Yes, I’m a tool. More accurately, I’m finally some one’s target market. If you’re selling televisions, cars, pop stars, hand soap, hunting supplies, reality TV shows, or celebrity relationship gossip… I don’t care. Your square peg bounces off the round hole in my head where advertising should go.

But sell me zombies?

Sell me a TV show (on AMC no less!) about zombies based on the The Walking Dead comic series I’ve been reading for the past seven years?

I’m so there. I’m following your Twitter feed, liking you on Facebook, and generally drinking the Kool-Aid. I’m not worrying about spoilers — I’ve already read the comics, I know what happens — I just want to stalk and devour all the info I can find.

Because I’m a tool. A tool for The Walking Dead.

Here: Watch the trailer, drink some Kool-Aid, and join me on the edge of my fanboy seat as we wait for the Halloween premiere to roll around.

I had nightmares as a kid, same as everybody. Most of them are lost in the fog of growing up, but one from when I was four or five stands out: My grandfather, who I loved, sat at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night, smiling and motioning for me to come to him for a hug. But when I did, the toys on my dresser behind him leered and leaped toward me like evil jack-in-the-boxes. (Jacks-in-the-box?) And so I sat in bed, terrified and torn between the loving patriarch and demonic playthings that he, of course, couldn’t see or hear.

I think the worst nightmares are those that take place in your bedroom, in your bed. Because upon waking, there isn’t that moment of “Oh, good, I’m in bed, it was just a dream.” There is no sudden relief, but just the exhausted peace as the dread slowly seeps away.

…Until you hear that sound again, somewhere in the dark of your room.

No bad dreams last night, but I did finish a new Worth a Thousand entry, a story of childhood fears called Under the Bed and in the Closet, inspired by the always-creepy artwork of Brad McDevitt. Give it read, give it a Tweet, pass it along to all your Facebook buddies, and be sure to swing by Brad’s site to say hi and thank him for the artwork.

(No new Worth a Thousand this week, I’m afraid. Last week’s business trip took my free time out back, put a bullet in its head, and dumped its body in the desert. But in return, it gave me fuel for another wave of the pulpy, overwrought prose you’ve learned to love.)

Las Vegas after dark holds few surprises for me. I’m not a local. I’m not even a regular. But I’ve been there often enough to get a feel for its primal rhythms, its drunken grinning stagger, its fratboy howl. The details change with the ever-evolving skyline, but the heart of the place is the same as was the first time I visited. I suspect it’s the same as it was twenty years ago, thirty, more.

But as the sun lurches white and burning back into the sky, the Vegas night shift gives way to the morning shift. The strip is empty where, at midnight, a pack of dead-eyed people in hot pink t-shirts reading “Hot girls to your room in minutes” were handing out pornographic business cards (“Candi, $99, 555-121-2233″). In their place are slightly younger, slightly more lively people in hot pink t-shirts reading “Grand Canyon Tours” and handing out discount tickets to tourist attractions.

The crowds of sweaty, smiling drunks are gone. Sweaty, serious joggers have their place. They run in pairs, rather than full packs. They speak in hushed tones to each other, if at all. They are not here for a good time. They’re racing the sun: jogging in 85 degrees is one thing; jogging in 100 is another.

As the morning heats up, perhaps the joggers will be replaced by middle-aged and elderly tourists, who might give way in turn to young and foolish as the sun sets and the cycle begins anew. I don’t see it happen, but I can imagine it, on my way to the airport and back to the real world.

Check out this week’s Worth a Thousand entry, Gone Native. It may be the only story to ever feature Lady Ashwood and her man Huxley.