In an unprecedented move, the entire staff of The Daily Discord has pledged to drink as much as possible this Saint Patrick’s Day. When asked to elaborate, on what many are calling a senseless publicity stunt, CEO Pierce Winslow had this to say, “I know a lot of people drink quite a bit on Saint Patty’s Day already, but we are going to drink sooo much that normal people will seem like a bunch of nuns at AA.”

When asked the purpose for all the drinking, friend of the Discord and horror author Mike Griffiths had this to say, “We all know that Saint Patrick was responsible for saving many aspects of Christian history, which has worked out so well for us, and he supposedly drove the snakes from Ireland…namely the English. As a Pagan snake worshipper all this just makes me want to smash a U2 album and kick some leprechaun in the head. So that’s why I’ve resolved to construct a model of Saint Patrick out of living mice and duct tape, which I will then feed to my reticulated python. I’m hoping the tradition will take off like Guy Fawkes or Leif Erikson Day.”

After searching the entire Discord Tower Complex, we caught up with Mr. Winslow in the dumpster out back, trying to find something to eat.

“No, no, no…,” said Winslow. “We aren’t doing this as a charity fundraiser, although my ride does need a new set of tires. I consider this more of a silent protest against the capitalistic money grubbers who aren’t giving me my fair share of the Sheppard’s Pie! How am I going to afford a second exotic petting zoo on the south lawn of my third estate with all these people refusing to share their wealth? Trickle down my ass.” When asked to elaborate more on his view on Reagonomics, he said, “No, I mean I felt something trickle down my ass. I think I’m going to climb out of this dumpster now.”

As I was leaving, the Ghetto Shaman ran into me with his car and, from the looks of things, had started his celebrating a little early.

“The rest of these guys here are a bunch of panty waists and not fit to be shown a bottle of Vermouth at ten paces,” said the Shaman. “It makes me sick, seeing Griffiths and Zano with their ‘micro-brews’ and Cokie McGrath with her Boonsfarm and bottom shelf absinthe. I’ll be drinking like a real Irishman, not some micro-snob trustafarrian. Whiskey with a Whiskey chaser over here, bar keep! I’m going to drink so much my puke will be 80-proof, which my dog will appreciate later.”

When pressed for any real reason for dangerously binging on this day already known for dangerous binging, Mick Zano said, “It’s not about making sense. Have you seen our marquee/scroller thingie? The Discord has never been about making sense…duh.”

When it was pointed out that pledging to do something is typically associated with a good cause or at least a positive social outcome. After I made this comment, Griffiths punched me in the face and asked me if I wanted to wrestle. These are behaviors I was later told are connected with an elevated BAC.

Later, after I put ice on my jaw and was trying to sneak out the side door, Zano attempted to sell me his rare beer coaster collection that looked to be a stack of soggy paper towels. Mr. Winslow then asked me to head to the store to pick up a case of aged Scotch, but only handed me a dollar. The Ghetto Shaman mumbled a thread of obscenities and demanded this bar crawl adopt a “naked” theme. Unfortunately, I was dragged along. If this piece gets posted, I guess it means that some of us made it back alive. Oh, wait know, I can send it from my phone…so no guarantees.

Tell my wife I love her. Peace.

Outside the Collapsing Shack, AZ—In a freakish turn of events not seen since that last Crank feature, Alex Bone has sworn off all societal ‘responsibilities’ and ‘obligations.’ Inspired by the Discord’s own ‘Occupy Space’ movement, Bone Man has not only joined the ranks of the homeless, but is working diligently on a statewide movement for others to join him in his crusade against rent, mortgages, and roofs in general.

The Discord caught up to Alex, where he was hiding from the police behind a dead tree in the woods just south of town. There, our own Cokie McGrath asked why he had chosen the road less cozy.

“It wasn’t just because I didn’t have the money to pay my rent,” said Bone. “There is waaaay more to it than that. These days they expect you to pay for your home, pay for your utilities, pay for your food, and even pay for your sex!”

Cokie asked him to elongate…er, to elaborate on that last part:

“Yeah sex, the only reason you need a place is because chicks dig beds and heating and all that other sissy stuff. From now on I’m only going to go out with women who dig me for me…sure I’m wet when it rains and I freeze when it’s cold and I’m forced to eat rotting food from dumpsters, but…what was the question? And another thing, paying bills is stupid. The Native Americans didn’t have bills. Land of the free, my ass, how about land of the bills?! I’m not quitting my job, so don’t call me a bum, I’m just spending money on what I choose to. I’ve been at it for a while now and I already have an extra two thousand dollars in my bank account. Suck on that Arizona Power Service! Now if only the bank would let me in so I could withdraw some of it. So what if I smell a little? It’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

Mr. Bone is now trying to convince others to adopt his carefree lifestyle and has released a seven-CD set entitled: Shirk Your Way to Prosperity. When we asked how he was able to keep his job without bathing and such, Alex Bone said, “I have enough money now to buy a new shirt every day if need be.” He then took a sniff of his armpit. “And, by Yig’s scaly beard, need be…but I prefer to wash my clothes in the company’s bathroom sink, while washing my feet in the toilet. They’re always encouraging us to multi-task, right? I’m starting to get a few weird looks, but it’s worth it. I have so much money now I treated myself to two twelve packs last night. That’s almost a case using the metric system, woo hoo!”

When Cokie asked him about his Anti-Home Movement, Bone said, “The Sacred AHM is all about taking your freedom back and using it the way God intended, on barcrawls. Screw wasting money each month just to have a place to rest. I can rest just fine under a bridge and I have so much money now I can use my wallet as a pillow, bitches! I used to just work my ass off to have a place to drink my crummy beer. So I just cut out the middle man. Heck, if I drink enough, I don’t even notice how cold it gets. In your face UNS Gas!”

In closing Bone added, “I’m finally free. The man doesn’t own me anymore. I can even stay at City Hall some nights as part of the main Occupy Movement. Oh, and if you get a bus pass, you can just circle town and stay warm for hours. They drop you right off at the shelter and the mall, where I spend a lot of time buying lot’s of very small things that fit in my backpack. It’s almost full so I’m going to have to sell shit on Ebay so I can buy more shit. Hey, where are you guys going? If you let me take a shower at your place, I won’t smell so bad. You can’t argue with that logic. Maybe I could crash there too. I need to charge my laptop. Oh come on, I’ll buy the beer. I can afford fancy imported beer now. Did I mention that homelessness is the new rich?”

Long before there was Spongbob Squarepants, there was Spongecake Cream Members. But 1/10/2012 marked the beginning of the end. No, it isn’t cataclysmic storms, or giant grasshoppers like that similarly named Peter Graves’ movie. It’s not tsunamis or earthquakes or Mayan Gods either. It’s not even Ahmanutjob flexing his nuclear muscle, nor is it Kim Jong Jr. testing his authoritah. I’m afraid, it’s much, much worse.

I cannot get much more depressed and still function. Today, sniff-sniff, Hostess Bakery filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. Yes, I know, I know…how will we ever function without the Sacred Twinkie? I don’t know…but somehow we must soldier on. If not for us, for the sake of the children. Yes, for the children. But how can a child grow into a fully functional adult without first knowing of the magic ‘T’? It’s like a rite of passage. The mighty sponge member, Exglucosebur, passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, for countless generations. The Once and Future Ring Ding.

When one reaches a certain age, the parent sits you down and hands you your first one. You are told just how to slowly and methodically open the package without damaging them. You are then told to take a bite, albeit a small one. We never know just how the little ones will react to the flood of flavor, the tsunami of sugar, the cacophony of cake, the symphony of spongy goodness.

Oh, I still remember my first time: I was behind the candy rack in my parent’s deli, hiding, ashamed, yet curiously attracted to them. Mom said they weren’t good for me, especially seeing as how I was already adept at finding the right end of the fork, so to speak. Yes, ahead of my age was I—a fact directly related to having access to free food 24-7. I took one bite and it was the first time I heard the music. The first time I saw the light. After I engulfed the little yellow wonders, almost swallowing them whole, I felt a sudden flood of warmth, a kind of epiphany—an epiphany only superseded by my first encounter with Coca-Cola. I grew up fast in those years, always managing to keep my little diabetic dalliances a secret from the parents.

I was finally caught on day, the plastic wrap and the little cardboard in my shirt pocket, face full of yellow cake, and the telltale spent white filling still in my hand. I was humiliated, eyes downcast, waiting for my father to fulfill his fatherly duties and wup my ass. What happened that day surprised me… one day you realize, the dad you had was not the dad you thought you knew.

No, that one warm June day in my seventh year, he sat me down and opened up another pack. He then went to the dairy case and grabbed a can of ReddiWhip. As he was telling me to keep my mouth shut about this, he covered each of the Twinkies with a delicate ribbon of whipped cream and handed me one. He then reached into the soda case and grabbed two Cokes—you know, the little 6 oz ones from years past. As he handed me the Coke, he had this little crooked smile. “Now this is our little secret, OK?”

I know why he had to keep it a secret. He, like me, had learned all too well the wonders of food. But unlike, yours truly, he was unable to remain just a ‘social eater’. He was a habitual user, Dad was. Hard stuff, too. One time, right after returning from WWII, he downed 13 bowls of Minestrone soup. He survived the war but had to have his stomach pumped that night. Eventually such indulgences came back to bite him in the ass.

Mom didn’t understand; she wasn’t like ‘us.’ She had never seen the light, nor heard the siren’s song—at least not until the day Dad took her to see Englebert Humperdink. She sure saw something that day. Came home all wobbly and glassy-eyed with the same crooked little smile… I never understood her addiction.

But will the little ones even remember the Twinkie? What great poems or sonnets will be written about the Ring Dings? the Choc-o-diles? the Devil Dogs? Oh, the humanity of it all. We need to act and act now. I say we do a fundraising telethon thing. Instead of ‘Jerry’s Kids,’ we can get a bunch of fat kids crying and staring into their empty Twinkie boxes.

“Why, mommy. Why?!”

That should do the trick. Think of it, Twinkies are the go-to for all occasions. Just lost your girlfriend? Get over that pair with another golden pair. Won the lottery? Twinkies. Hormones going wild? Twinkies. Pregnant? Twinkies. Postpartum? Prepartum? Post-prepartum? You always had a friend in Twinkies. For some of us, sadly, they were our only true friend.

We also need to think about the coming achococlypse. If we are to survive the coming onslaught of Global Problem Du Jour: pollution, radiation, droughts, liberals and famines, we will need the chemical properties of our favorite little ‘Soylent Yellow’ to help us endure and persevere. After all, they may just keep us alive. Twinkies are forever, too. Have you ever seen one go bad? Think of it. Well-armed Mad Max type vehicles will scour the countryside in search of them. Future history buffs will no doubt read of the Great Twinkie Wars.

“The Shroud of the Ring Ding has fallen. Begun the Twinkie War has!”

—Yoda

They have a half-life of about 400 years and are on the periodic table of the elements too, right next to uranium under Ts. And didn’t we find yellow cake in Iraq? Iran is trying to enrich Twinkies, but we can’t let them succeed!

I will now go to my local convenience store and start a memorial outside, complete with little crosses made of Twinkies, flowers, notes, the whole thing. I have even started knitting a patchwork quilt. Their stories must be told! It just seems wrong, so so wrong…

The Crank

I tried live-blogging the movie Twilight. Never do this. I would rather live-blog a hundred Republican debates in a pool of acid (not LSD). Not sure which Twilight thingy, exactly. Mr. Winslow would never reimburse me for an actual movie ticket, so this was purely a televised event. At least it was a night filled with monsters other than Mitt and Newt for a change.

Oh, boy, here we go:

Hour 3: I think the chick likes the vampire…hmmm. A plot twist I was not expecting.

Hour 11: After I ask for some clarification on something, my daughter says, “He’s a werewolf, Dad, and she’s a human who likes a vampire but the werewolf and the vampire are protecting her.”

So I ask, “Why aren’t they fighting or trying to devour each other?” It reminded me of that J. Geils Band song, Love Stinks. “You love the wolf and she loves a vampire. She loves some other zombie…you just can’t win.” I think it goes like that (you should hear my version of Angel is the Manifold).

For a little history, my daughter made me turn off Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein last year…made me turn it off! Right at the good part, when the monsters start showing up. “This is stupid, Dad!”

Is there any hope for the next generation?

Hour 24: I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand; his hair was perfect.

Hour 39: No vampires have attacked any werewolves yet, and no werewolves have attacked any other werewolves, etc. and so forth. “I say, hey, yeh, yeh, hey, yeh, yeh, what’s going on?!”

Hour 60: How come none of the werewolves ever wear any shirts? …even on seemingly light transformational days? Now back in the day, Lon Chaney Jr. wore flannel…you know, proper lycanthropic lesbian lingerie (LLL). And now, in this bizarro-were-world, they’re entirely beyond fashion.

Hour 83: Ooh, now the vampires aren’t wearing any shirts either. I fell strangely titillated. Must look up word titillated.

Hour 88: OMG, Edward is back! Who’s Edward again?

Hour 122: I wonder how many people realize Bella is a tribute to Bela Lugosi? Not many from this bunch, I reckon. Those same people will be shocked when she becomes a vampire. Now if only she was named Boris, or Lon, or maybe Romeroella…speaking of which, is Edward a werezombie?

Hour 130: Becoming a vampire is really ‘change you can believe in.’ Bella/Edward 2012.

Hour 789: “The only reason I left is because I thought I was protecting you,” said Edward. If only our former president had had such insight.

Hour 1,346: So, I thought about it, as I’ve had months during this “movie” to do so…how had we come to such a sad state of affairs? How had horror sunk into such a pit and a pendulum (sorry), such a pitiful paranormal state (sorry), such a pit of despair? (I don’t have to apologize for that reference; it’s not from a horror movie.)

Instead of watching Edward continue to be an embarrassment to all things vampire, I mulled over horror’s plight and the horror of horror’s recent demise. I couldn’t blame Fox News. Not this time. And then it hit me, Anne F*ck*ng Rice. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Interview with the Vampire (the book not the movie) and to some degree Lestat (the book not the movie), but little did I know what evil that woman would unleash on the entire genre. I think I made it up to Lasher, which I believe is about a transsexual gargoyle. Maybe that was a different series. Bottom line, Anne Rice should have stuck to porn. It was like she created some gateway series to hell…and not a cool hell like from South Park either.

Maybe we need to go back even further into the origins of celluloid horror to find out how we came to this dark and terrible place, which would be great if this horror movie actually had some dark and terrible places in it. Where’s the ground clinging fog? Where’s the creepy cemetery? Where’s the man in the mask who turns out to be Mr. Jenkins the caretaker? Now that was horror. This is more like Breakfast at Vladimir’s, or Legally Blood.

As soon as you bring in too much of the human drama, it’s not a horror movie anymore…it’s a human—or, in this case—an inhuman drama. Whenever you make the main point secondary, everyone loses…except chicks. It’s like Titanic. Sorry, it’s not a love story …it’s about a really big f*ck*ng ship sinking into the unforgiving icy waters of the North Atlantic! Swim Rose swim! And then get eaten by sharks. Now that’s a movie.

Sorry. Maybe we need to start with fifties horror movies. We can’t blame this all on Anne Rice. After all, they were cheap and cheesy and chock full of atmospheric buildup. As bad as many of them were, at least they took themselves seriously. Then came Godzilla movies, which were enjoyable in their own right, but ended the whole “taking themselves seriously” thing…in the form of a large seven story radioactively enlarged lizard.

The next insult to horror came in the form of John Carpenter. Although, I admire his work, and I liked Halloween very much, it had the unfortunate side effect of starting the entire slasher genre—which, besides the movie Jason & Freddie Meet the Harlem Globetrotters—was completely worthless. It was Mr. Jenkins the caretaker! I knew it!!

Then a very good horror movie did something else to help seal the genre’s fate. Remember American Werewolf in London? Yeah, Landis, I’m talking to you. You made a good horror movie that was also bordering on a comedy. You confused a lot of people with that oxymoronic combination. Sorry, but you too had some part to play in the weakening of a genre. See, once a genre is weakened it’s susceptible to shit like Buffys.

Enters Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who finished off any hope of returning to the more traditional undead fiends. The rest is history.

Science fiction set a similar, yet parallel course into the bowels of the Sarlacc, so to speak, but I already covered that debacle here. I think George Takei had it right when he intervened during a recent battle between Star Wars’ Carrie Fisher and Star Trek’s William Shatner:

“Fellow Star folks, cool it down and shut your big wormholes. Each is wonderful in its own special way. What’s needed today now more than ever is star peace, for there is an ominous, mutual threat to all science fiction. It’s called Twilight and it is really, really bad.”

–George Takei

Hour 2,421: I agree, Mr. Sulu, but thankfully I gouged out my own eye balls during the last love sequence.

If I had my way, all the werewolves and the vampires would be trying to kill each other amidst a massive gore splattered battle. Oh, and this would occur during the opening sequence, not during hour 427.

You want to try a real werewolf/vampire flick? Go see Underworld: Awakening, hailed as ‘a new war, new breed, same attitude’…this also could have worked in South Carolina for the Republicans last week. But with them it’s the same breed, the same attitude…oh, but they will have a different war, I’m sure. What? You thought I wouldn’t get any digs in?

I even called up Northern Arizona’s premiere horror writer, Michael D. Griffiths to let him weigh in.

Zano: Dude, what did you think of Twilight?

Griffiths: It sucked.

Well, there you have it. Now back to our story, already in progress.

Hour (sorry, but time has stopped): This is turning into Groundhog Day, only in undead form. Oh, wait Edward’s back….and he’s not wearing a shirt! OMG! Didn’t see that coming…with any luck I’ll wake up in a few hours to Sonny and Cher singing I Got You Babe somewhere in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

Typically, when a coworker comes to me first thing in the morning with a ‘story’, I feign interest. I might smile and maybe even nod periodically as if listening intently to this intriguing yarn (much in the same way I read Zano posts).

This particular story caught my attention with its opening line of “Hey, I was pulled over this morning on my way in.” It seems as though said coworker was doing more than the posted top speed whilst going through a residential area. The local city constabulary is known to still be trying to figure out how the paper sack resists their efforts to punch through it, as it were, so I figure this story just might have some Discord-style yuck yucks attached to it. Little did I know…

The coworker’s tale:

“So there I was, up to my knees in Caribou dung, surrounded by a thousand Umbatzu tribeswomen naked to the waist.”

Sorry, that’s an old Wild Kingdom flashback. I still get those from time to time.

“So there I was, minding my own business, blowing through some apartment complexes, when all of a sudden I hear a siren and see the flashing lights in my mirror. I pull over to the side of the road and proceed to get my stuff out of my wallet. I even leave the seatbelt on, and you know how hard it is to get your wallet out of yer back pocket with the damn belt on!”

I am injecting a quick note that will prove important as we proceed. You see, a very large squash is sitting next to my coworker on the front seat of his pickup. To us Itralians, the word we use to describe a very large squash, or a very stupid person, is ‘Googootz’.

“So this cop walks up to my window and says the usual license registration and proof of insurance number and I start handing him my stuff.

He then says to me kinda quick-like ‘Do you have any guns, knives, sharp objects, illegal narcotics, open beer or liquor bottles, hypodermic needles, Googootz, or any other items which I might need to know about?’”

At this point I would like to add another tidbit to this story. My coworker is Montana ex-Mormon. He can count on one hand the number of Italian-Americans he has talked to in his entire life.

“So I’m all nervous-like and just say no. I didn’t really listen all that well to his question. So he repeats it and I again says’ no. He then asks me to ‘step out of the truck please.’ As I step out of the truck, I’m trying to figure out just what pissed this guy off. Ah mean, I got the new mufflers and they ARE a bit loud, and the tires are big, but they fit within the width of the truck.”

Then the officer said, “Sir, you told me you had none of the items I asked about, and I see one of them as big as life on your front seat.”

He then points to my coworker’s big assed squash. At this point, fellow Discordians, I am laughing about as hard one can internally while trying to keep a poker face on the outside. Tears start to well in my eyes as I watch my friend all red-faced and twitchy continue describing his ordeal:

“Just how the crystallized-f%^& was I supposed to know it’s a goo-whatever-the-f&*^ing goonie goo goo? I’m about to pass out when he smiles and says he was talking about the squash. He just told me to slow the hell down when going through this area, and to have a nice day, the little prick.”

As I can no longer hold it in, I burst out laughing. He then hands me the biggest Googootz I have seen in a quite a googootsin long time. He tells me it was hiding in his garden, and he wanted to know if I liked squash.

I said, “No, but I do appreciate a Googootz like you.”

Normally, this would mark the end our tale, but I brought the protagonist of our story home that day but I left it in the Ram overnight. The next morning, after my wife left for work, I saw it sitting on the passenger seat, so I brought it in and put in on the kitchen counter and headed to work. Later that day, after it got dark, I get this phone call from my wife…a rather irate wife.

“What the hell is this friggin’ Googootz doing on the counter?! It’s dark in here when I get home and all I see in the glow of the street light coming through the window…to me it looked like a friggin’ baseball bat sitting on the counter! I damn near called the cops!”

All’s I could think is this same cop would respond and, having had enough, would haul the thing downtown for questioning.

My wife continued, “I thought there was somebody in the house, maybe a burglar or something. Scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t until I put on the lights that I saw this friggin’ Googootz staring at me.”

My wife made both my coworker and I some really nice Zucchini bread. But, sadly, she doesn’t like squash anymore.

Googootz night and Googootz luck

The Crank

Collapsing Shack, AZ—After losing dozens of potentially talented reporters and multiple lawsuits, the Daily Discord’s CEO finally moved the official Discord ‘Casting Couch’ from Mick Zano’s office. “This latest list of atrocities and abuses marked the last straw,” said CEO Pierce Winslow. “And this time I mean it!”

As a result, threats, blubbering, and attempted bribery were heard echoing up and down the halls of Discord Central today.

“What can you expect?” said Winslow. “Do you see a lot of women working here? Guess why that is? Yep, it’s because either Mick Zano or the Ghetto Shaman scares them off. That and the fact we have no toilets in the rest room. And don’t even get me started on what they make the interns do. At this point, the only college that still sends us any is that damn Hogbein Institute and Multiplex. And the last one I got from there thought the World Wide Web was something from the Lord of the Rings.”

In his defense, Zano brought up the fact Cokie McGrath still worked for the Discord, “so we can’t be all bad.”

Winslow then pointed out the fact McGrath has filed no less than seven restraining orders against Zano and is even beginning to doubt whether or not he can truly “make her a star.”

When Zano was given a chance for a rebuttal, he had this to say. “This is completely unfair. Four of those restraining orders are completely unjustified.” And somewhere in the background someone did that badha bah, drum thing.

“Winslow could have at least waited until the Swedish exchange student bikini team had finished their tour,” added the Shaman.

Winslow countered by saying, “and I’m taking away that damn Badha bah drummer too!”

I caught up to local horror writer Michael D. Griffiths, who tends to lurk around the office looking for free pastries, and asked him if he knew of any inappropriate behavior going on within the halls of the Discord.

“Umm, as long as begging, screaming, panting, grunting, bribing, pleading, demanding, hanging up porn calendars, third party harassment, quid pro quo, inappropriate emails, asking to wife swap, hanging up flyers for office orgies, giving crude gifts, pinching, hugging, froughting, naughty pantomiming, knee licking, trying to get other employee to give out their daughter’s cell numbers, and hiring topless dancers for lunch breaks are okay, then I think these guys are pretty well behaved,” said Griffiths.

Mr. Griffiths later admitted, however, the Ghetto Shaman’s list would be “considerably longer.”

So as you can see, even with the loss of the infamous Casting Couch not much will probably change around Discord Central. When we asked Winslow where it would go, he said he was considering giving the couch to the Crank. “That guy needs something to cheer him up.”

Now you have to excuse me, the Crank is researching which bar has the best PBR pour in Mesa and the new interns from the institute are due to arrive any minute. Can you open a locked door with a church key? I mean they must call them keys for some reason.

Collapsing, AZ—After thirty-three failed suicide attempts, the creature known as the Frankenstein Monster was admitted to a local acute psychiatric unit over the weekend. When asked why he had tried to light his whole body on fire, encase himself in ice, and watch the entire Jersey Shore series on Netflix while eating buckets of habanero chicken wings, the monster had this to say…

“It isn’t fair. I’ve been around longer than Dracula for Christ’s sake, but I get no publicity anymore. I thought things might be turning around when Deniro played me in that movie, but apparently that was just a dead flesh in the pan. And since then, nothing.

Hell, I could hang with the Vampires and Werewolves back in the day, but it’s really this zombie popularity that pisses me off the most. What do you think I am? I’m a walking corpse, that’s what. Should I have eaten that little girl’s brain before I tossed her into the well? What’s a dead guy gotta do? My agent kept telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Franky. Don’t worry, Franky.’ Now I don’t even have an agent as I threw him into a well.”

These days everybody loves serial killers. How about I just kill a few hundred screen writers and maybe then I’ll get some attention? I could already be half zombie, half serial killer. No, really, I’m made of parts from like seventeen people.”

Then the fierce creature grew quiet.

“Hey, are you going to finish that donut? Do you have anything with cream in them? These are kind of dry.

“No,” I said.

“And don’t even get me started on these new Vampires,” he continued. “I remember fighting those blood suckers while making that movie with Abbott and Costello. Now those guys were funny, not like you jerks at the Discord. In the old days, Vampires were evil nasty things. They’d tear out your throat and make you scream in terror. Well, not in that order. The screaming generally happened before the throat tearing out part. Today vampires are heart throbs? Hello? They don’t have hearts, people! I feel like I’m in the Twilight all right, the Twilight Zone! How did vampires morph into these sexy sensitive types that shimmer in the daylight and want to date virgins? I blame Anne Rice for that shit. I want to see Less-stat. If you ask me, you should have stuck with porn, girlfriend. Oh, and if I get my hands on that Stephanie Meyer, bitch, I’ll eat her brain and throw her down a well.”

When I asked Franky what his future plans were, he replied. “Well, for one, I intend to start eating people. Not because I like the taste, but it just seems to be all the craze these days. I’m also going to try to be more sensitive. Do you think they’d let me go to high school? I never did get my degree. Oh yeah, I’m also going to say brains a lot, use Rogaine all over my body to grow some furry hair, maybe get those Goth dental implants that look like vampire fangs. And let’s not forget my mass murder angle. I figure, if I cover all the bases, they’ll have to like me again, right?”

When I mentioned he had forgotten about Aliens, killer cyborgs, and giant radioactively enlarged bugs, Frankenstein wore a very long face. He’s always like that, really.

So I said, “Hey, let’s not forget about Frankenhooker.” I was just trying to cheer him up, but, in retrospect, this was a big mistake. He immediately grabbed my arm and threw me into a well. Thankfully, he forgot to eat my brain. Now I’m forced to write this entire article on my cell phone. Hey, but his agent’s down here and says they need him for I, Frankenstein, coming out later this year. Would someone please tell him? It’s a comedy. But just don’t mention the word Frankenhooker.

Collapsing Shack, AZ—The story you are about to read is true, sadly…except the crawdad part and most of the dialogue. OK, the premise is true, the rest is bullshit. After nearly half an hour of grueling work, the infamous zombie author Michael D. Griffiths believed his zombie Christmas story was ready for publication. He could not have been more wrong…

I eventually caught up with the local legend and when I say local, I mean the local bar. And when I say legend, I mean he holds the record for the most women turning him down in a single night. And here we all thought Zano’s record would hold. Happy hour is the best time to catch him and thankfully Flagstaff only has about thirty likely establishments. When I found him, in the back of the Green Room, he was sobbing over an empty pitcher of IPA. After I agreed to buy Mr. Griffiths another pitcher, he had this to say:

“I was told there was going to be a zombie Christmas Anthology and started to write a story for it. I mean come on, my zombie novel Eternal Aftermath has sold nearly twelve copies. But anyway, I wrote this tight little story about a group of guys who have to fight their way through a zombie infested town so they can get medications for some sick kids on Christmas Eve. It passed the Flagstaff writing group with flying colors. They loved it! Hell, Zano was even considering modifying it for the Daily Discord. I mean it’s got zombies, an X-Mess message, and all that Yule time sentimental crap tied up in a nice red bloody bow. But what does my publisher say?

“No, no, no, no, no, I want, like, zombies in a Santa suit eating children.”

He really said that. Dude?! What the hell?! Even I can’t write stuff that sick. Perhaps I should stick with my cannibal mutant anthologies and Santa Claus can bite me.”

When I asked the melancholy author if he had any plans to rectify the situation, he said, “Look, I tried my best and I blew it. Now I won’t be able to afford to get Christmas presents for my family this year, unless you count these crawdads I’ve been saving since last summer in a bucket in my bathroom. But I forgot to refill the bucket last month and they’re not very active. Well, they’ll be easier to wrap now. Kind of smells like an Asian fish market in there, though. Cheaper than replacing the Poo-Pourri, I suppose. Heck, they might not be eatable anymore, but I’ll let my family make their own call…after I ship them back east.”

When I asked if he meant shipping the family or the crawdads back east, he took a large swig from the pitcher and blew a wave of foam barward. 

A hardy “PthHwaaaw!” was all he managed.

He drinks right out of the pitcher, by the way. For those scant few of you who don’t know him personally, Mr. Griffiths is a 7-foot tall Nordic-Viking type dude (NVTD).

Once the pitcher was done, he got up to leave, but as he started downing abandoned drinks off a nearby table, he yelled this across the bar at me, “Christmas Zombies, Bah Humbrains! Christmas is for sissies anyway. I’ll show them a whole new meaning of terror when I release my Zombie Ground Hog Day series.”

Then Mr. Griffiths stumbled back over to me and slurred, “I don’t want to drop any spoilers, but let’s just say loads of children will be eaten by giant undead rodents and every time he sees his shadow, he’ll vomit acid. I might tie it in with that Bill Murray movie and have them relive that glorious day over and over again. Did I give too much away?”

I asked him when the deadline was for his publisher for this original zombie x-mas story, and he said, “Now! It’s due now! If he wants Gore, how about Al Gore trapped at Santa’s flipping workshop, with ice melting all around, surrounded by armies of undead cannibalistic climatologists! I’ll give him Gore…I’ll give Gore!”

He then chugged his last confiscated pint and stormed out of the bar, shouting incoherently about cannibal anthologies and the mutant hordes. Oh, and he left me with the bill for both pitchers, the usual.

I just whipped out the parents’ ultimate Christmastime argument for good behavior.

“Santa is watching. If you don’t want a lump of coal in your stocking, you’d better go to sleep.”

Being an off-the-hook intelligent six-year-old (who miraculously still believes), she asked “how does he know?”

I used the tried and tested “magic” answer.

Her response was “no, really, how does he know?”

I gave her an off the cuff answer that was truly plausible, although probably not appropriate, but true to the Discord credo (of not being at all well):

“Well, honey, about ten years ago President Bush approved the Patriot Act which allows him to tie into the phone and cell phone networks, internet, and CIA satellite surveillance systems to spy on private citizens. So Santa knows everything.”

She got a look of shock on her face and rolled over and went to sleep. So I got to thinking, as owls often do, why don’t I have a look of shock on my face while I roll over and go to sleep?

It’s amazing the girl still believes in Santa amidst such a cynical time (she reads Zano, after all). My brother clued me in to the whole Santa thing when I was three. With that revelation, I put the whole Tooth Fairy thing to the test by putting my newly fallen tooth under my pillow without telling anyone. I awoke the next morning, with a bit of a knot in my stomach, and checked for my reward, knowing it wouldn’t be there, but with a bit of hope. The truth was revealed. That did it for the Tooth Fairy, the Easter bunny, and Jesus Christ.

So what does all of this say about our society? Not so much my “discovery”, but the possibility of what the government may discover about us? On the way to work the other day I heard a story on the radio about some woman who was busted for going into a Wal*Mart store, gathering the ingredients for crystal meth, and actually brewing it right there in the store. At that moment I wondered, how is that done? How could you even try that? I wanted to Google that shit to find out, but I didn’t, because I knew that big-brother was watching. I am by nature a very intelligent and curious guy (Zano’s characterization of me as a Bond villain is not far off). I have also wanted to look up bomb making, router spoofing, naked female midget wrestling, and any number of other big-brother-noteworthy info nuggets, but haven’t because of their very big-brother-noteworthiness. Isn’t this supposed to be the land of the free? Or the free basing? Why do I feel like I can’t use the greatest informational tool in history to access the sum of all mankind’s knowledge openly? I’m not planning to open a Wal*Mart crack department; I just want to know how this woman could possibly have pulled this off.

Obama, who in my opinion is an adequate president (the stimulus wasn’t a bad idea in principle, but a lot of the shit he stimulated was ludicrous), promised to dismiss the Patriot Act. Instead of ending the Patriot Act, he started using it…competently.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

– John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (Jesus, could you lose some of that name?)

While such powers have resulted in a number of high profile captures and assassinations (Yeah, Bin Laden was assassinated; I don’t have a problem with that, but who are we kidding? Lettuce not smooth-over the reality of what we did illegally), what has this environment done to our society? The shit spewed daily here at The Daily Discord could easily be construed as subversive. In my ‘hood, where nothing ever happens—except for that one dumbass a month that slams into that phone pole, no exaggeration—there always seems to be strange vehicles parked across the street from my house. One of them even looked like this:

Am I under close surveillance? In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, I am “mostly harmless”. And yet, I feel insecure in an environment intended to make me feel secure. This is a load of shit. And how much of my cell phone, internet, and spy satellite bill are paying for surveillance of me?

I could get more verbose, I’m good at that, but I have pretty much said all I have to say on this topic. There is no need to provoke big brother any more than I already have. I just have one more thing to say:

The red fox is down.

Dogs barking, can’t fly without umbrella.

The chair is against the wall.

Johnny has a long mustache.

Merry Christmas. And for those non-Christian readers who are offended by that, to quote one of my heroes, “Happy Birthday Jesus”, wherever you are.

Ask anyone who works, or has ever worked retail at a shopping mall during the holidays, what’s the most depressingly degrading job one could apply for, or have thrust upon them during the Christmas season, and here’s how it will go down. Oh, I should add, the following yule time tale actually happened…sadly.

If you ask this “what’s the worst Christmas job” question at your local mall, this will be some of the replies:

• The lion share of the mall-ites will give you confused stares. If you yourself are confused by this, just remember you’re standing in the center of some food court, yelling questions at random passersby.
• A handful of people will avoid you like you’re “it”…that somehow a flash mob of people playing a rousing game of mall tag just spontaneously erupted.
• One man will go to such lengths to avoid you he’ll stick his own head in one of the mall trash cans, like an ostrich. Yeah, you! Did you think I wouldn’t see the other 93% of you? I’m still haunted by this man’s logic.
• Someone will invariably “shush” you, and then ask for directions to the Orange Julius stand.
• But one, ONE solitary person out of everyone you’ve accosted—is bound to answer, Department Store Santa.

We have a winner! Give the man a cigar. Being a department store Santa is truly a job to test men’s souls. This is how I became one, during a hectic Christmas season in the winter of 95′. But a little history first.

For years, Value City held prime-position as the face of the Lycoming Mall in glorious central Pennsylvania. Catering to the “low-income/useless crap on the cheap” demographic. It had operated under the name “Gee Bee’s” before someone, presumably in a cheap-suit, stood up in a boardroom meeting one day and said, “Look, we want to offer our customers value. Yet, we want to imply this is no mere store…Value hut? Value Sovereign Nation?! ValueTownXpress? Uhh…. How about Value City?”

Besides, what the fuck is a Gee Bee anyways? Do we really want the first thing to enter our customer’s minds to be “Nights on Broadway?”

During the holiday season in 95′, I joined this city of value and entered the wild world of holiday retail. The work wasn’t bad, better than working for the Discord, but somehow I got stuck in the household accessories dept—which, at the time, was just a massive, massive amount of African-themed knick-knacks, vases, tribal masks, etc. It’s as if someone took one aisle from Pier 1 Imports and said, “We can do more of that for less.”

It didn’t take long before I got verbally reprimanded for being culturally insensitive.

I made the remark (to a black co-worker, no less), “You got it lucky dude, you work in the shoe dept”

Apparently had I wandered onto the set of Roots. I failed, despite my best efforts to convince Mr. Wunderlin (there’s irony for ya!) that I wasn’t being culturally insensitive. Hell, Shawn, the black guy, thought it was hilarious.

So, with the holiday season fast-approaching, one day Mr. Wunderlin—walking ‘round in a winter Wunderlin—approached me. Seeing as I was slightly chubby at the time and white, he wanted me to be the official Santa Claus for Value City this year. I weighed the pros & cons….while everyone else was slaving away, stocking shelves, I was forced to sit in a chair for roughly six hours each night in a sweaty costume, getting groped by children with sweaty, sticky, candy cane hands and yanking at my fake beard—always braving the time-bomb that some kid’s gonna either a) piss or shit themselves on my lap, or b) vomit profusely, or c) all of the above simultaneously (a dream come true for certain members of the coaching staff at PSU). What? Too soon? This was literally as close to hell as I could be, without actually going to hell, or PSU.

I get issued the costume, which consisted of a hat, a fake beard that smelled like linseed oil, a pair of Santa pants, and a Santa coat, along with leggings that, when put on, made my shoes look like real boots. Correction: which WOULD have made my shoes look like boots, if I had owned any black shoes to camouflage them. I only had white shoes. So, after a quick visit to the Shoe Dept, I got a pair of black sneakers comp’d to me by Value City. So, I try on the outfit in the men’s room and practice my script (yes…there was a fucking script) and, to be honest, I didn’t look half bad…I was chubby, but not in a “bowl full of jelly” kind of way. I just looked like Santa was kept captive by Buffalo Bill from “Silence of the Lambs” for a few months. Put on the lotion or you don’t gets the presents.

I brought this to Mr. Wunderlin’s attention, “I look like Santa with a tapeworm.”

He responded thusly, “Yeah..I mean, you’re fat, but you’re not ‘Santa fat.’”

Fuck you, Mr. Wunderlin. I didn’t even bother to change your name when I wrote this…prick! His solution was to grab a decorative pillow from the home-furnishings dept (comped, of course) and then positioned a back-brace to secure the pillow around my waist. Problem solved. Say hello to “Lumpy Claus.”

I was also instructed to go out in to the center court to watch the actual Mall Santa, who all of us Department store Santa’s aspire to be…you know, to get the Kringle mannerisms down. Wonderlin! So now, in addition to this pile of shit I find myself in, I also get to stand outside Santa’s Village for almost two hours watching him sit children on his lap, asking them what they’d like for Christmas. In my 1995 fashion sense, I must have looked something like a cross between Eddie Vedder and a Nintendo Magazine ad…I’m surprised I didn’t get accosted by angry parents.

My script was as follows: “Ho ho ho….Merry Christmas…have you been good this year? And what would you like most for Christmas this year?” This was then followed by a photo op with Santa and a candy cane. By the second day, I threw that script away. I was in full-blown improv mode, the St. Nick ZONE. My natural ability to develop a rapport with the young ‘uns made me an instant hit. I was “Jokey Santa” And you’re goddamn right I used this to my advantage. Why? Two words…Single Mothers.

A sample conversation:

ME: “I think that Mom should join in on this photo with us. What do you think?”

KID: “YEAH! C’MON MOM!”

MOM: “Oh well….I…Guess…Okay, what the heck!”

ME: “That’s the spirit! Plop on down and you’ll get a candy cane of sorts too Mommy!”

MOM: “Awesome!”

ME: “Ho ho ho…it sure is, Mom, it sure is.”

The rest of the days leading up to Christmas Eve were a myriad of every disgusting bodily fluid one can imagine. I got pissed on, I got farted on, I got drooled on (and that was just the mothers! Yowza!). Mercifully I was spared a Cleveland Steamer, and the foresight to know that in the early days of the internet people actually devoted whole websites to this phenomenon.
One time my Santa beard got pulled off my face so hard that the elastic snapped. So someone was dispatched to the crafts section for a bit of twine (comp’d). My beard had also taken on a slightly pinkish-hue due to the amount of sticky grubby candy-cane hands constantly pawing at it. One of my boot leggings had actually split up the side and had to be repaired with common black electrical tape. Jolly old St. Jury Rigged.

So that’s my tale. Value City went bankrupt a few years later and is now a Burlington Coat Factory. But some department stores are probably wandering the malls right now, frantically seeking the latest “craze” toy. Since then there are a whole slew of children who grew up to be adults with children of their own. And they will take them to see some severely underpaid Santa at some shitty department store—a man trading in his last remaining scraps of dignity for the utmost honor of getting pissed & farted on by a giggling 7-year old.

Fuck you, Mr. Wunderlin. Just Fuck you…you, and the cheap sleigh-bell-adorned reindeer you rode in on.