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Here is a new toy.
if blogspot pull their fingure out some time soon then you will be able to see this new toy built for you.
Find out the truth about some people with the true meaning calculator.
# posted by Matt the Hat at Saturday, July 03, 2004 | |
The Goth culture: its history, practices, stereotypes, religious connections, etc.
It seems to me that once more goths come under the hammer of jugmentalism due to the actions of a minority.
Dark Reign
"I find it deploarble that a human being that follows a lifstyle such as Goth has the nerve to quote the bible." --Vince Wylde, Massachusetts
Do these people really think that you can ascribe to a fasion that started in the mid 80's in London England the status of hell worthy tesspass or all defining lifestyle? I have yet to meat two people who define goth the same way. The term only ever came into existance because the media put it there in the first place. Goth is within cetain indefinable boundries and ranged within a certain scope an experimentalist and exploritory culter that examines the darker and moodier parts of life that the main stream refuses to address. It has always been something for the individulistic and a rough umberlla term at best. Over time certain symbles have become popular within the goth communities dispite the great differences between these communities. This symbles have become iconic and easy to recognise and even as they have done so they are regected by goths as pase, pretentious or even mockable. This is when others take up the icons and can at last form a charicature of the goth sterotypes. To say that you understand goth via that is like saying you understand God because you've met the local vicar in the pub once.
The Goth culture: its history, practices, stereotypes, religious connections, etc.: "The perpetrators were apparently not Goths; rather, they had incorporated some Goth symbolism into their group's unique image. Similarly, they held hands in school; not because they were bisexual or homosexual, but in order to shock other students. Their goal was to disturb their fellow students and distance themselves from the school jocks who ridiculed and harassed them."
The media is keen to label everything in neat boxes. so what happens when they see people with icons they assosiate with goth?
They lable this new eliment goth too.
and the next...
...and the next...
...and the next, ad infinitum.
So if the pool of dark clad local alternative rock fans calls itself goth does that make it the truth?
Goth has no real cread because there is no such thing as the corporate-goth direction, becasue it has no direction. What it does have is lots of individules acting out a form of social browninan motion. the result is movement no one can control.
Right now "goth" is bloating on all the slipnot, manson, corn and skata rock being knocked out by the media. The result is worse confusion than ever.
Worse as Goth is not international each "pool" of black clad "goth" is nothing like the next. Go to holland and the goths ware Pink and bright green and listen to EBM and thrash metal. Go to germany and the goths listen to death-metal and have a tendency towards army serplas. Go to belgum and goth is ultra underground in the main. Keeping looking arround and in that area you will find goth that is like a chilled out slightly anarchic black-hippy movment. Go to the UK where goth was born and this all mixes as the word on the vine is that THE goth club to go to is slimelights in london, here revellers from all over the world tend to do speed to stay up untill the club closes (it closes when the last goth exits the building at about 7:30am).
But also visit Gosips on traditional night and everything changes again. On the whole the UK has two types of goth Old school and new. Old school or traditinal goths are the original 1980's goths and have a tendency toward a commanding presence.
The new wave goths are still experimenting and discovering what they like. It is totally different to old school to the point that nothing is the same.
Visit the fetish scene and you will find more goths of a totally different nature - they will look unlike any of the other goths you have met.
Now visit the US. 99.9% of goths in the us have no idea what they are talking about. There is no Old school because the new romatics and (art) punk never married up out there because this was a purely British phinomina. The teddy boys happened and again a small ammount infused into British Goth. by the time Sisters of mercy and Cure were doing the scene it was already well astablished. It was a Punks, Goths and other art students multi-cultural event even the hippies were joining in.
In the US the goths formed from Death metal, hard punk, heavy rock and the steriotypes the brits were sending over. goth is a vauge concept that the Britsh media tried to put on a music and artisic revelution started by punk. Everything else is aftershock. You will notice as you examine the origines of punk that classic and untra-retro clothes were the norm and this developed into a new experiment - edwardian and victorian dress codes. Goth, therefore is a unequly british export. To understand goth is to understand britsh art culture of the 80's and early 90's and more importantly to know intimatly the university city that's took part such as London, Birmingham and Notingham.
Ultamtly it was just a heavy backlash against the residue of beatle mania
It was the british post-punk inovators that were first called gothic and it is they that uniquly formed it. Everything else in every other country is only goth-influenced heavy metal and rock.
Even more devistating for those who wish to build there lives with goth as the foundation is that it is only a by-product of an existing musical experimentation going on since the blues became a popular art form.
If you want to know more about the early years and the whole punk story then you would do well to read "Punk: the illustrated hostory of a music revolution" by Adrian Boot & Chris Salewicz.
here I even found an amizon link for you:
# posted by Matt the Hat at Saturday, July 03, 2004 | |
Slipknot - who is goth - A brilliant Parody
Slipknot - who is goth: "I AM. Believe me. I go to graveyards every week.
I'm a pop star threat and im not dead yet
Got a super dred bet with an angel drug head
Like a deadbeat winner, I wanna be a sinner
An Idolized Bang for the industry killer
A hideous man that you dont understand
throw a suicide party and im guarunteed to ****in snap.
Its evilsonic, its pornoholic,
Breakdown, obscenities is all i want to be!
If your 555 then Im 666.
(whats it like to be a heretic?)
'Dont fuk with me and you will be fine.' - Mick #7"
# posted by Matt the Hat at Saturday, July 03, 2004 | |
joie de vivre
Some people may have notice a little war going on.
An interesting discovery that might offend the more puerile visitors (who aim to offend members and readers alike) is simply this: the entire exercise seems to have imbibed me with a new joie de vivre which was previously missing.
Also I notice that the amateurish and coarse attempts at developing a community from the homemade forum ("out-of-the-box job") and the equally flakey technical skills of the users we have spoken about (here) points in part to an emotional substrate of society - the lower teen bracket.
The esculence of my utterings for these unfledged explorers being questioned of late has forced me to examine again the entire affair and wonder if the disclaimers were properly read or if (in point of fact) there simple needs to be an enhancement of teaching as to the nature of blogs, blogging, On-line journaling and the like.
As many seasoned blogger are aware blogs have become the place to put your rants, opinions and other thoughts. they can also be guides, reviews or even story telling methods. Hell you could bend one to be a small forum with the right skills. Above all a blog is a place for personal expression whatever form that might take.
Let us open by savaging the last post I read at this dudes website
I follow no crowd
he says, yet he follows the SLT crowd.
Goth is NOT original
he says and it's true.
We all follow a crowd, we all run with a pack and when we stop to see another pack running we point and say "look at the mindless clones".
The only freedom we truly have is that we may choose which pack to run with and we may choose how much power we give them (power of pack is directly equivalent to our fear of their rejection).
All this is why this blog has caused more offence than spitz ever will - the power of the pack was released on it's members. An apparent insider has fired his guns and now a tiny shiver of fear cries out "you bastard!".
So Matt emails me and tries in his own un-clever way to entice me to his website indicating I will be terrified by what he's written.
The poor lad does not know the difference between a trackback ping and an email. Perhaps it is unfair of me to engage with this guy in an exchange of words after all the most I could hope to do is crush some poor sods spirit. This coquetting and some what superficial "blog" is nothing more than a cry for help, an indication of the deep need for recognition, respect or even friendship. I would be a cad to attack a guy when he is down and a fool to think he would take the hand of friendship if offered by any member of this merry band of bloggers. So perhaps I should simply stop verbally raping his self image despite:
"I challenged this Matt guy to a blog duel. He probably won't accept."
What are we anyway? It seems we are just so many of the bullied kids from different schools doing what was done to us before it happens again. We are doing to ourselves what our tormentors did to us and yet so many of us realise the truth in the proverb:
Pleasant words are like a honeycomb - sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. --Proverbs 16:24
We think we are growing up - but we are not. We think we are become wise - But we are still fools. We feel we have become death the destroyer of worlds - but we are all just dust in the breeze.
We write our "revelations" on the nature of man and woman as if we are the first to think of them and yet we are doing what a thousand have done before us. When the realisation finally dawns that we have nothing new to add to the tomb of human knowledge the sense of mystical saint hood fades and where once we had told ourselves of our wisdom, insight and open minded enlightenment we finally reach the foothills of reality.
It is always a shock to discover that we are not reaching for the crest of the hill but are merely at the base a mountain. For the world is not hollow and you have not even seen the sky.
We like so many before us try to transcend the triviality of life and seek something better, something beyond. In truth we seek definition and when at last we have everything we strived for we discover our world is hollow and we have indeed touched the sky - the sky is cold and our riches are but lifeless trinkets evidence that our wisest sayings are nothing but callow utterances.
This is the current position of the young man who as yet cannot comprehend how a stranger so totally deemed as nothing can never-the-less shake his world and shock his most sensitive beliefs - the belief in the total rightness of his life.
Where does this concocted sense of self-righteousness come from? It comes from the heart.
At some time between the onset of puberty and now: the outcast starts to realise nobody much likes him (or her). Sometimes it is because they are smarter, taller, fatter or slower than the popular kids but the effect is the same. Bullied at school! Tormented endlessly as self-important, self-appointed judges condemn you and whip the crowed on to more of the same until it becomes the normal mode of life.
Sometimes we have embraced a dark clothed sub-culture and called ourselves goths at the very centre of this hell standing up and saying "fuck-you buddy" right there in the face of it. This type of person is usually acting self destructively in an unknowing effort to prove the tormentors correct. Sometimes a strong person of this type is actually growing to the point that the opinions of the popular kids is irrelevant or even less then the tormented kid's. They are going down fighting. But those of us who do are still fighting those battles years after the other kids have forgotten our names. Every last insult is like a poisoned tipped arrow and it is still in your flesh. Only the tormented kid can remove his own arrow tips.
For others, though, the change comes later when something finally snaps - the poison arrows or the torment given has worked it's evil magic. This snapping is the last vestige of hope that they might be accepted and be popular. Perhaps they are dumped or maybe they just get beaten up one too many times. The story is the same only the faces change.
In this hopelessness something dies and it is not without reason that the proverb says: "a hope deferred makes the heart sick". --(Proverbs 13:12)
At the point of total hopelessness a new light dawns and the victim asks "why me?" and the remaining vanity says "it's not fair, I deserve better than this" - The conscious utterance of this is: "I am not going to be treated like this any more". One of two things will happen:
1. The bullied becomes the bully throwing words around and making appeals to force to "control" those that would threaten the glass world and hitting back first at the world at general. The result of this randomly focus rage is the pointlessness that this blog has been witness to of late. You will notice that with this come the blaming others for the persons world. the new bully surrounds themselves with a large crowd of people who support and endorsed their new behaviour. They become the crowd of "popular kids" all the time blaming the world for the things that have happened to them.
2. The more moderate result is to simply locate a group that will not judge or might even accept and approve of the person without the need for them to change.
Whatever the out come when it happens to one of us the results are still the same. The pain and fear don't go anywhere although they may become numb for a while. It is always other peoples fault because it is too much to bear to look to ourselves for change - we fear that we might truly find that we do "suck" after all.
In bulk this is a US / UK divide with the "goth scene" in the US conforming to pattern one while the UK tends toward pattern two. That said the worthless and concocted mansonit/satanist/hate-munger group who follow pattern one do nothing to alleviate the problems with the media. (For more info into WIG (What Is Goth?) follow this link)
As readers will be aware I have a strong aversion to the ostentatious and vainglorious prating and preening of those in the alternative culture who call themselves goth and worship marilyn manson and other overblown, insincere idiot bands that call themselves goth-satanist-heavy-metal gods. These bogus leaders demonstrate a trite and tested method of hollow and insincere mock rebellion.
Their followers all acting in much the same way claim to be individuals and free minded which is the great irony of it all. May personal gripe is these egotistical and haughty bands and their clone-like supporters then call themselves goths, these goths then act with total disregard for society often spouting extreme anarchistic dogma. The result of all this rage is then focus indiscriminately and the result is that all goths are hounded by the media as dangerous out of control devil worshipping mass murderers. Just read what was said after the Columbine incident.
The truth is these people are Dark-Punk / Nu-Punk or perhaps thrash-metal / death-metal followers all of which (but especially punk) are musical rebellion, often anarchic and express rage, and frustration. Goth on the other hand has mostly been about artistic rebellion a rather more introspective and moody discipline.
Let us not live our lives by the uttering of some pompous and overblown egotists who, after all, are only performance artists for whom life is a stage and the slick veneer just a front for a counterfeit revolution. They promise much but have not the power to deliver even the smallest meaning, hope or value to your life.
The Greeks called in a fallacy of logic to say that there are only two possible options. A whole spectrum of options exist but how much are you willing to face?
# posted by Matt the Hat at Saturday, July 03, 2004 | |
The Reviewer - we have been rated!
The Reviewer: "Wit and amusement: 9/10"
We asend the dizzy hights of cool as the reviewer recognises our flare and skill! A big well done to the members who actually ever post anything.
# posted by Matt the Hat at Friday, July 02, 2004 | |
Reclaiming the Shadows: A Jungian Perspective On Goth
"To find the spirit of Goth, look at our surface culture. America is obsessed with the future: Goths honor the past. Americans believe in motivational speakers and catchy slogans: Goths explore complex, painful depths. While the National Endowment for the Arts was sanitizing publicly funded culture, Goths were writing some of the darkest music yet seen. As the 'Republican Revolution' of the mid-90s preached from the soapbox of patriarchal values, Gothic men were growing long hair, applying makeup and approaching religion from a Dionysian (rather than Appolonian) direction."
because we all know that americans invented goth (It's first imegence in the UK is just a side story)!
# posted by Matt the Hat at Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | |
Post number 50
According to all indicators this is the 50th posted entry for the Blog!
So with that in mind what better time than to re-iterate the aims of this blog.
Yes it is for Goth's and those affiliated areas of the alternative scene.
No it is not fair and impartial it is heavily biased to the opinions of the members who are free to express those opinions without censure.
No it is not going to appeal to everyone
Know there is nothing you can do to change the contents of these posts. This is for Goths, Punks and associated weirdos to express themselves openly. To say what is on their mind and to share their opinion.
If you do not care for the opinions stated here that then so what!? We will not let you flame the site; you can not fine us, sue us or remove us.
If you wish to answer back, disagree or endorse our views you may do so with the comment box. If we don't like your comment we shall delete it.
The internet is a place of total freedom of speech and that freedom works both for you and against you.
This means that you cannot stop us blogging about you and we cannot stop you blogging about us. If you feel so enraged that you need to rant then I understand that rant space (your own account) is totally free. In fact unless you are totally spineless and can only leave anon messages I will even show you tools that will help you. For example the Link-Back / Track-Back link on every post means that you can virtually force a link to your rant, comment or other posting about our postings.
Now that the aims and objectives are clearly laid out again let us laugh and be merry for tomorrow we might read about ourselves.
This is the sound of the sane!
# posted by Matt the Hat at Sunday, June 27, 2004 | |
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