Thursday, August 14, 2008

Death by hickey!

Mankind loves to scare itself. Since the dawn of human existence, people have been telling stories to frighten each other, partially as a way of dealing with our fear of the darkness and the unknown. Even cavemen used to sit around the fire and tell each other stories about scary things that go bump in the night.

Monsters have always been great at scaring us. And we’ve invented some doozies. Ghosts, mummies, werewolves, the creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein’s monster, Golems, demons, orcs, zombies (my personal favorite), harpies, your mom, the boogieman, little girls with bad hairstyles who spend most of their time at the bottom of wells, Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, the chupacabra, the Candyman (my other favorite), Cenobites, Big Tobacco and clowns. But what I don’t understand is our fascination with vampires. They are the lamest monsters around (except for Count Chocula, he kicks ass.) And ye,t not only are craptastic vampire movies made by the ass-load every year, but people actually model their lives around them. Some people claim to be real vampires, perhaps even going the extra step of having their teeth sharpened.

Why vampires? They aren’t scary, they’re just annoying. You could be walking around any random Hungarian (or Transylvanian) village at night, beer stein in one hand, Bavarian sausage in the other, and all of a sudden you feel two sharp, needle-like stabs in your neck. “Hey! Quit it Lestat. I’m just trying to get home before the real monsters come out. There’s a lawyer convention in town!” Is something you might say if you’re on a first name basis with your local neighborhood vampire.

I’m tired of all the vampire movies. Vampires have gone from being the stuff of our nightmares to being the antiheroes of our action movies. When did this happen? I miss the good old days when The Monster Squad had to kick Dracula’s ass and his harem of wispy blonde nosferatu bimbos. Now we’ve got vampires doing kung fu (which in itself isn’t a bad idea, but why would they need to? They’ve got super strength) and having sword fights in trendy LA goth clubs. Doesn’t make sense to me.

Vampires are really nothing more than thin, pale rejects who love capes and dark clothes and hate the sun. Maybe that’s their appeal. People who are sickly and deathly pale must find the thought of living forever in that state attractive. Plus it gives them the excuse to dress like it’s Halloween every day of the year, (and don’t we all wish we could do that? I’d be a ninja half the year and a super hero the other half. Perhaps a fairy princess every now and then.)

Maybe it’s the seductive nature of the vampire. The sensually shared moment between vampire and prey, when the hunter wraps his arms around his victim in a cold embrace and tenderly, almost lovingly finds the jugular vein hidden within her delicate and arousingly feminine neck. He places his lips against her flesh and inserts his teeth into her, feeding off her lifeblood in an erotic display of power and domination. If that’s so, then…….yawn!!!

Seriously, vampires are just freaks who kill with really strong hickeys. Is it really worth painting your lips black, wearing corsets and leather and being so pale as to be almost translucent in an attempt to model your life after one of them? Besides, the fact that cosplay is at its best awkward looking and at its worst a reason to point and laugh at people, it just seems like a drain on the bank account. “Let’s see, it’s either buy a gallon of milk for breakfast this week, or buy a pair of fishnet gloves with the fingers cut out of them. Hmmm….choices, choices.”

Guess what people who love vampires a little too much? You don’t have preternatural strength, you’re teeth don’t work like straws, there are other colors besides black, red and purple and there are other fabrics besides velvet and leather. Go take a shower to clean all that black shit off your faces, burn your copies of the Twilight series and go for a suntan session, you’ll feel better for it.

Join me next time when I unfairly attack people who are obsessed with anime and all things Japanese (except for Japanese porn, because then I’d be a hypocrite and we wouldn’t want that.) Honestly though, how many waifish girls with pink hair and ridiculously huge eyes can a person look at before going crazy?

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