Happy New Year!

The New Year is usually represented by a baby, because babies represent hope. Every parent hopes that their young one will enjoy a good life, perhaps even a better one than their own. Let us all be hopeful that 2009 will be better than 2008. Happy New Year, everyone!

All kidding aside

Christmas shouldn't be creepy. Not the real Christmas. Not really.

Children and parents shouldn't need to be afraid of Santa.

Surely there will be a special level of Hell for this man, Bruce Pardo, who dressed up as Santa and then shot his ex-wife, members of her family and friends at a Christmas party, killing 9. The first person he shot was an 8 year old girl. What went through her mind as she ran to greet Santa at the door, just before and after he shot her, must be the stuff of nightmares. 

The only good part of this story is that the jerk thought he was smart. He thought he could get away with it, get out of town with the money taped to his body and not get caught, But he was a stupid enough to burn himself badly, after which he decided to put himself out of our misery, but only when he realized he could not get away.

Don't get me started about Americans and their love affair with guns and violence. There are far too many people who feel entitled, resent being deprived, and feel justified in sharing their misery with others. "I'll show you," runs through far too many little minds. 

Empathy has been described as "feeling through our skin" what other people are feeling. Not many adults learn empathy. They usually learn it, or not, as children. On the list of things that you MUST teach your children, please include empathy.  Killers lack empathy for their victims. 

Here is one site you can visit to learn more about teaching empathy to children. And if, as an adult, you have trouble connecting to others, the tips provided may help you, too.

Family Education.com

Santa killer planned to flee to Canada

Holiday Greetings 2008

Creepy Christmas Fun

If you like your holiday on the creepy side, or have a slightly twisted sense of humor (guilty as charged), visit www.creepychristmas.net. They are posting a different short film for each day of the month counting down to Christmas.

I like December 8, 10, 18 and 20 best. December 14 is exceptionally beautiful, but pretty creepy! If you click on More about this Film, it will take you to a screen with  the whole list, and you can scroll through and watch them in order or rummage through the list and select those that look appealing, which is a funny thing to say about these films. 

Sadly, his year, one man created a real creepy Christmas. These films were done in fun, a response to our need to scare ourselves occasionally, so we can laugh at ourselves. What this man did was not funny. It was truly horrifying.

The Sexy Vampire

My friend asked me to go see the latest silly woman falls in love with sexy vampire movie last weekend. She has read all of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books and even started a book club . . . guess which book they read first? You are so clever. She insisted that these books were different than other vampire books, which left me wondering how many vampire books she's actually read, since the idea of the sexy vampire in love with a human woman has been around for a while, and while I'm not an expert, Buffy and Angel leap to mind. It's not a new concept.

My kids are big fans of Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire series. I only read the first one, Dead Until Dark, about a telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse who works in a northern Louisiana bar. This book has a great opening line: I'd been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar. It was funny and clever, but I wasn't motivated to read any more. True Blood is the new TV series based on the books. It stars Anna Paquin, and is a bit too bloody and pornographic for my taste, but in it an attractive and trusting psychic girl falls in love with a dangerous, good-hearted vampire. As in Twilight, there's a lot of posturing and posing by the vampires.  The hero spends a lot of his time looking pained.

This blog has received scores of hits on the search terms: our fascination with vampires, and the truth about vampires and a Google search finds much is being written on the topic of women's fascination with sexy vampire men. I think it's all about how hard it is for ordinary mortal women to be aroused by and have orgasms with ordinary mortal men. Real life, real men are so mundane and boring, so indecisive, so clumsy. Most women have to boss them around to get them to do anything. And most of the well-dressed ones appear to be unavailable (to the opposite sex, anyway). Vampires are handsome, fashionably elegant, rich (not sure how they accomplish that, but money never seems to be a problem), and apparently when they turn it on, they are irresistible. Most guys don't have that kind of mojo. 

So, it's all about sex and power. I think we've figured that much out. Each author, TV or movie producer comes up with a different angle, but there are common denominators that we have come to expect. A tortured vampire who doesn't want to suck blood and kill people like the other vampires and a woman who loves him, usually unconditionally, and other "bad" vampires who want to kill her? Not new.

In the movie, Twilight, the gimmick is a group of nice teenage "vegetarian" vampires, who survive on animal blood, but still have to fight the urge to dine on their human neighbors. They are also unusually attractive, stylish and spend most of their time sitting or standing around artificially posing. The only time in the movie they showed any personality, other than pouty or brooding, was when they played baseball in the woods. They each have a different ability (hmm, anyone thinking Heroes?), such as fast speed, ability to tell the future, super strength, whatever, and they can go out in sunlight, but prefer not to, as it makes their skin glow like it is coated in diamond dust, and people would figure out they are "different," and then they would have to move again, and it would be all so inconvenient.

As the hero Edward tells Bella, the besotted, starry-eyed teenage girlfriend whose thoughts he cannot read (oh my!), sucking animal blood is like eating tofu, not nearly as satisfying as the real thing. He nobly explains to her that he is not a nice guy, that he has killed people (he is especially solemn with that line), and part of him would really like to taste her blood, but the teenage girl, whose brain cells have been fried by love (what teenage girl has not experienced this?), declares vacuously that she doesn't care (doesn't care that he's killed people? how amoral of her), she knows that he won't hurt HER (emphasis on HER). This is followed by several silly scenes of them in the forest, culminating with an overhead view of them lying chastely side-by-side in green grass dotted with charming, possibly artificial flowers.

I don't care what you've done.

I love you anyway.

I know you won't hurt me.

Is this the kind of stuff you want your daughter saying to her boyfriend? Is this what you are saying to your boyfriend? These are silly declarations by a silly girl who will grow up to be a silly woman, willing to sacrifice everything important for LOVE, like that lasts, or like the man who receives her gift will value it as much as she does. That is the lesson being taught here to our daughters. If you love him, give it all up. Hold nothing back. Lie to your parents. Run away from home. Have sex. Be willing to become a vampire. Screw women's lib. Live for him. You don't matter. The premise here is a bad one.

Are we supposed to believe this girl knows what true love is? She wasn't that good an actress, and no 16 year-old teenager, boy or girl, knows what true love is, although many think they do. They are not finished growing up. Their brains are not fully developed, especially that frontal lobe part that tells them when they should run away from danger. 

The most appealing characters in this movie are the "bad" vampires, who lust after the blood of our silly heroine. They, at least, are true to their natures. In the final scene, the "bad" female vampire is seen spying on our young lovers, plotting, no doubt, to do them harm in the next movie. I wish her well in her quest. Someone needs to take this lot down. I don't doubt she will fail and probably die violently, but at least she knows what she wants and understands the cost. I doubt Bella does.

More on this subject:  The Truth About Vampires

That's One, Spookannie!

I recently celebrated my real birthday and completely forgot that I started this blog a few days earlier, so Happy Belated Birthday to my virtual alter ego, Spookannie, born November 23, 2007. She and I started this blog with no clear idea what direction it would take us, just a desire to expand our thinking horizons beyond the limits of the paranormal forum constraints and to write more expansively about whatever came to mind.

I often wonder after a post where I will find the next idea to write about, but one always seems to come along ... eventually. I wondered if I had what it took to be a blogger. I have since started two other blogs, so it's possible the answer is yes.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I plan to continue as long as I have ideas and an audience, whether large or small.