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!

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.
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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 ...
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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.

IN HIS HOUSE IN RUSSIA, DEAD CTHULHU WAITS ...

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. As everyone knows. And in dark and dreadful places on this earth his followers gather to hail His Dreadfulness. And await their horrible destiny.

But what happens to those places when their destiny (*munch, munch ... burp*) is fulfilled?

They remain. Abandoned. Awaiting discovery.

And now one has been discovered -- deep in the wilderness that is rural Russia. See more pictures of it -- if you dare venture into the realms of insanity from which no man returns untouched.
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THE SILVER KEY - THE MOVIE

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Silver Key". Directed and produce by Conor Timmis og Gary Fierro. Timmis as Randolph Carter.

Thanks to Libraryman, the worlds coolest librarian. Please stop saying "oook".
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"YULE HORROR", BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings un-hallowed and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sin's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

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LOVECRAFTIAN JOKES

All this talk of Lovecraft and fungi, drove me to dig out some favourite lovecraftian jokes from my archives:


“You Goth?”

“No, I’m just a Fun Guy”


So Nyarlahotep pops across to the library where Cthulhu’s actually a bit more rugose and squamous then usual. And he says, what’s up?

And Cthulhu says “Rl’yeh fthagn, ahem! Blimey! Sorry, phlegm. Bit ill, actually.”

So Nyarlahotep rubs three of his pseudopods together and says, “I have just the thing!”

And he leads the mighty Elder One across the non-Euclidean town sqaure, down a dodgy back alley, where an eldritch couple of debt collectors are lurking.

And Nyarlahotep says:

“Here’s that sick squid I owe you.


“Waiter! Waiter! There’s a dead squid in my soup!”

“It’s not dead, Sir. It’s just dreaming.”


HP Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.

As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.

They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching – the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.

A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.

Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past – the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.

Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…

“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”


Necrotelecomnicon: the book of dead phone numbers.
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"THE COURTYARD", BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

It was the city I had known before;
The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngs
Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs
In crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.
The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at me
From where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,
As edging through the filth I passed the gate
To the black courtyard where the man would be.

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed
That ever I had come to such a den,
When suddenly a score of windows burst
Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:
Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead -
And not a corpse had either hands or head!

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"The Courtyard" is poem no. IX from the cycle Fungi from Yuggoth.
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SUPPORT THE GREATEST SWIM TEAM!

As a man of class and style, The Dodologist obviously prefers cardigans, tweeds and bow ties. But sometimes, just once in a rare while, he puts on a t-shirt. And as he enjoys supporting great athletics, there was no way around ordering this one:


There simply wasn't.

Click pic for a chance to support some really great athletics. Like running for your life ...
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