Tag: weirdness

Hogwarts for Vampires

On By Chas S. Clifton

Maybe if I had a bookish teenage daughter I would know this, but the boarding-school-for-vampires (etc.) genre has exploded.

Here is a typical cover blurb:

Two years after a horrible incident made them run away, vampire princess Lissa and her guardian-in-training Rose are found and returned to St. Vladimir’s Academy, where one focuses on mastering magic, the other on physical training, while both try to avoid the perils of gossip, cliques, gruesome pranks, and sinister plots.

Margot Adler and I were discussing vampire books about four years ago, when her quest to read them all had passed ninety titles. Cradle-Marxist that she is, she was trying to understand the vampire craze as being somehow a critique of capitalism.

I don’t think so—and definitely not in the Young Adult classification. Check out this list of suggested titles, linked from a website of a public library near me.

It could be more work for Joseph Laycock, the go-to guy in religious studies for vampire-ology, but he has moved on to otherkin, of which more anon.

RELATED? “We are more interested in the zombie at times when as a culture we feel disempowered,” [Clemson professor Sarah] Lauro said. “And the facts are there that, when we are experiencing economic crises, the vast population is feeling disempowered. … Either playing dead themselves . . . or watching a show like ‘Walking Dead’ provides a great variety of outlets for people.”

A ‘Going Out of Civilization’ Sale

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

The local weekly newspaper arrived in my post office box today.

I see that a liquor store in my little mountain county is announcing a new 12/21/12 pricing plan:

Bud or Bud Light six packs will cost you two chickens or a goat . . . Canadian Mist 175’s will cost you 1,000 rounds of 12 gauge . . . All wine 750’s will be traded for five gallons of gas.

People up in the county seat must be well-armed and thirsty. I wouldn’t give more than a box  (25 total) of shotgun shells for 175 ml. of blended Canadian whisky myself .

What Happened to Ufology?

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

When people are still talking and writing books about the Roswell Incident more than sixty years after it happened, you have to wonder if the air has leaked out of ufology.
In Britain, the Telegraph reports,

Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country’s foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.

Back in the late 1940s–1960s, I think that there was a sense of movement: first the sightings of unknown “spacecraft.” Then visual sightings plus effects, such as burnt spots on the ground. Then sightings of aliens themselves (following J. Allen Hynek’s classification scheme).

Surely the truth would be learned soon, whether the aliens were benevolent or whether they were not and Earthlings had to overcome their political differences and fight for planetary survival.

But no.

Me, I am of the Jacques Vallée school: They have always been here, living “inside the walls.”

Pentagram Pizza: Some Good Reads and Free Music

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

• Finding a complementary relationship between Paganism and Tantra at The Pagan Perspective. Not this:

My sabbatical led me down the rabbit hole of tantra, or rather neo-tantra, which turned out to be nothing more than a mobsterized store front for polyamory and polysexuality. Now I am the last person to dismiss sexuality or the free expression of it; however, when sexuality becomes a religion in disguise, we lose something of both sexuality and religion.

• Download a free compilation album, Songs of the Goddess.

• Edward Butler, who has published two articles in The Pomegranate, has put them and some other material into a book: Essays on a Polytheistic Philosophy of Religion.

• Occult Chicago links to an old article about a “spirit photographer” of that city. Some people sure did want to believe, didn’t they.

My Son “Was No Zombie”

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

So says the mother of the man shot by Miami police while eating the face of his victim.

But catch what the girlfriend says: ” ‘ That wasn’t him, that was his body but it wasn’t his spirit.  Somebody did this to him,’ WFOR quotes her as saying.”

Isn’t that pretty close to the pop-culture definition of zombie? (Professor Davis, no need to call your office.)

Should we consider Rudy Eugene to be Patient Zero in the zombie outbreak—unless that dubious honor should have gone to this woman, three years ago?

It’s spreading.

UPDATE: Music for the Zombie Apocalypse.    

And remember, even the Obama Administration wants you to prepare for the zombie apocalypse.