2005-01-23 - 7:48 p.m.

death is so now!

Oh, dear... I seem to have developed the worst kind of hipness without even knowing it. I seem to be winning at a very sick game, giving a bad example and resulting in bad press on all sides. A reporter asks "what is wrong with this generation?" and the camera pans to me. Me looking very intense. Me glowering. There's a voice-over, saying "This is Emma Flocke. Years before the homicidal-suicidal-self-harm-goth-rock trend took off, this young woman was encouraging horrible, horrible things which we dare not speak of on network television."

You see, once again a young man has comitted a sensless killing and as usual, his parents and teachers are unwilling to take the blame. If the defense will argue that it wasn't him while maintainting that it wasn't his role models either, who does that leave? Mr. Brian Warner, who I had that most alarming dream about yesterday afternoon. While I never want have another dream where I'm naked in bed with that man, I don't think his music makes kids kill. I don't believe goth causes violent behavior.

But this pop-goth bullshit is on the rise, and in this bastard genere a lack of musical prowess and actual goth schooling (go listen to the Sisters of Mercy and call me back if you still think My Chemical Roimance is goth) is made up for by the worst kind of street cred.

It's like "how dare you say my band isn't beautifully dark? I fucking tried to kill myself, okay? I think I know a thing or two about being beautifully dark." In a couple years being in a cutting edge rock band and not having attempted suicide will be like being a musician in the 60s and not having tried LSD.

Mental illness, more than ever, it seems, equals cool.

So where do I sit in all this?
Alas and alack, on the cutting edge, so to speak. A hypothetical teenager with dark lipstick and still bleeding arms will look admiringly up at me soon and say "Wow, your lipstick is so dark and your scars have healed to white. It's like, you were suicidal before suicide became the new khaki!" I'll reply that I wasn't doing it do be cool- it was a very dark time in my life- I really wanted to die back then. It was painful. No one- fucking NO ONE under any circumstance should ever have to go through that shit."

Then this hypothetical girl will laugh and say "Omigawd! That's exactly how I feel! Avril Lavigne has a new song about it!"

And then I'll cry and that'll be hip too. About six months ago I saw an issue of "WWS" magazine that proclaimed that "Suicide is the new Gay!" meaning a lifestyle obsession that will make you instantly admirable. I was deeply offended, didn't buy it, and considered writing an angry letter, but in retrospect, they were right. They were right and I'm still disgusted. Maybe, since "Suicide is the New Gay," next year Psychopharmacology will be declared the new suicide. One way or another I'm fucking sick of the dead and dying.

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.