Category: Esoteric Studies

Lovecraftian Deep Thoughts

Some selections from Lovecraftian Deep Thoughts and More Lovecraftian Deep Thoughts:

I always thought that after the Old Ones got the Earth cleared off, it will leave a lot more parking space for owners of big cars.

Whenever I read the word “eldritch” I get hungry because it reminds me of “sandwich.”

If Miskatonic Library had been guarded by cats, Wilbur Whateley might still be with us today.

I think the Deep Ones should change their name to the Deep Many, because, for heaven’s sake, there’s more than just one of them.

I think that Cthulhu can beat up Godzilla because Godzilla is a lizard and Cthulhu is an octidragopulp and a pursuing jelly.

I always thought that an angry mob of Vermont farmers should have attacked the winged crabs and sold their meat as seafood.

What’s so great about the Great Old Ones, anyway? They’re all locked away under the sea or in outer space or in other dimensions. Sometimes I want to stick my tongue out at them and yell, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, look at the high and mighty Great Old Ones.”

Although it is true that I just sent six bullets into the head of my best friend, I hope by this statement to show that I am not his murderer. No, just kidding.

Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers met H. P. Lovecraft in heaven, and quite frankly, he spooked them.

I always thought it must be very boring to be a Great Old One. I mean, Yog-Sothoth is conterminous with time and space, but what does he DO?

I once sent Azathoth an invitation to play chess. But then I remembered that he is the blind idiot god. So then I sent him a picture of himself upon which I drew a silly mustache and clown nose. But then I remembered again that he is the blind idiot god and wouldn’t “get” the joke. So then I bribed his amorphous flute players to play a month’s worth of Zamphir just to see what effect it would have. I haven’t noticed anything yet, have you?

This morning I was awoken by the thin, piping sound, “Tekelili! Tekelili!’ But I wasn’t scared because I knew it was just my nose whistling.

Wouldn’t it be awful if the Great Old Ones cleared off the Earth, and then decided that they had made a terrible mistake.

If you went into the Miskatonic Library, and stole the NECRONOMICON, and were later caught, would they fine you or would they just be happy the thing was gone and ignore the whole thing?

What were the Great Old Ones called when they were young anyway?

I think it would really nice to have an audio-book version of the NECRONOMICON on tape. But then, I suppose it would use up an awful lot of narrators just making it.

Do you think Nyarlathotep, he of a thousand forms, might actually be schizophrenic?

If Cthulhu calls, should we answer or should we just let the answering machine pick it up?

They say that Hastur is called “He Who Cannot Be Named,” but when I visited him last week he told me to just call him “Sam.”

If I could be a character in a Lovecraft story, I think I would want to be one of the monsters. Then I could really scare people at Halloween — plus, I wouldn’t get eaten.

Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler dies

The San Diego Union Tribune has the full obituary. No real reason here to blog it, except that Nicholas Corwin and I have traditionally noted the passing of each Watergate figure. I suppose it’s our generation’s version of the JFK assassination or something.

Fun trivia fact: In addition to being part of the infamous USC mafia, Ziegler was also a tour guide on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.

Cantonese idioms and expressions

A friend over at the UCI Library emails me with some great excerpts from a book of Chinese idioms:

UCI got another book about Chinese idioms today, and it’s a lot of fun. Since I already told you about “eating dates whole” and “one day of sun and ten days of rain”, I figured you might find some of these interesting/amusing, too. (I’m particularly fond of the first one, since it explains Hong Kong cinema and vice versa …)

— “to start a movie” —
(to cause a fight among rival gangs)
“Hey! Let’s go start a movie with the Tseng triad!”

— “to drop an orange then pick up a tangarine” —
(to recover some of your losses)
“After the stock market crashed, I lost a lot of oranges, but I found some tangerines, too”

— “to throw down the cooking pot” —
(to divorce)
“Things haven’t been the same since mom and dad threw down the cooking pot.”

— “the roof only leaks on a rainy night” —
(troubles have a way of compounding and overlapping)
“I should have known that this store would be closed when I am in desperate need of some asprin — after all, the roof only leaks on a rainy night”

— “to be slapped by a ghost” —
(when a person bluntly reveals the truth about a situation)
“He finally told me about the affair he’d been having. He must have been slapped by a ghost.”

— “big food” —
(to take more than your share of the entree, and less than your share of the rice that’s meant to accompany it — to be greedy)
“Watch out for him. He’s big food — he’ll take all your money and leave
you with none”

Compulsive squalor: animal “collectors”, trash houses, and clutterers

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has put together an amazing, comprehensive post about squalor and animal collecting: the so-called “cat ladies” and garbage people. The stories are incredible, the syndrome pervasive. People across the country accumulate hundreds of animals, or fill their bathtubs with feces, or stack newspapers to the ceiling in room after room until their homes are uninhabitable.

Careful with some of those links, the stories they lead to are not for the squeamish. This article from the Minneapolis City Pages is particularly amazing.

There’s no graffiti like Situationist revolutionary graffiti from May 1968

  • In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices.
  • Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
  • No replastering, the structure is rotten.
  • Reform my ass.
  • The revolution is incredible because it’s really happening.
  • Run, comrade, the old world is behind you!
  • When the National Assembly becomes a bourgeois theater, all the bourgeois theaters should be turned into national assemblies.
  • Warning: ambitious careerists may now be disguised as “progressives.”
  • Please leave the Communist Party as clean on leaving it as you would like to find it on entering.
  • Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat.
  • When the last sociologist has been hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat, will we still have “problems”?
  • Concrete breeds apathy.
  • Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.
  • Art is dead, Godard can’t change that.
  • A cop sleeps inside each one of us. We must kill him.

…as found at the Bureau Of Public Secrets.

Expo ’67 goes online

expo67sovietWhen I was two years old, my mom took me to Expo ’67 in Montreal. Of course I don’t remember a thing about it, but I like to think that the experience-via-osmosis somehow triggered off that certain section of developing grey matter that got me into the whole retro-future/techno-utopian subjects that my studies have orbited around.

The National Archives of Canada has put up a terrific on-line exhibition of Expo ’67. Even though it’s 1967 and the world is up past its elbows in conflict and cultural disassociation, Expo ’67 is refreshingly jet-age and perkily idealistic. I can just picture the moonbase.