southsamurai

Amen to that

I mean, if we're going to avoid the sparkling fucking vampires, then it's gotta be mirrors. Makes no sense within the mythologies surrounding vampires imo.

Running water is about the purifying nature of it supposedly, as other "evil" entities are also unable to.

Wooden stakes being needed to pin them down or be a death blow, there's links between wood and life that make sense within that framework. It wasn't originally just any wood, it was (iirc) dogwood and ironwood. Something like that.

Garlic, also a purifier.

You gotta realize, most of the early written vampire stories did come from existing legends, and those legends did usually have an internal consistency to some degree or another. But not mirrors. Stoker pulled that out of his ass due to not understanding his sources, so it doesn't really match with much.

The idea is that vampires lack souls, and thus fear mirrors, depending on what set of myths you're working in. But there's also supposedly a tie back to real people with rabies being easily startled, with mirrors apparently being something that would do so even easier, but I'm not sure it holds up to scrutiny since the tie to rabies is weak as fuck to begin with, and there's no record of that being a specific thing. It seems more like a hypothesis being projected rather than something with provenance.

But we got being invisible in mirrors.

Now, some people have decided that the mirror thing is because of the silver in mirrors, and add silver being potent against vampires in some cases, but neither is based in any of the known vampire mythology as it existed pre-stoker. And there's arguments there that kinda make sense if you buy into some of the supposed mystical and magical properties of silver. It's tie to the moon in some beliefs would maybe give it sovereignty over most creatures of the night, and is supposedly why it's werewolf killing.

I can't even remember exactly when silver started being common against vampires in books. I know that the Blade trilogy made it seep into pop culture, but it did exist before that.

Most of the stuff around the older books does make a kind of sense, but not that one

Have gloves, will travel reads the card of a man!

I mean, there's maybe a point in there, but the writer is just such an asshole I wasn't willing to read the whole thing to see if there was

You sure? I'm told I have a reassuring voice that almost makes it an enjoyable process

Ignoring a road rage incident, it was a crash.

Me, my sister, and a friend were heading home with my mom driving back in my early high school days.

The route went through a country highway; basically just an extra wide two lane road. It was at night, and either my mom didn't see the lights on the car, or they were off. I didn't see lights, and right before the car hit the van immediately behind me, I did see the car, but not lights. Blinking yellow light at the intersection

Anyway, the car was doing well over the speed limit. Rough estimate at the time of collision was around 60, with the car not having braked until absurdly close.

The van roatated at least three times, then rolled on the second or third and kept rolling while rotating. We ended up on the side of the van maybe fifty or sixty yards down the road.

Everyone in the van was cut to some degree or another. Glass went everywhere, and even safety glass will do that. We were also all bruised up pretty heavily.

But that was it in terms of injury. Some sore and achy necks and backs, and everything hurt bad enough the next day none of us really got out of bed except to pee. But nothing broken, no major damage beyond bruising where seat belts dug in hard. Those bruises were still there maybe two or three weeks later.

The van was demolished. The side that got hit was crushed in a good third of the width of the van. Part of the roof was peeled back and it was crushed down a little as well.

Every now and then I drive past where it happened, and I'm amazed nobody was hurt worse. Even the people in the car were fine beyond bruises and general impact pain.

Like, that van had to have looked like something out of a movie spinning and rolling down the road. The crash woke up the couple that lived roughly at the point where our van stopped. It was maybe three feet from the rear bumper to their mailbox. But their house was set back a decent ways from the road, so that shit had to be loud.

Lmao! If only it could be improved.

I always hated doing them, not because of the nature of the job but because even when I was younger, my hands (and therefore fingers) were on the large side. Large hands means large fingers. I guess you can see where that would be a detrimental trait for impaction removal lol.

At one point, I wore a size 15 ring and my company had to special order gloves for me. And that was roughly around the same time as that patient. So the fingers I had to use were bigger than 15 by a good bit. Plus, I was still lifting some, but had taken up a casual practice of what's called iron palm training. That's where you repeatedly slam your hands into things to make them tougher. That's an exaggeration, it isn't all that harsh, but still.

So I ended up telling the one company I worked for that I really needed to not be doing them. The supervisor at the time was a pretty great lady, but she didn't quite get the issue. I took a risk and just slapped my hand down on the desk with my index and middle fingers out and asked her if she'd like me to help her clear her bowels. It worked! I cleared her bowels and got a raise.

Nah, that last part is obviously a joke, but I did get her cooperation lol

I don't think Vonnegut will ever be irrelevant to a given time. Maybe not everything he wrote, or said, but there's a lot of his stuff that's applicable to the human condition.

Well, since the lady herself has expressed a desire to end its use for that purpose, I consider that a good thing on top of the practical reasons.

Not that I really know a damn thing about it beyond what I found in the linked article, but still

I have nothing useful to contribute, but holy crap I wish I had the household to do this because I'd love to try it.

But if I tried this, either the teenager or the old man (well, other old man) would fiddle with it every time they opened the fridge and I suspect that would interfere with the process.

Aren't all anons?

Of course. Comes with a free skin though