I wanted to talk about Tom Shellenberger. When I was barely a young kid there was a man who would dress up as Dracula and walk around Dundalk, my hometown. Dundalk is like the underarm of Baltimore. Dundalk is the punching bag for the suburbs of Baltimore, always has and always will be. But I don't mind, I love growing up there. I miss it. I love Dundalk. People like Tom are Dundalk. I have always had an affinity for vampires. I grew up with a Hollywood obsessed with the undead. Check out this list!: Once Bitten, Fright Night, Vamp, My Best Friend is a Vampire, Near Dark, The Lost Boys. All of these films came out in the mid-1980s and I watched them all, over and over again. I am still obsessed with these movies! I read everything I could find in the library on vampires as early as elementary school. In high school I found the Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice's vampire universe, and later, other writers, like Michael Romkey, Laurell K. Hamilton, John Steakley, Charlaine Harris and...

I found WNUF Halloween Special only after it made the jump to bluray, thanks to boutique label Terror Vision. Upon my first viewing I was enthralled . I may have been hypnotized with magical nostalgia (I use that word a lot) as I sort of drifted off (but not dozed off) into this subconscious trip back in time, or so I imagined. The film is a supposed found-footage tape of fictional news station WNUF of a Halloween Special produced in 1987. It follows Frank Stewart as he visits the purportedly haunted Webber House. The brilliance of this film is the authenticity with which it appears to be a product of the '80s. 2nd slipcover option And so as I watched the film, that stupor had set in, as I was half-tired, and my brain was fooled into comfortable fantasy. The commercials felt so real, like half-forgotten moments of long lost life. Or maybe a tape ejected from one VHS dimension into an adjacent dimension here. I had begun to believe that this was indeed a tape that had been found, an...

Things rarely change, right? So after not posting here to this dear, dear diary of a blog for a while, things are probably not a whole lot different. Well yes and no. I'm definitely in a better position, a career, than I was before. Now I spend most of my time working on getting into a new home so that maybe I can get back to work on DISPLACED . The Orioles still suck, and yet I stay with them always, always... Addiction, to whatever, is probably the most ridiculous mountain you could ever hope to climb. It reminds me of the literal mountain in Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales in which curious humans begin a climb to the castle ruins above, only to remain stuck in a timeless void, climbing for eternity entrenched in a hopeless bubble never to reach the top. So to say that I've gone days without that precious synthetic optimism would be meaningless. Who cares? It could be with me for decades. Perhaps it's the journey of ridding myself of the stuff that I'm doing all wr...

The O’s complete another losing season in a week or two. My hypochondria seems to be getting worse, and I’m back on the white optimism. I haven’t even thought about either UNIQUE or WITNESS since classes began. One good thing coming up is the trip to Memphis and New Orleans in the end of October with Theresa in our first road trip in the Mustang. And at least football’s back this weekend. Finally a team from Baltimore to cheer for that wins. Anyway, this has been easily the quickest summer of my life. The coolest, too. I’m quite blown away, really. I’ve stopped drinking, hanging with friends, and generally doing anything. Things are great with my GF. But I wonder if maybe I am just depressed. As you may know, I’m not fond at all of the word or its definition; but what else could it be. I’ve even lost my appetite and cravings for food! Today I eat only out of habit and for sustenance. This is both good and bad.

What a Sunday! It's lovingly warm outside, and the Baltimore Winter sky is beginning to look a lot like the Pacific Northwest. It's cloudy 'round here damn near daily. And the Ravens are in the playoffs! What a day... I'm two days out from a nice 5-day vacation and I've got a couple six packs of Bud American Ale, my new favorite beer behind Guinness. I've come up with a few new things to implement into UNIQUE , and I'm looking forward to this evening so that I will be able to sit down in quiet. I'm going to sleep tight, tonight. Goodnight, Baltimore!

What a great weekend! My little brother arrived in Baltimore and the Ravens win on Saturday blended right into Christmas with Theresa's family all day Sunday and our friend's at night. I wanted to post here over the weekend, but for the first time in a while I did not have a chance. But that's a good thing. I kept busy and stayed optimisitic throughout the weekend. Now we're gearing up for Christmas with my family and I'm finally in the spirit. I'm spending every dollar I have on everyone I can think of. And...I'm enjoying it. Weird. Now, if the Raven's win on Sunday and I get some editting done, I'll be ringing in the New Year like a madman! Also, while reading a new vampire book collection I was given yesterday, I began to see things about descriptive narrative differently. So that is something I'm looking for while doing revisions tonight and this week. There are certain times when I use words like Victorian in place of describing the characte...

It's warm. Damp with large drops of rain pelting the windshield every now and then. The Crystal Method's The Winner fades into Over the Line , and I roll the windshield down. In my pocket are two white pills. I fish them out, and pop them in my mouth, downing them with a Diet Pepsi. To my left is the Patapsco River, capped by downtown Baltimore a little further to my north. Yellow street lamps guide my way on either side, and I close my eyes to inhale the watery breeze. I stop in front of an old basketball court. Just past the court is a small field that ends at the water, a stubby pier jutting out in broken planks. I remember the place from my earlier drinking days. Friends and I would come here before we were old enough to hit the bars and drink. We would drink cans of Bud and bottles of Zima and we would make out. I slip my hands in my pocket and lean back on the hood of the Mustang. Crystal Method's High and Low is on now. It's perfect and I smile. I'm happy i...