Yes. I'm 12.

The title of this post stems from the sniggering that happened when I saw the last name "Dick Johncox" today. I acknowledge my occasional forays into completely juvenile behavior. It keeps me young at heart. The actual rant stems from something different yet similar.

I went to a wedding last weekend, and my psychosomatic rabies acted up. Noises were too loud, it was too crowded, and I felt like I was going to start foaming at the mouth and biting people. I managed to bail after the ceremony and head to the hotel for some downtime. People eventually arrived at the hotel for the after-party, and I had occasion to pinpoint something else that annoys me.

Social chameleons, or people that attempt to be ingratiating. I wound up in conversations with both types of people more than once. My normal modus op is to beat a hasty retreat, because I'm not a nice person when I'm annoyed.

Social chameleons are defined by their copycatting of an expressed opinion, even if said opinion is contrary to one they've just given. "My favorite ice cream is vanilla!" "I like chocolate best." "Me too!" It's sometimes excusable as a nervous social reflex. Two people who don't know each other trying to make conversation to prevent an uncomfortable silence. Usually it's a person who is far too eager to please. I'm apparently intimidating. I'm intense, or so I'm told, and that unnerves people. That doesn't make it any less annoying to be confronted with someone who will agree with me no matter what I say. If the person doubles back on their own opinion too often, I begin testing their sense of humour by making outrageous statements. "I have this bad habit of licking toes. When people have bare feet around me, I usually grab their feet and lick their toes. Surprises the hell out of 'em." "Oh wow! You too?! I do that all the time!" .. uh huh. Thanks for playing.

The second aspect of this that annoys me is the common denominator ingratiating thing. Granted, also occasionally excusable, but generally annoying anyway. Where the other person knows something about me and uses this as the entire basis of their conversation. "You're a vegetarian? That's so cool! I will talk about vegetarian-oriented topics until you want to become a cannibal!" "You have cats? I have cats! I will now bore you to death talking about cats until your ears bleed!" The worst is when the person blurts out whatever it is they're talking about unprompted, just out of the blue. If I'm at a party, and everyone is talking about frogs, "I like blue shoes" will cause me to stop and stare blankly until my brain parses that information and tries to figure out what the hell blue shoes have to do with anything else involved in the situation. My "WTF" fu is strong, and I can convey that term in bold, italic, underlined, 24 pt font, all-caps.. with a glance. What's usually worse than the initial statement is the follow up explanation.. "I heard you always buy blue shoes." .. especially if the information is wrong. It's not nice to laugh at people, but right about there, I usually can't help myself.

Yet a third aspect is the Spanish Inquisition get-to-know-you-better encouraging questions and statements. "Why are you a vegetarian?" "I can't eat meat." "Well, I think that's a good thing, because it shows you care about animals!" .. "What made you choose to become pagan?" "I haven't found a definition for the Powers That Be that fits my own personal belief system." "Oh, it's so good to see young people questioning and learning!" This aspect has gotten bad enough that I try to derail it with completely off-the-wall answers. "Why'd you choose to become a vegetarian?" "Tortoises." "Oh..uh.. what?" "Tortoises. I like giant Galapagos tortoises. They're herbivores, and they lead a very peaceful sort of life. In trying to mode my life after the Way of the Galapagos Tortoise, I chose to stop eating meat to hopefully bring myself further into symbiosis with them." "Great.. uh.. gotta go!" "Why are you (insert thing here)?" "Have you ever noticed how the flavour of bread changes when it becomes toast? It's not just the texture, it's the entire taste..(find a way to bring this around to whatever they were asking me about. Usually after their eyes have glazed over.)"

I had someone come up to me after the wedding and cheerfully remark that I must've been wasted. Which isn't true, because I'm far too much of a control freak to get past the drunk-dial-your-cellphone-phonebook-list stage of tipsy. The basis for drunk determination stemmed from the way I kept twisting the conversations of the two people who were being social post-its that night. I noted that there had been two choices: make it amusing or hide under a table and scream.

The table wasn't really an option. Have you seen what lurks on the bottom of rental-buffet tables? Ugh.
-P

"Do you know me?"

This morning while on the bus to work, we stopped at a red light. There was a man walking on the sidewalk with a very woebegone expression. I watched him, trying to imagine a better day for him. He happened to look up while I was watching him, so I offered him a cheerful smile and a wave. He smiled back and waved, and when the bus drove away, he was still smiling.

The lady sitting next to me gave me a look and asked if I knew that man. I said no. She asked why I'd waved to him. I replied that I'd waved because he looked sad. She proceeded to lecture me on how 'you shouldn't do that' because 'it's not safe to do things like that at strangers'.

What a miserable and lonely place the world would be if strangers never made eye contact, or smiled, or waved, or introduced themselves.

My two-headed alien love child

I love horror movies. Everything from spine-tingling psychological freakouts and nightmare-inducing gorefests to bad movies about demonic puppets or flesh eating diseases. I own every Troma title commercially available on DVD. Admittedly - that's for two reasons.

1. I loves me the cheesy, wacky, OH NO THEY DIDN'T!, horror movies.
2. Lloyd Kaufman - He's rabidly pro-independent. Yay! I support Troma to do my bit to make sure they stay in business. I not so secretly want to watch Troma take over the world. Toxie for Prez!

My dirty dark secret, that isn't really a dirty dark secret from anyone who actually knows me, is: I come up with and write really bad horror movie scripts. I don't go for good, intellectual, bowel-moving horror.. I go for the dark humour aspect, because those are the movies I like best. Movies like Shaun of the Dead, Night of the Creeps (Looky! A Romero!), Dead Alive (Peter Jackson before he started taking himself seriously).

"Horrorble" movies. The reason this isn't a secret to people who know me is that I dragoon them into being painted with liquid latex, fake blood, flour paste, tattered clothing, and smiling pretty for my very old and battered camcorder. The results are awful, corny, cheesy, over the top.. and exactly what I was aiming for. I don't subject other people to these movies, although if I ever convince myself to buy a digital camcorder that will change.

I'm lucky. My friends either share my love for outrageous horror movies, or are good natured enough to let me dragoon them into filming something that would be very embarassing if they ever ran for office. (But hey, considering who we've had in office before.. or now.. I figure it's not so bad.) Without my friends, I'd probably still write the scripts, but I'd never do anything about them. Without the people around me, without their sense of fun or willingness to jump both feet into whatever crazy thing I've written and want to film.. I would never want to do this. Because the answer to "why" is "it's fun!"

I was thinking about that this morning, and how much I appreciate the support of the wacky buggers I am lucky to call 'friends'. I also had a vague correlation between movies I enjoy watching - where the cast and crew apparently had a really good time, and movies I think are good but not fun - where you can tell everyone worked their ass off but the stress conveys itself onto the film. I'm usually vindicated by blooper reels or outtakes.

My train of thought has now derailed, so I'm ending this post. I may or may not pick it back up later.

Fandom = wank

{Doh! This was originally written 11/30/05 and saved as a draft instead of posted.}

I had an experience yesterday I would much rather have been without. I was in a chat window with some people, idling while doing 20,000 other things at once, and when I clicked back to the window, the chat were talking about someone I know. They didn't know I knew this person. I was so surprised to see my old comrade's name in a completely new medium that I smiled and watched, intending to jump in and chirp about the small-world effect. The smile faded, because what some of the people were saying wasn't very nice. Or fair. Most of it was second-hand crap they'd supposedly heard from other people. Names were dropping left and right and all sorts of "fandom" acronyms being passed to the point where I almost couldn't read the conversation.

I didn't really know what they were talking about. I'm fandom-free. I'd even go so far as to say I'm anti-fandom of pretty much any kind. Because fans can be scary. - please note, to understand that link, you'll need to check out what that blog is about. I'm not going into the back story of it other than to say some crazyrabid fans really fucked life up for a whole lot of people in their obsession quest to meet their fandombait.

I used to go to a lot of Scifi/Fantasy/Movie cons.. because I'm a geek and I freely admit that. I stopped going because the people began to creep me out. More and more of the "fans" I encountered were completely obsessive. I also noticed a really nasty trend of defensiveness amongst the "fans" - gods help you if you didn't worship their Flavour of the Week Fandom, because they would turn nasty in a second. They were.. ugly. Not all of them - there were still a lot of really nice people out there, but .. more and more of the ones I encountered were truly horrific specimens that I wanted nothing to do with. The ones who would obsessively talk about their favorite "fanon" or "OTP" or, worse, the scads of "fanfic" they'd written or read. (I have a whole 'nother rant to go on about how I feel about 'fanfic' but that's for another day.) There was also a lot of actor/author bashing going on amongst the "fans" and that bothered me. People would get into fandom wars that devolved into horrible mudslinging matches with absolutely hateful things being thrown back and forth, words meant to wound. The whole attitude made me uncomfortable, so I removed myself from the medium.

To return to why I just bored you with all that - the person being talked about is apparently widely known throughout several fandoms for sharing less than contemporary views. The people in the chat were talking about this person in a fairly derogatory manner, and said things which immediately let me know they absolutely did not know the person they were talking about. Because, you see, I do know this person. Haven't talked to them in awhile, but this person is not likely to open their mouth without evidence to back their words up. This person's views aren't mainstream, they aren't popular, and they're controversial as hell - but regardless of what I think of the theories - the person promoting them has reason to think them and promote them, because they wouldn't do it without valid, verifiable reason. I watched that get completely disregarded by the people in the chat who flat out didn't want to even acknowledge that the person MIGHT be right, because it would upset their entire rose-tinted view of actors in their fandom. I watched them bash on this person and tear down the person's point of view for no other reason than to blatantly defend their idea of their fandom. They were spiteful, hateful, hurtful, and horrible, and it made me feel ill to even read it.

I sat there and watched it, and didn't jump in, because at first I didn't really understand, and by the time I did, I was too angry. It gave me a good idea of who to watch out for, because anyone rabid enough about their fandom that they go out of their way to be hateful to anyone else about it is right up there at the top of my list of people I don't want to associate with. It also validated my desire to stay far outside of fandom as a social institution. It made me feel very bad for my comrade, that they were the target of so much hate. The horrible part is knowing that I couldn't defend them - even if I'd tried, the people being awful wouldn't have stopped and probably just would've gotten worse, and it would've been all over their website today as more ammunition to hurt my comrade. So I watched and took notes on who to avoid. I could've been nasty and hateful back, and verbally cut the antagonistic little brats to shreds and sent them crying home to mommy.. but that would've sunk me to their level and I refuse to go there. It would also have served no purpose. It wouldn't have changed their opinion or opened their minds.

It's odd, in a way. This blog began as an offshoot of my rants on the Horde, but up until now, none of my rants have really been about those types of "fans".

The Horde - for the few of you googling - is not the Great Dark Horde - it stands for 'Wide eyed galloping horde'. The kind of people who obsess over an actor based on either looks or the presumption that the actor is anything like a character they've portrayed. Imagine a group of people standing around, chatting. You mention The Latest, Greatest Movie, because you've just seen it and want to know if anyone else has. The person who jumps at you and begins gushing about an actor and how hot/cute/sexy they are and won't shut up about it, carrying on about the actor's entire filmography and their favourite moments of each movie? That's a Horde member. My best example of a Horde moment - I encountered one girl going psychotic over Ian McKellan. I nodded, smiled, and wished her luck. She began screaming at me that she would 'get him', they were 'meant to be together' and how 'everyone says he's gay but they're wrong, I know he's not!' Sir Ian, btw, is homosexual and has been public about it for years. At that point, I began backing away slowly. More recently, it's been Nathan Fillion. It seems to have escaped quite a few people that Mal Reynolds is a fictional character. I've had discussions about his demeanor and it makes me boggle - have these people seen the outtakes, or the gag reels? Or, have they missed the picture of him in a skirt?

I can't wait until Slither comes out.