Vampire Taxonomy (21 page)

This technique was actually best executed by Child Vampire Homer from
Near Dark
. He would simply throw a bike in the middle of the road, sit down, and wait. Dinner would come to him. This movie also showed the eventual dynamic that forms when you sire a child when Homer remarks, “Do you any idea what it’s like to be a big man on the inside and have a small body on the outside?” And fellow vampire Severen replies, “You have any idea what it’s like to hear about it every night?” The mutual resentment is almost inevitable.

John Carpenter’s Vampires
,
The Forsaken
, and
Vampires: Los Muertos
are all good examples of vamps taking residence in run-down towns in order to keep a low profile.

Vampire harems run rampant through pop culture, including
Van Helsing
,
Dracula: Dead and Loving It
,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
,
The Vampire Lovers
, and
Lesbian Vampire Killers
.

Carmilla
, the groundbreaking novella published in 1872, featured lesbian vampire characters and is still looked at as a sexually revolutionary text.

A few famous examples are Ziodex Industries (synthetic blood refinery,
Underworld
), the Denham Corporation (
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
), Berm-Tech Industries (telephone company,
Netherbeast Incorporated
) and Russell Winters Enterprises (
Angel
).

See the vampire series
Blue Bloods
,
Underworld
,
The Vampire Chronicles
, and
Twilight
’s Cullen family.

Not to be confused with the actual vampire condom, which is an all-black latex condom being sold on the Internet. It’s packaged in matchbooks, and its motto is “Vampires Always Get Invited Inside.”

Household items that could cause pain or discomfort for your vampire are as common as table salt. Ancient supernatural lore has hailed salt as a deterrent for the undead. The theory is that if you sprinkle seeds or salt on the ground, a vampire will have to stop and count each grain before he can cross over. Now imagine if you spilled a shaker on the floor of the kitchen. That’s a lot of time spent sorting grains if you’re not around to stop him. Another sore spot for vampires is roses and other thorned branches. Boughs of these types of pricklies have been cited in folklore as the only means of restraining a member of the undead.

You don’t even need to make your own vampire kit; the market is practically teeming with travel-size Nosferatu insurance. The kit itself isn’t a new idea; in fact, an 1800s vampire kit was sold for $14,850 at an estate sale in Natchez, Mississippi, in October 2008. It contained candles, a cross, holy water, a Bible, a gun with silver bullets, stakes, mirrors, and garlic. It’s one of many vampire kits circulating in the world today. (Many have wound up in museums. One in particular sits at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.)

If you’re a loyal newspaper reader, it’s likely you’ll occasionally read a suspicious article in which a group of “ruffians” has tried to take over a location, yet is mysteriously thwarted from causing any more trouble by sunup. And every once in a while, you’ll get something really special like the
Boston Globe
’s report of a vampire teen uprising in the Boston Latin Public School on March 26, 2009.