Why Don’t Vampires Get Scurvy?

Dear Solitary Reader: If you watch TV, and I know you do, you have at some point while surfing through the 700 channels that grace your cable box run across some sort of vampire related TV watching.

There’s a myriad of shows out there – Vampire Dairies… huh? What? Oh sorry Vampire Diaries. (As an aside both of those shows bear potential for hilarity Vampire Diary: June 12 Dear Diary, today I ate someone. June 13 See June 12 etc. the other would make a great B movies about vampiric cows (note copyright movie about vampiric cows – I shall name it The Herd: Night of the Blood Red Mooooooo-n).

As for vampire shows there’s also True Blood, I haven’t watched it but have heard good things regarding it. Then there’s the quintessential Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel – both shows that re-ignited Hollywood’s love of the vampire and have kept it fairly strong.

Movies like Daywatchers, whatever that one where the vampires took over that town in the arctic and ate frozen villagers… I think it was called Bloodshake or something. Oh and then there was that movie called Twilight.

I don’t see a whole lot wrong with the Vampire subset of fiction but here’s what’s getting to me on this lazy Friday evening: why do so many of these shows have to have the brooding vampire. What, exactly, does a vampire have to brood about?

Really, in my gloriously relevant opinion, Angel did it first and did it best. Vampire has no soul, gets a soul and realizes he’s done some bad things. Feels bad about it. It could happen. But in a way I wish Joss Whedon had foregone that plot twist (although it would have deprived me of meeting Doyle and Lorn – two of the best secondary characters to ever have existed and may they both rest in peace – and not to mention all those extra years that Charisma Carpenter was on the air – mmmm Charisma) because of the countless knock offs that it would inspire.

Ever since Dracula, the vampire has been portrayed as a semi-romantic figure (you know for something that’s  gonna eat you after it’s done with you (why aren't spider’s considered romantic?)). And now you throw in this handsome vampire guy who’s all of a sudden got these pangs of guilt to go along with his pangs of hunger and he’s got a pout down to his ankles and women (and some guys) are swooning. That’s right – I said swooning.

But I ask you, oh solemn vampiric one – why are you so glum (other than the lack of  Vitamin C)?

• Sure you’ve probably killed a lot of people, but you’ve stopped doing that – so get over it. You’re immortal so you have a lot of time to make up for what you’ve done; you’ll always be thin so you don’t have to worry about your weight (tangent: do vampires gain weight when they eat fat people?).
• Sure your stocks are down (whose aren’t?), but you’re immortal, so if you just let them hang in the market for a while, they will come back up.
• Assuming you started with youthful good looks, and they all seem to, you’re going to have those forever (on the downside, if you were an ugly bastard when you were alive, not aging isn’t going to improve that). 
• Sure getting a wooden stake through the heart will end your un-life, but if there’s one thing that Sonny Bono taught us, the same thing will happen to you if you’re alive too.

So, you see, I just don’t get it. Why are all these vampires so glum? Perk up vampy – sure life sucks – but you’re dead so enjoy it.