WNW: Adult Wednesday Addams

Every Wednesday until Halloween, there is a new episode featuring Adult Wednesday.

Here is the first.



The others may be found here.  (snap snap)

Kreuzige Ihn!

WNW: Transcript from a Gothic Church

Partial transcript from the evening Ash Wednesday service at Sepulcher of St. Mary's Bloody Tears, sister Peine Forte et Dure presiding:

PFD: Good eeeeeefning, Christian Children of the Night!

Congregation responds with "Good eeeeeefning," though some orthodox members respond with feral hissing. Brother Malkav the Mentally Unwashed responds with "Bleh Bleh!" In fact this is his sole response throughout the entire service.

PFD: I have a few announcements to make before we begin our worship service. Today marks the first day of Lent, which means that purple is the official church color until March 22. Please update your wardrobe accordingly, and give thanks for no longer having to coordinate with that awful green of Epiphany.

Murmurs of approval.

PFD: Lent is a time of sacrifice, where we commemorate the Lurking of Our Lord in the desert for forty days and His temptation by the forces of Conservatism. For other Christian denominations this is a time of introspection, sacrifice, and sometimes even depression. So, business as usual for us. Some of you may see this is an opportunity to freak the mundanes by engaging in "more self-flagellating than thou" behavior. Please keep in mind that God hates a suck-up.

Congregation hisses in dissatisfaction.

PFD: Many people choose to observe Lent by giving something up. I would like to point out that it should be something you enjoy, so no more claiming to give up being happy, wearing bright colors, or going out in the daytime. You would be better advised to help one of our less-spooky brethren in dealing constructively with these feelings.

More hisses.

PFD: Finally, with today being Ash Wednesday, we shall be anointing your foreheads with ash crosses. You may not have it applied upside-down, I don't care how cool, ironic or iconoclastic you think it is.

Congregation frenzies. Howls, hisses, and screams build to ear-splitting pitch. Many church members bare their fangs. Order is restored when Sister PFD throws the hand sign for Advanced Presence. More "Blehs" from Brother Malkav.

PFD: After the anointment, we will serve communion. It will be through Intiction, a.k.a. "Slop and Drop". Please pay attention to the Fall of the House of Ushers, because if you go the wrong way you're liable to drip Christ's Blood into the ash, and while that would definitely make a striking fashion statement it is also extremely poor form. And now, Father Armand Cobwebb will lead us in prayer.

House lights go down. Fog generator starts up. Transcript ends as Worship Service/Rave begins with pipe organist beginning to play E Nomine's Vater Unser:

WNW: The Gothpel

It may not be readily apparent, but Christianity can be incredibly goth. After all:

1. Its chief symbol is an instrument of torture.
   
2. The Sacrament of Communion is ritualized, symbolic Theophagy.
   
3. Priests and Nuns wear black and white. That is old school goth, baby.
   
4. Speaking of colors, look at the colors of the church year: Dark Blue. Red. Purple. Black.
5. In fact, the entire season of Lent is one big ol' goth party. It starts with people wearing ash on their foreheads and ends with the death of God.
6. The entire first half of the Book of Revelations is basically about all the cool people being feared, misunderstood and oppressed by The Man because of their religion, followed by persecution and death. But that's okay, because not long after that, all those people in power die hideously, and are tormented forever.
   
7. This is the religion that invented self-flagellation... because cutting is for poseurs.
   

Seriously, if there isn't a "Goths for Christ" movement, someone should start one. You can practically perform the Mass to E Nomine's Das Testament already.



----------------
Now playing: E Nomine - Vater Unser
via FoxyTunes

I Has A Flavor

So yesterday, one of my Internet Stalker Boyfriends (hi Nathan! *waves*) IM'd me and asked simply, "Flavor?"

Naturally, I replied with "Gothberry."

I had intended to photoshop a picture of a goth girl licking her finger/hand/arm and making a parody of the "I has a flavor" lolcat, but.... well, you put those words into Google and see what YOU come up with.


Instead, I give you this:

GOTHBERRIES TASTE LIKE SCHADENFREUDE

(image courtesy of oskaline)

Unseelie

I have a recurring dream/fantasy/what-have-you where I am a DJ for a small, low-budget radio station -- perhaps it's college radio, perhaps it's fiercely indie -- but it's of the "painted cinderblock walls and reel-to-reel tape machines" aesthetic.

In this dream, I host a program from 3 to 5 am called Hour of the Wolf. Adopting a soft German accent, I spin selections of goth, techno, trance, EBM, and synthpop music for an audience of about a dozen listeners. As the music plays, I dance alone in the studio, convulsing to the music as the moisture from my breath clings to the walls.

There's something strangely hypnotic about the deep of night, a dark room, a disembodied voice, and that kind of music. When I would dance at my goth club in Washington DC, I recall experiencing a form of ecstatic disassociation where my mind would feel like it was on the sidelines, watching my body from a distance of several feet away as it thrashed about.

In that moment, I understood what it is to be fae: a darkling spirit, all thoughts banished and all impulses indulged, consequences be damned. It is the complete annihilation of the superego as the id comes out to play. It is complete, ritualistic abandon. It is the zen no-mind paired with cathartic exertion. It is the cool, damp cloth of Not Giving a Shit laid across the fevered brow of I Am Me And I Am In This Moment.

It is the utter abandon of pure infancy.

The darkness is your mother's womb, the rhythm her heartbeat, the voice HER voice. These are the sounds of your universe for the first nine months of your life; no wonder they trigger such a primal reaction in us. That I am consistently thinking about being the DJ in this analogy means I am in all likelihood trying to reconcile an increasingly strong urge for motherhood with the equally strong belief that I would be a horrid mother.

What makes faeries horrifying is that they combine magical power with all the impulse control of a five-year-old. As long as they like you, all well and good; but the moment you irritate them (or worse, they decide it would be amusing to torture you) -- I'm thinking that an eternity of middle school gym would pale in comparison.

Babies are like that, and their magical power is that you must care for them. Because the whole world loves babies, right? And if you don't, you're some kind of monster, never mind that children may essentially be nothing more than a massive stroke of ego: "What this world needs is MORE of me!"

Apparently my reproductive organs and I are having a disagreement. How else to explain the mutually exclusive desires of wanting to have children, yet not wanting to go through the trouble of actually raising them? The implication that I am, psychologically speaking, a cuckoo is profoundly disturbing to me.

If children are unseelie fae, then I must be the freaking Queen of Air and Darkness.

----------------
Now playing: Christopher - You're So Sexual
via FoxyTunes

Cool in Retrograde

Cue music: a slow dirge of notes played on a low stringed instrument

Voice-over upon a black screen:
"It was a darker time... our shadows stretched across the mortal world, and the humans shuddered at our influence. Their money was becoming useless, their resources scarce. They reproduced at unprecedented rates, spreading disease with abandon while the greatest of plagues incubated in its dark womb, waiting to decimate the population of continents. Class fought class and race fought race, and all the while great nations sent their young men to die in futile struggles. It was the heyday of Hell...."

Second voice:
"The Dark Ages? The Inquisition?"

First Voice:
"Nineteen Seventy-Seven."

Music speeds up to become the opening bass riff of "Stayin' Alive"

"Well you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a womans' man..."

Fade in to Logo: Welcome to the world of Gothic Funk.

I must confess a strange nostalgic attraction for the 70s. I remember very little of that decade, having been born in 1973, but its culture has affected and shaped me in a thousand different ways, and my recent delving into Electric Company videos has wakened these memories.

For me, the late 1970s will always be extremely cool to me because that was the era of my brother, Shane, whom I idolized. Anything associated with him was cool, and anything he did was to be emulated. (Fun fact: because he was into Dungeons and Dragons, I was into D&D. He was my first Dungeon Master. Oddly, he outgrew it a few years later, and I've never stopped playing with toys and polyhedral dice.) Shane is seven years older than I am, and while I'm a child of the 80s, Shane was (at least to my starry eyes) completely 70s groovalicious, baby.

Shane was cool. Shane was a teenager in the late 1970s. Thus, the late 1970s were (and still are) cool. QED.

If you seek further proof, look at Quentin Tarantino's films. He seems to be making a career out of all the goofy-fun tropes of that time.

So one day, not too long ago, I was considering role-playing games, and thought: I like Vampires. And I like Goth. Vampires and Goths go together like satin and lace. But sometimes, too much Goth spoils the Vampirism. I wonder, would it be possible to combine Vampires with something else I think is cool, but isn't horribly over-wrought?

Then three thoughts occurred to me, in rapid succession:

Satin and polyester.

Vampires and the 1970s.

Gothic-Funk.

Sheer brilliance, as far as I'm concerned: Vampires and muscle cars. Big afros, big fangs. Who's the private dick that bites all the chicks? It's Drac, baby. Can you dig it?

It's the perfect blend of camp and angst, and best of all, I can get rid of so many modern conveniences that can rip huge holes in plots:

• Cell phones
• ATM machines
• 24-hour stores
• the Internet

I am positively drooling at the thought of this concept. But I'm not quite sure where to begin preparing. Has anyone run a game set in the 1970s? Are there any gaming resources for this era? (What, no GURPS: Disco?)

In short, how could I make the World of Gothic Funk into a complete polyester experience for my hapless players?

I welcome all feedback!

WNW: I love to take a bath in a casket

... because, really, who doesn't?

(lyrics)

I love to take a bath in a casket
A casket, a casket is the thing
I love to take a bath in a casket
In a casket you will never leave a ring!

By candlelight I soak and sniff carnations
In my casket that is squeaky and old
I love to take a bath in a casket
In my casket I can never catch a cold!

Some vampires like it in a bathtub
Others have tried a sink
But when I am sloshing
I'm wishing to be washing
In something that is soft and lined with pink!

I love to take a bath in a casket
A casket, a casket I crave
I love to take a bath in a casket
Although I take my showers in a grave!

You're the only Blacula for me, Young Morgan Freeman.

My Lurking Sound: The Sisters of Mercy, part 1

(mild apologies to Sean Witzke, from whom I misappropriated the name)

Oh hell with it, I'm just gonna phone this one in. I hated doing book reports as a kid.

From Wikipedia:
Though Andrew Eldritch is often called the "Godfather of Goth", The Sisters of Mercy (the main artistic vehicle of Andrew Eldritch), despite being formed in 1980, were originally not very popular in the post punk sub-genre that the British press, in the early 1980s, had labelled, both the artists and their audience, Goth. The Sisters of Mercy were, however, accused by the press of plagiarizing Joy Division, who were marketed by their management as "gothic" in the late '70s.

The Sisters of Mercy would have a big impact on the second wave of Goth that came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of the reasons Gitane Demone of the first wave commented that the scene had turned "stale". The use of drum machines and the atonal, deep vocal style used by many second generation Goth bands were inspired by the Sisters of Mercy and were not that common among the first generation.

Since the early 90s, Eldritch has publicly rejected associations with the Goth subculture. He describes The Sisters of Mercy as humanist, modernist, and implies he wants nothing to do with Goth, stating "it's disappointing that so many people have in all seriousness adopted just one of our many one-week-of-stupid-clothes benders". He also notes that, "I'm constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more goth than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord."

(song ends at 3:27 mark)

She stands pressed against the wall
So she can see the door
In case the laughing strangers crawl and
Crush the petals on the floor

Alice in her party dress
She thanks you kindly, so serene
She needs you like she needs her tranqs
To tell her that the world is clean
To promise her a definition
Tell her where the rain will fall
Tell her where the sun shines bright
And tell her she can have it all
Today

Pass the crystal spread the Tarot
In illusion comfort lies
The safest way the straight and narrow
No confusion no surprise
Alice in her party dressed to kill
She thanks you turns away
She needs you like she needs needs her pills
To tell that the world's okay
To promise her a definition
Tell her where the rain will fall
Tell her where the sun shines bright
And tell her she can have it all
Today
Today

Alice
Don't give it away

Poetry for the Emotionally Exhausted

The universe whispers
Of chains and shadows
Beneath a delicate sky
Manipulating the apparatus
Of worship and need

I'm going to Hell... who's coming with me?

There are three topics forbidden to polite conversation: Religion, Politics, and Sex.

I don't like to talk about religion because it is an intensely personal and intimate subject to me. I honestly don't care who, what or how you worship, as long as:

1. You give me the freedom to worship (or not) as I see fit;
2. It doesn't involve harming animals, children, or non-consenting adults;
3. You don't immediately assume I am evil/wrong/broken for not sharing the same views.

I don't like talking about politics because it seems to automatically engender reaction #3. I also view politics with heaping disdain because it seems to be High School all over again, albeit writ large: getting elected, whether to Student Council or Congress, is largely a popularity contest based upon how good you look and the sincerity of your lies, not your strength of character or knowledge of the facts. Thus I regard politicians as garbage collectors -- their purpose is to do a job I find loathsome, and once elected I'd like them to do their jobs quietly and efficiently. If they don't dispose of my garbage in a professional manner, I fire them.

This leaves sex. As some of you may have deduced, I quite like talking about sex, and am very hard to shock. However, in deference to the delicate constitutions of some readers, as well as adhering to Blogger's Terms of Service, I prefer to use clever euphemisms and double entendres rather than outright vulgarity. (Plus, any fool can write porn. Erotica is much more challenging.)

Today, however, I'm going to end up breaking my own rules and talking about all three of them. It's not a choice I'm particularly comfortable with, but Calliope is a fickle bitch today and so it's either this or printing the word "fuck" a thousand times.

Aren't you lucky?

My father is Jewish. So Jewish, in fact, that he was born in Austria in the 1930s, and had to flee a little thing called the Holocaust. Now even though he married a non-Jewish woman (aka shiksa), I still look very semitic. I have dark hair, dark eyes, and distinctive nose that is too large to be properly adorable. This doesn't bother me (other than the nose); in fact, I am very proud of my heritage. However, I am sick and tired of being hated for what is essentially an accident of my birth. Because, as you may have heard, Jews are apparently to blame for everything in the world.

My mother is Protestant Irish. God help me if I lived in the United Kingdom. I'd be labeled as a potential terrorist, a British sympathizer, or a worthless layabout, depending on where I was. Again, whether or not I truly am one of those things doesn't matter; it only matters if I look like I am.

You will notice that I never had control over any of those things. Yet whole countries and entire cultures would have me jailed, beaten, raped, and/or killed because of them. Hatred, I believe, is the bastard child of politics and religion, usually caused by people who aren't getting enough sex. Sometimes I think that if world leaders had daily blowjobs the world would be a more relaxed place to live.

I know what it is to be hated, which is why I'm generally conservative. Republicans are pro-military, and I like a big military, because they protect my way of life. I am very much in favor of not being beaten to death because of my heritage.

Now, I said all that just so I could say this: Because I know what it's like to be hated because of circumstances of birth, I stand firmly beside my gay brothers and lesbian sisters and those in-between. And if they're going to Hell because they were born gay, then I guess I'm going to Hell because of the accidents of my birth. I mean, a good quarter of the world thinks I belong there anyway, right?

I'm a goth. I have a tattoo. (No, I'm not going to show you pictures.) I like to wear black and dance to strange music. This means I'm damned to Hell because apparently I'm a Satanist, I mutilate my God-given body, and my every waking moment isn't spent praising Jesus.

Except: I go to a Methodist church with my parents on Sundays. I pray on a regular basis. My tattoo has a cross in it. Heck, I even spent a few years teaching Sunday School.

Yes, I am a pro-gay rights conservative Christian goth. Is your mind broken yet?

If you're going to hate me for anything, hate me for that. Because those are things that I have chosen, and I am damn proud of all of them.

G.S.A.

We here at Lurking Rhythmically would like to take a moment to warn against the dangers of drunkenness on St. Patrick's Day. It can turn a normal, self-loathing goth such as this fine fellow:


And (shudder) loosen him up:


Thus turning him into this:


This is been a Gothic Service Announcement.

Confessions of Cyber-Nun

It's been over two years now since I've had sex. Which means, essentially, I have cobwebs up there. I believe my virginity has, in fact, re-grown.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was that too much information? Look, if you wanna to hang with the PalPal, you gotta suck it up sometimes.

Anyway, at this point, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to be a cyber-nun for the rest of my life. This is different from a she-geek in that geekettes are always in high demand due to the male/female imbalance inherent in geekdom. A cyber-nun, on the other hand, is a woman who, due either to excessive baggage, issues, or health reasons, feels safer -- and is therefore more attractive -- in the anonymous online world.

Or, put bluntly, she-geeks have sex and cyber-nuns don't. Instead, like traditional nuns, we focus that energy inward, but instead of turning it to faith we turn to things like fanfiction, or MMO's, or... writing blogs. The computer becomes our altar. Checking our email is a sacrament. The toys of Legolas and Morpheus atop our monitors? Icons of worship. Our liturgy is quoting from any one of a dozen geekdoms.

No doubt some of you -- and God bless you, truly -- will write in and say, "No, Palette, we find you beautiful and smart and witty and sexy and we'd shag you right now if we could." And don't get me wrong, I truly do treasure those sentiments. But if you ever saw me, the real me, for just a second... you'd see why it would NOT work. And then there'd be several awkward moments, and we'd both feel horrible because I'd feel rejected and you'd feel superficial. So just... trust me on this, 'k?

A very select few reading this blog have seen my face and lived to tell the tale. No doubt several of you will chime in with "You have nothing to feel bad about, you look fine." At which point I say, "Most of you knew me in person before you met me online. Those who only know me from online have built up this fantasy of me as some Charisma 20 sex goddess (an illusion for which I really have only myself to blame, truth be told), and unless I was a supermodel I'd have absolutely no way of meeting that expectation."

The closest I come to a supermodel is "er".

Yes, I'm rather depressed today, but I think it's a highly realistic depression. I'm slowly coming to terms with the notion that I will be romantically alone for the rest of my life, and that I will die without having known the joys of raising my own children. Instead, I'll have an extensive collection of online friends who will never have met me, and wouldn't even know where to send flowers in the event of my death. Which doesn't make them any less real, any less valid, or any less my friends; but they, like so many things in my life, are pure abstraction and not concrete.

If I could have one selfish wish, I would wish that I could be the person you think I am. She's a much nicer, prettier, and overall better person than I could ever hope to be.

Sorry about the emo whining, folks. I needed to get that out of my system. And now, like a sorbet to cleanse your palate (pun intended), I leave you with this picture of a hot latex fetish nun:

Slouching towards Bethlehem

Those of you who read this blog -- all five of you (hail Eris fnord) -- are no doubt at this very moment wondering, "Oh great and cryptic Palette, She who must be mollified with offerings of dark chocolate and Hot Topic gift cards, whither sprang the name Lurking Rhythmically?"

To which I reply: excellent word usage. "Whither" is highly underrepresented in today's modern literary venue.

The appellation in question was created many years ago by a friend of mine to whom I shall cleverly refer as Captain Kidd. I was game mastering a session of In Nomine hacked to use White Wolf mechanics when the good Captain observed that "Goths don't dance. They just sort of lurk rhythmically on the dance floor." I found this observation both pithy and apt, and resolved that if I was ever in a goth band I would use that name.

(As an aside, if it ended up being a techno/electronica band, I would have gone with the name Hohmann Transfer Orbit instead.)

I never did start that band, which is a pity because I look stunning in basic black and I really do dig the music. I just don't have the dedication to live the goth lifestyle 24/7, mostly because the banks where I have worked for several years have a highly conservative dress code and given the choice between facial piercings and a steady paycheck, I'll take the latter any day. I do, however, consider myself goth-positive: I respect the culture, try to keep up with the trends, and when I was living in Washington DC I was a regular at Midnight.

(Obligatory shoutout to Sascha and DJ Phae.)

In fact, Midnight is where I lost my goth virginity. I admit, I was scared of what I might find there ("Oh my god! That guy in the corner is making out with a polar bear!"), but I wasn't there five minutes before I was welcomed warmly by both the regulars and the event coordinator, Scott Royce. I haven't felt such unconditional welcome at most churches.

This was a wonderful thing because, like most of my melanin-challenged brethren and sistren, I cannot dance. Attempts at dancing have been mistaken for grand mal seizures. I do, however, possess a decent sense of rhythm thanks to seven years of being a band geek, and my experience with both theater and Vampire LARPing taught me how to lurk convincingly.

So I got out on that dance floor and I lurked in a rhythmic manner. I lurked the hell out of that rhythm.

At the end of the evening, several people told me I was a good dancer.

That, my friends, is acceptance.