Rumors Of My Vampirism Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

In the spirit of the Sex Chat hotline not being as hot as Apu had anticipated, a recent Yahoo news story about how humanity could devolve into vampirism was sadly lacking. Just look at that headline: "Asteroid strike could force humans to live like vampires". I mean, is that an insta-click, or is that an insta-click? Sure, one might be disgusted by the lame 'humanity could face a permanent Twilight' subheader, but hey, including the word 'Twilight' gets this story pinged by hundreds of needy teenage girls. Never let it be said that the Yahoo News gang doesn't know how to generate pageviews.

So yeah, it's basically just about how a hypothetical asteroid strike could ruin the ozone layer and basically force humanity indoors during the day, lest our skin be slowly burned off. Basically, the human race would turn into any redhead at a beach. That would certainly be a dire situation...but saying this would "force humans to live like vampires" is a bit much.

Pretend you're on Family Feud and are asked to name the top traits of a vampire. Where does "can't go out in the sun" rank on that list? The top answer is clearly sucking blood. 'Stake through the heart' is probably second, since that's how the vast majority of vampires are killed in movies, TV shows, books and other pop culture outlets. (Though technically, I'm not sure staking is all that unique a weakness. If you stabbed me through the heart with a wooden stake, I'd die too, and I'm the least-vampiric guy you'll ever meet. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I have plenty of vampire friends.) Aversion to daylight would be at best the third most-known trait, possibly even behind such other weaknesses as crosses and garlic. So yeah, when I read an article about how an asteroid strike in the ocean might turn me into a vampire, I'm thinking, "Geez, will this meteor be made of some odd material that makes blood extra-delicious?" I'm not thinking about the ozone layer, since let's be honest, I'm half-expecting that to bite the dust in my lifetime anyways. That's much less interesting than wondering if I should invest in Mott's, knowing that they'll be able to pawn their tomato juice off on gullible future vamps.

So don't worry, humanity, nobody is going to be turned into a vampire anytime soon. The real victims here are the aforementioned sad and lonely Twilight fans who were momentarily hoping for an asteroid to strike the earth just so they'd have a better chance of finding an Edward of their very own. Am I poking fun at a stereotype by saying that these girls are so pathetically lonely that they'd actually welcome the probable end of civilization just so they could get laid? No. No I'm not.