Dressing in the Dark of Winter: coats

In the nether-netherland of northern Canada, staying warm in a witchy way can be a mortal challenge. A few weeks ago I made suggestions for men's gothy winter boots that prevented frost bite. This week I'd like to consider ideas for men's spookily warm winter coats.

Walking in a real winter wonderland, you'll need some serious cover to keep from freezing. And if you want to stay warm and still darkle, here are a few suggestions starting from the cheapest to the most expensive:

1. The black wool pea coat. A good old stand-by but still elegant enough to add some classy creepiness to the holiday season. And the deathly days that follow.
2. If you're into the cyber look, you can easily find some futuristic wintery gear. Cryoflesh has some ideas but you could probably find something spacey enough at Old Navy or any other mundane clothing store.

3. Fur may be cruel but faux fur will only make you look evil. And that in a darkly dreamy fantasy sort of way.



Source: Kate's Clothing

4. Finally, if you have the money PlastikWrap will happily wrap you up and send you forth to haunt and multiply. Grrr!

Source: PlastikWrap

Yes, 30 days of night are now upon us. And we must be vigilant and prepare for the endless cold and deadly dark...Ok, it isn't quite like that. Vampires would warm the place up!

Have a happy New Year, my pretties! And dress warm and witchy!

Goth philosopher: Michel Foucault

The question isn't: was famous philosopher Michel Foucault a Goth? No. We need to ask ourselves: was he a closet gargoyle?

Like a gargoyle, a dreadful mystique looms around Foucault. But the dread is not elicited by his dark visage. Unfortunately, it is due to an unwarranted reputation as a near impossibly difficult writer with an incomprehensible style. Foucault is one of those French postmodern philosophers that gets lumped together with Derrida, Lacan, Althusser et al. Superficial similarities notwithstanding, Foucault is a wonderful stylist (not that Derrida, Althusser, Lacan et al don't have their good qualities also) who while discussing difficult topics is rarely difficult to understand. And best of all, there is a distinctively Gothy theme in his writing. He writes about madness, outsiders, and sexuality with a desire to destabilize and decentre the mundane while providing room for the freaks to get their freak on. What else is Goth about?  


Besides, he's got a Gothy look:

A uniquely personal version of academic Goth, non?

If you're thinking of taking the plunge and trying out this great thinker, might I suggest starting with The History of Sexuality: An Introduction: Volume One? The subject matter is interesting to say the least and the book is easy to read and full of the contrary ideas of this arch-contrarian. Here is a little taste from the first page:

"For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the nineteenth century. It was a time of direct gestures, shamelss discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies 'made a display of themselves.'

But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie...(The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, p. 3)"

Very well-written, easy to understand, intriguing...non?

Have a very merry Hexmas, my dark comrades!

Happy Belated Winter Solstice!

I know I'm very late but I've been very busy the last two weeks with marking papers and exams and other end-of-term thingies. Now, I'm free for a week and should get back to posting. So I want to wish you all a very merry winter solstice and hope you had a great time because celebrating the longest night of the year is the real reason for the season.

JesusWeenie Watch: The Transphobic Idiocy of the Institute for Canadian Values

In an earlier post, I flippantly declared the existence of 5 sexes. At least. Give or take. Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling makes that case at the same time that she presents the scientific and meta-scientific argument that gender and sexuality are arbitrary and imposed.

The fake world of politics seems to be imitating the real world of art and science. In the wonderland of Ontario, the Ministry of Education has now introduced an anti-bullying campaign that includes: the establishment of gay-straight clubs in all schools upon student request (and all means Catholic homophobic ones, too!), the expulsion of bullies as a last resort and--and this is a huge "and"--sensitive instruction on gender issues, including lessons about the 6 genders. Not just 5 but 6!!! At least. Give or take.

Well, don't rejoice and sing the Hallelulah Chorus just yet my fellow darklings. The real Hallelujah Chorus of the JesusWeenie faction is up in arms and appalled and self-righteously outraged and otherwise writhing and wrathing and raving about in the sanctimonious Gormenghast that is their ideal White Christmas Canada.

Foremost among the JesusWeenies can be found the inaptly named Institute for Canadian Values. Well, because, you know, intolerance, homophobia, transphobia and religious bigotry are all Canadian values and not the hackneyed dreams of the false worshippers of a past that never was. Anyway, the Institute has launched a grotesque stop corrupting our children campaign. I mean, seriously, you can hear Mrs. Lovejoy shrieking, "What about the children?! Won't somebody please think of the children!?" And of course, the children, that's really what this is all about, in'it?

Right, JesusWeenies care about children as much as they care about women and real people in general. This is the Canadian Taliban out to impose their version of this country on the rest of us. Just as anti-choice is about controlling women, this anti-corruption campaign is about controlling children--and marginalizing LGBTQ people in the name of family, religious and parental freedom. The freedom of institutions and structures that restrict and script us.

Just look at the horror over questioning gender and the diatribes against the fabled radical politically correct agenda. The sacrosanct binary system of the family-sex-gender complex is under attack and it must be defended. Because society needs the simple world of twos, of easily reducible and complimentary opposites. If there are more than two sexes, then there will be sexual chaos and all of civilization will crumble into the anarchic orgy of mass confusion and liquidating pleasure. Without two, we have no discipline; and no law and order and no work and production and no inequality and authority.

And, of course, that is the whole point. Let's have a little sexual chaos. A little polymorphous perversity. Let's undermine this little fantasy world called 'Western Civilization.'

Maybe when we start doing that, we'll actually help a few children unlike the JesusWeenie bullies behind the bullies. Charles McVety, the President of the Institute of Canadian Values, asks about the gender-bending side of the anti-bullying campaign, 'And what does this have to do with bullying? Nothing!' There's the naked face of hatred, brutality and oppression.

Ask Jamie Hubley what homophobia and transphobia have to do with bullying. Ask Billy Lucas, Asher Brown and Seth Walsh. Ask the more than 200 LGBTQ people killed this year alone or the hugely disproportionate number of LGBTQ teenagers who try to kill themselves or succeed. Hell, you don't have to ask them. Everyone who has grown up in this hate-ridden society knows that 'fag' and 'lesbian' and 'queer' are the archetypal taunts of the bully.

If anything homophobia/transphobia and bullying are one and the same thing. Bullying is about imposing sexual and gender norms. You know it, Chuckie boy. That's why you're being so coy and disingenuous. You are a bully, like all your fundie friends. You want to protect your racket.

Yes, it does get better. But only because we combat hatred, intolerance and religious bigotry.

Let's keep Canada loud and proud, my dark comrades!

Boi crush

Causing gender confusion in male genitals everywhere (and possibly in female ones, too but I can't speak from experience but he is that pretty; and are you sure you're hot for him cuz he's a guy, ladies?), supreme supermodel Andrej Pejic is *swoon* one of the most beautiful human beings evuh!

Just look at him!

And look again!

And once more!

Ok, I can't stop!

More proof that gender is irrelevant. It's the beauty signs--and the beauty spots--that matter.

Oh sweetie, you are just plain gorgeous. I'm melting.

Enjoy, gothlings!

Gothic Lolita: Good Reads

Like so many other goffs, androgyny and the feminine fascinate me. Gothic Lolita style is a natural fit for the dark and ambiguous dandy of all 5 sexes. Add a love affair with Japanese pop culture and you've found the perfect look.

But there's more to looking than appearing. You've got to down-and-dirtify your mind with some good brain candy.

I'm going to make some suggestions but beyond the obvious. If Gothic Lolita is like a wicked Victorian fairy tale, then here are some books that capture the dark side of innocence:

1. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. About a wretched boarding school and the vile creatures that inhabit it. Tragicomic with an eerie cartoon sense. Waugh's characters are like marionettes just on the edge of becoming real people.
2. Put Out More Flags by Mr. Waugh also. Some of the same characters return to the Blitz. Even more tragicomic. With two of the most distasteful children imaginable. And the archetypal con artist.
3. Dorian by Will Self. The Picture of Dorian Gray was terrific but this late-last century remake is even better. More edge. More evil. Deliciously decadent.
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Ok, this one is obvious. But it is one of the best novels from the latter half of the last century. Moreover, it is a postmodern dark fairytale without equal. Think Alice in Wonderland twisted by Poe and written by an incomparable stylist.
5. The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov. The almost lost proto-Lolita. Shorter, maybe sweeter. Definitely darker.
6. The Holy Terrors by Jean Cocteau. About a metaphysical incestuous relationship. And adolescent doom.
7. Count D'Orgel's Ball by Raymond Radiguet. Cocteau's lover. Dead at 20. Ah, tragic talented youth. Beautifully written. A magic tale about adultery.
8. The Complete Saki by Saki. The Edwardian dandy writer. Malevolent epigram-spouting youths and an avenging weasel. You know you want to read it.
9. Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Erotic masterpiece by the man that put masochism on the map. Really an adult fairytale.
10. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Heavy. Yes. But it takes place in an Alpine sanitorium populated by bizarre characters. You can taste the doom and the mystery.
11. The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil. Another book about evil adolescents and a horrible boarding school. Bullying and sexual torture. Not for young adults.
12. The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. Here is another adult fairytale. A dark erotic story that is more twisted and evil than arousing. Not for the squeamish, either physically or morally.
13. Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau. The title tells it all. Black magic most foul and fae.
14. The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. The British master of horror. A tale of terror for younger readers...maybe? Like Coraline (too obvious to list here) but darkly different.

Ending at 13 would have been too predictable. But 14 suggestions for Gothic Lolita intellectual kicks is surely enough for now, is it not my pretties?

Goth Icon: Klaus Nomi

Of all those Goth before there was Goth, opera singer Klaus Nomi has to be king or god emperor or supreme buffoon. A walking doll, he was born to be cartoonified.


Source: wikipedia


One time pastry chef turned retro-futurist intergalactic tragicomic trickster imp, Klaus Nomi out-glammed the gods of glam. A twisted jester, an Elizabethan freak, Nomi came to our planet like an alien to redeem us. Outrageous and touching at the same time.

I can pile on the descriptions but I can never say it better than it's said here.

And to finish, here are the words of Henry Purcell's 'Cold Song'. One of Nomi's best-known performances. Beautiful and bone-chilling and heart-breaking:

I can scarcely move or draw my breath.
Let me, let me, let me freeze again to death.

A Reading List from the Multiverse

Surfing the internets this Friday night. (Another wild weekend for the Komrade. Next weekend kicks off the Xmas party circuit.) Surfing away and I come across Michael Moorcock's Recommended Reading List.

The anarchist creator of sword-and-sorcery anti-hero Elric of Melnibone, Michael Moorcock is the anti-Tolkein. His reading list proves it. Some wonderful. Some interesting. Some puzzling.

Moorcock definitely reads a lot of new work, so I haven't read or heard of a lot of the authors on this list. A good sign though. Adventurous and up-to-date. A good to-read list.

I would definitely agree with him about China Mieville who is probably the best fantasy writer out there today. Perdido Street Station is one of my favourite books. If you like steampunk and horror, you will love that one. Mieville creates one of the most in-depth and multifaceted and believable fantasy worlds I have ever encountered.

The inclusion of Bertolt Brecht would be intriguing on its own. The reason though makes it downright fascinating. Moorcock recommends Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht as a proto-steampunk work. Never mind as a precursor to dark cabaret. Cool enough. But also as an 'influence on Elric'! Now really. I have got to read that!

Moorcock also recommends quite a number of non-fiction works. Of these, I can only say ditto to King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. (I haven't read the others.)

King Leopold's Ghost is the best book about the horrors of imperialism I have ever read. Compelling and unputdownable. It covers the little known decimation of what would become the Congo in the late 1800s and early 1900s by--wait for it--Belgium! Who would have thought the worst imperial power in recent history would be wee wittle Belgium? Just plain evil. Around 20 million Congolese lost their lives because of fucking Leo.

Empire is a strange work. It reads like it was unfinished or haphazardly put together but the ideas are so fecundant perhaps because they are only half-formed. On every page, you find a thread to unravel and spin away with. So many embryos. So many. It's like an IVF clinic in your head.

The oddest and most intriguing recommendations Moorcock provides are for books by Andrea Dworkin. But then, apparently, she was a friend. Which probably doesn't mean much other than he was attracted to her and to her work. It definitely makes me want to read her. Anyone hated like she was has gotta be worth it.

Moorcock is a wonderful writer and a wonderful thinker. If he recommends it, then it is probably a great book.

So read on, gothlings!