It seems like people have been asking Cthulhu to run for President for about as long as I’ve been alive, or at least since my teens. I am curious about how many people have written Cthulhu in for every Presidential election. Clearly there is no reason for surprise that Cthulhu would eventually heed these calls and actually give it a serious run. This does not bother me at all. I even retweeted one missive from the campaign that included an adorable picture of Cthulhu perched upon the Whitehouse.
After that I began seeing more retweets from other Cnidarians, or at least from one other Cnidarian. That’s fine. Do I look like someone who wants to police tweets? I’ve never YET blocked or reported a single person on Twitter. I have been blocked... most recently (that I noticed) by William Gibson because I called him a dork. Which really kind of made me think he might be an even bigger dork than I am.
But I digress. Hopefully you can understand my consternation when I saw a Cnidarian STREET, of all people, retweeting a Cthulhu 2016 missive that included a meme conglomerating Sol Invictus with Cthulhu... more specifically, the Earth being charred and Cthulhu ruling over its scorched remains. The first thought in my head was Virgin Bride Ceremony. Can you blame me? Why would a Cnidarian Street want to scorch the Nature Preserve of the Jellyfish and hand it over to Cthulhu?
When I threatened the offending Street with a Virgin Bride Ceremony (I was feeling pretty emotionally raw about the whole thing) he CLAIMED it was because Cthulhu is hip and trendy right now and he therefore wants to infiltrate those masses so he can enlighten them to the Real Truth. Well, okay. Go ahead and enlighten Cthulhicans (or whatever they call themselves, I’ll admit I just made that word up), to the Truth of Cnidaria. Just please don’t scorch the Earth with them before you get around to explaining everything!
Let’s stick with healthy concepts, like flaying all human scum off the Earth.
I dunno. Some of the atmosphere surrounding Cthulhu seems kind of religious. And forming a religion around fiction books and short stories seems like it might be just a wee bit strange. Lovecraft’s writings aren’t officially considered sacred texts, like The Principia Discordia and 3-Fisted Tales of Bob are. They’re presented as fiction, plain and simple. If people keep forming religions based on such things, the next thing you know they’ll be putting stock in a disjointed anthology of short fiction like The Bible!
(Though I have heard that some people in Kansas already actually do this.)
I’m all for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, but sometimes I really just have to wonder a bit about people.
Operative J, The Blasted One