Now that I think about it
posted 706 days ago by J.S. Vodalarius
You know, despite all my protestations of possible Goth I may in fact be a cranky indie kid. I know I’m kind of a hippie, and a Goth is just a hippie in black, but I’ve been sitting around for the past couple of hours listening to Elliott Smith and Spoon and reading obscurely humourous webcomics, and this may make me indie. I don’t know why I even bother to think about this, given that I’ve never tried very hard to fit into any categorization, but there it is.
Anyway, today I indulged my terrible addiction to makeup. Mainly lipstick. See, there’s this fabulous store in Marlborough called Inkubus, with an equally fabulous coffee shop next to it called Jitter Beans. Actually they’re run by the same woman. So I went to Jitter Beans and had a vanilla chai latte for the first time ever, and that was good, and while I was there I worked on my mittens and downloaded songs from eMusic—thus the Spoon and the Elliott Smith.
Then I went over to Inkubus and poked around. I got a pair of tights, because I always do that when I go there because they have awesome tights. They also always have a couple of baskets of makeup that they’re clearing out, so it’s all fifty cents. And I spent fifteen minutes poking through those baskets, and I ended up with three lipsticks and two bottles of nail polish, although one of the bottles of nail polish is for the Sibling. I also got a Manic Panic lipstick in a gorgeous shade of dark blue, but that wasn’t a sale item. It cost $7.50. Worth it, though.
The guy at Inkubus, who always seems to be there when I’m there, pointed out that at least my addiction mainly restricts itself to lipstick that’s really cheap. If I’d gotten all four lipsticks at Manic Panic prices I’d be putting myself out of a lot more money.
Maybe next time I go I’ll get a lip liner pencil. I need one.
Now with more goth
posted 707 days ago by J.S. Vodalarius
Right. So not-so-hot on the heels of my last post comes, live, a bit of late-night yammering! I just finished watching Beetlejuice, which I didn’t actually see most of, because I spent most of the film just listening to the dialogue while I worked on my crochet. I’m making a blanket from a pattern in The Happy Hooker. It duplicates the color bar test pattern from the television.
Now, the day before I made my last post I found myself seated in an armchair in the living room, watching Interview With The Vampire with the Sibling and knitting a black lace scarf. At one point I paused, glanced over at my Voltaire book and down at my black socks, and said, “Am I trying too hard?”
The answer is no. Trying too hard is when you get dental surgery to make your canines really pointy. Watching movies off Anne Rice novels and making black lace is just being me. Besides, if, nearly a week later, you find yourself watching a Tim Burton flick while working on a color-bar blanket, that might mean you’re just garish and/or attention-getting. Or something. I’m not sure what I’m saying, but then, it’s quite late, and I should probably be going to bed instead of writing this.
Anyway. Crochet. I’m making myself Goth mittens. I had this nice mitten pattern in one of my crochet books, but the colors it used just weren’t me. Dijon mustard yellow and moss green and brown may work on some people, but they just make me look like I’ve got jaundice. So last week I went to the local yarn store to take advantage of a sale, and I got proper yarn colors for mittens. There’s a very bright red, and a nice drying-blood sort of burgundy, and of course black. I’ve finished one already. Made it extra long, because the sleeves of my winter coat pull up a bit and also long gloves suit me. I’m at work on the second one now. Well, not as we speak; I worked on it earlier today, and I’ll probably pick it up again tomorrow. I’m going out anyway, to deposit my paycheck and have some hot tea and a scone, so I might as well bring along my crochet for something to do while my downloads are going at the cafe.
Hopefully there won’t be any fundamentalist Inquistiony Church-of-Englanders there, a la Eddie Izzard. Because forced to choose between cake or death, I’d have to go for mousse.
The PC Underworld
posted 712 days ago by J.S. Vodalarius
Today I went shopping. It wasn’t horrible girly “shawping” either. No, first I went to the coffee place in Marlborough and had a bubble tea and crocheted while getting my eMusic downloads. Then I poked around in Inkubus, bought cool tights and mildly cyanotic lipstick, and drove into Keene for magic soap, DVDs, and some other essentials of life. On the way home I stopped at Inkubus again for white face powder.
Actually it was sort of a Goth day, especially given my outfit, from the (hand-knitted) black lace scarf and deathly-pallor lip gloss to the big honking black leather boots. I enjoy my Goth days.
As I was descending from the car in the parking lot outside Target, I began to wonder what people thought of my appearance, and an image came to my mind. A small child, pointing at me and staring, asking the nearby mother, “Mommy, what’s she?”
And the mother responded, “That’s a Goth, dear.”
And in my probably overly detailed mental image I turned to this mother and child and told them, calmly, “Actually, I prefer the term Chthonian-American.”
The definition of “chthonian,” from Merriam-Webster Online:
chthonian, adj. – of or relating to the underworld
Seems appropriate, don’t it? I submit that we Goths of the Americas should begin to insist on being referred to as Chthonian-Americans. Not only is it accurate and amusing, it’ll irritate the hell out of everyone. And we all want that. Don’t we?