I, the Undead Cheese Minion

Once upon a time, partway through college, I thought that I was interested in goth subculture.

As someone who appreciated the darker side of life, I toyed with the idea of becoming part of it. After all, I liked graveyards and ghosts and spooky things and listening to Evanescence. That's pretty goth, right? I definitely wasn't emo. Some of the music is okay. But those hairstyles and colors are awful. No thanks!

It's important to note that I never actually dressed like a goth. I do like to wear all black on occasion, but makeup and eyeshadow to make myself look pale? Haha, no. Some of those goth ladies are positively beautiful, but the males look too androgynous for my tastes. 

Anyway, I spent a few days researching the subculture, and found that I actually don't fit into it very well. The "goth" bands that I listen to are certainly gloomy: Evanescence, Nightwish, Woods of Ypres, Cradle of Filth, Emilie Autumn, The Birthday Massacre, A Pale Horse Named Death, Tristania, and so forth. However, it turns out that my interests are somewhere halfway between goth and metal - halfway enough to where I'd be a bit of an outsider in either subculture. According to this s00per g0ffik website, the bands that I listen to do not qualify me as a goth, but rather as an Undead Cheese Minion.

Here is the direct quote from the website:

Chemically, Metal is very similar to cheese and it can very easily be become cheese. Sometimes in cheese factories in remote places in the world they accidentally get the mixture slightly off and produce an Undead Cheese. These undead cheeses then escape and produce albums. Undead cheeses are smelly and a bit runny. They are also very dangerous because they, like sirens, have the ability to suck you in and drag you down into a deep dark abyss where you become an Undead Cheese minion. Undead Cheese bands are not Goth, in fact they are not even music…they are something different altogether…something incomprehensible. Pre-pubescent to teenage males run the highest risk of being lured in by Undead Cheese. Most metal walks a very thin line between being music and undead cheese.

Q: What do I do if I suspect my son of being lured in by an Undead Cheese?

A: Sprinkly holy water on his pillow at night before he goes to bed, burn sage and pray. Do all these things without his knowledge. If he were to find out, it could only make things worse.

So I tried listening to "real" goth music, and hey, it's actually pretty good.  The Sisters of Mercy have some good songs, and I like Diary of Dreams. And we can't forget Lovesong by the Cure! Who knows - maybe I'll dive all in at some future point. But I still like my gothic metal bands much better. And I don't do that makeup thing, so if I wear all black, I suppose I just fit under the general label of "dark alternative" or "psuedo-metalhead-but-not-quite-because-i-definitely-listen-to-korn-linkin-park-and-slipknot-and-have-never-attended-any-sort-of-concert-whatsoever-of-any-genre". And half the time I just wear souvenir T-shirts or plaid button-ups (especially at work!) so yeah, not goth. Definitely Undead Cheese. 100% proud Minion of the Undead.

This is my blog. It will certainly talk about music, but it will also talk about whatever else I feel like. My mind has the tendency to travel in like 50 different directions at the same time, so please expect very little consistency or cohesion. If that means nobody follows this, then so be it.

Really, I just need a medium where I'm motivated to write more than in my personal journal. I write in my journal every night. I've kept a journal since I was 6 and written in it (almost) nightly since I was 10. I'm 25 at the time of this posting, so I must have tons of profound written wisdom, right? WRONG! Most of my entries are one-liners, hastily scribbled right before bed. And 5,475 variations of "wow I'm so tired haha got to sleep" and "lol where is the love of my life? ok time to sleep" get very old, very quickly.

I also have another blog, on LiveJournal. I haven't bothered to delete it, though I haven't updated it in years. Ever since that site got overtaken by Russian spambots, it lost its appeal to me. You can probably Google around hard enough and find it, but I'm definitely not going to link it here. It's riddled with unbridled pessimism and teenage angst, and I'd really rather not revisit that period of my life. Or have anyone else see it that knows me outside of the internet.

So here this is. For better or for worse, my lame blog. WHOOSH