If I wuz a vampire, I'd want to be resurrected in a way not unlike Dracula from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Body carved up, bits of vital organs strewn around some ghoulish but really scenesque places to visit, and assembled again with bags thrown atop a pillar of flame. And then I could bounce around and do my teleporting thing while cool battle music played, except not get whipped by a vampire hunting. Oh, and part of the?ritual would involve popping open a bottle of watermelon wine and spraying it all over while braying the Ami chant from "Return to Innocence". Something about an image like that really haunts my dreams.

I've long had a thing for vampires. While not puregoth, it's another hard drive in my server racks and certainly something that comprises the unpredictable, volatile, but ever-so-lively me. There was a time when I was younger and couldn't control my rage as well?or more effectively, convert it into creative productivity?and focused with such dire agony unto myself that my nose began bleeding. These episodes usually resulted in me lying on my back and taking my Mom's "good advice" of putting a freezing can of orange juice concentrate on my forehead. I don't know why that was ever a suggested remedy when I later found that lying back and pinching my nose with a Kleenex and falling asleep (provided I didn't choke in my own blo0d) worked too.

Years after that, I became riveted by the Blade movies (just the first two, actually), hugely because it mixed two of my favorite things: techno music and vampires. Nothing like kicking ass while pumpin' rave beats are pounding out of the speakerboxes and fresh blood is pouring out of the speakers!?I wondered for awhile what it would be like if?traditional?vampyr mythology took some twists like the following:?vulnerable to moonlight, allergic to onions, and the innate ability to manipulate locomotives with great technical prowess. Furthermore, what if silver did nothing particularly damaging but in this canon, fool's silver did? Or even diamonds? Imagine using the De Beers stock to battle the damned undead.

While it didn't go out on such a limb, the cartoon Count Duckula did suggest that the eponymous character had a big hankering for ketchup and that?uh?he was a duck, among several other quirks. The show, when I watched it, had such a gritty style by way of film deterioration and just the sheer style of how Duckula and friends (and some not-so-friends) were drawn. Same with Dangermouse, another favorite although I really can't remember much past the intro sequence. Dangermouse is suggested to have been inspired by Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan, who to me is not only King "Longshanks" but The Prisoner. Again eponymous.

Quite often, I'd arrive home from school and watch one, two, or all three of these (and other shows which served to titillate and prod my imagination). One time, I came down with a gross sort of scalp infection, and my Mom (who truely, to this day, continues in her ways) gave me tea tree oil to rub in it. If you've ever smelled that oil, well, then you know you're in for a doozy. Here I was, on the edge of a queen-sized bed and sniffing all the fumes, this almost acrid cloud of woozability, while these shows rolled on. Occasionally I'd drop out of consciousness and go to sleep?for a ten of minutes until my little brother pounced on me or awoke me otherwise?and then the watching process would begin again… until I fell asleep once more.

As it stands, I honestly never watched most of these shows in whole. If it wasn't tea tree oil, it was the chilliness of the winter knocking me asleep and then coming back up again. To increase the probability of these matters, it likely doesn't help that I am narcoleptic?moreso at the time?and dropped off to sleep in the most awkward of circumstances. My memory is a foggy haze of clips of TV, stitched end-to-end. I can recall giant chess pieces from The Prisoner tromping about the board, and invading the castle of the mallard Count, while Zippy and Bungle yammered on about a giant?heliotrope?moon ruled by KOMPLEX. Frogs turned to salamanders, pawns to people,?literal doorways into children's?programmes morphing into gateways into?my own personal?hell with purgatorley 'round the bend.?With, antiestablishment rebellion antics giving way to relaxed sitting in an innertube quicky, breathlessly, take a few steps forward before being swept back and dashed against the rocks?yawns ascend like laughter and jolt me awake once more. Or am I still dreaming?

These disembodied bits have helped?and are helping?me to revive the whole of who I am.