On Halloween, Let’s Consider Important Questions. Like, Do Vampires Poop?
It’s Halloween weekend, and along with the tricks and treats, and little goblins and ghouls, there are other things that haunt me.
Questions. Queries. Imaginings. About
These keep me awake at night.
Can zombies swim?
Whenever I watch a zombie movie, I always imagine different ways that I could escape zombies if I ever found myself in that situation.
I’m sure you can all relate.
Now, to be clear, I’m talking about your standard issue, usual zombies that you see in TV and movies, the kind that move very slowly, shambling along, whose bodies are in a constant state of disrepair, and who seem very easily outrun, although of course their advantage is that, like the turtle vs. your hare, they don’t get tired and, slow or not, they just keep moving. Plus, you have to sleep and they don’t, so you’d better get a really big head start on them so that they don’t catch up to you while you’re taking a nap.
But, again, I’m thinking ahead of things that I might need someday if there’s a zombie virus.
Up to this point, I’ve also thought about climbing trees, sealing myself into bunkers and reinforced buildings, having an array of barbed wire fences and flamethrowers surrounding a building, and, one of my favorites, living on an island.
Because, as far as I can tell, zombies can’t swim.
Or can they?
I’m not sure.
My initial thought is that they can’t swim. After all, they’re dead bodies, and dead bodies tend to not do so well in water. They get all bloated and explode very quickly out in the sun, floating along, so the zombies couldn’t last long enough to get from the mainland out to an island.
Also, they can’t really swim.
Swimming takes much more rapid movements than zombies seem to offer. So, you would think they would sink rather quickly.
And then what, do they get eaten by fish? Do the fish then become zombies? Does the ocean get infected by the zombie virus and does everything in the ocean become zombified?
Or since they can’t die, do they just float along, or sink to the bottom and then walk along the sea floor because they don’t need to breathe and they can then technically walk all the way to the island to find you? But could they make it, or would the saltwater dissolve them eventually or would their flesh be slowly eaten away by sea creatures, and, again, would that turn them into zombies?
But regardless, I kind of like my island idea.
After all, if you’re going to eventually die anyway, you might as well enjoy yourself on a tropical paradise until the time comes.
Plus, I love coconut.
Do ghosts fart?
Ever walk into your house after you’ve been away, or walk into a room and notice a strange smell?
Of course, once you do, you have to try to find it, because who wants a strange smell in their house?
I’ll usually look for some dropped food or something behind or under furniture, and sometimes that’s the case. Some bit of stray potable that tried to escape and sadly discovered its motion was limited to whatever got it there in the first place, and then was left, saddened, and chastened, to rot in bitterness and disappointment. It’s like the Willy Loman of pizza toppings. Poor green pepper. You coulda been a contender.
But what if it’s not a rogue vegetable?
My next guess is that it’s a croaked mouse. They’ll get into the house from time to time, especially in the winter, and will end up kickin’ it, and not in the sense that they put on Hammer pants and break dance. And once they get to a certain ripeness, they’ll emit a foul stench.
But what if it’s not a mouse?
Something else? Something in the vent? Something downstairs coming up through the vent?
Nope, nope and nope.
Whiff your underarms.
Not you.
Not me.
Did you fart?
No.
You sure about that?
Then what is it?
Maybe it’s a ghost?
Do ghosts fart?
I’ve often wondered about this, since ghosts seem to engage in some banal and goofy activity. People will talk about ghosts leaving cabinets open or opening kitchen drawers or moving little items around.
Because of course that’s not the people in the house, who have just forgotten they left a kitchen cabinet open.
It’s ghosts, dammit!
So, if ghosts love spending their time doing goofy, little stuff like that, playing practical jokes and such, why wouldn’t they step into a room and pop one?
Why not get someone to blame the other person in the room for their farts? Or get them to think there’s something else going on, and then ghost giggling as they look around and under the furniture?
So, my vote is that yes, yes, ghosts probably do fart.
And aren’t you glad that incredibly important question has been answered?
Do vampires poop?
Do vampires poop?
Pee?
I was thinking about this while watching the “Twilight” movie and encountering the scene where the vampires invite Bella over for dinner, making a big deal out of the fact that they don’t eat food but they’re trying to cook for her, etc.
Here’s the part of that scene that really doesn’t make sense: They act as though they’ve never cooked before even though they haven’t been vampires all their lives, so at some point they must have known how to cook real food, which I also assume wouldn’t be a skill you would forget, despite all the time passed… anyway, a minor quibble considering how masterfully Stephenie Meyer tells her story, so, moving on…
They’re on a liquid diet. They say they don’t sleep. Do they have other bodily functions?
You would think they would, since the blood they’re taking in is hardly pure, so they’d have to expunge their bodies of the waste products said blood carries. Ergo, they would have to emit some sort of waste, whether urine or feces.
I would guess at the very least all they do is pee, since they’re on a liquid diet, and have been for a while.
So, another really important question: Is the pee red? And if so, wouldn’t that be really difficult to clean out of porcelain toilets? You’d have to clean it all the time to avoid staining.
Hmm.
And say that the vampires are lazy or don’t feel like cleaning it. Do they invite a cleaning service over? And if so, do they have to tell the cleaning people, since it would be pretty strange for cleaning people to be constantly coming over to clean blood out of a toilet, or are the cleaning people vampires too? And if they’re not vampires, do they have to sign a contract with the cleaning service that says they won’t eat their employees?
These are all incredibly vital issues that need to be considered. And I sure hope Stephenie Meyer answers all of these integral questions in the next “Twilight” book.
Don’t you?
Is there a vampire workout video?
Another thought while watching ”Twilight” again…
You hardly ever see any fat vampires.
They’re almost invariably beautiful, young (or young-ish) and ripped.
Even the evil decrepit old vamps are at least skinny.
So, I’m wondering, do vampires only “turn” fit people?
Or do people make deals with vamps and tell them, “Hey hey hey… let’s wait a minute here, shall we? Give me six weeks to get into shape, and THEN you can suck out my blood and turn me into an undead creature of the night! At the very least, let me lose these love handles…”
If that’s the case, I think a lucrative pursuit would be to become a personal trainer for future vampires.
You would put people through an intensive two-month boot camp that would get them into ripped, ready-to-be-drained shape so that they could spend eternity looking like Calvin Klein models, instead of extras on “Roseanne.”
I think it’s a great money-making opportunity, just waiting to be explored.
Yup.
This is why DaVinci’s ghost jealously haunts me for rivalling his genius.
Are there Vampire businesses that are open all night?
There are a lot of other businesses that amaze me with their tenacity to stay around. I never see anyone there. There are never any cars outside. They don’t advertise. They don’t seem to be particularly viable. Yet there they are, steadfast, inexplicable.
Can these places be potential tax write offs or money laundering enterprises?
Or do they have a set of clienteles that I’m not privy to, since I don’t run in certain circles, or since I don’t maintain a strictly nocturnal existence?
Maybe they’re just dead during the day, but at say, 3 or 4 a.m., when most of us are in bed, asleep (or, just waking up to get a bottle for a one-year-old), they become bustling meccas for a wide range of customers.
It’s strange to think of this different world taking place around us, apart from us, but still somewhat tangentially tied, if only through the physical remnant of the building, standing static, abandoned, during the daylight hours.
Hmm.
You wonder if vampires think the same thing about banks.
“What’s up with that Us Bank building?” writes the vampire blogger equivalent to Sean. “I never see anyone there during night hours, when we’re all awake. How does it stay in business?”
