Dude(tte), I’m building a monster! No, it’s not for Halloween. God, how lame do you think I am? It’s for wreaking vengeance on my enemies. And occasionally fetching me a soft drink while I’m watching television. (Maybe a glass of wine.) (Or, on special occasions, possibly a shot of Everclear.) Now, because, as anyone who’s ever met me or read my blog knows, I am an easygoing, mellow kind of person, not given to hostility or rage, I haven’t got that many enemies, so my monster will need to have other things to do to fill its time. I’m thinking a little light dusting, perhaps some ironing. Maybe I’ll have him write a blog post or two.

            Thanks to Congress not having passed healthcare reform, this is the Golden Age of monster-building. Why, the streets are pretty much littered with corpses! (Or people who are soon to be corpses, and hey, a little tap with a hammer to the back of the head, and that difference is more or less obliterated.) (Not unlike the back of the head.) (Don't worry, though: the hammer's fine. No hammers were harmed in the making of this blog. Or this monster.) Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m going to build my monster out of just any cheap Chinese-import slave-labor corpse parts; I want the best corpse parts for my monster. So I was terribly disappointed when I found out that the brain I was going to use came from a Republican Senator, and no matter how much effort it took to find that brain in that Republican Senator, out it went. (And now I have something to put in the little trick-or-treaters’ bags when they come to my door.) (Nothing equals the enchanted look in a child’s eye when you give them the gift of human offal.) (Oh, how awful! No…how offal!) Everyone knows, and now I do too: if you’re looking for brains, you don’t go to Republicans. Hearts, either. Just as, if you’re looking for balls, you’re not going to find them on a Democrat, or at least not one who’s in Congress.

             So many people have told me that I need an evil servant named Igor to build a monster, but that is the kind of old-fashioned thinking that has kept monster-building from truly entering the 21^st century. (That’s the one we’re in now, right? I kind of lost track.) I am an able-bodied madman, fully capable of robbing graves all by myself; I don’t need some ghoul, no matter how attractive his hunchback, to help me. Oh, sure, it’s pleasant sitting together late at night, companionably sewing corpse parts together, but let’s face it: economic times are not good, and we all have to cut back. So my motto is, “A mad scientist needs an evil servant like a fish needs a bicycle.” If I could afford an evil servant, I wouldn’t need a monster, now would I?

            Oh, who’m I kidding? I would always need a monster.

            So whom will I send my monster to wreak vengeance on? Well, just to start with, the dumbass who sits next to me at work and who says “What up, dawg?” in that stupid-ass voice seven or eight times a day. Oh, man, my monster is going to totally fucking wreak vengeance on him. Have you ever heard anyone say “What up, dawg?” like that? It’s annoying as shit, and kind of  racist. You know who else my monster is going to wreak vengeance on? Rachael Ray. God, she’s irritating. Stop making those fucking weird arm gestures, Rachael, unless you want some vengeance wreaked on you; fair warning. (You could also start making food that doesn’t suck ass; seriously, you’re only a serious drinking problem and a big giant rack away from being Sandra Lee.) And also? I think our Mayor, the Right Honorable Richie J. Daley, could use a little vengeance wreaked on him, just on general principles, because of how he’s kind of a twat and is raising property taxes drastically. True, these people are not, strictly speaking, my enemies, but rather, just people who get on my last nerve. Close enough.

            Now, my monster won’t always be wreaking vengeance on my enemies and getting me soft drinks. (Or, as mentioned, maybe a glass of wine.) (On special occasions, possibly a shot of Everclear.) I feel strongly that monsters today should have the freedom to pursue their own interests, should be able to find their own victims to wreak vengeance on or even just forget convention and vengeance, and kill for the sheer joy of it. (I can hear the outraged shrieks of more-conservative mad scientists now. “A monster needs direction!” Get over it, Frankenstein.) For far too many mad scientists, the mad scientist/monster relationship stifles the monster’s creativity, so that when faced with a simple choice—choking a victim or wringing his neck, for example—the monster cannot respond with the vibrant creativity that one hopes to see in a monster—throwing one’s victim into the baboon pit at the Lincoln Park Zoo, let’s say.

            Finally, I’m aware that the day you build a monster, while a day of great joy, is also a day of great sorrow, for by the very act of building a monster, you have set in motion the events that will lead to torch- and pitchfork-carrying villagers destroying your monster. And on that day, my tears will be tears of joy, joy for having known my monster, and having had him wreak vengeance on my enemies (well, people who annoy me anyway), as well as tears of sadness, because of how I’ll have to get my own sodas (and also maybe wine) (and, on special occasions, a shot of Everclear) from then on. “Farewell, monster!” I’ll cry; he won’t hear me, of course, because of how he’ll be busy being in flames, but I know that somewhere in his mostly-rotted brain, he’ll be thinking, “Thank you, mad scientist! Because even though I am in flames and my brain is rotting, at least you didn’t give me a Republican brain!”

            Or maybe he’ll just be screaming. Who can tell with monsters these days?