Mythos Monday - At the Wuthering Heights of Madness

Great, I'm in for it now...because of H.P. Lovecraft, I have to read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. How in the name of Yog Sothoth did this happen?

I vaguely remember the circumstances. It was yesterday, but it seems like a strange aeon ago. We were driving back from Fall River to Boston after visiting my ailing grandfather, and NPR's story on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came on. I think I snarkily remarked about that being the only way pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights could possibly be made interesting to me, because it's just a bunch of ye olde British people saying (insert blustering, throaty British sounds here).

My better half was quick to defend both books, stating I would probably like them, and mentioning that we have a copy of Wuthering Heights at home that I should read. I snickered, and tried to make like I was only joking, but I had already mentioned that I hadn't been reading enough fiction lately, so I was running out of escape routes.

"I'll tell you what," she says as I claw for a way out of this. Shit. I'm cornered now. She's gonna' challenge my manhood or something, "if you read Wuthering Heights, I'll read Lovecraft."

I smiled, because I'd been trying to get her to read Lovecraft, and also because I knew I was locked in, "Just tell me what I should read." I couldn't resist. It's a deal.

So I decided she'll read the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. Much, much much easier said than done. There's about 4,000,000,000,000 different ideas of what stories and what authors make it up, so I had to narrow it. I decided to make her reading syllabus approximately as many pages as the Penguin Classics' version of Wuthering Heights (story text only), about 330 pages give or take. I would also limit her reading to stories written by Lovecraft.

Here is what she is reading:

At the Mountains of Madness
The Call of Cthulhu
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dunwich Horror
The Colour Out of Space
Dagon
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Shadow Out of Time
The Whisperer in the Darkness
The Unnamable

Not completely complete...there are quite a few more, depending on how you slice it. I could have added The Nameless City simply to show where ideas for later stories like At the Mountains of Madness came from and it is, I believe, the first of his stories to mention Abdul Alhazred and the "That is not dead which can eternal lie..." line, but it shows up elsewhere. I could have easily added The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and/or The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath but it would have been almost another 200 pages, and would have necessarily meant cutting out many of the stories listed above. So the best I can hope for is that she reads the above and gets more interested. Not likely, but you never know. She resisted Patrick O'Brian for more than a year, and then got hooked. I know, I know, different genres, but one can hope.

When we got back I made one last attempt to find an easy way out of my part of the deal. They did it for Austen, maybe someone did it for Brontë. Could there be an At the Wuthering Heights of Madness? Maybe The Call of Catherine? Wuthering Heights and Fungi from Yuggoth?

No luck. Oh well, I guess I'd better grin and bear it. Stiff upper lip, you know. Wot-wot?!?!

Mythos Monday - Better Late Than Never

I meant to have everything put together long before now, but with a damned busy job, four young children, and a myriad of other things going on in my life, I usually can't sit down to start doing anything until around 10pm...but nonetheless, there is plenty to stick up here from the world of politics, entertainment, pop culture, and even academia...so here goes:

Paul of Cthulhu, creator of Yog-Sothoth.com points out The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's Dark Adventure Radio Theatre (DART). Radio re-creations of four outstanding Lovecraft stories: At The Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Out of Time, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. You can listen to (or download) the trailers for free, but the programs themselves cost. I normally wouldn't point someone towards something you need to pay for, so I'll say that I'm not affiliated with HPLHS in any way, I can't vouch for what you're going to get and I don't get paid to do any advertising for them. The trailers are cool, and they were all I needed to hear.

Also in entertainment, looks like we may see Lovecraft's work on TV soon. Fangoria reported recently that Herbert West - Reanimator: The Series is currently in development.

What BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was for Gothic storytelling, HERBERT WEST: RE-ANIMATOR will be for sci-fi and horror.

Little secret: I liked Buffy - the movie and the series. If you look at the pictures, however, it looks more like 90210 or The O.C. meets Lovecraft. I'll probably end up watching it anyway. And when I realize that it's too adapted to the youth of today, I'll probably still watch it, using my need to heap unimaginable amounts of scorn upon it as the rationalization...

Earlier this month the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka KS protested at the University of Chicago over some bullshit or other, dragging along their usual gang of fucktards. It turns out the Phelpsian douchebags were met with a ferocious counter-protest from all walks of student and staff life, including this young lady:


Immediate popularity among people who've actually heard the name Cthulhu on various social networks like twitter, flickr, etc. Hmmmmm...you know, I got to give the gal "snaps" for poking fun at Freddie and his gang of hatemongers, but I find the sign sort of lame...Maybe I'm just being a party pooper.

Since I just talked about goings on at a university, the final few links are going to be more "academic" in nature.

Jason Colavito is an anthropologist and journalist who enjoys debunking fringe science and "Ancient Astronaut" theories. On his website he takes some time looking at H.P. Lovecraft as a jumping off point for the whackos who actually believe in this stuff...

Dr. Justin Woodman is another anthropologist who studies the occult extensively and is also a Lovecraft fanatic. Look at his profile on his blog and you'll see what I mean. He apparently did a series of four lectures in 2007 concerning Lovecraft and his influence on the occult; I bookmarked the page on Yog-Sothoth.com some time ago, but have yet to get around to listening. You know...all that spare time I have.

Mythos Monday - Cthulhu is Boring!

Shortly after starting this blog I initiated a failed attempt to do a weekly link-dump for Cthulhu and things Lovecraftian. It only lasted a few weeks because...well...the shit can be really...BORING. And nothing is more boring than geeky boring. Like someone tweeting "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn!" Gee, I've NEVER heard that before...how clever.

I guess what I'm saying is, impress me, make me laugh, show me something I never seen before. I love geeky, but it needs to not suck...or at least be original. So that's what I'm going to try to do here, every Monday. Take what I've seen over the past week that I like and just dump it here with some commentary. As much to catalog it for myself as for anyone else.

I can't remember who to hat tip for this one, and I'm not sure of the veracity of all the claims, but I am 100% sure that the claim as to Cthulhu's abilities are false.

Neo-con blogger Robert Stacy McCain invoked the Great One's name used some Cthulhu imagery as a harbinger of doom for "Mad Money" Jim Cramer.

I'm not a writer. But I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express about 4 years ago when I moved my family from Washington to Rhode Island. Which is why the concept of The Innsmouth Free Press seems like a lot of fun. A fictional Loevcraftian publication that is actually generated by its readers. Assuming they take any of my drivel. @innsmouthpress. And in one of their latest tweets they point out this funny (and 3-year old) take on a popular late-70s' / early-80's maritime show...

And I'm saving the best for last. The Obscure Hollow posted some pictures and clips from a trio of Lovecraftian creations. The first was the 2005 movie "The Call of Cthulhu" available from the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. I did not know this existed. But I do now, and as soon as I take a minute from this silly self-aggrandizing masturbatory publishing lark I intend to order the DVD. The second is a pair of Lovecraft video shorts just put up today. One is a silent film adaptation (from the 1930's) of The Other Gods that is pretty cool. My favorite there is the "A Lovecraft Dream" animated piece that brilliantly...well, just watch it - you won't be disappointed!

That's it for this first Mythos Monday. No, Cthulhu really isn't boring, if you know what you're looking for. Everyone has fun with the mythos in his own way...

If you see anything you think I'd like, get hold of me at:

cthulhusfamilyrestaurant@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/Chef_Cthulhu

Reality Imitates the Mythos...Again...

There's got to be a reason that this story from the core of the mythos is so appealing on so many levels...


This could be one of them.

Geologists say that mountain ranges such as the Alps or the Himalayas form in collisions between continents. The last time Antarctica was exposed to such forces was 500 million years ago.

"The mystery here is that the Alps are only 50 to 60 million years old, while here we have a mountain range that may perhaps be as old as 500 million years," Ferraccioli said.

Hmmm...think they'll find any triangular slates with striated markings when the ice sheet melts?

It seems that he had pondered a great deal, and with alarmingly radical daring, over that triangular striated marking in the slate; reading into it certain contradictions in nature and geological period which whetted his curiosity to the utmost, and made him avid to sink more borings and blastings in the west-stretching formation to which the exhumed fragments evidently belonged. He was strangely convinced that the marking was the print of some bulky, unknown, and radically unclassifiable organism of considerably advanced evolution, notwithstanding that the rock which bore it was of so vastly ancient a date - Cambrian if not actually pre-Cambrian - as to preclude the probable existence not only of all highly evolved life, but of any life at all above the unicellular or at most the trilobite stage. These fragments, with their odd marking, must have been five hundred million to a thousand million years old.

I can't be sure. I wonder if we're going to see any aeons-old protoplasmic things or cylindrical, winged space beings. We just can't be sure. But he knows....

He knows...

Now this is religion in schools that I could be a fan of...

If You're Going to Attend Miskatonic U, Expect to See Some Elder-Signs

...like this one...


...or this one...


...or, if you can get one of those sweet little eldrich coeds from the "Sisters of Azathoth" pledge class back to your room, you just may be lucky enough to see THIS ONE!


Now THAT's a portal in which I am sure no evil lurks...

Apparently, some students and staff at a local Catholic University don't feel that way. Now I've made it clear that my religious views are somewhere in the void between agnosticism, atheism and just plain not giving a shit (it's a little place I like to call "Beer") but this seems a bit ridiculous.

“There is no choice if you don’t think it’s appropriate. You can’t turn it around,” said biology professor Dan Kirschner, faculty adviser for BC’s chapter of Hillel, a Jewish student group. “I think it is being insensitive to the people of other faith traditions here.”

Ummm, lessee...private university...openly declares itself Catholic...wants to have a crucifix in every room...hey, you know, they can do what they want. It seems appropriate to me. And to me, insensitive (downright discriminatory in fact) would be not allowing a Hillel chapter. If the school goes Unitarian, feel free to bitch.

Amir Hoveyda, head of BC’s chemistry department, blasted the school in an e-mail to the Herald for “not being interested in an exchange with its faculty members.”

In an interview with the college newspaper, The Observer, which broke the story, Hoveyda described the crucifixes as “offensive” and the university’s actions as “anti-intellectual.”

Professor Hoveyda, I'm sure they are interested in an exchange with you - say, on, oh...I don't know...issues affecting the Chemistry department? Why did you agree to be a head of department for a Catholic university you find the Catholic "mythos" and its symbols offensive? And as for "anti-intellectual" you lose me there. For Yog Sothoth's sake, they put a fucking crucifix in a class! It's not like they invited Ben Stein and his gang of yahoos to teach creationism as a valid scientific theory to your classes under the guise of "academic freedom". As long as they haven't started telling you how to teach chemistry or to make sure everyone believes that supersaturated solutions can only come from God through the grace of Tiny Little 8-Pound, Six Ounce Baby Jesus, and that the tongues of flame on the bunsen burners are really the Holy Spirit, I'm pretty sure you can stave off the anti-intellectual brain rays emanating from a crucifix. There are plenty of examples of the anti-intellectual aspects of ultra-conservative, ultra-Christian institutions and movements. This isn't one of them.

Hey, per-fess'r...maybe you could go teach at a muslim college. I understand the sorority pledges are all Halal:


Ya' just can't tell 'em you'd like to PORK 'em!

Great Cthulhu's strap-on! Now THAT'S INSENSITIVE, if not downright sexist.

Cthulhu's Tentactles - Serious and Silly Lovecraft

A day late, but never short. I can't take credit for finding these, as all these links and many more were found PMOGing my way through some of the excellent Cthulhu and Lovecraft missions there.

1. The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, mentioned in my last post. It's kept fairly up to date, and a good broad resource on Lovecraft, his life, his place in pop culture, etc. It brings the serious and some of the silly sides together well.

2. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS) Cell phone ring tones, prop downloads (Insanity Certificates, Lovecraft Stamps), Sanity Tests, and "live radio" adaptations of Lovecraft's stories. Cool, pop-culture.

3. Arkham House Publishing founded by August Derleth and another of Lovecraft's freinds after his death. Intended to keep Lovecraft's legacy alive, it has ended up being as much or more Derleth's.

4. The Misadventures of Hello Cthulhu is an attempted merger of "Hello Kitty" and the Cthulhu Mythos. It's decidedly silly, but not good parody, in my opinion.

5. H. P. Lovecraft on Scriptorium. A fairly lengthy study of Lovecraft by his "Leading biographer and critic". This guy shows me just how silly I was trying to do my humanities "Sufficiency Project" on Lovecraft at WPI. I was too busy thinking about monsters.

Shoggoths Don't Surf!

Or maybe they do. It seems that most bands that try to work Cthulhu and the "mythos" into their music also use "D-e" words. There are, of course, exceptions. Which is good because death metal sucks.

The H.P. Lovecraft Archive describes The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets as:

A Vancouver “punky surf” band whose lyrics don’t just make passing mention to Lovecraft—their entire existence seems to revolve around him. Their name is taken from a sentence near the beginning of Lovecraft’s “The Tomb”: “I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets...”

I describe this song, "Yig Snake Daddy", as rockin!

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets – Yig Snake Daddy

Am I mistaken, or does this almost have a little bit of a Dread Zeppelin feel to it?

Another song for the little flip-style jukebox in your booth...