Obligatory Swine Flu Post

Groan...I almost can't stand doing this, but it's low hanging fruit and I'm out of ideas...and I feel obliged to somehow contribute to the struggle to save humanity from just another strain of the flu before we are all turned into mutants for Will Smith to kill.

I could just offer my economic advice...

or are people trying to kill us?



or am I being too glib?

Hmmmm...probably. I tend to scoff at the masses when they lose perspective...or when they appear to lose perspective...or when the media tries to push a loss of perspective. I wonder if that last bit isn't the most true. Haven't seen a lot of panic around here.

So...YOU ARE HERE:


What this means is we have

human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.

If you read the page you see that it doesn't matter if we go pandemic or not from here. We've already got community infections in the U.S. and Mexico - it doesn't matter where else it goes within or outside our WHO region.

So I officially don't care if we have a pandemic or not. I want to not hear people say the word "pandemic" like they have one in their neighborhood. Because what they really have is a virus.

I guess we'll see some widespread infections...infections with what?

Streiffer said it's important to keep the threat of swine flu in perspective. It's a new strain of influenza, so people haven't built up immunity and vaccines won't block it, but there is no indication that it is any more virulent or dangerous for normally healthy people than the more typcial strains of flu.

"What people don't seem to understand is it's not worse than the average flu, except there's no herd immunity -- which means there's no immunity in the general population -- therefore, everyone's at risk, but not necesarily for anything more virulent or dangerous than average influenza."

Oh...so, we could be seeing lots and lots more of what looks and acts like the flu, a virus that killed slightly fewer people last year than automobile accidents. (h/t DrMomentum for the link!) Crap. I was hoping I'd get night after night of feverish dreams of Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror.

So maybe the H1N1 virus is just the slugger the influenza team needs to get out of the basement and into a distant third behind heart disease. Then again, maybe not...we may just see a bunch of people on Nyquil and anti-virals (buy stock NOW!!). We have a pretty damned good track record against the flu here in America.

Would it suck to see a widespread outbreak of a flu few could avoid? Absolutely. By all means, I'm taking precautions for an extended flu season, especially with my younger children, and keeping myself informed. But beyond that it's biz as usual.

Oh wait, this just in...it's not a government plot! They've found patient zero!

h/t @billmarrs

I've Tweeted My Meat...

I've seen (that is, been followed by) people who are tweeting serial stories...I usually block them as soon as I read their twitter homepages because the stories are boring as shit and they seem to picture themselves as far more artistic than they actually are.

This one, however is a bit different:

“Where is it?” She grasps, fingers scraping. She yanks. It peels. A gallbladder. “Damn.” She reaches back in. _"Will you quit wiggling?"_

It's a sample tweet from one of the editors at Tweet the Meat, a Twitter-based horror e-zine that seeks to publish complete, 140-character-or-fewer horror snippets from its readers. And they even pay a buck per submission via PayPal.

Anyway, the concept sounded interesting enough so I submitted a tweet on Sunday, and it got accepted. As they have first digital rights to it, I can't reproduce it here for you, but I'll let you know when it's up. I don't want to sound like it was a monumentally difficult thing, but I did think about it for at least a couple of days. Trying to complete an action and create enough of an atmosphere to capture the imagination of a reader in 140 characters, while being grammatically correct, was an interesting task. Definitely fun.

I have a PayPal account, but I don't need the dollar. In this case, they will make a donation via PayPal to the charity of your choice in your name. I think that is an excellent idea. I believe I will choose Project Valour-IT, who help "provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries." They can use the dollar way more than I can, and maybe I'll try and do a submission a week to get them more money...

It'll be interesting when they start posting reader-submitted stuff, to see the quality that made the cut. It's definitely more interesting than some wannabe wovelist trying to feed you mediocrity 140 characters at a time.

On other publishing news, my "Monster Byte" was accepted by the Innsmouth Free Press, though it has not been published yet. I hope to see it soon, but I also had planned to make a couple more related ones to round the story out...I should get cracking. I had also wanted to write a piece of short fiction for them; something of a Cthulhu meets Patrick O'Brian in the Oregon territory circa 1820. I should get cracking on that, too. I was also going to set up an invitation only blog to display works in progress for comment. I should get cracking on that, too.

Mythos Monday - The Call of Cthulhu (2005) Movie Review

Before I start, I'm going to say that I'm not much of a movie reviewer...at all. But since I say "Yeah, sure!" last week, I might as well keep my word. I'll also say you can find the IMDB page here, and some cool stills from the movie here.

The film itself is a black and white, silent film production of H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu. It's around 47 minutes long and goes to great lengths to faithfully re-create the story on screen. They succeeded amazingly.

I won't bother with a plot synopsis - read the Wikipedia link above if you want one. What I will do is point out that the story itself as written does not lend itself well to modern film. Since the story is a narration based upon the notes and experiences of people other than the narrator and contains little dialogue, addressing the story with a movie full of dialogue would (I believe) unnecessarily complicate the movie. The silent format was excellent for visualizing the three separate stories that make up The Call of Cthulhu, allowing just enough "dialogue" to be put in to fill in gaps and keep the story rolling. Taking only a small amount of license with events and people, the plot is adhered to almost exactly.

Highlights: I liked that the producers took the time to vary the images of Cthulhu used in the film - particularly the idols. The ones from the Louisiana Bayou, the Esquimax tribe in Greenland, and found aboard the freighter in the South Pacific are all distinctly different and horrid in their own ways. The cult scene was great - the battle between police and the cultists was carried out in true silent movie style. The Cthulhu stop animation reminds me of "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" with the exception that the detail put into Cthulhu itself is phenomenal. The DVD carries several minutes of bonus footage, much of which is stop animation creation and outtakes.

The DVD also has a behind the scenes feature, about 25 minutes with the producers, cast, crew, set designers, etc. Quite impressive. Being an independent film with a low budget (not to mention forcing themselves into a specific "era" of film making) they went about it "the old fashioned way" - though with modern equipment - and it was great to see how they put things together, created perspective with small sets, and built a two-story R'lyeh in the narrator's back yard and figured out how to make a sailor get "swallowed up" by the city's bizzare geometry. Watching it was just as worthwhile as watching the movie.

Quibbles are so minor, they bear no mention...really.

In short - this is DVD not simply worth seeing, but buying and enjoying again and again.

As a bonus, it was also an excellent way to introduce my 9 year old to the story (and the basis of the mythos) a few years before he can read at the level Lovecraft wrote.

Okay, I Admit ... I'm A Jumper!

I'm mostly a baseball / football sort of guy; I admit I'll listen to the basketball talk on the local sports radio, and I almost never listen to the hockey news that's going around.

Not that I dislike hockey. I didn't watch a lot of it growing up here in Massachusetts, but in the early 90's when I lived in Long Beach and then in Monterey California, hockey was just starting to catch on, tickets were relatively inexpensive, and I started to take a liking to the game. I became a San Jose Sharks fan in 1993, and a die-hard fan after their against all odds playoff run of 1994 (even though they only made the second round). Even though I was from here, it just didn't cross my mind to become a Bruins fan. It would have seemed somewhat disingenuous of me. So I watched former Soviet Army players Makarov, Larionov and Garpenlov tear up the ice while Irbe overachieved in goal and had a great time going to the Shark Tank for games.

Getting married, moving around a lot more and going back on sea duty did a lot to cool my hockey fandom, and in reality I haven't paid attention to the game since about 1997.

But this year both my original "hockey love", and my local team the Boston Bruins are in the playoffs and, of course, it's hard not to get a face full of the local hysteria over hockey. So my curiosity has sparked again. And yes, I'll admit, I was stoked at the Bruins' sweeping of The Habs. I watched two of the games. And last night on "Versus" I watched Game 5 of the Sharks / Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (I'm sorry - FUCKING STUPID NAME, anyone? Never mind that the team was bought by Disney to milk the popularity of their stupid fucking movie. But it seams ANY team from Anaheim just has a shitty name...as proof, I also give you the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". Cuz Anaheim is close enough to LA to be part of LA, even though it takes more than an hour to get from one shit hole to the other on the freaking freeway and nobody in shitty old Anaheim wants to be part of shitty old LA. Can we just nuke both cities and be done with it?) It was great watching the Sharks pull it off in OT, but to tell the truth, I think the Duckies will end up taking the series. Hope I'm wrong.

I guess hockey may be the only sport where I pull this crap. Football? Nope. If my Patriots aren't there, I don't give a shit. I don't "have" and NFC team. Baseball? Hah...don't even consider. There is but one team; all the others are trying hard. I had a guy who worked for me tell me, "If a team beats my team in the playoffs, I root for that team to go all the way." Aaaaaw, what a nice guy. If a team beats my team even in the regular season, I ask Cthulhu to fly their plane into a mountain on the way home. Preferably a mountain in Antarctica.

Now according to ESPN's Bill Simmons' 2002 Rules for Sports Fans, I am all kinds of wrong here and am going to Hell. Now he's from Boston, and his book Now I Can Die in Peace is a good read (he articulates his rules early on in the book as well), but fuck him on this one.

Besides...Jeremy Roenick was born in Boston.

And if they face each other in the finals well...I'll be happy with whoev-... no, that's just as fucked up as allowing Anaheim to have sports teams. Suppose I need go with Rule 19.

Maybe I'm just some English pig with no brain, you know...maybe I go to box for two minutes, all by myself and, you know...I feel shame.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - Really? Is Walking That Hard?

We have evolved to do certain things well, and for long, sustained periods of time with little to no degradation to our capabilities.

The thing that comes most quickly to mind is walking. It's easy, it can wake you up, and while regular walking alone won't get you into shape, it does maintain a nominal measure of cardiac health. Okay, it's not a great way to get from Philly to Tampa, but it is a good way to enjoy a city for a day.

But not now, and not in Boston. Now you can pay $105 NOT to have to walk around Boston and see sights, many of which are free, for what used to cost you maybe at $10 fare card for the "T".

This shouldn't bug me so much...really. I saw one of these "tours" come cruising by me last week as I crossed the road in Charlestown. They looked like they were having fun. And all I could think of was "I guess walking is just too fucking hard."

And then there is what I saw today driving home from the market. A bumper-mounted towing platform for the Segway on a car. So now you can not only drive to a curb, you can now step off onto the sidewalk and not have to move any major muscles to go the rest of the way!

Now maybe there are some people who need access to technology like the Segway to overcome physical limitations. Maybe the guy with the Segway on his car bumper was one of them. However, whenever I pull up images of the damned things, it seems they are simply expensive toys.

Now I'll admit that they do not generate any CO2 like internal combustion engines, and as such can be useful for day to day business travel over long distances through city streets instead of taking cabs.

But...but...

I just can't.

Maybe they're just not badass enough...


There!!! Now go around and wipe out the rest of the Segway geeks...

Sci-Fi Movie Hangover

My son really loved watching Forbidden Planet, as I mentioned yesterday. One of his favorite parts of the DVD was the "bonus" track of old Sci-Fi trailers. He was watching them this morning with his younger sisters (5 and 3) as part of his school vacation TV when I came downstairs at 6:30 this morning. His favorite trailer?


...and for your viewing enjoyment:


I guess I gotta' get "Them" next...

Other trailers he liked...




...and just because I felt like it, if anyone remembers Channel 56 Boston (or Channel 48 in Philly) in the 1970's...

Mythos Monday - Taking the Easy Way Out

With little in the way of creativity or insight to offer, I'm just gonna' highlight the fact that I am, at heart, a consumer. Particularly of the two following things:



I ordered them this evening, should have them bu Thursday...Cthulhu Mythos mini-film festival is in my future.

Both films are fairly recent. The Call of Cthulhu is a 47-minute silent-film adaptation, that is by many accounts very faithful to the story. It was filmed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society and released in 2005. Cthulhu: Welcome Home to the End of the World was released in 2007. It's unique among Cthulhu-inspired horror films in two ways. First, the protagonist is gay and second, it is the only film I've ever bought that features Tori Spelling. I wonder if Cthulhu's tentacles come out of that honkin' schnozz of hers? I mentioned this movie a few months ago, and even linked a trailer.

This was born out of a non-mythos-based endeavor; I decided to start watching some good sci-fi films with my oldest son, as a sort of weekly father-son movie night. We started tonight with Forbidden Planet. Hadn't seen it in years, and it's interesting to see a young...I mean YOUNG...Leslie Nielsen. But you hear old Detective Frank Drebin come out when CDR J. J. Adams raises his voice emphatically. Anne Francis wasn't bad, either.

Hubba, hubba!

Oh yeah...son loved it, too.

Meat Plans

Last August I wanted to try smoking some meat, so over the course of a couple of weeks I made some kick-ass homemade barbecued pork and beef. I finished the summer vowing to get a smoker.

Here it is, April, and I still haven't got one. But I'm going to get one, and am trying to plan a few opportunities to put it to the test. I'll definitely re-do the recipes I did last year, but like I mentioned I'm going to use a cut of meat with more connective tissue - shoulder or butt. I'm salivating just thinking about it. This summer, this place will change from Cthulhu's Family Restaurant to Cthulhu's Smokehouse.

Oh...and there's no sense in doing it again if you don't intend to improve things or explore new things. So this year, I'm going to add homemade bacon to my list of smoking feats. I found that post when I was looking for a pulled pork recipe. Over the winter I found a local meat store that sells good-sized, good quality (non-industrial/corn/petrol-based) pork bellies. They cost a bit, but they look like they'll make great bacon.

I just need to figure out when...I'll probably need to throw a good-sized cookout at least once this summer. This will also be the second year we spend a week on the South Coast (Westport MA) at the beach, and I think smoking up the bacon for that trip (breakfast and BLT's) will be the thing to do.

Shit...it's 11pm and I need barbecue.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - Two Things

First THoroughly Useless thing:

These two people.

Ugh. I understand they are facing charges. If you ask me, it's the wrong way to go. I think Domino's should estimate the business lost and litigate to get their wages - if they ever work again - garnished at 25% until the money is made up...which will pretty much be the rest of their lives. Apologies for the sound. It was the only one I could find that wasn't from a newscast, but apparently the poster thought it would be artsy to add the reverb.

Second THoroughly Useless thing:

My brain right now. My clunky, cement-filled, dry brain filled with painfully linear thought processes. Absolutely 0.0 on the creativity scale, so I have to resort to low hanging fruit like this shit.

Man, when you hit a dry spell, you hit a dry spell.

Tea-tards

What do you do when your party's "raise spending and reduce taxes" plan is replaced by your rival party's "raise spending and reduce taxes" plan?

First, you act shocked...shocked, I tell you, that this horrendous unchecked spending is going on. Then, you grab on to as many general and hollow slogans as you can. Finally, you misinterpret an important American historic event by throwng a crybaby tantrum like my kids do and claim it to be a similar historic act of defiance and liberty.


When I first heard of the idea of a Tax Day Tea Party I was excited. I love a cup of fragrant Earl Grey and a fresh baked scone with clotted cream and jam. But the more I read, the more I realized it really had nothing to do with a tea party - either the nice kind I refer to, or the one in December 1773.

Andrew Sullivan had an interesting take on the whole thing, but instead of taking his word for it, I also spent a while going through their page and came to the same conclusion.

As a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power, I guess I should be happy at this phenomenon. And I would be if it had any intellectual honesty, any positive proposals, and any recognizable point. What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.

And it's not a very focused one at that. But since when is a tantrum focused? I mean really. Look at the site. Try to find a coherent mission statement that explains EXACTLY what they are trying to accomplish...they've gone all "Mad Dr. Bernardo" on us.



They've gone all "Tea-tarded" if you will. Some gems...

(Rick Santelli) called for a “Chicago tea Party” where advocates of the free-market system could join in a protest against out of control government spending.

People speak as if Republicans are all free market advocates and Republican administrations are the free market administrations. This is absolutely laughable. We have not had free markets here since forever...

On February 27th, an estimated 30,000 Americans took to the street in 40+ cities accross the country in the first nationwide “Tea Party” protest.

That's about 750 people per city. Sounds a lot bigger than it is. Though I understand the group tantrums are getting much bigger.

And some of the various comments...

The Boston Tea Party was a protest, but it was more than that. It was a refusal to pay unjust taxes. ... I say, if everyone of you truly believes in this cause, then don’t pay your taxes.

Except the Boston Tea Party really wasn't about not wanting to pay taxes...it was about wanting the representation that came with taxation. These people want the opposite...representation without taxation.

If you love your country, and you want your tax dollars to be spent not only wisely, but ethically, then refuse to contribute tax dollars to this administration. Don’t participate in the system. Make a REAL statement, just like Samuel Adams and the rest of the men who met and did the right thing at the Old South Meeting House.

How can you ensure your tax dollars are being spent wisely if you don't participate? This is the exact opposite of what the namesake of my favorite commercial beer wanted. He WANTED to participate. He WAS participating, as much as he could, up until and after the Boston Tea Party. Oh, and the administration doesn't spend your money. Congress spends the vast majority of it.

Dear Patriots of this great country— Rise up to be heard not to be taxed. This is the way to be heard. We need to be united and show our flustration (sic) before it is too late.

Read that again...giggling yet?

I believe that we pay too many taxes but not that it is because people voted in Democrats and not Republicans. ... The Tax Day should be a way to do some action that will work to reduce taxes.

Funny...our taxes are the lowest they've been in a long, long time...

I think that we should do exactly this….don’t pay taxes on April 15th. If enough people actually did this, say 30,000+, they would have to change. ... I think that would send a greater message to our government that we don’t want our money spent this way.

Ahem...when approximately 10,000,000 people fail to file their income taxes annually, I don't think an additional 0.3% increase will be noticed.

And lastly...

I love the idea of these Tea Parties, but I think we need to be careful and not sound like a bunch of cheap bastards that just don’t want to pay taxes.

Oooh, too late. They already do. (In deference to the author of that comment, he does go on to explain why taxes are necessary.)

I could go on, but you get the idea. There is room for reasoned debate about taxes, spending, the current tax system and reform. There just doesn't seem to be any discussion going on there.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - Stone Temple Pilots Lyrics

They always seemed, to me, like they were trying to hard to be "deep" and ended up being lousy.

When the dogs do find her
Got time, time, to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it
When the dogs do find her
Got time, time, to wait for tomorrow
To find it, to find it, to find it

or...

Feelin' uninspired
Think I'll start a fire
Everybody run
Bobby's got a gun
Think you're kinda neat
Then she tells me I'm a creep
Friends don't mean a thing
Guess I'll leave it up to me

...and other meaningless (or seemingly so) drivel.

Whatever.

I'll let Mike Judge do the talking:

Beavis : Is this Pearl Jam?
Butt-head: This guy makes faces like Eddie Vedder.
Beavis: No, Eddie Vedder makes faces like this guy.
Butt-head: I heard these guys, like, came first and Pearl Jam ripped them off.
Beavis: No, Pearl Jam came first.
Butt-head: Well, they both suck.

Well, I'm not that down on Pearl Jam...

Eulogy

I said goodbye to my maternal grandfather this past weekend. He would have been 92 years old this month. He went peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by his four daughters and one granddaughter, Friday morning last. I had some small pangs that I could not be there with him when he stopped breathing, but I made the 50 mile drive the night before and two other times that week, and the week before. It was good to be with him, even though the last time I saw him conscious was two weeks ago.

My mother and her sisters asked me to give his eulogy. I would like to be able to write it here, but I didn't really write it before hand. I just put some notes down on note cards and went from there. But I will jot (or type) a few of the most memorable things about him here...some of it wasn't said, some of it was, but it's all true.

- my mother's side of the family is Lebanese. The Lebanese call their grandfather "Giddo" (JID-doo). He was my Giddo Joe.

- Giddo Joe was born in 1917. Interesting things that happened that year: doctors first linked lead poisoning in children to eating lead paint chips. Also, J.R.R. Tolkien began writing his first "Lost Tales" that eventually became The Silmarillion.

- Giddo Joe played amateur football in 1935. The team was called "The Roughriders". I remember him telling me that for protective headgear he wore not one, but two stocking caps. Apparently, it was enough protection. He remained sharp as a tack until the very end. He loved football til the very end, too.

- Giddo Joe joined the Army in WWII and served as a combat engineer in the Pacific, and the occupation forces in Japan. He left the service a Staff Sergeant and became a civil engineer for the state of Massachusetts. After he retired he was a freelance surveyor. He must have surveyed about 5 million-billion miles of road and property boundaries. Seriously...if you've driven a Mass. freeway, he worked on it. I used to help him during the summer and when I was home from college. It paid well; you'd be surprised what someone will pay to find out the four corners of his lot so he can scream at his neighbor for having a shrub 2" over the boundary.

- We would go around on these jobs in a 1971 Dodge Dart. I can still smell the vinyl and the oil, hear the loud, mechanical sound of the directionals, and visualize the array of tools - mallets, plumb bobs, hundreds of feet of steel tape, wooden stakes, nails, ribbon, spray paint, you name it - in the trunk. I remember how meticulous he was. If we did a job and he found out a week later he was half a degree off on an angle, or a foot off on a measurement, he'd call me up and say we needed to get back out there asap and re-measure. Close enough was not good enough. He was doing something for someone, and he was damned well going to do it right.

- He had the most beautiful singing voice, and led the church choir for 50 years. Even though I'd quite lost my religion by adulthood, I could still go to mass when Giddo was singing. There was little that sounded better to me than him singing a hymn in Aramaic. It would make the hair stand up on the back of my neck and give me goose bumps. I don't think he missed a mass or holy day in 50 years. I figure at least 60 masses a year, his audience was in the hundreds of thousands.

- Giddo Joe was the most humble and kind person I'd ever known. He was always helping people, encouraging them and mentoring them. What stands out the most is that he treated children - everyone's children, it didn't matter - like they were his own. He'd joke with them, play with them, and talk to kids like they were the most important and special people in the world. Last night my wife and I agreed that if everyone treated children like Giddo Joe did, we would have far fewer problems.

I am absolutely not doing him justice here. It was an emotional weekend for me, but in all, it's really a "good" and natural thing. He had 92 great years (his decline was rapid and spanned only the final 5 or so months), he got to know his great grandchildren (I never got to have a strong relationship with my great grandparents) and was never not surrounded by his family. I can't think what could have been left for him to do. When my time has come, if I could be judged as half the man he was I will consider my life a success. I love him, I miss him, and I'll never, ever let my kids forget what a great person he was.

...and with that, I'm back.

THoroughly Useless (THU) Thursday - A Day Late and a Buck Short

There's been a lot of thoroughly useless shit surrounding Madonna lately.

First, there is her thoroughly useless bid to adopt a Malawian child to be a sister to the one she has already adopted. Thoroughly useless not only because it failed, but because of the thoroughly useless American adoption system that drives frustrated people to adopt children from overseas.

Okay, I'm going to take a break here and clarify a little bit. First of all, while I do not care for Madonna anymore - she has completely jumped the shark in my book - I give her credit for her charity efforts in Malawi. I applaud any private charity effort overseas, especially in this economy when the government needs to focus its money and energy here at home. Also, I am not against overseas adoption per se - it saves a child from poverty and (assuming the parenting is good) gives them a very good chance at a good life. However, it does nothing to relieve the burden on our own system or provide relief to hundreds of thousands of kids equally deserving of a shot.

Which brings me back to the celebs. They piss me off. King Brad and Queen Angelina and Madonna, while benefitting individuals, are doing harm to masses of people. If adopting underprivileged children is truly important, are they actively using their celebrity to push for adoption reform RIGHT HERE? Now I've researched this...meaning I've Googled the question like, three times...and can find no evidence of our most glamorous pushing to help kids right here. So, unless I can find some other evidence, I can blame these particular celebrities for not recognizing a real domestic problem and taking action.

I can also blame them for making shitty movies. And proposing thoroughly useless remakes.

In the name of the Blind Idiot God Azathoth and all his pipers this is a bad idea. Maybe the worst idea ever. In fact, I'm downright angry about it. Hasn't she fucked enough movies up already? Is nothing sacred?

Lovecraft, Age 9

Old, untitled books should not be casually opened, for you never know what horrors you will find inside. Especially if you're a parent stumbling upon your kids' writing journal.


Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl ch'ken fhtagn...

It's true. Why else would the Great Old One open a restaurant? I'd be pretty fekhin' hungry sleeping all those aeons.

Junior fancies himself a Lovecraft...