Recent events in the Vampire Society…

The Vampire Society is more than just a book to me; it's a fundamental truth. We live in a society of consumers, of vampires, who value material goods above all else. It explains so many current issues, it is inescapable.

And yet, people try to escape it.

In some ways, it is funny. It has to be because it is so horrific.

This current stream of thought began when I read Tim Murphy's blog. I was surprised to find him writing about recent events here on My Side. His opinion, as I see it, is that Tony and I should "get along". And it has to be, we are both his friends. I do not see it this way. Tony's foul comments show me that there was more than just a disagreement of opinion. Tony's disrespect for truth and flagrant disregard for decency destroyed his humanity in my eyes. Who I once saw as human, I cannot bear to think about.

Sadly, though, this isn' - not to forget Greene - are as endearing and as familiar as the group in "Not a penny less, not a penny more" and the murder mystery is chilling exciting, but as you read more and more, its not the murderer itself who catches your attention - its Dante HIMSELF !!

I have become facinated by the guy (with due respect, one of the greatest writer/poet of medivial culture). It will probably take me months to figure the guy out simply because his origional work is in Italian and Latin, translation is by Longfellow in a form of english that long became latin to most of us - I have trouble translating any form of english that comes close to Shakespearean English.


I think Dante's work was an irreverently intellectual challenge to the then corrupted society he lived in and he is unabashedly an icon - a tortured and blindingly brilliant mind. He is nectar of the medivial society - society he mocked with panache in his literary brilliance - La Divina Commedia - Inferno Purgatorio Paradiso (translates to The Divine Comedy - Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven") "

which traces his imaginary journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven during which he encounters historical and mythological creatures, each symbolic of a particular fault or virtue. Beatrice, Dante’s great love, whom he regarded as a manifestation of the divine, is his guide through paradise. Dante’s Divine Comedy is one of the great works of world literature, and it was also proof that in Italian literature the vulgar tongue could rival Latin. Read about Dante's mindboggling classification of sinners and Dante's structured vision of Hell

In the Inferno, sinners are organized by three vices -- Incontinence, Violence, and Fraud -- and further subdivided by the seven deadly sins. In Purgatory, penance is ordered on the basis of three types of natural love. Paradise is organized on the basis of three types of Divine Love, and further subdivided according to the three theological and four cardinal virtues..


Read on below, a chillingly captivating beginning of Hell, a slow realization of where you are:
"A heavy thunder breaks the deep lethargy within your head....

...causing you to upstart suddenly, like a person who by force is awakened. Before you stands an enormous gate with an inscription that reads:


"Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."

aker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."