By my count, since 2001 there have been no less than 30 various movies, books, and TV seasons of (very popular) vampire-themed stories, to say nothing of the hordes of lesser books and direct-to-DVD movies.

• Southern Vampire Mysteries (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009)
• Blades 2 & 3 (2002, 2004)
• Underworld series, movies (2003, 2006, 2009)
• Van Helsing (2004)
• Night Watch series (2004, 2006, 2009)
• Twilight series, books (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
• Ultraviolet (2006)
• 30 Days of Night (2007)
• I Am Legend (2007)
• Let The Right One In (2008)
• Twilight series, movies (2008, 2009+)
• True Blood (2008, 2009+)

A dozen different plot lines, all with the same boring bloodline.  And on their heels, a new TV show (The Vampire Diaries - also based on a book series), book (The Strain - yet another trilogy), and movie (Daybreakers - with trilogy potential / likeliness, and bonus oil metaphor!).  All within a year, all their own separate new universes.  Great for the fang-bangers, but wasted space for those of us bored out of our skulls.

Between the endless faux-goths and massive preteen mobs, I can understand the demand for the genre, but I didn't realize how big a business vampirism entertainment really was.  From the list above, the movies alone grossed over $600,000,000 - so why not suck the bones dry, right?  I mean, Let The Right One In was really good, but it was in fucking Swedish.  Remake it in English now.  As much as the missus and I enjoy True Blood, it's opened her eyes to the fact that her previously beloved Twilight series is nothing more than a plot-by-plot rip-off of Harris' source material.

The frustrating part about this plague is how much creativity is being wasted on such tired material.  I'm not the biggest fan of horror, but I love science fiction and, to an extent, fantasy.  The vampire thing has the ability to straddle all three really well (I think that's why I find True Blood so entertaining).  Unfortunately, most vampire vehicles are too-simply driven either by a human killing vampires (mild successes), a vampire killing vampires (moderate successes), or a human-vampire love story (jackpot! see you at Hot Topic).

Strip out most of the fantasy elements and practically all of the sci-fi and you've essentially got zombies, which are apparently the new vampires.  Which makes sense, since I'm groaning like one right now.

Second verse, same as the first:

Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Shawn of the Dead. ...and then Dawn of the Dead again.  28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Months Later.  Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, The Dead Are Still Rising, Hey Look More Dead Rising Again!, Are The Dead Still Rising?, The Rise & Fall Of The Dead, Dead Falling, and Dead Rising: Resurrection.  World War Z the book was turned like Blade, and now it's a movie.  Left 4 Dead 1, Left 4 Dead 2, and presumably Left 4 Dead 3 - but not Left 4 Dead 4 BECAUSE THAT'S TOO MANY FUCKING 4'S!!!  Resident Evils 1-18, and oh no 2009 isn't yet super-super-saturated, so why not Dead Snow, Zombieland, and Breathers.

It's a Sixth Sense situation: the poor genres don't know they're dead.  Can you imagine if someone like George Lucas did this to his fabled stories, constantly retreading the same ground, squeezing every last drop out of his creative?  Why you'd throw away your Yoda backpack and Indiana Jones whip, and start wearing all black, make-up, mumble melodrama like "life is pain", and form fake blood pacts in your parents' basement.

And then pre-purchase a dozen New Moon tickets four months in advance.

Update: I missed one.  Apparently CBS tried out a series last year called Moonlight, involving vampire detectives.  It failed, but they're discussing a movie anyway.  As much as I'd like to chalk this up as an indicator of the genres downward trend, it was probably just another standard CBS casualty: ignoring their viewer bases of octogenarians and "people who like to laugh".

At the risk of stating the obvious: print media is dead, and broadcast journalism may have suffered a deathblow.

It's been a rough two weeks for MSM.  Iran is revolting its stolen election and defying its dictator for the first time in 30 years.  I know this because I use the internet, and not because I read the newspaper (sadly, I don't anymore) or because I watch broadcast news (gag me).  Throughout the past week, while traversing through rumors, journalism, heresy, and first-person accounts, I kept an eye on the internet's own revolt (further) against traditional media.

While internet communities - which include Iranians - were sharing information in real-time, some broadcast media essentially went dark on the protests for days.  As much as of a love-hate relationship I've got going with Twitter right now, I can at least say honestly that it brought me real news faster than the boob tube.  The whole thing is laughable, but also pretty sad.

It's true that social networking services like Twitter have no verification.  You have to take every individual #iran tweet with a grain of salt.  But because Iran has the kind of government it does, there would obviously be no foreign journalists with a camera anywhere within its borders this week.  In 2003, Salam Pax blogged from Baghdad while the bombs fell.  The difference then being there were also correspondents on the ground, reporting live for broadcast.  Six years (and two presidential elections) later, it appears the scales have tipped well in the internet's favor.

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Over the weekend, the lady and I were out of town for a wedding.  When we checked into the hotel, the TV in the lobby had on cable news, which was covering the Iranian protests.  As soon as we settled in our room, I put on the same.

At the same time, I turned on my iPhone and loaded my Twitter application.  The cable news station had cameras shooting computer monitors (at bad angles) displaying Twitter.  On my phone, I was in Twitter - which is to say, I was reading it firsthand, as well as participating in the conversation.

On TV, I saw melodramatic journalist-personalities ("journalisties"?) embellish unnewsworthy tweets, such as "If an innocent girl gets shot halfway across the world, does she make a sound? Yes, the whole world hears her."  While in Twitter itself, I skimmed past the same updates and read dozens of other more meaningful notes.

On TV, I saw commercial breaks.  In Twitter, the news never stopped (surprisingly great uptime this weekend).

On TV, I heard anchors repeat themselves every few minutes.  In Twitter, I saw heavy retweeting - fast-growing groups of different people rallying around information together, not a one-way, aimless talking head.

When cable news finally decided to take a full break and let the news catch up to them, they spent 30 minutes recapping a news topic Americans hold dear: international soccer.  This news organization was very obviously - and, to their credit, transparently - trying to play catch-up with the internet.  But they've all swung the pendulum so far in the other direction, they're now also trying to play make-up.

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I don't usually advocate token charity gestures online, but if you're on Twitter, there are two very easy things you can do to really support protesting Iranians.

First, change your Twitter account settings to Tehran time.  If true, the rumors of Iranian Twitter crackdown means the more people posing as Iranians in Twitter, the harder it will be for them to silence real tweetin' Iranians.  It might all be bunk, but it doesn't hurt and it takes about 7 seconds.

Secondly, change your Twitter profile picture to a shade of green.  I used Photoshop, but you can use this nifty site to do it all online, or just pick a new one from this collection.  It's the color of the opposing party, and it shows any Iranian on Twitter that you're listening and they have your support, wherever and whoever you are.  If Alyssa Milano can do it, you can too.