Happy Valentine's Day
Wednesday evening I stumbled across a thread where someone wanted the internet to write his homework. The subject? H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu. Supposedly he's taking a course called "Writing beyond Language: the Monstrous/Mystical/Surreal" which sounds awfully fishy but okay. I believe I wrote the lion's share of this person's homework and I sincerely hope they use it then fail.

Well you might want to cite S.T. Joshi because he's the preeminent Lovecraft scholar alive today¹. The Call of Cthulhu was written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1926² shortly after marrying his wife Sonia H. Greene. They had moved in with each other living in the Red Hook³ neighborhood of New York City.
When Lovecraft wasn't moping around the house nor out with his pals in the KLM club Lovecraft would be working on his story.

The tale begins with Inspector Legrasse⁴ out on Coney Island⁵ with his newlywed bride. They're having a grand old time, she's sketching things while he's posing for a novelty photo at a shoreside booth. When he receives the novelty photo, which makes the retiring LeGrasse appear to be a Russian strongman rather than a meek NYC detective he notes a smear in the sky as if something was falling to earth⁶.
Later that evening there's a tremendous ruckus. Legrasse awakens cursing the coloreds under his breath⁷ as he walks over to close the window only to be assaulted by the eldritch¹¹ foul smell of decaying fish. Mobs of people choke the streets running in terror from the oceanside.
Looming over the tenements and amusements is a gigantic demon with a cephalopod¹¹ head and vast wings. The name comes unbidden to his mouth, "Cthulhu".
He awakens his bride and they enjoin the great panic seeking shelter from Cthulhu's rampage. Their friends Henry Armitage⁸ and Wilbur Whateley⁹ catch up with them as they run into a legion of America's soldiers forming ranks as a perimeter.

Suddenly the ground erupts and smaller star-spawn of Cthulhu start attacking everyone. Unfortunately LeGrasse's nameless bride is badly cut and later dies of sudden violent blood loss¹⁰.
Everyone converges on Battery Park where America's warships, freshly returned from Europe, are massing to make a final stand against Cthulhu. Just as freedom appears to be within their reach a mighty tentacle slams down on their Model T sending it careening out of control into a telephone pole.
Dreadful Cthulhu's form now looms over them raising his noisome¹¹ and rugose¹¹ foot with the intent of extinguishing wholesome human life. The sky opens in a rain of fire as battleships rain fire and destruction from offshore.
A wireless transmission received in Chicago a few days after the attack declares that Cthulhu still lives and he is making his way westward¹².

Lovecraft is exploring themes of alienation. Most critics like L. Sprague deCamp¹³ have derided Lovecraft for this one-dimensional portrayal of the nascent Mrs. LeGrasse when according to Lovecraft's correspondence, most tellingly with R.H. Barlow¹⁴, that Mrs. LeGrasse's lack of identity and ignominious death meant to convey the tragedy for the Inspector. He always believed you did not truly get to know someone until you married them¹⁵.

The most striking aspect of The Call of Cthulhu in the late twenties is the unflinchingly bleak climax followed by the troubling denounment that underscored the futility of man trying to fight the universe, nature and other forces to which man is but chaff upon the wind¹⁶. The United States of America hero of The Great War now must face a far greater foe who will not accept surrender nor will there be any true defense. America lives but America is doomed.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a notorious perfectionist and went out of his way to make his manuscript unfilmable before "that hack D.W. Griffith fill'd it with bi-planes & cast Rudolf (sic) Valentino & Clara Bow in the main roles"¹⁷.

The Call of Cthulhu is well-known for its accessible portrayal of the cosmic and outsideness embodied by the titular horror. One of Lovecraft's largest sales to Weird Tales netted him a respectable sum of $315 dollars, minus his agent's 10%, from Farnsworth Wright¹⁸ who wrote after Lovecraft's death that he bought the story simply because it fit the remaining space of the August 1927¹⁹ issue and derided it of having any true literary merit.

Someone rubbed two brain cells together and figured out I was doing a Lovecraftian pastiche of the recent monster movie Cloverfield. Not wanting to be dismissed as a troll I needed to follow up and I do believe I did land on my feet and at the very least I scraped my knee.

Spluh, where do you think Abrams got the story idea²⁰? The back of a box of Cheerios²¹?

Whether you know it or not, nearly all of Lovecraft's stories have fallen into the public domain with the advent of 2008²². Right now Hollywood has assembled like ghouls around Mr. Lovecraft's grave hoping to snag a juicy morsel from his mouldering bones in the hopes of desperately generating some nine-figure revenue to feed their ravening, bloated industry before collapsing on itself.
In fact the date 1/18/08 was chosen precisely so the movie would premiere on the actual night of the passage of The Call of Cthulhu into public domain²³.

1. Sunand Tryambak Joshi is preeminent in the community of Lovecraft admirers and scholars. He has also written several other books about other weird authors such as Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany and M.R. James.
2. The Call of Cthulhu was indeed written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1926 two years after he married Sonia H. Greene and if I recall correctly I believe they were separated at this time with Sonia working in Cleveland wiring money to her husband.
3. Lovecraft did reside for a time in Red Hook which galvanized his racial hatred.
4. Inspector John Raymond LeGrasse is one of the main protagonists in Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu. Instead of being based out of New York City he hails from New Orleans, Louisiana in the original story.
5. Warriors... come out and plaa-aay...
6. This is reminiscent of the final scene in Cloverfield that supposedly takes place before the first scene in the movie and alleges to show the monster falling from space into the ocean.
7. H.P. Lovecraft was racist but so was everyone in the day.
8. Henry Armitage is the hero of The Dunwich Horror and a red herring character I plopped into Asbury Park by Night.
9. Wilbur Whateley is the main villain of The Dunwich Horror.
10.  
11. An assortment of stereotypical adjectives used by Lovecraft in his work.
12. An altered take on the final, garbled message at the end of Cloverfield.
13. L. Sprague deCamp is an asshole and in my opinion sought to marginalize and villainize H.P. Lovecraft for petty reasons couched within a façade of scholary thought.
14. Robert Hayward Barlow was one of Lovecraft's correspondents, largely forgotten due to the eminence of August Derleth, who was originally chosen by Grampa to be his literary executor not Augie. He wrote weird fiction, studied mesoamerican culture and committed suicide at an early age when it was discovered he was a homosexual.
15. I'm writing by the seat of my pants, folks. I don't think Grampa ever wrote any sentiment close to this.
16. Humans are insignificant. If the universe destroys Earth it is not out of malice but instead because the universe sneezed and Earth was in the way.
17. Trying to emulate Grampa's correspondence style and I did pretty well thankyouverymuch. I added the error on Mr. Valentino's first name to kindasorta make it seem authentic.
18. Farnsworth "Shake Rattle and Roll" Wright was the editor of Weird Tales. He had an astounding ability to reject the submissions of H.P. Lovecraft yet readily accepted ghostwritten revisions by H.P. Lovecraft. Most of Lovecraft's revision work would become 90% Lovecraft with just a mere shadow of the author's original intent.
19. The Call of Cthulhu was first published in February 1928. Again I was writing by the seat of my pants.
20. Abrams got the idea by trying to combine Godzilla with a Miracle Mile doomed love story hoping to create a franchise, try out that newfangled "viral marketing", sell toys and buy another ivory backscratcher.
21. Cheerios are delicious and you must eat them.
22. H.P. Lovecraft's corpus of work has passed into the public domain as of January 1^st, 2008 in the European Union. Lovecraft's oeuvre does not enter the public domain of the Republic of the United States of America until much further in the future.
23. I'm trying to be crafty here and show more layers than there really are to my ruse.

Before adding in all the anchor links in "footnote fetish" I realized it was nearly seven thirty p.m. on Wednesday, February the 13^th, 2008! What's so important? The lunar eclipse!

I empty my bladder, find my mp3 player, fetch my tiny maglite, wallet and ten bucks while pulling on my hoodie and avert an accident.

Before stepping out I made sure my housekeys are in my right hand, the familiar and comforting heft of my wallet in my left sweatpants pocket and a Katamari Damacy mp3 joyfully playing in my ears I stepped out into the night.

Already Orion was high in the south and I started looking to the southeast for the moon to no avail. Totality was not to begin until 8:30-ish p.m. Mountain Standard Time! I look to my left and find a crescent moon at its zenith and realize that the eclipse isn't until next Wednesday.

I meekly thumped back downstairs and resumed my perennial work which is heptapod.org.

I'm always paranoid about pulling on my hoodie backwards and smothering within the hood. It has yet to happen but the two times I've yanked the hood away from my face I was frought with terror. Wednesday evening before my ill-fated excusion I only got my hands into the sleeves before realizing my error.

Whew.

Whenever I leave the apartment I always make sure that the house keys are in my hand. I'm always paranoid about locking myself out of my apartment. The only other person who reliably has keys lives more than sixty miles away from me. Ever since the incidents with my bicycles I no longer have a hidey hole with a spare set for just in case.

Same goes for my car. Whenever I'm going to close the trunk of my car I always, always, always make sure that I have the car keys in my hand so I don't lock them in the trunk.

Thank you and good night.