You got Laurence Rickel-Rolled!

In Laurence Rickels’ book The Vampire Lectures, Rickels brings up Freud’s idea of the uncanny and relates this to vampirism. The word for uncanny in german is unheimliche, which literally means un-home-like. In Greek the word for blood is hemo (for example hemoglobin is the scientific name for red blood cells). Blood and home are essentially the same thing. Your family household is your bloodline. Your blood relatives are the members of your home. A loved one that comes back from the dead is the same, yet different. A vampire is unheimliche, un-home-like, or un-blood-like. A shell of a person once known. They are similar to the member of the household, of the bloodline, yet different; uncanny.

It is possible that vampires represent the deep subconscious wish all humans have for eternal life, or at least a second chance at life. Rickels mentions that in Europe, during the vampire mania that spread, men who died as bachelors or people who committed suicide were most feared to come back as vampires. Could this be because people believed a bachelor or suicide victim deserved a second chance? Rickels hypothesizes that it was due to improper burial rights. Suicides were not allowed a Christian burial, and bachelors didn’t have a family to properly mourn their passing. This would lead to the inability of the deceased to rest in peace, and therefore allow for their return as a vampire. This idea is similar to the rule that if a person has unfinished business when they die, they are likely to come back as a ghost until that business is finished. In Hamlet for example, the prince’s father visits him as a ghost so that his son may avenge his murder.

One of the more obscure rules a vampire must follow is that it cannot enter a household without an invitation. A vampire must be let into the house by the consent of the owner. The origin of this rule seems mysterious. Rickels discusses the idea of “no vampirism without the desire to be vampirized” and this idea seems to fit with the invitation rule. People who attend horror films seem to be in a similar vein (no pun intended). People pay money to see a horror movie and be scared. They desire fright.

A Meal Divided

“You enjoy that meal?”
“Sure did Barrett, thanks.”
“My wife packed that meal for us.”
“Oh…" Abe's eyes glanced over, but his head didn't move, "sure was nice of her.”

Barrett was riding a few feet ahead. He turned over his shoulder, looked at Abe and said, “Yes, it was.”

The two men rode through the brush on horseback. The pace was slow and the occasional rustle of grass could be heard as the horses made their way.

“Why we going off the trail anyway Barr-”
“Abe,” Barrett said with more force than he intended, “Abe, you remember a couple winters ago, when that fox kept breaking into my barn?”
“Oh shoot, yeah!” Abe had a laugh that sounded like a wobbly piece of sheet metal, “I ‘member we set up so many damn traps for that thing, you nearly stepped in one yourself. Couldn’t even set foot in that barn for fear of being clenched in the ankle.”
Barrett stared ahead straight faced, “Yeah, never did catch that fox.” He mumbled.
Abe looked over at the back of Barrett’s head and his smile faded. He thought for a minute, then stared down at the reigns in his hands.

The sky was a dusty overcast grey. Bushes and weeds littered the landscape with a tree every now and then that painfully crawled out of the ground. They came upon a small clearing and Barrett suddenly stopped his horse. He stepped down onto the ground as Abe watched. His left hand gripped the reins with white knuckles, and his right hung centered from his belt strap. His whole body was rigid as he looked off into the horizon with unfocused eyes. Dark bags rested under his sockets from the nights of sleep lost over what he was about to do.

A gust of wind blew and the bush swayed in the waves of the air.
“Barrett, I just…” Abe’s voice lost steam and trailed off as he shifted in his saddle.
“There’s no point Abe, I know what you done.”

A sudden calm grew and Barrett squinted towards a dark smudge in the distance.
“What is that?” He muttered, more to himself than to Abe.
He flicked the nails of his fingers up the scruff on his cheek. Smoke seemed to be billowing out of the ashy stump of a tree. Barrett started to lead his horse towards the stump while Abe slowly followed on horseback.

When they reached the stump and saw the other side, an old Indian man lay smoking a long pipe. He took a deep pull, glanced at Abe, then turned to Barrett and grinned. Smoke leaked out of the cracks between his teeth, twisting in streams up the front of his face. He leaned back and exhaled, a cloud of dark grey rising from his mouth.

“What the hell’s an injun man doing all the way out here?”

Barrett rested his hand on his revolver just in case. It shone pale silver in the light of the overcast sky, having been carefully greased the night before.

The man wore the old furs of some grey fox or wolf. The hide was oily and tattered. Patches of fur had altogether fallen out in various places. The man looked like some diseased animal, slumped against the stump of a tree to rot.

“Y’all right there fellow?” Abe asked, a bit withdrawn.

He looked up towards the clouds and coughed out a slow chuckle. He leaned back, hands crossed, patiently waiting, as if he had come for a show.

Barrett was watching him out of the sides of his eyes, not wanting to look him dead on.

“Come on Abe” He sighed, “Let’s go.”

R-R-Rambling!

Note to reader: The following is an experiment in rambling. Its what happens when editing and research goes out the window, and I try to just write what I want to. No internet to look up facts or quotes to make myself appear smarter, and minimal editing of what I’m thinking. The result is this. I promise next week’s blog will be more structured.


It’s amazing, the magnitude of things. The massive scale of this place we call the universe. How are we able to even sum up the amount of content the universe contains into that one word? It reminds me of one of my favorite movie endings. At the very end of Men in Black, the camera pans further and further back from Will Smith, to New York City, to Earth, and even further and faster back to the whole Milky Way Galaxy, and to many other galaxies, until all of the entire universe is contained inside a blue orb. The orb is then picked up by a giant alien hand and tossed in what appears to be some alien form of marbles. It’s comical but at the same time awe-inspiring. This scale of magnitude is very real. Even just looking at your hand, there are millions of skin cells. Inside each cell is a functioning process, not unlike a tiny city. There is data being copied from our DNA, which is then translated into proteins, folded, and shipped out to the place where it performs its function. This protein has a job like most people do. It could break down certain molecules that enter the cell, or it could be used in the cell membrane to decide what gets in. You probably think I’m high or something at this point but I assure you I’m not. If the tiny cells of my brain called neurons are doing what they should be, then I’m thinking straight. We can think of these cells making up a person in the same way that we as people make up the world. The world is one big organism with all the plants, animals, bacteria, etc. doing their own specialized part. But now this rambling is getting a little too hippie and there’s only one place I can go from here, global warming, which I don’t feel the need to preach about.

One of my biggest questions is how molecules turned into cells that needed a form of energy to stay “alive” in the first place? Everything evolved from single celled organisms, but what did the single celled organism evolve from? Molecules? How do molecules evolve? Why is it that the chaos of the beginning of everything decided to become organized? Isn’t some law of thermodynamics broken here? What made cells even want to stay alive? Cells obviously can’t think or feel pain, so why put the effort into trapping energy? Whatever the reason, it must mean that life is better than death. An old Greek myth involves a man who is granted one favor by a god that knows all. The man asks the god, “What is the purpose of life?” The god tries his hardest to persuade the man to ask for something else but the man is stubborn and will not be persuaded. The god sighs and grimly whispers, “There is no purpose to life. Man would have been better off never being born.” Phheww, that’s one of the darkest Greek myths in my opinion. But I don’t think that Greek god had it all figured out. True, death is the absence of life, and so the absence of happiness and sadness, of all the ups and downs this world has to offer. Is all the sadness and pain worth the moments of happiness and joy? Too emo, next.

It’s hard enough to put the universe to scale. What about our lives though? We take things for granted. This phrase is said a lot, and it’s true, but it’s impossible not to take things for granted. Our minds are set up so that we only deal with net differences, not the absolute quantities. What I mean by this is that over time, we adjust to the way our lives are. How is it that a spoiled 14 year old told to do chores can declare they have the worst life ever, while a poor immigrant can think a hula-hoop is the best thing in the world? We are only able to compare the quality of our lives to our own experience. We set up our own reality of how we think the world is and try to maintain it. Sometimes I look at the rich and well pampered and think, how can they throw a fit over not getting the most expensive brand of bottled water, or not being able to sit first class on a plane? But in the same way, someone from a third-world country might look at us and think, how can they throw a fit over not getting a good haircut or not getting good seats in a movie theater? A great show that used to be on the discovery channel was called I Shouldn’t be Alive. It told the stories of survivors of traumatizing accidents and experiences. People who got lost on a hiking trip or who were lost at sea after their plane crashed. In all the cases profiled on the show, the survivors very narrowly escaped death. The most interesting part of the show in my opinion was at the very end, when it showed the survivors telling the final part of their tale, and through this, reliving the experience. It was the looks on their faces when they told of how they waved a plane down, or made it to some kind of civilization. The relief and pure joy of knowing they would be able to live another day was truly beautiful. Conveniently, many of the survivors ended up becoming motivational speakers after their return home. Figures, my as well cash in on one of the most raw and beautiful moments of their lives. But after watching a handful of episodes, a pattern started to emerge with the survivors. All of them claimed that after this traumatic experience, they never took another day for granted again. They “woke up to life” and have since lived with a renewed vigor. One man said that still, the sound of helicopters is his favorite sound in the world, because it instantly brings him back to that feeling he felt when he was rescued by one. In my opinion, the traumatic experience of these survivors has kept them “grounded” so to speak. They know what true despair and hopelessness felt like when near death, so anything else feels above that. Maybe its some form of post-traumatic stress that keeps them at this level. Instead of feeling like it’s the end of the world when they get in a fender bender, they can take a step back, remember what’s important, and just be grateful they’re alive. Maybe that’s the key to life? Approach life from the lowest point possible. It makes sense; people who constantly relive their glory days are miserable.

Anyways, I guess I should try to relate all this to my parasites class, after all, that’s what this blog is for… umm… life is a parasite. But a good one at that. You think about it, I’ve got enough on my mind.

D-D-Dracula!

While watching The Horrors of Dracula, something struck me as odd. It wasn’t the fact that Dr. Van Helsing never once smiled, or the fact that for some reason Count Dracula needed a librarian.


It was during the scene where Dr. Van Helsing drove away vampire Aunt Lucy with a Christian cross. Helsing pressed a cross up to her, and the metal figure burned a mark into her forehead. “How is that possible?” I scoffed in my mind. Later in the movie, Dr. Van Helsing holds back Count Dracula by grabing two metal candlesticks and holding them in the form of a cross. “Ridiculous!” I thought. Are vampires afraid of right angles? Do they not like metal objects? Surely the power of the cross had to do with something besides the fact that it is a religious symbol for good over evil.


I thought back to other known vampire myths. The classic protection against vampires has always been garlic, crosses, and sunlight. In the book I am Legend, garlic is explained as repulsing vampires due to a certain enzyme in contains, and sunlight burns their skin due to a severe form of albinism. Crosses as protection however, are left out. It seems that more recent vampire stories have started to get rid of the cross as a repellant. Let the Right One In, a newer movie on vampires from the Netherlands doesn’t use crosses. And although I haven’t seen it, I’ve heard Twilight vampires aren’t afraid of crosses either. Why is this though? Is it a sign of our times?


Back when the folklore of the vampire was thought up, people generally turned to religion in times of need. Pray to God and he would make a sickness go away. God rewarded the good, and punished the bad. Naturally, religion could also be used to drive away an evil vampire through the power of a cross. Nowadays though, more and more people are turning to science. If you get sick, you go to the doctor and get medication. I’m not saying one is better than the other (Well, maybe I am), I’m just saying that maybe peoples idea of what protection is, has changed. It seems people put more faith in the physical now than in the spiritual. It’s interesting to observe this possible shift through vampire lore.

Food for Thought

Serres is the ultimate parasite. The author of the aptly named book, The Parasite, does what he knows best; “He obtains energy and pays for it in information.” He is a parasite on us the reader. Is he not exchanging his thoughts, in the form of a book, for our money? And with that money he’ll buy food that could be ours! Serres takes our food for his thoughts. “He obtains the roast and pays for it with stories.” (36) Food for thought.

Serres too talks of leadership. “Anyone who wants to sit on the shoulders of an athlete does not want him to see well. He who likes to command can do so, but on one condition: the eyes of the producers, of the energetic and the strong, have to be poked out.” Is Serres opening our eyes to the world of parasites or merely blinding us? Reading Serres is a constant game of Marco Polo. Where exactly is it that we are being led?

In French, the word parasite also means static. Serres’ work seems to fit this alternate definition well. The text is a jumble of noise through which we, the reader, try to perceive a clear message. We are led through fragments of fables, references to philosophers, and puns on French language.

It’s easy to play the cynic though. And although there are times I wish I could tear up the book into tiny pieces and eat them, thereby turning his thoughts into my food, I restrain myself, and find his book more enjoyable to read than to eat.

(Serres rambles on about bifurcations and excluded thirds)


After all, the beauty of music isn’t in the individual melodies, but in the mixture of the parts together. A cowbell can be annoying on its own, but when put with the right melody, it fits. So too it is with Serres’ work. The weaving of philosophy, myths, and even science make it something more. The sum is greater than the whole of its parts.

At times, The Parasite pulls at the unconscious, as if there are connections just under the surface. The pieces seem to fit. But at the. Same time. Don’t.

Anyways; All hail Serres, Master of the Masters of thought.