One thing I hate about Aurora, it's all the damn vampires...

During my foray into Borders to sit and write today, I was confronted by pop cult behavior at some of its ugliest. The new Stephanie Meyer book is in. I sat there trying to work, as I usually do while my girlfriend is working, but found myself almost unable to first of all, find a chair and second of all, to find a chair where I would not be afflicted by inane chatter about vampires. I wouldn't mind if these people who were talking about vampires had ever seen Nosferatu or read up on Eastern European folklore...or hell, were even into the Lost Boys, but I found myself feeling sad for the vampire. I felt sad that vampires had joined wizards in the province of uber gay teen cloakiedom and had been struck down with proprietary panache. As a struggling young writer, it makes me sad that easy outs had been taken, vampires had been made sexy and innocuous and the memories of Max Shreck and his ilk had been shat upon. Where are the bloated revenants who rose from the bogs to rip the throats out of their families? Gone. Anne Rice has been to vampires what Adam West was to Batman. Hopefully, someday, like the Dark Knight, the vampire will return to us.