Monsters Wanted Bad

Remember when men were real men, women were real damsels in distress and the monsters were real scary evil monsters. Ah, the good old days. As Halloween rolls by this year, it just isn't the same anymore. It makes a decent horror fan want to shout out; "Where have all the Monsters gone?"

Monsters are meant to lurk in the dark corners of our mind or in the dark basements of our homes from where they go on a rampage of mindless maiming and killing of innocents just because that is what they do and they are good at it. However, these days, our beloved monsters have been given a makeover by the spin doctors of Madison Avenue.

Let's start with Vampires. The two top hottest TV/Movie Vampire franchises at the moment are True Blood and Twilight. In True Blood, a synthetic human blood substitute has been created which means that vampires don't have to suck on a living human anymore and so many Vampires try to mainstream and become like any other normal citizen but they face discrimination, social profiling and prejudices. It is the new civil rights movement; "Equal Rights for the Victimised Vampires." If homosexuals fought to come out of the closet, vampires now fight to come out of the coffin, so to speak. Twilight takes the idea of the harmless vampire even further by introducing the concept of "vegetarian" vampires who choose not to harm humans.
Hmmm. So far from being the scary creature of the night penned by Bram Stoker, vampires it seem are socially disadvantaged, misunderstood and deprived of their rights. Heck, they can even be "vegetarian".

Werewolves or shape shifters were always my most favorite of the evil night creatures. But again, the modern werewolf is less primal beast and more sexy man and puppy dog charms. True Blood's Sam Merlotte changes into a cute puppy dog. Twilight's Jacob is a big hit with the ladies but his wolf persona also seems very much domesticated canine rather than vicious beast.

Sam shaved (L) and unshaved (R)

Jacob's Wolf impression isn't so impressive.

And so it goes. One by one all our favorite monsters have been emasculated and given a metrosexual makeover. Below are some of the taglines that are being used to change the way we view monsters.






DRACULA :- Just a tall, very,very dark and handsome romantic stranger in the night.














Werewolves:- In every man, there is a puppy dog trying to come out.
























Frankenstein's monster:- A victim of a bad plastic surgeon. It could happen to any of you and has happened to many in L.A.

























Witches:- Girls just wanna have fun.













The Squirrel wishes they would leave our monsters alone. Let them be the monsters that scared us in our childhood. Let them be all that they can be. Let them be BAD.

(Squirrel wants to know which is your all time favorite monster. Please take the poll on the side)

Still Monitoring the Airwaves

Dear friends, readers and wandering visitors,

You may or may not have been wondering where the squirrel has been for most of the last month. Either way, the answer to my disappearance can be summed up in one foul four-letter word; "WORK".

Even so, in whatever small slivers of time that I could scrounge, I have kept monitoring your various blogs. I was able to do this by applying the latest available satellite dish technology available to the squirrel kingdom (as seen below). This special program is called S.E.T.I. or Squirrels Eavesdropping on The Internet.

Realm of the Lone Grey Squirrel's SETI program

Well, here are a list of excuses for not posting that have been cleared by my PR team.

1. I was overworked and have been working almost every day for the last month.
2. I was overworked and I have been working some 16 hour days for most of the month.
3. I was overworked and I was also traveling to places with no internet access.
4. I was overworked and I preferred to use my spare time to eat, sleep and use the toilet.
5. I was overworked and declared mentally unstable ("disturbed" was the term used by the doctor) and it is hard to type on the laptop while tied up in a straitjacket.
6. I was overworked and I fell asleep on my laptop and drooled into my key board and shorted it out.
7. I was overworked and so tired that it was difficult to type on the laptop as all the letters on the keyboard began to look like alien hieroglyphics.
   
8. I was overworked and drank so much coffee to stay awake that I had coffee rings round my eyes which somehow made it hard for me to read the computer screen.
9. I was overworked and distracted by all the tiny fairies and goblins that I was seeing all over the place.
   
10. I was overworked and my mind was too confused to0 come up with good excuses for not posting earlier.
    

However, as I have said, my lack of posting does not mean that I have not been monitoring the blogosphere and keeping in touch with the latest in weird news from around the world. To prove this, I offer the following as a remark on two rather sad and strange recent incidents.


Well, fairly recent incidents. C'mon, give this overworked squirrel a break.