prologue: should've taken that left
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Welcome to Danteland where ride operators twiddle your life between disgruntled underpaid thumbs, pay-to-use bathrooms accept only obsolete European currencies and large half-breed dogs guard the ferris wheel for reasons you will never fully understand.
I am Dante, twenty year old proprietor of this eerie and faintly ridiculous amusement park I have come to know as life. And let me tell you folks, you have picked a fine day to trespass on my land.
Our newest attraction, Sticky Kevin's Clown Graveyard, is opening in a few short hours with live music from Sticky Kevin himself. I understand he'll be previewing a couple of tracks from his latest concept album about raping muskrats before screeching 'LOUIE LOUIE!' at anybody unlucky enough to be caught in his immediate field of vision for the rest of the set. No doubt it will be a fabulous show but height restrictions
do apply in certain areas of the Clown Graveyard, namely Slappy's Mausoleum and The Final Pratfall.
Anyhow, finding your way around here is easy enough. Links on the left will ferry you off to different attractions and the picture gallery is forever on your right no matter where you go, what you do, or which doors you frantically barricade with rotting furniture.
Today's attractions include:
Madame Nigel's Wendyhouse Of Pain: Hey there Mom & Dad.
Brought some real young kids with you that're probably going to stop you from enjoying yourselves or having rough sex in the scrubland behind the burger stall? Pregnancy stopping you from going on anything besides frequent quests to vomit down your top? You can lose it all here, at Madame Nigel's Wendyhouse Of Pain! Get rid of that fun-stopping foetus in the
TEAROOM OF UNBIRTHING, our on-site abortion clinic! Drop off the toddlers at Madame Nigel's own
DAYCARE OF NO RETURN where Madame Nigel will craft your child into an attractive tent, lampshade or edible snack! How will you live with yourselves? Worry about it later! Pay January 2009!
The Infernal Hedgemaze Of Satan: Where did it come from? How do I get out? What just bit me? No seriously, call an ambulance man, she's really sick, I- OH GOD WHAT IS THAT? These questions and many more could be answered to you and you alone if you can fumble, crawl and sprint in a panicked spastic hobble with blood pouring from your many wounds to the centre of The Infernal Hedgemaze Of Satan!
Hold your official ride hedgeclippers tightly as you discover that they are useless for carving an exit out of the hedge but are most useful for forking family members in the face with as a sacrifice to the mighty Prince Of The North himself! Flee from the eleven foot tall manchild Gruh as he attempts to make violent retard love to your face! Lose your sanity and immolate yourself on one of the many attractive fountains within the labyrinth as a warning to others! At a most reasonable $36.95, entry to The Infernal Hedgemaze is easy...but leaving is not! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!
Elephant Christ: Danteland's very own premier white knuckle rollercoaster is well worth the neck trauma and subsequent years of insomnia it inflicts upon those who brave its numerous loops, twists, revolutions and angry crow attacks! Made from the very sturdiest material that the abbatoir a few miles east from here with a faulty lock on the back door has to offer, Elephant Christ moves faster than any other rollercoaster on the planet thanks to a major electrical fault in the braking system!
Let your own personal Elephant Christ Funeral Carriage shuttle you at breakneck speed up from the fiery depths of Hell as you pass through such terrors as the
EMPLOYEE CLOAKROOM and the
STAIRCASE TO FLOORS 2 & 3, before finally getting to meet Jesus himself as your cart spirals hopelessly towards the
PARKING LOT. Remember to smile at the peak of
COMPANY TELEPHONE MAST #A1778 where your picture will be taken by the morbid enthusiasts we rent it out to!
Wheezing Paddy's Bathroom Of Horrors: Dare you enter this wretched domain where toilet paper clings to your shoe like a zombie hobo? Recoil in horror at the
MIRROR OF LIES as your true image is disfigured due to lack of cleaning by idle janitorial staff! Prove your bravery by sitting in
CUBICLE #7, where Wheezing Paddy himself was murdered by a figment of his own imagination! And, if you dare, make your way to the stall on the very end and behold...
THAT WHICH WILL NOT FLUSH! Malevolent stool? Stillborn antichrist? Ball of hair and condoms with googly eyes planted on it? Your guess is as horrifying as ours!
Genital Bee Petting Zoo: Come along and meet the little troublemakers that EVERYONE in tragically underdeveloped countries is screaming about! First utilised as an entertaining method of castration in Iraqistahn before breaking free from their enclosure and wreaking a furious revenge on anything with air in its lungs, the Genital Bees are Mother Nature's latest way of saying 'You know what mankind- seriously, fuck you. Eat shit.'
Take Bony Albert's
BEE QUICK OR BEE DEAD challenge by surviving for two whole minutes naked in the Genital Bee enclosure, smeared in the blood of their murdered bretheren! Can you go a whole 120 seconds without a queen flying up your love hole and establishing a hive in your bowels whilst her loyal winged soldiers pump an agonising venom into your twitching shell of a body? Come find out!
Enjoy.
madame nigel's wendyhouse of pain
Hello. I am Dante and Disneyworld has a severe vermin problem. In any other part of the world, I would reap a good few thousand dollars for taking the head of their king, Mickey, but he and his kind are protected by an endangered species law or some such shit. Little does he know that his do-gooder facade is as transparent to me as the bullet-proof glass of his flying limousine in which he escaped moments before I managed to hurl him from the window of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Not to worry, there are many more grassy knolls to be found within the Magic Kingdom, which will become his tomb once I flush him out of his vietcong tunnel complex under Epcot with incedinary grenades.
I look at the world differently from a lot of people. Plenty have brought my sanity into question but I really don't think I'm insane, though I suppose I'd have to believe in something like sanity for that to work. Sanity is simply the point where science goes blind. Where people stop seeing what they're told to see. I like to place myself beyond that.
I alternately ridicule, embrace and imitate the things that crown this disturbing pop culture that everyone's lives have become so attached to. It's my way of keeping society's skin away from my own while remaining the centre of attention in the places I need to be. It also acts as a filter for letting the people I feel comfortable with into my company. I value my own thoughts, ideas and shifting opinions greatly and I often feel that if the world is any closer than at arm's length, it will poison everything I hold dear.
Pretty much my only philosophical standpoint on life is that everything is true from a certain distance. I believe that people as a whole are on a quest for a right answer that doesn't exist- that as a race, we might have been close to the truth once but walked straight past or ignored it because it wasn't elaborate enough. Everything that is real in this world is, at its heart, simple. I think we overcomplicate things in the belief that simplicity is ignorance, which in turn makes us ignorant to the simple truth. Take that as you want.
I also believe strongly that we are here for no special reason or purpose. I think of humanity as I do everything else and that is simply as a consequence. I believe that as people created gods and monsters and placed themselves as the special children of invented divinity, our egos inevitably grew to the point where we pompously believed that we
had to have some kind of wonderful unimaginable point for being here. I don't really buy it.
All I truly believe in is the futility of consequence and the power of a fertile and fearful imagination.
the infernal hedgemaze of satan
'So Dante,' I suppose you are murmuring to yourself. 'You are quite the master of dancing merrily around revealing your interests in lieu of vague death threats against the employees of Disneyworld. Do you fear to lay bare the things that pleasure and disgust you, the things that would pull a defined human being from the maelstrom of your lunatic ramblings?'
Well, my dear and curious child, where I come from, we call that fighting talk.
And unlike that behemoth rodent that I faced so long ago, I will stand and face your challenge. And then I will watch as your limousine speeds away in the pouring rain, drop to my knees and bellow 'FACE ME, MOUSE! FAAAACCEEE MEEEEE!'
The disappointing and somewhat disturbing truth of the matter is that I am just like you, albeit taller. Six feet and seven inches. A smidgen over two meters. Two and a twenty third yards, just short of three paces. Quite tall. To buy me in Ancient Egypt, you would ask the merchant for exactly 4.47 cubits of Dante please, thank you very much.
It is important you know exactly
how tall I am so that you don't feel the need to inform me about it if we ever meet. Had I not gone to such pedantic lengths, you may have opened conversation with something in the region of 'Oooh goodness, aren't you
tall.'
Why yes, yes I am. And now you know
exactly how tall. Marvellous.
Back to how normal I am. And I do stress my normality, my mundanity, the truth of my epic lack of remarkability. I'm not the best looking guy you're going to meet. I'm not the most interesting, the most awesome, the best dressed, the greatest at conversation or anything that would define me as the life and soul of life's little parties. I am human and the only thing that contrasts me against many people is the fact that I know and accept it.
Resolutely, I don't like being treated against that. It makes me feel mildly uncomfortable. I accept whatever praise and freebies I get with good grace and a smile but the situation itself unnerves me. I sometimes see such things as wreaths for a funeral of some kind, a going away present. I wonder through my half forced smiles about these people's ulterior motives because lord knows I have enough of my own.
Sorry, am I heading too deep into the realm of sociological condition? Okay, not to worry. Here's a barrage of pointless trivia. I have an officially tested IQ of 168 and a weight fluctuating around the area of 215lbs. I say fluctuating due to a stomach condition that has plagued me for most of my life, turning the inside of my gut into a shuddering volcano. If you believe what the doctors say, it will be gone by the end of the year. I'm generally a very happy person, due to the fact that I know absolutely nothing matters and so there's nothing to worry about.
I have a small scar near my hairline from a close brush with death when I was little. I've had a few of them. I've officially died twice. I hate fishfingers. I'm terrible at relationships. I have difficulty finding any sort of common ground with the majority of people. I love sex for sex's sake but sometimes I will sleep with a girl just so I can go to sleep holding somebody, even if I never see them again. I have a minor animosity towards vocal car navigation systems, believing they will lead me into a dead end and begin laughing sinisterly to themselves.
The only thing that
does set me apart from the crowd is music and my non-negotiable need to compose, play and listen to it nearly every hour of my waking life. I play a number of instruments to a varying degree of skill including keyboards, pianos, mandolins, violins, cellos, drums, clarinets and sitars but my first love and most used instrument lies with the guitar and its many variations.
Electric, acoustic, classical and all deviations between, I think the guitar is the sexiest, most expressive instrument in existence. I own about twelve of them, all for different individual purposes, and over twice as many guitar effect processors and boxes. It is something of a trademark of mine to mess around with obscene alternate tunings in a quest to elicit different sounds and also so that it is only me that knows how to play them properly. To pick up a guitar in my house and attempt an F#Major chord is to unleash a barrage of dischordant notes that will immediately curse you for vomiting them into existence.
So even if the music I write is not actually
for the guitar, you can harbour a safe bet that I composed the music itself
on the guitar.
As you may have figured out in between wondering when this fucking section will come to an end, I write a ridiculous amount of music. Constantly. Every genre imaginable and a few I'm almost certain I've invented in the course of my experimentation. I must have written close to six hundred different pieces of music since I was about twelve, some for bands, some for other people's bands, some just for me, some just for other people. These days, I pour my musical heart and soul into my current band, named
Hang Marie. We are currently recording some older songs as a kind of practice for our monstrous near-three hour debut double album,
The Forest Is Hungry & Will Wait No More. Unfortunately, the speed at which I write music leaves the recording process choking in its own dust. As soon as I finish something, I can't bear to hang around waiting to risk losing inspiration. I have to jump into something new, something fresh. Consequently, the band itself is waiting to record no less than twenty-eight finished albums and EPs. Strange, unbelievable, a filthy lie- these are the most common responses in people until I show them the stacks of folders containing endless compositions and production notes, a passion that leaves me sleepless for days on end.
But crazy crazy passion for one thing creates an unbalance in others. I find it impossible to put all but two people in this world before myself and my own needs. I brought myself up to believe that you must take everything from life before it takes everything from you. This doesn't make me some deformed sewer-dwelling mutant, hammering miserably on my pipe organ beneath the grandeur of life's opera house but it does distract me from things I wish I could care more about, no more so than other people.
More? More words? 'You terrible shit,' I expect you hiss to yourself. 'You self indulgent longwinded terrible shit. Why, what person in their right mind actually
writes about themselves on their profile?'
Perhaps you'd feel more at ease if I gave you a quick burst of random things that make me happy. I dislike lists, I prefer to make my point as completely and utterly as possible. But here I am, a bad person trying to do the right thing, giving you a list. Here it is sweetheart, lap it up.
horror movies, travelling, cigarettes & tea, esp guitars, singing, writing (poetry, lyrics, scripts, letters of complaint),
reading (books, dictionaries, obituaries),
rainy weather, the great outdoors, solitude, sex, the occasional beer, looking good, manic workaholism, the middle of fucking nowhere, the word fuck, japan and all that is japanese, the word marvellous, theatre, microwaveable food, mp3 players, emotional extremities, the word shit, kung fu movies, samurai movies, silent movies, videogames, 40's pop, cabaret show tunes & cabaret, delta blues, chanting choirs of buddhist monks, spastic freeform jazz, videogame music, african drumming, gently strummed spanish guitars, thunderous orchestras and WHAT ELSE? ...what else?
elephant christ
You'll be delighted to know that the majority of my senseless rambling is over now. No more endless monologues of personal revelation, no more conspiracy theories about how Sean Bean once seduced George Harrison in an attempt to become the fifth 'evil Beatle', completing the flesh pentagram that would enable them all to become unkillable.
Instead, here are some questions I am sick to the back teeth of answering in comments. Any of these questions will deduct ten points from your
Super Amazing Comment Of The Century score. A score of more than -50 will earn you a visit from Tumour McGee, the terminal disease fairy.
So I guess you need to ask yourself if leaving me a shitty comment is really worth your life.
...yeah. Here's the F.A.Q.
Hello, how are you? Absolutely terrific, thank you for asking.
Wow, your profile is LONG! Why is it so long? The way I figure it, you could have wound up here for any number of amazing reasons including a misplaced click of the mouse or cruel practical joke played by a friend or relative. But the two most common are either:
-you came here to rate me and/or drool over my picture gallery.
-you want to read about me.
In the first scenario, the links to both rate button and gallery are clearly and conviniently marked, requiring next to no reading.
In the second, I believe in giving you, the reader, something to actually read about concerning myself, rather than just a few lines from some dumbfuck emo song typed out in pink superscript. No quiz results, no flashing backgrounds, just cold hard Dante. Much like I will be a hundred years from now.
Why, my dear boy, your profile is the most astoundingly well made thing I have ever clapped eyes upon! Do you suppose you could make me one? Afraid not. I only consider making layouts for my closest friends on here and even they take a long time to materialise. Trust me, about a year ago, I had a bog standard VF profile because I had no idea how to do anything fancy with it. How did I get this far? Research and practice, the same with anything in life. Try it yourself.
Understandable. Do you suppose, then, that we may forgo any formal conversation in lieu of meeting up? Again, no. Not only do I not want to meet up with someone I have known for roughly two messages worth of conversation but also, for god's sake, think of your own personal safety child. Do you trust me that much that you're certain I'm not some kind of deranged axe murderer?
Oh come now. I have large amounts of marijuana for us to partake in. I despise drugs and I despise being around them. I used them for a long time and they destroyed anything that was good about me. And the drug I hate the most, with every inch of tangible fibre in my body, is marijuana in all of its forms. I have no problem with you if you choose to do it, nor do I look down on you in any way whatsoever. But I do not want to be within a county mile of you when you're using it.
You say you have this immense love for music. Where's your giant music list? It's in my head. It's on my mp3 player where it belongs. To list every single band, artist, composer and influence that I regularly listen to would take a ridiculous amount of time and space. So instead, I refer you to the constantly changing
Now Playing section over there on the bottom right.
Here's a ten! Would you rate me back? Yes, probably. That is, if you have actually rated me. Lying just won't do kids.
So, y'know, I noticed you haven't said too much about your marital status or sexual orientation. I'm straight, currently single and no, I don't want to be your boyfriend. The idea of an internet relationship does absolutely nothing for me. I need the physical side of such a thing close to hand for anything like that to work.
Why haven't you answered my comments? I'm either busy or oblivious as to the fact that you have written me a comment. If you really want something answered, send it to my inbox where I am more likely to take notice of it.
Where is Danteland? Can I go there? OMG, is it really real? Why yes, yes you can! My dear child, it's as real as the brain that you have between your ears! Danteland is located approximately twenty feet over the edge of your nearest cliff! We hope to see you soon!
Are you sure you even belong on this site? I mean, you don't seem very gothic, you don't wear anything with a million zips and bondage straps all over it, you make NO mention of how fantastic EBM music is...what gives, dude? I'm here because there a lot of good people on this site that I enjoy talking to. No, I'm not a goth or a vampire and more of my wardrobe comes from Next than it does Hot Topic. But do any of you seriously believe that the only people worth knowing are the ones who dress like you, think like you, listen to the same music as you? Can you honestly stand there and preach about accepting individualism when you want every single person you converse with to be a carbon copy of you? Think about that for me.
Why do some of your signs address you as Caleb and not Dante? Very, very long story. Let's see how short I can make it.
I was born in the UK. My name was Caleb. I was then adopted at a few days old and taken further into Europe. The people that adopted me changed my name to Dante. Skip forward sixteen years. I came back to England and sought out my real parents. They changed my name back to Caleb. I didn't think much of it at the time. Then, come me being about nineteen years old, I decided that my name should belong to the people that actually raised me. So I changed it back to Dante. Good story? No, it isn't. So please, please, sweet baby jesus, stop asking me about it.
'Tearoom Of Unbirthing'? Isn't that a bit close to the mark, you sick bastard? Probably, yeah.
genital bee petting zoo
currently causing blisters
next visiting
Tokyo, Japan- Summer 2007
Crete, Greece- Fall 2007
Romsdale, Norway- Spring 2008
Florida, USA- 2008
New York, USA- 2008
Cairo, Egypt- 2008 |  |
And so, you have reached the end of Danteland. I hope it has been as much fun for you visiting as it was for me creating it. That is to say, I hope your wife removes your kidneys in your sleep and runs off with an Icelandic tennis coach, your driver's license is confiscated for running down a foreign diplomat under the influence of cough medicine and the only friends that you can trust are small eyeless dolls that live in your fridge.
Goodbye. |
