Seasons Greetings!

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It’s Winter break here at the Kill Zone. During oAWREATH3_thumb[1]ur 2-week hiatus, we’ll be spending time with our families and friends, and celebrating all the traditions that make this time of year so wonderful. We sincerely thank you for visiting our blog and commenting on our rants and raves. We wish you a truly blessed Holiday Season and a prosperous 2014. From Clare, Jodie, Kathryn, Kris, Joe M., Nancy, Jordan, Elaine, Joe H., Mark, and James to all our friends and visitors, Seasons Greeting from the Kill Zone. See you back here on Monday, January 6. Until then, check out our TKZ Resource Library partway down the sidebar, for listings of posts on The Kill Zone, categorized by topics.

23 thoughts on “Seasons Greetings!”

  2. Okay…I waiting.

    … patiently
    …
    … just sitting here

    … bouncing ping pong ball off big tatooted bald man next to me in train

    …ooo

    …maybe him bad choice…

    …running

    …seeing TKZ after holidays

    You Have Fun!!

    Hope me come back all one piece!!

  3. It is my habit to read Proust as I ride the train. It’s early, early on Christmas Eve, and there’s this guy bouncing a ping pong ball off my head. The dragon tatt didn’t tell him anything. I hope all of you get your Christmas wish, too. When I see you in ’14, I’ll show you my new present. Gotta run.

  5. Happy Holidays right back at you, Kill Zone! But does anyone really believe the writers who run this great site will JUST be wassailing and caroling away in new sweaters that don’t fit? Nonsense. Yuletide log blazing or not, once a writer, always a writer. As they sit bunkered by shredded paper and empty boxes, lost in thought about the next murder, others will think our writers are experiencing a wistfully nostalgic moment. Hah!

  6. Last time I checked, there was only one comment.

    Ohhh, where did everybody go???

    I’m out here in the wilderness of mirrors howling into the chili-wind. (Yes, that was intentional.)

    Now I see that Basil has wandered in off the tundra. And here we all are. No friends. All alone. I’m sure that I’m like a lot of you, when I say that I have eaten waaay too much chocolate and sugar, yet again, this holiday season. Now, I got this huge basket from Harry and David’s and I’m sitting here stuffing the caramel popcorn into my mouth by the fistfull. Hmmm. Guess fistfull in not a word. Well it should be. Now it’s come to this. Tonight I will be watching reruns on Netflix as I’ve exhausted their “Instant” channel. Except for Lillyhammer, of course. Does anyone actually watch that? Gadzooks.

    If you’re looking for a detective series that is funny and set in SOCAL, try Terriers.

    Cheers, Y’all!

    • Hey Jim, I loved Terriers, I even had the theme song — “Gunfight Epiphany” by Robert Duncan — as my ringtone for a while. And yes, people do watch Lillyhammer. I am going to see what the excitement is about over the next week so I’ll be caught up when the season starts. BTW, the plot of Lillyhammer reminds me of a book I read last year, I believe by a Nordic author, but I can’t recall the name of it. Is it acknowledged in the credits?

    • Jim, the book is THE HITMAN’S GUIDE TO HOUSECLEANING by Helgamur Helgason (I have butchered the author’s last name…it’s an Amazon Encore title.

  7. Are we running out of First Page Submissions here?

    I think I’ll send another one in to be blistered and thrashed by the writing gods. Oh, just kidding, for Pete’s sake. No, all your comments are extremely productive and i am sure that everyone appreciates that words are not minced here at TKZ — except for those pesky gerunds, of course; the dogs.

  8. I also wanted to wish you all a very happy, healthy, and safe holiday season. And also to take this opportunity to thank each of you and all those who stop by and contribute through the comment section for taking the time to share with us your views, experience & hard-earned wisdom. I for one learn much and truly appreciate the effort you’all put forth here for our benefit. May 2014 be your most prosperous year ever!!!

  9. See, we don’t need all those “other guys” to have a good time here. While the cats are away, eh?

    Joe: I’ll be going right over to YouTube to grab Gunfight Epiphany. Yunno. I think my favorite part of Terriers was when the guy’s sister was living up in the attic.

    Now I’ve just launched into a book about art theft and the people who do it. Before I check out to walk the dog, here’s a great article I read this morning from the Atlantic–THE ELMORE LEONARD PARADOX by Christopher Orr. I am not familiar with Christopher, but his article is just great. I’ll check for a link, and here it is, just like magic:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-elmore-leonard-paradox/355734/

    • I loved that scene too, Jim, particularly when the legs came down out of the ceiling.

      Interesting article. I think the folks who have taken on Dutch’s work (with the strong exception of JUSTIFIED) have violated two rules: 1) don’t mess with the dialogue and 2) respect the audience.

      Last year (2012) (I think) the season premiere of JUSTIFIED dropped on the publication date of the new Leonard novel, RAYLAN, with an artist’s rendition of Olyphant, in character, on the cover. At one point during the season premiere Raylan came into the office all duded up and someone — might have been Art — said, “If we put you on the cover of a book it would sell a million copies.” It might be my favorite line from the entire series. Just ahead of “Right there’s good.”

  11. Ooh boy, thanks for the water Terri, glug, glug, glug gotta go.

    Big tattooted bald man has more endurance and moves faster than seems possible.

    I think he’s Terminator guy.

    starts for door, stops & hands glass back

    Oh, and you might want to hide in cellar till he passes by.

    Have a happy new year…and don’t get stomped by robo-baldie!

  13. Managed to get on a Greyhound and I think I lost the tattooted one somewhere around Des Moines. Rode all night.

    Wow. This is a small town, very quaint.

    Town sign visible in light of full moon. It says:

    “Wolfsblut Tennessee…everyone stays.”

    Hrm, interesting. Sounds German. Good beer maybe?

    Kinda dreary vibe though, but hey it is after midnight.

    Oh look. There’s an all night diner. Hunger calls.

    enters diner, sits at counter. Only two others in place, they looks like Abbot & Costello, kinda, in a backwoods Tennessee after midnight being chased a bald headed tattooted robot hitman sorta way.

    Cutsie Waitress comes up to me. She’s got a butterfly tattoo peaking out from her tight dress on her boo…uh…her che ….uh…it’s a butterfly that I won’t stare at…ever…My oh my, her eyes are blue and I’m not looking at the butterfly.

    “Hey hon,” voice like honey. “You new around here?”

    “Yah, from Alaska. And not lookin’ at butterflies or anything. Just want some midnight breakfast…and no boobie butterflies. … oh dang … did i just say that out loud.”

    She smiles in a she-wolf kinda way that melts my face into tingliness.

    “Alaska huh? You must be pretty hot…down here in the south parts…I mean.”

    Her voice makes me wonder if butterflies suckle at the brea …. oh…dang…not lookin’.

    nooooootttttt llooooookiiiiinnnnngg.

    Other two peoples perks up and looks my way.

    “Yah, kinda travelling ya know?”

    Waitress has funny look. Keeps licking her lips.

    Other two peoples gets up and comes to counter for paying bill methinks.

    Boy, they’ve got hairy faces. Like duck hunter’s but fell head first in bucket of rogaine.

    “Hey hon, ready to order?”

    I look back to waitress.

    “Whoa Nellypottamus of the Nile! You’ve growed a beard in a minute chickiepoo!”

    She smiles this kinda not so nice smile.

    “And your eyebrows are combed like all the way back-a-you head! And your butterfly looks like a giant hairy moth!”

    Her voice is growly, “Guess, who’s for staying for dinner Alaska boy!”

    Other two comes closer. Throats rumbling and their noses kinda stretched like doggies with a really bad sinus affection. Yours truly’s bladder suddenly feels very like a balloon left sitting on the outdoor spigot in a water-balloon fight gone all wrong.

    “Supper time,” says fat Costello wolf-man dude.

    Door swings open and in walks tattooted baldie-bot with giant shotgun and a machette…where’d he get those? Des Moines must’a had a sale!

    Wolf pack turns their heads. Saliva slobber spewing about like that watery scene in that dancing movie with sexy chick in chair flingsing hair back… except this is slobber from werewolf jaws and not even a little-itty-bitty-bit wet-t-shirt kinda sexy.

    “Oh boy! Not hungry really! Thanks though wolf-lady butterfly boobie girlie and doggie dudes! Say hello to my little big scary chasing me across country friend!”

    Growls, grunts, gunshots and the French fry timer all go off at once. I’m a runnin’ out the back while baldie deals with the bad dogs!

    Anybody know how to get to Sheboygan from here?

  15. Well…how about that taxi ride?
    Surprisingly Wolfsblut Tennessee had an awesome cab-driver, named Beau-Jangles who wanted to get out of town as much as I did. And wow did he drive fast!
    I met up with him as he was helping rescue some armored car guards who did not look to healthy. It seems they had contracted some really contagious disease that infected their mouths and eyes with a lot of really bad drippy nasty goo-goo-gunk-a-muck. So Beau had helped them by making them sit on the side of the road by their truck and covered their mouths with duct-tape to avoid contaminating the public. Had to tie their hands in back too, as they kept trying to pull the tape off which would have spread that disease pretty quick like.
    And speaking of that disease those guards had, boy it must’ve been something awful that messed them up in the head and made them madder’n’hell. Cuz every chance they got they would start grunting and cussing and swearing and saying the kind of words what even my great-aunt Gert (us kids called her Gert the Viking cuz she was built like that fat opera lady with the horny helmet, but the adults all called her Sailor Gert because she apparently spoke Sailorese according to Momma).
    Any ways, once I helped Beau get them nice and safely ‘triaged’ for the ambulance squad he asked if I’d like to help get the luggage they was delivering up north to Manitoba.
    “Heck ya bro!” says I. “That’s half-way home to my Alaska, where my wife’s awaiting, and probably gonna be singing a horny helmet song of her own since I’ve out for so long runnin’ from tattooed-baldie-terminator-dude.”
    “Huh?” says he, “Terminator?”
    “Oh, it’s just a nickname I gived him. You got nothing to worry about,” I splained, “unless you’re a weird-wolf that is. He don’t like them.”
    Before he can answer more I put all those black suitcase like bags in the trunk and back seat and they were all pretty heavy but it didn’t feel like clothes and stuff.
    Boy, Beau Jangles sure could drive fast.
    To prove the point I said, “Boy, Beau Jangles, you sure can drive fast.”
    He smiled back at me with a weird smile, almost kind of like that butterfly booby werewolf waitress back in Tennessee, except with the butterfly tattooted on his chest…at least I didn’t think he seemed like that type, and I wasn’t going to ask, cuz that’d be kind of weird.
    Well, needless to say Manitoba came up pretty fast. Like faster than I thought possible cuz less than three hours after helping those sick guards we flashed past some old creaky abandonded customs shed on the Canadian border and into the Great White North…koo loo koo koo koo loo koo koo!
    Half way home, and at nearly 300 mph we’d either be home by dinner tomorrow or a splotch of grease on the Alcan. ‘Cept there was one problem. Beau Jangles kept the pace up and we missed all the mounties all the way through Manitoba and almost all the way through Alberta until we suddenly discovered that mounties or no, January in Mid-Western Canada was cold. Real cold.

  16. No…you don’t understand. I’m from Alaska and I’m telling you this was
    CCCCCCOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDD!

    That’s COLD with a capitol OLD!

    And the engine froze up. Not froze up as it seized, stuck, wouldn’t start, needed to be rebooted. Nope, We stopped to take a leak…not take a leak together, although as kids I used to take a leak with my brother and we’d have light saber fights with our…well…you know what the Ghost Busters said about crossing the stream and…well as adults that’d just be too weird. Like weirder than say walking down the street hand in hand with him wearing a great big frilly dress and apron and singing and have my shirt half untucked and holding a penguin in my hand that was doing the bass part of the harmony…you know…that kind of weird.

    Anyways, we turn around and WHAMO!! The whole Taxi is encased in a block of ice, like return of the Han Solo frozen in Carbon stuff, except this wasn’t Han Solo, it was a Yellow Cab from Wolfblut Tennessee and there was no Luke Skywalker to save us. And my coat was inside.
    But, low and behold, salvation cometh our wayeth in the shapeth of a most weird than everything elseth I’d seeneth yet since the traineth.

    There was a loud farting sound and I was about to make fun of Beau when I suddenly realized the sound had come from the place where the sky had just ripped open in front the Taxi Cube. Out of the flashity blue sparkliness of another dimension where darkness seems like something that comes in a box and you have to build it with the enclosed screwdriver and funky wrench that only one purpose for only one screw in the entire kit, well out of that scene steps who else?

    Yup, you guessed it.

    Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy and Gary Coleman.

    “Hey there buddy,” says Presley.

    “Buddy,” nods Kennedy.

    “What’choo think you talkin’ bout, buddy?” said Coleman.

    “Uh,” I stammered, trying not to faint, “my name’s Basil, like the herb, except I’m neither leafy nor green and don’t take well to being cut up and put into soup, so please don’t cut me up and put me into soup…please.” My voice got all mouse like and my mouth tasted like maple syrup, except like maple syrup after you threw up from too much of it. “Wife…kids….at home…waiting…. and …Thai food leftovers…”

    The loud farting sound ripped the nervous silence again and the big window in the real opened up again and the three step aside, snap to attention and salute as another figure steps out from the wherever it was that he stepped out from.
    It was Terminator Baldie, and he had a new tattoo tattooed on neck, of a werewolf like doggie being…a dog in a position of…it was not a nice tattoo. He walked right up to me and smiled. It was indeed a smile, in the most technical of senses. But in the emotional kindness and sensitivity departments it was the kind of smile that would make a pit bull turn around and bite its own head off and serve to the big dog baldie platter.

  17. “Thank you Mr Sands. You were perfect in your under cover roll.”

    “I was?”

    “Yes,” Baldie’s not so pleasant smile turned truly nasty as he faced off with Beau Jangles. The latter shook so hard his bones actually rattled like an out of tune marimba with gum stuck under half the bars. “thanks for bringing us the most wanted man in the province of Albreta. Wanted for murder, theft, robbery, werewolfery, armed guard robbery and posing as a taxi driver in another dimension in order to pull off the largest ever heist of dollars. And he almost got away with it too.”

    “He did?”

    “Yes sir,” he stepped right close to Beau, who’s trousers promptly turned dark with the extra pee he’d not been able to get rid of yet before being interrupted, and then said pee promptly turned into a pile of frozen urine-slushy, and then into a solid chunk pee-ice-manacles around his feet as it froze hard and fast to the ground in the -60 temperatures. “Yes mister not an herb, but just as deliciously useful without having to chop you up into our soup…”

    “Please don’t”

    “We won’t”

    “Thank you.”

    “Yes, sir,” baldie continued, “You brought him right to us. Good thing we were waiting, or you’d never have been able to collect the reward.”

    “Reward?”

    “Indeed,” said President Kennedy, “He’d brought you this far in his multi-dimensional cab to one of the most secret dimensional portals not known to exist but pretty everyone who won’t read this story.”

    “Not only that,” Elvis wiped a scuff from his blue suede track shoes, “but he was about to kill you and leave you here in the snow so he could use your DNA to cross back over.”

    “My DNA?”

    “Of course,” said Baldie, “Only those with a pass, implanted passport and correct inter-dimensional immigration and customs authorizations to travel to specific times, places, and spatially reasoned co-existent anomalies and who are native-born Albretans, Saskawhatchewans and Alkaskans can cross back.”

    “You pronounced those names funny, shouldn’t they be Alberta, Saskatchewan and Alaska?”

    “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout leafy green herb?” Gary Coleman said. “Those are the names for the places in our more advanced, smarter, better equipped, and better smelling dimension…ya big dummy.”

    “Wait,” I said, trying really hard to wake up from this silly dream, “that’s Redd Foxx’s line, not yours.”

    “Ah,” said Baldie, “but this is where you have a lot to learn Basil, a very lot.”

    Gary Coleman walked up to me, got real close like, stretched out his hand and said, “Basil… I am your father.”

  18. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Beau / Buddy was unceremoniously dumped/sucked into clear plexiglass cube that was shaped more like a funny looking duck than a true cube.

    “Outa here,” said Elvis.

    “Until next time,” said John Kennedy.

    “Join us son,” said Gary Coleman.

    Then they all vanished with three individual farty sounds, except while the other two were loud ripping kinds like before, Elvis Presley’s made the hissing sound like one of the silent but deadly kind we all learn to fear when young.

    “He had another stop to make, 1971 I believe, he seemed to have left his favourite sun-glasses back there somewhere.”

    All but Baldie had gone. The inked up behemoth stood there holding the Beau/Buddy duck-cube in one hand. Beau/Buddy’s eyes looked pleadingly through the glass, but he could only look, something like duct-tape covered his lips.

    “Again,” said Baldie, “thanks for leading us to him. I knew you were the chosen one, I just knew it.”

    “Sorry about bouncing the ball on your head on the train,” said I.

    “No, I’m sorry I had to use such a primitive signal to get you to cooperate,” he started for the portal back to his dimension, then turned back to me.
    “You are welcome to come with us, and get to know your father’s world.”

    “Uh,”

    “But on the other hand, you just became fabulously wealthy beyond yours or anyone’s wildest dreams,” he motioned to the cab, “And you just got a new really sweet high performance Crown Victoria taxi, 0-300 in 7 flat on the right road.”

    “Huh? How can I keep it, won’t the FBI or the RCMP be looking for it?”

    “Nope, It’s not even stolen. It was made in our dimension but worthless over there.”

    “You mean it’s counterfeit?”

    “No, no, it’s real. It’s just that our money system is not based on the same commodities as this dimensions. And since you folks don’t have an understanding the value of giant platinum worm intestinal enzymes there is no real way to even do business with you. In the mean time you keep it and have a really good vacation, or buy a continent or something like that.”

    With a flash a deep rumbly fart Baldie and his bundle flashed back to the other world and the stillness of the north Alberta night settled on me once and, and it was cold. Really cold. But my new super-powered Crown Vic was almost magically un-iced, warmed up and ready to go. I got in and glanced into the back seat where one of the bags had opened, spilling some of its contents. Several stacks of fresh green US hundreds and twenties tumbled to the floor mat, along with colorful bundles of CA bills in the same denominations.

    “Hrm, I’m a rich man in two countries now.”

    I flipped up my cell phone and dialed the world’s most beautiful woman who goes by the title Queen of my Heart, The Lovely and Magnifienct, and most gorgeously nice to look at and prettiest smelling lady every, Mrs B. Sands and said, “Honey! Sorry I’m late, get ready to go on to town tonight baby!”

    “What, no, no, I’m not talking about Mac-Donalds baby…noooooo way.”

    “We’re going big time! That’s right! It’s the nice clothes tonight hottie-momma! “

    “RED ROBIN! YUUUMMMMMM!!”

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