« Books I Read During an Indian Summer | Main | Happy/Sad »
October 29, 2007
Battling My Inner Demons
Last night I went to see 30 Days of Night. For those of you who don't know me personally, this was a big jump from my modus operandi, which is to avoid anything scarier than a clashing Halloween sweater. As a child I wasn't allowed to see anything scary (my sobbing sister had to be pulled from The Princess Bride during the ROUS scene), and thus I am highly sensitive to anything slightly creepy. As a result, I have never seen The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Omen, etc. In fact, until last night I thought that the Friday the 13th and Halloween series were one in the same (Michael Myers being the true identity of "Jason"--in a Bourne Identity kind of way).
In case you aren't familiar with 30 Days of Night, let me recap. In the northernmost town in Alaska, there is a full 30 days in the dead of winter where the sun does not appear. Vampires take this opportunity to seal off all communication (destroying the helicopter, burning the satellite phones, killing the sled dogs) and go on a murderous rampage. The survivors have to band together to fight them off, etc., etc. In the end, they retreat to a metal building highly indicative of an oil refinery building, or perhaps some other infrastructure related to an extractive industry.
I was already a bit nervous about seeing the movie (see above paragraph about my ninny-ways), but as the credits started rolling I noticed with growing horror that the parallels to my plans for next month did not bode well. Note:
On November 24 (a mere 27 days from the darkest day of the year), I will be traveling to a remote mining town in northernmost Alaska. It is common for the weather to reach -40 degrees, and snowmobile is the preferred method of transport. There is a strong possibility that I will be touring buildings with mining equipment (or even visiting the mines themselves), and I just know that I'm going to be thinking--how would I kill a vampire with this [insert technical tool name here].
On the other hand, I now feel fairly confident that I know the rudimentary vampire-killing techniques. Sadly, if the movie is any indication, vampires also move quite fast and the chances of me being able to accurately swing an ax at their carotid artery are pretty slim, especially when you consider that I will be wearing eighteen layers of clothes and will be moving with the deliberate speed of the Staypuff Marshmallow Man.
Where I'm going with this story is that last night as I prepared to go to bed, I was a bit apprehensive. I have really vivid dreams, and I was worried that I was going to wake up all sweaty from nightmares. All alone, I turned on all of the lights in the apartment and prepared for a long haul. There may have been a few tears, but let's not talk about that.
And I was right--I did have dreams about vampires all night long. But in an ironic twist of fate, the dreams consisted of sitting in a long, fluorescent-lit board room with a group of business clad executives and creating a strategy plan for how to deal with the vampires. No actual demons of the night made an appearance, and by the time I woke up this morning I was totally and utterly bored with the topic. If I never see another pie chart about effective vampire removal methods, it will be too soon.
