Sloth pt. 2

I made you wait a long time for Sloth, I know. Things have been hectic, and roller-coastery with me lately. So I've been the very opposite of sloth, actually. I did my spring cleaning in anticipation of my mother-in-law's visit. My spring cleaning involves steaming carpets, cleaning baseboards, washing walls and light fixtures, bleaching the heck out of everything, and vacuuming corners and crevices with the hose attachment. It's a big effing deal. I also completed a super huge painting for my mom, who commissioned it for her remodeled dining room. My area of expertise is at about 5x7, and she wanted 60x30. Needless to say, I painted and hated it, painted over it and hated that, and finally settled on something after the third try. I don't think I'll ever work that big again.

But anyway, on to Sloth, the final mortal sin.

Sloth is about indifference, about not caring. But most people know the association with laziness. I think it has to do with that whole "idle hands" thing. That if you aren't industrious, Satan will make some work for you, and it will be baaaad. It probably was a way to treat depression in ancient times. Nothing gets you out of a depressive disorder like knowing it's a sin that will get you into hell!

The punishment for sloth in hell is being thrown into snake pits. That actually makes sense, because in a snake pit, you can't be indifferent or lazy, you're jumping all over the place trying to save your life, right? Only you don't ever get out of the pit. So you have to be on alert forever. Excellent punishment, one of the better matched up ones, I think.

I have, of course, been guilty of this one. I've been lazy, mostly. I could do a lot more with my time, and I have battled with depression. Really, depression is the root cause of my slothy ways. Not eating right, not exercising, not wanting to tackle the tough project of the dissertation. All of it has its root in depression. And then the ensuing guilt trip for being so lazy all the time brings you full circle. I've been crawling out of it, but it's still nagging at me.

Ever since I was a teenager, my family has referred to me as lazy. Now, I was the first teenager in the family-no older cousins or siblings-so maybe they were just shocked at how much sleep and crabbiness could come from one person. I didn't think I was that lazy, but their perspective really effected me. I don't know if people I know today would call me lazy. I certainly tried to fight against that label for a long time. I graduated college in 4 years, even though it took a double unit load in my last semester, because I thought an extra year would be thought of as lazy and wasteful. I have worked fairly consistently through college and grad school. I have had two jobs while doing PhD course work.

Once I was studying for some kind of PhD-related exam that I had to take the same day and my mom got a big dresser delivered. She and my brothers brought it in and marveled at my laziness for not realizing what was going on and that I should jump up and help. I really didn't realize what they were doing. I was so freaked out about messing up on the exam. Lazy? I'm still on the fence about it. Would it have really been a big deal to take 10 minutes out of my day to help? Was I really unable to notice them or did I just not want to notice them?

I keep my house tidy and make sure to keep track of everyone's birthdays. I send gifts for baby showers and weddings on time. My holiday cards go out early. I have a pet peeve about lateness, so I am always on time for everything. I try hard not to be lazy, but I think that ultimately, I have yet to shake of the label and the guilt that goes with it.



Now vampires and sloth are hard to put together. I mean, yeah, they tend to be indifferent to human life, but lazy? Not really. Maybe in the True Blood universe, where vampires reflect the spectrum of human qualities, but elsewhere, vamps are pretty much go-getters. They have to look for blood all the time, and not get caught during/after drinking. They have to evade vampire hunters and competing vampires. Much like sharks, they are always moving, always on the hunt. Except for daytime, when they are mostly dead. Some vampires can stay awake during the day. If I remember correctly, Angel spent a lot of daytime brooding. Most of them are dead in coffins during the day, though. Maybe the lack of day-time industriousness is enough of a qualification?

Seriously? Get up and get to work already!

Now that the sins have been explored, I realize that of them all, my favorite is lust and least favorite is greed. My most-often-committed is probably sloth or pride. I think these sin lists have done more harm than good, because they ultimately set a strict standard that punishes everyone for just feeling negative feelings. But they do give us some insight into the characteristics deemed most damaging in western culture.

Not surprisingly, it seems that vampires are used as the embodiment of our most denigrated qualities. They reflect the aspects of humanity that both fascinate and repel us, sometimes all wrapped up in the same character. They have always been scapegoats and metaphors, so it should be no surprise. I nominate Eddie for laziest vampire. Clearly depressed and self-loathing, Eddie traded his blood for love and didn't even have the energy to update his mid-80s decor. He didn't even put the effort forth to learn how to glamour. Don't let this happen to you!

Wrath!

Next to sloth, wrath is the most interesting to write about.

Wrath is anger, but to the point of rage. It's usually about anger out of control.

Punishment in hell involves being dismembered alive, which is kind of wrathful in and of itself, but hey, Hell isn't above stooping to sinner's level, I guess.

Obviously vampire wrath has to do with blood lust. Sometimes demon-like vampires are just about anger out of control, but again, it's connected to the hunger more than the rage, so I don't know if wrath is a good vampire quality. At least, not one that seems to be laid upon the vampire characters most of the time. Sure, vamps in stories get rageful, but usually for the same reasons humans do, they just have the ability to tear people apart with their bare hands.

Spike, all wrathy

But then they eat, right? It's totally not wasteful.

30 Days of Night, which still scares me to think about.

Anyway, instead of focusing on the expression of wrath, I thought I'd show you a clip about wrath happening in the place I see it most, the freeway. This is Louis CK, amazing comedian, explaining how he dealt with a wrathful driver. His pronunciation of "baguettes" makes me smile.

Envy

In total sloth fashion, the sloth story will have to wait. I bring you instead:


ENVY

Envy is the desire for someone else’s traits, situation, material possessions. But sometimes it gets even worse, because sometimes envy doesn't just involve wanting things you don't have, but also wishing that someone else didn't have those things. This is closely related to "schadenfreude" or taking joy in the misfortune of others.

Punishment in Hell: put in freezing water (what?)

Color associated with envy: Green

Gotta say, guilty over here where this is concerned. It's perhaps the hardest one to work away from for me. I want all kinds of things I can't or don't have. A lot of those things I can clearly do without, like for instance a perfectly slimming, no snaps or flaps, baby soft and supple black leather jacket.

When I was working in Fullerton and living in Corona, I would have to drive the 91 freeway to and from work at rush hours in my jeep with no air conditioning. I used to remember being stuck in the same spot for 20 minutes at a time, moving at a crawl, watching people in sporty little VW hatchbacks drive past me in the toll lane (which they could afford to pay for), with the wind blowing at them despite the fact that their tinted shiny windows were rolled up tight. The wind was glorious, beautiful, icy air conditioning, and I hated them for having it when I was sticking to the back of my seat in the middle of traffic in July. Anger, it turns out, does not really cool you down at all.

I want the money that Paris Hilton is totally squandering by being lame and I want her to have to work in a factory for a year. Preferably the same factory that made whatever crap she sells with her brand attached. That's a shitty thing to want, because clearly the poor girl would never survive such a thing. And is so entitled and superior she isn't even equipped to learn the lesson.

I want to weigh 120 lbs and wake up with perfectly clear skin and then go eat something delicious that never goes to my thighs. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of things about my life, and am lucky by far when you measure me up to the rest of the world's 32 year old women, but, well, the green-eyed monster is here with me. To deny it would be to pretend I'm not human, because everyone feels envy at some point. Even vampires.

Vampires of fiction are super envious! They usually want some of the aspects of their former human life back. A lot of them seem to secretly (or in the case of Edward Cullen, Bill Compton, Angel, not so secretly) regret being turned. They envy the ability to witness sunrises big time. Though movies and television have allowed them to see a version of sunlight, they still want the real thing. They seemingly make for great romancers, but not for long, unless you want to become one too. Soon after dating one, well, some issues are gonna come up, like having a normal life where people go outside during the daytime, making babies, having a dinner with garlic in it once in a while, getting older. So even though vampires seem to be super sexy, they do fear they can't give their heroines (or heroes) what they need to be truly happy (which in books is usually "a family"). Many vampire stories are about vampires wanting something they don't have, whether it's their humanity, someone else's girl/guy, or the power of other vampires.


By far the saddest element of this story is one that involves vampire children. Little kids who get turned are a freaky tale, but Anne Rice's Claudia tugged at my heart strings. Poor girl would get old inside, but always be a little girl outside. Never able to grow up and be a woman. Never be seen as a woman by the men in her life.

Envy for power, that's a biggie in vampire fiction. Even though they've had generations of intellectual history to use at the ready, they are really REALLY behind when it comes to democratic concepts, diplomacy, essential human rights. They all seem to operate in a very feudal, medieval-y mindset. The Victorian ones are all about nobility and European accents. I guess this is all because the writers figure they are too old to incorporate a new ideological system of power into their world view. I guess there's some merit to that idea, since it historically takes a whole generation of people with backwards social/political values to die off so that progress can be made politically. If those old dogs in power never die, well, you got yourself a pretty stunted system. But come on, these ladies and gents have centuries to work out ideas and have an outsider stance from which to view them in action. Are you telling me that after a thousand years or more, their biggest problems are going to be about getting "promoted" or fighting over various forms of tasty food/human companions?
A great deal of vampire fiction shows us what we envy, however. We wish we didn't have to age, since aging in this culture is associated with weakness and declining in social and economic value. We envy superior strength in a culture where strength is not as important as ancestry, economic class, and social skills. We envy the heightened hearing, smell, taste, and sight that vampires are often given because we sedentary humans no longer really need to use our bodies senses in ways that help for hunting and preventing danger. And because though we pretend we are civilized, we all know deep down that civilization is a lie, and we're probably closer to the animal kingdom now as we've ever been.

I pretty much envy their ability to glamour or put people in their thrall. Oh, and the whole young forever thing.

Greed

Thought I wasn't gonna make it today, didn't you? Well, cocktail in hand (because it's Friday) I am here to bring forth another deadly sin. P.S. I might get saucy on account of the vodka.

Greed - A desire for material wealth so strong that it gets in the way of spiritual growth; a desire for more than one needs or deserves.

Punishment in Hell: taking a swim in cauldrons of boiling oil, which is A-OK with me.


Greed is really one of the more horrible sins. I mean, not only is it about not sharing, which is totally uncool, but it's about hoarding stuff that you may never use. As previously mentioned, UNCOOL.

I encounter greed all the time, and greedy people are hard not to notice, but I try really hard not to be greedy myself. I actually have the opposite problem most of the time, I usually feel like I don't deserve stuff. M is trying to break me of that, because it really upsets your mojo at the roulette wheel or the slots. I mean, you have to believe! You can't put Debbie-Downer energy out there before you set your chips down or you're sunk. Am I right?

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." - Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987

Capitalism depends on greedy fuckers like this, or at least unrestrained capitalism does. Today, we all benefit from these greedy fuckers. We get cheap clothes and shoes, affordable heirloom tomatoes, and clean hotel rooms. The kinds of labor involved in the service, farming, and outsourced factory work that fuels our economy is all about corporate greed. If corporations really believed in their Workers Rights documents (they've all got 'em), they would have the same ethical standard no matter who is working for them or where they work. We are the most "unequal nation in the developed world," according to Too Much Online, a web-zine that put out a top 10 list of America's Greediest a few months ago. They are as follows:

10. Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Airlines

Despite a loss of profits, Delta seems to continually reward Anderson with raises, shares, and a bunch of perks while they lower seating capacity on planes, raise prices for tickets, and charge up to $30 for you to check a bag! Meanwhile, it's not even Anderson's only gig. He's a director of a medical technology board that awards him $188k a year.

9. George David & Marie Douglas-David

George is CEO of a company involved in defense contracting, which has had just the peachiest time since 9/11, earning him the top perch on the list of best paid defense technology executives. He and his wife just went through a messy divorce, in which she asked for more than their pre-nup designated in alimony. She aruged that to cover her "basic expenses" she would need not the $20,000 a week agreed upon, but $53,000 a week. "Among those basics: “$4,500 a week for clothes, $8,000 for travel, and $1,500 for eating out.” A WEEK! And what does she even eat? She's approx. 98 lbs!

8. Steve Wynn

A Las Vegas pioneer, Steve Wynn has enough money that he can put an elbow right through a Picasso and be like all, "bummer," and go on with his day. True story. He's in the top 200 of Forbes top 500 richest people. He's ridiculously rich in a town full of excess. Despite his $900 million fortune, Wynn gave out the requisite demotions and job cuts in February of last year, saving his company $80 million. But "in November Wynn Resorts announced a special $4-per-share dividend. Total cost of the dividend payout to Wynn Resorts: $492 million. Total dividend check that will go to Steve Wynn: $88 million." Nice.

7. Robert Rubin, US Treasury-Secretary, Citigroup senior strategist

This guy had a big hand in the economic downturn during hist stint as Treasury Secretary by helping roll back New Deal reforms that prevented some of the greedy bullshit that went on during the Bush2 administration, and as Citigroup's senior strategist, he managed to be around for their disgraceful $65 billion loss. He managed to rake in $126 million plus perks from his tenure there.

6. Andrew Hall

I'm not even gonna shorten the Too Much review of Hall, you should know all of this:
"If you happen to be Andrew Hall, the world’s most celebrated commodity trader, you don’t care what other people think. Hall waged a four-year battle — against his neighbors in the posh Connecticut town of Southport — to keep a 80-foot-long concrete sculpture on his lawn.

The neighbors won, and Hall had to remove the concrete eyesore. He promptly replaced it with two garishly painted "cartoon-like” sculptures of cars.

Hall can afford plenty of sculptures. He took home $100 million betting on oil futures and other commodities in 2008 — after picking up a quarter-billion over the previous five years — and stood to receive another $100 million this year.

But his employer, Citigroup, balked. Citi, by that time, was sitting on $45 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, and handing $100 million to Hall, the honcho of Citi’s commodity-trading subsidiary, would have created a PR disaster for the bank — and the Obama administration as well.

Hall didn’t care. He demanded his trading fee. Citi ended up having to sell off Hall’s subsidiary, at a bargain basement price, to end the Hall headache.

Our story, to be sure, does have a happy ending — for Hall, Citi, and federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. Hall will get his $100 million, but not until next year. That deferral let Citi claim a zero pay expense for Hall in 2009, and Citi’s pay outlays for the year now show up about $100 million less than last year.

This accounting razzmatazz helped skew the 2009 executive pay totals for the seven biggest bailout basket cases and enabled pay czar Feinberg to claim that pressure from his office had, “on average” reduced executive cash comp at the seven by an impressive — and thoroughly misleading — 90 percent."

5. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, the internet network company

Despite laying off workers, Chambers of course continues to rake in millions. His company invented a fake version of bonuses called "discretionary" so that the top execs could get their bonuses in a down economy. Apparently, they still wanted them despite not earning them. Over the past 5 years he's made $127 million.

4. Rupert Murdoch, media mogul, owner of Fox

Rupert isn't American, so I don't know why he's on this list, but he's for sure a greedy mofo. He's one of those people that makes so much money that they don't really exist in the real world. They exist in this fake ether-world of the super-rich, where shit just doesn't matter. Seriously, your tears? They mean nothing. I mean, if you can channel them into a box-office smash and promote the shit out of your tears to the extent you are contractually obligated to, well, cry away, but otherwise, WTF? We're trying to eat our $1000 chocolate mousse with real gold flakes. Stop with the noise.

Despite his gajillions of dollars, he wants to charge you, yes YOU for reading news on the internet. NEWS. On the Internet. Place of all things free. I'm telling you, he doesn't really live here with the rest of us.

3. Mark Herd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Ever wonder why printer ink costs so damn much money? I mean, the printer itself costs about the price of like 3 printer cartridges. How is that effing possible? Well, thank Mark Herd, who is milking cartridges that cost $3 to make. He cut 6,000 workers last year and gave people demotions (some up to 15%, which makes me, a lowly adjunct at a Cal State feel bad for them, because I'm only at 10% cut.), Raising his douche quotient even more? He took a pay cut of 20% in "solidarity" but made that tidy sum up in new stock awards.

2. Richard Scott, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. CEO


A quote from Scott,

“Do we have an obligation to provide health care for everybody? Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obligated to feed everyone who shows up?”

Just fuck this guy, is all I have to say.

But Too Much has more:

"The federal government went on to indict key Columbia/HCA personnel for “bilking Medicare while simultaneously handing over kickbacks and perks to physicians who steered patients to its hospitals.” The company ended up pleading guilty to 14 felonies and paying $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.

The board of Columbia/HCA, then the nation’s biggest for-profit hospital chain, would go on to ease Scott out the door, but ever so gently. He left with a $10 million severance package and stock worth $300 million.

See, fuck this guy.

1. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle business software

He apparently buys up companies, fires everyone and then gobbles up their customers. After laying off tons of people, he buys yachts and sales them in rich guy yacht races. He also ranks as a total jerk because he pledged $115 million to Harvard but then didn't pay because it was all based on Harvard president Lawrence Summers. Not that Harvard needed the money, but still. It's shady.

Summers, as a side note, is famous for his feud with Cornell West, who totally rules, and for giving a rousing speech at a conference about how women don't make it in academia in the sciences not due to discrimination, but due to biology. He claims that socialization or cultural reasons are negligible. Dude! Really? Not surprisingly, 88% of tenured faculty during his presidency were men. This is the kind of loyalty Ellison has, to dudes who suck at an exponential level. Looks like my chances at Harvard have just been tossed out the window....

There's actually a joke about Ellison:

“What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison? Answer: God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.”

He supports the push for mandatory national ID cards, has had his fair share of insider trading lawsuits that he's wiggled out of, and manages to donate only 1% of his staggering income each year to charity. A winner! #1


Vampires aren't particularly associated with greed, but as greed and vampires both become important cultural narrative themes, they are bound to intersect. The painting above that shows greed via George W. Bush and our Lady Liberty was painted by comic artist Alex Ross and rules!

I have yet to see Daybreakers, but I hear it has its share of corporate America greed symbolism. When I see it, I'll be sure to publish an in-depth review.

Sure, vampires are greedy for blood, and if I remember in Blade III/Blade Trinity, there was a plan by the baddie to use the homeless as blood farms, which is super greedy, but overwhelmingly, the other sins seem to come forward in vampire lore. The only time they overlap is when the vampire has an aristocratic legacy and feels he or she deserves more, or there is a clear element of hierarchy in vampire culture which is a result of old vampires hanging on to outdated traditons. The Sookie Stackhouse books and True Blood explore the vampire kings and queens, all of whom do the same stuff the super-rich and royal do, namely exploit, dabble in narcissism, and give less than two shits about anyone else.

Anyone want to add to my greedy jerks list? Do so in the comments!

Lust

Lust!
The sin of craving pleasure of the flesh
Punishment in Hell: smothered in fire and brimstone

This one is super easy. I'm all for it. And I've got no guilt about it either! I'm pretty sure lust became a sin when the big matriarchal to patriarchal change-over happened. Because really, it wasn't too problematic until the big three, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Few ancient religions saw it as problematic as those guys. I love looking up this stuff, because medieval Christians just crack me up. Check this out this punishment guide for sex outside of marriage based on the type of sex that occured!:

• Dorsal sex (woman on top): three years penance
• Lateral, seated, standing: 40 days
• Coitus retro (rear entry): 40 days
• Mutual masturbation: 30 days
• Inter-femural (ejaculation between the legs): 40 days
• Coitus in terga (anal sex): three years if committed with an adult; two years if with a boy; seven years for habitual offenders; and 10 years if with a cleric*

*Brundage, James A., “Let Me Count the Ways: Canonists and Theologians Contemplate Coital Positions,” Journal of Medieval History, vol. 10, 1984, 81-94; Richards, Jeffrey, Sex , Dissidance and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages, (New York, 1993).

Obviously some taboos regarding sex existed in cultures for thousands of years. Animals, kids, blood relatives, and the like. But making people feel guilty about having sexual feelings is something Catholics have perfected.

Vampires seem to be OK with lust. They are primarily a metaphor for sex and sexuality in the 19th century, but these days, they are just extra lusty. The only vamps that seem to be chaste are of course, Twilight's Edward, who is seriously old fashioned, and the book version of The Vampire Diaries, in which Stefan Salvatore remarks that they just can't do it anymore after they are turned. Boo to that, I say. Thankfully, the TV show is different.

Lusty vampire stuff:


Don't worry, I'm not going to post the vampire sex toys, though they are pretty amazing.

Pride

Today's sin is Pride aka vanity, a desire to seem more important than others or, an extreme love of self.

Punishment in hell: Broken on the wheel

(which, yet again, I could do better. I mean wouldn't a better punishment be to get turned into whatever it is you feel so superior to? Or to be forced to look at yourself in the mirror and nothing else, forever. I really should be given some kind of administrative assistant gig in hell if I end up there.)

Demon in charge: Lucifer aka Satan - the top dog in hell, so this one is a biggie on the list. He's the one who wanted his throne on the highest cloud above earth, and so was punished with the whole underground thing.

Animal: Horse (damn prideful horses, up on their high...horses...)

Color: Violet, which is interesting because purple was a very difficult color to make in ancient times, so it was valued highly by aristocrats and royals. Who are PRIDEFUL. Get it?

Having pride is a good thing, but you can take it too far. On this special day, St. Patrick's Day, we can see great evidence of this. New York has Mr. Irish buttons guy:

There actually aren't many Irish enclaves in SoCal, but every pub in the area is already brimming with kids in green. And in my classes today, many people were, as they call it, "Irish for a day." I'm all for goofy cultural festivals, especially if they involve letting loose and having cocktails.

I've actually got some Irish in my background, but really, that's no feat, since I have about 20 different cultural groups in my background. Apparently Cuba was quite the melting pot since it was conquered by Spain. I've always wanted to get one of those DNA tests that can give you information about your background. They sell them on Ancestry.com and other genealogy sites. They give you a look at the migration of your DNA around the world. From family rumor and name origins, I've got connections to Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Italy, and Africa (nobody knows where specifically though). What if I get my map and it's just all covered with dots!? I'll be right where I started, only $350 poorer. Woo, working-class pride!

Dante conceived of pride as "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor," and I bet you can probably attribute some of your all-time worst thoughts and actions to pride. Let's take Mr. Buttons guy, who has buttons that say Irish are #1. Why not just Irish are Awesome? Why you gotta make a list and put yourself up at the top, guy? Cultural pride is important, and especially in a country where assimilation is still considered the route to happiness, but loving your own doesn't mean hating everyone else. Unless, of course, you're a vampire.


Vampires are big on the whole superiority complex thing. Part of the reason Buffy had a stake in hand on the daily was that these guys and gals saw themselves as top of the food chain, humans being perhaps very chatty food. My favorite vampire saga, the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris (on which the TV show True Blood is based) explores the prideful vampire in detail. She creates a good estimation of our world, only one where vampires really exist and are no longer living in secret. They seem to feel that they are superior to humans, and to were-creatures (werewolves, were-panthers, shape-shifters), and at the same time have to lower themselves to campaign for rights in the human world. Even though they may create close friendships with humans, the vamps in the Sookieverse have a mantra, "vamps first."


Because they can live incredibly long (dead) lives in literature and film, vampires are presented as being or believing they are wiser, more cunning. And they've got all kinds of biological advantages like superior hearing, strength, sense of smell. They have some reasons to feel like they are superior to humans, but they usually take that sense of superiority too far. As the old saying goes, "pride goeth before the fall."

In vampire movies and books, it's usually the very creatures they feel are so beneath them that cause their demise. Somewhat like Lucifer's story, they underestimate their foes and overestimate their power.

The original vampire of legend, Dracula, was also arrogant. He went to England (homeland of arrogant dudes in the 19th century) and his character challenged a number of British social conventions, namely sucking on ladies and walking around all superior and top-hatty despite having a foreign *gasp* accent.

Other arrogant prick vampires:

Interview with the Vampire's Lestat de Lioncort, who is the biggest brat of all time. ALL TIME.

Deacon Frost from the first Blade movie, who was all "I'm wearing a leather jacket and I don't care about being late for super secret vampire council meetings."


Dragonetti, Blade, who was probably the most pissed off about Deacon being late. He gets a double pride fail for feeling superior to Deacon, whose superiority complex propelled him to do insanely megalomaniac stuff.

Viktor, from Underworld who was so "vampires rule, werewolves drool" that he killed his own daughter for having relations with Lucien, one of the most awesome werewolves in film history.

I think amount of fabric and brocade/monograms in your environment are clear indicators that you have a bit too much pride.

Vampire council the Volturi, Twilight, each of them more arrogant than the next.

Sophie Anne LeClerc, True Blood, who is doing well on the show, but in the books, well, she get cut off at the knees. Literally.

Danica Talos, Blade III which I own and Matt seems to like best of all the Blade movies (a travesty), but she truly does shine as the villain here. She totally outclasses the supposed big bad of the movie, Dracula.

Gluttony

These installments on the 7 Deadly Sins include:
-Short history of the sin of legend
-How I'm totally in violation of this particular sin, via reminiscences and jokes. Spoiler: I commit all of them!
-Some interesting cultural things relating to it in modern times if I feel like it.
-And because it's on my mind, how the vampire myth has incorporated the sin into popular stories. Because, hello, I always talk about vampires here.

It's Lent, which means very little to me as I'm not even Catholic. I mean, I was baptized Catholic, and I've been to church a handful of times, but I definitely don't observe Lent. Still, the thing that fascinates me most about this particular observance is its biggest byproduct: Guilt.

Guilt is a feeling, a very powerful one. It's the feeling that you've done something wrong, that you've violated some rule or standard. That you are solely responsible for your bad behavior. That's kind of why I wanted to look at the Seven Deadly Sins. I've got all kinds of guilt, and I wanted to investigate where it comes from, and if it's rightfully placed in my life. These 7 sins are the moral attitudes and behaviors those in Judeo-Christian culture are supposed to avoid. The list itself became very popular in art and literature during medieval times in Europe, but has been around in various forms ever since in popular culture. The 1995 movie Se7en with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman is a good example of the modern take on the list. There is a list of corresponding 7 Virtues, but I think I'll leave those for another time.

The seven deadly sins aren't all bad ideas, but they have been warped and twisted in different ways to make people feel guilty for having just about any feeling at all. My first choice: Gluttony.

GLUTTONY

Gluttony is about consuming much more than you require. The ideology behind its sinfulness has to do with being wasteful, but also the fact that hoarding things like food when others may go hungry causes a great imbalance and encourages being unkind to those less fortunate.

According to legend, those who are gluttons will be punished in hell by being forced to eat rats, toads, and snakes....which seems to be teaching the wrong lesson, I think. Wouldn't a better punishment be being given a plate with one pea on it for dinner forever? Gluttony is associated with pigs and the color orange for some reason. The obvious cultural symbol of gluttony is obesity, which was the focus of the serial killer in the aforementioned movie Se7en, but gluttony is about much more than just food.

The demon associated with this particular sin is Beelzebub (literal translation: lord of the flies). One of the seven princes of hell, he was invoked a few times during the Salem witch trials. Beelzebub was with me today when I was in Target, enticing me to put everything by Liberty of London in my cart. Seriously, I have no garden, and yet the gardening tools, they would be soooo cute in my future one day-maybe garden.

Medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas argued there were 6 ways to commit gluttony (because he apparently had tons of time on his hands and maybe he was also hungry a lot):

Eating too soon
Eating too expensively
Eating too much
Eating too eagerly
Eating too daintily
Eating wildly

Sweet Lady: A Glutton

I have been guilty on about 5 counts here. I doubt I've ever eaten too daintily. Perhaps that's some kind of eating disorder? I definitely eat too soon, when I'm not hungry. I've eaten a $70 plate of lobster before, which is ridiculous, and I've battled lately with eating too much, and too eagerly. There have been times in my life where I've eaten wildly. Most notably my frenzy over Porto's chicken pastry dish. Oh, and the day I gave up being vegetarian because a hamburger made me totally melt inside.

But my real gluttonous habit? Books. I could have books on just about any subject. I'll take them all. There are never too many. If I like a book, sometimes I'll have two copies, one to destroy with notes and highlighters, and one clean to make copies for students. I've gotten several desk copies of books and I'll keep one at home, one at the office, and put one on reserve at the library if I've required it for a class.

My fantasy future home has a room in it with an expansive ceiling so that I can have bookcases that go up into the air, requiring a rolling ladder. I have been getting digital copies of a lot of books lately, as well as audiobooks, but actual paper and fabric books are completely necessary to me. I can't envision a future where I don't have hundreds of spines to look at, just so I can browse and find something that interests me on a day when I'm bored. Looking through the list of books in digital format would not be as satisfying somehow.

This culture tends to encourage gluttony, or at least it seems to discourage saving things forever. Your clothes and furniture should look very new, your electronics shouldn't be more than a year or two old, your car should be new. Buying stuff that lasts forever isn't really stressed as important anymore.

Artist Rob Pettit has called attention to our throwaway culture through his use of old cell phones as art installations (above). Seattle based artist Chris Jordan also focuses on the excesses of this culture using items thrown away. His show from 2003, Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of Mass Consumption also used cell phones:

5000 Cell Phones

Cell phones aren't the only things we throw away just because they aren't new. His photographs use other items as well.

I tend to keep a lot of things, but it's sad to notice how much trash our tiny family makes on a weekly basis. We recycle, and we're in pretty bad shape economically lately so we can't waste too much, but as a country and a culture, I think we're doing pretty badly in this regard.

Artist Alex Martin tried to call attention to and combat this practice by wearing the same dress every day for a year. Her website, which has a really cool video about the project, details her 365 day art project. Here's a website geared towards kids that talks about the project as well.

Now, I know what you are thinking, what the hell? Where are the vampires? Well here they are!

VAMPIRE GLUTTONS

My favorite vampire glutton: Erzebet Bathory, the Hungarian princess who was rumored to bathe in blood she took from her virgin servants in order to stay youthful in appearance. One witness claimed over 600 girls and women were tortured and killed to supply her with these blood baths, though she was only convicted for 80-which still rates pretty high, I think, serial-killer wise. If she had used water, she may have been the cleanest person in Europe in the early 1600s.
I wonder if she cleaned up after the blood baths? I mean, did she just towel off the blood and slip into clothes? Did she rinse? The few paintings completed during her lifetime do show her wearing red, so maybe she coordinated her wardrobe with her creepy habit. She doesn't really become connected to vampire lore until Bram Stoker claims her story was partial inspiration for Dracula.

There are other depictions of vampires in popular culture eating wildly or overindulging in blood. Many vampire stories incorporate the idea of an insatiable hunger (1983's The Hunger comes to mind, as well as 1979's Thirst). The movie Blade showcases a variety of clubs and parties in which the bad-guy vampires are showered in blood, while Blade himself only drinks enough to stay healthy, from a sanitary blood bag of course.


Good vampires, like Buffy's Angel, Vampire Diaries' Stefan Salvatore, The Vampire Chronicles' Lestat, and Twilight's Edward, all try to keep their blood intake to a minimum, and when they can, they try to eat from anything other than human necks. Synthetic blood is offered as a more "civilized" alternative for Bill Compton on True Blood. Anti-hero Lestat does eat people, but he goes for evil-doers only. Mostly.



Most contemporary evil vampires are portrayed as insatiable consumers, driven to consume as much blood as possible with no regard for humanity. They are often depicted with blood running down their chins, all over their lips, in that messy way that insinuates they have blood to waste. And even when they aren't trying to be gluttons, it happens. Young vampires are often depicted as unable to control their thirst, often taking too much blood to keep the human alive, leading to some regrets for good guys like Louis de Pont du Lac from Anne Rice's books.


So we get contradictory lessons in pop culture about gluttony. We are rewarded for constantly purchasing and using new items, and encouraged to forget or deny the consequences (landfills, etc.), but some of our most evil characters are portrayed as excessive and over-indulgent. We convince ourselves we need things that are truly not necessary, and in fact, our economy depends on that lie. It's no wonder vampires make great characters in contemporary culture. The metaphor of the vampire works (depending on the vampire) to both reinforce and punish gluttony.