And just why does Cthulhu want you to stay in school? So you can read awesome books like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Promotional book video below (yes, books come with videos nowadays, I guess so they can still appeal to the illiterates out there who can’t watch tv without moving their lips):

To say I was skeptical of the merits of this tome would be to understate the case to a positively perjorrific extent, and when I picked it up at the bookstore what actually ended up selling it wasn’t the book; it wasn’t even the premise, although with me anything with tentacles is a pretty safe bet.

It was the po-faced study questions in the back. I wish I had it handy, so I could type out the best bits, but here’s my absolute favorite:

10. Is Monsieur Pierre a symbol for something? Name three other well-known works of Western literature that feature orangutan valets. Are those characters also slain by pirates?

I always HATE the part in the comedy of manners when the ourangutan valet is slain by pirates. I mean, you know it’s coming, right? But what can you do about it, right? Nothing; amirite?

He also wants you to stay in school so that once it’s finished (oh, doesn’t everyone have a book they’re working on, destined to be put aside and picked up as the eons pass and never, ever finished?) you can read His autobiography, as told to Neil Gaiman.

I never knew my parents.

My father was consumed by my mother as soon as he had fertilized her and she, in her turn, was eaten by myself at my birth. That is my first memory, as it happens. Squirming my way out of my mother, the gamy taste of her still in my tentacles.

Don’t look so shocked, Whateley. I find you humans just as revolting.

Which reminds me, did they remember to feed the shoggoth? I thought I heard it gibbering.