IT'S 95 FUCKING DEGREES

Yes it's that time of year again. The time when I complain about the heat every waking moment of the day, all the while laying on my couch and refusing to turn ther air down out of sheer laziness.

It is also the time of the year when I get a lot more time on my hands, and thus decide to do something extremely time consuming (and usually stupid). So, for the remainder of the summer, I have decided that every other day I will post a different blog centering on something that interests me. Be it a book, a person, an art style, a movie, a fictional army colonel, a pair of socks, a bee, etc, etc, the theme possibilities are infinite.

Today begins the first of the posts, and the theme is Lovecraft, because I'm reading Lovecraft and because I feel like typing words about him.






Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of the early 20th century whose stories, "The Call of Cthulhu", "At The Mountains of Madness", "The Colour Out Of Space", etc, have held a massive cult following since the 1940's. Though generally thought of as a horror/science fiction writer, Lovecraft's gothic tales often feature a keen, psychological horror, rather than an intrepid, obvious threat. That being said, his themes often center around what may be instead of what is. There are also beasties. Wonderful, grotesque beasties such as Cthulhu, the Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep (probably misspelled that), freakish fish-people etc.


Needless to say, Lovecraft has a massive cult following (and probably an actual cult somewhere up in Rhode Island...) and there have been numerous adaptations of his works; movies, comics, socks, etc, not to mention works directly influenced by dear ol' Lovecrafty (including ELDRITCH!, the comic I was pimping out for nearly a month).

Did you know that Lovecraft was also a Scrabble master?

Though there have been criticisms of his work on all levels of the critic-sphere, I for one haven't found a single piece of literature by H.P. Lovecraft that I dislike. My own comic and writing style has been profoundly influenced by my personal favourites, namely "The Colour Out Of Space", "At The Mountains Of Madness". This is one of the reasons why, when I happened upon THIS I was absolutely thrilled. "Die Farbe" (German for "The Colour") is a 2010 film based on "The Colour Out Of Space", and though it is only one of many movie adaptations of Lovecraft's works, it is the newest adaptation that I have found, so it should be interesting to see what the World of 2010 does with it.

For those interested in the realms of H.P. Lovecraft, I suggest:

-ECTOPLASMOSIS! A site dedicated to strange ephemera, particularly that oftentimes related to Lovecraft or Lovecraftean art.

-The H.P. Lovecraft Archive Exactly what it sounds like. Site for everything Lovecraft; info, books, movies, etc, etc.

-Cthulhu Lives! Also known as the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Information, merchandise, etc. Buy me a sticker!

Post a comment if you want more links. I'm tired. I have to get up at 4am.

In other news, there's oil on our shores! Does this mean all the tourists will go home? Not that I go to the beaches anyways, but it would be nice to be able to drive through them again.

Stay tuned for more posts; I guarantee they will be better than this one. I just can't go that far into the Lovecraft-ness without writing a full-blown research/autobiographical paper, and seeing as I just finished doing five of those, I'm not exactly interested in doing so right now. Tomorrow's theme will be: MUSIC?