Graveyard Week: Disinterred

Fortuitous timing lets me conclude Graveyard Week with Disinterred, a story about the grave of a victim of a witch hunt. Fortuitous because next week is Witches Week!

I don't know if we can keep this up every week: it may be a one-time occurrence. Certainly when we go from Sea Monster Week to Montana Week we'll have some problems, Montana not being by the sea. Ditto for Mummy Week and Martian Week -- although we never do see Marvin the Martian's face. Maybe it's mummified.

Graveyard Week: Grave Robbers

Attention world: I do not want a fancy coffin for my funeral. I don't need it. I'll be dead. Find the bargain one, the one made cardboard and Hefty bags. That'll do. I shall die as I lived: cheap. Also, skip the flowers. And any coordinated release of doves around my tombstone. Do they make tombstones out of plastic? Something that cost $2? Sign me up for one of those. I want the entire funeral to cost less than a meal at Burger King. Take all the money you would have spent on a fancy hoity funeral, stick it in the bank, and when it hits a million airdrop it over whatever area was most recently hit by a natural disaster.

Also, do not bury me at the graveyard featured in Grave Robbers. That should go without saying. - Sean

Graveyard Week: From Kennedy's Lips

Some of these story just barely have enough story to last their alloted two minutes. Some of them seem like they could go on longer but -- trade secret here -- that's all we had, and we didn't have no more we coulds puts in thems. Some are worthy of the full-on short-story treatment.

From Kennedy's Lips, then, should have been the pilot to a TV show. It kinda is, in fact.

Graveyard Week: Denali's Dead

Denali's Dead just didn't make the cut for Zombie Week, but (appropriately) it lives again! There's a bunch of stories that fit multiple categories. We might just be anal enough to go back and retroactively add things like Cold Comfort of a Coffin and Tintinnabulation into Graveyard Week. - Sean

Graveyard Week: Hold Your Breath

On a previous commute, I drove by a graveyard. Held my breath just about every time, just like I was on a bus in second grade on a field trip. I always liked the story behind it, that nothing bad would happen if you didn't follow the ritual, but something good --an extra year of life -- would happen if you did do it. Must have been tough back before cars and horses were invented.

Hold Your Breath, then, is my deconstruction of that wonderful belief. But a nice little story nonetheless. If you were Abner or Lushana you'd do the same thing.--Jeff

Graveyard Week: Mr. L's Final Legacy

The titular character in Mr. L's Final Legacy is fairly obvious if you follow corporate scandals. Or even if you don't. Easy hint: rhymes with flay. Easier hint: it's Ken Lay, recently deceased CEO of Enron, the multi-billion dollar company that did ... what did it do, exactly? Something with natural gas? Or energy futures? Anyway, they claimed to be making billions, and none of the executives were eating macaroni and cheese, so everyone agreed to believe them and give Enron their money. What's the worst that could happen?

The worst that can happen is that you work for Enron. Or, as Cobb in the story does, hold a wee bit of a grudge about getting screwed out of your pension. Emphasis on the "wee". - Sean

Graveyard Week: The Seventh Foot

The Seventh Foot is (if you'd read him) rather blatantly Lovecraftian. I had found a great site which posted all of his stories up. He's public domain, so there's nothing Napstery about the site doing it or me reading it. Every day during my lunch hour I'd read a different story, and see if it kicked up any inspiration in my mind. Often the stories I wrote after them felt nothing like a Lovecraft story: but good creativity doesn't have to work like sourdough, only replicating, never inspiring.

So there's a lot here in the two minutes of broadcast. This would be one of the easiest stories of mine to film, since there's so much action. But pretty expensive, considering what I can write with a noun an adjective could cost a whole bunch of union carpenters a whole bunch of time making.

Additional note: since we're heading into October, which is the month of Halloween, Sean and I have some special things planned for this month. Graveyards seem appropriate for All Hallow's Eve, as will the other themes this month. Come November, back to Accountancy Week and Humidity Week.