Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Gothic…but not a Goth

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Ogre‘s been running a “Kill Your Idols” week on his journal this week, asking people to take their favorite musician, filmmaker, author, and artist down a few notches. To wrap things up, today’s topic was ‘your scene‘, which prompted this brilliant post by chrisbynum that absolutely nails much of why I’ve never self-identified as “Goth”.

Goths, in general, are kind of pathetic. Goths over 25 are really pathetic. As a public service, you should all be made aware that there is a difference between conformity and just growing the fuck up.

The worst offense is self-identifying primarily as “a goth”; it is my biggest pet peeve: “Hi, I’m Vyxqwynn! I’m 29, I’m from Seattle, and I’m a goth…” I think “goth” should be an aspect of who you are, not what you are. I have been around this scene in Seattle for nearly a decade. I think I have a sincere appreciation of fundamental gothic principles and ideals, and many of my good friends are gothic in their styles and attitudes, but, hell no, I’m not a goth! More of a gothic cowboy, if anything, with a healthy does of old-school geek thrown in. After all, I own a horse and 19 seasons of Star Trek on DVD, but I do not have razor blade scars on my wrists. And besides, if you were really all that goth, you wouldn’t have to go around telling people all the time, now would you? :P

So be as gothi_c_ as you want to be — in your beliefs, your style, your self-expression, whatever — but, please, don’t be a goth…

To me, goth means two main things: 1) that subjective experience in any flavor is to be valued (this is actually a classical romantic ideal…), and 2) that settling for mediocrity is an affront to one’s own existence. These are the two principal gothic ideals I can really get behind. I think many self-professed “goths” have never considered either one of these issues and are simply too caught up in the superficial trappings of this fucked-up scene or in their own maladjusted affinity toward darkness, self-pity, and insatiable lust for attention of any kind to actually live gothic.

Y’know what the number one thing I hear goths talk about whenever they get together is? Fucking clothes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love clothes — including gothic clothes — but I’m not deluded enough to think my compulsion to own every expensive black leather or PVC Edward Scissorhands wearable I can snipe from someone on eBay somehow makes me superior to a guy wearing Dockers™. If I had a nickel for every really deep conversation I’ve heard between two goths in the last three months, I couldn’t park on Broadway for 10 minutes…

So keep on keepin’ on, batcavers, but, please, consider giving drama for drama’s sake a rest, and turn the attitude down a notch or so. I promise you’ll still be having plenty of fun, and you may actually have more energy to pursue the dark and important things in life that actually matter…

Damn straight. Yes, I wear primarily black, I listen to a lot of dark music, I’ve been hanging around the gothic scene for years, and I spent years DJing at goth/industrial/alternative clubs in Anchorage…but I’ve never wanted to lay claim to the title of “Goth”. Gothic, sure, occasionally — but not Goth.

For one thing, I’m not depressed enough.

I don’t write enough bad angst-ridden poetry, either. ;)

Unless James is reading this, in which case I’m still too goth for your punk ass, buck-o.

iTunes “Black #1” by Type O Negative from the album Bloody Kisses (1993, 11:15).

Small Pets Allowed

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As Prairie and I are planning on getting a place together in a few months, we’ve started occasionally flipping through ‘For Rent’ listings to see what’s available in our price range around town.

Yesterday, one of the listings caught my eye.

“Hey — ‘small pets allowed, up to 20 pounds.’ We could get forty hamsters!”

Sadly, my idea was vetoed, as was my backup suggestion of one large hamster.

Ah, the compromises we make when arranging living with someone else.

iTunes “Razor’s Edge” by Revolting Cocks from the album Beers, Steers and Queers (1990, 4:45).

Photo Flood Finished

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I’ve finished uploading older photographs into my Flickr account for now. I’ve been concentrating on bigger “event” things to put into sets, rather than everyday stuff.

New sets since the previous update: The Jensonia Hotel fire, Kevin and Emily’s wedding, Bumbershoot ’03, Pride Day ’03, Bumbershoot ’02, Bumbershoot ’01, and Pride Day ’01.

And right at the end of the Pride Day ’01 set, just for Kirsten:

Seattle Gay Pride Parade, Seattle, WA

Photo Flood

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Yesterday I realized that while my Flickr Pro account allows me up to 1Gb of uploads each month, I haven’t been using anywhere near that much — so I decided to fix that. :) I’ve started digging into my iPhoto archives and adding photosets from past events, working my way backwards.

Last night I managed to get three four sets up, all from 2004: Bumbershoot, the Gay Pride Parade, the Fremont Solstice Festival, and the Folklife Festival.

iTunes “Baseball Dub (Cheeky All Stars)” by Faithless from the album Irreverence (1997, 2:42).

Which religion?

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I know I’m not going to have time to really go as much into this as I’d like while I’m on my lunch break, but I found an interesting little online quiz through Subzero Blue: Which religion is the right one for you? Here’s my results:

You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don’t believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof).

Agnosticism is a philosophy that God’s existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe.

agnosticism
79%
Satanism
75%
Islam
58%
Buddhism
54%
Christianity
50%
atheism
50%
Paganism
46%
Hinduism
38%
Judaism
38%

Some points before I head off to work, some of which I might come back and expand on later:

I come from a strongly religious background, specifically the Episcopal faith. Having grown up with that, Christianity forms the base for many of my beliefs.

That said, one of the things I’ve always felt very fortunate for is that my parents never had any problems with the fact that we’re a pretty bright family, and have a tendency to question, poke, and prod at things. Christianity was never something that had to be accepted at face value — it was okay to ask “why?” when things didn’t seem to make sense. In fact, if I’m remembering the story correctly, my father was at a point where he found either Christianity in particular or religion as a whole to be fairly hokey, and first sat down to read through the Bible with the avowed goal of finding every problem, every issue, and every inconsistency so that he could point them out to mom…and while he certainly found a fair amount of all of those, he also discovered along the way that there was a lot of really good stuff in there, too. He’s since devoted a fair amount of time to theological study, and is currently in the long process of getting ordained as a minister.

Over the years, I’ve found plenty to question when it comes to religion, which came into play as I was answering the questions on this test. While I wouldn’t say that I am entirely without faith, I certainly do question things, and I often have difficulties when it comes to my concepts of both God and the afterlife. I tried to be as honest as possible when answering the questions, and these doubts certainly pulled my scores towards the middle of the spectrum.

I’m also not entirely happy with either the questions or the scoring system on the test — there were a few where I felt that having to pick a point on an agree/disagree scale didn’t really do justice to the question, or truly represent the answer I wanted to give. Still, I did the best I could with it.

I am rather amused that my second-place score was Satanism, though. Make of that what you will.

Lastly — why do all of these quizzes produce the most god-awful HTML when giving you the code to post your results? Normally I clean them up, but this one was too complex for the little time I have on my lunch hour. Ick.

iTunes “Skin” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1990, 4:40).