2004 – A Year in Review

         Hello customers, investors, employees, friends, and anyone who has given us money. 2004 sure has been one raucous year, but it didn’t quite “rock-us” enough to turn a profit. Yes for the 18th consecutive year our expenses have outweighed our income, but we’re hoping our new web presence will pick things up a bit, and we’re enthusiastic that 2005 is going to be the best year yet for Jim Rage’s Elite Zombie Hunting Squad.
         Chico “The Mad Hatter” Eastridge has been taking web design classes at the local community college “Thetford Academy” in hopes of starting what he refers to as a “career”. If dreams were made of water Mr. Hatter would need a boat, but his hard earned technical training has come as an asset to us. Employing (buying cigarettes for) the teenagers who seemingly live in the woods behind our office we we’re able to write up some real third rate material to put on our new website. On May 14th the site was launched to applaud of millions, who we assume were clapping about something else. It was about that time that some pretty spooky stuff started to happen.
         During their downtime our hunters noticed they were no longer able to access many internet application such as their email or online poker accounts. All online business had to be conducted through our guestbook and it was here that we learned why the internet is a dark, dark place. A one, Barry Dooley, commissioned us to take a job in Ireland for exorbitant amounts of money on August 13th. Enjoying travel and exorbitant amounts of money the Gory brothers were sent in the Jim Rage Emergency Jet to Dublin. Rory and Cory Gory were excited to be sent on such a high profile mission. Backing up the Gory Bros. was our plucky intern Pat Gray and Scarface Macandale (who is far from the best helicopter pilot we’ve ever had). After accidentally ending up in Dublin Michigan, our crew was finally on their way. A rented helicopter and a few forged work visa later our crack team arrived on the scene. Expecting to meet up with area expert John Islingston of John Islington’s Extraordinary Zombie Hunters (or JILXGZH) our employees were a bit perplexed to not find anyone. No Barry Dooley, no outrageous European zombie hunting personalities, no biohazard zombies, no piles of money, nothing. After exploring the area a bit and kicking a few pebbles around all hell broke loose. Rory was engulfed by a well disguised pit trap. Pat Gray’s head was crushed between two swinging logs. There was fire, arrows, fire arrows, and the partially eaten corpse of John Islingston dangling from a string with a creepy laughing voice box in his mouth and it really spooked our hunters. Cory Gory later described it as “a lot like an R rated Home Alone”. Scarface Macandale fled in the helicopter, went to Denny’s™ and hasn’t come back since. With arrow in side, Cory caught the next pleasure cruise back to the US apparently unaware that he’d left our jet in Dublin. From what we can piece together from the local authorities “Barry Dooley” is just an alias for the notorious cannibal and chess fanatic Andrew Grier. We mourn the loss of our brave zombie hunters and if anybody can understand a thick Irish accent could you please call the fine people at the Irish Aviation Authority in Cork? That’d be great, because we’re told our Jet was shuttled there, and it’s a really expensive piece of machinery, and it’s not insured or anything. At the time however we were unable to mull over such problems because of the fascinating rise of a zombie dinosaur in Boston.
         On The 16th of August A fully intact Tyrannosaurus Rex was discovered by workers on Boston’s “Big Dig” project. As you may remember the night’s sky had been a spectacle in the previous days as the Dömsdeigh Comet passed by Earth close enough to be observed by the naked eye. It is thought that a large chunk of the comet broke off 65 million years ago wiping out most forms of life on Earth. In one of the most disgusting displays of Irony ever fathomed trace elements “astral radiation” managed to revive the ancient flesh of mummified dino. Dick Weston of the Boston Globe, who’s known for his investigative journalism in the field of zombism, was there to report the insanity.
         “Zombie dinosaur attacks Boston! Millions flee, menace spreads! Anarchy in the streets! Orgy of brain eating madness! The Comet which killed it, brought it back!” –Dick Weston, Boston Globe
         The article continued in much the same manner the first ten paragraphs and eventually devolved into blocks of exclamation points. Floods of entries filled our guestbook from concerned citizens. Boston is a bit out of our territory and unlike Dublin no one was offering exorbitant amounts of cold hard cash for the Job. Jim Rage was on vacation in Haiti pulverizing the faces of voodoo zombi lords, Frank Gritt doesn’t like the public, and Baxter Black was closest to the phone when the army called so he took it upon himself to give them some advice. Apparently the army couldn’t get the go ahead to open fire because the aptly named “Thanosaurus Rex” was protected as a historical artifact and to destroy it would require cutting a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape. Baxter Black began to recommend the ol’ “big net” technique but he was suddenly attacked by ninjas (August being ninja season in Vermont). The army was unable to find a big enough net in the state of Massachusetts, and to import one would’ve been against local big net union regulations, so for the next few days Boston was hopelessly engulfed in confusion, mismanagement, and chaos. The people of Boston being incredibly well adapted to confusion, mismanagement, and chaos shrugged and got on with life, stopping only to be occasionally consumed by a 65 million year old lizard. Soon enough Zachary “Carvin’” Kervin’s heavy heart brought him to Boston for a “sympathy job”. Armed only with a meat cleaver Zachary climbed atop the Thanosaurus and hacked away at it for days, riding it all across this great nation. Although we have no footage, it can be assumed it looked like this.
After they crossed the border to Mexico we lost track of Zachary Kervin’s progress. The Musuem of Natural History had the creature appraised on Antique Roadshow for roughly the total worth of all the countries in Europe and is asking they be reimbursed for our employee’s actions.
         Of course all of this business would’ve been taken care of easily via our new fancy website if 237 demonic zombies hadn’t attacked our headquarters and messed up our computer. It appears that we built the website on an ancient Pagan burial ground and, well you know how that is? It’s a bitch. Being rather occupied with memorizing various pop culture icons of the 80s so that we could join in on this whole “retro-craze” movement, we didn’t even notice as 237 zombies walked through our front door, slaughtered Pat Gray’s family (who were there to pickup Pat’s stuff), destroyed the website’s server, ate like everything in the fridge and didn’t even offer to go to the store to refill it, and attacked us in a glorious battle, which would soon be forgotten due to the massive amount of trivial retro knowledge that was currently filling our brains. Most of the bodies were burned, we kept a head though. We keep it on our mantle. Dirk Razor is currently figuring out how to use it as a puppet.
         In light of our current loss of zombie hunters we thought it best to add a new member to the team. So everyone give a big Jim Rage welcome to Mary The Mistress of Madness. Mary is our answer to “The Americans with Disabilities Act” which is always threatening to shut us down because they claim we’re not an “equal opportunity employer”. Well Mary’s as disabled as they come. She’s stark raving crazy, has no sense of balance, and at some point in time her hand got replaced with a fork (she refers to it as her robot hand). So welcome aboard Mary, I’m sure you’ll have a fulfilling career as a background character eventually being killed off in some horrible manner. And congratulations to The Mad Hatter who has been promoted to a full time position after his work on the Interstate Bakery Co. Job where our employees were forced to fight the “un-bread” minions of a confectionary company gone mad with power.
Goodnight everybody, remember not to plant your apple trees near your well.

RE-DEAD THE UN-DEAD!