Belvedere and The Vampire
Belvedere and The Vampire
There was definitely a vampire in town all right.
Several of the saloon chorus girls in Hayden, Colorado had been bitten on the neck and had some of their blood drained.
Sherrielock Holmes the saloon owner was herself attacked by the vampire but she managed to beat him off with a whip.
A vampire hunter called Batty Bill Cotee was brought into town to give a speech on how to ward off, fight and kill vampires.
Batty Bill Cotee gave the speech at the Teetotalers Methodist Church in town.
Cotee recommended wearing Crosses and Crucifixes around one’s neck.
The recommendation led to sales of Crosses and Crucifixes from Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church and Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in town.
Neither Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church nor the Immanuel Baptist Church in town profited from the recommendation.
Cotee also recommended hanging garlic in one’s doorway and one’s window to keep vampires out.
This led to great sales on garlic at Haim’s Delicatessen in town.
And the hanging of garlic led to a decrease in both vampire sightings and visits by traveling door-to-door salesmen at most homes in town.
“The way to kill a vampire is to stab it through the heart with a stake,” said Cotee.
Belvedere took particular note of that statement.
A few days later, the advice was to come in handy.
As Belvedere stepped out of the saloon one night, he noticed one of the saloon chorus girls Carla getting bitten on the neck by a vampire.
Belvedere immediately ran into the saloon and said to the cook, “I’d like a steak please.”
“How would you like it?” The cook asked, “Blue-rare? Rare? Medium rare? Medium? Medium well done? Well done?”.
Belvedere took a quick look out of the saloon window and realized he didn’t have much time.
“Uh… blue-rare please,” Belvedere said to the cook.
A couple of minutes later, the cook handed Belvedere a plate, “There you go. One 10-ounce blue-rare steak.”
Belvedere ran outside with the plate and the steak and ran up to the vampire who was still being a real pain in the neck to Carla.
Belvedere grabbed the steak off the plate and then dropped it to the ground shouting, “Ow! Hot! Hot! Hot!”.
He quickly dropped the steak on the plate and ran over to the water trough for the horses and dipped both plate and steak into the cool water.
The vampire had stopped biting Carla on the neck as he stopped to watch Belvedere make a spectacle out of himself.
When the steak was sufficiently cool, Belvedere ran over to the vampire and started stabbing him in the heart with a steak.
“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” The vampire asked.
“I’m stabbing you in the heart with a steak,” Belvedere replied.
“It’s a wooden stake you’re supposed to use, moron,” Carla said exasperatedly, “S-T-A-K-E not S-T-E-A-K, idiot!”.
“Oops!” Belvedere said.
He went running over to a white picket fence across the street and grabbed a stake from the fence.
“Hey, come back with part of my fence,” the homeowner shouted.
Belvedere ran over to the vampire and quickly plunged the white picket fence wooden stake into the vampire’s heart.
The vampire quickly degraded into skull and bones and then dust.
The homeowner rushed on to the scene and picked up his white picket fence stake and started crying, “Waaah! You got blood on it!”.
“My hero!” Carla kissed Belvedere.
Sherrielock Holmes who had been watching the whole scene up from her second floor saloon office window started laughing her head off.
“Oh, Belvedere,” she laughed, “you’ve got the brains of a politician.”
-A western vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Saturday June 11th
2016.
Belvedere In Hayden, Colorado
Belvedere In Hayden, Colorado
By the time Belvedere arrived in the town of Hayden, Colorado in June 1880 ( a town no longer in existence), he was tired of being an outlaw.
The final straw for him was when he found his name misspelled on a Wanted poster in a post office when he went in to buy stamps.
He decided to give up being an outlaw.
Thus when he rode into Hayden on his not-so-loyal horse Wildflower one June morning and noticed the Bartender Wanted sign on the window of The Wild Tomatoes and Mushroom Saloon (with the word Bartender spelled correctly), he decided to apply for the job.
The proprietress of The Wild Tomatoes and Mushroom Saloon was a startlingly beautiful Englishwoman by the name of Sherrielock Holmes.
She wore a very beautiful red evening dress with black ruffled sleeves when she met him.
Although Belvedere had no experience being a bartender, she was intrigued with his life story and laughed uproariously as he recounted his past exploits.
She hired him and personally trained him as bartender.
One night as he threw the last of the drunks out of the saloon (well it was actually Sherrielock who thrashed them out the door with her whip), he was closing up the saloon when the town’s sheriff Franklin P. Peabody approached.
“Evening, Belvedere,” the sheriff took off his hat and spit chewing tobacco on the ground.
“Evening, Sheriff,” Belvedere put on his hat and put chewing tobacco in his mouth.
“You know townsfolk are claiming that there’s a vampire in town,” the sheriff looked towards the west and watched the last of the sun setting behind the mountains.
“A vampire? You mean like those bloodsuckers of medieval myth and legend?” Belvedere tried to blow bubbles with his chewing tobacco but failed.
“That’s right,” Sheriff Peabody nodded.
“But that’s crazy,” said Belvedere.
“That’s what I say,” Peabody agreed.
Peabody walked down the street towards his sheriff’s office and Belvedere stood there pondering the moonlight.
He decided to spit out his chewing tobacco.
Belvedere did so.
Right as a bat flew by.
Belvedere was positive that the bat swore at him in Romanian.
-A western vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Friday June 10th
2016.
Belvedere’s Career As Wild West Outlaw
Belvedere’s Career As Wild West Outlaw
Belvedere finally managed to cross the Missouri River at Saint Louis and head further west.
He did not have much luck finding a job in places out west either so he wound up joining a gang of outlaws called The Redford Raiders.
He was kicked out of The Redford Raiders for constantly singing arias from Italian operas as they rode along the trail.
So he became known as The Lone Bandit and held up stagecoaches, Pony Express riders and banks on his own.
Having somewhat of an aversion to violence, he never carried any bullets in his gun.
So usually any robbery he attempted ended in failure when someone challenged him to use his gun.
When no one did that, his robberies usually went off without a hitch.
Save for the one time his horse bolted to a distant stream after he had robbed a stagecoach and he had to hitch a ride to get to his horse.
The person he happened to hitch a ride with just happened to be Wild Bill Hickock.
Fortunately for Belvedere, Wild Bill was in a good mood having won a card game in a nearby town and so didn’t ask too many questions like “Why are you wearing a bandana mask around your face?”.
Wild Bill dropped Belvedere off at the stream where Belvedere’s horse Wildflower still had his head in the stream going “Slurp! Slurp! Burp! Burp!”.
Belvedere thanked Wild Bill for the ride and as Wild Bill rode off into the sunset, Belvedere jumped on to Wildflower shouting, “Hi-Ho, Wildflower, away!”.
Wildflower yawned and daintily and slowly rode off into the sunset while Belvedere sang,
“… The Camptown racetrack’s five miles long
Oh, de doo-da day
Goin’ to run all night
Goin’ to run all day
I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag
Somebody bet on the gray…”
A Sioux warrior on top of a far hill tried to shoot Belvedere to stop his singing but had neglected to load his ammunition that morning and so prayed “Oh Great Spirit, help improve my memory and please deliver me from the singing voices of paleface fools.”
Belvedere continued to sing as Wildflower rode into the sunset as the horse looked around for signs of a nearby cactus by which he could suddenly unload the heavy load on his back… and his ears… and enact his vengeance at the same time.
-A western vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Thursday June 9th
2016.
George Belvedere Duhamel: A Vampire Wild West Tale
George Belvedere Duhamel
George Belvedere Duhamel was an outlaw.
He went by his middle name Belvedere.
He was the son of a Louisiana fur trader and a Haitian stage dancer.
He was born in New Orleans in 1840.
He joined the Confederate Army in 1861 although he mistakenly thought he was signing up to be a member of a traveling Shakespeare theatrical company.
He mistook the Confederate Army uniforms outside the recruiting station for actor “soldiers” in the Volscian army after Caius Marcius Coriolanus the great Roman general had defected to the Volscians from his native Rome because he found the plebs in the city to be quite revolting.
He was quite surprised to find himself in an actual Army after signing on the dotted line.
Belvedere spent the greater part of the Civil War running away from Confederate soldiers to avoid being shot for desertion (he did not have the stomach for fighting).
He also spent the other part of the Civil War running away from Union soldiers who wanted to shoot him for wearing a Confederate Army uniform.
Belvedere happened to be having a corned beef, lox and cream cheese sandwich in the Appomattox Court House when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9th 1865.
When a black and white photograph of the event was taken for posterity (the photo was taken in black and white because colour photography hadn’t been invented yet), Belvedere was the disheveled looking Confederate soldier in the background looking very downcast as he stood behind Lee and Grant.
Belvedere was looking very downcast not because Lee had just surrendered to Grant but because the storekeeper who had sold him the corned beef, lox and cream cheese sandwich had neglected to include a dill pickle in his bag when he handed it to him.
Because Belvedere had worn the uniform of the losing side in the Civil War, he had trouble finding employment after the war.
He wasn’t hired in the North because he was considered a damned rebel and he wasn’t hired in the South because he was considered a damned deserter so he was told to head to the Wild West to seek his damned fortune.
He began his journey west by getting his foot caught in a beaver dam while crossing a stream for which he was cussed out in beaver talk by the dam beavers.
All in all, it was a damned inauspicious start to the beginning of his outlaw career out west.
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Wednesday June 8th
2016.
June 24th 2016: A Poem
June 24th 2016: A Poem
June 24th 2016
Saint Jean Baptiste Day
in the Canadian province of Quebec
La fete Nationale
And in Europe
the day after the Brexit vote
Britain votes to leave the EU
Markets in turmoil
David Cameron announces his resignation
Uncertainty takes hold.
In Armenia, Pope Francis calls the Ottoman killings of Armenians in 1915-16 “genocide”
Expect Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to burst a blood vessel in his Presidential Palace in reaction any second now
In Syria, the Civil War goes on and on
The war against ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State likewise goes on and on
British politics polarized
American politics polarized
Storms and floods in Germany
Storms and heat in the U.S.
On a personal level
the job I landed after 18 months of searching lasted only 3 days
I don’t have what it takes to be a telemarketer it turns out
A friend of mine in South Africa
his life likewise in turmoil
3 members of his family struck down by drug resistant tuberculosis
A daughter of his assaulted and facially scarred for life by an ex-boyfriend
At the world level
and on a personal level
it seems everything is in a mess
When calamity happens on the world level
such as in the aftermath of World War I or in the depths of the Great Depression
that’s when monsters or heroes arise
In those years before the mid-20th Century
it was mainly monsters that arose-
Hitler, Stalin, Tojo
very few heroes
and of those heroic few
Churchill spent most of that time on the parliamentary backbenches
FDR battled the effects of a paralyzing illness that left him wheelchair bound
and then had to battle to save America from total economic and social collapse
And then had to battle Tojo and Hitler
Gandhi spent time fasting to achieve a peaceful non-violent way to independence for India
It seemed the monsters were allowed free rein most of that time
while the heroes were dragged down and burdened by problems of their own
before they could arise to fight and slay monsters
Tumultuous times in our world today
and in such tumult inevitably monsters will arise
and we are left to ask,
Where then are the heroes?
-A poem written by Christopher
Friday June 24th 2016.
The City On The Sea: Not All That It Seems To Be: A Poem
The City On The Sea: Not All That It Seems To Be: A Poem
To live in a tourist attraction
is to live in a fish bowl
A city full of natural beauty
Mountains, sea, trees, flowers
But the world of man intrudes
A city of mainly working poor
struggling to reach the middle class
but the dice is loaded against them
But the natural beauty
The mountains, the sea, the trees, the flowers
So many do not really want to leave
So they stay and work in their serfdom
Thinking that somehow they will eventually break through to the next ceiling and eventually reach the glass ceiling
And some will
but most won’t
It’s a city now a playground of the rich
A world-class city
And sadly that also means a city
which can only be truly enjoyed
by the world’s most elite class
And so I am trapped in this strange paradise
A city which only seems to serve the rich man Divas of that Biblical parable
And the poor man Lazarus has not even the dogs to lick his sores
Too poor to stay in this city
And paradoxically too poor to leave
I call people I once knew in my home province
asking if someone can put me up for a bit until such time as I can get back on my feet
Oh, they have plenty of advice to give
Plenty of advice
but not a helping hand
The old saying is all that glitters is not gold
And indeed it isn’t
but even the glittering gold itself isn’t worth it
As King Midas discovered when his loving flesh-and-blood daughter turned to gold at his touch
The city glitters
Sea, mountains, trees, flowers
beckons to the eye of the visitor
but on the sidewalks and in the alleys
broken people and broken dreams
but they are neither added to nor subtracted from the city’s GDP
For it is all a game of bookkeeping and accounting
and appearances
For what is of value is the gold and the assets and the profits
what is not of value is the people
Such is the city on the sea!
-A poem written by Christopher
Tuesday June 21st 2016.
Sent from my iPhone
I Won’t Be Updating My Blog For Awhile
I Won’t Be Updating My Blog For Awhile
Well just when one thinks one is getting back on one’s feet, someone comes and kicks you.
I finally landed a job yesterday after 18 months of looking and then what happens today?
My cable company cancels my Internet and phone service because I haven’t paid them in 5 months.
Of course the reason I haven’t paid them in 5 months was because I had no money in my bank account to pay them. I needed to pay for rent and food first.
It will take a while for me to earn enough money to pay my bill to get my Internet and phone service back.
So I won’t be posting any more entries here for a while because I no longer have Internet.
I’m using a public library terminal to write this my final post.
But since I’ll be starting a job next week, I won’t have time to rush to the public library to update my blog.
Nor am I one of these people who does personal stuff on their computer at work.
I don’t believe in stealing time from one’s employers.
Nor will I use my coffee breaks and lunch time to post.
Outside my office is a park with a beautiful view of the water and old paddle river boats.
So I’ll be spending time out there and not on my computer.
I could use time in my apartment at night to update but as I say, I no longer have a phone and Internet.
I probably won’t be caught up financially speaking until next November or December.
So I’ll probably not be seeing you again my dear readers until next November or December.
Please accept my apologies for not replying to any comments you might post here over the next few months.
Here’s the link to my author page on Amazon where you may go to buy Kindle and paperback editions of my books:
http://www.amazon.com/Christopher-Milner/e/B01EUR8ILG/
Here’s the link to my GoFund me page where you can donate money to help out any way you can with my financial predicament:
https://www.gofundme.com/2s99rkmc
So until next November or December my friends, au revoir, auf wiedersen, sayonara, until we meet again.
-Christopher
The Parting of Storm Clouds: A Poem
The Parting of Storm Clouds: A Poem
To know something one has never truly known before
To experience something one has never truly experienced before
is actually a rarity when one reaches a certain age
so when it actually happens
It’s a knowledge one can’t really articulate
an experience one can’t really describe
until one has actually been there
When skies are stormy and then quickly pass
one is somewhat grateful for the light
but when skies are stormy and it looks like the storm clouds are never going to pass
then one is truly and extraordinarily grateful when the light appears
When George Bailey stared into the abyss in those icy waters below the bridge in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life
He was indeed looking into the abyss
The abyss of hopelessness
The abyss of despair
The abyss of no return
The abyss Dante would have called Hell
It’s the most terrifying feeling in the world to look into that abyss
So terrifying that when Our Lord saw it as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if it’s possible let this cup pass from me”
An abyss so terrifying that even Christ Himself was afraid
But George Bailey had friends who prayed for him as he stared into that abyss
Christ had the Apostle John, His Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene
who prayed for Him
George Bailey fell into the icy waters and an angel pulled him out
Christ descended into Hell and the third day He rose again from the dead
in a body that would now live forever
One never knows what it’s like to be at that moment when one does stare into the abyss
One fears such a moment
The amazing thing is when one experiences that actual moment
The moment one is actually about to be plunged into the abyss
and then suddenly somehow one is actually inexplicably miraculously pulled out of that abyss
when one thinks one’s faith is even less than the grain of mustard seed required
then one experiences the greatest miracle of all
a miracle that can be felt only by those who have looked deep into the abyss
and then somehow inexplicably have been pulled out
Do not ask for this test, my friends
for it is indeed the most terrifying moment of all
That moment when one looks deep into the Abyss
The Abyss of hopelessness
The Abyss of despair
The Abyss of no return
The abyss of Hell
although the next moment
The moment one is actually pulled out of the Abyss
Is the most glorious feeling in the world
No other moment in life can compare to it
No other moment in my life can compare to it
but it is indeed the most glorious miracle of all
The miracle to realize that when skies are stormy and quickly pass
one is somewhat grateful for the light
but when skies are stormy and it looks like storm clouds are never going to pass
And then they DO pass
Then one is TRULY grateful for the light.
-A poem written by Christopher
Tuesday June 7th 2016.
When The Stars Don’t Shine: A Poem
When The Stars Don’t Shine: A Poem
What is it like when the stars don’t shine?
When the dark of night is just that…
the dark of night
When the moon is nowhere to be seen
and someone has turned off the stars
as if they were gas lights on cobbled streets of yesteryear
This is my hour in my own Garden of Gethsemane
and someone has turned off the stars
Deliver me, O Lord!
-A poem written by Christopher
Monday June 6th 2016
Dracul Van Helsing 
If This World Were Narnia: A Poem
June 26, 2016 at 5:40 pm (Commentary, News, Poetry) (C.S. Lewis, Narnia, poem)
If This World Were Narnia: A Poem
If this world were Narnia
it would be at the height
of the White Witch’s Winter
A world where it is always
winter
but never Christmas
A world where beavers and fauns
and sons of Adam
and daughters of Eve
desperately search the icy ground
for any sign of a thaw
A sign that Aslan was finally on the march.
-A poem written by Christopher
Sunday June 26th 2016.
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