Vlad The Impaler, We Need You

Posted on July 28, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Everyone (but me) has been reading vampire books. The craze apparently swept the nation while my attention was elsewhere. (I never know what’s popular. I was probably fretting over my tractor’s valve train.)

I’m all for stories about undead bloodsucking monsters. Go team evil! I was delighted (if surprised) with the unexpected popularity of an old Victorian story with an awesome villain and a weird implied Romanian back story. Something to strike a blow against this summer’s oversold story about Blue Alien Indigenous Treehuggers who symbolically defeat Space Marines and Halliburton? Maybe Bram Stoker wound up on Oprah’s Book of the Month?

My wife, who is more aware of popular culture than I, explained things. For the six other guys (and they are definitely guys) who don’t know the scoop; here is all you need to know. Stephene Meyer took the vampire story and ran with it to the tune of several books and some movies (and for all I know themed lunchboxes and a game show). In my eyes the whole things sounds suspiciously like the fruit of focus groups but that’s just the sort of thing a Curmudgeon would say. The whole thing started in the young adult book market like Harry Potter and I’m the last person on the continent who hasn’t either read the books, watched the movie, or otherwise paid attention. Inexplicably this set of vampire stories include Werewolves? I’m not ruling out Smurfs either. Maybe I missed other details; so be it.

One day my kid’s Happy Meal came with a wristband sporting what appeared to be an anemic blue jean clad mall-dwelling high-schooler. This guy. This boy. This, shallow pathetic watered down echo of James Dean without the motorcycle? Could he be a vampire? My wife patiently explained that the character was not only a vampire but a “vegetarian” one. I was incredulous; “But he looks like one of the Backstreet Boys and… DID YOU SAY VEGETARIAN!?!”

This last part cannot stand! I realize that it’s all harmless frivolity and one probably needs two X chromosomes to “get it” but vampires must not be portrayed as wimps. Vampires can and should be merciless, predatory, and at any moment seriously considering and capable of killing everyone in the room. Vampires living on woodland creatures is pathetic. If I can kill a deer and eat it that doesn’t make me a dark lord now does it? Any vampire less dangerous than a blogging deer hunter is bad for society, a blight on humanity, and yet another way to turn a really excellent villain into a Pokemon character. I blame Anne Rice for this.

Vampires are bad news. They need to be nasty, cunning, nearly unstoppable, and unspeakably malicious, monsters. Otherwise they’re just losers without a day job. Any teenage waif mooning around a vampire should wind up double plus dead and hopefully mentally tortured on the way out. (Renfield wound up eating spiders in an insane asylum. Now that’s a vampires’ handiwork!) Anything less is just lazy. A teenage airhead escaped from the text of Romeo and Juliet skipping around in your malicious orbit is too uncool for a top flight villain. Vlad the Impaler would have tossed her from the parapet in less time than I take to scan the phone bill. Nosferatu was harsh to the core long before CGI. Even Bram Stoker’s Dracula took out an entire boatload of sailors just to get to Britain. Mass transit baby! Vampires kill off a handful of innocent peasants to warm up for an unhinged evening of concentrated evil and we love them for it. Maybe they’ll even put some heads on spikes to remind the terrorized countryside that the crazy guy in the old castle on the hill is not interested in talking to the homeowners association. Anything good and holy in the vicinity of a hardworking evil vampire is going to get seriously messed up. And the best part is that you know it’s coming. When Bela Lugosi unleashes his cool accent you know his victim is up against something legendary. Vampires don’t “feel your pain”….they cause it. This is important. Vampires = bad. No exceptions. Vegetarian vampires are a sign of the downfall of society.

You may now pursue more intelligent fare. Thanks for listening.

Posted in Wussification and other modern hazards. | Leave a comment

Shirley Sherrod is David Howard

Posted on July 25, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

In 1999 there was a kerfuffle about nothing. David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington DC was discussing the budget. His intention was to say that times were tight and he’d have to be very careful with the budget this year. There was nothing unusual in the content of his remarks (aside from the novel idea of fiscal responsibility in Washington) but he had the terrible misfortune to posses a large vocabulary. Howard said he’d have to be “niggardly” with the budget. “Niggardly”, for those of you who’ve fallen behind on your Reader’s Digest Word Power studies, is an adjective derived from the Old Norse verb nigla (“to fuss about small matters”) meaning “miserly or stingy”. The word “nigger” is derived from Spanish/Portuguese and has nothing to do with the concept of “stingy”. (Look it up if you don’t believe me.)

Of course everyone got the vapors about a word that sounds similar to verboten language. Ten days after the mistake of doing nothing wrong, Howard was fired. Did I mention that Howard, tragically, was white (and gay), or that his boss, the mayor of Washington DC (as is required by either law or tradition…I forget) was black. Eventually someone picked up a dictionary. Soon he was rehired and we all had a laugh at our collective stupidity and learned to live together as a nation of reasonable people. Just kidding.  He more or less got his job back but we’re still morons and I’m sure Howard wouldn’t play scrabble alone in a locked room.

Eleven years after Mr. Howard’s career went through a wood chipper because one word sounded like another, Shirley Sherrod was pounded for doing the right thing but saying it in a way that exceeds the toddler level sensibilities of those around her. Mrs. Sherrod, a black bureaucrat, told a Hallmark style redemption story of overcoming her racial animosity toward a white farmer 24 years earlier. Thirty-eight seconds of video from her speech took the story out of context and made her look like a racist jerk. This was pitched into the public maw by a pundit I don’t listen to and amplified by a “news” outlet I ignore. In short order Mrs. Sherrod was hurriedly submitting a resignation which was requested (depending on who you ask) by either President Obama’s direct order or one of his flunkies who knew which way the wind was blowing. A decision, like the canning of Mr. Howard, which was ill advised and shortly reversed. For my own amusement I like to imagine the first person to listen to the rest of Mrs. Sherrod’s speech and realize she wasn’t the anti-Christ also has a dictionary and knows how to use it.

So what have we learned? Nothing I’m sure. However, I’d desperately like to meet Mr. Howard and Mrs. Sherrod and buy them both dinner at a nice restaurant. I’d happily pay the bill just to hear what they have to say about the matter. Which, if either of them have learned anything from the pants shitting weenies that nearly ruined them both, is nothing.

Posted in The Shafted | 2 Comments

When something can’t go on forever…it won’t.

Posted on July 25, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Unless you live under a rock you know the economy has changed recently.  The question is; when did you know it was going to happen?  The press likes to pretend that the economy suddenly tanked without warning but I disagree.  The writing was on the wall years in advance.  Like anyone else, I clung to the idea that maybe I was misreading things and a booming economy based on free credit and magic unicorns would last forever.  Yet small deductions and minor observations piled up incrementally until I couldn’t help but get the point.

In any process of gradual learning there’s the moment when you give up all doubt and just know.  For me, that moment was a minor observation.  I was living in a large city which, as far as I could ascertain, was constructed entirely out of debt.  With a certain amount of self deception you could ignore this.  But one day the pizza delivery guy arrived in a brand new Cadillac Escalade.  While chatting with him I determined that he had indeed “purchased” (i.e. financed) it specifically for his job, he was entirely supporting himself with a part time job delivering pizzas, and he thought his new glittering White Elephant was a wise “investment”.  Nor was he a young fellow…he was in his mid twenties and more mature than the pimply faced high school student I usually associate with pizza delivery and fiscal cluelessness.

When the guy who brings your pizza is driving a brand new Escalade…something is terribly wrong.  That was all you needed to know about the economy in early 2005.

Posted in Harangue-a-bang-bang! | Leave a comment

Hello world!

Posted on July 22, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

This is a test.  This is only a test.  If this was an actual post it would have content.  As for insight; I’ll leave that determination in the hands of the reader.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment