Seriously...

In response to "Are There Satanists on the Square?" published in the most recent issue of the Community Free Press as well as at jerichosjournal.blogspot.com, I wrote the following letter to the Community Free Press. I am reposting it here in the event it never sees print.

In re: "Are Satanists on the Square?"I am a Park Central Square "vampire." Some facts about the game for the uninitiated: The Georgia-based White Wolf publishing company is responsible for Vampire: The Masquerade, a role-playing game in which players take the role of vampires who are trying to hold onto their humanity while hiding from a superstitious and fearful humanity. The game was originally intended for tabletop play, much like TSR's Dungeons and Dragons, but rules were adapted by players and the publisher for live-action role-play. To clarify, live-action "vampires" like myself do not bite one another or endorse any physical contact of any kind between players. They use a set of rules to determine their characters' statistics, roll dice to resolve actions based on those statistics, and drink too much Dr. Pepper.

It's a morbid version of Strat-o-Matic Football (or basketball or hockey).

Unfortunately, like Dungeons and Dragons, V: tM has attracted players who were unable to seperate reality from fantasy and players who have not demonstrated the most maturity. There was a notable case in Florida where teenagers who identified themselves as players of V: tM were arrested for violent crimes. Another negative incident involved tetanus being spread because a player bit another.

The general public doesn't see these things in Springfield, not because there is a Satan-spawned conspiracy to cover them up, but because all of the players involved locally have the common sense to know that the content espoused in White Wolf's books is purely fictional. We do not meet at Park Central Square because of its history, and we have no interest in splashing through sewer water in the Springfield Underground. We meet there because it is a central location. We go and play our game in full view of the public, pick up after ourselves, and leave usually right before midnight, sometimes meeting at local diners to have a laugh and some food. Recently, the Park Central Square game relocated to an indoor location provided by one of the players. Not so we could conduct "wicked rites" in private, but so we would not get rained on.

Mr. Jericho would know none of this, however, because all of his information, as he himself has written has been given to him by "a source." If his source is anything more than his own spiritual fervor, it's second hand, and so being, is not beyond reproach. Mr. Jericho would rather make allegations about the moral character of people with whom he has never interviewed or even observed first hand than to pursue the truth.

I will not challenge Mr. Jericho to do anything. I will not demean myself by sinking to his level and casting stones (what does the Bible say about that, by the way? Oh, yeah! Don't do it, ye who is not without sin). I will, however, encourage parents and people who know players to thumb through the books at Barnes & Noble. One could even go to http://www.white-wolf.com/ to see the roots of this game. If you have concerns that the players are coercing your children into something you are not comfortable with it, do what parents should do in many aspects of their children's lives: check it out for yourself and talk to your children about it. Whatever. Just don't be a tool of hate. I don't care if you're an avid Jericho reader or not, if you assault me because you've been led to believe I am a devil worshipper, I am not going to level unholy powers against you. I'm going to call the police.

The secret ingredient is death

Before I go to work at the oppressive citadel of customer service, I peer into my mail box, hopeful I will find a post regretfully informing me of the passing of a beloved, wealthy aunt or uncle who I had never met, but continuing on to tell me how I was their favorite nephew (despite circumstance having kept us from ever meeting) and how they had left me the bulk of their considerable wealth. Today, though, all I had were bills, the newest issue of a magazine I subscribe to, and some recipe cards.

I do not cook very often. Generally, I go into my kitchen long enough to pour a glass of milk. Still, I didn't immediately discard the recipe cards because I thought that they might come in handy some day when, in an attempt to fool some lovely thing into thinking I can cook, I might whip up a chocolate cake with my magical, non-existent cullinary powers. I looked through the cards, imagining sexual conquests through food preparation.

Until I saw creamy fettuccine alfredo.

The preparation and the ingredients involved seems normal enough, but then I glanced down at calories per serving. 1, 467! Jesus Christ! I could give a newborn congestive heart failure in one meal! And under the caption "Great Ideas," the recipe card's authors also suggest stirring in crisp bacon to create "a more hearty, robust dish." Oh, sure! Let's add a can of lard on top of that just to be sure that my arteries clog in one loving spoonful!

It wasn't bad enough that Martha Stewart was after my wallet. Now the people peddling recipe cards through the mail want my life.

Siege

The cat pees everywhere but in her litterbox. I clean the thing daily, digging in the expensive odor control litter like I'm prospecting for gold. She only craps in the litterbox, so I suppose I should count my blessings. It is hard to consider the positive, though, when I am crossing the living room to step outside onto the front porch to check the mail and suddenly, the stench of cat piss hits me in the nostrils like a double-barrelled shotgun blast of yuck. The real tragedy is my golden-hued couch. I can smell that evil has leaked out of my cat, but I can't see it. There are no adjectives to describe my frustration when, half-asleep and oblivious to all sensory input, I just plop down onto the couch and squarely into a warm, wet spot.

If only I had been a dog person...

It's Saturday, which means that I am not contributing to the financial well-being of the call center today. It does mean that I was able to sleep in. Sleeping in has become my new guilty pleasure. Marines accomplish more before 7 AM than I do all day? Bless 'em, but I can get quite a bit done in my sleep. I think I dreamed about work last night; my nocturnal fantasies start to get hazy after the second cup of coffee. Anyway, in my dream, I was Magneto from the X-Men, but not the ready-to-retire-to-a-cottage-on-a-English-countryside Gandalf-looking Magneto from the movies, but the physically-fit underwear model in the comics (which seems extraordinarily realistic since Magneto was around in WWII). Magneto-me went inside the call center and generated an Electro-Magnetic Pulse. The computers throughout the building went dead. The phones went dead. The vehicles in the parking lot went dead. Everything electronic in the building dead dead dead. Being the source of the telecommunications service for the southwestern corner of the state in which I live, there would be several thousand customers suddenly without service. No technicians could roll to get the service back up. Dispatch would be unable to open new work orders for them to act upon anyway, and the customer service call center for a tri-state area would be completely non-functional for any of those states let alone the mob of torch-carrying villagers now without service gathering in the parking lot to prepare to storm the call center.

I woke up before the first attack. I always wake up before the good stuff happens. I'm always snatched from the grip of nightmare by someone down the street honking their carhorn for their spouse to hurry up, they're going to be late from work, and erotic dreams are invariably given a figurative cold shower because of the neighbor fixing his hot water heater. Today, it was the smell of cat pee. The strong, acrid scent was in my nostrils as I hauled my bulk outta bed.

I don't need an alarm clock; I just give her fresh water before I go to bed.

I'll bet Gandhi had a flask for days like this...

Until today, I worked Monday through Friday from 2:45 in the afternoon until 11:45 PM. No reality television for me, which is fine since I don't care which struggling actor or ambiguously gay elementary teacher gets voted out of the leper colony. Once, I got lucky and made it to the midnight premiere of a movie I had been looking forward to. I think I even got there in time for the coming attractions. By the time I got out of work on Friday nights, the band at the corner bar was packing away their instruments and all of the cute girls had already paired off with the date rapists.

Until today.

Monday, I start 1:30 to 10:30 PM. Still no reality television, which is still fine, but now I can take in a late movie or catch some good live music at the local bar. Until I clock out tonight, though, I'm taking calls for the somethingth-largest telecommunications corporation in the United States. If one wants to see the worst in humanity, this is the job to apply for. In one ear, I have customers lying to me, throwing every colorful metaphor in the book (which is published by Random House, I think) at me to describe my sex life and my mother, and even going so far as to threaten me. Apparently, they don't realize I'm looking at their account information as they are allowing their mouths to excrete this insurmountable amount of shit. In the other ear, I am hearing a supervisor remind the call center that customer services representatives who transfer customers to supervisors will be fed to ravenous skinheads. I didn't need the extra incentive not to dump the pissed-off, vaguely racist white trash mom into my supervisor's voicemail. I try to resolve their problems. Not out of any sense of altruism, mind you, but because I don't want her calling back and possibly collapsing a Doral cigarette-blackened lung to yell at me twice as loudly. I couldn't live with that on my conscience.

If I were more industrious, I'd sneak in a flask and share it with the janitors. They are the only people in the whole building making an honest living. I've got aspirations of being published as a writer, so I am well-suited towards obfuscating the truth from the public, who might be dissuaded from contributing to my commission by our competitor's advertisements. It's a living. I'd much rather languish here in obscurity than live high on the hog off of the sweat and blood of others, like so many aspire to. I have been here for a few years, and I can see the bloodlust in some of the new hires' eyes. They'd cut my throat and bathe in my blood for a chance to be middle management. Bloody savages! I will fight them off and thwart their efforts to become the next big thing by remaing complacent in my low level customer service job. Sure, some will pass me by, but others, not understanding that I'm not applying for management positions, will not even put their own names in the hat because they think I will beat them out.

Ha! The janitors and I drink to your misery, prep school graduates.