Dog help me, I had to go to the local Walmart Super Center today. I can count on one hand the visits I’ve made during the six years we’ve lived here, and under normal circumstances, a team of rhinoceri couldn’t drag me to a Walmart in the run-up to Christmas.
But I discovered my meringue powder had expired, and I need some to make royal icing. No other place had it, so off I went.
I think I saw four older teens/young adults at Walmart dressed kind of like Nazis, so that was disturbing. Three boys and a girl. They weren’t displaying swastikas, but their black trench coats and old-fashioned black military-style clothing had what looked like fake insignia of indeterminate origin.
I hope it’s just some weird non-Nazi-affiliated fashion trend I’m unaware of because I’m old. After seeing the group clomping through the store in their heavy boots earlier, I accidentally bumped into the girl in the baking goods aisle. We had a good-natured exchange about it, which one wouldn’t expect from a Nazi.
Back in the day, I was a teenaged punk in this same county and felt judged for the outlandish clothing and hairstyle I favored at the time. So I want to believe these kids are just expressing something harmless that eludes me. But yeah, it was unsettling.
I’m baking cookies anyway, Nazis be damned. Our annual cookie event doesn’t take place until Friday, but over the years we’ve sensibly taken on more prep work in advance so that actual cookie night is less grueling.
At various points in this hellish year, I’ve thought about saying to hell with, well, everything. But for whatever reason, I keep on keeping on.
Cookies and butter lambs and other bullshit like that, no matter what. It’s arguably a pointless groove, a rearranging of deck chairs, but it’s mine.
What keeps you plugging along?
Open thread!
Baud
I made some goofy fashion choices when I was young. But who knows these days?
Steve LaBonne
I mentioned a day or two ago why we are having a very subdued holiday season. But life goes on and comforting routines help keep one going through hard times. So, not pointless.
zhena gogolia
I began doing word puzzles obsessively in January 2016. The habit stuck with me, less intensely, through the period when I could blissfully ignore the government most days. It’s going into overdrive now.
Math Guy
My lack of any coherent fashion sense probably contributed to my being single for so long. Oh well.
I maintain my equilibrium these days exercising and reading. Enjoying “Kafka on the Shore” by Murakami at the moment.
realbtl
My dog gets me out on my gimpy 76 yo ankles/knees twice a day if it is above 0º. Luckily he’s small and the walks are short (enough).
Albatrossity
I usually make pfeffernusse and peanut brittle for the holidays, and haven’t felt like doing that this year. But I miss them, so I probably will manage to do that later this week. Some traditions need to be honored, for sure.
NotMax
Inspector Clouseaui/Inspector Gadget fashion fetish?
:)
rikyrah
Please show us some pictures of your Christmas cookies :)
Poe Larity.
I think they call them Goths.
suzanne
Stress relief? Yoga. Pinterest home decor. Spooning the dog. Running. Throwing stuff away. Brushing my hair 200 times.
John S.
If wearing all black were nefarious, then my teenage daughter would be a Nazi.
(She’s definitely not.)
Rose Judson
I got my cookies that need to be mailed in the post this morning. Just one more present to pick up (Mr. Ex’s customary case of Christmas craft beer) and a few more boxes to bake off that will be presented in person over the weekend.
Haven’t seen any ambiguously fash cosplay teens over here. While en route to the post office I did pass a group of large, loutish-looking boys in track suits outside the main entrance to the local park who were happily feeding popcorn to a squirrel.
Christmas spirit, innit.
Gin & Tonic
Two years ago when I was going through an awfully dark time health-wise, going out in the woods with the dog kept me going. She didn’t know anything about my tribulations, just wanted to chase random scents and jump in the pond or the river. It was mostly therapeutic, but long walks with no human companionship in the (sort of) wilderness also gave a lot of time to think, which sometimes was bad.
But things worked out OK in the end.
Scout211
My daughter and I started a daily email to each other when she first left home. The college years and her study abroad in Spain cut that down to every once in awhile. But since then we email each other every day when we first get up, usually around 5 am when we are the only ones awake in our respective homes.
She’s in her mid-40s now and very busy with her career and her family but she writes every day with few exceptions. It most definitely keeps me plugging along if plugging along means it lifts my spirits so much that I feel like I can face anything in the day ahead.
Here’s to things that help us all keep plugging along.
surfk9
Ms Surfk9 and I make thousands of Christmas cookies every year and send them all around the country. We spend many days every year doing this. This year it has helped keep me sane.
rikyrah
Sort of wish we had a post where folks would send in pictures of their Christmas cookies/cakes
TONYG
I was a teenager during the first (of several) waves of punk rock culture back in the seventies (although I wasn’t a part of that culture). “Blitzkreig Bop” for Christ sakes, was one of the iconic songs. Nazi symbolism was common back then (which I found to be infuriatingly stupid, especially given the fact that a lot of Holocaust survivors were alive and relatively young back then). Maybe the kids that you saw were just a modern manifestation of that — “wear of say something to piss off the old folks”.
featheredsprite
In death, there are no silly young people to fret about. You would miss them.
NotMax
Could be worse. Could have been outfitted in skinny jeans.
;)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Poe Larity.:
That was my reaction having befriended an international batch of goth kids back in the late 90s. We’ve all stayed in touch all these years as I’ve watched them grow up, have successes (and tragedies). But I got a great insight into goth pop culture and how enduring it’s turned out to be.
NotMax
Can’t rightly say but it takes me all day to do it.
:)
Rose Judson
@surfk9: I made 80 dozen this year, so 960 cookies. Takes up three weekends, but it’s so worth it when friends share how much it means to them. Also I catch up on TV while I’m doing it.
JerseyBeard
Routine can be empowering, I’m happy for you that you’re sticking to some of yours.
Elizabelle
I love the blogpost title.
Poe Larity.
In other news, you should be a rideshare driver:
https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/articles/lower-alzheimers-death-rates-among-taxi-and-ambulance-drivers
Chetan Murthy
@Poe Larity.: i wonder what the rate of alzheimer’s disease is for London cabbies?
WTFGhost
Not a “pointless groove” – more like, an analog record groove, that shows off a fuller, richer, picture of you than could be created using mere (scorn) DIGITAL (/scorn) reproductions…
(Kids, I’m referencing “vinyl records” versus “CDs” – you may need to ask your *grandparents* about this one!)
Betty Cracker
I know what goths are. These kids weren’t goths.
Anyhoo, I’m currently being entertained by a grunting flock of White Ibises (the Steffi Graf of birds) in my cypress tree and a whistlIng, screechy flock of Red-Winged Blackbirds in the nearby sweet gum. Far more engrossing than fash-fash forward Walmart teens.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Betty maybe you met amateur goths?
Betty Cracker
@featheredsprite: Thanks, sunshine!
Lumpy
I agree with the comments that the Walmart shoppers were probably goths, or maybe fans of “industrial” music or electronic dance music. Quasi-military garb, cropped hair, insignias and sigils are popular in that world. You could probably ask them in a friendly manner and get a response, as they clearly don’t mind attracting attention. If they’re just music fans they will quickly dispel your concerns, and if they are militia types they’ll probably be glad to tell you about that as well. Those people have been emboldened by Trump, and they probably imagine that they have all kinds of popular support that they don’t actually have. So they would be glad to blab about their mission or whatever.
A Ghost to Most
Making things keeps me going. And my grow room. I have a mission to conserve a particular MJ strain that I find highly creative.
Rose Judson
@rikyrah: Here’s one of the boxes I sent out this morning, if that helps?
HinTN
@surfk9: May I send you my address?
ETA: @Rose Judson: You said friends and family…
Poe Larity.
@Chetan Murthy: Taxi Brains Project:
http://spierslab.com/taxi-brains-project/
Josie
My two granddaughters, ages 6 and 9, and my writing. Also, I have invested in some new to me seasonings and am studying Mediterranean cooking. It’s really good!
NutmegAgain
I always make stollen (shtullen, not stolen!). It’s really the only reason I’ve hung on to the big stand mixer. Other German Christmas yummies I typically buy, although you can’t get proper Pfeffernusse (powdered sugar, not icing) for love nor money. My kid says all the ones she’s seen in Germany now have hard icing too. And slowly the world comes apart! A funny about the Stollen–first year that kid was living in Germany she mentioned that we always had homemade. Her German pals were shocked, and possibly horrified. Homemade!?! But I think the store bought stuff could easily be turned into a doorstop, to replace a brick.
Besides complaining about bad German pastry, I hang light strings all over. When I discovered the battery powered strings that had a timer (6 hrs on, 18 off) I was off and running.
NutmegAgain
@Rose Judson: looks yummy!
WaterGirl
@rikyrah:
That’s a good idea!
New Deal democrat
Okay, this place could clearly use a good chuckle:
Caption to photo:
”They used to laugh and call him names . . . “
https://mastodon.world/@[email protected]/113673024973698281
NutmegAgain
@Albatrossity: yum Pfeffernusse! I am about to try my hand at homemade, since I can’t find any with powdered sugar, only hard icing. Do you have a favorite recipe you’d like to share?
tobie
Let’s hope that baking mellows the soul of youth, whether fascist curious or not.
I read that ex-Congressman David Rivera (R-Miami, FL) has been indicted for lobbying for Venezuela. I don’t know much about him but it would be ironic if, like all GOPers, he railed against the dangers of communism while supporting a Venezuela’s communist regime.
Ramona
I am so looking forward to pictures of your butter lamb!
HinTN
@New Deal democrat: Definitely worth a chuckle.
Princess
@Poe Larity.: I wonder if playing certain video games could have the same effect.
Doc Sardonic
@featheredsprite: Wow, you must be a fucking riot at parties.
p.a
@TONYG: I don’t know who got writing credit, but the story I remember about Blitzrieg Bop is that it was inspired by DeDe’s dad, who was a guard or some such at Nuremberg.
Jeffg166
I made death by chocolate cookies this morning. I doubled the recipe and gave half to my next door neighbor. He and his wife like them.
Other than that that I am ignoring the holidays once again. This year has been particularly successful. I never turn the TV on. I see no Christmas stuff other than what I run into on YouTube. That I mute.
Skippy-san
My wife keeps me going on – that and my fear of missing out on something.
TBone
Last night, TCM aired ‘From Darkness to Light’ about Jerry Lewis’s failed attempt to make his movie titled ‘The Day the Clown Cried’ which was filmed in a concentration camp and culminated in Jerry as the Clown leading 65 children into the gas chamber. Then they aired ‘Life Is Beautiful’ (Italian) right afterwards, which successfully blended clown comedy with tragihorror. Something about Jerry was really off and I don’t know enough about his life – was he doing drugs? He got over that failure, but only just barely.
Life is like that. Wear the scars proudly, and also the grays. Keep going. When you’re walking through hell, there is no other way.
narya
I’ve been asking myself that very question lately: mostly it’s inertia (in the sense that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion . . .), and I’ll settle for that for now. I’m hoping that the consulting gig ends up helping the organization; that would be gratifying. I’m reading somewhat more. Looking at my year-end numbers, I exercised less this past year than I would have liked, so I’m planning on fixing that. And I’ve been forcing myself to be social, at least a bit; last night I committed to planning a “beer from the basement” party for the usual suspects. I’m definitely struggling a bit, but I also know that exercising, eating healthy, and doing at least a few social things helps stave off the depression spiral, as does the lengthening days after the solstice.
Also too: Balloon Juice keeps me going.
zhena gogolia
@Rose Judson: Wow! I just gained three pounds.
Scout211
Nazi chic or Nazis?
Trollhattan
Last summer on a hot afternoon (is there any other kind of summer afternoon?) cycling our parkway path I approached and passed a man on a bicycle. It was a folding bike but more interesting was the Asian rider in full IJA WWII regalia, including cap and full-size sword at his side. He did wave as I passed, so that was reassuring.
ETA forgot to mention the boom box playing marches.
TBone
@NotMax: ha!
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: There is a really funny photo out of the expression on a translator’s face after she hears Trump say that Italy and America have been friends since the Roman Empire.
Barbara
@TBone: I did not like Life Is Beautiful nearly as much as I was “supposed” to. I don’t think it actually blended comedy and horror successfully. I could not suspend my disbelief sufficiently enough to see it as a fairy tale, not even for a second.
TBone
@Barbara: I’m sorry you didn’t find in it the power of silly like I did. Everyone is different (usually me, obvs).
Quiltingfool
Quilts. That is what keeps me from jumping into the canyon of doom. I’m working on one right now that is very old-fashioned, scrappy, looks like something a Depression-era quilter would make (waste not, want not) and when I look at it, I just say to myself, “pretty, pretty, pretty!” lol!
The selling of quilts has really slowed to non-existent sales, but, really, how many quilts does a person need? They aren’t disposable, they last a good long while (I have a few that are about 75 years old). Plus, many of us getting up there in age are trying to have LESS stuff!
I don’t care, though. I’m still going to make quilts and if they go to organizations to raise funds, great! I’ve got plenty of fabric!
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: I have gotten addicted to Zen Word. It’s an easy game, really, just involves spelling words from a group of letters.
Betty Cracker
@Quiltingfool: I’ve got a quilt my great-great grandmother made, and a couple made by her daughter and her daughter’s daughter. I can barely sew on a button, but the quilts mean a lot to me. And yours are works of art.
Barbara
@TBone: No, in this case it was definitely me. Maybe because I am primed to push back really strongly to what I see as a kind of emotional manipulation.
Betty Cracker
@Trollhattan: That’s a funny story; glad you included the detail about the marches!
KatKapCC
Visit your local goth/industrial dance club and you’ll realize these kids were not cosplaying Nazis.
AM in NC
Just finishing up my holiday baking and starting deliveries today. So much joy!
And I also had my weekly volunteer time with the first graders at our local elementary school. Now a classroom full of six-year-olds excited to see you every week is THE BEST reason to keep on keeping on.
Fuck Trump and his MAGOP asshole enablers. I won’t let them take my joy away.
TBone
@Barbara: well, I think that’s a healthy instinct in most situations!
TBone
@AM in NC: come sit by me (if you want)
Betty Cracker
Jesus, I don’t know how many times I gotta tell y’all that I know what goths are. They weren’t goths! Could be part of some music or cinematic fandom I’m completely ignorant of though.
schrodingers_cat
Long walks, workouts and art. That’s what keeps me going.
OT. Have any juicers traveled to Amsterdam? Know of neighborhoods that you can stay that won’t break the bank?
KatKapCC
@Betty Cracker: I included “industrial” on purpose. No, they don’t sound like goth kids, but the description of black trench coats, black military clothing, and stompy boots sounds very much like industrial/rivet-head/thunderdome-at-Burning-Man types. I mean, fine, you saw them and I didn’t, but being part of that scene myself a few decades back, the description sounded exactly like a lot of folks looked. That’s all.
Quiltingfool
@Betty Cracker: Well, you can make butter lambs, and cook very delicious foods, and you know birds and have two adorable dogs…so who cares if you can barely sew buttons?
I know how to cook, and could probably do better, I just don’t want to. Frankly, I’d love to have a good cook in the house, I’d be willing to do the clean up!
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: I stayed in an old, no-frills hotel right across from the big park that is close to the Rijksmuseum. It was pretty cheap even during high season.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Could they have been Visigoths? Asking for a friend.
MobiusKlein
While being stuck as a software manager, I try to profile and optimize random bits of code around the company. I have one thing I’m working on to optimize cpu/memory performance on Money formatting, might get up to a 10x speedup!
Ah, nevermind, gotta get back to end of year reviews.
sixthdoctor
Borrowing my brother’s keyboard and trying to learn allll the classic 80s synth riffs from scratch. Jump? Tom Sawyer? THE FINAL COUNTDOWN? Oh hell yes.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: Do you remember the name?
sab
@Baud: 20 years ago my stepson looked and dressed like that. Black studded clothes, weird hair, clunky boots, pierced everything. He was and is not anything like a Nazi. He was if anything antifa. He got in a lot of bar brawls, mostly beating up racists and homophobes.
His style sense hasn’t changed much, nor have his political views. But he did give up drinking and bar brawling.
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
I enjoyed it while watching it, back when it was in the theaters. But afterwards, I thought: if the Allies show up a day later, the kid’s part of a great big pile of ashes, and all of the father’s pretending to the kid that it’s all some sort of game is going to be crushed when the kid finds himself in the gas chamber after all.
Sure, miracles of timing like that happen, but it’s like winning the lottery. People win the lottery, but for every winner, there’s millions of losers.
lowtechcyclist
@Quiltingfool:
My wife and I still very much enjoy the quilt you made that I won here last spring. She sleeps under it every night!
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
Or maybe Ostrogoths. You never know.
David_C
Plugging along? Singing prep for Lessons & Carols and Christmas Eve services, deciding that I will continue to post about vaccines and other public health measures, despite the new administration. I realized I could retire tomorrow and probably get a consultant gig, and being from the West Side of Buffalo and going to public schools made me less likely to back down.
And I’m with @Betty Cracker on a previous thread. I’m not battling with the Democratic Party when there are real issues to spend energy on.
Oh, and grandchildren and having time to do genealogy.
Poe Larity.
Well I was being facetious knowing Betty’s punk past.
But Tampa’s All Ages Goth Prom is this Friday…
NutmegAgain
@schrodingers_cat: A bunch of years ago I stayed in a place called de Filosooph. Each room is dedicated to a different philosopher… But, they have rooms of all sizes and the smaller ones can be (used to be?) affordable. Easy access to the tram and also the Vondelpark.
AM in NC
@TBone: I have a feeling we’d have a lot to talk about and would laugh a whole bunch (sometimes pointing and laughing).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
Sounds more like Ostrogoths. ;)
dm
@Math Guy: I keep reading Murakami, but i’m not sure why. Mostly, I guess the works he describes are just slightly off.
He sure does like to put his characters into wells, though. I wonder is it’s an allusion to the “frog in the well”.
1Q84 was great. I can’t pass a maintenance ladder on a freeway overpass without thinking about that book.
Miss Bianca
Words to live by. Rotating tag, anyone? :)
Finally getting around to sending Christmas cards and little care packages. I actually bought real Christmas Cards that you send through the mail and everything!
(My mother was a Christmas card salesperson when I was little, which occasioned trips to New York without us, which I hated, but plenty of Christmas card samples, which for some reason I just loved playing with.)
Also listening to the Monkees Christmas album. That’s helping me cope too.
Miss Bianca
@A Ghost to Most:
Ooh! Which one? There was a strain called Witches Weed that I used to be able to get that I swear to Dog spurred some of my most enjoyable creative writing spurts.
AM in NC
@Quiltingfool: I have a quilt my mom made using the “Cathedral Windows” pattern. Every time we see your quilts I am reminded of my Mama. It’s a double gift!
RevRick
@NutmegAgain: I buy Archway Pfeffernusse and they swim in powdered sugar. Maybe it helps to live in the swath known as Pennsylvania Dutch country (which is basically an arc that extends out from Philadelphia for 75miles from the Delaware River to the Mason-Dixon Line).
TBone
@AM in NC: me too!
RevRick
@Quiltingfool: My local newspaper has a version of that called The Word Game. They give you a word, and the challenge is to find as many four or more letter words using its letters. It starts on Monday with words that generate about 20 words and by Saturday it’s up to 50. Doing it is how I start my day as well as two sudoku and a cryptoquote. And coffee. Multiple cups of coffee.
Miki
I bookmarked this Betty Cracker Post oh so many years ago. It meant a lot to me then, and maybe more to me now.
Thank you so much then and now.
Kayla Rudbek
@Chetan Murthy: probably very low, as they can see the difference in brain activity with an MRI. I know that there’s at least one scientific article about it.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: but still, there was a purpose – he gave the kid a structure, something to hold on to at least – through that time. A survival kit, no matter how long that survival lasted. A single iota of easier is better than nothing.
Kayla Rudbek
@Princess: Tetris is supposed to help in preventing PTSD.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
I planned to not decorate the tree, just leave it with lights this year (a very naughty kitten & enabling daddy/mom-ish cat will probably wreck any decorating I do). I wasn’t going to do any Christmas cooking at all, because our dishwasher broke over the weekend & the repairman said the part wouldn’t come until 12/26. The kids just want money and my husband & I are getting hearing aids for each other, so no gifts.
Well, today I broke down and bought a few rolls of wired ribbon (it’s pretty cheap, and you can make bows to cover a lot of tree with a 10 yard roll). The tree looks pretty good, and the cats can’t break it, even though they can un-decorate it over and over. The dishwasher part came TODAY, my husband contacted the repairman & he’s coming Christmas eve, so Christmas dinner is back on. And somehow, there’s a pile of tchotchkes and homemade gifts on the worktable waiting to be wrapped. So I guess I just keep going in spite of myself.
Ruckus
@Quiltingfool:
Have a quilt made many, many, many moons ago. I used it as a blanket for years. It finally wore out/has a couple seams that ripped 3-4 yrs ago and it’s folded up in the closet. It’s been so long since I got it I have no idea who gave/left it to me. I’m an old and in my family most of my aunts, my mother, one grandmother sew a lot. She knitted lace doilies almost constantly. Amazing stuff. It seems that many women that used to do this as a normal part of living – now don’t do this as much. But then one has to remember that I am an OLD and life was just a TAD different when I was a kid (Born in the late 1940s). Most women didn’t work – at a paying job, although many did during WWII. Often doing work that was “men’s work!” It was a time that changed how things were done, who often did them and that gender didn’t mean nearly what many thought before then. It has opened up (not without pushback) a lot of the world for women. It has gotten far more open in the last 3-4 decades. And that is BETTER
About this Christmas stuff. I was the youngest in my immediate family and now I’m the only one left and the oldest in the extended family. And not all my cousins are still here. Life is as life does. We get to enjoy it, most of the time, put up with it the rest.
eclare
@sixthdoctor:
Tom Sawyer FTW!
Quiltingfool
@lowtechcyclist: How nice! Quilts look great, crisp and flat when new, but when they’re washed they get kind of crinkled and soft. I like the soft and crinkled, personally.
Quiltingfool
@AM in NC: Oh, Cathedral Windows! That quilt is truly a labor of love. I’ll bet it was all hand sewn, too. What a treasure!
Quiltingfool
@RevRick: I used to do that one, too, when I got the Kansas City Star! I also did the crossword puzzles – easy one on Monday, Sunday was a real bear!
I was so into crossword puzzles I bought a crossword dictionary. Well, my dad started doing them about the time I stopped, so I gave him the dictionary. He used it so much it literally fell apart, so I bought him another!
Ruckus
Betty
I’ve walked inside wallyworld – once. Something I needed could not be found anywhere else within reasonable distance, all the other stores were out. I hated shopping there but it was a need all of us have and every other store anywhere near me was out of stock. I really dislike wallyworld. Where I live there is one grocery chain and within reasonable distance 2 stores, Target, and wallyworld. Unless an issue like this comes up again, which I now try to avoid at all cost, it is my very, absolute last choice of places to shop.
Math Guy
@dm: 👍
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat:
It might have been the Sonder Park Hotel. Based on a cursory search it looks like there are a lot of good deals right now.
Quiltingfool
@Ruckus: My grandmothers quilted, sewed clothing, canned food, all that stuff. And one grandma took in laundry and ironing for extra money. They had to – poor people have poor ways, as they say!
My grandmothers could work rings around anybody, let me tell you!
We didn’t have blankets from the store, we slept under quilts. My mother didn’t make quilts, but we had plenty from both grandmas.
I still have several; one of them has been worn to death and I need to rehabilitate it for my cousin. I’ve done that before, just to preserve the memory, I guess.
Shana
I used to make several kinds of chocolates, 3 different barks, turtles, chocolate dipped apricots, and another random kind every year. However due to diabetes, kids growing up and not needing to gift as many people I’ve stopped making them.
Both our daughters are getting married next year, early June and late August, so that keeps me going. And the fact that Virginia has elections next year. Let’s hope the convention that the opposite party takes the top three offices holds true.
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: I get way too serious about these things. Basically, yes, it took random good luck to survive and I dislike intensely dramatic portrayals that suggest that people had agency to survive or help others. Perhaps they did within an incredibly narrow margin, but everyone had the agency to defy Hitler in the voting booth and when it mattered and was free of consequences they didn’t care enough to exercise it. The extraordinary efforts of others — Wallenberg, et al. — that are so celebrated shouldn’t have been required.
You can imagine what a ball of laughs I am to be around but I usually know the limits of my companions.
Starfish (she/her)
@Betty Cracker: There was some overlap where there were some Nazi goths, and some goth music overlaps with some Nazi music. I never noticed, but friends did. They were wearing things that were less obvious than Swastikas, but it was definitely Nazi stuff. Also, the hairstyles I saw were severe. The girls were always wearing buns, and the dudes tried to have the cop haircut.
Kayla Rudbek
@Starfish (she/her): didn’t the subtle signaling even get down to shoelace color on the Doc Martens indicating whether one was neo-Nazi?
Noskilz
Maybe anime fans? The amount of merch for that kind of thing these days is a bit mindboggling, to the point where one of the years-standing complaints of one of my convention going friends is that dealers rooms have been taken over by clothes and costumes.
The incoming administration has really put a damper on my enthusiasm this year, but I’m determined to have as nice a time as I can manage before those fools get an opportunity to really screw things up.
Omnes Omnibus
@Starfish (she/her):
Then there is the issue of Goths as a musical subculture with some fashion markers or Goths as a fashion statement, There can be a huge difference. Hell, I used to go to the Batcave in 1984 and I didn’t look “Goth” then or now.
AM in NC
@Quiltingfool: Yes! Every stitch hand-sewn. She was showing me how to do the final piecing together of the window panels in case the cancer got her before she finished the quilt, but she completed it.
She asked all of her children to send in clothing swatches from all of her grandchildren for use in the windows. We are all represented there. And it is a treasure.
WTFGhost