A member recently asked how a vampire can retain assets and identities in this age of constant tracking, computer records and security run amok. Very good question.
Until the last few years, this has been no problem at all. I always keep several identities working at any given time and begin new ones every few years. It is much easier than you can imagine but it is getting tougher.
First, it has always been easy to get a birth certificate (when they became standard about 125 years ago). By watching the newspaper for deaths of very young children or infants, the hospital, birthdate and other info is usually listed. Wait about 10 years and request a certified copy of the birth certificate. Using the birth certificate, you can register for a Social Security number and now have two forms of ID. At 18 years since birth, use those forms of ID for a Driver’s license and then apply for a Passport.
Keeping these identities in constant rotation gives me about 7 or 8 identities between age 20 and 40. Recently, there has been an attempt to link death certificates with birth certificates and this will make it more difficult. It may become necessary to generate new identities in third world countries were records are not as well kept or can be made up for a bribe.
Transferring the money is actually very easy. Using trusts and paper assets like cash and stocks (in certificate form) money can be moved around quite easily. I have professionals that take care of many of the details for me but I have a good understanding myself.
Offshore accounts and multiple identities, some connected financially to facilitate moving money around, allow me to change primary identities every 15-20 years. I maintain residences, subscriptions, file taxes and many other things on the identities to give them life.
Ask yourself how Mexican’s, many of which cannot speak English, can come to the US and establish identities to get jobs, buy property and live fairly normally without being caught? Many even use sloppy forgeries and fake Social Security numbers. Imagine how well it works when done skillfully with real documentation.
The future could become a problem though. As databases track everyone’s movements, money transactions, employment history and more, it may become more difficult. Having fingerprints (yes, vampires have fingerprints), DNA or other biometric information could expose people with multiple identities. I suppose, the vampire community will come up with ways to circumvent the system and share. While I haven’t seen an online community for vampires yet, I expect there may be or will be soon. We can use technology too.
If you have any questions, just comment and I will try to respond.
Again, sorry for my absence the past couple of weeks. This blog is interesting to me but not a priority. When life gets in the way, I may go silent for short periods. I will get back to the questions that have stacked up
[...] 2008 at 12:27 pm (vampires) Tags: vampire, vampires I was thinking today about the definition of evil. Main Entry: [...]
Dearest Vampire,
I trust that you are well today. I see that you still have not finished the small game that we were having with your name. You teased us and stated that we came close to discovering your name, but then you never went back and gave us the final answer. Perhaps you are being coy?
Please tell us what your name is so that we at least have something to call you besides ‘vampire’, which is far too generic a nickname for you.
Hi Triangle,
Not being coy, just not really comfortable with my real name out there, although as you know, I use aliases for real life (see my last post).
I kind of like Mr. V anyway.
Aw, I am honored that you like my nickname for you. Then Mr. V you shall be. Of course, you could tell us that your name is Burt and you have a pal vampire named Ernie and we would be none the wiser to your deception.
I wonder… do you feel as if you have lost part of yourself? Do you feel that your humanity slowly slips away? Does the act of feeding on people wear at you? (And no, I do not believe that if there are real vampires, all of you buy your blood from morticians and blood banks.)
I have a theory regarding that, though were it fact, I doubt you would admit it.
I love theories…do share…
I posted it to my blog. It post title is “Evil” and I explain some of my theory. Feel free to comment and tell me what you think.
Since I doubt you will comment on my blog, I may as well post my theory here. It goes something like this: I believe that you cannot be a vampire without being at least a little evil. I do not mean evil in the theological, my soul is going to hell, way. I mean that once you begin feeding off of humans, you begin to lose yourself and your humanity and goodness begins to slip away. It does not have to be quickly, if you have hundreds of years, it may take a while, but eventually you become something evil and something that has lost the war to retain itself. Do you feel as if you have lost yourself, dear Mr. V? If your wife or child or parent were here today and spoke with you, would they know who you are?
Hi!
He lost his humanity the day he couldn’t just die as any other human. To be a human you need to die, have conscience, lie and have a laguage system (noot only a simple group of codes as some animals do). Animals are not capable to do such a things, like for instance to lie.
Evil… I have known some humans with a lot of evil potential or completely evil and still they are humans even if I wish they are not. C. S. Lewis wrote a magnificient book about being evil (The title in Spanish traslates something like “Leters from the devil o his nephew”) and others essays.
The evil legend of a vampire is a very long history and with a lot of stories all around. But there is a mythical explanation and I wish Jemmy would be around to explain it for us. It is simple: as vampire is associate to the dark side, evil is along the way.
Anyway, google “myth + vampire” Sucking blood from another humain can be monstrous, but not evil… I think evil is much more dangerous and suttler. But I really need your opinions about it to rethink a bit more.
I don’t know. I think hurting people and feeding off of them would cause you to slowly lose whatever of yourself and your humanity that you had managed to retain.
I also wonder why our dearest Mr. V has moved his website from a host in New Hampshire to France. It was registered to a gentleman in New Hampshire and now shows up as being registered to a host in France.
Well his French is not good enough and his Spanish is even worse. Only the level of Japaneese seems ok. He doesn’t get a word in Italian or Portuguese and had the bad luck that I do. Life can be hard even for a Vampire with little memory for languages… hahahahahahahahahaha
We can be bad humans, but even the most cruels killers are humans. I don’t think We can denied humanity so easily when We don’t like the person. A difficult question then: Was Hitler or any Dictator in Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Honduras, El Salvador etc, etc human? I am talking about the worst examples of humanity, but humanity at the end. Any serial killer would be an apprentice in front of them. I don’t know how much you know History but believe me: I am talking about the worst. They are evil, the true one but still human beings. Unfortunatelly. I would like a better humanity but as you I find it difficult to accept sometimes some things (usuasually with the CIA envolved like in Guantanamo) And being human being is not a prize for good behaviour, is a condition like being white, asian, african etc.
Is Mr V human? No. He has a human body, can speak a language, can lie, can invent and create. He cannot die and this difficulty to enhace human destiny is important. He can be nice or bad, whatsoever. And I think he likes his “ahumanity”… r may be not… Anyway he is not answering. And maybe he doesn’t know…
I wish Margareth o Jemmy would say something…
besossssssssssssss
Sorry, I have been under the weather today. If we were back a few hundred years, I would say perhaps Mr. V had placed a hex upon me. Lucky for him, we know about viruses.
I think there is a difference between human and humanity. You can be human and have no humanity, as Lantana has said. You can also be non-human and have some humanity. Look at gorillas and other primates. They are not human, but they can communicate complex ideas, they can learn sign language, they can mourn and have joy and feel compassion, etc.
But I think a vampire would not fit either category. I think they would be inhuman and they would also lack humanity.
Hello
This will be my first time to ask questions, and hope won’t be the last one. I’m just curious if the rumor really is true that there has been a violent war between vampires for years now? and do you also get into fight with your own kind, how violent and often? Thanks, hope to see your answers soon!
So, Mr. V… care to explain why you are not as fluent as you claimed you were?
Easy, it has been decades since I exercised my French, Italian, etc… Living in the Southeast US, I do get some Spanish and Portuguese and Japanese has been my recent work-in-progress as I have been spending a lot of time there.
If I start reading, listening or speaking a language, it starts coming back quickly. Vampires so not have super-memory powers. As far as I can tell, my memory works about the same as yours. There are entire decades that I have little memory of. It usually takes a specific incident for me to remember things from long ago.
Got to run. I am going to try and do some posting tonight.
Hmm… I never really thought about it that way. I guess I owe you an apology. So you are not as super-human as we would think.
Dang. You keep making me have to apologize. I will have to work on that.
No problem trianglenights. You are right to be skeptical. People on the Internet can claim anything. I don’t expect anyone to believe me. The best I can do is be truthful and honest. You have to decide for yourself.
Just a bit of info about me… I never ventured into any of the Arabic languages or Hebrew. I also never tried ancient languages like Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
I love science and have been fortunate to live in an era where humanity has advanced science at a pace never seen before. Almost everything we use today has been invented or discovered during my lifetime. Indoor plumbing, electricity, radio, air conditioning, incandescent lighting, aircraft, locomotive (train), and much more.
Prior to the 1800’s, life had not changed much for a thousand years.
Let us take a step back a bit and start again from the beginning. Do you think you are human, Mr. V? I mean, a human corpse is still human and a dead dog is still a dog… just dead.
I don’t know how to answer that. Either way, it would just be my opinion. I was human. I look human. I guess it really comes down to how do you define ‘human.’
Maybe it is more a type of human similar to male, female, white, black, blonde, brunet? Most vampires I have met do not consider themselves human anymore. Again, this is their opinion. Until science has the opportunity to study vampires and determine what the differences are, we probably won’t really know.
Of course it will be your opinion. Since you are the only vampire I can talk to, I am asking you for your view of the world and yourself, not how you think anyone else would respond. I am fully human, I am fully a woman, I am fully a mother, but my answers to a whole range of questions will be unique to me. If I had 20 vampires who were willing to email me and tell me their stories, then perhaps I would care what the community of vampires thinks and feels. For now, I will be happy to just come to know your opinions and thoughts. Sound good?
So back to the question. Do you think of yourself as human? Do you view yourself the same way you did before you changed? (I am thinking of how something like a near death experience causes someone to reevaluate how they think and feel about who they are and want to be.) Do you think you are something other?
Honestly, I don’t know how to answer that question. I am human but I am not. Let me ponder it.
Just saw something that reminded me of something you might find interesting…
Did you know that 100 years ago, boys and girls colors were the opposite? Boys wore Pink and Girls wore Blue. Was reminded when I saw a baby wearing Blue and had to think about it. It was in the 40s that it changed. Why? I have no idea.
That is why I ask it of you. Because it is a hard question and not one you can flippantly answer. I think that once you really think about it and are able to answer the question: Are you human or are you inhuman?, then that will color the answer to every other question I wish to ask you. How you define yourself is an important factor of who you are.
I was aware of that fact, actually. The whole gender color thing is manufactured. It was not that long ago that we dressed our babies in white and both boys and girls were dressed in dresses and other similar outfits until around the age of 5 because that was when they were seen to have moved out of young childhood.
the more and more questions i read and the anwsers you have supplied make it so easy to believe and so hard not to believe because the anwsers and you blogs are so detailed and amazing that it seems almost impposible to be amde up:)