Alternative Medicine

Vampires, like dogs, vary widely according to breed. You've got your gross, bald, pointy-eared Nosferatu type, and your brutal, ugly, rip-your-face-off Alaskan vampires. Some are sinister and dour, like Bela Lugosi's Dracula, and some are pale and glamorous and erotic, like Anne Rice's creations. They seem similar enough to belong to the same species - though taxonomic classification is a bit problematic, what with them being so elusive and all, not to mention undead.

So maybe, like dogs, they're just different breeds. Maybe there are even toy vampires you could carry around in your handbag. Wouldn't that be cool? As long as it was made of UV-resistant fabric.

You see, I'm thinking about this because I've got these weird marks on my neck lately. The doctor said it was eczema and put me on steroids, but this has had no noticeable effect except that my thigh muscles seem to be bulking up nicely.

So I'm wondering if perhaps I've fallen victim to some vampire that saps its victims' lifeblood very, very, very slowly, by scraping lightly at the skin and getting just a tiny bit of capillary blood from the surface.

I don't see why not, do you? They would have to subsist primarily on regular food, because they wouldn't get enough nourishment from such a small amount of blood. So maybe they aren't actually undead. Unsick, perhaps - with a general desire to nibble on someone attractive, a philosophical objection to organized religion, and a tendency to stay up too late, then feel kind of crappy when the alarm goes off in the morning.

Maybe I should swap out the steroids for holy water.

I'm from Alaska!

This post guest-written by Magda Silhavy

My brothers Edwin, Dumas and I (and a few distant cousins) went to see 30 Days of Night today. It's not really my kind of film - I generally prefer movies without quite so much decapitation - but I had to see how our hometown would fare. I haven't been home in so long! It's been months since we snoeshoed merrily along the lanes, waving cheerfully to our neighbors, cold but happy, our bellies full of Nyuk-Nyuk's delicious polar bear stew, not a care in the world.

I tell you what, we leave for a few months and the whole place goes to hell.

It didn't look quite right, though. Of course the long night casts unfamiliar shadows over everything, and the vampires and all the screaming were a bit distracting. But where was City Hall? Where was Nyuk-Nyuk's house? And our houses? And the historic district, where Dumas wants them to build a Super Wal-Mart? And where was Barrow High???

(Goooooo Pharaohs!)

They weren't there, and I'll tell you why: It was filmed entirely in New Zealand!

Outrageous, but at least it clears up the question of what strange language the vampires were speaking. It must have been Maori.