If you’re a certain variety of geek, then cryptic polysyllables like Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath will have a significance for you outside of bringing to mind Native American-titled hamlets scattered throughout Southern New York or the sound of violent hay fever.

You’ll know them as key cognomens in the works of author H.P. Lovecraft, the celebrated fantasy writer who dreamed up not only a new form of horror, but a mind-bending cosmogony chronicling humankind’s infinitesimal place in the universe. I’ve long contended that if Creationism — which only raises more questions than it answers — is taught in schools, then Lovecraft’s collective Cthulhu Mythos should be part of the curriculum as well. In this cosmic horror, the earth began as but a petri dish for great, protoplasmic gods who fell from the stars, dwelt in imposing temples, engineered lesser forms of life (man decidedly not being born in their images), and ultimately abandoned it — or were banished from it — for far-flung gulfs in space.

I wonder if H.P. — who died unknown and flat-busted — could even begin to comprehend the loony array of public domain merchandise his life’s work has inspired; not only can you have titles like At The Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, and The Doom That Came To Sarnath populating your book and DVD shelves, but his stamp appears in comics, action figures, role-playing games, plush toys, water bottles, t-shirts, posters, bedroom slippers (!), and most recently…

…a 13” hand-crafted silicone dildo… (read the full article)

Words and sayings that are overused or subject to malapropism ultimately lose all real meaning.

Every chick and her auntie is a “diva,” even though the term can only really be applied to an accomplished opera singer, an awesome 1981 New Wave movie, and Annie Lennox’s first solo album. Any form of calamity, misfortune, catastrophe, or upheaval is a “tragedy.”

What preening narcissist doesn’t always trigger “drama!”? Osteoporotic Rachel Zoe has literally beaten “literally” into the ground, and look what the Dubya years spent on the Dark Side did to “patriot,” “terrorist,” “elitist,” “embolden,” “freedom,” “victory,” “stay the course,” “global war,” “weapons of mass destruction,” and “nookular.”

I fear now that “gay icon” may have officially jumped the shark. (read the full article)

Yes, Focus on The Family’s ostensible mission statement is the strident defense of every homespun convention that can be invoked under the name of Jesus, Santa Claus, or Uncle Sam, but we all know what the watchdog group’s true raison d’être is: condemning smut while teeth-gnashingly wallowing in it and convincing its members they’re above it all.

This vintage F.O.F. seminar on porn addiction is hysterical on multiple levels: the wonderfully trashy Ho Stroll opening montage, the assertion that the strategy behind our hugely successful War on Drugs should be applied to combating porno cartels, James Dobson’s hilarious “The fags and the dykes, and every kind of perversion!” rhetoric that sounds lifted right out of Myra Breckinridge, and best of all, the most over-the-top drink-the-Kool-Aid audience reactions ever.

I once went to a funeral for a family friend that almost immediately descended into an interminable hour-and-a-half-long Evangelical sermon on the dangers of pornography in which the deceased was barely even incidental. Watching this brought back the same avoid-the-groupthink phrase I kept repeating over and over in my head to keep me sane:

Not a looker among ‘em.

Hat tip to Found Footage Festival.

Slopes are slippery, and if the gays get married, we know that zoophiles and necrophiles will want to as well, and if they can get married, then the next logical step will be beautiful, nubile young women falling in love with monsters instead of football players and movie stars. Not the hot vampire kind of monster, either — misshapen, malformed creatures with tentacles, three eyes, and kindly hearts. It’s thoroughly aberrant, and since an attractive man can never love even a homely woman, it’s our daughters and their intact hymens that we have to watch with the utmost care. (read the full article)

What would Jesus do?

The question has, fittingly, become something of an inane T-shirt slogan along the lines of “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” or “No Fat Chicks.” If he was real — he still falls into the same category as Robin Hood or King Arthur for me — then why the hell would he want anything to do with the lovely cross section of humanity that’s turned him into a QVC tchotchke, much more sit by idly as his followers arrogantly put words in his mouth?

If you’re looking for the perfect embodiment of the dissonance between what a bearded, down-at-heel hippy and the star-spangled superpatriots among us would do, then thankfully there’s Tea Party Jesus, a site devoted to literally using Big J as the puppet through which the very worst Tea Bagger illogic is funneled to wince-inducing effect. Yes, somehow our savior was able to anticipate such events as financial reform, gays in the military, and the turbulent 1960s. Simply click on a captioned picture to reveal which God Wad said what jaw-droppingly heinous pontification about which apocalyptic social development/hated class of people. (read the full article)

You have only to regularly tune in for The Soup to be hip to the fact that The Secret Life of The American Teenager is easily the worst scripted drama on basic cable, and arguably, in the entire network landscape. Overwrought, plastic, insipid, and reactionary, the series clumsily cobbles together every paralyzing phobia about sex, and is apparently written by a group of middle-aged Evangelical virgins who still cry while masturbating in the dark.

You see, sex in this jejune little corner of suburban hell is not a natural act that carries with it certain practical ramifications requiring it to adapt to a modern world wherein humans don’t have to be in constant states of reproduction because they’re no longer subject to the whims of weather, plague, and predators. Rather it’s a form of spiritual trespass that incurs dire consequences through all manner of corporal castigation — just like The Entity, minus the invisible rape and blue lightning!

So, pregnancy is God’s way of punishing you for being a whore by shackling you with a precious bundle of joy, and should you avoid baby stigma through the use of contraception or sheer chance, you will also receive retribution in the form of a dead parent whose demise is apparently directly attributable to your climax.

And that makes you a murdering tramp whose guilt cannot be alleviated! Ever! (read the full article)

A horrible child learns about racism and bigotry toward perceived gender identity because of a traumatic home perm incident and an unfortunate wardrobe. Take that Glee with your overwrought “teachable moment”! This shit is real!