The History Channel Trick

In an age that unworships at the non-altar of the relative experience, I recommend co-opting a trick perfected by the History Channel, both for some of their more standard history programs and their whack-a-doo pseudohistory programs, such as the "prophecies" of mystics, or the alien origins of the pyramids, or alien ghost autopsies, or whatever.

It is five magic words:

"There are those who say..."

Throw these in any time you would like to make an outrageous claim without any footing. It will sound authoritative and mildly suggestive that those who disagree will find themselves in an impossible situation.

Gremlins vs. Zombies: The Grempocalypse

The worst thing that could ever happen is that you get your pet gremlin wet* on the same night that a radioactive thunderstorm turns all the dead people into zombies.

Sure, the gremlins would fight the zombies, and the zombies would fight the gremlins, and that would super exciting, especially since the rain would turn the gremlins into more gremlins, and the zombie bites would turn the gremlins into zombie gremlins, and then the zombie gremlins would have to decide which side they would fight on, or if they would form their own army, and fight them both.

But eventually, they'd turn on you. Fun's over, and all of a sudden, you find yourself running through the streets, praying for Gandalf's eagles to swoop in at the last minute to save the day like they did in the Battle of Five Armies. Maybe you can make it until sunrise, and hope that the gremlins have re-killed all the zombies before bursting into flames. The giant birds never come, the sun doesn't rise and you aren't even left with the choice of whether to be turned into a zombie or become gremlin food - the choice happens to you.

Yet, there's a market for these spectacular, doomed experiments in fantasy:

Alien vs. Predator
Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons
Mermaid Yakuza vs. Terminator
Wolfman vs. Dracula
Moriarity vs. Fu Manchu
King Kong vs. Godzilla
Giant Squid vs. Sperm Whale

and of course, the penultimate conflict:

Satan vs. _________

Please tell me you didn't fill in the blank with "God." Because this particular titanic struggle between nasties doesn't include Him, for pity's sake. The word that belongs in that blank is "Us."

As one-time (and in many cases, current) subjects of the "god of the air" we also are locked in mortal - rather, immortal - combat with Old Scratch and his maniacal kin. But we aren't guys in white hats. If the devil is Predator, we're Alien. He didn't think up lying, pride and greed all by his lonesome, you know. Or if he did, we've become quite practiced at the dark arts of his making.

Winner gets to take on God. Unlike, however, the final target in Gremlins vs. Zombies, God isn't about to take off running. In fact, He's got just the sword to cut us to ribbons: His very word that formed us out of nothing is the same thing that will send us on our merry way to the wrong side of Winner-ville.

Yet he doesn't do that. In his wisdom, he reserves the destruction for Satan and his blokes, but for the other half in the wicked match-up? Mercy. Sacrifice. Humilty. A free ticket out.

Weird God, that God. Weirder than Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Monster.



*A refresher: 1) Never get them wet - they'll spawn more gremlins. 2) Never feed them after midnight - it turns them evil. 3) Never expose them to light** - it hurts them.

**Unless, of course, they've eaten after midnight - then sally forth, Gremlin Hunter. Sally forth.