vampire teethAre you starting to wonder whether all these "zombie cannibal freakazoid" attacks are really on the rise or if it's just like disease and child abductions -- they have always been around, it's just we're more aware of them now. Like, well, the man with vampire teeth who supposedly attacked a homeless man in California. It's the latest oddball crime to cap off a month of face-eating drug addicts and whacked-out dudes disembowling their own intestines.

Oh yeah, the guy has vampire-looking fangs all right. Check out the vampire man photo. But he's also missing his two front uppers and possibly his back molars, so it looks like what we're seeing is just a really sharp pair of upper canines. Plus, the 55-year-old "vampire man" did not use his vampire teeth on his homeless victim in this seemingly unprovoked attack, rather he used his feet to kick him repeatedly in the face and ribs, leaving his eye swollen.

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What police seem to describe is a random and unfortunately common occurrence among the homeless community, a life often fraught with violence and conflict.

Every day when a new story about zombies, cannibals, or vampires surfaces, I realize ever more that we are only paying attention because of the sensational aspects of the case. If this guy didn't have sharp chompers, we would never be reading or discussing it, we wouldn't care about the suspect, and we wouldn't care about the victim. On the other hand, maybe so many unusual details about cases like these are making us take note of them like we never did before, and that kind of awareness can't be all bad. It's a double-edged sword, a sharp one.

Are you getting sick of everyone trying to sensationalize these really sad, tragic cases?