Bat Milk by Brandon Blommaert
Today’s bizarre and brilliant Saturday Morning Cartoon is BAT MILK by Brandon Blommaert, c/o Sundance Channel:
Vampires of the Wild Kingdom
The Vampire Squid:
“Like many deep-sea cephalopods, Vampire Squid lack ink sacs. If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips. This luminous barrage, which may last nearly 10 minutes, is presumably meant to daze would-be predators and allow the Vampire Squid to disappear into the blackness without the need to swim far.” — wikipedia entry on Vampire Squid from Hell
The Vampire Bat:
“…The furry, bean-shaped bat with its rodent-like face resembles a rat with wings, but bats are actually more closely related in evolution to dogs and horses. In fact, vampire bats in the wild will gallop and leap across the ground much in the same way that horses do.
In South America where they are common, vampire bats approach their prey on the ground, galloping quickly and quietly as they sneak up on, bite, and drink the blood from sleeping cows, goats and birds.” — “What Steers Vampires to Blood,” UCSF Research
The Vampire Finch:
“…Their most important source of food during the extended droughts is blood. The finches begin by landing on the tail of a seabird. They peck at the base of its wing feathers, breaking the skin and causing it to bleed. As the blood oozes out, the finches sip it every few seconds. Other finches line up behind the booby like a queue at a blood bank and as soon as one leaves its blood-sucking perch another takes its place.” — “Islands of the Vampire Birds”
[Read about Oxpeckers and more at The Evolution of Vampires]
Image Source: fatfinch.wordpress.com
Don’t Stop Bleeding
Just a vampire girl
Livin’ in a zombie world
She took the midnight train
Goin’ anywhere
Just a city boy
Dead and raised in south Detroit
He took a bite of brain
Goin’ anywhere
Find a human in a smoky room
The smell of blood and cheap perfume
For a lifetime they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on
Strangers shuffling
Up and down the boulevard
Shadows searching
In the night
Undead people
Living just to find emotion
Feasting somewhere
In the night
Slurping hearts till the lust’s fulfilled
Everybody’s out to kill
Doin’ anything to feel the vice
just one more time
Some are green, some are blue
Some have mouths that cannot chew
Oh, the horror movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on
Strangers shuffling
Up and down the boulevard
Shadows searching
In the night
Undead people
Living just to find emotion
Feasting somewhere
In the night
Don’t stop
Bleeding
Hold on to that feeding
Undead
People
Oh-oh-ooooh
Don’t stop
Bleeding
Hold on to that feeding
Undead
People
Oh-oh-ooooh
My Pet Vampire
Tight as a tick to a scalp,
I keep my vampire nailed down
to the floor in my bedroom.
His arms are stretched pale and flabby
as the hairy little bat I know
he wishes he could turn into
when I see him squinching his lupine brow
and grunting like he’s constipated.
But the nails won’t set him free
from the clock-handed impalement of his limbs.
Maybe he could transform into a flying rodent
but he’s stretched so tight, the tension
between those silver spikes would only split
him right in two. I keep him fed
with stray pet blood and sometimes
he acts like he loves me for it –
cooing like he’s the one stray I kept,
the one pet I cared enough about to take in,
the lucky survivor I won’t kill.
At other times — usually at night
when I peek over the bed before sleep –
his eyes quiver ablaze and he stares
right at me like some starving feral animal
caught in a barbed wire fence.
Asleep, I dream of torture –
of drizzling holy water left-right
across pasty dead flesh, drawing
cross-shaped wounds in the gray canvas
of skin. I dream of taking needle nose
pliers to teeth before teasing him
with my bare wrist and strained neck.
But in the morning, the sunlight blares
into the windowpane, fizzling his face
and he screams like a drowning hyena.
It’s annoying. And as I close the curtains
I deeply wish I could just finish him off,
but this supernatural sundial
is the best alarm clock I ever had.
They Eat People
I Eat People: Animated Video by Dan Hess
Cannibal Corpse Lounge Music: YouTube Parody by unknown lounge act
Why Dost Thou Love to Eat People?: YouTube weirdness by anonymous guitar-playing vampire freak (this too has been parodied…badly)
Corpse Contest Winners
In the latest e-mail edition of The Goreletter (#4.03), I held two cool contests for subscribers and the results are now in.
First up was the “Corpse Contest,” sponsored by Jim Minton, the producer of Exquisite Corpse, with a free DVD version of the film as a prize. This contest asked readers to write a poem, eleven lines or less, about horror cinema. The only catch was that the words ‘exquisite’ and ‘corpse’ had to appear somewhere in the poem and the final two lines had to rhyme. A lot of great creative entries came in for this one, and Jim has kindly tossed in an extra DVD so that TWO entrants can win! Here they are:
1st Place Winner
IN CONSIDERATION OF MR. BIRD
by James C. Wardlaw
The organist coaxed screams and crescendos from the pipes.
The movie projector cast the flickering images of a corpse
dressed in a black tuxedo.
He rested on the park bench, hands folded on his chest
while ravens pecked at the sinkholes that served him for eyes.
The audience gazed at the staccato pictures in black and white,
wondering just what the hell would happen next.
Those black birds pulled out chunks with veritable haste.
It was a study in exquisite poor taste.
***
2nd Place winner
BLOOD PORTRAIT
by James S. Dorr
Exquisite,
Max Schreck –
his name even meant “fear” –
lurking corpse-silent through
Nosferatu,
no gentleman vampire he,
Bela Lugosi,
but claw and breath
drenching death.
***
I loved everyone’s poems, but these two did the best job with imagery and formal line construction. Congratulations to Mr. Dorr and Mr. Wardlaw — they’re both getting a copy of the otherwise unattainable DVD, Exquisite Corpse!
The second contest was a trivia contest — a random draw of people who sent me an e-mail message with the name of my first website in it. The winner was Jeff Strand, who remembered my old website was called, “Arnzen’s Arbor Vitae,” from the mid-to-late 1990s. Congratulations, Jeff! You won a rare broadside of my poem, “Six Short Films About Chauncey The Serial Killer” and an advanced demo of my upcoming CD, Audiovile!
I run contests often in The Goreletter…all you have to do is subscribe if you don’t want to miss the chance to win.
curse of the hempire
hippie vampires look the worst
because they refuse to Lugosi
their hair back with pomade;
they sit cross-legged beside their
broken coffins and tie-dye
their funeral garb into spirographic florals
of mold and mud, tripping on homegrown
shockwhite graveyard mushrooms,
believing they’re good vegetarians
until the thirst for human blood
animates their groovy shambling
and like stoned-out stone-cold soldiers
they hunt hungry for a feast of friends;
“make blood, not war,” some cry and
they bite men in the spirit of free love –
their undead heads slurping in shadows
that no longer see summer or sunshine
forever young
Twisted Prompts for Sicko Writers
+ Depict an allergy gone haywire.
+ Pen the monologue of a nostalgic vampire.
+ Script a dialogue between the Devil and his publicist.
***
Instigation is a WEEKLY department in Hellnotes newsletter.
Nicolas UnCaged
For your next movie night, rent:
Vampire’s Kiss (1989)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Kiss of Death (1995)
Horrorshow Horrors
For your next movie night, rent:
American Movie (1999)
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
Proverbs for Monsters
+ Slime never feels slimy to slime.
+ Bark all you like, the man in the moon has no ears.
+ Biting off the head silences the victim. But it is the feet that will stop them from running away.
+ Beware of things that go bump in the day.
+ Man, like monster, also has sharp teeth.
+ Those who most shun garlic, often most enjoyed it in their youth.
+ The sleep of madness brings forth humanity.
+ Wear gold jewelry. When silver is in fashion, wear even more of it.
+ Like a stake through the heart, so is the love of the clergy.
+ A man eating plant will even swallow a vegetarian, when hungry.
+ A garbled threat is but a spell cast by an illiterate witch.
+ An infant vampire bites hardest.
+ Even werewolves shave during the day.
+ It is not your tentacles, but the acid that drips from them, that frightens your prey.
+ Those who fear the sun too soon often awaken before sundown.
+ One can catch a good human with a bad hamburger.
+ Holy water stings but a neck bite is forever.
+ Nothing is more stupid than an exposed brain.
+ Fortune favors the cleaver.
06/18/2013 at 8:43 am 
06/11/2013 at 2:11 pm 
