ze monsta's haus

nonbinary monster // mastermind // dom

[zemonstashaus]

Cover for my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel titled Cicatrix.

A novel-thing about longing, identity, space and the sea, being a monster of both body and mind, queer love, maggots rewriting history and the “great” ideas of “great” men, birth, origins, folklore, art, disgust, linguistics, and the creation of stories and reality.

Structured in three parts, loosely based on the ideas of growth, decay, and transformation, it begins with (MC1) Lux; gamine, born in the gutter with a crooked spine during an eclipse, a proclivity for list making and collective nouns, and a penchant for mischief. From there the narrative moves along back and forth via a train of thought rather than linearly, from Lux to (MC2) Talis and various vignettes that I'm tentatively referring to as Veritas de Verme. Talis was spat out by the sea during a storm of epic proportions, composed mostly of salt, steel, and stone, afflicted with leucoderma, and promptly dragged to the reformatory thus beginning a life of longing and inky transformation.

________________________________________

There's no plot really but there will be: lots of lists; full body tattoos a la Zombie Boy; gender ambiguity; blood and the sea; nuns; cameos from Judith and Artemisia Gentileschi, Henrietta Lacks, the Donner Party, Andy Warhol's torso, and Frida Kahlo; allusions to numerous historical events such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the Molasses Flood, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Black Death; a slaughterhouse and a crematorium; queer love; a butcher and a typesetter; anagrams; deer; a dog called Horehound; a person longing for their twin; a person longing for their "soulmate" a la The Origin of Love; questions about reality, history, objectivity, identity, and binaries; poetic maggots; possibly a place called Saville; did I mention a lot of blood?

[waxxxing-deactivated20250124]

We created spaces where we became all of the negative stereotypes attributed to fat. We did this in an effort to challenge these stereotypes, but also to push our audiences to find desire in the ugly, in the gross and grotesque. We wanted to confront and challenge the monstrosity often attributed to the fat body by mimicking and becoming monsters. In an effort to reclaim space for our bodies, we played with and became gross stereotypes. When we reclaimed and adopted these negative attributes as our own, they began to hurt less. Playing with the gruesome allowed us to carve out opportunities to embrace the ugly, to have fun with it, and hopefully to encourage others to do so as well.

Gruesome Bodies and Wasted Desires by Liz Brockest (via disgusting-body)

[christinefriar]

[lovecrimers]

[chasewhiteside]

The Best Cat Video on the Internet (h/t Jarred Alterman)

[cheshire-the-fucking-cat]

[zemonstashaus]

bonemangrove replied to your post: Is it too much to ask to have *one* person I can talk to about Breaking Bad?

You rang?(Keeping in mind that it’s been ages since I’ve sat down to watch an episode and season four is still mostly unknown to me)

Yay! You should get caught up (though I know you just started school so that might be easier said than done). Seasons 4 and 5 have been fantastic, and the half-season finale is in less than 12 hours. Omg, I'm so stressed :/

I really can't get over how awesome this show is, but I've watched every episode in a matter of like 5 days and I already want to start the whole series over...

[zemonstashaus]

Is it too much to ask to have *one* person I can talk to about Breaking Bad?

And I don't mean the assholes on the tumblr tag who can't manage more than a "Skylar [sic] is such a fucking hoe! When's Walt going to kill her??" I mean people that actually want to talk about the brilliance of this show: cinematography, character development, easter eggs and foreshadowing, color theory, recurring symbols, hypermasculinity, gender, race, and most importantly Jesse's tears.

Jeebus.

[zemonstashaus]

remember the time

when i fact checked a PolitiFact article on Plan B, emailed the writer with a mountain of evidence about why she was wrong, she said she’d “take a look,” and then nothing ever happened?

that was fucking great.

[zbags]

[zbags]

Once a Brackish Apex Nautilus (N. salmacidus magister) has consumed the fleshy tail and innards of a Pontic Rosefish (Helicolenus thriampi), it will continue to maneuver the more durable front end, exploiting the carcass to stalk prey oblivious to its presence. Its arms can control the bony head-parts and remaining fins from inside. The “tongue” emitting from the mouth is actually one of the cephalopod’s two proper tentacles, which possess barbed club ends with rudimentary suckers. Culinary market incentives have led Euxinovan commercial fishermen to carefully sort such nautili from their carrion-free brethren. A second flush nautilus (as one fully gorged on a rosefish is termed) will yield chewier meat and a deep, almost smoky flavor. Best served with legumes and Sauvignon Blanc.

[besamebesamemucho-deactivated20]

[zemonstashaus]

Timothy Cummings

[revenge-of-the-witches-blog]

“Often both men and women, but especially men, project onto cats what under patriarchy they have learned to fear in women, which is why cats were burned when the witches were burned all over Europe in the millions. Women and cats were viewed as equally sexual and equally evil. What cannot be broken to obey must be destroyed, by that reasoning. Cats are seen as sneaky. They are considered without loyalty because they have a will and life of their own. But cats form intense passionate attachments and loyalties.”

— Marge Piercy, in response to the question “[W]hat has your politics got to do with your infamous passion for cats?” (via revenge-of-the-witches)

(source)

[nevver]

[zemonstashaus]

Ray Caesar

[arcticgrey-deactivated20121009]

It offends me both as a librarian and a pervert.

best comment on 50 Shades of Grey that I’ve heard so far (via zarahlee)

[rhizombie]

Capitalism is only possible because we can reduce the complexity and difference of life to a single system of exchange. In capitalism it no longer matters what circulates – whether it is money, goods, information, or even the feel-good messages of feminism, multi-culturalism and community – as long as there is constant exchange. For Deleuze this has a positive and negative side. Positively, it displays life’s power of deterritorialisation: a capacity to take any actual thing and translate it into a movement of flow. [...] There is a positive capitalist tendency in all life, a deterritorialising tendency to open any system on to exchange and interaction. But deterritorialisation, which relies on an initial territorialisation, is also accompanied by reterritorialisation. Capital arrests its tendency to produce and open flows by quantifying all exchange through the flow of capital. In capitalism everything becomes measured by money or quantity – even the commodity value of art and the information value of concepts.

Claire Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers)

And here’s the tricky difference between relative (capitalistic) and absolute (nomadic) deterritorialization in layman’s terms.

(via rhizombie)

pg 65

[rhizombie]

The fringe of indetermination which surrounds individuals and the relative, floating and fluid character of individuality itself has often been commented upon…The error, however, is to believe that this indetermination or this relativity indicates something incomplete in individuality or something interrupted in individuation. On the contrary, they express the full, positive power of the individual as such, and the manner in which it is distinguished in nature from both an I and a self. …Indeterminate, floating, fluid, communicative and enveloping-enveloped are so many positive characteristics affirmed by the individual. It is therefore insufficient to multiply selves or to ‘attenuate’ the I in order to discover the true status of individuation. We have seen to what extent selves must be presupposed as a condition of passive organic syntheses, already playing the role of mute witnesses. However, the synthesis of time which is carried out in them refers precisely to other syntheses as though to other witnesses, thereby leading us into the domain of another nature in which there is no longer either self or I, and in which, by contrast, we encounter the chaotic realm of individuation.

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

And here’s his critique of both Lacan and Marx’s conceptions of the individual.

(via rhizombie)

pg 258

[sb-deactivated2032432-deactivat]

The monster always represents the disruption of categories, the destruction of boundaries, and the presence of impurities, and so we need monsters and we need to recognize and celebrate our own monstrosities.

Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, Judith Jack Halberstam, Duke University Press (via themadwomanintheattic)

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