Who is Cultist of Vertigo?

cultistofvertigo · 02-24-2010, 02:14 AM

I'm really fucking pissed off now.

I just spent like 5 minutes writting out an introduction that was actually a proper introduction when my computer up and restarted in the middle of a sentence without even so much as warning me. On top of that, it took fucking forever to finish restarting, and by the time it did it took so long to pay attention to the buttons I was pressing that it took longer to load the browser which just made me more furious and I started clicking and banging stuff like a madm'n and...

I just really don't feel like going over it again. It was a nice post, though, I was talking about how I got here and what I might do and why and when and where, and then I started bitching about vampires. I didn't get to the part about me being a haunter who doesn't take a shine to the "haunter" obsession with 1970's misconceptions of dinsaurs and how they reflected my attitude towards the goth kid's (and now emos too) obsession with a blood disease that fucks with your circulatory system.

I was going to get to the questions right about then when it happened, and now instead of feeling like you know a little bit where I'm coming from, all you know is that I'm currently angry and impatient.

But I'll try to sum it up in a really impersonal way just to get it out there: Saw this on somethingawful.com, it didn't actually look bad, so I thought I'd join. Hadn't frequented a message board for a couple of years, and if this is going to be one that I do, you're probably only going to see me in the music section, since I can't for the life of me understand why H. P. Lovecraft is so highly regarded (especially since alot of the stuff they praise doesn't show up in his work, and they ignore the fact that his intense racism shows up in almost everything he's ever written) or how someone can look me straight in the eyes and tell me that they genuinely, not ironically, truly enjoyed the 1931 Frankenstein movie (or as I like to call it, "Awkward Fumbling in the Dark, starring a guy that mumbles really loud").

Point is, there is a huge disconnect between goth movies/literature and me. It isn't always this way, but to me, "goth" is exemplified by Guillaume de Machaut and Peter Murphy. So, there's that.

So now I'm going to answer those questions:

1. What do you do? (Hobbies, job)
Write stuff (stories, screenplays, music, etc.), go to school (getting a Associates in Filmmaking in 2011), do other things.

2. Where are you from?
Earth. Phanerozoic Eon, Cenozoic Era, Anthropocene Epoch.

3. Who is your favorite author?
Frank Belknap Long wrote the best singular story I've ever read, and also the second best. Clark Ashton Smith is infallible, and I also like Poppy Z. Brite. There's more, but FBL and CAS are at the top.

4. What are your favorite films?
Godzilla, Tetsuo, Zeram, Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Dune, Audition, Silent Hill, Call of Cthulhu, The Shunned House, Metropolis, etc.

5. What music do you want played at your wedding?
Ariel Pink live with Geneva Jacuzzi, Gary War on guitar, and Busy doing her badass shoulder dance. And because I feel like I need to put a goth answer, I suppose we'll play some corny ebm and 90's darkwave at the reception.

6. At your funeral?
They Might Be Giants, Ariel Pink, my stuff on the count of my enormous ego.

7. This IS a gothic website, so... how do you want to die?
Either ripped to pieces by a theropod (current favorite for the job is Aquila), or right before I finish the sentence that would reveal where the treasure is hidden to my son.

8. What kind of casket would you want?
Casket? Fuck that, I got worms to feed!

9. What's your FAVORITE outfit?
Hmm... a black t-shirt with a dinosaur/Godzilla/band/Pyramid Head on it, with either fishnet or laced sleeves, and then those big pants that have gotten so shredded they are funtionally shorts, striped tights but with fishnet over that, and those wicked 3 inch wedge boots I got. I'm being nice and picking a goth answer, but that isn't totally accurate.

10. What's one thing you miss about being a little kid?
All of it. Did I mention I'm also a haunter now? I take nostalgia very seriously.

11. What's your favorite band?
How about top 5?
1. They Might Be Giants
2. Bauhaus
3. Boyd Rice
4. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
5. John Cage
Boyd Rice and Ariel Pink switch places every other minute.

12. What kind of education do you have? What is/was/will be your major?
I feel like I've already answered this, because I have

13. Why did you join?
With so many major hauntology groups in europe for the time being, and others either ignoring Texas or having just passed (Neon Indian was frickin' amazing), I started turning back into a goth kid. Not like I ever really stopped, but I'm definitely in the groove right now.

14. If the first 13 questions didn't give it away. What is your gender?
Grow up. I know you mean sex. You mean sex because you think sex=gender and vice versa. I would have expected better from a goth forum. I can't even answer what my gender is, because I can't pick one. I'm equal parts manly, girly, both, and asexual. But you didn't want to know that did you? Well, I'm not telling you my sex now. Tough puppies. It's a good thing I'm not transexual or something, or I might have been offended. As it is, I'm just being difficult.

So, uh... yeah. I'm alot less mad now that I've ranted a little.

You can always respond to this thread here, but, as I said, I'm probably going to be in the music section talking about how cool Bubonic Plague is and how I'm madly in love with a guy whose music I can't stand (Mana).

Sea Yua Round... I guess... elipsis.

Amunet · 02-24-2010, 06:49 AM

I think you're equal parts hilarious, and interesting...

Welcome to Gnet....

Feel free to rough up the forums a bit, I think you're gonna have a blast.

(Looking forward to this)

=)

Amunet

Malice In Wonderland · 02-24-2010, 11:36 AM

Hmm. Maybe.
Edit: Godzilla <3

Saya · 02-24-2010, 12:21 PM

We're on somethingawful?

ZOMG WE ARE:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/week...ist.php?page=1

hey Ophelia, you're mentioned in a quote! And holy shit, Alan, you're talking about Pokemon o.O

Corpsey · 02-24-2010, 12:31 PM

Ha, I remember that. Of all the whimsical things people could quote from Alan, it was his mentioning of Pokemon.

Welcome and all that jazz. I will read you intro at a better time, not right in the morning when my eyes are straining at that font.

cultistofvertigo · 02-24-2010, 01:06 PM

Pokemon are the bizzomb, youse guys. My favoritest pogemans is still Missingno..

Yeah, when I was reading the something awful article, I noticed that it wasn't really as funny (in that depressing, awkward, niche of niche bizzarre fetish mixed with illiterate homophobic preteen sort of way) but seemed more normal. It seemed like the page was just making fun of the fact that it is a goth forum, which seemed childish. Then I remembered that I was a goth kid... and I'm repeating myself.

And yeah the intro is a bit long. But consider (green lakes and the idiocy of clocks) I actually had a pretty tight group of 2 or 3 paragraphs that covered everything, and then I just lost my god damn mind and had to find it again.

But I bet I can make this post long.

It's pretty long.

Getting longer.

Okay, enough of this.

Alan · 02-24-2010, 03:45 PM

I was just reading about the Big Five of the Phanerozoic today. I smile that someone used that word today.

cultistofvertigo · 02-24-2010, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan

I was just reading about the Big Five of the Phanerozoic today. I smile that someone used that word today.

Yeah, what a mess. We're dead in center of "6" right now, by the way.

As far as I know, the current concensus is:
Now: Humans, duh.
KT/KPg: Meteor, duh.
TrJ: POSSIBLE Vulcanism, less dramatic by virtue of it being essentially the same thing as the Great Dying, but with a biosphere (including dinos) better able to breathe in near-anoxic environments.
PTr: One time I saw an animation of this that scared me to death. It had a cross-section/see-through crust, and they showed how this gigantic subduction zone surrounding the entirety on pangae forced the magma into this bubble, which exploded upwards in a mushroom-cloud looking shape and slammed Siberia from underground. It certainly drives the horror of that particular event home. I still can't sleep at night.
DC: Any combination of freezing, anoxia, or meteor, or all three, or none. no body seems to have a clue.
OS: Freezing. Not to snowball earth degree, but pretty bad considering there were animals in that water.
Vendian/Cambrian: Some don't seem to think this counts, but I do. I mean, unless there is some sort of Proarticulate lost world in the Amazon or something I don't know about, it's obvious something terrible happened. It's a little more obvious here though: eyes. Spriggina just wasn't ready for that shit.

The PTr and TrJ fascinate me though. I still get a real sick feeling in my gut if I read about the Great Dying too much, but I still can't believe how almost everything on the frickin' planet died. And TrJ because it just illustrates how much better dinosaurs are than everything else. KT is solved, and everytime I hear someon bring it up I want to punch them in the face, because I just know they're going to slip and say "dinosaurs are extinct," which is for some reason forgivable in some backwards ass nations.

My other favorite extinction is the Oxygen Catastrophe. That, and I love how we seem to have to believe that the Snowball Earth episodes spelled doom for a lot of earthlings, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of that.

We've got such a badass history.

Still Jack · 02-25-2010, 12:32 AM

I actually sort of like you. What puzzles me, however, is the fact you hate H.P. Lovecraft (understandably so as he was quite racist), even though he had a bloody good writing style, yet you like Poppy Z. Brite, who's work reads like Bad fanfic/ torture porn literature.

the-nihilist · 02-25-2010, 07:42 AM

Weren't most people racist back in those days?

cultistofvertigo · 02-25-2010, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Still Jack

I actually sort of like you. What puzzles me, however, is the fact you hate H.P. Lovecraft (understandably so as he was quite racist), even though he had a bloody good writing style, yet you like Poppy Z. Brite, who's work reads like Bad fanfic/ torture porn literature.

HPL is fine, but his fan base turns me off more than his actual racism. And that's saying something, because I hate those fucking nazis (no, HPL is not a nazi, but he did write a letter describing how all the jews in New York made him feel physically sick).

Just to be clear here, I hate HPL as a person, not as a writer. His writing is far from perfect. The dry, matter-of-fact style works really well when he's talking about astronomy and paleontology, but when going on and on about the state of the uncle's estate and all that, I just tune out. He also has a unique way of introducing the monsters, which sounds like he's trying to be FBL, but it's clear to me he's just using "undescribable" as red herring, and never really backs that up by not describing the monster.

And you are absolutely right about Brite. She's a big, corny mess.

So, I think what you're implying here is that what's most important for literature is how competent the actual writing is. I disagree. The most important part of any piece of art, across the board, is whether it was worth both making and viewing/reading/playing/whatever. You can use all the big words you want, but if you're story is about something people do outside my window, why the hell should I care?

HPL writes space monsters and technical sciency stuff well, but when he isn't doing that, it's just boring and/or racist. Poppy Z. Brite is insane, and I think isn't physically able to write like normal people. The only way Lovecraft beats Brite is with monsters, where the most I've seen Brite do is zombies, which don't really even count, and HPL did a sound monster.

But I would much rather read the one written by the non-racist who is never boring. Can you see where I'm coming from here?

Oh, and Nihilist, not everyone in the 20's/30's was a racist. Clark Ashton Smith sure wasn't. The Marx Brothers weren't. Plus, I've never considered that an excuse (well, except for Martin Luther King being religious, I can forgive that pretty easy). For example, Thomas Huxley said that birds were dinosaurs in the 1870's. Even a century later there were still some idiots who couldn't figure out what he was talking about. So no excuse.

Raptor · 02-26-2010, 05:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malice In Wonderland

Godzilla <3

More importantly: dinosaurs. Judging by the tshirt list anyway. I like.

cultistofvertigo · 02-26-2010, 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raptor

More importantly: dinosaurs. Judging by the tshirt list anyway. I like.

Yep, I love dinosaurs. Well, Theropods, but the others are cool too, I guess.

Right now my favorite dinosaur is Sagittarius (secretary bird for the, uh... newbs? Am I doing that right?). What other dinosaur kills its prey by stomping on it, then stabbing it in the skull with it's back talon like it was a stilleto. T. rex ain't got nothin' on that shit.

And judging from you're name "Raptor," I'm guessing you're a fan of theropods too.

We have so much in common! We should be bestest friends! Wheee!

Raptor · 03-01-2010, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cultistofvertigo

And judging from you're name "Raptor," I'm guessing you're a fan of theropods too.

I was pretty obsessed with dinosaurs when I was younger, I think I had most of these magazines: eBaylinkbecauseIcan'tseethemanywhereelse. I wanted to be a paleontologist for a long time as a kid but it got replaced with physics, still interested though. I'll admit I had no idea what a secretary bird was until just now, not suprised that they're someones favourite.

cultistofvertigo · 03-03-2010, 05:12 AM

Before that it was Hesperornis for a little while, and before that it was Crows.

Ugh. The 90's and Dinosaurs. I always thought it was worse than the 70's and Dinosaurs, because at least then it had only been a few years since Deinonychus and the Dinosaur Heresies. But 20 years later... in the same decade as Sinosauropteryx? No excuse.

What's worse is that I still see shows like Jurassic Fight Club prominently displaying Dromaeosaurs with a debilitating case of mange. I didn't even think Dinosaurs could get that!

Well, maybe the Dino-Mange.

MissInformation · 03-03-2010, 07:01 AM

Points for Godzilla! I love Burning Godzilla and should I ever marry, I want Godzilla and King Ghidorah cake toppers.
Do you ever read the webcomic, Twisted Kaiju Theater?

cultistofvertigo · 03-04-2010, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MissInformation

Points for Godzilla! I love Burning Godzilla and should I ever marry, I want Godzilla and King Ghidorah cake toppers.
Do you ever read the webcomic, Twisted Kaiju Theater?

YES!! I was obsessed with it back in middle school! My favorite character was always the guy who was Space Godzilla. Token black guys are better when they are space mutant nephews of Godzilla.

You want Godzilla and KG cake toppers, huh?

...will you marry me?

MissInformation · 03-05-2010, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cultistofvertigo

YES!! I was obsessed with it back in middle school! My favorite character was always the guy who was Space Godzilla. Token black guys are better when they are space mutant nephews of Godzilla.

You want Godzilla and KG cake toppers, huh?

...will you marry me?

I'm 31 and still obsessed with that comic. It kind of inspired my own
http://projectpoppet.com

I'll get back to you on the marriage part.