Funny dice

"And with strange aeons even death may die..."

On this day on 1890 one of the greatest horror fiction writers in the world was born: H.P. Lovecraft. A master of description and understatement, Lovecraft wrote from the fringes of human imagination and dread, describing a world we suspected but could not put into human language, something out of the corner of your eye and that woke you up at 4 in the morning filled with terror.

Lovecraft is a far, far better writer than most modern horror scribes, relying on dread and fear, on the psychological fear of the other rather than visceral dismemberment and damage. Having your body rent apart was the least of your worries in a Lovecraft book. It might even be the better of two alternatives. H.P. Lovecraft's books will scare the hell out of you with stuff you never even knew could exist, and hope deeply does not. His mythos held such a disturbing, awful plausibility that you'll find yourself looking twice at ordinary objects like how the joints of the room fit together in a whole new light.

And, just for fun, here's a song Call of Cthulhu players will know, sung to "Chattenooga Choo Choo:"

Pardon me boy,
Is this the Lair of Great Cthulhu?
In the city of slime,
Where it is night all the time.

Bob Hope never went
Along the road to Great Cthulhu,
And Triple-A has no maps,
And all the Tcho Tcho's lay traps.

You'll see an ancient sunken city
Where the angles are wrong.
You'll see the fourth demonsion
If you're there very long.
Come to the conventicle,
Bring along your pentacle,
Otherwise you'll be dragged off by a tentacle.

A mountain's in the middle,
With a house on the peak.
A gnashin' and a thrashin'
And a clackin' of a beak.
Your soul you will be a lackin'
When you see that mighty Kraken.
Ooo-ooo, Great Cthulhu's startin' to speak.

So come on aboard,
Along the Road to Great Cthulhu,
Wen-di-gos and Dholes
Will make Big Macs of our souls.

Under the sea,
Down in the ancient city of R'lyeh,
In the Lair of Great Cthulhu
They'll suck your soul away...
(Great Cthulhu, Great Cthulhu
--- Suck your soul ---
Great Cthulhu, Great Cthulhu)
...In the Lair of Great Cthulhu,
They'll suck your soul away!

Written by Joan Carruth, David Geller and Lawrence Press, one of the few Filk songs I can stomach.