News of the Psychotic
Wednesday, 2nd April 1997Denver, CO [NotS]
‘Hi, I’m Val,’ she said, ‘I’m a vampire.’
For a moment, I merely stared at her, unable to say a word.
This was two years ago. I’ve since said a few words to her. I’ve also concluded that she’s completely barking mad. What I’m not certain of, however, is precisely why she’s mad. Is she insane for believing that she’s a vampire, or is she insane for expecting me to believe she’s a vampire; the world may never know.
Of course, she’s not alone. Not even a little bit. And that’s unfortunate, because that means there are more of them. Lots more. Thousands.
Naturally, none of them are actually vampires. None of them are immortal swordsmen from the Scottish Highlands. None of them are anything they claim to be. And none of them are very interesting to anyone but a psychiatrist.
Really, these people would fit better into a News of the Psychotic than a News of the Stoopid. But, since none of them actually fit in anywhere, I’m sure they’d be ecstatic to be included wherever I put them.
It’s hard to find a starting point, so I’ll just hop about and hope to include every part of this….
It really began ten years ago. Well, almost ten years ago. And longer ago, in a way…
On Saturday 28th January 1989, I met this crazychick. Not my fault. Whose fault it was and how it included me is a very long story. I met her. We’ll start from there.
She wanted me to go along with her and her friends to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Great; just what I wanted to do that night.
I’d seen it before—a few times, actually—in 1986. That wasn’t really of any importance: she wanted me to go regardless. So, I did. Dumb, huh….
It hadn’t changed much in three years. It had gotten a bit lazier, maybe. The people were the same: overreactive, capricious, pretentious, brainless, pathological crisivores [to invent a word] who were too busy screaming at each other, trying
to all be in charge of absolutely nothing at once, to get anything accomplished at all.
This was in Des Moines. There wasn’t much else to do. So: I began to watch them.
Now, near the end of 1997, nearly a decade later, I still don’t understand them completely. But I have worked out a few things.
It seems like I should have a name for these people, but I haven’t. I usually just refer to them as ‘those idiots’, which seems to work well enough.
Those idiots are…it’s hard to label them, since that’s exactly what they’re after. They’ve invented a word for the rest of us. Normal. But they’ve made it a noun somehow, as in ‘look at the Normals’. I guess I could call them Abnormals. I could call them other things, but kids may come to this site; who knows.
Not only do the Abnormals claim to be vampires, they also claim to be wiccans. Yeah, like pagans. Okay. One thing about pagans: they’re not even remotely satanic, and neither satanists nor pagans worship the devil. I’ll explain that one in another News of the Stoopid sometime.
The vampiric Abnormals want to be wiccans. They consider themselves witches. That’s odd to me, since witches never existed before. I looked it up. The entire witch thing of the dark ages was a misunderstanding of hallucinations caused by various types of mould. Look it up and you’ll see what I’m on about. I don’t want to bother with it all here.
Both vampires and witches are mythical animals. The Abnormals would have you believe that they’re both. Also, they claim to be actors. That they couldn’t act their ways out of a Joel Schumacher film doesn’t seem to be relevant to them.
What do they use all this acting ability for? Two things [three if you count claiming to be things they're not]. They ‘act’ onstage at the Rocky Horror Picture Show [where 'acting' is standing in front of people, staring at the screen over their shoulder, and sorta making some of the same motions as the prerecorded actors] and they play roleplaying games. Here’s where the fun begins.
Obviously, the favoured game is Vampire: the Masquerade. The concept of the game seems to be playing a vampire who pretends to be human. So, we now have the Abnormals: humans pretending to be vampires pretending to be humans playing a game in which they pretend to be vampires pretending to be human. I’m left wondering: why be reincarnated if you can just grow up?
Also, they never miss a convention for anything. Star Trek, Highlander, Xena, whatever. They’re always there. They also always hit RenFest—that place dominated, I’ve heard, by cowboys and Wookies. I’ll deal with cowboys in yet another News of the Stoopid sometime…
I realise that the ‘net is a major stomping ground for convention/RenFest types. I’m not out to insult anyone simply for attending these things. The Abnormals are different. They have to go to these things. There’s no place else for them to be.
Meanwhile, they’re all tragically American. Fine. Be American. No problem. But then they all try to sound as if they’re English. At least, I think that’s the accent they’re going for. They wind up sounding like they’re from Cairo. And they do this at me of all people. Brilliant: I spend years learning American accents to avoid stoopid questions, and these idiots claim to be English, sounding Egyptian, and talking about Scotland.
Meanwhile, they’re all desperately intelligent. Well, eventually. They can’t produce a thought on their own, but they have mastered that chin-in-hand hmmmm thing that always sounds like a Skeksi Muppet sighing. One of them will ask some retarded rhetorical question that has nothing to do with either reality or intelligence, and the rest of the collective will hmmmm about it for a while. I can’t even think of an example.
Every last one of them is psychokinetic. They can’t spell or pronounce psychokinetic, but that’s exactly what they are, damnit. Okay, it’s not exactly what they are. What they are is psychic. They’re able to cross into your dreams, not oneirokinetic. They can move things with their minds, they’re not telekinetic. Of course, they can’t just do any of these things for just anyone. Oh, they can do it; just, not right now, not here, not with Normals watching.
Whatever.
That’s how they act. Here’s how they live:
About a dozen of them will play house together. Between them, they can give enough blood to make rent each month [ironic behaviour for a vampire]. The Abnormal males are these hideous creatures with the worst haircuts ever and wardrobes to match. Here’s a hint: if you’ve got to hire a special tailor to make a cloak in 1997, maybe YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO WEAR ONE!!!1 The females, meanwhile, average at sixteen years old. The males, after all, are afraid of adult women. And abortion is a bad word among Abnormals—not that they’re opposed to the act, they just don’t like to be reminded about the last time they had one.
Then there’s Rock. Going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show alone could create a News of the Stoopid. It works like this:
Cram a bunch of losers into a cinema. That’s the hard part. First, you’ve got to survive the massive stoopidity out front. Why are we out front? Because the people running the cinema won’t let them in until they absolutely have to. Then, as you go in, you’re stopped and searched by an idiot who couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a road map. Feel safe now? The search has nothing to do with the cinema, of course. It’s just something they do to believe that they’re important enough to be killed with weapons.
Once you get inside, there’s more stoopidity as some idiot reads you the rules. Where the rules came from, no one knows. And they’re the stoopidest rules ever conceived. No Open Flames [that doesn't necessarily mean you can't be an open flame]. No Water Devices. No Weapons. And so on. Stuff you wouldn’t have tried in the first place, unless you were Abnormal.
The rules are over. The film can start.
Ever seen Mystery Science Theatre 3000? I’ll admit that Rock was earlier [1975] than MST3K, but at least Crow and Servo have new things to say each week. These idiots are still shouting the same things over and over. And these lines are dumb. They’ll ask for something to happen [psychic], it will happen onscreen [magic] and they’ll shout Thank You [capricious]. Why use the oxygen to get that accomplished?
Here’s what happens to Normals who try shouting something else: you get into trouble. Weird, huh? Try shouting the first thing that comes to mind. They won’t appreciate it at all. It took them twenty-two years to get the lines down that they have now. Don’t screw anything up. Don’t make them lose their rhythm, or whatever they’re running on.
What I also find disturbing is the attention they’ll devote to the least important aspects of ‘acting’. Okay: the actors in the film look like they look. Fine. The idiots onstage need to look just like them. Fine. So they’ll put all this effort into costumes, makeup, props, whatever. They won’t let one of the ‘actors’ onstage without the wigs and all that. Somehow, a four hundred pound creature playing Janet Weiss seems fair IF she’s got a blonde wig. Moreover, having this rhinoceros take off most of her costume during the show is deemed appropriate. And there’s nothing in the rules about that. They mention that the film deals with homosexual, incestuous, interspecial matters, but they never warn you that Rosie O’Donnell is going to shed her mumu just metres from your face. Ick.
That’s the Abnormal agenda for the week end. The rest of the time, they lurk about in restaurants, drinking coffee with excruciating amounts of cream and sugar and getting people like me in trouble. They rehash the events of their latest D&D game as if A) it really happened and B) anyone could ever care whether they encountered a level six mud dragon with a level ten secret decoder ring. Who gives a damn. These are the idiots who have gotten the two dollar minimum/two hour maximum rule installed at most American restaurants.
Here’s the best part: one idiot tells the other idiots about the mud dragon. Then the other idiots, as the collective, all go ‘d’oh-oh-oh no!’
Git git git; we’ll get them Dukes this time.
I still have no idea what makes these people so Abnormal. Maybe it’s genetic. I dunno. But if anyone ever accuses you of being a Normal, take it as a compliment. Then, tell them you’ve had your salivary glands blessed by a priest, and spit on them. That’s the fun part, after all.
—Gremlin