary. Gradually you’ve realized that, as adorable as your mother thinks her new grandchild is, this thing is loud, lumpy, and largely ungrateful.

But there’s help. There’s Wartsinol. By affecting the brain’s dopamine and oxytocin centers, twice-daily Wartsinol will force you into loving this thing that shares your genetic code. In just three weeks you won’t mind driving the store for the second time in one day because it keeps spitting up strained peas. You’ll be happy, and so will your family. Your wife wants you to love it. If you’ve put up a good act, your parents already think you do. But think about your parents. Think about your cold, distant father, five hours late to pick you up from softball practice, and you’ll reckon that Wartsinol will make the world better.

There are side-effects. Mild rash and aching joints are the most common. Not so bad, right? Other side effects include drowsiness, loss of appetite and intestinal lesions, but those happen with everything, so settle down. The worst thing, which I’m paid to tell you in a calm voice, is that twice-daily Wartsinol may cause heart disorders. But I’m not going to say it in a calm voice. I’m going to tell you straight-up that it’s been linked to fewer heart disorders than the fast food you cave into weekly. Also, one in two hundred subjects went sterile, which would disconcert other men, but this little bundle of joy wasn’t entirely planned either, was it, champ? So it’s less of a “side effect” than a “bonus.”

Twice-daily Wartsinol. Think about it.

Bathroom Monologue: Miniature Self-Soiling Noise Machine

The miniature self-soiling noise machine will be the hottest gift of the Christmas season. It’ll also be the hottest gift of August, because that’s nine months after winter, and people screw more when it’s cold and body heat is desirable.

Think of all the things it can do. It coos. It crawls. It self-soils. But there’s more:

-You can leave it alone for a weekend, and it will die.

-You can leave it in the car on a hot hour, and it will die.

-You can feed it something that it has no good reason to be allergic to, and it will die.

Research indicates one hundred percent of the market is addicted to drama. Let us tell you: there is no drama like a dead miniature self-soiling noise machine. If you’re one of the statistically negligible crowd that doesn’t care for miniature self-soiling noise machines, you can rejoice in the ease of its termination. Rejoice silently, though. Loving owners of miniature self-soiling noise machines may take offense.

The miniature self-soiling noise machine comes with a myriad of mini-game features. Play modes like, “Is she autistic?” and “What does Mommy wear when you spit up on her last clean blouse?” and the new, “Sure he’s vice president of a foreign aid charity, but the neighbor’s miniature self-soiling noise machine grew up to earn six figures. Where did I go wrong?”

The best thing is that a miniature self-soiling noise machine is free. Conception comes at no cost to you unless you find a really attractive hooker. We generate revenue through vanity projects, like healthcare, new shoes every four fucking months, college tuition, and the threat of imprisonment for abuse. Why, if you want, the miniature self-soiling noise machine can become the monetary bane of your existence! And if you decide it’s not for you, there’s no commitment. Simply move to Mexico and change your name.

Bathroom Monologue: Corpsing

Kill one of their runners. Carve the note into his chest. Leave it in your language, not theirs. You could text them. It is faster. Corpsing is simply clearer. They'll get the message and leave town by dawn.