The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I have never heard any interviews with the lady who wrote the Twilight series. All I know is she said she got some of it from a dream.



I got curious and looked up the Native American tribe mentioned in the story and they exist up in Washington state. Supposedly there are about 750 of them on a reservation. I got this out of Wiki and I guess they have been featured in other books besides this series. You can read the article over there.



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Historically the Quileutes were very talented builders and craftsmen. Like many other tribes in the region, they were excellent boat makers. They could make canoes for whaling, which could hold tons of cargo and many men. They had cedar canoes ranging in size from small boats that could hold two people to giant vessels up to 58 meters long and capable of holding up to 6,000 pounds. The modern clipper ship's hull uses a design very much like the canoes used by the Quileutes. The Quileutes used the resources from the land to make tools and other items. In the region, almost everything was made out of wood. Necessities like utensils, clothing, weapons, and even paints were made from the natural resources available to them. The Quileute Tribe is best known, as artists and craftsmen at least, for their woven baskets and dog hair blankets. The tribe would raise specially bred, woolly dogs for their hair, which they would spin and weave into blankets. They would also weave incredibly fine baskets that were so tightly woven that they could hold water. They could even boil water in some of them. Another example of their craftsmanship was the waterproof skirts and hats that they would make, using cedar, to shield against the heavy rainfall in the region.



Beliefs



The beliefs of the Quileute People have changed over time. They originally were a very spiritual people. The boys would go on quests to find their supernatural power once they reached puberty, if they wanted to. Yet, at a certain age, the power would wear off, or stop being put to use. They would perform the first salmon ceremony to ensure a good season.



They believed that each person had their own guardian and they would pray to it, along with the sun and Tsikáti (the universe). Much of their original religion was lost and forgotten after the Europeans came. James Island, an island visible from First Beach, has played a role in all aspects of Quileute beliefs and culture. Originally called "A-Ka-Lat" ("Top of the Rock"), it was used as a fortress to keep opposing tribes out and served as a burial ground for chiefs.



Told much in Quileute folklore, the Quileutes descended from wolves. Quileute myths proclaim that the two sided mythical character known as Dokibatt and K’wa’iti was responsible for creating the first ever person of the Quileute tribe, known as the Alpha, by transforming a wolf. This creation story takes on a life of its own. In the beginning there were six tribal societies that represented the elk hunter, the whale hunter, the fisherman, the weather predictor, and the medicine man. The medicine man honored the creator with the wolf dance. Quileute folklore is still very much alive in the area of the Quileute Nation near La Push, inhabited by many descendants of the original tribe.



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Stephanie Meyer must have done a bit of research.



Here is another source: http://www.forks-web.com/fg/quileute.htm



It says LaPush is about 12 miles from Forks. Has to be a big tourist town now, lol. Yes, it's a real place. The above site has this: "According to legend, the tribe was created from wolves by a supernatural transformer. The tribe's lineage stretches back thousands of years to the Ice Age, making them possibly the oldest inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest."



It isn't something they taught when I went to school. The Twilight movies is the first time I ever heard of this tribe, but then there are lots of tribes I probably have never heard of even though I live in the Pacific southwest.

I gave away two of my profiles and would have given away this one but I decided to leave this one and work to get it as high as I could before I wasn't on the internet.



I have gotten upset about things but not recently involving leaving. Sometimes things happen in one's life off of here that affects their abitlity to be online and also affects their behavior.



I have had a continuous line of deaths which were either in my family or of close friends' family and now my husband died and even though we weren't living together at the time it hit me pretty hard. I found I couldn't be rational here all the time. I also knew I was going to have to move and that may happen. There seem to be choices is all I will say.



Sometimes things change. Some might get mad and the cliques or rules or individuals and threaten to leave...let them. They will either leave or calm down. People will talk about this in the covens because the coven becomes family to most here. I don't really have those feelings. People are nice but I don't really know them so that wouldn't really influence my decisions overall. Mine are usually about offline problems. I will be offline "I think" for awhile. I don't know really, could be here and nothing will happen. This is the second time in the last year or so I have been in this predicament and I don't know where I will be living really after 60 days...so that has affected me vacillating on leaving, staying, keeping any profiles but I trimmed down expenditures and even though the price is minimal here. I have this one which was paid up longer than the other two so it will sit here dormant if I am off the internet. Getting to a library isn't that easy where I am which is kind of out in the country. I don't have the transportation and I have responsibilities that connect back to the family with some of the children.



There are times I just want to say the hell with it all. I can't believe others haven't felt that way as well from time to time but why complain about all the bad things on here really. I will tell people and have but they had no way of knowing that it wasn't something I just thought up, I had been thinking about it for a long time. It was difficult to pass things on to others after all the time I had spent on them, at least for me. I would have second thoughts but this time I did what I said, I gave up two of my profiles but chose to keep one after certain circumstances changed and I found it kept my mind off of negative things and when I am not able to be on here it will remain for awhile and by the end of that time, I hope things are resolved.

My granddaughter who is 8, is fascinated with what she calls "fortune tellers". They aren't people but this folded piece of paper with flaps with fortunes inside. That isn't the real name of it but I would suspect many now haven't heard of cooties.



We had them back in the 50s and they are actually called "cootie catchers". One of my older grandsons knows this name. But it sort of refers to head lice and people don't have that as much as they did in the earlier part of the 20th Century.



You would put dots on one side and run it through the person's hair and then say I got all your cooties or something to that affect. It was also used, the word, to make fun of people. Kids can be so ruthless. "Eww, you have cooties." That sort of thing. I can't find out who made the first one. Here is one link about them and of course there is a discussion on cooties in Wiki.



http://www.chroniclebooks.com/ivyandbean/pdfs/cootieCatcher.pdf



Cootie Catchers



A staple of the elementary school playground, the cootie catcher's predictive powers are generally regarded as being surpassed only by that of the Magic 8 Ball.

how to make a cootie catcher



Take an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper. Set it down in front of you like you're going to write on it, long-side vertical.

1.) Take the upper right corner in your fingers and bring it down to the left side (feel free to reverse left and right, should the whim strike you) so that the top side is now in line with left side. Make a crease.

2.) Now do the opposite- take the upper left corner and bring it down to the right side- it should meet at the horizontal fold from step 1. Make a crease. You should now have something that looks like a kid's drawing of a house.

3.) Cut off the flap at the bottom.

4.) Unfold the paper. It should now be a square with diagonal creases meeting in the center.

5.) Fold in all four corners so that they meet in the center. This should leave you with a smaller square.

6.) Flip the square over and repeat, folding in each corner so they meet in the center, leaving you with an even smaller square.

7.) Flip it over again and put your fingers inside the flaps, fleshing it out into a genuine cootie catcher!



what to DO with your cootie catcher



The cootie catcher has, theoretically, two uses. The first, for which it is named, is a trick in which you open the cootie catcher one way and pepper it with dots. Approaching the intended victim, you open the cootie catcher to the "clean" side and announce that you must perform a cootie inspection. Running the cootie catcher through the victim's hair, you now reveal the side that you peppered with dots and announce that you've found -gasp- cooties! Of course, you were kind enough to catch them and now shake them out of the catcher, revealing the "clean" side to demonstrate that they're gone.



I have never seen this done. The more highly evolved use of the cootie catcher is as a scrying device. For this purpose, the cootie catcher must undergo further preparation:



1.) With the cootie catcher closed, number the eight outside surfaces.



2.) Open it one way, exposing four surfaces. Name these with any convention you like- colors are traditional but by no means required.



3.) Open it the other way and name the remaining four internal surfaces. The can follow the same convention as the first four or they can have their own.



4.) Unfold the internal flaps one at a time and inscribe each with two fortunes such that one fortune is written on the underside of the flap to correspond with each of the names from step 3.



You now have a powerful tool for predicting the future and mocking your friends (who can say which is the greater purpose?). To use it, have the supplicant pick a number from one to eight, corresponding to the numbers on the outside of the cootie catcher. You then open the catcher in alternating directions, counting the number you have been given. The seeker of wisdom then picks a color (or whatever convention you have chosen) and the corresponding flap in unfolded, revealing their fortune. Alternately, you can prolong the process by counting out the letters of their color choice and only then having them pick their fortune.



Use it wisely. Use it for good. Use it to give your friends silly and embarrassing fortunes.

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1059598



At least most young kids have never heard of Soupy Sales but I knew who he was and for awhile all the kids my age were emulating white fang. So it was cootie catchers, white fang and boys chasing you around the playground trying to flip up your dress to see your panties so by the time my kids got into elementary school the rules for dress was if you wore a dress it had to have shorts underneath. Of course after around 1966 girls could wear pants to school. It wasn't allowed when I went to school. Even in the local parochial schools during that time you weren't allowed to wear patent leather shoes. The nuns felt they were reflective and your panties could be seen reflected on the tops of your shoes, lol. It was a funny time.

COMMENTS

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LadyRayneofDarklight
04:53 Nov 28 2010

I used to love those things when I was younger.

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POST COMMENT

Think I am getting writer's block. I am into the 10th chapter of one of the books and I am going to kill a character, well it's his own fault. It's funny how they seem to come alive when you create them. This is the last in a series and I haven't finished the other books that come before, hahaha. I just like the characters in this one. Having fun with them. Not that interested in publishing or if they make money, more a creative thing.

This is just a suggestion and only that and probably no one will see this because I'm not causing any kind of fuss with anyone. It is something I don't really like to do.



Anyway it might behoove the site to put in the database especially by the articles a line up by the link something like Permission given: ............... then put the name of the person or organization that gave the permission to post their copyrighted material. Otherwise you might get into copyright infringement issues. My article was posted in there without my permission by someone who found it on an ezine I was writing for at the time. I just asked for another link because I wasn't sure if the ezine would totally fold because it had a closed temporarily page on it at the time. I don't work that closely with it at the moment so I felt it might disappear anytime. I wouldn't have had it yanked out because some person here would lose a point and I know how hard they are to come by. It is only a suggestion to cover all bases, unless you go to showing around 200 words with a direct link to the articles.



Permission is probably the best thing and a link to where it is located. The reason I am stating this is because sometimes people remove their articles and if you only have a partial article when you click on the link the rest may be gone, especially over a long period of time. Just a thought.

I have been chatting off and on with Elizabeth Russell Miller over in FB and she is a very charming lady. I had published an article written by her years prior and emailed a few times but nothing more. She has the Canadian branch of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula and is considered one of the foremost authorities on the book and associated topics. She is well educated and not a fly by night eccentric. The American branch is run by Melton, the guy who wrote the book "Vampires" and just came out with a new revised version.



I was commenting on the misuse of Latin in the community and by others. It has been so long since I took it, back in the 60s. I learned classical Latin and not ecclesiastical Latin (as used in mass or writings of the church) and I had two years of it.



I hadn't seen it in any of her bios but she used to teach Latin for 9 years, it was her undergraduate major. So she answered what I was trying to figure out. Vitae Dominae which is feminine and didn't mean what people were stating and because there is no verb involved it doesn't leave much latitude to translation. It is something like life of the lady. Didn't make sense to me. People were writing their Latin in phrases that approximated the way we say English and that isn't correct. It is written more like Spanish with the verb at the end. In classical Latin which is usually what is taught in schools and universities that do offer it an ae ending is pronounced like eye and v is like a w. Therefore the first word would be weeteye and the last domineye. I guess only those who are older and had Latin would notice all of this. Now I know where to go in doubt, just ask Ms. Miller.



Then there was the guy telling people not to email him because he wasn't interested in their problems or what they were doing for Thanksgiving, etc. Basically he said he didn't have time for it...he is young. He is actually very nice. But...I had to laugh because beyond that on his own wall he posts it is because he is a sociopath. Now that is something very specific and I doubt he tortures animals or sets fires and things like that...he should have said antisocial because even though sociopaths are antisocial in nature in a very abstract way it doesn't mean the same thing as preferring to keep to oneself as opposed to manipulating situations and being well sort of on the sketchy side of criminal and sadistic. I said nothing about it though, I knew what he meant but wondered if anyone else would realize he meant he liked to keep to himself....funny, funny.

Joe Rao

space.com Skywatching Columnist



The full moon of November arrives on Sunday and will bring with it a cosmic addition: It will also be a so-called "blue moon."



"But wait a minute," you might ask. "Isn't a 'blue moon' defined as the second full moon that occurs during a calendar month? Sunday's full moon falls on Nov. 21 and it will be the only full moon in November 2010. So how can it be a 'blue' moon?"



Indeed, November's full moon is blue moon – but only if we follow a rule that's now somewhat obscure.



In fact, the current "two- full moons in one month" rule has superseded an older rule that would allow us to call Sunday's moon "blue." To be clear, the moon does not actually appear a blue color during a blue moon, it has to do with lunar mechanics.



Confused yet?



Well, as the late Paul Harvey used to say — here now, is the rest of the story:



The blue moon rule



Back in the July 1943 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, in a question and answer column written by Lawrence J. Lafleur, there was a reference made to the term "blue moon." [Gallery - Full Moon Fever]



Lafleur cited the unusual term from a copy of the 1937 edition of the now-defunct Maine Farmers' Almanac (NOT to be confused with The Farmers' Almanac of Lewiston, Maine, which is still in business).



On the almanac page for August 1937, the calendrical meaning for the term "blue moon" was given.



That explanation said that the moon "... usually comes full twelve times in a year, three times for each season."



Occasionally, however, there will come a year when there are 13 full moons during a year, not the usual 12. The almanac explanation continued:



"This was considered a very unfortunate circumstance, especially by the monks who had charge of the calendar of thirteen months for that year, and it upset the regular arrangement of church festivals. For this reason thirteen came to be considered an unlucky number."



And with that extra full moon, it also meant that one of the four seasons would contain four full moons instead of the usual three.



"There are seven Blue Moons in a Lunar Cycle of nineteen years," continued the almanac, ending on the comment that, "In olden times the almanac makers had much difficulty calculating the occurrence of the Blue Moon and this uncertainty gave rise to the expression 'Once in a Blue Moon.'"



An unfortunate oversight



But while LaFleur quoted the almanac's account, he made one very important omission: He never specified the date for this particular blue moon.



As it turned out, in 1937, it occurred on Aug. 21. That was the third full moon in the summer of 1937, a summer season that would see a total of four full moons.



Names were assigned to each moon in a season: For example, the first moon of summer was called the early summer moon, the second was the midsummer moon, and the last was called the late summer moon.



But when a particular season has four moons, the third was apparently called a blue moon so that the fourth and final one can continue to be called the late moon.



So where did we get the "two full moons in a month rule" that is so popular today?



A moon mistake



Once again, we must turn to the pages of Sky & Telescope.



This time, on page 3 of the March 1946 issue, James Hugh Pruett wrote an article, "Once in a Blue Moon," in which he made a reference to the term "blue moon" and referenced LaFleur's article from 1943.



But because Pruett had no specific full moon date for 1937 to fall back on, his interpretation of the ruling given by the Maine Farmers' Almanac was highly subjective. Pruett ultimately came to this conclusion:



"Seven times in 19 years there were – and still are – 13 full moons in a year. This gives 11 months with one full moon each and one with two. This second in a month, so I interpret it, was called Blue Moon."



How unfortunate that Pruett did not have a copy of that 1937 almanac at hand, or else he would have almost certainly noticed that his "two full moons in a single month assumption" would have been totally wrong.



For the blue moon date of Aug. 21 was most definitely not the second full moon that month!



Blue moon myth runs wild



Pruett's 1946 explanation was, of course, the wrong interpretation and it might have been completely forgotten were it not for Deborah Byrd who used it on her popular National Public Radio program, "StarDate" on Jan. 31, 1980.



We could almost say that in the aftermath of her radio show, the incorrect blue moon rule "went viral" — or at least the '80s equivalent of it.



Over the next decade, this new blue moon definition started appearing in diverse places, such as the World Almanac for Kids and the board game Trivial Pursuit.



I must confess here, that even I was involved in helping to perpetuate the new version of the blue moon phenomenon. Nearly 30 years ago, in the Dec. 1, 1982 edition of The New York Times, I made reference to it in that newspaper's "New York Day by Day" column.



And by 1988, the new definition started receiving international press coverage.



Today, Pruett's misinterpreted "two full moons in a month rule" is recognized worldwide. Indeed, Sky & Telescope turned a literary lemon into lemonade, proclaiming later that – however unintentional – it changed pop culture and the English language in unexpected ways.



Meanwhile, the original Maine Farmers' Almanac rule had been all but forgotten.



Playing by the (old) rules



Now, let's come back to this Sunday's full moon.



Under the old Almanac rule, this would technically be a blue moon. In the autumn season of 2010, there are four full moons:



http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20101119/sc_space/thereallystrangestorybehindsundaysbluemoon

Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars



By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press Nicholas K. Geranios, Associated Press – Mon Nov 15,2010



PULLMAN, Wash. – Invoking the spirit of "Star Trek" in a scholarly article entitled "To Boldly Go," two scientists contend human travel to Mars could happen much more quickly and cheaply if the missions are made one-way. They argue that it would be little different from early settlers to North America, who left Europe with little expectation of return.



"The main point is to get Mars exploration moving," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, who wrote the article in the latest "Journal of Cosmology" with Paul Davies of Arizona State University. The colleagues state — in one of 55 articles in the issue devoted to exploring Mars — that humans must begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a catastrophe on Earth.



Mars is a six-month flight away, possesses surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant water, carbon dioxide and essential minerals. They propose the missions start by sending two two-person teams, in separate ships, to Mars. More colonists and regular supply ships would follow.



The technology already exists, or is within easy reach, they wrote.



An official for NASA said the space agency envisions manned missions to Mars in the next few decades, but that the planning decidedly involves round trips.



President Obama informed NASA last April that he "'believed by the mid-2030s that we could send humans to orbit Mars and safely return them to Earth. And that a landing would soon follow,'" said agency spokesman Michael Braukus.



No where did Obama suggest the astronauts be left behind.



"We want our people back," Braukus said.



Retired Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell, who walked on the Moon, was also critical of the one-way idea.



"This is premature," Mitchell wrote in an e-mail. "We aren't ready for this yet."



Davies and Schulze-Makuch say it's important to realize they're not proposing a "suicide mission."



"The astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony," they wrote, while acknowledging the proposal is a tough sell for NASA, with its intense focus on safety.



They think the private sector might be a better place to try their plan.



"What we would need is an eccentric billionaire," Schulze-Makuch said. "There are people who have the money to put this into reality."



Indeed, British tycoon Richard Branson, PayPal founder Elon Musk and Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos are among the rich who are involved in private space ventures.



Isolated humans in space have long been a staple of science fiction movies, from "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" to "2001: A Space Odyssey" to a flurry of recent movies such as "Solaris" and "Moon." In many of the plots, the lonely astronauts fall victim to computers, madness or aliens.



Psychological profiling and training of the astronauts, plus constant communication with Earth, will reduce debilitating mental strains, the two scientists said.



"They would in fact feel more connected to home than the early Antarctic explorers," according to the article.



But the mental health of humans who spent time in space has been extensively studied. Depression can set in, people become irritated with each other, and sleep can be disrupted, the studies have found. The knowledge that there is no quick return to Earth would likely make that worse.



Davies is a physicist whose research focuses on cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He was an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.



Schulze-Makuch works in the Earth Sciences department at WSU and is the author of two books about life on other planets. His focus is eco-hydrogeology, which includes the study of water on planets and moons of our solar system and how those could serve as a potential habitat for microbial life.



The peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology covers astronomy, astrobiology, Earth sciences and life.



Schulze-Makuch and Davies contend that Mars has abundant resources to help the colonists become self-sufficient over time. The colony should be next to a large ice cave, to provide shelter from radiation, plus water and oxygen, they wrote.



They believe the one-way trips could start in two decades.



"You would send a little bit older folks, around 60 or something like that," Schulze-Makuch said, bringing to mind the aging heroes who save the day in "Space Cowboys."



That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation. That radiation would also damage human reproductive organs, so sending people of childbearing age is not a good idea, he said.



There have been seniors in space, including John Glenn, who was 77 when he flew on the space shuttle in 1998.



Still, Schulze-Makuch believes many people would be willing to make the sacrifice.



The Mars base would offer humanity a "lifeboat" in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable, they said.



"We are on a vulnerable planet," Schulze-Makuch said. "Asteroid impact can threaten us, or a supernova explosion. If we want to survive as a species, we have to expand into the solar system and likely beyond.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_one_way_to_mars

I see people rarely read my journal, lol. I don't know why I write in it. It has gotten to be sort of like I am conversing with myself. I have gotten so critical lately because I have developed a long list of aggravations. I could write it all down but when done the hard part is to whittle it down until there are none left on the list. I am not so sure I am up to that.

What to say. I use to write in here all the time but when you have a lot of deaths in the family and of close friends there isn't a whole lot of happy happy types of things to say.



It looks like I am going to have to make a difficult decision about someone and I am really unhappy about it. How do you decide to pull the plug on someone. I had hoped I would die first but that didn't happy. When you get old it sucks because you don't go to weddings and baby showers anymore...you go to funerals.

Good Conversation Can Boost Brain Power, Study Finds



http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20101105/hl_hsn/goodconversationcanboostbrainpowerstudyfinds



WEDNESDAY, Nov. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Friendly discussions with other people can help you solve common life challenges, but conversations that are competitive in tone aren't helpful, finds a new study.



"This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you're making friends, can provide mental benefits," lead author Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist and researcher at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, said in a university news release.



In this study of 192 undergraduates, the researchers examined the effect that brief episodes of social contact had on a type of cognition called executive function, which includes working memory, self-monitoring, and the ability to suppress external and internal distractions. These mental processes are essential in dealing with day-to-day problems.



Engaging in a short, 10-minute conversation in which they got to know another person helped boost the participants' performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. But when the conversations had a competitive tone, the participants showed no improvement on the cognitive tasks.



The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.



"We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others' minds and take their perspectives on things," Ybarra said. "And we also find that when we structure even competitive interactions to have an element of taking the other person's perspective, or trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes, there is a boost in executive functioning as a result."



The findings suggest that having a friendly talk with a colleague before a big test or presentation may prove beneficial, according to the researchers.

You want to suck my what?: Vampirism, drinking blood viewed as an ‘escape’



Posted by Jessica Swider Opinion, Sub Feature

Thursday, October 28th, 2010



What only comes out at night, has sharp teeth and sucks your blood? Teenagers probably aren’t the first thing that comes to mind. However, in some places, groups of young adults have become convinced that they’re vampires — full fledged, straight-out-of-a-movie vampires. They even go so far as to “feed” off each other.



Pop culture is one to source on which to place the blame. Movies and television, such as the Twilight series and The Vampire Diaries have romanticized and glamorized the undead so much that youth are now mixing up horror movie stunts with passion and showing that they care for each other.



Boise State philosophy and English major Beth Ropski said, “Vampirism is completely romanticized in our current social culture. Shows like Twilight and TrueBlood can be entertaining but they also super-sexualized this ‘blood lust’ and allow people, possibly unsatisfied with their lives, to develop unhealthy and unrealistic behaviors such as thinking they are vampires and drinking human blood.”



While this may sound extreme, it’s becoming more prevalent every day.



The website experienceproject.com allows people to communicate with other like-minded individuals — including people who think they’re “vamps.” The group “I Am A Teenager Vampire” has 13 members and several subgroups such as “I Drink Blood.” Other websites that enable teenage vampires, such as sanguinarius.org, offer advice to others on how to deal with their new found “life.”



One user, “Tim,” talks about his personal experience, “I’ve always had a love for blood … but lately I’ve needed to drink it or I would be sad, angry or a multitude of other bad emotions.”



Not only is this trend disturbing but it holds a multitude of potential health risks. Doctor Vince Serio, director of medical services at Boise State Health Services believes there is inherent danger by participating in such an activity.



“Biting another person, to the point where blood is drawn, is a high risk activity in which either partner runs the risk of contracting HIV, hepatitis B or C,” Serio said. “These are serious infectious diseases that have lifelong health consequences. Additionally, human bites are more likely to become infected because of bacteria that live in the human mouth. In fact, human bites are much dirtier compared to dog bites and often require antibiotics to heal completely. In my opinion, this is a high risk activity.”



In addition to the obvious potential for disease, there are many consequences of subsisting on a diet that consists mainly of blood and uncooked meat. Such a diet obviously does not provide the entire recommended daily nutritional requirements. According to The National Institute of Health, the recommended daily allowance of iron for the average young person is 11-15 milligrams daily. Consuming more than 45 milligrams in a day can lead to nausea, diarrhea and vomiting as well as potentially permanent liver damage.



So with all the dangers that such a “lifestyle” brings, why are people still so enticed, even on lesser level?



“Basically I saw it at the time as more of an escape,” said pre-nursing major Emily Verrinder said of the Twilight movies. “Obviously that kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life but the elements of the story were believable to a point which made it appealing. Who doesn’t want to be involved, even vicariously, in a dangerous whirlwind romance? The hype helped too.”



Communication major Christopher Larson speculated on why people may be attracted to the overall vampire trend.



“If the human race is always going to be obsessed with this idea of the fountain of youth,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we be obsessed with a product of the mainstream media that is, in part, centered on the ideas of immortality and living forever?”



While not all fans of vampire movies and television shows are as fanatical and extreme as the groups of “real vampires,” the pop-culture obsession can be a slippery slope for those that are easily influenced. It’s important to keep reality in mind, and remember that while escapes are great, real life is better.



http://arbiteronline.com/2010/10/28/you-want-to-suck-my-what/