CorpGoth's Mid-Month Status Report: March forward!

It is once again time of CorpGoth's Mid-Month Status Report! This time the task is to show our work shoes, meaning the ones we use everyday due to the realities of walking long distances or dress code or other reasons. You can find other participants from here, go check their shoes too!

I live in a cold and bleak city, where is snow and hale and slush snow, and they can change from one to the other within a week. For the last six months I've been walking to the university or to the shops and other places, because it was just two kilometers from my old flat. This means that I walked from 4 to 8 kilometers daily, so the shoes had to be comfortable.

One can clearly see, that those shoes are used and the surface is slightly damaged. They have served me well, but I hope I find better ones before winter comes back and buries me into her cold whiteness again.

Now that I live 400 meters away from the university, I shall be able to use more high heals. Also, the spring is coming, so soon I do not need to worry about snow and icy roads anymore. These boots are lovely, but there is one slight problem. I found them at a flea market and they are one size too big for me. Therefore my ankles start to hurt, if I walk with them too long. I shall try to figure some way to make them more my size, so that I can wear them as "work shoes". I wonder if somewhere they sell some sort of ankle support thingies I could wear inside the shoe.

Hierarchy of needs, aka. how important aesthetics are for goths?

This post is mainly inspired by the fact that I moved into a new flat almost two weeks ago. I guess it is relevant to tell, that my common-law marriage ended in last September and I had to live in the old flat till February because the rental contract was determined to that month and there would have been financial sanctions if I had broken the contract before that.  But that's enough about the private life of Jade!

I have been awfully busy with the whole operation of moving for the last month and I felt completely exhausted. So, instead of organizing the fridge or other more urgent matters, I started to hang paintings and photos on walls.

It made me think Maslow's hierarchy of needs. For those who do not know it, or just can't remember at the moment, here is a nice information package. According to Maslow, physiological needs like food and shelter are the base of human's needs and the last priority is self-actualization, which includes creativity.

This is an old theory and there has been criticism against it. The prioritization can vary in different circumstances and I started to wonder, is my circumstance altered, or in what stage of need the environments physical attractiveness is situated. The aesthetic nature of a human's environment is not mentioned in the bottom portion of Maslow's triangle, so I assume it is considered to be a part of self-actualization, since making one's home cozy is expressing one-self.

Kitchen. The chandelier is owned by the other roommate.

I am bold enough to claim that in goth culture the aesthetic has a big role. At least for me personally it has an important part in my life and luckily my new roommates approve my sense of decor in the no man's land (aka. living room, kitchen and corridor). I am not ashamed to confess, that I get sings of depression if my environment is ugly. Or if I can not dress at least in a moderately gothic way. I'm not saying that all goths are vain or disturbingly attached to pretty objects, but I think it is sort of a part of the sub-culture to have the tendency to appreciate twisted beauty.

The corridor. 

 The corridor would be so depressing, if there weren't some paintings or the cages on the dresser, don't you think?

Close-up. In the cage is a fluffy chlamydia bacterium.

 For last but not least, my worktable. I decided to hang on the wall a drawing made by a friend, since it has been away from the walls for nearly a year. I like it very much, it is sad and beautiful at the same time. I need some beauty in front of my table, since I must spend a lot of time there doing my Bachelor's thesis and other essays. As seen in the picture, the table is already in a mess.

Also, the painting is not tilted, it just looks like it thanks to the point I took the photo from. Thank you for reading and next time it is CorpGoth's Mid-Moth Status Report!

CorpGoth's Mid-Month Status Report: Love What You Do

Lovely Trystan in her blog This Is CorpGoth has given us an opportunity to tell about our career, school or other vocation. More precisely, what we love about what we do. Here is Trystan and other participants, go and check what they love about their careers!

I study Finnish literature at a university and I love it. Basically this means that I study theories and methods of literature studies in general, like in comparative literature, but I am to focus on developing my expertise on history of Finnish literature and the institutions that have an effect on it (like changes in the field of publishing, stipends for writers and so on).

I love reading fiction, I love studying those theories and especially I love how literature studies have changed the way I see the world. It is like I have these gogglers and I can see how our culture is full of conventional features that are actually from fictional literature.

And besides, in our examinations part of the books are fiction. For example I have read 12 children's and youths' books including Harry Potter and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the questions were like "tell us about the horror elements in Wonderland" and I got study-points for it. How cool is that!

At the moment I am doing my bachelor's thesis about a Finnish novel from the view-point of menippean satire and rhetorical devices. I could go on and on about it, but I must restrain myself. I just post a pic where are some of the theory books I am probably going to use.

In general, I strongly encourage people to read more fiction, it is fun and makes you see the world from a new angle, trust me!

Adventures in Taxidermy, or at least with a Skull

Last weekend I was visiting my family and as a dinner we had a rabbit. While my father was disemboweling the creature and chattering away about should we give brains and other parts we were not going to eat for the dogs, I started to think about the skull. It would be a pretty little decoration in a house or as a jewellery, so I asked if I could try to boil the head of the dead rabbit. I had never done anything like that before, so I was excited about a new experience. My mother was first against it, because it is quite smelly business. So she insisted that I should put a lot of allspice to the water and it was not smelly at all.

It was not a pretty sight, I must say and that is one of the reasons I did not take any photos of the process. It was just a grey lump in the kettle. People tend to whiten the skulls, but I like it like that, more natural-like.

There are no specific instruction about how long one should boil the head, but for a small creature, like the one I was experimenting with, recommendation was one hour if young mammal and about 3 hours if it died old. I cooked it about two hours and when I was removing flesh with a toothpick the jaw got separated. That is the risk if one cooks the head too long, other parts fell off too, not just soft tissue.

That was not really a problem for me. I preferred it to be easier to remove flesh and get a 3D puzzle than the option of a smelly little skull, if I can't get all soft material out of it. First it was a bit awful and slimy, but then I got used to it and it was rather fun to clean the skull.

Boiling a skull is the easiest way to clean it, if one is trying it for the first time. Other ways are for example maggots or through a process of decay. A third option is dump the skull into a anthill. The little buggers eat everything.

Live-gigs at bars, usually a disappointment?

Doom-metal gig at a bar called Vastavirta

I seldom go to gigs that are held in bars, because the sound system is hardly ever good. I do not know if it is just me, but I never actually hear the words the vocalist sings. Or other details for that matter. The volume is just way too loud, making the experience more felt than heard.

One of the reasons is that the artists can't usually bring all of their own equipment. Another problem can be that the premises the bar is situated is not designed for live-music performances. Therefore the volume must be insanely loud to reach the far end of the room.

For example, last night I went with some of my friends to listen to doom-metal at a place called Vastavirta (Counter-current). Thank goodness one of our party had remembered the volume is absurdly loud and had a bag full of earplugs. So, we did not get our eardrums damaged, but I could feel each time a drummer hit his pedal the sound in my entrails and especially in my vocal cords, which was a bit freaky. It felt as if I had my self been all night singing like a growling doom-metal vocalist.

Remember you earplugs!

Of coarse the atmosphere in a crowded bar can be very good and enjoyable. I'm not saying last night was a bad experience, it felt strangely cathartic to let the sound waves occupy one's body and just feel the rhythm. 

Though I still like to hear by what language is the vocalist singing.

Winter's Bride

As I mentioned, I made a trip to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden with a friend. We went to see some art exhibitions, shopped and generally acted like tourists. Except we made a little photo shoot too. Since it was almost Winter Solstice (18th of December), we decided to do a Winter's Bride. In the pics I am wearing a wedding dress my friend found from a second hand shop and some vintage furs of my own. Lipstick is Make  Up Store's Black Orchid.

We took these photos at the garden of Royal Library and some dog-owners and joggers apparently were a bit amused by our behavior. I'm just happy if we brightened somebody's day.

Once again I'll mention that the furs are heritage from my mother's side and the creatures were skinned before I was even born. Also, a poor student like me could not afford furs. :)

Have a happy Christmas, Yule and slightly late Winter Solstice!

Gothic transport: a funeral vehicle

I was on holiday with a friend in Stockholm, Sweden and when we were walking from the harbor 6.30 a.m. we saw a lovely funeral vehicle. It was clearly altered to transport other than corpses.

This made me think how utterly cool car it would be, when and if in the future I would need to have one. I'm pretty sure that The Addams Family had had a funeral vehicle if it had not been so impractical considering the size of the family!

I tried to google where could one buy a funeral car but I only found american websites. No mention in my home country but that is not a surprise, since this country's population is so small. Here is one of the websites I found: http://thefuneralcarstore.com/preowned.php?type=Hearse

Do not know if they sell for private persons, whom are not in the business.