Emotion Critique: Love

So, I was told recently by the voices in my head that never stop speaking to me that today is something called "Valentine's Day", a day supposedly used for giving people generic store-bought cards, candy, and flowers that will wilt and die, much like most love will. Oh, I kind of made myself sad with that analogy. It's okay, self. You'll be okay. All you have to do is think about all the fond candy that your significant other might try to fatten you up with... and once you get fat...

Oh, look, I'm supposed to be critiquing a topic here. This one is the emotion humans call "love". What is this "love"? How do you go about making it happen? Well, I will be your guide to the "love". Yes.

Love is supposed to be one of these kinds of selfless ideas, like saving orphans from a burning building. Those orphans are never going to pay you back no matter how many times you save them. Nope, they're just going to want you to adopt them and feed them probably... and you won't know what orphans are supposed to eat and you'll give them some dog food, and then somebody will tell you that you're not supposed to feed the orphans dog food, and then you'll be all like, then what do I feed these orphans? There are so many of them and I'm not giving them my food. Then the orphans will be taken away from you, unless you're really crafty, but... uh... I'm not supposed to get into that. I had one of those things... a... uh... yeah... moving on...

Love is all about doing the right thing and not screwing up even a little. Since I'm a straight man, I'll give you a straight-manly example of screwing up love. So, let's say you go and like a chick and she likes you back and you hit it off pretty well. You're going on a date taking her to some nice Italian restaurant with some nice music playing in the background, and your orphan slave is carrying your bags... NOPE! You see? You already made a mistake, you moron!  You can't take her to an Italian restaurant! That ruins love! That's it! Love is thrown straight out the window because of your rancid garlic breath. No woman ever like rancid garlic breath and if they tell you, oh, it's not problem. I like garlic, then she is a succubus and will probably attempt to feast upon your viscera. Hint for love: Don't let this happen to you! The only known way to stop a succubus is by making terrible bird noises and poking her incessantly until she leaves, never to return probably.

Okay, so, don't look now! Love is staring at you in the face! You and your mildly disconcerting orphan slave have managed to impress a female homo sapien by taking her to a nondescript restaurant owned by a nice slick-looking man named Jimmy, and by not eating garlic or having her be a succubus. THIS MEANS YOU ARE SUCCEEDING AT LOVE.

Haters will tell you that this is untrue, that love is not a game, but they are wrong. Love, an emotional state, is a game that you WILL NEVER WIN. Don't even think you can. The only way to win is to not play at all. Well, that's not true. You can do some things to win, but I'll get to those things later.

Look, the first kiss of love is the most important thing in the world. Don't be intimidated by the female's proboscis, or her strange desire for your blood. This is only natural. Once you couple with the love-creature-female, you will only have seconds to make certain you have established that the title of lover is yours. You must hurry and deliver the stork to the messenger... if you get my meaning. *wink*

After you are finished with love, you have to run really fast or else angry love-gnomes will chase you down and beat you with aluminum bats. Yes, this is actually a part of love that many people forget. DON'T BE THE GUY OR GAL WHO FORGETS THIS IMPORTANT PART OF LOVE. Remember to bring your anti-love-gnome spray, as well as a golf club or two to take those little suckers down once and for all, those damn horrid creatures.

Oh, you don't believe all of what I say? Fine. Go ahead and love and see what happens. If it's not as bad as that then you have evidently copulated with one of the genetic mutants of the female branch of our species. If it's worse then I will pray for you because I think you are to be pitied.

The one thing I haven't mentioned is that once you have established your dominance and given the female all of your time, effort, and fortune... as well as all your "love" as if that were a quantifiable thing without the love-gnomes... then you have become the slave to her. And there is nothing you can do. You're probably not even reading this because she has already removed her chassis and is now  feasting on your organelles.

Yup. I'm not wrong even a little bit because I'm the smartest and also number one. If you disagree then you just don't understand and you're a spud of lard.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Don't let the love-gnomes get you...

La lala la la la la la la l ala la la la la al al ala la la la la la lla.

P.S. Also, from what I've seen, love also involves sparkly men and bored women. I must research this because this might be the breakthrough I've been looking for... it involves a movie-book called Twilight, and I think... well, I think to understand the love-gnomes and the females I know what I must do. I must watch this Twilight and see why it is the greatest love story in the entire world. I shall get back to you and tell you what I've learned. I am not a sparkling man or a bored woman, so I don't know how I'm supposed to fit into this "love", but I suppose it should be obvious when I watch the film. I think it will involve dumping barrels of glitter on myself and streaking through the women... all the women... it is the only thought that makes any sense at all. The movie will be interesting if it is about sparkling streaking men and bored women looking to find their glittery princes through spontaneous, and oft-times disgusting means.

P.P.S. If you disagree with me about love, write me a message, 10 words or less, telling me how and why I am wrong. If you can't prove it in 7 words than I have to say that I'm right and you're an idiot who doesn't know anything about the "love".

Creature Deliberation: Vampires

Vampires, creatures of the night, monsters beyond all horror of imagination who... until recently... had represented terrible ideas of sexuality and life beyond death, and nowadays seem to represent terrible books and movies that should be stricken from all records.

Look, I love vampires. I feel ashamed in saying that, but I find that vampires are among my favorite horror movie monsters. Although... I don't know how many vampire movies are actually "horror" movies especially in the last thirty years or so. Some books and movies that have vampires in them still stand up quite well in the horror genre, such as Dracula (1931), as well as the original novel which is still fantastic. 'Salem's Lot , the book by Stephen King, is also quite good even though the movies made of it are nowhere near as good. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is also fantastic as a very recent vampire novel. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is one of the first novels to really explore vampires as almost zombies and takes multiple forms of vampires. Then there is a movie like Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), which is fantastic both as an early film and a starter to the genre.

There are a few other decent vampire stories, but most of them have not been recent. Vampires as monsters are barely recognized anymore. Now vampires seem to all be about lust and sexuality rather than a monstrous force. Anne Rice is the one to blame here. Sure, Bram Stoker kind of started it off with a sexy Dracula back in the Victorian Age, where sexy was not vogue, but try comparing that sexuality to the present-day. It's gone a little crazy. Vampires seem almost to be a fetish nowadays and not one of those cool fetishes like I have, but a disturbing one that makes me shudder every single time I hear a fangirl squee about Twilight. I have really no opinion about Twilight, only because I feel it's unfair to judge something I've never had any part of. I know about it, kind of, but at the same time, I couldn't care less about some teen girl novel, or series of novels, or movie about shirtless men that kind of make me feel very uncomfortable and inadequate... I mean... yeah... if that's what all girls want... You know something? I'm not getting into this.

My point is that vampires are first and foremost, in my mind, monstrous and horrible. That's where the horror of most of these novels and movies come from. The vampire talks like a gentleman (of gentlelady in some cases), and one can never tell what kind of monster lurks beneath the surface until it is too late and the vampire gets to have a late night snack of person neck.

The vampire myths are fascinating, stemming from old time illnesses that were diagnosed as death, and people being buried before death. Hell, maybe the myths even have some bases in reality. I'm not going to rule it out. It would be hella cool if that were the case. It probably isn't... but still, you know?

I guess my problem with modern vampires is that they aren't scary. There is no obvious horror anymore and that makes me very sad. Vampires are such an interesting monster, much more refined than werewolves or zombies or Frankenstein monsters or swamp things or whatever... and it makes them fascinating. They retain so much of their humanity while also losing so much of it as well.

Then there are things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and those kinds of television shows, which are infinitely better than Twilight, but simply awful in comparison to earlier and better works in pretty much any kind of media.

I like the idea of vampires. I really do, but there are so few good forms of vampires (and there really have never been many good ideas out there anyway) that it is very disappointing to see how many failures that there really are.

I wish there could be better vampires, but nowadays vampires, true horror vampires, are fast on the decline, and it shows just how far those monsters have fallen.