Vampires: Myth, or… Teenagers With Too Much Time on Their Hands?
From the Daily Reveille, the school newspaper for Louisiana State University, comes this article about the vampire subculture (which, believe me, will get an article at some point in the future). The article has interviews with a couple of “vampires,” a teenage male who enjoys drinking his own blood, and a female who is a “psychic vampire” who feeds off “psychic energy” by going to clubs and having sex with other members of her vampire coven. That’s a pretty ingenious way of getting laid. Wish I’d thought of forming a “psychic vampire coven” when I was in High School for the purposes of sexual favors. The group is for psychic vampires, so you don’t actually have to drink any blood. And it probably wouldn’t cost any money. Pretty good racket, there. The guy who actually drinks his own blood says that he drinks about a shot glass full of blood at a time, and that it makes him feel “energized” – which is probably another way of saying “really light-headed from draining a shot glass worth of blood from his body.” As an added financial bonus, if you do this while drinking alcohol, you can save money. Nothing tastes better than recycled booze. Yum.
Interview with a Vampire

Alien Abduction Compensation: Are You Eligible?
Ever hear the joke about the lawyer up to his neck in cement? Along that line of thought, not content with the already low public opinion of advocates, German lawyer Jens Lorek is doing his best to set the bar even lower. His gimmick: pursuing compensation claims for people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. According to the article, in Germany, the state will pay compensation to kidnap victims. I am sure the German lawmakers who created that program were thinking more along the lines of terrestrial kidnappings – and also, you know, kidnappings that actually happened — but hey, an abduction is an abduction. From the sounds of it, Lorek hasn’t yet built a client base, but he seems to be working on it. On the bright side, it is good to see that both alien probes and ridiculous abuses of the legal system are not solely the territory of the United States.
Abducted by aliens? Call now for compensation

Ancient Mayan Prophecies: Myth, or Stuff People Made Up Hundreds of Years Ago to Explain Stuff They Didn’t Understand?
A question to ponder: Are Ancient Mayan Prophecies myth, or reality? Wait, I got it. Myth. Wow, that was easy. There has been all kinds of talk on the Internet about the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, ancient Mayan prophecies, and all kinds of other silliness. Like many civilizations, the Mayans created myths to explain aspects of the world that they didn’t fully understand. The great thing about living right now, in 2006, is that we understand a whole lot more about the universe than we did when the Mayan civilization was at its peak. But, the Big Bang and supernovas are just not nearly as sexy as ancient prophecies and mystical mumbo jumbo! Plus, doing real science takes a lot of work. You have to at least go to college – and usually graduate school as well. That’s expensive. Plus, you have to learn calculus, and conduct experiments, many of which are extremely tedious and take years to complete, and which may not even succeed. When they do succeed, they get peer-reviewed before they are truly validated. Personally, I think scientists are nuts. Interpreting ancient prophecies is where it’s at these days.
The Seven Mayan Prophecies: Message of awareness and hope

Vodka: The Extraterrestrial Drink of Choice
Sure, we’ve got pedophile Congressmen, drunk Senators and enough dirty money going through Congress to fund a small country, but there is one thing we haven’t had to worry about, yet: rides on extraterrestrial spaceships. I guess our extraterrestrial brethren don’t want to mess with the U.S. Congress, and are content with abducting the leaders of small Russian republics. The majority of the article below is about chess, so I will just quote the good part here. Detailing some of the problems he has faced since being elected the leader of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov notes that, among other issues:

“…there is the danger of alien abduction: He said he already has been forced to make one trip on a UFO — in 1997 when he was on a business trip to Moscow. `They took me from my apartment, and we went aboard their ship,” he said during a recent interview at his office in Kalmykia’s capital. “We flew to some kind of star. They put a spacesuit on me, told me many things, and showed me around.”

We can only imagine what kinds of things they told him. I wonder who you have to pay off to go on an extraterrestrial junket. I’m guessing aliens have a taste for vodka.
Flamboyant leader’s chess gambit puts Kalmykia on map

Harry Potter: Fiction, Or… Evil International Witch Conspiracy?
Yet another attempt to ban Harry Potter, this time from a housewife in Georgia, because she believes that Harry Potter is “an ‘evil’ attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.” I really hope this woman finds a better cause to make a fuss about. Personally, I think she should focus on Spiderman. Do we really want to teach children that playing with poisonous arachnids can give a person super powers? How many children have died from spider bites after watching the Spiderman movies?

I don’t personally have an answer to that, but I bet it’s a lot.
Georgia mom seeks ban on Harry Potter

Most people who have just a casual acquaintance with the extraterrestrials who are constantly manipulating our world believe that there is but one species of alien meddling in our affairs. However, according to renowned UFOlogist Miesha Johnston, there are in fact several alien species that pay regular visits to Earth. Although Ms. Johnston’s authoritative paper, Reptilians, has not yet been published in any serious academic journals, we remain hopeful that she will submit it for publication before long so that she can be recognized for her scholarly approach to this important topic.

In her groundbreaking paper, Johnston describes several types of aliens, including mammalians, greys, insectoids, and of course, reptilians. These aliens have a sort of psychic ability through which they feed on the fear and adrenaline of Earth’s inhabitants – which, perhaps, explains the abduction and anal probing that we hear about so often. Johnston also describes species that have little to no social boundaries or respect for etiquette. Johnston relates her own personal story of aliens interrupting her at a particularly embarrassing moment. “At an intimate moment with my partner, a door seemed to open above us in the ceiling,” she writes. “It was as if a very strong energy was whirling above us. I felt like they were taking some of that sexual energy from my partner and myself.” Efforts to teach aliens basic manners – like not busting through people’s roofs while they’re doing the nasty to gank their mojo – have thus far been met with resistance, though some extraterrestrials have been receptive to attending cultural sensitivity classes.

Suffice to say, Miesha Johnston’s paper has far more information than can be covered in one article. So rather than be caught unaware, please read this important work and learn about all of the extraterrestrial species, and how to avoid being abducted by them. Ignore Ms. Johnston at your own peril. Who knows, you too may soon find your anus being probed. Me? I am playing it safe.