People - the weird, the crazy and the stupendously infuriating bigots
I'm gonna go backwards in chronology with this post. Starting with yesterday. Or last evening to be specific. My friend M called and informed me that our RP scenario has been accepted by Fastaval - the Con we're writing it for. We attempted last year as well, and were in the group of 'finalists' that had written sufficiently good scenarios, but alas. Too many were better than us in the last sorting and we didn't make the final cut.
But this year we did. Major YAY! We're in! This is perhaps the most influential and prestigious RP Con in Denmark, the Con where diceless and systemless RP is considered an art, the Con where new genres are invented every year. So, being role-players and quite heavy on the enthusiasm we're excited and all worked up about it. Very much looking forward to presenting the complete and well worked-through scenario.
Yeah we're weird, but we enjoy it. Just like we enjoyed dressing up for the Pirate Costume Party on Saturday. And rum doesn't make a person less weird, I might add.
Progressing over the past two weeks at work something rather... peculiar has revealed itself to me. The man I'm often teamed with for picking started flirting with me. Nothing wrong there, that's not peculiar in and of itself. No, the thing he decided to reveal about himself, now that's peculiar. Or perhaps more bluntly stated: crazy.
Taking breaks once in a while we chat about this and that of course. And I mentioned that I'm quite into fantasy. He's not, and for some reason this topic led him to divulge that he's a psychic.
"Uhhh okay..."
Now, I will not go so far as to say that I'm sure what's true and what's not. I don't believe in god, in a creator, in an ultimate being, but I do believe there are many things in and of this world that we humans don't always see and much less understand. I have experienced certain things myself that have convinced me that there is indeed more between heaven and earth... as they say. But I draw no conclusions, and I listen to all statements and stories concerning such things with a healthy dose of scepticism, there are so many frauds when it comes to exactly these things.
So the man tells me he's a psychic. My first thought is whether he's just trying to impress me by making up a story that might appeal to a fantasy reader, or whether he's trying to impress me with something he truly believes about himself - or whether he's just being frank, but I find this latter option to be rather unlikely. I've no idea why he was telling me this, liking fantasy books normally does not lead me to discuss the supernatural in our own world.
My second thought was whether to be openly sceptic or whether to play along and show interest and see how far he'll take the story. I opted for the latter, it might turn out to be amusing after all. And oh boy, was I right.
This man is completely and utterly off his rocker. Yes, I'm willing to believe that some people are psychic, but when you hear this, you'll see why I'm more inclined to laugh at this one.
Oh yes, he started talking, and once I had shown interest and hadn't laughed him off the floodgates opened. Oh yeah, he can talk to those on the other side, he's been out to cleanse houses and the like. Ayup. And I was doing the whole "Ohh, I see. Aha. Yeah? Hmmm." And when he's out cleansing houses he's usually successful, as he says, because on his side he has The Messiah and for extra back-up 8 world leaders - though he mentioned no names.
I raised my eyebrows at this and commented that that sounded like a pretty bloody efficient team. He agreed and confirmed that if his allies here couldn't handle it, it was Evil itself (obviously meaning Satan). I made sure to nod in understanding. What he said made perfect sense, but his all too quick divulgement of his alliance with Messiah had me suspicious. The suspicion did not fade at all when he told me that he and Messiah were really close. He had, in fact, been Judas in an earlier life and the Bible had been edited so heavily that the part of Judas was so twisted that it was almost unrecognizable. Yeah, I'd heard that before. Oh yeah, he'd been Judas alright, sometimes he had problems with his neck and hands and feet.
And there I went thinking "Uhm, yeah, Judas hung himself, so I see the neck-problem right there, but hands and feet? It was Jesus who was crucified, you dolt, not Judas/you."
Ahem. He continued with the reincarnation stuff. I threw in the comment that I had a friend who was positive that he'd been Jack the Ripper in a previous life to which I commented "Yeah, he and 800 others." And my colleague here smiled and agreed with my disbelief and explained that types like that - Jack the Ripper, that is, not my friend - don't come back. They receive their punishment never to return.
And to get back on more interesting topics, such as himself and his merits that might impress me, he said he'd also been a boy king. I dryly remarked that there'd been quite a few. Which one of them was he referring to? In Egypt, King Tut. THE King Tut. I managed to prevent my eyebrows from disappearing beyond my hairline, this was getting real good, oh yes. Yeah, as he said, he never should've gotten off that horse. That's what got him killed. And here I was laughing inside. King Tut was from Egypt, you dolt, he didn't ride the horse, he would've been in a chariot.
He mentioned a few other people he'd been that I no longer remember, I just rememer thinking. Oh wow... does he really think I'll believe all this shit? But I think he does. Because if he didn't, he wouldn't have made the comment he did a few days later.
We have radios in our trucks so we can have some entertainment while driving around the faciility. I usually listen to P2 since it plays classical music and jazz and other such good stuff. What with the noise in the storage facility the speaker's voice is difficult to make out while driving, so I didn't hear who wrote this particular piece of music, just that it was a double-concerto for flute and harp. Oh lovely, I think, I love harp. And while listening I recognized some harmonizations that reminded me an awful lot of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, so I was guessing the composer is Mozart. My colleague here was fairly impressed with how at home I was in this sort of music, and I told him I grew up with this sort of thing.
A few minutes later he came up to me (the only reason I can think of for him not to say it immediately is that he had to come up with it first) and said: "Perhaps I should drop the bomb now." Man, I was worried, was he gonna ask me out on a date? Was he gonna tell me he has the hots for me? I looked at him questioningly. "I was also Mozart." He stated. I laughed and said jokingly "Then perhaps you can tell me whether you wrote this concerto." We had a bit of a laugh at that. After the concerto had finished playing the speaker confirmed my suspicions; it was indeed Mozart.
I don't know whether this man thinks that if I'm into fantasy then psychic stuff must be the way to lure me in, or whether he's so unsure of himself that he has to rely on having been someone else in order to be able to impress me. Either way makes him a pathetic loser.
Further intel reports that a friend's sister met him at a party and he talked about this new young woman at his workplace whom he has the hots for, and since I'm the only young woman there. Well, doesn't take a genius to figure out what he be wanting. Said sister also reported the impression that "He's creepy!" Those were the words, and what with what he's told me now, about what an important person he has been several times in previous lives, most likely to compensate what an insignificant fellow he is in his current inarnation, I'm inclined to agree.
The sad thing is. He's a really friendly person. Not one of those macho types who have to emphasize their own presence all the time, he's slightly anonymous, it's easy to not even notice that he's there. And he's overall really companionable and I like working with him, and then he has to turn out to be crazy. Psychic, okay, that I can deal with. But come on. Judas, and King Tut, AND Mozart and others.... oh please. I'm not stupid. I mean... this makes him a total fucking nutjob.
And now. Going back in time to last weekend. Saturday to be exact. Pirate Party for the staff members at the school where I teach RP classes. I managed to throw together a pretty awesome costume if I do say so myself. The party started unusually early, but hey, they might have something planned. We arrived, all of us more or less pirated up, and while the cooks set up the indoors gas grill for roasting a whole pork we filed into an adjacent room for what was apparently a lecture. I thought: "Oh, neat. A lecture about pirates, a nifty idea to start off the party with." But oh how wrong I was. We all sat there ready to party like it was 1748 dressed up as scallywags, ready to drink rum and shout obscenities at the imaginary offenders who might want to prevent us from being pirates.
And the lecturer? A man in his late 50s I'd say, perhaps in his 60s. The headmistress had heard his lectures before and had enjoyed them very much, it was her idea to bring him here. I think his main theme was communication, how we communicate and how we avoid it while still pretending to. It might have been relevant if it had been serious, it might have been funny if it had been... well... funny. The problem was, this man tried to be both. And while alternating between wannabe-witty and wannabe-wise he was all the time being incredibly sexist.
I was furious. For some reason his points always circled back to women. And his scentific evidence? None. I quote: "Now, I don't know women in general but I know my wife/mother/mother-in-law, and she...". I can use anecdotal evidence for exactly shit. The best one was when he recalled from his childhood how on Sundays after Sunday dinner his father and the children would sit around in the living room, while his mother would be doing the dishes - always being noisy ith those dishes, so noisy in fact that sometimes the father said to the children "I wonder what's wrong out there..." but not a word about actually checking. Then this particular Sunday the nise stops and his mother enters the room and finally voices her problem. It is unfair that she has to stand out there all alone and do the dishes. His father readily agrees. "Why of course it is, no one's asking you to, we'd rather have you with us in here!" And then there's that whole self-satisfaction as if these were the wisest and wittiest words ever. Yeah, so the woman will have enjoyed this Sunday with them and postponed doing the dishes. Bt guess who will hav to do said dishes when it's much later and the food has fossilized and is twice as hard to get off? Her! Alone! He didn't say it, but it was so obvious.
And all the bullshit about how women are fussing about decorations, because his wife is, and how mothers want to ruin everyone's nice homes with their children's horrible creations ecause his daughter is like that (now who's the one fussing about decorations?), how women are this and how women are that. He works as a counsellor for companies who need help with sorting communication problems between their employees, and all the examples he drew from this work were about girls. Note I very clearly quote girls. He described that he came to this firm where 20 girls worked and they needed his help with communication problems. Might I just point out that girls are female humans under the age of 18? I think he meant women, but he consistently said girls in these examples.
And these 20 "girls" needed his help wth communicating, and he said he felt all lost because he didn't know much about that, he's a psychologist. So when he showed up and asked what the problem was they explained they were very upset. And he said that that made him very happy because then he could help them. His solution: he sent them all home to cheer up - I figure he tried to joke about it here. I sincerely hope no company him money for it if he did what he said he did.
Oh yeah, and he disliked children and young people too. Because young people don't know anything. Well, they may know something but they have no experiene. And he kept going along those lines. By the time we got to the break I was so furious I very nearly left the establishment. Here is this man who seems to have a sort of homoerotic relationship with his telescopic pointer - yup it started pen-size and extended to 2 ft or somesuch - and the way he was fiddling with it all the time through the lecture it gave me clear images of something decidedly erotic. Judging from his gestures, and his references to his home-life, I'd say he's still in the closet. Goodness knows that it would explain a lot of the domestic issues he kept referring to. And this outrageously offensive most likely closet homosexual spent alost two hours consistently degrading, insulting and blaming women (and to some degree young people) for everything.
I think it was supposed to be funny. But there was no point. No punchline. A few of the teachers seemed to enjoy themselves, but at least half were just annoyed. That lecture was such a party-pooper. I didn't go back inside after the break, I was simply too angry, thankfully one of the other teachers felt the same so we had ourselves a good and proper rant about the git in the next room. He (the teacher) had some pretty good observations about the git as well, so we managed to vent and get over it.
And we were totally in party-mood again by the time the actual festivites started. Eating pork with our fingers and pretending to shoot each other with our toy flint-lock pistols. Singing pirate songs. And as is tradition: The new teachers must be initiated. Every year we have an initiation that goes with the theme of the party. Last time was a medeval party and the new teachers were 'knighted' to be Knights of our School, this year they were given a pirate name and had to walk the plank. Much hilarity ensued. Especially as the initiated filed into the room, blindfolded and with a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them. My RP teacher colleague and I immediately saw the resemblence and intoned Hoist the Colours from PotC At World's End. That was so awesome. And after an entire night of yelling ARRRRR way too much it took me three days to regain some semblance of my normal voice. That bit was rather awful, but what can I say? When I party, I party hard, and when I go to a costume party I tend to role-play my costume. I'm weird like that.
But damn it was fun. And thus the post ended on a more cheerful note.
But this year we did. Major YAY! We're in! This is perhaps the most influential and prestigious RP Con in Denmark, the Con where diceless and systemless RP is considered an art, the Con where new genres are invented every year. So, being role-players and quite heavy on the enthusiasm we're excited and all worked up about it. Very much looking forward to presenting the complete and well worked-through scenario.
Yeah we're weird, but we enjoy it. Just like we enjoyed dressing up for the Pirate Costume Party on Saturday. And rum doesn't make a person less weird, I might add.
Progressing over the past two weeks at work something rather... peculiar has revealed itself to me. The man I'm often teamed with for picking started flirting with me. Nothing wrong there, that's not peculiar in and of itself. No, the thing he decided to reveal about himself, now that's peculiar. Or perhaps more bluntly stated: crazy.
Taking breaks once in a while we chat about this and that of course. And I mentioned that I'm quite into fantasy. He's not, and for some reason this topic led him to divulge that he's a psychic.
"Uhhh okay..."
Now, I will not go so far as to say that I'm sure what's true and what's not. I don't believe in god, in a creator, in an ultimate being, but I do believe there are many things in and of this world that we humans don't always see and much less understand. I have experienced certain things myself that have convinced me that there is indeed more between heaven and earth... as they say. But I draw no conclusions, and I listen to all statements and stories concerning such things with a healthy dose of scepticism, there are so many frauds when it comes to exactly these things.
So the man tells me he's a psychic. My first thought is whether he's just trying to impress me by making up a story that might appeal to a fantasy reader, or whether he's trying to impress me with something he truly believes about himself - or whether he's just being frank, but I find this latter option to be rather unlikely. I've no idea why he was telling me this, liking fantasy books normally does not lead me to discuss the supernatural in our own world.
My second thought was whether to be openly sceptic or whether to play along and show interest and see how far he'll take the story. I opted for the latter, it might turn out to be amusing after all. And oh boy, was I right.
This man is completely and utterly off his rocker. Yes, I'm willing to believe that some people are psychic, but when you hear this, you'll see why I'm more inclined to laugh at this one.
Oh yes, he started talking, and once I had shown interest and hadn't laughed him off the floodgates opened. Oh yeah, he can talk to those on the other side, he's been out to cleanse houses and the like. Ayup. And I was doing the whole "Ohh, I see. Aha. Yeah? Hmmm." And when he's out cleansing houses he's usually successful, as he says, because on his side he has The Messiah and for extra back-up 8 world leaders - though he mentioned no names.
I raised my eyebrows at this and commented that that sounded like a pretty bloody efficient team. He agreed and confirmed that if his allies here couldn't handle it, it was Evil itself (obviously meaning Satan). I made sure to nod in understanding. What he said made perfect sense, but his all too quick divulgement of his alliance with Messiah had me suspicious. The suspicion did not fade at all when he told me that he and Messiah were really close. He had, in fact, been Judas in an earlier life and the Bible had been edited so heavily that the part of Judas was so twisted that it was almost unrecognizable. Yeah, I'd heard that before. Oh yeah, he'd been Judas alright, sometimes he had problems with his neck and hands and feet.
And there I went thinking "Uhm, yeah, Judas hung himself, so I see the neck-problem right there, but hands and feet? It was Jesus who was crucified, you dolt, not Judas/you."
Ahem. He continued with the reincarnation stuff. I threw in the comment that I had a friend who was positive that he'd been Jack the Ripper in a previous life to which I commented "Yeah, he and 800 others." And my colleague here smiled and agreed with my disbelief and explained that types like that - Jack the Ripper, that is, not my friend - don't come back. They receive their punishment never to return.
And to get back on more interesting topics, such as himself and his merits that might impress me, he said he'd also been a boy king. I dryly remarked that there'd been quite a few. Which one of them was he referring to? In Egypt, King Tut. THE King Tut. I managed to prevent my eyebrows from disappearing beyond my hairline, this was getting real good, oh yes. Yeah, as he said, he never should've gotten off that horse. That's what got him killed. And here I was laughing inside. King Tut was from Egypt, you dolt, he didn't ride the horse, he would've been in a chariot.
He mentioned a few other people he'd been that I no longer remember, I just rememer thinking. Oh wow... does he really think I'll believe all this shit? But I think he does. Because if he didn't, he wouldn't have made the comment he did a few days later.
We have radios in our trucks so we can have some entertainment while driving around the faciility. I usually listen to P2 since it plays classical music and jazz and other such good stuff. What with the noise in the storage facility the speaker's voice is difficult to make out while driving, so I didn't hear who wrote this particular piece of music, just that it was a double-concerto for flute and harp. Oh lovely, I think, I love harp. And while listening I recognized some harmonizations that reminded me an awful lot of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, so I was guessing the composer is Mozart. My colleague here was fairly impressed with how at home I was in this sort of music, and I told him I grew up with this sort of thing.
A few minutes later he came up to me (the only reason I can think of for him not to say it immediately is that he had to come up with it first) and said: "Perhaps I should drop the bomb now." Man, I was worried, was he gonna ask me out on a date? Was he gonna tell me he has the hots for me? I looked at him questioningly. "I was also Mozart." He stated. I laughed and said jokingly "Then perhaps you can tell me whether you wrote this concerto." We had a bit of a laugh at that. After the concerto had finished playing the speaker confirmed my suspicions; it was indeed Mozart.
I don't know whether this man thinks that if I'm into fantasy then psychic stuff must be the way to lure me in, or whether he's so unsure of himself that he has to rely on having been someone else in order to be able to impress me. Either way makes him a pathetic loser.
Further intel reports that a friend's sister met him at a party and he talked about this new young woman at his workplace whom he has the hots for, and since I'm the only young woman there. Well, doesn't take a genius to figure out what he be wanting. Said sister also reported the impression that "He's creepy!" Those were the words, and what with what he's told me now, about what an important person he has been several times in previous lives, most likely to compensate what an insignificant fellow he is in his current inarnation, I'm inclined to agree.
The sad thing is. He's a really friendly person. Not one of those macho types who have to emphasize their own presence all the time, he's slightly anonymous, it's easy to not even notice that he's there. And he's overall really companionable and I like working with him, and then he has to turn out to be crazy. Psychic, okay, that I can deal with. But come on. Judas, and King Tut, AND Mozart and others.... oh please. I'm not stupid. I mean... this makes him a total fucking nutjob.
And now. Going back in time to last weekend. Saturday to be exact. Pirate Party for the staff members at the school where I teach RP classes. I managed to throw together a pretty awesome costume if I do say so myself. The party started unusually early, but hey, they might have something planned. We arrived, all of us more or less pirated up, and while the cooks set up the indoors gas grill for roasting a whole pork we filed into an adjacent room for what was apparently a lecture. I thought: "Oh, neat. A lecture about pirates, a nifty idea to start off the party with." But oh how wrong I was. We all sat there ready to party like it was 1748 dressed up as scallywags, ready to drink rum and shout obscenities at the imaginary offenders who might want to prevent us from being pirates.
And the lecturer? A man in his late 50s I'd say, perhaps in his 60s. The headmistress had heard his lectures before and had enjoyed them very much, it was her idea to bring him here. I think his main theme was communication, how we communicate and how we avoid it while still pretending to. It might have been relevant if it had been serious, it might have been funny if it had been... well... funny. The problem was, this man tried to be both. And while alternating between wannabe-witty and wannabe-wise he was all the time being incredibly sexist.
I was furious. For some reason his points always circled back to women. And his scentific evidence? None. I quote: "Now, I don't know women in general but I know my wife/mother/mother-in-law, and she...". I can use anecdotal evidence for exactly shit. The best one was when he recalled from his childhood how on Sundays after Sunday dinner his father and the children would sit around in the living room, while his mother would be doing the dishes - always being noisy ith those dishes, so noisy in fact that sometimes the father said to the children "I wonder what's wrong out there..." but not a word about actually checking. Then this particular Sunday the nise stops and his mother enters the room and finally voices her problem. It is unfair that she has to stand out there all alone and do the dishes. His father readily agrees. "Why of course it is, no one's asking you to, we'd rather have you with us in here!" And then there's that whole self-satisfaction as if these were the wisest and wittiest words ever. Yeah, so the woman will have enjoyed this Sunday with them and postponed doing the dishes. Bt guess who will hav to do said dishes when it's much later and the food has fossilized and is twice as hard to get off? Her! Alone! He didn't say it, but it was so obvious.
And all the bullshit about how women are fussing about decorations, because his wife is, and how mothers want to ruin everyone's nice homes with their children's horrible creations ecause his daughter is like that (now who's the one fussing about decorations?), how women are this and how women are that. He works as a counsellor for companies who need help with sorting communication problems between their employees, and all the examples he drew from this work were about girls. Note I very clearly quote girls. He described that he came to this firm where 20 girls worked and they needed his help with communication problems. Might I just point out that girls are female humans under the age of 18? I think he meant women, but he consistently said girls in these examples.
And these 20 "girls" needed his help wth communicating, and he said he felt all lost because he didn't know much about that, he's a psychologist. So when he showed up and asked what the problem was they explained they were very upset. And he said that that made him very happy because then he could help them. His solution: he sent them all home to cheer up - I figure he tried to joke about it here. I sincerely hope no company him money for it if he did what he said he did.
Oh yeah, and he disliked children and young people too. Because young people don't know anything. Well, they may know something but they have no experiene. And he kept going along those lines. By the time we got to the break I was so furious I very nearly left the establishment. Here is this man who seems to have a sort of homoerotic relationship with his telescopic pointer - yup it started pen-size and extended to 2 ft or somesuch - and the way he was fiddling with it all the time through the lecture it gave me clear images of something decidedly erotic. Judging from his gestures, and his references to his home-life, I'd say he's still in the closet. Goodness knows that it would explain a lot of the domestic issues he kept referring to. And this outrageously offensive most likely closet homosexual spent alost two hours consistently degrading, insulting and blaming women (and to some degree young people) for everything.
I think it was supposed to be funny. But there was no point. No punchline. A few of the teachers seemed to enjoy themselves, but at least half were just annoyed. That lecture was such a party-pooper. I didn't go back inside after the break, I was simply too angry, thankfully one of the other teachers felt the same so we had ourselves a good and proper rant about the git in the next room. He (the teacher) had some pretty good observations about the git as well, so we managed to vent and get over it.
And we were totally in party-mood again by the time the actual festivites started. Eating pork with our fingers and pretending to shoot each other with our toy flint-lock pistols. Singing pirate songs. And as is tradition: The new teachers must be initiated. Every year we have an initiation that goes with the theme of the party. Last time was a medeval party and the new teachers were 'knighted' to be Knights of our School, this year they were given a pirate name and had to walk the plank. Much hilarity ensued. Especially as the initiated filed into the room, blindfolded and with a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them. My RP teacher colleague and I immediately saw the resemblence and intoned Hoist the Colours from PotC At World's End. That was so awesome. And after an entire night of yelling ARRRRR way too much it took me three days to regain some semblance of my normal voice. That bit was rather awful, but what can I say? When I party, I party hard, and when I go to a costume party I tend to role-play my costume. I'm weird like that.
But damn it was fun. And thus the post ended on a more cheerful note.