Well, the reports I have been receiving about the collapse and demise of the nauseous and diseased Academy for Psychic Studies were a bit premature.
That's right. I said premature.
I got inaccurate information about the state of the Academy's health. As you know, I heard there was only the two fat guys left. Whether that was a deliberate attempt to obfuscate or conceal the true nature of the Academy's status or if that was just another example of how, at the Academy for Psychic Studies, gossip is taken as fact and wishful thinking is taken as reality is anyone's guess at this point.
However, that the information was incorrect and that I had incurred false hope and unwarranted celebration is a situation I cannot abide. There's no excuse. I relied on the unreliable and paid the price.
Don't ask me to name my sources. I won't talk about them. This error is my fault and mine alone. That's not what you would hear from the SRF leaders, nor would you hear that from a current follower. You'd never here this either: I apologize for any problems my inaccuracy has incurred. I'll fight harder than a heavyweight champ to protect free speech and the truth. There's no purpose to fight for inaccurate information.
The Academy is not dead.
The fact remains, there is an Academy for Psychic Studies/Spiritual Rights Foundation. It is alive (although a shadow of its former self). So while the Spiritual Rights Foundation lives today, we may see the day where time has taken its toll, vital and youthful prospects are uninspired to join and the geriatric followers are too frail to continue.
That day isn't today.
Take a look at the Academy for Psychic Studies' website. At long last, there is a staff page displaying the Witches of Ellsworth, their super-sized sycophant and their remaining weary followers - 5 followers in total, 8 when you add the Witches and their whipping boy. I guess one reason for it is that there are so few people remaining at this psychic sewage treatment plant their names and faces will conveniently fit on one page. Another reason is that someone, somewhere, decided to advise the Witches of Ellsworth Street to allow their faces to be shown to the public. I think the Witches agreed but only if the remaining staff members of the Academy posted their faces so as to provide human shields and alternate targets for the tomatoes that will come their way.
It's not just that the Witches of Ellsworth are pictured, so are all the rest. Of course, that's pretty much everyone involved with this failing, miserable collection of debris.
When you peruse that page and view those faces, you might notice something: every one of them are of late middle-age and older.
Now, does the staff member's age denote the maturity and wisdom that comes from (I'll just call it) experience?
Maybe these staff members are indeed the cream of the perverted Academy's crop?
I say they are the staff members who are too damn crazy, tired or afraid to leave. Maybe all three.
Take a look for yourself. Closely scrutinize their faces and especially their eyes. One is photographed in profile for reasons that will become obvious. Others have that wild look in their eyes. Some seem to be making an effort different from that of a natural smile (which, it just struck me, would need no effort).
It's contrived. It's forced. It's the representation of those who are compelled to serve with a happy heart and a sense of purpose that serves no one but the two Witches at the top.
What is sad and infuriating at the same time is that the remaining flat-liners aren't infused with a sense of public service (and those of you who know these people have seen that first-hand), nor are they sufficiently introspective to sit down and think about what in the hell they are really doing and what the FUCK they are actually getting out of all of this unadulterated bullshit.
As the indoctrination at the Academy for Psychic Studies is that the followers are receiving benefit, healing and self-awareness every time they perform a psychotic reading, teach a class on spiritual psychotic technique, do any kind of unpaid work for the Witches (actually ALL work for the Witches is unpaid) or give the Witches a substantial cut of their meager earnings, I suppose those delusional followers really do believe they are doing well for themselves and good for the world.
They would have to. If they ever learned the truth, they would drop as dead as SRF's psychotic founder.
Revelation of the truth is pretty much what killed Bill Duby. So, I guess it would do likewise to his followers.
No matter what the remaining followers believe and no matter that they conduct themselves with the kind of psychotic zeal that would bring them favor with, I guess no one (because only cash on the barrel impresses the Witches and no one else gives a fuck) they would have to admit the applicable psychotic homily in their situation would be "like attracts like".
So if the Academy for Psychic Studies needs to attract the young and energetic followers that propelled this demented and worthless organization into a brief but glittering heyday - well, why screw around: these old bastards with their stuck-in-the-70's states of mind, their long-ago-and-far-away tales reminiscent of the bullshit your dad and uncles spewed after a night of boozing (like my dad's tales of a 10 mile hike to and from school, uphill both ways, in the snow, in July, in California farm country) are quite likely to have the same effect on the young people this idiot cult needs to thrive as it had on you as a 12 year old rolling his eyes, sighing deeply and hoping the old fuckers will finish their story before you have to tell them you have to go dump a load of diarrhea before you explode all over them.
I would expect, judging from the Academy's own "like attracts like" philosophy, these old tellers of tall tales would attract those of their own ilk. The old and weary. The frail. Those on the verge of dementia.
Have any of the remaining staff members retained an inkling of relevance to the young and vital new members they desperately need? Yeah, I didn't think so.
That does bring up a question, though: if the remaining Academy staff members are hopelessly irrelevant to any generation besides their own, would that mean the Golden Child would be pressed into service so she may face the world as the psychotic heir of the dysfunctional cesspool her father created?
What, are you kidding?
If there is one value the Witches of Ellsworth Street is passing along to their next generation, it's work. The followers work. The Witches crack the whip.
Receiving the kind of the kind of indoctrination, psychotic patter and schizophrenic delusions that have come so easily to the Witches and their Warlock would take special effort to infuse into the Golden Child. As the Witches are immune from the infection called "work" and exhibiting effort is anathema to their tender sensibilities, there's not a chance they would make the effort and rigorous daily beatings we endured to indoctrinate their Golden Child. They wouldn't trust a lieutenant to do it either.
Regardless of indoctrination, that the Golden Child was raised behind the iron gate and only released under the close personal supervision of the Witches, the child's social skills and non-existent and interactions with the real world would make her presence in the public eye more of a liability than an advantage.
So, the one weapon the Witches might have had available is useless to attract the victims the Witches need and the people the Witches have remaining are useless as well.
What is driving these unfortunate staff members (well, most of them are unfortunate) to continue to provide slave labor as they march down the road of irrelevance?
It's an infection. The infection of delusion - the delusion there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the delusion they are more knowledgeable and holy than others and that someone, somewhere believes these followers of the Spiritual Rights Foundation are more than human.
They would have to believe. After one of Angela Silva's tirades about nothing more than she hasn't screamed at someone since yesterday and Robin Dumolin grabbing them from behind and reaching around to grab the change in their pocket, they would have to hang on to hope to survive.
