three phobias

[sergebroom]

"Lovecraft says there are three phobias we're born with: coldness, darkness, wetness. No accident that his stories frequently begin at night in winter by the seaside."

Marvin Kaye in the Fall 2006 issue of H.P.Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror.

What if Lovecraft were alive today?

...He suddenly awakened and realized that it was midnight. The feeling of dread became unbearable as he opened the fridge to get a water bottle next to the gibbering bowl of potato salad...

Comments

[tania-c.livejournal.com]

I tried to find you a link to the image of the Far Side cartoon When Ketchup Goes Bad, and instead found this page:

The Cthulhu Mythos on the Internet, with a story listed at the end - When Potato Salad Goes Bad.

If Lovecraft were alive today...well, I'll avoid the obvious comment on kicking and screaming "get me out of here!!", and say that I'm not sure how things would be different. Cold, dark and wet can be creepy, and don't need a lot of accoutrements from a modern age to cause of frisson of "ick" to run down your spine.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I don't know what Lovecraft would be like today, but one might get an idea from his own spiritual heirs. Take a look at the movie HellBoy, for example, although I doubt he'd have his hero be a demon who loves kittens and who uses a revolver that fires holy bullets. Then again, what do I know? (To quote Sgt Schultz, "I know nothing, nothing!")

As for the Far Side cartoon you were looking for... His original version of the when-ketchup-goes-bad cartoon actually was when-potato-salad-goes-bad. I can't remember why he changed it because I think the potato-salad version makes more sense. And that is what I had in mind when I cooked up this post.

[tania-c.livejournal.com]

I couldn't/can't remember which had gone bad, the ketchup or the potato salad. I can picture one holding a gun, and the other with hands in the air.

I tried both versions when image searching, with no luck.

Over on Neil Gaiman's blog Maddy Gaiman has been sharing her adventures on the set of Hellboy 2. If you are interested.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I looked thru my copy of The Best of the Far Side twice last night and couldn't find the cartoon's potato-salad version, or the ketchup one. Maybe it was in another Far Side book, or my memory played tricks on me and made me merge different memories together. (On the bright side, unlike my wife, I remember the date of our wedding.)

As for the Gaiman family... Have you got the link to Maddy's involvement with HellBoy 2? That is one movie I'm looking forward to. I think it was originally going to be a direct-to-video movie, then del Toro's Labyrinth made it to the Oscars and suddenly HB2 became a big-screen release. Woohoo!!!