It’s Friday morning and I’m enjoying my coffee and looking forward to a long day of work followed by a weekend of more work because I overbooked myself this month and have so much shit to take care of. UGH. Freelancing has its downsides. I definitely lied in the post one or two back where I believed the rest of the month would be easier.
But before I go do work to pay rent and survive in capitalism (you can help me write more and suffer less!), I’m going to treat myself to some Dracula.
I’m writing from home again and no longer from my TTRPG workshop in the woods which was weirdly affirming and mind-blowing and I learned a lot about myself. It was kinda crazy. I did not encounter any ghosts, thankfully.
ANYWAY, May has been busy and now the rest of the month will (hopefully) be more relaxed. Instead of reading two Dracula Dailies at a time, I’ve decided to read this one right away since it seems pretty long and I’ve got the time while I recover from where the abyss stared back at me in the woods (there was love in its eyes).
May 24th
I had to look back to be sure that we’ve gotten two letters from Lucy in a row. If Mina sent a letter in reply to the last one, we aren’t being permitted to read it. Lucy opens by thanking Mina for her sweet letter, which is not for our eyes I guess.
May 18th
This was an annoying email to receive the day after the last post because it’s so short, but I didn’t want to make a new blog just for it.
It’s horny vampire o’clock again!
May 15
I’ve missed out on noting that these entries note if Jonathan is using longhand (normal, readable by everyone) or shorthand (simplified, a bit like code to be able to write faster). Usually his journals are in shorthand but it seems appropriate to note this now since he said before that Mina understands his shorthand and it might otherwise be difficult to understand. Therefore, Dracula cannot read his diary.
May 11
The next entry does NOT bring us back to Jonathan! Lucy Westenra replies quickly to Mina’s previous letter saying she’s not as bad a correspondent as Mina would imply. Besides, she has absolutely nothing to write about, except for boys.
As to the tall, curly-haired man, I suppose it was the one who was with me at the last Pop.
Pop???
I think my favorite thing about this book is that everyone’s just being mundane and ridiculous in a way that isn’t too far off from modern blogging, except that it also shows how far out 100 years is since the book was written. Cat meat man? Pop with a capital P? What are these people talking about? In my local dialect “pop” is our “soda pop” but I doubt she means that.
May 8
Jonathan learns that shaving can get dicey
Would you judge me if I told you I gasped when I read this at the top of the Dracula Daily email?
I want to open this one by saying that I’ve discovered that by cat meat, Jonathan wasn’t saying he eats cats. He was talking about a dude who sells leftover butcher meat for cats. A cat meat man. Probably stinky but wow, what a job. The meat is sold on skewers so the kebab comparison is valid. Animal cruelty aside, Jonathan is still pretty racist.
May 5th
Jonathan starts off today talking about food which sounds like kebab and he compares to “London cat meat.” I don’t think this man can get any worse. He’s racist, sexist, and eats cats.
May 3rd
So a couple months back I found this academic book, Reading the Vampire by Ken Gelder, at a used bookstore for six bucks. I picked it up with the intent to read it and send it to a friend who likes this kinda stuff more than me (shout out to Leigh, if you’re reading this). That book’s discussion of Dracula and the introduction of “Buda-Pesth” as opposed to “Budapest” brought me down an interesting rabbit hole about the city and how it’s kind of two cities and there’s a lot of local baggage about it—look it up if you’re into that. John Harker doesn’t care about any of this, leading me to believe he’s a basic bitch, but I suppose he is just spying on it from the train so maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. Checking on the modern Anglicizations makes me feel less like white colonialist scum.
I’m starting a new Let’s Read where I read Dracula like a pervert!
I thought I’d open with a spooky fun personal anecdote about Dracula, but I don’t have one. I’ve never read it before, nor have I seen any Dracula movies. My relationship with Dracula mostly comes from cultural osmosis and the Netflix Castlevania TV show.