Mountain-Lilac-4-s-58e94fe9e501a__880Photography Of The Invisible Light That Plants Emit

8-2The Art Of Kazuaki Horitomo

colleenmooredhollhouse4This Flapper’s Dollhouse Cost More than Most People’s Homes

Anne-Ten-Donkelaar-Broken-Butterflies-4The Poignant Beauty of Anne ten Donkelaar’s Broken Butterflies

The Forgotten Language That Only Women Once Knew
Savoring the celluloid hues of colorpalette.cinema on Instagram
How to Become a Deadly Misandrist Fairy Vampire
Sleep Is the New Status Symbol
Romania’s Problem with Dracula
Ask Baba Yaga: Folkloric Advice From Taisia Kitaiskaia
A Compendium of Shakespeare’s Plants, from Juliet’s Rose to Ophelia’s Bouquet
Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America
The Peril of Being Disbelieved: Horror and the Intuition of Women
The Mushroom Hunters: Neil Gaiman’s Feminist Poem About Science
WitchEmoji, an iMessage sticker pack for all of your witchy needs
Shadows From The Walls Of Death
Today’s Feminist Horror Owes A Lot To Overlooked 20th-Century Artist Carol Rama
Debunking the Myth of 19th-Century ‘Tear Catchers’

✥ comment

Artist: Haenuli Shin
Artist: Haenuli Shin

A gathering of death related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have been reported on or journaled about in or related to the Death Industry recently.

More reading: Links of the Dead {April 2016} // Links of the Dead {April 2014}

💀 How Grief Books By Mediums Harm The Living And The Dead
💀 Victorian ‘Coffin Torpedoes’ Blasted Would-Be Body Snatchers
💀 Death-Inspired Love Comics That I Create To Cope With My Depression
💀 How Tech Is Transforming A Bejing Burial Site
💀 Grieving Haitians go into lifetime of debt to fund funerals
💀 This Is What It’s Really Like To Do Makeup… On Dead People
💀 The Devastating Process of Dying in America Without Insurance
💀 My Journey As A Hospice Care Volunteer via Patricia Lundy
💀 The Grave Girl Shares Some Out Takes From Her Year Of Cemetery Visits
💀 Remembering the World’s Oldest Person, in the Objects She Left Behind
💀 Bang the Drum Slowly: Grief in Modern Horror
💀 See Death as a Triumph, Not a Failure
💀 In South Jersey, a familiar fight to save a historic African-American cemetery
💀 How To Love The Earth In The Afterlife
💀 13 Reasons Why I Gave it a Shot (and am glad I did) via Death In The Gay Den
💀 Thoughts On The International End of Life Doula Association Training Weekend, From Death In The Gay Den

✥ 1 comment

I love it that you’re enthusiastic about your babbies and your doggos, and I live for seeing all of your beautiful selfies. Your political talk doesn’t bother me one iota! Sometimes, though, I got a lot of problems with you people. And now you’re gonna hear about it.


A List Of Reasons For Which I Have Unfollowed People On Facebook, Ranked

10. Too many photos of your boring food (delicious looking food is okay).
9. Vaguebooking. Jesus. Either say whatever, or don’t. Quit dicking around.
8. Run-on sentences with no punctuation. Your poorly constructed shit gives me vertigo.
7. Your stupid drama. Work that out privately. You’re causing me the fremdschämen willies.
6. Animal abuse. WTF is wrong with you, you fucking psycho?
5. Your themed engagement photoshoot.
4. Folks who are purportedly #soblessed. You are the literal worst.
3. That friend from long ago who I thought might still be decent, but you posted a Ted Nugent photo.
2. You shared a video of that woman on instagram who is always eating exotic fruit & smiling vacuously
1. You tagged me in something really dumb, in a very public way. You’re dead to me.

✥ 2 comments

19 Apr
2017

box

It has been forever (or at least a year?) since I’ve written about Stitch Fix, and the reason for that, to be perfectly honest, is because I thought I was done with them.

To sum up, if you’ve never heard of them, or you’d blocked from your mind my blathering about them: Stitch Fix is a subscription box service. You sign up on the site, fill out some preferences, and once a month or so they send you a box of five things. You keep what you want and send the rest back. You pay a $20 fee per box, which is credited toward whatever you keep. If you don’t keep anything, you lose your “styling fee”. That’s basically it. I got about 10 boxes from them last year, which you can read all about under the Stitch Fix tag if you so desire.

Why did I even sign up for it? Well, mainly because my wardrobe consisted of jeans and tee shirts. And even though that’s perfectly fine most of the time because I work from home and never go anywhere, in the past few years I’ve had to start attending more out of state conferences and conventions, etc., for work, and every once in a while I have a social function with people outside my usual sphere, folks for whom I’d prefer to dress a little more “normal” in front of. You know what I mean, I know you do.

After a year or so I, one: pretty much had everything I needed, wardrobe-wise, and two: they kept switching out my stylist and with every new person styling my box, the items they would choose for me became increasingly more off-the-mark and ridiculous. So I just put the service on hold for a while.

Stitch Fix Scan

However! When someone uses your referral link (which, by the way, is peppered liberally throughout this post), and signs up and gets their first box, I get $25 credit. And apparently a few people did this over the past 12 months, and I had some credit to play with. So…I thought I would give it another try! Let’s see how badly they fucked it up this time, shall we? Spoiler: they kind of did fuck it up. Spoiler no. 2: I did not actually try any of it on, Meaghan. You’re not the boss of me.

Korner Cardigan

Moselle Cardigan from The Korner. The first thing I unwrapped was this insane sweater thing. It seriously weighed a million pounds, which was the first red flag because in April, in FL, it’s already sweltering, so no one is going to want to wear your ugly crocheted cardigan made from 50 albino Fraggle pelts. Just no. This absurdity costs $128.  Also, they spelled corner with a “K”. JUST NO. I sent it back, after I broke both my arms trying to lift it back into the box.

Alice Blue

Deitz ruffle blouse from Alice Blue. Well, she got the “moody florals” part right. I’m a sucker for anything that looks like Aunt Maude’s curtains or that sofa you remember from your grandmother’s house in 1975. However, I do not, under any circumstances, wear spaghetti straps, and also the length looks like it would probably hit me just above my belly button, and those bits are no one’s business but my own. This costs $48 but you could probably get the same thing from a sale rack at The Wet Seal for $7.99. Sent back!

Kut from the Kloth

Mollee dress from Kut From The Kloth. Now this…this was interesting. But dammit, how many black dresses do I need? And I’ll confess, I was so offended by everything else in the box that I snubbed it out of spite. Also, I’ve not been feeling so great about the old bod recently, and this looked like it was going to be clingy, and you know, I really just didn’t want to make myself cry. Returned. But if you are interested, it was $88.

Liverpool pants

Cameryn skinny pant by Liverpool. UUUUGGGGHHHH. Why, god, why?! I really, really despise colored pants. Pants should be some form of denim colored or black. That’s it. There are no exceptions. I am not interested in your shamrock trousers, Stitch Fix! And I know you know that, because I’ve marked it in my preferences! Get it out of my face. $88

Paper Moon

Odelle knit dress by Papermoon. This one isn’t exactly terrible, either. I like the color, and the print (I’m wild about florals and paisleys) but what I don’t like are wrap dresses. I don’t like the thought that on a whim, my dress might open up and spill all my goods for all the world to see. And I don’t care if it doesn’t work that way, my point is that I am anxious about enough in life as it is; I don’t need to add “frock betrayal” to the list. Away it goes! $74.

Well, I gave it another shot. I tried! And yet I kept nothing. But you know what? I am doing it again next month! I have one more credit left, and it covers the cost of the styling fee, so I’m kind of getting the box for free and even if I hate everything, it’s …fun to see what they’ll pick out for me. So I will report back next month, and I may even try some things on.

Until then…am I nuts? Is this all ugly? Or am a being bitchy and hasty? What would you have kept? Feel free to weigh in!

✥ 1 comment

18 Apr
2017

Books

SO, yeah. Wow. Man. This past month. I was knocked out for about 2.5 weeks with bronchitis, and so it’s mostly a blur of coughing and hacking and more tea drinking than I have ever done in my life. I put a serious dent in our supplies (which is good, because we had a surplus anyway, and it wasn’t moving very quickly.)

I pretty much have no idea what’s happened from mid-March to mid-April, it’s kind of pathetic–I really am a very useless sick person! I did do a little bit of reading, but not much. Or rather, I am reading a lot of things, but not making much progress with anything in particular. Pictured here: Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates, A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf, The Erstwhile (sequel to The Vorrh!) by B. Catling, Birdbox by Josh Malerman, and My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (which I must finish before the film is released!)

blue dahlia

Before I took ill I did manage to finish this beauty. Behold, the Blue Dahlia from the book New Vintage Lace: Knits Inspired By The Past by Andrea Jurgrau (details on my Ravelry page). Once I got the hang of the pattern, it was actually a lot of fun to knit on, and even though at one point I ran into a snag, it seems after seven years of practicing this hobby, I finally have enough confidence in my abilities to say “hey…you know…I don’t think this is actually my fault…let’s check for errata!” And sure enough, there was an error that was fixed in an update, and it was related to the exact issue I was having! The lesson to be learned here is that sometimes other people are actually to blame. It’s not always me!

DCO

In an interesting turn of events, I was present at a Death Cafe…as an actual attendee! Up until this point I had only organized and facilitated the events (which I have written about before), and I have to say…it was much easier to be an attendee. So much less pressure! Hardly any stress at all! Although the day I go into something completely anxiety free is a day of miracles. But It helped that it was held at a lovely friend’s home, and that I had more than a passing familiarity with the charismatic facilitator. So many interesting things were discussed, and innovative ideas and concepts were bandied about–I cannot say it often and loudly enough: if you have the opportunity to attend a Death Cafe, either locally, or perhaps in a city that you are visiting, you absolutely must. Every single time, I walk away from one invigorated and enlightened, and despite what might be perceived as a morbid subject matter, it is a truly life affirming experience.

Grief Bacon

Sooooo…turns out four years of caring for close family members who keep dying one right after the other is not good for one’s well-being, neither mental nor physical. You’re shocked, right? Well, I was shocked when, a week before my grandmother passed, I stepped on the scale and discovered that not only had I gained back any weight I’d lost three years ago, there were many, many extra stowaway pounds as well. Caring for people you love, putting their needs above your own, and then watching them die one by one, tends to be a disheartening, depressing, and demoralizing process. Not cool, grief and depression (and laziness and apathy). Not cool at all.

As someone who is an emotional eater even in the best of times, well, I’m here to tell you that ever since December 2012 when I discovered my mother had cancer, and going forward from there to care for her, and then both of my elderly grandparents, it’s been taking a severe toll emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. What I’m saying is basically I ate my way through the past four years, and I’m fairly certain that with each death, my give-a-fucks for my own well-being dwindled significantly.. I stepped on the scale in early February, a week before my grandmother died, and was utterly horrified. Ten weeks later, I have lost 17 pounds, but I have got quite a while to go and a long journey full of hard work ahead of me. This “creature of the night” tee is one of my favorites. When I bought it, several years ago, it was pretty boxy and very loose. In 2016 I noticed that it had become uncomfortably tight, and I resembled a creature of the night stuffed sausage. It’s getting loose again, and I can tell it fits differently, more like it did when I first bought it. That’s where I’m at right now, friends. Hopefully there’s many more loose tee shirts where I am headed. And so, you know what that means. There’s going to be a lot more Weight Loss For Weirdos posts around here

Steven Universe

Currently binging on: Steven Universe. These past two weeks of bronchitis have laid me pretty low, but this sweet, kind, beautiful show has cheered me immeasurably. I’ve been slowly catching up on it since December, but we took in half of season two just this past weekend! I woke up the next morning feeling better than I have in a long time, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The week before the Steven Universe marathon, I mainlined all of Taboo, and while I loved Tom Hardy’s grim, grimy, bleak British drama and was over the moon to find out it was renewed for a second season, Steven Universe was a welcome palate cleanser afterward. I’ve also been watching Supergirl. Don’t laugh! I really enjoy its dorky optimism.

And of course, my one-word movie reviews. Because brevity is the soul of…the really lazy person.

3/23 Song of the Sea Absolutely (on Amazon Prime)
3/28 Prevenge Definitely (on Shudder)
4/1 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter YMMV
4/1 Rogue One OFCOURSE
4/2 Ghost In The Shell skip
4/3 Moana YEP
4/16 The Void no *
4/16 The Void nah

* I had really been looking forward to The Void, but somehow Amazon tricked me into watching the wrong one, and because the time between reading the synopsis six months ago and watching the film a few days ago was long enough to forget what it was supposed to be about…I didn’t even realize until the end I’d been duped. I was doing a lot of head scratching throughout, but I was determined to see it through. Even though it was a disappointment. And when I figured out my mistake and watched the one I meant to watch in the first place? That was kind of a disappointment, too. Though I think the popular opinion was that it was a really incredible film, a friend of mine summed it up best: “…it collapsed under the weight of its influences. It checked a bunch of boxes but didn’t have a voice of its own.”

 

✥ 5 comments

Weird

I have been stricken by a sudden sickness; a miserable spring cold that arrived out of nowhere and has rendered me scratchy-throated, fuzzy-brained, and with a wretched, wracking cough. All I want to do is put on some fuzzy socks, curl up under the covers and prop myself up on a fluffy pillow, sip a lemony hot toddy, and lose myself in the restorative properties of good book. And if I’m not cured by the last page, well, at the very least, I’d like to think that from these beloved books and treasured tales, I will have been inspired in some small way.

Sometimes my mind wanders as I am reading, and I find myself wondering all kinds of ridiculous things. But things which certainly require answers, I am sure you will agree! What sorts of clothes were the tenants from the grotty apartment building wearing, in that thoroughly unsettling tale? What sort of fabulous frocks might the witches from that mystical manifesto caper and cavort in? Did that invisible wind-based demon who tormented lonely travelers wear a sweater to keep warm?

See below for the culmination of these feverish thoughts involving sartorial suggestions for selected sick-bed stories. Some of them, because my nonsense cannot be contained, even have accompanying soundtracks!

As, always, click the image for a detailed listing of the items used, and links to books and texts and music have been provided as well.

What Is A Witch by Pam Grossman and Tin Can Forest

what is a witch
Salt Is For Curing by Sonya Vatomsky
saltisforcuring
“Near Zennor” by Elizabeth Hand (in the collection Strange Errantry)
Near Zennor playlist on 8tracks
NearZennor
The Tenant by Roland Torpor
The consistency of empty space playlist on 8tracks
The Tenant
Revenants by Daniel Mills
Don’t you recognize your own daughter? playlist on 8tracks
Revenant
The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune
The tides of all men’s souls belong to me playlist on 8tracks
Sea Priestess
“The Carrion Gods in their Heavens” by Laird Barron (in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.)
In a voice rusty and rugged playlist on 8tracks
Carrion
“The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier A madness seized them playlist on 8tracks
The Birds
The House On The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
That fragment of ruin playlist on 8tracks
House on the Borderland
“Into The Woods” by Robert Aickman (in the collection The Wine Dark Sea)
It is something I have long known playlist on 8tracks
Aickman
“The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood
The merciless spirit of desolation playlist on 8tracks
The Wendigo

 

Wanna see some more ridiculous ensembles? Go nuts!

👁‍🗨 How To Wear: A Winter Getaway
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: Your Favorite Horror Film
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: The Arts
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: The Spring Equinox
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: The Winter Solstice
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: The Autumn Equinox
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: A Jean Rollin Film
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: A Gothic Romance Novel
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: Your Favorite Tarot Deck
👁‍🗨 What To Wear Upon Greeting Death
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: A Melancholic Holiday
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: A Date With A Monster
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: Dramatic Jewelry
👁‍🗨 How To Wear: A Tee Shirt

✥ comment

medium-Stanislawa-P.-emission-and-resorption-of-an-ectoplasmic-substance-through-the-mouth-1913 SÉANCE: Spiritualist Ritual and the Search for Ectoplasm by Shannon Taggart

uploads%2F2017%2F2%2F21%2Fbergandhoeg_15 A glimpse into two Norwegian photographers’private gender-bending experiments

This Is What Victorian Ladies Smelled Like
Horrors Beyond Belief! Should You Be Reading Emily Carroll’s Horror Comics?
Wildly Inaccurate Myths About Spiders (Plus the Truth)
Dystopian dreams: how feminist science fiction predicted the future
In the Land of Giants: Communing with some of the biggest trees on Earth.
On The Heartbreaking Difficulty Of Getting Rid Of Books
Seven ‘wyrd’ TV programmes from 1977 – a golden harvest of folk horror
Your Favorite All-Female Super Teams!
Felter Skelter: Weird & Wonderful Artists Who Work With Felt
Men Grin and Women Scream: A New Analysis of Gendered Words in Fiction
Scary Stories Tribute Art Exhibit Is Beautifully Terrifying
Bad Books For Bad People Episode 8: Prince Lestat in the Realms of Atlantis
Fleeting Beauties Of Spring
What’s That Smell? Rare Books and Artifacts From a 1906 Library
15 Historical Women They Should Have Taught You About In School

✥ comment

MONSTERCOVER-RGB-small-768x566I don’t know how spooky I was as a small child. Not very, I guess. My cousin’s KISS posters scared me so badly that she would have to shut her bedroom door so that I couldn’t see her walls when I was in the house; the monsters of the week on Scooby Doo gave me nightmares (even though they were usually, like, old man McGillicuddy under a mask or something), and I had actually a fit of hysterics after a particularly upsetting episode of Benson with a dream sequence murder. Scary things and monsters were not my bag until all of a sudden they were. And then, hoo boy. It was vampires and werewolves and zombies and elder gods and Lovecraftian horrors 24/7. And I still haven’t grown out of it.

Russel Nohelty, publisher of Wannabe Press (a small press that makes “weird books for weird people”) has a similar fierce love for the monster in all of its myriad forms. You might even say he’s a bit obsessed with them — psychological monsters, horrific monsters, religious monsters, mythological monsters, fantastical monsters, and everything in between. He’s never met a monster he didn’t like.”What if,” he thought, “I went to my favorite creators, ones that I knew loved monsters as much as me, and put together an amazing monster anthology where all of us could tell our favorite monster stories? It would be a love letter to monsters.”

31b54da5a17fbd92b733855bde624b7a_original

d4380ff7c24bb1f843b48e769a503875_original

Created by monster-lovers for monster-lovers, Monsters and Other Scary Shit celebrates everything awesome about monsters. And when else to present to the world your glorious ode to the things you love best in life? Valentines Day, of course!  Monsters and Other Scary Shit was launched via Kickstarter on February 14th, Valentine’s Day 2017. (The campaign has reached its goal, but runs until April 7th–so there’s still time to grab a copy for yourself, and to fill that monster-shaped hole in your own heart.)

The 224-page monster anthology is organized and edited by Russell himself, is printed on high quality, glossy art paper and bound in beautiful hardcover, with cover art by Aaron Alexovich, indie comic creator and artist for Invader Zim. The comics are “…written and illustrated by one of the thirty different professional teams who have credits ranging from Marvel, DC, Vertigo, Oni, and Image, to brands like Star Wars, The Simpsons, Transformers, Invader Zim, and more. ” As well as an entry from Unquiet Things favorite, Christie Shinn!

Even though monsters are in every form of storytelling on the planet, they are often lumped into the horror genre. But monsters are so much more than horror. They are sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, drama, and everything in between. Notes Russell, “I love monsters because they can represent ANYTHING. They can represent people, places, things, or ideas. You can use them to tell a deep story or a fun one. I love Monsters Inc as much as I love Hellraiser, and I wanted to curate and anthology that showed my love of all types of monsters.”

The monstrosities that stalk these pages range from over the hill Sesame Street type monsters to demonic robot overlords to world-swallowing beasts; humorous and unsettling and sometimes creepy as hell, there is literally something in here for everyone. In reading through the tales, there are quite a few that I would have liked to continue reading, there was a definitely feel that there was more story to be explored; some that felt just exactly right, and of course, as in all anthologies, there’s always a few that left me scratching my head, or simply ambivalent. On the whole, though, I am reminded of two other somewhat monstrous anthologies that I’ve read in the past few years and found myself enjoying–The Sleep of Reason and The Other Side: An Anthology of Queer Romance …so, if either of those titles appealed to you, you’ll probably dig Monsters And Other Scary Shit, as well!

See below for a handful of images from the book, and get on over to the Kickstarter page for more details and a closer look!
28The-Mirror-dare-and-smith-4 mbellamyhorror1 Ghoul page 2v204A-Screen-To-Kill-For-dare-tanner-smith-6 23frozen-scream-ostlie 03Download-Possession-Ramos-1

 

 

 

✥ comment

bunnehThis past month has been a heart breaker. We lost our dear Mawga, and just like that, our already dwindling family was that much smaller. The days since her passing have been colder than any I remember for this time of year and I’ve been busying my most of them with the work that comes after a death. Making arrangements for, in this case, cremation, retrieving said cremains, cleaning up and cleaning out the house for when we are able to sell it, meeting with the probate attorney, etc.  Thank goodness my grandmother and grandfather set up many of these things in advance, otherwise it would probably be a lot tougher than it actually is. Note to self: get your will and last wishes down on paper and legalized. When I leave this world, I want to ensure that people are put to as little trouble as possible.

So the weeks have passed. And today, again, just like that, it is the first day of spring.

Afghan

earrings

I’ve been incorporating my grandmother’s beloved belongings into my home and my daily routine. The top photo, an old afghan given new life, draped on the reading seat in my office.  Below that, a pair of opal earrings which I haven’t seen in many years and which we unearthed from the musty depths of an old dresser. She frequently used to warn me against the wearing of opals; apparently they were said to be bad luck if they were not your birthstone. They are not mine, but I’m shrugging off superstition and wearing them anyway. Mawga is no doubt tsk-tsking me all the way from the other side.

cardiganVampira

I’m afraid the No-Buy from the beginning of the year hit a stall as of mid-February. I haven’t gone too crazy…for example, no new skin care items because my weird face seems less weird on its current regimen and I’d hate to screw that up. Only ONE new book purchase, everything else has come from the library. No new jewelry at all! I sort of goofed when it came to perfume because glob knows I don’t need any more of that, but how can I resist Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Lupercalia Line?

I have, however, given in when it comes to attire for the torso part of my bod; I just can’t resist  creepy/spooky black tops! No, I do not have enough already, thank you very much. The first is a spider web cardigan from MischiefMadeMe, and the second is a Vampira scream queen top from Grit-N-Glory (there are also Lydia, Lily, Morticia, & Wednesday versions)–and it looks like they’ve not yet sold out!

briar

…also, okay. Another confession. Though wall real estate is becoming more and more scarce chez Ghoul, I also purchased some more Art. (You can read of my art obsession here, if you missed it). Pictured above is Briar, a sweet batling wrought by the brilliant hands of Jessica Joslin and who has just recently joined our motley menagerie.

reading

Reading: Gosh, I have been all over the place lately. I finally got around to reading Paper Girls, described as paranormal science fiction mixed with ’80s nostalgia which is such a cool story. I can’t wait to see where it goes.  House of Penance is a horrific take on the story of the Winchester House and is super intense. Glitterbomb, a dramatic horror story about fame and failure, details through the character of aging actress Farrah Durante, how the entertainment industry feeds on our insecurities, desires, and fears.  I kind of wanted more from this story, but I’m at a loss for, what exactly, I thought it was missing.

Not pictured: Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula. I am somewhat conflicted about this one. As one reviewer succinctly put it: “…there’s a Bram Stoker-shaped hole at the heart of the book.” And wow, is there ever. The book’s author delves into the lives of everyone who has ever touched Bram Stoker, no matter how obscure or insignificant. And though neither obscure nor insignificant, I would venture to say that at least half this book is about Oscar Wilde! At the end of it all, though, I can say I have a pretty good picture of the time during which Stoker lived, and the history and culture of that time, and the people with whom he chose to surround himself and those by whom he was inspired. David Skal writes with a wry humor that serves as a skillful punctuation to the information and stories he shares, but never overwhelms the reader with it. He lets the facts and data tell the story. It’s a lengthy, rambling story with plenty of digressions, but if you are a fan of Bram Stoker’s stories, then I think you will very much enjoy this story of the life he lived.

And lastly, Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. My sister recommended this to me ages ago, and I stubbornly chose other feminist works to read first. On one hand, I am glad; I think my dissatisfaction with those previous titles made me that much more appreciative of Bad Feminist. This series of essays, some of them intensely vulnerable, addresses race, culture, and Scrabble competitions; intertwined with her ruminations on literature and culture, it’s equal parts commentary, memoir, and critical analysis. One thing in particular I loved about the book was the tone; it was not overly academic (I’m sorry to confess I find that rather dreary) and it wasn’t some sort of manic comedy (see Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman)–while it was witty, it was also utterly genuine. But I do think even if I had not encountered those types of reads previously, I’d have loved Bad Feminist all the same, and that much more.

17359407_1450527951657033_6339641534273504411_o

And of course, one-word movie reviews. This month’s viewing is comprised of a very short list. It seems I’ve been doing more reading than movie watching recently, which is fine. I go back and forth between the two, some months it’s one more than the other. Looks like the books win out, this month! I’ve also started keeping track of the dates the films were watched, but that’s probably of no interest to anyone but me.

2/26 Get Out (in the theatre)…ABSOLUTELY
3/5 Ouija: Origin of Evil…nope
3/9 Don’t Breathe…ugh
3/20 Salome’s Last Dance (Amazon prime)…OMGYES

✥ comment

FASHUNI know next to nothing about fashion, and with every passing season I’m fairly certain my knowledge diminishes rather than increases–but that doesn’t mean I love it any less. For me, at its best, it is glorious art, it is a political statement, it is a snapshot of our times–the good, the bad, and the ugly.  At its worst…well, actually, the worst thing, the most offensive thing a fashion design can do, is bore me.  But at its best, it thrills, it inspires, it sometimes agitates or confounds, or quite possibly it makes you giggle with glee roar or with laughter (my personal favorite.)

At any rate, I don’t take my interest in it seriously. Or at least I try not to! But when the Fall collections begin walking the runway, I am riveted.  Here are some of my favorites right now.

17158952_1437224522987376_7075834504079411636_o

Comme des Garçons Fall 2017 Ready To Wear offers us a sensible, down to earth collection that that definitely won’t leave your family and friends and coworkers confused and concerned as to your deteriorating mental state. Full of waddling, exaggerated silhouettes evoking over-sized dress forms or perhaps even ancient goddess imagery, you’d be forgiven for thinking huh, this looks like an enormous, gore-soaked maxi-pad.

_MON0238 _MON1279

On the other hand, I want to wear Yohji Yamamoto’s 2017 Fall Ready collection everywhere that my bright & sunny presence is requested; PTA meetings (I don’t have kids but whatevs), bridal showers, church picnics. The possibilities are endless.

_ARC0781_VAL0789

Valentino’s Fall 2017 Ready To Wear collection, with romantic colors ranging from rich raspberry to ice cream pastels, luxe textures, delicate embroidery and sequins reminds me of several coffee table books belonging to my grandmother. These books were basically photographed tours through various estate homes and I’d spend hours mesmerized by the sumptuous decor: opulent damask curtains framing dusty glass windows overlooking flowering garden mazes, lavish boudoirs swathed in velvets and silks, shimmering crystalline chandeliers. The ensembles featured in this collection conjure these intoxicating, daydream homes.

01-givenchy-rtw-fall-2017 20-givenchy-rtw-fall-2017

To be perfectly honest, all I see when I gaze too long upon Givenchy’s Fall 2017 Ready To Wear collection is a scarlet coven of demonic teletubbies.

16683827_1431831123526716_7153145648670249625_n 16864305_1431831120193383_2344936060249127411_n

Though I really want to love a couture collection inspired by the symbolism of Twin Peaks, MSGM’s Fall 2017 ready to wear offerings are comprised of an almost offensive degree of fug.

16905029_1427546907288471_625509383215889809_o

Are you ready for Gareth Pugh’s sleep-deprived garbage bag dystopia?

17097434_1434711423238686_6351119442822166206_o 17039294_1434711426572019_3781905199896120101_o

Anne Demeulemeester’s ghostly veils (top) and Rick Owens’ (bottom) grimly towering headdresses are extremely pleasing to me.

KIM_2215KIM_2247

And finally Alexander McQueen’s collection of jacquard and brocade with feather stitch details, trailing beads of jet with memento ribbons threaded through tweeds and leather, was imbued with dense imagery woven into every motif- whether witchy sun and moon symbolism or medieval tapestry inspired flora and fauna–and utterly brimming with both youthful and traditional female energy and power. Gorgeousness.

✥ 2 comments