1. Stages of fatherhood. First, you’re a jungle gym. Then you’re a mediator. And then you’re an ATM.
2. Isn’t religion just the middleman that takes a cut every time you pray?
3. BFF shouldn’t be used for anyone who hasn’t helped you move a body.
4. I’m surprised child services hasn’t taken Dora the Explorer into protective custody.
5. I want to start a goth dance venue called the Baby Seal.
6. Work is an irrational interruption to one’s private life.
7. Shallow people often confuse obscure with deep.
8. There’s something completely liberating about accepting the fact that most of the world couldn’t care less you exist.
9. Just because you’re talented and special doesn’t obligate the universe to acknowledge this in anyway.
10. Life is like sex. If the answer to “how’s it going?” is “it’s complicated”, you’re probably doing it wrong.
11. The word “fondle” can’t be used in any sentence with positive connotations. I don’t think you can fondle anything without being creepy.
12. Sometimes, whatever it takes is alot.
13. Everything has an expiration date. Saving yourself for marriage at 20 is commendable. Saving yourself for marriage at 60, not so much.
14. If you’re an English major and haven’t figured out that only poets read poets, you’re in for a surprise.
15. I don’t get the phrase, “Happiness is the best revenge.” Shouldn’t you have gotten over it my now?
16. Dead people are gullible. “You can only speak through me. Your son want to know where you hid the money?” doesn’t work with live people.
17. Michael Cera is the new Molly Ringwald.
18. If your movie has a 5 minutes exposition at the end explaining what happened the previous 90 minutes, it sucks no matter what anyone says. I’m looking at you Vanilla Sky.
19. Minority Report would have been a better movie if Tom Cruise’s character died at the end which pretty much can be said about any of his movies really.
20. If they called them Sad Meals then kids wouldn’t buy them.
21. I use to know everything. Now I don’t know anything. Senility is full of surprises.
22. When someone tells me it’s as easy as pie, I always have to clarify if they mean pie or pi. Neither of which seem that easy.
23. It’s never good when a friend suggests an activity followed by the words “What’s the worse that could happen?”
24. Late notices are just society’s way of telling you to stop play World of Warcraft for awhile.
25. The problem with the MySpace mood update is that there’s no setting for ironic or ambivalent.
26. Liking something mainstream and popular doesn’t make you cool. Hating it doesn’t make you cool either.
27. The reason I don’t talk to dogs or gods is because you’re considered psychotic if they decide to talk back.
28. A typo is just your brains way of saying your grammar needs work. Either that or type slower.
29. I will never forgive Twilight for associating Super Massive Blackhole with sparkly vampires playing baseball.
30. Sex with the light off shouldn’t be allowed until you can find your way around with the lights on.
31. Now that I’m older, I wish my favorite bands would sell Daytimers instead of t-shirts.

I call it glam goth: Adam Lambert at the the American Music Awards, Lady Gaga’s photoshoot for Out magazine, Miley Cyrus in black eyeliner, Rihanna in a hasp collar, and sparkly vampires. Peter Murphy’s cameo in New moon is a long way from the opening scene of the Hunger. Bela Legosi really is dead. Goth is dead. Long live the new goth.

The gothsters (hipsters but wearing vinyl and platform heels) moan and groan that it’s not really goth. That it’s faux-goth. It’s surface level goth like Rihanna’s little foray into fetish wear in her Disturbia video.

Goth is much deeper and more meaningful like the Cure’s Lovecats.

Besides, goth isn’t fashion. It’s about the music. Of course, that music ranges from early darkwave to industrial to it’s current EBM/electropop phase. It’s goth if it gets played in at goth clubs? I guess this means Nirvana was goth for the 2 years the deejays overplayed Smells Like Teens Spirits.

Goth has always been about the exploration and acceptance of the darker nature of things. Who’s to say one person’s search is more valid than another’s?

The current economy coupled with the realization that some things will never be fixed is getting the mainstream to take a hard look at the Yin. Goth isn’t doom-and-gloom. Goth is the permission to look at those things that balance the light.

With the success of New Moon, which almost made more than the new Batman on opening weekend, Hollywood is repackaging goth (NCIS, the Vampire Diaries, Interview with a Vampire remake with Robert Downey Jr.) as I’m writing this. Last weekend, my friend Brad brought his corporate co-workers to one of the goth nights. The mainstream is flocking to see what the fuss is about.

It’s nice to see people learn to play in the dark. Just as long as it’s not slit-your-wrist dark because that would be emo and that’s faux-goth, too.