Random: an old (unanswered) question about vampires

I first thought of this question when I was in early teens, reading a vampire novel (I can’t remember which, but it sparked many years’ worth of vampire reading). And over years the question was never answered.

Question: Can a vampire’s brain have a capability to hold over 800-or-so years’ worth of memories?

It’s a stupid question, I know, as vampires are fictional, but so many authors invented a range of plausible scientific explanations, types of vampirism and mythologies. And yet none of them, as far as I could recall, had ever explained this little bit.

I think it was Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula where the vampire said he could remember every historic milestone since he was turned during 11th century. This confused me. I do have an appalling sense of time, but I have my way of making sense of time.

Such as thinking that a person’s brain was like a dune, or desert, if a wind were brain cells and the sand were memories. It’s a childish way of seeing things, but it was the only way I could make sense of time. Anyroad, this way seemed logical to me when I was a child. And admittedly, still does to the adult me now.

Actually, that’s another thing! Wolverine. (I’m changing the subject somewhat, sorry.) I once asked this in front of super Marvel geeks and I don’t think I have felt that much weight of silence as I had at the time.

Question: if Wolverine had a regenerative healing ability, wouldn’t this mean he’d lose virginity every time he had sex?

I thought it was a valid question, but the looks I had from them said otherwise. Uptight geeks.

This sort of questions tend to pop up when I’m drifting between wakefulness and sleepiness. It tends to freak Will out. He taught me not to ask him these questions at bed time because it tends to keep him stay awake, trying to figure it out as well. (He still hasn’t forgiven me for asking the Pluto/Goofy question on the night before he was due to leave for the 5AM flight.)

I know I am supposed to think about serious issues while I’m in bed, but it’s a childhood habit that just won’t die. I used to have problems falling asleep and so, lying there in bed bored the hell out of me. Hence all those silly questions.

For instance, I used to wonder about Sindy‘s family – had she a family snd if she hadn’t, what were their fate? This is embarrassing, but I decided that they – parents, grandparents, two brothers and a sister - were killed after falling accidentally into a volcano crater during a family holiday. Hence Sindy as an orphan. It made perfect sense to my seven-or-so-year-old mind.

Other seemingly important questions from childhood years:

• How does Wonder Woman deal with her outfit when she’s in the loo? (I wondered after failing to see a zip anywhere on her outfit.)
• If Pluto is a dog, what is Goofy? (Will and I debated this many times.)
• If there’s no gravity in space, how could the flag on the moon hold up like that?  (No one told me it was held up by a bleeding metal rod.)
• What does the motto - mobilis in mobili – of Captain Nemo‘s futuristic submarine Nautilus translate to? (I guessed ‘changing inside a change’, but I was wrong. It’s ‘moving within a moving element’.)
• Why is Dennis the Menace so irritating? Why couldn’t his parents just twack his head? It didn’t seem fair that he could get away with that kind of antics when I can’t. (You should have seen the state of my bum after I held a younger brother out of a window. OK, it may be fully justified because I accidentally let go of his ankles.)
• Do female cyborgs have periods? (I already knew about this sort of thing, thanks to living on a farm)
• What’s the real purpose of having a belly button? (in spite of living on a farm, I didn’t make the connection between the belly button and that – like I said, I was a stupid child)
• If I stick a finger into the belly button too deep, will it open up making all internal organs fall out? (I was too scared to experiment.)
• Why does Superman wear his Y-fronts outside his tights? And why does it need a yellow belt?
• Why couldn’t Archie make up his mind about Betty and Veronica? (I created mental lists of pros and cons for each girl, and concluded that Archie should go for Veronica because if he was that indecisive, she would make decisions for them both.)

I don’t think this kind of questions any more. Well, sort of. A couple per week, perhaps. Not that many, I promise.