Zipperfish Embarks on Literary Career

I have the Hidden Reality as an audio book. I listened to it after I saw an episode of The Big bang Theory, where Sheldon was heckling him at a book signing/seminar. I've tried to watch a few programs on String Theory, but even the special ed version gave me cerebral brown outs. For I am but a simple caveman. Their ways frightened and confused me...it was like they were speaking in tongues.

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American philosopher and novelist of the mid-20th century, famous for her works The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). She founded the philosophy of Objectivism and is credited with giving rise to the political offshoot of that philosophy, libertarianism.

Love her or hate her—and there doesn't seem to be much middle ground—she was a ferocious intellect who developed a complete and integrated philosophy from basic principles. She was an uncompromising figure, given to a rather harsh derision of anyone who disagreed with her. Even libertariamism, a political movement she helped launch, she considered an unwanted bastard child of her philosophy. Her novels were a financial, if not critical, success. She became politically active in the 1940s, participating as a "friendly witness" in the infamous US House Un-American Activities Committee, which blacklisted many Hollywood figures including Charlie Chaplin, who left the US. She gathered around her a group of acolytes including future luminaries such Alan Greenspan (Chair of the Federal Reserve). Later in life she became with lung cancer, and signed up for government-assisted social security and Medicare (to the derision of many of her adversaries on the political left) and died in 1982.

...

How's the script for "Cthulhu Eats Kabul" coming along? :twisted:

Thanos Thanos:

How's the script for "Cthulhu Eats Kabul" coming along? :twisted:

In light of recent personal events, I've changed the treatment to "Cthulhu falls victim to economic downturn. Looks for work."

This one is going out to Shep...

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The Calling of Cthulhu

by Zipperfish

The agent, a young, fastidious man behind a polished maple desk, concentrated a little too earnestly on the résumé in front of him. He scrunched his face and made significant-sounding "hmmm" noises.

The job applicant sat knock-kneed and hunched, too big for the little chair in the office. The chair was uncomfortable, though the applicant didn't want to appear shifty. He sat still on one malevolent buttock until it screamed in pain, before shifting as nonchalantly as he could to the other, equally malevolent, buttock. As the casting agent switched pages on his résumé, the applicant worried that perhaps he should have used twelve-point font instead of ten.

"There's not a lot on here that really shows much experience, Mr. . . . ummm . . ." He paused and looked up expectantly, tweezed eyebrows politely raised.

"Cthulhu," said the hideous atrocity, shifting slightly in the chair.

"Kuh-thu-lu? . . . Is that right. Am I getting the right pronunciation?"

"Cthulhu."

"I see. Kuh-tu-lu. And really, sort of, spit on the t. Interesting. What kind of name is that, if you don't mind my asking?"

Cthulhu's mouth tentacles waved nervously. "It is an ancient name. It was old before the Great Pyramids, when man-apes scrabbled in the mud to eat insects."

The young agent with the impeccable suit looked back down at the résumé. "Yes, so you've said, so you've said," he mumbled. "You might want to consider changing it, you know. The name, I mean. You ever heard of Issur Danielovitch? No? That's Kirk Douglas's real name? Frances Grumm? Try Judy Garland. I shit you not, sir. I shit. You. Not." He smiled with preternaturally white teeth. In the ensuing silence, Cthulhu just stared at the animated agent with inhuman malice until one of the purulent ulcers on his skin made an impolite burbling noise. "Yes, well . . . just floating the idea," the agent said, glossing over the moment of social awkwardness as a man who has perfected the art of glossing over social awkwardness.

Cthulhu, not for the first time, wished he had some actual evil power instead of this rather pointless ability to instill nameless dread in people. He would settle for something like being able to flick this strutting peacock's eyeball out and then sucking out his brains through his gaping socket.

"Moving on then," said the casting agent in his squeaky voice, "A reference here--a Mr. Lovecraft--describes you as . . . let me see here . . . ah yes--as an 'indescribably evil god-like entity,' is that right?"

"Evil is a shallow aesthetic construct of puny humanity. I am beyond mere good and evil." Cthulhu felt good to have finally slipped in what, in his opinion, was a semi-intelligent comment.

"Shallow aesthetic construct . . . puny humanity . . . Got it!" said the man as he finished writing and looked up. "Very nice. Very Nietzschean of you. But, as a puny human myself," (he snickered here at his self-effacing humour), "I hope you don't mind if we just stick with the 'evil' then. I mean it's all well and good to be ineffable, but we don't want to spend all afternoon reeling off adjectives to try to encompass the totality of your being, right?"

Cthulhu gave a polite nod of his flayed and blighted visage to concede the point and went back to feeling like a dummy. He had been a master of the cosmos and here he was getting upstaged by this young whippersnapper with his immaculately sculpted, messy hair.

"And, well, I suppose I don't have to tell you that gaps on your résumé aren't always the greatest. In your case the gap is . . . what?" The young man's brow furrowed heroically as he did the math. "'Bout three and half million years, I guess."

"I laid in my house R'lyeh, dead but dreaming," Cthulhu intoned in a voice as ominous as a starless void.

"Well, sir, if may be perfectly blunt here: If you're trying to impress me, telling me that you were just lying about in bed for several million years isn't really the right way to go about it." There was more silence and glares of inhuman malevolence.

The agent cleared his throat. "But really, enough with the résumé? Who needs 'em, right? Why don't you just tell me, in your own words, how your experience will help me find you something in show business."

What could Cthulhu tell the man truthfully? He was like the laid-off CEO who suddenly finds he's not qualified to be assistant night manager at the 7/11. Evil wasn't cosmic anymore. It was brash, trite, a jester trotted out to amuse the commoners. Now Cthulhu, Satan and all the other Ultimate Evils stood backstage while fans lined up for painted psychos with wooden dialogue, zombies lurching about like angry drunks, and vapid teen vampires and their overwrought blood/sex metaphors. In short, times were tough, and here he was at the bottom of the ladder.

"Well," said Cthulhu, looking down and clacking his claws together, "I'm an indescribably evil god-like entity. Maybe a judge on a reality show?"

"I just don't think I can use an indescribably evil god-like entity right now," said the casting agent, using his thumbnail to unstick a stubborn piece of tape on his desk. "I mean we've already got Simon Cowell."

Again, Cthulhu had to concede the point with a weary touché gesture He wasn't feeling half as sinister as he was when he came in. At this point, he was ready to seriously consider picking up some work as a zombie extra. Maybe there was one where he wouldn't have to bleat "Brains" over and over again.

"You need to help me out, Mr. Cthulhu. Work with me here. Your specialty is creating this overwhelming aura of formless dread and impending doom . . . so . . ." The agent's hands slowly spun around each other. "So . . ."

The proverbial light bulb went on over both their heads at the same time, and they smiled.

"Cable news!"