On Wednesday, an international team of researchers unveiled the fossilized remains of an ancient relative of the sea cucumber. It had 45 tentacles and lurked at the bottom of the seas some 430 million years ago.
Cthulhu is a cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, this creature has since been featured in numerous popular culture references. Lovecraft depicts it as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists, in the shape of a green octopus, dragon, and a caricature of human form. The Lovecraft-insp In...
I’m impressed that Lovecraft has so influenced a bunch of British palaeontologists so much that they took the name for a new species from his most famous creation. But, really – only an inch across. No massive wings? no humanoid face? or blobby pot-bellied body? And I’ll bet not one of the scientists had eldritch dreams about sunken cities or non-Euclidean Cyclopean cities. Not much of a “Cthulhu”
Oh, yeah, they also either can’t properly pronounce the name*, or don’t want to saddle future invertebrate palaeontologists with a Lovecraftian mouthful:https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.2792
(b) New species
Sollasina cthulhu sp. nov. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: 4480289B-574C-4F7A-92F7-692DB3045B9E.
Named for the Cthulhu mythos of H. P. Lovecraft [27], a fictional universe populated with bizarre tentacled monsters. Pronunciation: kuh-THOO-loo.
According to Wikipedia:
Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo and said that “the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The u is about like that in full; and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, hence the h represents the guttural thickness.”[4] S. T. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave several differing pronunciations on different occasions.[5] According to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language.[6] Cthulhu has also been spelled in many other ways, including Tulu, Katulu and Kutulu.[7] The name is often preceded by the epithet Great, Dead, or Dread.
Long after Lovecraft’s death, the spelling pronunciation /kəˈθuːluː/[8] became common. Others use the pronunciation Katulu/Kutulu /kəˈtuːluː/.[9]
*although I agree that it tallies with the “long after Lovecraft’s death” pronunciation, it ain’t Lovecraft’s.
Feh. They found a living Purple People Eater at the bottom of the ocean. I started a thread about it, and it promptly sank into the same ocean without a trace.
This is a crock. Those are arms and tube feet, not tentacles.
Anyway, that thing looks more like an Azathoth than a Cthulhu.
MrDibble:
This is a crock. Those are arms and tube feet, not tentacles.
Anyway, that thing looks more like an Azathoth than a Cthulhu.
Azathoth:
The Dunwich Horror , but lacking the head.
To tell the truth, it’s more like an organic Omnidroid, with those armored tube-feet:
That’s not Cthulhu, it’s merely his, err, ‘Star-Spawn’…
I notice that they don’t show it eating any purple people, or giving evidence that it even wants to. Not much of a Purple People Eater.*
*In fact, there’s no evidence that the Purple People Eater was itself purple in color, which seems to be the only reason they’re calling this new critter a “Purple People Eater”.
"The Purple People Eater" is a novelty song written and performed by Sheb Wooley, which reached No. 1 in the Billboard pop charts in 1958 from June 9 to July 14, No. 1 in Canada, reached No. 12 overall in the UK Singles Chart, and topped the Australian chart.
"The Purple People Eater" tells how a strange creature (described as a "one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater") descends to Earth because it wants to be in a rock 'n' roll band. The premise of the song came from a joke told by t...
If anything, this is Cthulhu’s eldritch skin parasite. “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits itching.”
mbh
April 10, 2019, 2:42pm
9
It’s Cthulu sperm? Little eldritch abomination homunculi spawning across the universe? The spuz of a Great Old One discarded in our oceans? (Guess he didn’t have a hankie handy…)
Semi- hijack
Last week at the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market, I wore my cultist of Cthulhu ceremonial garb and handed out doom tracts. I got a 21.16666 out of a possible 30 in the costume contest.
Good to know that there are places that still account down to the closest 1/6 of a vote. MITSFS ought to be proud of them.
mbh
April 10, 2019, 8:28pm
13
Not quite Aphrodite rising from the sea, is it?
I’m a Cthulhu cult leader, too, but my duties are mainly ceremonial.
