Vampire.

He’d run through all of the possibilities, and it was the only one left. He stood facing a genuine vampire, fangs, glowing red eyes, and all.

He supposed it was his own mistake, staying in the university archives so late. He had come to Kraków to research his next book on the life of Jan Sobieski, the Polish king, and he was not above slipping a few złotych into the hands of a librarian or two to stay after hours. Now he wished he had called it an early day.

It had attacked him just as he was replacing some manuscripts on a shelf. It would have killed him right then and there, perhaps, if he hadn’t seen it out of the corner of his eye and been able to dodge it. He didn’t know what it was then, some psychotic homeless person who had somehow made it into that part of the library, he guessed.

That he figured it out was a complete accident. The thing had managed to grab his shirt and tear off the top button, revealing the crucifix he always wore around his neck. Upon seeing it, it screamed and backed away. It just stood there, glaring at him. He realized then that he was standing between it and the only way out of the room. Apparently, it couldn’t get past him as long as the crucifix was visible. The sun would rise in only a few hours. He could keep it there. He could kill it permanently.

Or…

How many times had he spent months on research only to hit a brick wall? How many times had he wished for an eye-witness account of some event? How many times had he needed an eye-witness when there simply wasn’t one? If what he was looking at was truly a vampire, there was no telling how old it was, what it had seen, what it remembered.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said to it in Polish, hoping it understood, “I’ll let you go if you let me go. How does that sound?”

It continued to glare at him, but slowly, it nodded.

“First, though,” he said, “I have a few questions for you….”

(For Sunday Scribblings No. 188.)

Since last year’s public service announcement seems to have fallen on deaf ears, I fear I must repeat my warning. Perhaps I can convey the message better using a different format:

EXT. NIGHT – A NICE SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD

It’s Halloween in a nice suburban neighborhood. Little kids dressed up as ghosts, cowboys, witches, and the like are out with their parents trick-or-treating. Some groups of older kids are out, too, without parental supervision. CAITLIN and MADISON are both thirteen years old. Caitlin is dressed as Bella from the Twilight series. So is Madison. As they’re walking they see a group of devastatingly handsome boys without costumes. They are maybe a few years older than the girls are.

CAITLIN

Wow, look at those boys! They are devastatingly handsome.

MADISON

Yeah, they’re really cute.

CAITLIN

They have pale skin and supernaturally clear complexions for their age. I bet they’re vampires! Let’s go introduce ourselves. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could fall in love with them to the point where we’re obsessed with them, and nothing else matters in our lives, not even our families?

MADISON

I don’t know, Caitlin. They could be dangerous.

CAITLIN

Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat. What’s the worst that could happen?

FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)

You could die.

Caitlin and Madison both look in the direction of the voice. It’s SCARLETT from G.I. Joe.

CAITLIN and MADISON

(together)

Scarlett!

SCARLETT

Your friend is right, Caitlin. They are dangerous.

CAITLIN

How do you know my name?

MADISON

I’m not really her friend.

SCARLETT

(ignoring them)

You should never approach a vampire unarmed. He’ll just suck all your blood, and that’s no fun.

CAITLIN

But they could be good vampires. You know, ones that don’t feed on people. Or they could at least be morally conflicted. And they’re devastatingly handsome. They’re probably also very charming in a self-loathing, brooding sort of way.

SCARLETT

(shaking her head)

That’s only in books and movies. Real vampires are always evil. There are no exceptions.

CAITLIN

You mean they don’t sparkle? And they won’t fall in love with me and stalk me in my sleep?

SCARLETT

No, I’m afraid not. Real vampires are incapable of love. If they say they love you, it’s just so they can get close enough to suck all your blood.

Scarlett is attacked by two of the vampires. She pulls wooden stakes from somewhere on her skintight catsuit and easily dispatches both of them. She then hands the stakes to the girls.

SCARLETT

Here, take these wooden stakes. It never hurts to be prepared.

Caitlin and Madison each take a stake.

MADISON

Gee, thanks, Scarlett

CAITLIN

Yeah, thanks. Now we know.

SCARLETT

And knowing is half the battle.

FIN

More from BLAZONED, for Halloween.

Transylvania

See t-shirts with this design.

The name Transylvania literally means “the land beyond the forest.” The Romanian name is Ardeal, and the Hungarian name is Erdély. In German, it is known and Siebenbürgen, which literally means “seven fortresses,” referring to the seven fortified towns founded by German immingrants to the region in the Middle Ages.

Though it was made famous by Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula, Transylvania is an area rich in history and has long been a crossroads for different cultures, a fact represented in the coat of arms.

The black bird in the upper portion of of the coat of arms is often mistaken for an eagle or even a raven, but it is actually a turul, a mythical falcon from Hungarian legend. It represents the Hungarian nobles who ruled Transylvania for several centuries. The sun and moon represent the Szeklers. The Szeklers speak Hungarian, but they are a distinct ethnic group. The seven red towers on the lower part of the coat of arms represents the seven cities of the German immigrants, who are commonly refered to as Transylvanian Saxons. Because Transylvania is now part of the modern state of Romania, these cities are normally referred to by their Romanian names, but sometimes the German names are used. The seven cities are (with German names in parentheses): Braşov (Kronstadt), Sighişoara (Schäßburg), Mediaş (Mediasch), Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Sebeş (Mühlbach), Bistriţa (Bistritz), and Cluj (Klausenburg).

Sighişoara is significant because it is the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula, Bram Stoker’s real-life inspiration for the vampire.

Interestingly enough, the Romanians, who have been the majority of Transylvania’s population for much of its history, are not represented in the coat of arms.

This is a short video I posted on YouTube to promote my t-shirt company. It’s a little cipher puzzle. There will be more if I get enough interest. (And if someone solves the cipher!)

“Strangers in the Night”

“Strangers in the night exchanging glances / Wond’ring in the night / What were the chances we’d be sharing love / Before the night was through.” I suppose that this one might be slightly more appropriate if the ice cream truck came out at night. But there’s still the problem of to whom, exactly, this song is addressed. The kids?  The delicious frozen treats? “Hello, randomly blue-colored, raspberry-flavored snow cone that’s blue only because they already have every other color including red but needed a blue one and couldn’t find a naturally blue fruit that would work since blueberries are really sort of blackish purple and someone high up in the Ice Cream Truck Company really liked raspberries and didn’t care that there’s no such thing as a blue raspberry. Where have you been all my life?”

“O Come, All Ye Faithful”

Although, when you think about it, it may not be so inappropriate.

“Windmills of Your Mind”

In addition to being one of your more insidious earworms and just generally creepy, this song is inappropriate because the lyrics (such as they are) are about the passage of time and a failed relationship.  “Pictures hanging in a hallway / And a fragment of this song / Half remembered names and faces / But to whom do they belong / When you knew that it was over / Were you suddenly aware / That the autumn leaves were turning / To the color of her hair.” It’s like the ice cream truck is taunting you. “That’s right, kiddies, eat your ice cream now, because soon you’ll grow up and get married and have children and a mortgage and a job you hate, and after you’ve watched all of your dreams die one by one, you’ll die, too!  Muahahahaha!”

“We Wish You a Merry Christmas”

The inexplicable thing is that someone has to make the recordings of the songs that the ice cream truck plays.  Why would they make Christmas songs?  It’s never appropriate for the ice cream truck to play Christmas songs because the ice cream truck only comes out in, you know, summer, and Christmas is in, you know, winter. Unless you’re in Australia, which I’m not. Maybe the Ice Cream Truck Music Company mixed up the shipments. Do they have ice cream trucks in Australia?  They probably don’t call them ice cream trucks, though. Maybe ice cream lorries.

The theme from Love Story

What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? Apparently, the answer to that question is, “Ice cream!”

Things have been a little slow around here because we’re currently in the middle of a massive cross-country move.  We’re leaving Southern California and moving to North Carolina.  This has been a long time in coming.  While we don’t regret moving to California ten years ago, we realized a few years ago that California can’t give us the life that we want.  So we started taking steps to leave.  Last week, one of the last pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place when we sold our house.  Immediately, we were confronted with a reminder of why we’re leaving.

But first, a short (I promise.) lesson in property law.  Way back in Ye Olde England, the rule used to be strict caveat emptor when it came to buying real estate.  The seller didn’t have to tell the buyer anything about the property.  It was the buyer’s job to find out if anything was wrong.  The English imported that rule to the colonies, and up until the turn of the twentieth century, it was pretty much the rule in every state.  Today, most states require the seller to disclose major problems, but California goes farther.

We had to disclose that we lived in a condo.

Really?  I’d love to see the lawsuit that resulted in this particular disclosure being included.  “Plaintiff began to realize something was amiss when he noticed doors to which he did not have keys.  He became even more suspicious when he saw other people using these doors to enter and exit the building.  These observances led Plaintiff to believe that there were large areas of the building to which he did not have access, but others did, and that in fact, he was not living in a single-family dwelling, but a condominium.”  I’m sure it’s the same guy who’s responsible for the “Warning: may contain nuts” label on packages of peanuts and the “Warning: may cause drowsiness” label on sleeping pills.

Booking Through Thursday

Do you read graphic novels/comics? Why do/don’t you enjoy them?  How would you describe the difference between “graphic novel” and “comic?” Is there a difference at all?  Say you have a friend who’s never encountered graphic novels. Recommend some titles you consider landmark/”canonical.”

I’ve actually blogged about this before, but it was a long time ago, so I’ll do it again.  I love comic books.  My favorites are the Justice League and Legion of Superheroes over at DC, and the X-Men and Spiderman over at Marvel.  I really like what Joss Whedon is doing with the continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in comic book form, and I’m actually enjoying the continuation and expansion of the Star Wars saga into the far future with the “Legacy” series.

Here’s the tricky part, though.  I can’t actually read them.  I don’t know if there is a technical word for it, but when it comes to comic books, I have some kind of reading disorder.  For some reason, my brain can’t process the pictures and the words at the same time in order to follow the story.  When I open a comic book, I get overwhelmed by the images, and I end up just idly leafing through without reading any of the dialogue.

Webcomics are a different matter.  I suppose it’s because you can only read one “page” at a time on the screen, and I can process better without the distraction of the rest of the “book,” even if I have to reread it three or four times.  I’m currently following Gunnerkrigg Court, drawn and written by Brit Tom Siddell, who is an incredibly talented artist and a brilliant storyteller.  You should check it out.

Meanwhile, I’ll read Wikipedia’s summaries of the other comic books I like, so I’m not completely in the dark about what’s going on.  *Sigh.*  I tell you, it takes real talent to fail as a comic book geek.

Booking Through Thursday

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

I’m of two minds about this question.  Sometimes, I think that the symbolism is there.  Sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes, too, I think symbolism is misused.  Back in high school, we had to read “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James.  For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it’s about a young governess who moves to a creepy country house to care for two creepy children who starts seeing ghosts.  Is the house really haunted, or is she crazy?  When our teacher told us that her visions were a result of her sexual repression, we all started laughing because none of us saw it (the name of the story aside).  Then she started pointing out certain symbolic things about the…ahem…spiritual visitations, and it started to make sense.

That same year, we studied T.S. Eliot, and we read “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”  Both of these poems have passages that make absolutely no sense when read literally, so they must be symbolic, right?  From what I know about T.S. Eliot, though, I think he might have been jerking everyone’s chain.  I can see him sitting down at his typewriter, softly chuckling to himself about generations of English literature majors struggling and failing to find any meaning to his poems and ultimately having to go on anti-psychotic medication.

I think that in modern fiction, symbolism is used less effectively because not many people are familiar with symbolic language or symbolism in general anymore.  I think sometimes symbolism is misused.  For example, I like vampire fiction partly because vampires are the perfect symbol for the dark impulses, emotions, and desires in all of us.  They’re monsters that look just like us, and we can become them if we’re not careful.  So, I’m not a fan of the current “vampires are people, too” movement made popular by a certain author in a certain series of books.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for taking symbols and subverting them to make a larger point.  Several writers have done just that with vampires rather successfully, using them to explore themes such as redemption and the ennui of modern life.  This author didn’t do that.  She broke the symbolism.

Her main vampire protagonist has all of the strengths of a vampire, but none of the weaknesses.  He has super strength and super speed.  He’s immortal.  And he’s really, really pretty.  He can go outside during the day without being burned to a crisp.  He can walk into a church.  He can walk into an Italian restaurant and order the garlic shrimp.  He can walk into your house without being invited first (all the better to stalk you while you sleep).  He can cross running water.  He doesn’t have an aversion to shiny things.  (Sometimes, he’s shiny, too!)  And best of all, he doesn’t make a habit of snacking on people.  So basically, he’s Superman with fangs, except, you know, he doesn’t have fangs either.

So while these books were a huge commercial success, they ultimately don’t work, because she’s taken away everything that makes vampires compelling or useful as a symbol for anything.  You could take the vampires out completely, and the story wouldn’t change much.  Even she seems to know on some level that it doesn’t work.  If you disagree, ask yourself, why, in a universe where being a vampire is so awesome that people should be lining up to take it in the jugular does it take four books for everyone to be okay with the main female protagonist becoming one?

My cat sitting in  a mail bin.  No reason.

A design from BLAZONED.

This England

The use of three lions as the symbol of the English monarchy dates back to King Richard I, “The Lionheart,” and echoes the coat of arms of Normandy, from which William the Conquerer launched his famous invasion.

The national flag of England is St. George’s Cross, a red cross on a white background. St. George is the patron saint of England, and his cross has been associated with England since at least the twelfth century.

The quote on the banner is from Act II, Scene 1 of Richard II by William Shakespeare. Here is the entire speech, which alludes to the fact that England has not been successfully invaded since William the Conquerer crossed the Channel:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,–
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.