Song Of The Day 10/29/2015: The Fabulous Poodles – “Vampire Rock”

Halloween Week – Thought I'd give an update on the whole vampire situation.

• The Atlanta Vampire Alliance puts the current number of actual blood-drinking vampires in the United States at about 5,000.


• Approximately one percent of that number live in New Orleans at the moment. My initial, involuntary response was that number seemed a little conservative, but after running some quick calculations in my head, it seems about right.


• According to an article published a couple of days ago on the website Atlas Obscura, three authors worked off three different models of vampire-human coexistence to determine the probable rate of human extinction in various literary scenarios, should one of them manifest itself sometime in the near future:
  
  
  • The "Stoker-King" model, based on the conditions outlined in Dracula and Salem's Lot, theorizes that "80 percent of the human population would be exterminated within the first 165 days of initial vampiric activity." This is predicated on the implied feeding requirements derived from respective vampires in those novels.
  
  
  • The "Rice" model, taken from Interview With the Vampire in which humans are fed upon but not necessarily killed in the act, predicts total human extinction within 50 years. Of course that's given that the interview is really, really long.
  
  
  • The "Harris-Meyer-Kostova" model -- drawn from contemporary vampire dramatizations like True Blood -- is the most optimistic, predicting that "system parameters ... would stabilize the populations of humans and vampires in time." I think that arrangement would work fine for about four seasons, but by the seventh it'd be a little far-fetched and tiring to watch.
  
  
  • So drink up.
  
  
• A dead chupacabra-like figure recently washed up on the banks of a stream near Carmen del Parana, Paraguay. It had no ID. It looks rather like a couple of bags of flour with mannequin-like hand appendages, but that just be my inner skeptic.


• In more light-hearted news, also in New Orleans, a "sanguine" vampire has collaborated with a local chef to make a nice bunch of blood sausage. Contains garlic.


• Finally, tomorrow's airborne hemoglobin level is 4, so feel free to have as much ketchup as you want.