jason | Entries tagged with vampires

Elizabeth, aka The Blooferlady, emailed me this today about how to Careers: Get on to the corporate radar with Dracula management - 19/Jan/2007 - ComputerWeekly.com. I guess IT is revenant after all.

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

The Harrow: Original Works of Fantasy and Horror: Vol. 10, No. 1 (2007) is up! It is our last using the old OJS system and I’m presently testing the new one. In the mean time, check out the stuff!!!

Editorial
—————————————-

Let’s Toast 2007!
Dru Pagliassotti, California Lutheran University
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=1162

Reviews
—————————————-

Weep Not for the Vampire by William A. Veselik
Dru Pagliassotti, California Lutheran University
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=1169

Editorial
—————————————-

Call for Stories: Golden Age of Horror-Wood
Dru Pagliassotti, California Lutheran University
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=1163

Reviews
—————————————-

Goblin Quest by Jim C. Hines
Dru Pagliassotti, California Lutheran University
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=1168

Fiction
—————————————-

Villa Locusta
Gemma Files,
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=1022

Church of the Broken Cross (Part I)
Joseph R. Armstead, Horror Writers Association
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=945

White Death
Marlissa A Campbell,
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=869

Blood Donors Wanted
Amanda M Underwood,
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=908

Bite Me! (or Priests, Porn and Hairy-Arsed Bloodsuckers)
Garvan M Giltinan,
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=948

Frazzled
J. R.,
http://theharrow.com/journal/viewarticle.php?id=964

—————————————-

The Harrow: Original Works of Fantasy and Horror
http://theharrow.com/journal/

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

I just picked up a copy of Curran’s book “Vampires: A field Guide…” as I’m looking for celtic vampire references. While googling to find how this Dr. Bob is, I found: Show 11 - Vampires! on Odeo: “On this week’s show, author Dr. Bob Curran tells us about vampires and how they differ from the Hollywood stereotype!” And i’m having a listen. Fun? Wow.

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

Rochelle was telling me about this Jesus in Japan | MetaFilter thing… so I went to have a look. Lots of fun information on
Cercle Zetetique : Jesus Christ’s grave in Shingo, Japan! including: “…eat a nice “Dracula” ice cream, which, in addition to being delicious (Shingo garlic is not renowned for no reason!), will turn vampires away. The crucifix drawn on the lid will finish repelling any vampire still surviving after the garlic (and a crucifix is right in the theme of the place)!”

Now, what could be better than that?

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

This article is great: The Killeen Daily Herald - Real life creepy crawlers

Dracula on the other hand, or Count Vladamir Dracula, was a powerful nobleman in Rumania, not Transylvania, who lived around the 4th century A.D. According to Johnson, Dracula entered the lore of Halloween when a priest came to visit him in the night, and refused to show the proper respect to the count’s status by removing his hat, citing his devotion to God as his only master. Dracula, unimpressed with the priest’s candor and dedication, had his guards screw the priest’s hat into his head so that he may never forget whom it was he disrespected.

HOw do people who call themselves Dr. get to spout idiocy? Easy, they recourse to the newspapers. I wonder if you can guess what’s wrong. Well, if you’ve read Dracula Sense and Nonsense, you’d know that Romania wasn’t a country until the 19th C. Dracula, i.e. Vlad Tsephes (spelling close) was a voivoid (military ruler) in Wallachia, in the 14th C (or 15, give me a break). He has never entered halloween, but he is reputed to have nailed turbans to a sultan’s envoys’ heads.

But we believe what we read in the papers… I guess I can use this in my critical thinking class today. Rule of thumb: If you know that half the facts are bogus, assume they all are bogus, and don’t trust the source or the reporter in the future.

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

This article is great. It proves once again how you can come up with logical answers based on non-sensical initial conditions. His taken for granted assumption, that this one definition constitutes the totality of the myth, is unfounded, so everything else that follows has internal consistency, but no external valitity. Of course I’m not saying vampires exist, but that his evaluation of the situation adds nothing except some wonderful Halloween discussion. Which in the end is what mathematics is all about, no?

Some interesting counter balances include the fact that all vampires pretty much die at the end of the movie, or in the morning (in movies). Of the stories I’ve read, most vampire stories that predate the 19th C don’t have everyone turning into vampires after they are bitten. And in many stories, the vampire can’t cross water… so islands would be relatively safe Happy halloween!

Vampires a Mathematical Impossibility, Scientist Says

A researcher has come up with some simple math that sucks the life out of the vampire myth, proving that these highly popular creatures can’t exist.
University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou’s work debunks pseudoscientific ideas, such as vampires and zombies, in an attempt to enhance public literacy. Not only does the public believe in such topics, but the percentages are at dangerously high level, Efthimiou told LiveScience.
Legend has it that vampires feed on human blood and once bitten a person turns into a vampire and starts feasting on the blood of others.
Efthimiou’s debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.
If mortality rates were taken into consideration, the population would disappear much faster. Even an unrealistically high reproduction rate couldn’t counteract this effect.
“In the long run, humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month,” Efthimiou said. “And doubling is clearly way beyond the human capacity of reproduction.”
So whatever you think you see prowling around on Oct. 31, it most certainly won’t turn you into a vampire.

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

Elizabeth and I just updated the Dracula Research Centre with information about the Dracula Symposium and Tour - Transylvania, May 2007 . Spread the word. I’m already working on my paper.

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

I got some interesting email from Rob Brautigam who runs shroudeater.com, as someone suggested that I send him a link to my paper “Early British Vampire Fragments: Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and William of Newburg’s Historia Rerum Anglicarum” (rtf) that should be coming out this fall in print. He suggested I look at
Repentant soul or walking corpse? Debatable apparitions in Medieval England by Jacqueline Simpson, and it looks good. Just thought I’d share.

Ex-Lemmingworks. ##.

Just got an email from Mark Benecke (AKA Dr Doom, Dr Maggot, Maggot Man) just emailed to tell me that he’s incorporated all my Romanian and Transylvanian Society of Dracula pictures from 2003 in Transylvanian Society of Dracula (TSD): Congresses, Symposia, Tours, and Vampire Links and along with my old post Thoughts on the Dracula Conference… on his site.

Dr Doom w/ camera and assistant.

We’re planning to go again in 2007 if the conference is going to be in sighisoara again.

[update: Mark had purchased tsdracula.org as a new global central home for the TSD.]

Originally published at .... You can comment here or there.

Westchester Man To Take Possession Of Dracula’s Castle - April 11, 2006 - The New York Sun - NY News” “A Westchester County man who is a descendant of the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Dominic von Habsburg, is waiting for the Romanian government to hand him the keys to Dracula’s Castle, the 13th-century palace where he grew up before the property was seized by communists.”

Of course, this wasn’t Dracula’s castle… since he’s the fictional character of an Irishman. But it is a castle often pawned off to tourists as castle dracula.

Originally published at .... You can comment here or there.

The symposium of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, May 26-28, 2006, in Sinaia, Romania: synopsis of a paper

PHENOMENA in the HOIA-BACIU WOOD

The Hoia-Baciu wood (HBW) , close to the city of Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, Romania, is the site of some unconventional phenomena which have been recorded and researched for nearly 50 years. People of various ages and educational levels seem to create a modern variety of folklore on the basis of these unconventional occurances. The HBW has a tendency to become the Romanian version of the Bermuda triangle.

( Read more... )

I'm currently reviewing the book Maria Dracula for the JDS, and found out that the author has a blog. Thought it might interest my brethren and sistren:

http://mariadracula.blogspot.com/

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Eno