Vampire charities

A warning: Beware of vampires.


That should go without saying, right? Everyone knows that some people cannot be trusted. But, when it comes to charities that warning often goes ignored.


Philanthropy kindles warm feelings and encourages humans toward noble goals. Simply put, charities inspire people to be, well, charitable. Unfortunately, not all charities are what they appear to be. Among the noble charities, vampires lurk. These vampires (defined as "people who prey ruthlessly upon others; extortionists") put on masks, obscure their motives, and siphon money from those who wish to help the misfortunate. Beware of vampire charities.


This is not a witch hunt. I will not reveal the names of the suspected. If you're concerned about the reputability of a malaria-relief organization, then just ask me. I bite, but I won't bite you if you're trying to help stop malaria. I'm vicious but not unreasonable.


Some things you should know about Infectious Bite:
* Infectious Bite is an organization of individuals. We are not affiliated with any government-accredited or certified charity.
* Infectious Bite encourages you to donate directly to malaria-relief organizations. You may find links to authorized non-profit organizations throughout our site.
* Infectious Bite is an awareness project. It is not our goal to raise money; although, we are grateful for all donations and contributions. We do accept donations. Donations are used to run the Infectious Bite project. We donate a portion of our profits to malaria-relief organizations. If you are skeptical, then please donate directly to certified non-profit organizations. We prefer your advocacy over your money.


Sincerely,
Ana Revenant



Malaria-relief organizations that we trust:
(This is not an exclusive list.)
*Malaria No More
*Nothing But Nets
*CDC Foundation
*Roll Back Malaria

What you shouldn't say to a vampire

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time entrenched in human society. It's not all bad, but I could do with a conversation devoid of trivial annoyances. For example: say "bite me", "suck me", or anything similar, and you may get what you wished for...of course, it won't be served in a pleasant manner. For your benefit (and mine), I'm compiling a list of things you shouldn't bring up in a conversation with a vampire.
Responses may vary depending on the individual and his hunger-level.


"How do I know you're real?"
What you don't know can't hurt you. Okay, I lied. It can hurt you, but you won't see it coming.


"I will slay you!"
Slay me with what--boredom? Killing me is a little redundant. Don't you agree?


"Grow up!"
I would if I could.


"It's daytime. You should be asleep in your coffin. Don't you guys explode in the sunlight or sparkle or something?"
Look around. Do you see any fireworks?


"Want to go for a bite?" (This includes "How about a drink?" & "Want to grab some dinner?")
Sure.


"What's your favorite food?"
Er...I thought that was obvious.


"Are you from Transylvania?"
No. Are you from the Garden of Eden?


"Oh, you're a vampire! Do you know Edward/Dracula/Lestat?"
Oh, you're American! Do you know George Costanza/Jefferson Davis/Tom Sawyer?


"I want to be a vampire. Will you change me?"
No. Do you really think I like you enough to have you tagging around after me forever? Bah!
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure how that happens. Any ideas?

Green Vampires

Why don't vampires obsess about climate change, global warming, or whatever you're calling it now? If someone is going to fret about the future of the planet, shouldn't it be the creatures who will witness its demise?

Well, it's not that I don't care. It's that I have absolute faith that you can handle this on your own. (I don't say things like that often, so there must be a catch.) Once everyone feels the threat of extinction, technology will suddenly offer a way out of the dilemma. Panicked people will scrabble against each other for self-preservation. From the maelstrom of competition, a solution will emerge. Humans are creative creatures, even if they are dim-witted and slow to act.

In the meantime, I will continue not living my green lifestyle. Anyway, I have a comparatively low carbon footprint. Don't believe me? Consider this:

I'm comfortable in low-level lighting, so other than powering my laptop and charging my phone, I use very little electricity. Along the same lines, I don't feel the need to power the energy-draining appliances in my home: the refrigerator, the stove, the dishwasher. Who needs those? Mine are unplugged.

I rent an apartment. That's an Earth-friendly residence, and it has the added bonus of discouraging angry mobs with burning torches and pitchforks. Speaking of which, put out those torches! Don't you know better than to start unnecessary fires? You're trying to kill yourself with smoke, aren't you?

Moving on: I have the tendency to reuse items instead of dispose of them. Why? Well, I remember when raw materials were hard to find and everything was handcrafted. Along that same line, I don't need an automobile. I existed years-upon-years without one. It's true: I don't fly like the vampires of certain stories. If I did, then I would certainly win a prize for green traveling.

Finally, I consume one of the biggest threats to the Earth, and the best part is that I don't need to cultivate my food. My food source grows wild. It's free-range, and I prefer it to be pesticide-free. Furthermore, I almost always shop locally for my dinners.

Pirkano oka yan,
Ana

Care for some claret?

"I never drink. . . wine." The character, Dracula, utters this famous line in the 1939 movie. "The scene created a use of wine, the blood of the grape, as a metaphor for human blood," (Melton 779).

Dracula is hardly the only fictional work that associates wine with human blood. Anne Rice's Lestat reports sitting in taverns clasping a cup of wine while drinking in the vision of human life, in the book The Tale of the Body Thief. In the film rendition of Interview with a Vampire, the same character is shown draining the blood of a rat into a wine glass to serve to thirsty Louis. At times, vampiric characters may imbibe wine in an attempt to placate their desire for the other red drink. "Unlike Bela Lugosi's Dracula. . ., Varney enjoys a good glass of claret, 'for it looks like blood and may not be it'" (Jenkins 83).

Similarity in color encourages the association of blood and wine, but symbolism makes the correlation irresistible. Buried in vampire legend are elements of Christianity. Vampire fiction is imbued with Christian symbolism, dogma, and mysticism. It is no wonder that writers have translated the Eucharist into their vampiric stories. Jesus calls the Passover wine his blood, and so the vampire calls the blood his wine.

Anyway, it makes for a convenient cover-up. Doesn't it? A wine glass in hand doesn't scare away dinner guests like a bleeding heart does.

Cheers,
Ana

Sources:
Jenkins, Mark Collins. Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend.

Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Encyclopedia.

Vampire Vineyards. www.vampirevineyards.com [photo]

Old Maids and Easter Nudity

Did you attend Easter mass naked? --No? Well, it's for the best.

Albanian folklore speaks of the mysterious Shtriga, who is a witch that loves "to eat human beings, especially young boys," but in a crunch she will also eat anyone whom she dislikes. "Though any woman, young or old, can be found to be a shtriga, they are usually ugly old hags [read: 'old hags' as unmarried twenty year-olds] who live in hidden places in the forest and have supernatural powers" (Elsie).

But, how will you know if the woman you suspect is a Shtriga or if she is just weird? Well, "if a woman's hair turns white when she is twenty, this is a sure sign that she is a shtriga" (Elsie). Young men should be wary of this woman. She is a heartbreaker. She will tear out a man's heart [literally] and "fry it for dinner" (Elsie).

Derived from Latin 'striga', meaning witch, these creatures will "often plot to eat one another's sons" should more than one striga exist within the same village. When afflicted women fall asleep at night, "their souls wander off, leaving their lifeless bodies in bed. On the night before Ash Wednesday, they fly down their victim's chimney and drink his blood, whereupon the victim dies" (Elsie). However, there is hope for avoiding death by Shtriga. "If you catch the shtriga in time, you can save the victim's life by forcing the shtriga to spit into his mouth" (Elsie). Furthermore, you can create a "grim safeguard . . . against Shtrigas, but it is hard to get. You must secretly and at night track a woman you believe is a Shtriga." If she was sucking blood, then she will venture "out stealthily to vomit it, where no one sees. You must scrape up some of the vomited blood on a silver coin, wrap it up and wear it always," (Durham 64).

A striga's spirit must return to her body through the mouth. "Should someone have turned the bodies over in their absence, the shtrigas will cause great commotion in their attempt to get back in. Equally, if you turn a sleeping woman around so that her head is where her feet were, and then wake her up, she will die on the spot if she is a shtriga because the spirit cannot find its way back into her body."

"One can prevent shtrigas from entering a house at Shrovetide [the days preceding Lent] by placing a sack in the chimney." A resourceful hunter may also trap the Shtrigas in the church on Easter Sunday by nailing a piece of old pork [leftover from Shrovetide] to the cross or by forming a crucifix from pig bones. Do this, and the Shtrigas attending Easter mass will be caught inside the building. On he who traps them may release them, and if "they are caught, they will pay handsomely for their release." (Elsie).

Surely the Shtriga will pay, for in order to release them from the church the trapper must enter the church naked and wash off the cross" (Elsie). And what vile woman wouldn't pay to have their young hunter enter the church nude during Easter mass?

Lamtumire,
Ana


Sources:
Durham, M Edith. High Albania. P 64.
Elsie, Robert. A dictionary of Albanian religion, mythology, and folk culture. P 237.

Vampire brides

While sloshing through chilly rain in search for a convenient bite, a thought occurred to me. It's spring. Do you know what spring brings? No, not flowers...It brings bloody brides in white dresses.

Spring is the season for weddings; although, I can't imagine why. Let's face it: if you wanted to get your pretty dress all muddy, then you should have just married your beau in a pig farm and not waited for the April showers...or in this case, March showers.

But, who am I to judge? Weddings aren't my specialty...which is kinda my point. In recent vampire fiction, including film productions, vampire brides are a common motif. Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is cited as the source for such characters, but are the enchanting women his wives, his pets, or his daughters? You draw your conclusions; I'll draw mine.

The harem of women, who swoon over Dracula, drags behind it the notion of immortal romance and relative fidelity. Edward pines over Bella, anguishing about choosing between his solitude and her damnation. "What choice have I?" he asks. "I cannot be without you, but I will not destroy your soul."

He hardly needs to worry about her soul, according to John Melton, who says that the "idea of the vampire brides emphasized the sexual nature of the vampire's relationship to his victims. The vampire attacked his victims and then tied them to him in a slavelike structure in which love played little or no part." And, fidelity?--Forget it!

I'm not saying that I agree with Melton, but his notion puts to rest the idea of trading an eternal soul for an eternal body. Romance is not part of the equation in his interpretation. How could it be? Would you love someone if they nagged you for hundreds of years?

Look at an old couple. More often than not, they're at each others throats. And, that idiom becomes literal if translated into an eternal, vampire relationship.

So, if you're dreaming of a white wedding, then take my advice and schedule it for noon on June 21st. Leave O-neg off the menu, and let your dinner guests choose between chicken or fish.

Until death do us part,
Ana

...Go ahead and ask. I know you want to.
"What about Lucius?" Eh...

Vampires in Ireland

What is Saint Patrick's Day without the mention of a leprechaun? These little, red-headed creatures are vicious mischief-makers, and, although we have that in common, I know little more about the leprechaun than what you can find in Wikipedia, if you commit the obligatory Saint Patrick's Day search.

So, instead of speaking about miserly sprites who dress in green (or red depending on the date of your book), I write about the more mysterious and more beautiful Dearg-Dul.

"Throughout the islands of the United Kingdom, particularly Ireland and the Isle of Man, there are countless tales of ghosts, spirits, and faerie folk", but Ireland is also the home of "the deadly Dearg-Dul. This ancient vampire's name, 'red blood sucker,' reveals its nature" to all who are wary. "Legends disagree as to whether the Dearg-Dul is a revenant or a kind of eternal faerie." Certainly, he "does not appear as moldering corpse, though [he] does sleep in graves" (Maberry 94-5).

"The Dearg-Dul is not a hideous monster, and in fact most stories agree that both the male and female Dearg-Dul appear as beautiful and sexually appealing figures whose charismatic aura is utterly compelling. They use their irresistible charms to lure potential victims to trysting places--where they attack and kill them." Into a stupor, they lull their victim through the use of spells, but they also possess supernatural strength. "The Celtic druids have battled these creatures for a thousand years and have devised a number of clever ways of defeating them. The most common way is to locate the grave of a suspected Dearg-Dul and then erect a heavy cairn of stones over it, sealing the stones with prayers and placing sprigs of holly between the rocks." The holly zaps their strength so that they are unable to break their rock prison. "Trapped in their graves, the vampires will eventually degenerate into dust." Yet, according to another legend, "should the stone ever be removed the vampire would walk the earth again" (Russo 38).

The Dearg-Dul is also a skilled trapper. Though both male and female variants exist in legend, the female is more cunning and more vicious. She "holds her victim captive, drains every ounce of his blood, boils it in a crimson cauldron in which she brews her special magic, and makes potions for herself that imbue her with her eternal and ageless beauty" (Maberry 96).

One enchantress (Dearg-Dul/Dearg-Due) "makes an unholy pact with a mortal man" to serve as his creative muse in exchange for eternal love. The pact is made, and the creature imprisons her lover in an underwater palace. Great songs and works of literature flow from his pen, infused with her inspiration, but no one will ever read them. The creature "drains her constant lover of all energy and vitality", taking his life-essence instead of love and "revealing this member of the species to be a kind of essential vampire." Without a tear of farewell, she casts his withered corpse to the side and hunts again for a new "eternal love" (Maberry 95).

Sources:
Maberry, Jonathan. Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings…
Russo, Arlene. Vampire Nation.