You Know You're in the World of Darkness When...

(from alt.games.whitewolf)

every other car that turns the corner is a new sports car with some bad-ass behind the wheel.
that same bad-ass rams that new sports car into the side of a building because he botched his damn roll.
lightning does occasionally strike on a clear night.
a city block is destroyed because a 'gas main' blew.
that same city block is completely repaired the next week.
you're the only one in a club because every other person has Obfuscate and is using it and you don't.
every person you meet on the street is a Mage, Werewolf, or Vampire pretending to be human.
you have ever heard "OK, I am going to jump of the roof and right before I hit the ground I'm going to Earth Meld."
there are over thirteen Vampire Clans fighting to secretly control humanity.
there are a bunch of mages, casting spells and fighting the Technocracy, who also happens to be secretly controlling humanity.
shapechangers are fighting the Wyrm controlled Pentex Corporation - who also, coincidentally, secretly controls humanity.
there are wraiths and the Fae running around, if not trying to control humanity, then at least interfere with it.
there are numerous other wackos, religious cults and terrorist organisations, all trying to kill something.
(and this is the kicker) despite all of this, humanity, in general, does not have a clue as to what is happening right under their noses.
the mortal Goths out number the rest of the population 2 to 1.
the first thought to the word Prince does not make you think of the son of a king first.
a witness says "It looked like some big guy in a wolf costume" to the cop asking questions.
the cops are always two minutes late in getting to the scene of the crime, and the person at fault has long since left.
the magic show in Las Vegas is real, and no one but his friends know.
white tigers are more common then orange ones. (Kahn Bastets in my group's games)
Stephen King and other Horror Fiction authors have nothing on the "real" world.
New York is safe in the streets around Central Park.
you can blame the last post's lack of content on Nos hackers, instead of a screw up.
the no-resource revolutionaries with no fixed address have cell phones and email.
Night Court handles things like traffic tickets.
you realize even the podunk towns have stores that are all open untill 10:00pm.
the liquor board never checks up on complaints about funny tasting red "wine."
the Dept. of Public Health issues concerned statements about mass anemia among the poor and downtrodden.
you wake up in a small dark room and you're dead.
you can find a gun shop open 24/7.
every club is open till sunrise.
you see a man running down the street, trip and stake himself on a toothpick.
you see a man take two full Uzi clips into the chest, two grenades in the back, a sword threw his side, and a knife in the head and all he says is "Ouch, that kinda itches a little."
the moon is full every time you can actually see it through all the rolling, thunderous stormclouds.
nobody figures out that the bloody Tremere headquarter is located in the +100-floor-skyscraper made out of black marble and covered with gargoyles which seem to have changed position every time you look at them.
vampires look more alive than normal people, because they actually try to look like normal people while the normal people try to look like vampires. It gets confusing sometimes.
nobody thinks The Crow had a dark and brooding atmosphere or a gothic feel to it. "It was very realistic." people say.
conversations don't begin with 'How was your day?' but 'How many people did you kill today?'
the leading cause of death in the world is exsanguination.
half the dead people you know still drop by for a visit every once in a while.
there are no human owned companies.
repressed memories are the most common psychological problems, due to the Veil, Delirium, Dominate 3, etc.
everyone you know has Appearance 5 or 6 but you.
your son feels its neccesary to "battle the Wyrm" every goddamn night.
half the population disappears during the day.
the government invests in E.T.-detecting glasses and uses them on senators.
Congress investigates the president to find where THEY can find good hookers for a reasonable price.
you're a serial killer and your victim ate you.
you try to take candy from a baby and get shot.
you can swear you smell a rotting corpse but it is just the local panhandlers.
every black leather coat is sold out.
Luxembourg is located in Scandinavia.
every episode of the Twilight Zone is a lame documentary film.
every potentially instructive topic is presented as a "dark and mysterious secret".
your writing does not compensate your absolute lack of knowledge in geography and demographics.
you can go on to say: "Hey! It is my idea! I know where I want to go with this!" and people pay you for it.
shining wealth and third world poverty crowd together in a single city.
corporations buy and sell lives like Pogs.
psychotic militant groups and fringe religious cults throw hatred and violence at people who don't deserve it.
personal success is proportional to the amount of people you step on.
you regularly hear sirens off in the distance every five minutes.
you can learn a lot about life by just talking to a street prostitute.
the weather forecast goes along these lines - "Cloudy. Chance of rain. Pretty much the same for the rest of the week."
you hear your next door neighbour beating up on his wife/kid/dog on a regular basis.
walking to and from work is an exercise in hoping you get there safely.
the tabloids are more believable than regular newspapers.
there are several really cool nightclubs where goths hang out.
you at least once woke somewhere not knowing how you got there. You feel slightly drained and you neck hurts...
the head of the art gallery looks at you funny and keeps calling you "mortal."
the obituaries take up more room in the paper than the stock reports.
your town has the following: cemetary, occult shop, gothic looking art museum, more cemetaries, gun shops, knife shops, sword shops, cemetaries, and 4 blood banks. For a population of 3,500 and falling.
everyone on the street has a fedora and poorly concealed shotgun underneath their long trenchcoat.
pigeons try to crap on church statues and they get their heads ripped off. (Gargoyles, if you didn't get that one)
every radio station plays nothing but Switchblade Symphony, Type O Negative, Rosetta Stone, Fields of Nephlim, and Eva O Hallo.
every motorcycle is either a Harley or "that cool one from Crow 2".
every suit is accented with lace and ruffles, a cane (with a sword inside it), a cape, and a top hat.
you see 40-50 rats running down the street in a tight pack towards the same direction, and it doesn't bother you the least bit.
you go to see John Carpenter's Vampires, and the whole movie you keep hearing people saying, "What a moron, I can do that ten times better than he can!"
your grandmother wants you to start dating "some nice, human girl."
the Rocky Horror Picture Show manages to launch the careers of several stars, like Susan Sarandon, Tim Curry and Barry Bostwi... never mind...
every one of us who has ever accessed this listserver is murdered in our sleep for "knowing too much."
the only time a city gets any sunshine, it's for the surreal awe and innocence scene just before it gets obliterated by a pissed off Mage with Forces 5/Prime 2.
kids in third world countries are working as fast as they can to dye clothes black.
a body with half the blood gone, and no wounds, comes rolling into the morgue and nobody is suprised.
you stub your toe on the street, and a guy in a black cape with an Omega symbol clasp appears out of an alley, holding a gun, muttering something about "returning to the wheel."
Poe, Shelly, Byron and Lovecraft are put in the non-fiction section, at the library.
the pale biker thugs run away when you introduce yourself as "David Giovanni."
you see an ad in a local tabloid for Dr. Vladamir's scalpel-less cosmetic surgery.
half of the people you interview for the job as the driver of the Red Cross "Blood Mobile" say they can't work day hours.
there are at least a half-dozen abandoned Gothic Cathedrals in the city.
everybody in the city has at least once seen a wild dog attack, woken up pale and tired after picking somebody up in a club, or had a bad dream about big blue people with hammers after scolding a 6 year old that there are no monsters under the bed.
Sewer/Waste Management employees are better armed than most South American guerillas and are trained in more forms of unarmed combat than a Navy Seal.
any make-up artists or CGI programmers hired to create a life-like werewolf for a movie are eventually found three weeks later curled up in a fetal position and completely insane.
hitmen are instructed to immediately run in the opposite direction if the sound produced by a bullet impacting a target's skull is "Clang".
due to massive use of Dominate, Presence, mental Gifts, Mind and Entropy magicks, Puppetry/ Mnemosynis/ Intimation/ Corruption Arcanos, and the Sovereign/Chicanary Cantrips, the only sentence the President can say is "I am the man who's made of ants, and I don't need no stinkin' pants!!!"
you drop a Snickers bar by a sewer grate, and a pale hand covered in warts, a mangy hand with claws, and a tentacle all make a grab for it at the same time.
you visit the local cemetary, and find a large sign by the gate asking residents to check in with the mortician before leaving.
you have a near death experience, and instead of a bright light with your dead relatives surrounding you, you recall two guys wearing masks and chains pulling you back and forth while shouting something about "calling dibs" at each other.
your birthday party is interrupted when six men dressed in black rush into your home, pistol whip the magician your mother hired, and drag him away while shouting "This didn't happen!" at you and your friends.
you're on your way to a Sci-fi convention dressed as a Vulcan when a gang of real ugly guys wearing red caps start chasing after you with metal pipes and screaming something about "the f*cking Nobles!"