Tales of the Occult - My Encounter with Teenage Witchcraft

To break from the happy happy joyful funtime that is this blog, I have decided to spend a week telling stories of the deranged and disturbed. That’s right, this week is Tales of the Occult here on this blog. Each story of the occult will SHOCK and TERRORIZE if it doesn’t totally BLOW YOUR MIND!

Today’s story – MORE Witchcraft!

I managed a video store when the movie The Craft came out. For those of you who have not seen the film, it was made by and for pierce-me-up teenage goth girls who wear black lipstick and leather and practice witchcraft.


Frankly, these people baffle me because I get them mixed up with all the different fashionable special interest groups. For some reason, I link teenage witches with groups like PETA, which believes that no animal should be harmed ever under any circumstances. This would seem contradictory to someone who worships pagan gods – gods that regularly demanded the blood sacrifice of animals. But I am not one to judge.

I also associate teenage goths with people who regularly glorify the so-spiritual-and-tuned-to-the-land-that-they-were-contacted-by-aliens Native American cultures - cultures that routinely kept women away from such “male-only” activities like reading. The fact that black-lipsticked suburban girls worshipped a culture that would have made them do nothing but plow a field and bear children may seem strange and ridiculous, but it takes all types.

Anyway, back to the video store. When the movie The Craft came out, flocks of teenage girls would come to the video store, pick the tape of the shelf, and gently caress it, cooing words like, “It is so real. So true.”

So I decided to watch the movie. Big mistake on my part.


For those of you who haven’t seen The Craft, it is about teenage witches who prance around and do spells and stuff together. They worship a being called Mamon who they describe as “the football field that God and the Devil play on.” This means they worship Astroturf. They have parties where instead of doing their hair and nails together, they practice magic that does their hair and nails for them. One of them turns her hair blonde with the power of magic, which led me to hope that the next one would accidentally turn her hair pink and then summon the Teen Angel from Grease. The Teen Angel would sing a song and they would go back to high school after dropping out of the Hogwarts School of Beauty. Sadly this does not happen.


What does happen is that the most obviously insane person in the group asks their St. Mamon of Astroturf for all the powers of the universe. And Mamon gives her all of this power.


This is the point where the movie completely loses me, because I do not believe anyone should worship any being that is dumber than a box of rocks. Mamon may be all powerful as Astroturf and yadda yadda, but he is an exceedingly poor judge of character. In fact, I am quite sure all of the other pagan gods actively mock Mamon for being so stupid.

“You would probably give all of your power to Eddie Murphy so he can make more movies where he plays all of the characters, you are that dumb!” they would say. And all Mamon could do is put on heavy mascara and weep a little, so that the mascara would run all over his pale goth-like cheek.

Seriously, if there is a guy on the side of the road wearing a tinfoil hat and babbling on and on about “gamma rays from Venus,” would you give him first strike nuclear capabilities? Of course not, but this is exactly what Mamon does.


And the rest of the movie consists of the obviously crazy insane, but now all-powerful witch wreaking havoc while the other witches try to stop her. Or something like that. Maybe there is a prom and some sisterhood of magic traveling pants in there somewhere, I don’t know.

Anyway, after actually watching the movie I began to try to talk to these teenage goths in the store about what a waste of time the whole thing was. Their response was to hate me for it. They would cradle the little video tapes in their arms, protecting these tapes from the horrible horrible video store manager who watched the movie and thought it was stupid.

Maybe they cursed me. Maybe they cursed my video store. Maybe they even CURSED THIS BLOG! I will never know because I never saw them again.

Duh dah DAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

Your mind is blown. Your nerves are shocked and all of your senses are now terrorized! Join us next time for the final Tales of the Occult!

Tales of the Occult - My Encounter with a Wiccan

To break from the happy happy joyful funtime that is this blog, I have decided to spend a week telling stories of the deranged and disturbed. That’s right, this week is Tales of the Occult here on this blog. Each story of the occult will SHOCK and TERRORIZE if it doesn’t totally BLOW YOUR MIND!

Today’s story - encounters with a Wiccan!


One of the most important lessons I learned about managing a video store is this – No matter how brain dead you might find that person behind the counter to be, the manager turned away about fifty people who were way way worse.

I interviewed people all the time, and not very many of them had what you would call social skills. One such fellow applied for the incredibly important position of assistant manager trainee.

I began my speech, “The assistant manager trainee position is a very important position, not to be taken lightly. There is a lot of responsibility and hard work. It is an hourly wage, but can lead to a salaried position and a long-term career with our company.”

“I will need certain days off.”

“That is fine. We keep our schedules flexible. There has to be a manager on duty at all times. The store manager sets his or her hours first, then the assistant manager. The assistant manager trainee has to fill in all of the gaps, but the longer you work here the more we can accommodate your schedule.”

“It is for religious holidays.”


“That’s fine. What I usually ask when writing up the schedule is to give me at least two weeks notice and I will write your day off into the schedule. If you don’t give me two weeks notice, it will be up to you to get someone else to cover your shift. And potentially in your case, that someone should be either the manager or the assistant manager.”

“My holidays are based on cycles of the moon.”

“No problem. Just give me the two weeks notice when you need the days off. Now about the employee discount-“

“Don’t you want to know what my religion is?”

“Not really. That is your business. Now, about the employee discount-“

“I’m a Wiccan.”

“That’s nice. Now, part of the job is knowing movies so you can sell them to customers.”


“Do you know what it means to be a Wiccan?”

“No. We offer a decent benefits package with health and dental in it.”

“There are other words for what I do, but they have negative connotations.”

“Good to hear. We inventory our films by genre and then alphabetically within a specific genre.”

“I practice witchcraft.”

“Bully for you. We have the ability to special order films if they aren’t in stock.

“Doesn’t that scare you a little?”

“We get all types here. Now about our layaway program….”

Needless to say, magical WitchBoy did not get the job. Maybe he cursed me. Maybe he cursed my video store. Maybe he even CURSED THIS BLOG! I will never know because I never saw him again.


Duh dah DAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

Your mind is blown. Your nerves are shocked and all of your senses are now terrorized! Join us next time for more Tales of the Occult!


UPDATE!

I post this and then a news story hits the wires:

Wiccan Stabs Herself during Good Luck Ritual

Another Story from the Video Store

One of the interesting things about video stores is how people assume the people who work in the store have real connections to the entertainment industry.

And by real connections, I mean people think they can come and complain about contemporary films and somehow, the video store people will fix it.

Back when The Hunchback of Notre Dame was in theaters, one guy decided to come into the store to let us know exactly what was wrong with this film so we could magically command Disney to take it back and pretend it never happened.

"You don't understand!" he told me after 30 minutes of harassing my employees. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame is NOT a kid's story. It is a serious examination of French society and religious hypocrisy! It is SERIOUS LITERATURE! It does does not need talking gargoyles or musical numbers! It's disgusting what Disney is doing! Absolutely DISGUSTING!"

And to prove his point, he waved one of our Hunchback dolls for emphasis.

"You heard about Disney's next cartoon, haven't you?" I asked.

"What?"

"Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is this guy who can talk to the street rats. One rat gets on each shoulder and they sing a song about the nature of good and evil with one 'evil' rat whispering in one ear and a 'good' rat whispering in another. We're selling the T-shirts in about a month. It should be really exciting to see how they pull it off."

I am sad to report that we permanently lost a customer that day.