THE DODOLOGIST'S GEEK FOLK FESTIVAL, THE KICK OFF: TOM SMITH PERFORMS "I HAD A SHOGGOTH"

From the stages of American SF/fantasy/horror-cons, straight to extinction - The Dodologist has the pleasure to kick off The Dodolgist's Geek Folk Festival.

And the obvious man to kick it off is Tom Smith - if for no other reason, then to spread out his contributinons.

I Had A Shoggoth is one of those songs that covers a lot of ground - monsterwise. The real star of the video, though, is the woman (ostensibly?) doing a interpretation for the hard of hearing.

Enjoy!

SCOTT WALKER: COPENHAGEN

Because it's a great song by a great man. No other reason needed.

LOVECRAFT AND THE HORROR OF THE CITY

Among H.P. Lovecraft's stories, few are as infamous as The Horror at Red Hook, his nightmarish description - written in August 1925 - of a hideous cult of devil worshipers in New York’s poorest districts. It's not hard to see why. Lovecraft wasn't an epigone of toleration at his best of days. And Red Hooks wasn't written on one of those. The story reflects his hatred of urban life in general and of New York especially, a city he moved to after his marriage to Sonia Greene in 1924.

But even if it's racism is vile and the story in itself is rather badly structured (Lovecraft didn't like it much, but then again he was hard on himself in general), it is deeply fascinating. Not the least for it's attempt to portray the city itself as some kind of a monster. It is a thing of decadence and horror, an atavistic return to a pre-civilized condition.

The best description of this condition, though, isn't to be found in Red Hook. It is instead the opening of another story he wrote the same month: He. He is, as stories go, a true failure, but it's first half (it is short), with it's description of the old New York hidden in the new, is still Lovecraft at his best: A writer of architecture - houses and streets and the moods they convey. The opening pages are urbanity-as-horror at its most fascinating:

My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyse, and annihilate me.

The disillusion had been gradual. Coming for the first time upon the town, I had seen it in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flower-like and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming golden clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies, and itself become a starry firmament of dream, redolent of faery music, and one with the marvels of Carcassonne and Samarcand and El Dorado and all glorious and half-fabulous cities. Shortly afterward I was taken through those antique ways so dear to my fancy—narrow, curving alleys and passages where rows of red Georgian brick blinked with small-paned dormers above pillared doorways that had looked on gilded sedans and panelled coaches—and in the first flush of realisation of these long-wished things I thought I had indeed achieved such treasures as would make me in time a poet.

But success and happiness were not to be. Garish daylight shewed only squalor and alienage and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone where the moon had hinted of loveliness and elder magic; and the throngs of people that seethed through the flume-like streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes, shrewd strangers without dreams and without kinship to the scenes about them, who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk, with the love of fair green lanes and white New England village steeples in his heart.

So instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blankness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before—the unwhisperable secret of secrets—the fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life.

Read the entire story here. It ends like this: "I have gone home to the pure New England lanes up which fragrant sea-winds sweep at evening." As was, of course, H.P. himself to do not that much later.

DAMN, H.P., I ALMOST FORGOT : HAPPY 120!

Sorry, I really did. Thank the tentacled one that he himself called to remind me.

His tentacle came through eons of mindless insanity to slap me on the shoulder. And sort of remind me that there are fates worse than trawling the World Weird Web to search for a fitting cake for one like you. Though it really should be ice cream of course ...

Anyway: Happy 120, H.P. Try not to go to nefariously insane out of sheer joy. Cthulhu promised to bring my present, as I sadly can't join the party on Leng tonight.
_____

EXPOSING THAT WHICH SHOULD REMAIN HIDDEN

As the subject of men exposing themselves was touched upon a few posts ago, the time had come to reveal what really should have remained hidden ...
_____

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIFTY MOONS TIME?

I knew life in those days was hard, but not that hard ...

HORRIBLE, BLASPHEMOUS AND UNSPEAKABLE! AND SHORT

It's like ... horrible and ... blasphemous and ... unspeakable and ... stuff. But it is at least short:



Yep, horrible, blasphemous and unspeakable. And short.

Horrified and unspeakable thanks to The Worlds Cooles Librarian who showed me the way into this particular spot of The Dark Side.

SAD SONGS, WEIRD VIDEOS, GREAT LYRICS

Some things ... Some things are just plain weird. Like the lyrics of Glenn Tilbrook's song The Genitalia of a Fool. Or like somebody creating a YouTube video to the song, only using footage of Johnny Depp - which, as far as I can gather from the World Weird Web, likes the music of Tilbrook and Squeeze.

Anyway, try not to watch the video, while you listen to this great example of Very Sad Country Music. You may keep your eyes on the lyrics instead. They are below.





The Genitalia of a Fool

Everybody's got a hobby
Everybody's got a schtick
Please consider me eccentric
Don't think of me as sick

Didn't mean to spoil your party
I didn't mean to be uncool
But I'm standing here holding
The genitalia of a fool

'Cause I thought if I exposed myself
You'd fall in love with me
But when I burst in
To my chagrin
You had company

I'm afraid I've shown your family
the wrong kind of family jewels
'Cause I'm standing here holding
the genitalia of a fool

Well I guess the show is over
so I'll just go on home
I'll pack my prize possession
it's the nicest thing I own

Didn't mean to scare the children
or make your grandma drool
but I'm standing here holding
the genitalia of a fool

And I pray that you'll forgive me
and try to understand
But I'm afraid you'll always picture me
with my whole world in my hands

And I'll go through life just wondering
how fate could be so cruel
Left me standing here holding
the genitalia of a fool

Now I wish that you were holding,
the genitalia of this fool