Living Letters
to Dead People—Vlad the Impaler
by Bob Iozzia
Dear Dead
Impaler,
I think history has given you a raw deal. Sure,
you impaled 20,000 men, women and children on
unsanitary stakes, creating a gruesome forest of
human skewers in order to discourage enemy armies
from slaughtering you. On the bright side, other
despots have done worse. More importantly, this
and your other acts of murder have employed a lot
of people through the centuries. Speaking on
behalf of those beneficiaries, thanks very much.
Well done.
In addition to the poor schlubs who had to clean
up the aforementioned forest prime evil (get it?)
mess, the Dracula franchise—named in your
honor—has provided years of gainful
employment to wooden heart stake artisans, garlic
farmers, writers, actors and other creative types.
And if you’ve inspired other serial killers,
international law enforcement agencies have also
benefited in terms of personnel hires.
Perhaps in an indirect way, you’ve also
touched the American auto industry. I’ve
heard that a product engineer at Chevrolet was
assigned the task of creating a hefty car that a
middle class family could afford without
sacrificing comfort and style. And so he did, but
couldn’t come up with a catchy model name
until he read a pornographic vampire comic book
based on sinsationalized details of your life.
At a department meeting with his boss and the
other engineers, he was nervous to reveal the
name and was sweating like a big fat Louisiana
alligator hunter until he finally blurted, “The
Impaler. It’s called The Chevy
Impaler.”
After the other engineers laughed their corporate
asses off for what seemed like the exact length
of time it was, his fatherly boss advised, “Listen,
you fucking idiot, I don’t think it’s a
good idea to call a two-ton speeding potential
weapon filled with gasoline The Chevy Impaler. How
about we call it The Chevy Hindenburg?”
And so was born the very popular, benignly named Chevy Bel
Air and it made a shitload of
money for General Motors, which I heard is named
for a War of 1812 blackmailing soldier who was
promoted from corporal to general as a bribe for
his silence after he caught Andrew “Old Hair
Up His Ass” Jackson being kind to a Native
American.
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