On this, the 120th birthday of H P Lovecraft, join me in pondering this mystery: How is it that Lovecraft, who claimed to suffer from a condition that made him lose consciousness in cold weather, was so inordinately fond of ice cream?

An enigma for the ages, to which I have no answer. Hey, wait, I have an idea! Let's ask S.T. Joshi! He knows everything! ;-)

I will add, to no particular purpose, that in this most miserably hot of Summers, the worst and most wretched I can ever recall in the Northeast, Lovecraft would have been in raptures, had he lived in our time.

Elementary: he was obviously trying to mithridatize himself...

Come now friends, Ice Cream neither increases nor decreases the temperature of the extremities - i have always been astounded that people who hate the weather where they are, don't just move - how often have those along the rivers of Iowa and Ohio been washed away? Yet there they stay - tsk tsk.

Perhaps Lovecraft was immune to brain-freeze?

or was perhaps already brain-frozen? and was not subject to thaw?

Perhaps "Cool Air" had autobiographical elements?

Now there's a unique marketing idea: Lovecraftian ice cream! All right, go ahead and laugh, but seriously, the man was mad for frozen custard and would probably consider it an honor to be associated with a quality product (especially if they provided him with a lifetime supply in exchange for the use of his likeness on the packaging).

Why the Waterman Company doesn't offer a special 'HPL' model fountain pen is beyond me.

Shoggoth Sherbet? R'lyeh Ripple? The possibilities are endless!

Ken K. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Now there's a unique marketing idea: Lovecraftian
> ice cream! All right, go ahead and laugh, but
> seriously, the man was mad for frozen custard and
> would probably consider it an honor to be
> associated with a quality product (especially if
> they provided him with a lifetime supply in
> exchange for the use of his likeness on the
> packaging).
>
> Why the Waterman Company doesn't offer a special
> 'HPL' model fountain pen is beyond me.
>
> Shoggoth Sherbet? R'lyeh Ripple? The
> possibilities are endless!


Superb idea - and they would necessarily be in colors like "ghastly", "ghoulish", "putrescent" etc.

I'll take a Cthulhu Cone with Shoggoth Sherbert please!

Lovecraftian ice cream: You don't eat it, it eats you!

I can picture it now--Shoggoth Sherbet would be a bilious green with black swirls, interspersed with eyeball-shaped-and-colored candy jawbreakers. Instead of a boring grid pattern, the cone would be imprinted with elder race hieroglyphs. Yum, yum!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 30 Aug 10 | 05:29PM by Ken K..

That hydrated methane ice that the energy companies are so interested in is actually a kind of sorbet manufactured by the
inhabitants of Y'ha n'thlei - it doesn't melt underwater and tastes
just like the primal ooze great-grandma P'thyathal'yi used to make.

What's really needed is a Lovecraftian version of Spellcheck. I've lost count of all the times I've had to stop typing, trot upstairs and search through my bookshelves for the relevant Arkham House tome to avoid a Mythos typo. Mistakes in grammer are one thing, but misspelling, say, 'Nyarlathotep'* in a post to this particular forum would be so mortifying I would probably never come back.

*Arggh! Had to run upstairs again!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 22 Sep 10 | 05:45PM by Ken K..

...'mistakes in grammer',eh?
Thank heavens you can splel...