Dreams of R'lyeh

My wife sometimes talks in her sleep. Usually just a few mumbled words, but sometimes long strings of words that don't go together in any coherent fashion. The only time these statements are ever actual sentences, they're almost always some variation on "you need to wake up", even though she's the one whose asleep.  If she seems distressed I will indeed wake her up, and she always says she was having a weird dream, sometimes a nightmare. After a moment we go back to sleep and often have a good laugh about it in the morning. It's been going on for years and it's no big deal.

Last night, she says something or other that wakes me up. I'm not sure what the first statement was, as I was asleep for half of it, and what little I heard sounded like just random words in no particular order. I look over and see she's asleep, with a really serene and peaceful look on her face. I decide I'll just let it go, since she clearly wasn't having a nightmare. About thirty seconds later, still asleep, she speaks a full (but short) sentence. As she intones these words, she continues to look as though the dream that inspired her speech was relaxing and pleasant:

"I am Cthulhu."

I kid you not, that's what she said, with a big sleepy smile on her pale unconscious face. While we did indeed have a good laugh about it this morning, I find that I cannot shake the fear that either she or I might actually be a Lovecraftian protagonist who refuses to draw the obvious but mind-shattering conclusion until it is too late. To nip that fear in the bud, I assure you I'll be checking her very thoroughly for gills, tentacles and mysterious yellow glyphs as soon as she gets home from work.

So if you never hear from me again, assume I've been devoured by my wife.

If you never hear from her again, assume the whole point of us moving to Seattle a few years ago was so that she'd be closer to the Stygian depths of the sea whose sepulchral siren song nightly serenades the secret squamous stirrings of her sinister soul, and that she has gone thither to join the batrachian voices of the mirky deep once her inhuman and indescribable transformation was complete.

The Adventures of Lil Cthulhu

That's my kind of children's story.

Makes me want to eat some cultists. Yummy.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and Lovecraft

It just crossed my mind how much the Gospel writers have in common with HP Lovecraft...

Howard Phillips Lovecraft		Gospelists
Borrowed heavily from Poe, Machen, Dunsany, Chambers, etc, but cast their work in a different context. Introduced unpronouncible alien Gods that couldn't care less about you, but will still probably devour you one day.		Borrowed heavily from the Old Testament, but cast it in a different context. Introduced a less-hellfire-y "love your neighbors" version of YHWH.
Encouraged other writers to borrow his characters, props, and themes for their own work. Would have been a big fan of the modern concept of "Open Source".		Don't seem to give a damn who uses their characters, or what words they put in his mouth.
Featured main characters typically doomed to go insane, sacrifice themselves, be reanimated, and/or disappear into the Dreamlands.		Featured a main character who sacrificed himself, rose from the dead, and then ascended to a higher plane.
Wrote bleak tales in which mankind was doomed to be destroyed once "The Stars Are Right".		Wrote Revelations.
Preoccupied with genealogy, tracing nearly all his main characters back to Obed Marsh of Innsmouth, and the inbred Whatley clan.		Preoccupied with genealogy, tracing Christ's lineage back to King David through two contradictory paths.
August Derleth took over after Lovecraft's death. Controlling what got published, and adding Elemental trappings to the Mythos that weren't in the original tales, and insisting his interpretation is the correct one. Many fans, however, consider his additions rubbish.		Take your pick: The apostle Paul. The Pope. The First Nicean Council. The King James Version.
Despite the original author's laxness regarding copyright, there's still been some conflict over it amongst later generations. My favorite example involves the first edition of Deities & Demigods, an old D&D Book, which included the Cthulhu Mythos. TSR was sued and asked to remove it by a rival gaming company who claimed to have the exclusive license to Lovecraft's work.		Despite the message of love and acceptance, we still got Witch-burnings, Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, etc.
Name dropped the Necronomicon, a fictional tome, into nearly every story for verisimilitude across his entire body of work. Later, he was surprised to receive letters from slightly unhinged people who thought it was real, not just some wicked shit he'd dreamed up to make his intertwined stories extra creepy.		??? I'm biting my tongue.

Not Quite Country

Hell is going to have all of the really cool motherfuckers in it.

Death & Taxes:NSFW

This has turned into a pretty serious fucking day.

Did taxes. With my wife as a full time student leaving me as the primary wage earner who doesn't make much, the damage didn't hurt as bad as it had in the past. No matter. Taxes suck. Take it from those who've got it. If people had voted for me and my voluntary tax plan...

Went through a stack of paper work that resulted from our company getting purchased last year. New insurance, new investments. I started to fill out my life insurance beneficiary form and had to stop. Primary beneficiary: spouse. No worries there. What about secondary? Say the two of us die when we fall onto the railroad tracks while stumbling home from the pub some evening. Who gets the insurance money and gets stuck making the (cheap) funeral arrangements? I will almost certainly out live my parents and most likely my sister as well. No kids to take care of it. No nieces or nephews either. Shit. Maybe one of my friends' kids? I set it aside to ponder later. I had never thought about it before and hadn't planned on thinking about it today.

But the big serious fuck all event of the day came with the mail. A Valentine's Day present for Jake and Krys from her aunt. Just looking at the package I knew there was some serious fucking shit inside. Ripping it open with my pocket knife the horrible nightmare scenario manifested. 23 Minutes in Hell along with a card wishing us a happy Valentine's Day and urging us to consider our immortal souls.

God Fucking Damn It! I grew up with a Christian mom who dragged me to church at least twice a week. My grandfather spent several years of his retirement as church janitor where I would spend every fucking day of my early childhood not spent in school at the church while my parents went to work. I used to fucking read the Bible during breaks in elementary school. I've spent way too much time around Christians and spending eternity with them sounds like the number one reason to sell my soul to Satan. Bargain basement pricing! Very motivated seller.

I live a pretty decent life. I don't deliberately fuck people over. I don't pick fights. Never stabbed anyone. Never shot anyone. Never slept with anyone's spouse without permission. I smile a lot, try to treat people in a friendly way a good percentage of the time. I say I hate kids and then let them play with my toy tractors (kept in a crate with a bunch of knives and a stack of Playboys) when they come over. All in all people consider me a decent guy. Either that or everyone refuses to say otherwise out of fear. I just don't know.

So if my wife's aunt's god desires to see me tormented for all eternity for not accepting his bastard* easy riding** son of a whore*** half breed as my LORD**** and savior while a lying, cheating, stealing, warmongering, hateful piece of shit like George W. Bush receives forgiveness as a Christian, then I will take the lash to the back and the branding iron up the ass for all eternity just to not have to hang around some smug jack ass of a mafia don deity who pretends to 'Love Everyone'.

For you Christians who have a more enlightened view and think that I will get into heaven, I'd say 'over my dead body' but...

So instead I say, pass.

*Born and raised in the absence of his father. Bastard.
**Easy rider refers to the boyfriend of a whore. Not her pimp, just the guy who gets the easy ride.
***His mom wasn't technically a whore but under the laws of that time she would have been classified as such.
****The LORD bullshit really gets to me. Hierarchy. Slavery. I kneel before no man or god. The good ones will get a hearty hand shake or a big hug. I have no need for a master. YesSir. NoSir. CanIHaveAnotherSir? If Jesus sucks my cock like a pro I might yell out, "OH LORD!" or "OH GOD!" Everybody sing along! ComeInMyEye My Lord, ComeInMyEye. Oh Lord, ComeInMyEye.

The Superpowers of Pregnancy

Because I seldom pass up an opportunity to engage in some baby bashing...

Heather Havrilesky on the superpowers of pregnancy

...while Obama may have selected an experienced and savvy collection of specialists to lead this nation out of its hard times, no one on Earth has the ability to tackle big, unwieldy problems quite like a woman in the home stretch of pregnancy. In addition to manufacturing a brand-new human being, a feat of nearly supernatural proportions in and of itself, pregnant women also have an uncanny knack for grabbing the most daunting task by the throat, wrestling it to the floor and smashing its face into the carpet until it yells 'Mother!'

Absolute bullshit!

The miracle of child birth is not some nearly supernatural feat but, as Bill Hicks so eloquently put it, it is, "no more a miracle than eating food and a turd coming out of your ass." Pregnant women aren't manufacturing a brand-new human being. They contributed half the genetic material necessary to form an abdominal parasite that after leaching off the host for 18 fucking years it will most likely become just another hunk of flesh oblivious to the world surrounding it and doing little more than contributing to the problems it encounters. You think you're raising the next Martin Luther King Jr. but in fact you've got Marty from Accounts Receivable.

As for pregnant women tackling problems and wrestling them to the ground, from what I have seen this super human skill involves the invocation of Cthulhu to compel the man in their life to do exactly as she commands while she eats bonbons and barbecue potato chips while she lies on the couch watching L Word episodes back to back. The strongest examples of pregnant women I have personally witnessed involved them barely managing medium duty tasks at work up to two weeks before they were due but only if they had a sit down every few minutes. That impressed me. Not bad for someone choosing to live with a ten pound parasite.

Maybe I'm just a bit full of myself. I have, after all, helped to usher more life into this world than all of my women friends combined. I've taken a 100 pound newborn in my arms and hauled it out of a mud pit in a torrential downpour. And can you really speak at all about the miracles of birth until you have been shoulder deep in pussy just to get the damn thing turned around so it might live?

Seriously. Sperm goes in, baby pops out. Praise Jebus!

The Conjurer

My good friend Knight of Pan has posted a kick ass music video featuring a track by his band, The Unholy. As someone who has dabbled in the 'black arts', I loved it. Here is The Conjurer.



As a side note, at school today I realized a common machining practice would also make a great metal band. Power Tap!

Completely Tasteless

Well, at least in one sense of the word. In the other sense, it tastes like Grape. Or so I'm told.

Tentacle Grape: Condoms and soda inspired by Hentai. How fucked up is that? It's wrong on so many levels.

When I'm pouring back a bottle of icy refreshment, I certainly don't want to picture it as some cold inhuman tentacle probing my orifices. I'm afraid to open the fridge now.

Weekend at Bernies (of Innsmouth)

Damn am I ever glad to be home.

Do yourself a favor and stay away from Long Beach, Washington. The only difference between the small towns on the Long Beach Peninsula (especially Ocean Park) and those invented by Lovecraft is that Innsmouth didn't have a tilt-a-whirl.

Being a vegetarian in a small town is a harrowing challenge, so we prepared by googling restaurants in advance of our arrival, and coming armed with a GPS so we could find the culinary safe harbors.

For the life of me, I can't now find the webpage that had falsely indicated the quality of their fare, but I can only assume we got the names of restaurants crossed. I took a second sip of the murky stratified gelatin they called iced tea at "Bernie's Place", just to confirm for myself that it really was as bad as I'd just tasted. I've had insect repellent that more palatable. My regimen of injected antibiotics begins tomorrow. Here's my woefully inadequate attempt at describing the food: it looked like tater-tots, but when you broke it open, melted wax slowly oozed out.

I'm sure the same thing would have happened had the waitress's ancient head been similarly cracked open during our meal. No doubt the alligator man on display down the road at Marsh's Museum was a close blood relative of hers. I tried and failed this morning to make a Mii of our waitress - I could get the square jaw, the horribly deep wrinkles, the sickly yellowed complexion and the bulging froglike eyes set out at the distant perimeters of her noseless face, but I just couldn't find a way using the Wiis limited options to give her the bandages, vericose veins, gill slits and webbed fingers that her real-life counterpart had.

Fearful of the genetic damage done by two sips of sludge and a quarter of a plate of tater wax, we left in a hurry (tipping the endangered species in spite of our better judgment) and rushed south down the peninsula looking for beverages bottled far from the local water supply.

Given that Cthuluoid context, it's not the least bit surprising (though still every bit as sorrowful) that one of my dear friends went certifiably insane while we were there, and now clearly needs significant psychiatric counseling.