How can you resist the Unspeakable Vault (of Doom) eh?
The Count is, bar none, the coolest character on Sesame Street. Forget your Leftys, forget your Oscars, the Count, Count von Count, was the only one who would have sneaked into your bedroom in the middle of the night and turned you into a numerically-obssessed, undead creature of the shadows. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the bar for cool around the ol’ raincoaster blog, and that is the secret behind Keith Richards’ enduring popularity; the threat of supernatural eroticism.
Where’s your Big Bird now?
Sesame Street is, as we have noted time and time and time again around these parts (even without getting into Grover is Bitter, which we will some day we’re really stuck for a post) an endlessly fascinating topic and a true microcosm of the urban reality which surrounds us, pervading every aspect of our lives. Truly there is no contemporary city experience which cannot be examined through the lens of this iconic children’s program.
Jimmy Canuck is on to this; he’s currently enjoying a long run in WordPress’s Top Posts for his 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Sesame Street, and I am proud to report I did, in fact, know most of them, including Guy Smiley’s real name. I even know Grover’s! It’s an interesting post, for who among us can say they already knew Baby Bear was Jewish?
He doesn’t look it.
But deep in the comments section I found this little gem from cole. Read it and weep laughing.
I actually know the guy who did the orginal Count voice. He is in a fiddler band and one night while I was cocktail waitressing I asked him to do the voice and he said…
“Fuck off” and “No”
I said , please oh please, not detered…he said,
“I only work for money.”
I offered a dollar, he said “Fuck you, two.” I agreed and he said,
“I see von green eye, two green eye…ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! Now go and get me a fucking drink.”
I love Sesame Street.
As we’ve previously, and somewhat floridly, reported, a new island has surfaced in the South Pacific, between Tonga and Fiji at approximately the location given by esteemed American author Howard Phillips Lovecraft for his accursed cyclopean sunken city of R’lyeh.
The crew of the yacht Maiken were the first to discover a strange phenomenon; the surface of the sea was literally covered in a blanket of floating stone. Volcanic pumice is very light, and as you can see from the pictures here, has the appearance of a rocky desert when in fact it’s more like a deceptively solid-looking and treacherous foam.
August 12, 2006, first sighting of the Stone Sea
Bizarre, eh boys and girls? I’m wondering if CS Lewis ever saw something like this before writing the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. They’re not lilies, but it’s very reminiscent of the scenes at the end of the world, with slightly more ominious overtones.
The next day, as the Maiken pushed forward, clear of the strange illusory desert at last, they saw smoke on the horizon and, being inquisitive sorts to say the least, investigated.
Could it be?
A lava eruption from the new land.
Now THAT is eerie, ladies and gentlemen. That is eerie.
Imagine how many people, in all of history, recorded and unrecorded, have had the opportunity to watch the birth of a new land. I’m glad the crew of the Maiken had the courage and curiosity to move forward when so many would have turned back. The mysteries of the earth are profound and glorious, and “awe” is, after all, the root of the word awful. Those who would look upon such things are marked forever.
Maiken‘s photoblog, with much more, here.
There you have it, nothing less than solid proof that the Cthulhoids have arisen. Not only has R’lyeh broken the surface once more, freeing Cthulhu to stalk once more among men, slavering with bloodlust and howling with madness, but His legions on the ocean bottom have seized control of the distilleries the Scots, so foolish, so blind, located together on a remote island, hemmed in by fog and shunned by mainlanders; a strange, lonely, broken-down place, where the very air corrodes the greyed stone from which the town is hewn. The townsfolk, isolated and inbred as they are, provided little resistance, arming themselves only with bulky helmets and a peculiar, non-Euclidean weapon consisting of a bizarre and abhorrent arrangement of pipes and airsacs. Their precautions were as nothing against the powerful arms and ravenous beaks of the briny legions, although the invaders did have to stuff their earholes with kelp against the terrible assault of the sonic waves.
Make mine a double, but I think I’m sticking with something further inland: tequila. That’s made from cactus, right?
There hath he lain for ages and will lie,
Battening on huge seaworms in his sleep;
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
And here we at the ol’ raincoaster blog thought we were the only ones who were on this Cthulhu thing around WordPress. Live and learn, and point and gibber in helpless panic at the ultrasound from sobek’s Innocent Bystanders blog.
There are other signs.
This came via Fark, as we have always known news of the End Days would arrive. Pass the whiskey. I have no intention of dying sober.
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A new volcanic island has risen from the South Pacific near Tonga, according to reports from two vessels that passed the area.
The crew of the Maiken, a yacht that left the northern Tongan islands group of Vava’u in August, reported on their Web log on August 12 that they saw streaks of light, porous pumice stone floating in the water — then “sailed into a vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice.”
They posted photos of huge “pumice rafts” that they encountered after passing Tonga’s Late island while sailing toward Fiji.
“We were so fascinated and busy taking pictures that we plowed a couple of hundred meters into this surreal floating stone field before we realized that we had to turn back,” wrote a crewman identified only as Haken.
The next day they spotted an active volcanic island, Haken wrote.
He said they could see the volcanic island clearly. “One mile in diameter and with four peaks and a central crater smoking with steam and once in a while an outburst high in the sky with lava and ashes. I think we’re the first ones out here,” he reported.
Oh no, far from it. But Johansen can no longer speak; he no longer has that which could serve as a tongue, nor that which could string together thoughts enough to guide it. God has been merciful to Johansen; may he be so to us as well.
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
raincoaster 