Gothix Magazine

12:45 pm - Steampunk Going Goth

 So I've been thinking of Steampunk a lot lately and it's definitely where Goth is going. That and Rengoth. All part of the Cosplay lifestyle. It's fun and creative. I've seen a lot of really cool stuff and by the way, we're working on some really nice paintings utilizing the cogs and wheels of Steampunk. 

What is the best way to make your paintings stand out these days? I mean, the super realistic paintings you can do in Photoshop. In fact, so many paintings you can do in photoshop, including Pointilism, and Monet-style expressionism.

Solution? Make it shiny! Make your pictures shiny! Put lots of glitter in them. Use metallic paints. Make collage or what I like to call garage sale soup.

Fuck what the "fine artists " sniff at. They are all stuck in the same spot making the same "academic" paintings. There is a reason why academic is a term of derision.

Don't be intimidated into buying all your supplies at an over-priced art store. They sniff at Michaels and other craft stores. Who is going to be able to tell if a painting is done by Windsor-Newton brushes and paints or Liquitex in the end?

If they scrutinize it that closely, anyway, give them a boot in the ass.

Why should they be able to define what is art? Do your stuff and post it on Etsy!

Fuck 'em!

Current Mood: artistic

02:44 am - A funny Video and very Apt

 <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tcz_NHAFGS0&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tcz_NHAFGS0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Current Mood: amused

01:06 pm - We Are Working On Some Projects

So far we have on tap: Samantha-X, done by the illustrious and odd humoured Don Fields with heavy illustration work by yours truly (Astorix) and Ron Gravelle. Then we have Psychotix in: Operation Nutjob, which will actually be broken up into at least 4 books written by the ever talented Kerry Griswold. The book has 12 chapters in all (so far) and If we were to put all 12 chapters into one book it would be a massive, ginormous 400 page tome. That would strain the definition of graphic novel, heh. One of the chapters is called Operation Nutjob, which will be the title of one of the books.

Then Ron Gravelle is working on an extremely awesome  webstrip called Außerdem. It has it's own website. Check it out at htttp://rono64.com

02:48 pm - Just viewed in Washington Online

Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable. * Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach children about sexual predators, you are irresponsible and eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that hates America and advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.


OK, much clearer now!

Current Mood: amused

12:49 pm - Time To Start Over

Goth is now slickly commercial. Slick magazines are telling us what is cool and uncool.

Goth started out as a counterculture movement for those who didn't want to be punk and wanted to echo the Beat style of the 1950's. They were depressive and for real reasons. Dysfunctional families, abuse, bullying in school. Feeling like a misfit and wanting to express their distress outwardly.


Just as the Beat generation came out of the horrors of World War II and refused to buy into the mass media's celebration of it being the "great war."

Now real angst seems to be an afterthought for many of those who call themselves Goth (in sort of a me, too, me, too fashion) and Goth wear is cynically marketed in stores, blogs and magazines. Some of it looks great, but it's slick and Goth was originally a very clumsy style. Ripped hoses that were ripped because the wearer couldn't afford new hose, or didn't care.

Don't buy into the slickness! Goth can have other colours besides black, white and red. It's the outward expression for what you feel inside.

Current Mood: awake

08:43 am - Anybody who Still Believes in the Secret? Watch this!!

Please tell me that people have seen the real DVD and dismissed it as the pure unadulterated horseshit that it is. This video is an antidote to what should really be an exercise in PT Barnum-style cynical hucksterism.

09:23 am - Weezer ALWAYS Rocks!

A sweet tidbit.

Current Mood: awake

01:45 pm - A Public Service Message...

No Really! A public service not to listen to this insanity...

04:35 pm - A funny video...

Rono64 Here...

It's time I posted a few funny videos and commercials I have come across over the last few years.

Enjoy!

Current Mood: amused

02:52 pm - Easter Explained

Current Mood: amused

01:19 pm - A Man After My Own Heart

TEASER TRAILER - 1/8/08

Men have always had intelligence which never has increased. Only knowledge has kept advancing.

-Carl Panzram

The Anti-Secret Man. If you think that all people are basically good, read this man's story. If you think that jail is the best option for criminals especially crimes that involves being born in the wrong family at the wrong time, read this man's story.

Then be afraid, be very afraid that those $1 billion earning soft-spoken talk show hosts have all the answers for all the downtrodden, which is to stay right where you are and think happy little thoughts, will be the first to wind up in our meat lockers when we finally stand up and take action.

Current Mood: Pissed!!

07:51 pm - Just Saw Sicko

If you aren't a Michael Moore fan, it doesn't matter. He's changed his methodology and taken a page out of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and taken facts. Facts such as England's drug prices, no matter what the prescription £6.75. In Cuba, 5¢ Canada's health care system was painted in more glowing terms that is deserved but it is true that they won't refuse to treat you if you don't have a health card. they'll worry about expenses later. And the stay is so much cheaper. The health care plan in Canada does not include prescriptions, eyeglasses and dental, but the price controls on drugs are such that a prescription of say, Imitrex, a popular migraine medicine, is 1/3 the price. Canadian drugs go generic sooner than the U.S. and there are no commercials advertising drugs. No waiting rooms full of drug reps taking up valuable patient time. They just drop off the samples and go.

Plus, with the surplus, the Liberals are talking about ramping up health care. Cutting the wait times, covering prescriptions and dental. If you're 65 you don't have to pay for any of that anyway.
But Canada was found to be the worst of the G8 countries that have universal health care. The wait times for specialists are ridiculous and the other countries cover drugs, dental and eye glasses.
So, shamed, the MPs are trying to do something about it.

In the U.S. it's a game of "Look at the monkey, look at the monkey!" Distract people with phony terrorist threats and fill up the papers and news shows with celebrity news (did the death of Anna Nicole Smith really warrant all day coverage by CNN?) People are losing their homes and if they are not outright losing their homes, they are certainly losing the equity in their homes to pay for their health care. Ambulance care should never be paid for by the patient.

What a rotten, corrupt and totally morally bankrupt system the "health care" system is in the U.S.

Current Mood: angry

07:10 pm

Okay, these guys are mutants. PanicBomber slays Ricky Martin

06:10 pm - One Of The Funniest Music Videos I've Seen Lately

albinoblacksheep.com/flash/314

I need to finda new vagina! It's dirty, it's hilarious, it makes fun of Kevin Costner, Bill Cosby, Colin Mochrie and shows Hulk Hogan riffing on a guitar and it's all done in Flash!

I'm a Flash Animation geek. It's easy to load and it's come such a far way.

I especially like the girl with the bouncing boobies from Ren & Stimpy, The Lost
Episodes

3.14 Video, funny as hell!

Have you ever seen Ren & Stimpy, The Lost Episodes? Spike cable channel told John K. that he had free rein. He could do anything that he wanted to. So he made the new episodes more in the spirit of how he wanted to, now that Nickelodeon was no longer holding him back. So, he did. IMHO he made the cartoons a bit dirtier but certainly nothing X-rated. Believe me, I have seen X-rated cartoons. Ralph Bakshi's (sp?) Fritz the Cat? just about any thing done by Robert Crumb?

But Spike lost its nerve. And for the second time in his career, the rug was pulled out from under John K. But at least now he has his current series Ripping Friends.

Current Mood: ROTFLMAO

08:02 pm - Hilarious Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD9U2CM-Y1E

Current Mood: amused

10:06 pm - Two Shows Two Different Views of The Other Side

Saving Grace and House. Saving Grace is a new show that started last month. Its a series starring Holly Hunter and the series is about a female cop who sins her heart out at every turn: drinks, smokes heavily, has sex with married men and she gets visited by an angel named Earl who is doing his best to get her to shape her shit up before she's on a one-way ticket to the no good part of the other side.
He saves her life at one point. I'm not sure if Saving Grace is going to stay on it's Christian view of the other side. But it's also a good detective story and Holly Hunter is a powerful lead actress.
He has the same accent that she did in Raising Arizona which is close to her own Georgia accent.

House is about a pain patient doctor who is completely atheist and scoffs at those who have faith. He seems to be getting a bunch of patients dying on him and he just can't understand why some of them hold their faith until the end. The last episode was a dying patient who already had a near-death episode and was pain free and blissful and knew that there was life after death. He sticks a knife in an outlet to hasten his death. House gnawed by curiosity does the same, but he just succeeded in knocking himself out and while his heart stopped, he didn't have time to have an out of body experience because he had paged someone just 30 seconds earlier. He becomes even more cynical and dismissive of the other side because he didn't have the NDE or Out of body experience.
I think this show is going in the direction of teaching him to accept some unexplainable.

Current Mood: Interested

01:06 pm - The Crow and Just Plain Mind Burps

My favourite movie at this time, my favourite time of year. I must watch it. And I must cry every time. The movie is Goth in every way, everybody gets what they deserve in it and the release I get from crying when I watch it is cathartic. I am actually not much into horror movies, except the classics: The Shining, Scanners, Alien. An American Werewolf in London The Lost Boys. The recent remake of Frankenstein, which stuck close to the book, without Boris Karloff and Igor being added. I really like Minority Report, although it is probably not horror per se, the story is sure horrific. The idea that somebody can be arrested before a crime happens? How close are we to that in North America?
Oh, yes, if Stephen Harper had his way, he would toe the Bush line and have racial profiling at the border. How many people are in prisons in the U.S. for crimes they didn't commit, just may have thought about committing. How far are we going to let the Patriot Act take us?

I know this is sacrilege but generally speaking I think Stephen King is a hack. Oh, I like a few of his films. Children of the Corn is a classic. But lately? I think he's purchased a script writing program and he's sitting back and letting it do the work for him. But it's okay to call him a hack. He calls himself a hack.

This year was sad at the passing of Robert Anton Wilson. But the Illuminati will live on.

Another movie I find horrific is The Fountainhead. I think the writing is truly scary. I am not an Ayn Rand fan. I think she was a bona fide nutbar. And the movie shows it. If you truly create for yourself then you cannot work for the public. If you truly want to call your own shots and be your own person, you cannot work in a service industry. If you truly don't care for anyone and you have no feelings for a person other than yourself, then why get married? The story contradicts itself sentence to sentence.

I wonder if that's why Architects in the 50's and 60's went a bit nuts in their building projects and we now have churches that look like big tits, spaceships out of Plan 9 From Outer Space? and half cut watermelons. Did the architects throw big hissy fits if they couldn't do it their way?
Who is paying you? If they're paying you, shouldn't they have a say, since it is they who have to use the damn building? Read my lips again: if you truly want to be self-actualising and live in the complete "me" you cannot work in the service industry!!!!

I can guess how many one building wonders there are out there.

Sorry, Steve Ditko if this bothers you. The world's biggest Ayn Rand fan who lives at the "Y."

Another mode of thinking that scares me is Scientology. I have tried to read Dianetics and I just can't get through it. To me it's an ink blot test. The insane see the reasoning very clearly. To me it's just plain horseshit. he took what was fashionable in psychotherapy at the time, which in the 50's they were extraordinarily primitive. They were still sawing skulls and prescribing valium to anyone who complained of boredom. So he tried to mix it all together in a stone soup and throw in a Science Fiction story.
He was once rumoured to have said: "forget being paid 10¢ a word, I'll start my own religion and become a millionaire." You have to pay to get in. Think about that one.

This concludes this session of mind burps. Tune in next time for major belches as I drink the soda of life very fast in a gulping sort of fashion. BRAAAAAAAAAP!

Current Mood: nudge, nudge, wink, wink

08:26 pm - Suing Customers: What a Fucking Terrible idea

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won a legal battle as a Minnesota jury found a woman liable for downloading music. The penalty: $220,000 in damages for downloading 24 songs illegally.

The New York Times calls the RIAA decision “a crucial legal victory for record labels and other copyright owners.” Other reports (see Techmeme) come down on the “RIAA is evil” side of the equation. Declan McCullagh breaks down how the RIAA won.

But there’s a broader business picture that’s missing. The issue: The RIAA’s so-called victory comes at a bad time. Music piracy is theft, but suing customers isn’t a good business move. Meanwhile, the music industry is actually making some strides–labels are ditching DRM, business model experiments abound and there is a growing file of evidence that the industry has a clue.

And then the verdict against Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman, hits and any recent goodwill from the music industry goes flying out the window. We’re back to equating the music industry with lawsuits again. The Times reports that record labels have brought legal action against 3,000 people since 2003. The average settlement occurs out of court for about $4,000. That adds up to $12 million not counting legal expenses. Is it really worth it?

For this effort, the RIAA has alienated consumers and has looked progressively worse compared to other content companies. Say what you will about television broadcasters, but the likes of ABC, NBC and CBS are hellbent on not making the same mistakes as the RIAA. The TV industry is throwing multiple models against the Web wall to see what sticks. A lot more gets done when you’re not suing everybody all of the time.

Current Mood: infuriated

10:21 pm - Movies to Recommend

The Lives of Others: a terrific flick about the oppressive East German government. A spy for a dissenting author is spied on. The man who spies on him gets tired of his job of spying on him. Up in the attic listening in to everything he's saying he "neglects" to write pertinent information about him. Finally he helps the author escape persecution by removing a key piece of evidence that would have sent him to the gulag for sure. He gets busted down to postal worker. But the author finds out and dedicates his next book to him.

Perfect Strangers: Ooh, this movie has more twists and turns than a West Virginia freeway. Starring Bruce Willis who does his usual smirk and Halle Berry who does a more than credible job. But the movie is really helped along by a great supporting cast. The end reminded me of Angel Heart.

Delta Farce: Stupid, asinine, but I loved it.

10:08 am - Tripping Balls

I'm suffering from a cold and my attitude towards cold germs are: "Blast 'em. Blast 'em with all of the forces of the Gods." So in typical me fashion, I get some cough syrup. In Canada, you can buy cough syrup with codeine in it. And I drink half a bottle. The experience was interesting. It dried up my cough and I got a very interesting buzz too.