Dracula Blogged

Looking ahead to Dracula in 2007

Greetings, Dracula readers.  As we look forward to May and Jonathan Harker heading east, it's good to see comments on this novel from old friends (hello, Baby Jinx) and new (welcome, Trevor).

What do people have in mind for the count this year? 

I'd like to put several options on the table:

• Adding more web 2.0 features - more images (from Flickr), and tags.
• Podcasting some or all of the text.  That's right, reading the novel aloud.
• Not doing it at all.
• Links back to previous years' discussions from each post

What says the community?  Thoughts, responses, suggestions?.

Vampire for president

It's barely 2007, and already the 2008 US presidential election is heating up.  But in which primary would a "satanic vampire" candidate run? 

According to Sharkey, Secret Service agents visited him and his 19-year-old wife, Spree, in Ohio on Feb. 15. The visit concerned Sharkey’s repeated remarks about impaling Bush, an act Sharkey said he would only do if he were elected president.

“They never even asked to see my impaling stick,” Sharkey said.
...

“They were telling me, when they were interrogating me, that their job was to protect Bush even after he’s out of office,” Sharkey said. “I’m looking at them like, ‘Oh, you’re going to defy me when I become president?’”

That Vlad Tepes-Dracula link just won't go away.

(thanks to Steven Kaye )

Staking in Serbia

The Register reports that activists have put a stake through Slobodan Milosevic's heart.

Miroslav Milosevic said "he and his fellow vampire hunters acted to stop the former dictator returning from the dead to haunt the country". His team explained that the wooden stake had been "driven into the ground and through the late president's heart".

Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia naturally condemned the desecration, while his daughter-in-law Milica Gajic said she "planned to sue the vampire hunters and accused the police of failing to protect the grave properly".

Readers alert to vampire history may recall the great Serbian18th-century vampire cases, Paole and Plogojowitz.
 
(thanks to Jesse Walker)