The Crushing Guilt of the Internet

This week I read The Elder God of the Internet by Janice Light, and let me just say right now that she can actually fucking write. That's like one for 25 by my count. How do I stumble upon such utter crap?

(Link)

Here's wot 'sall about:

"Tessa only joined the cultists to get away from her own crazy life, but they seem pretty serious about calling up Cthulhu from the depths of the Atlantic sea. Tessa's given up drinking, stuck with nothing to go back to and nothing to look forward to, so she doesn't much care if they really do manage to bring on the end of the world. But then Auntie Beatrice arrives to give poor Tessa a piece of her mind. This is a fun short story for those who don't take their Lovecraft too seriously."

I tried to look up more about her to see if she was really British. Sometimes she writes like it, sometimes not. She has no profile, so we'll never know, but she does have a story called Milk of Human Kindness, which I assume is a lactation fetish erotica (look it up, it's a HUGE category on Amazon).

Uh yeah, so I said she could write before but for what it is, this story is way too long. It has like five chapters, the last of which has no point at all, just more talking. It's like if Kafka wrote a story about going to the store to buy some milk. Really well written, really long, really pointless.

It's about an alcoholic girl (if I really wanted to drink while reading this is it because I'm an alcoholic or because I was bored?) who joins a cult of Cthulu in order to stop drinking and on the day they will raise the Old One from his slumber, her great aunt comes and embarrasses her.

Turns out though, while she is trying to get her to leave the great aunt reveals she's familiar with her Cthulu chants and wants to see these young new internet cultists fail. Horrible transition later and we're suddenly outside. This is the only part that was badly written because, for as loooong as the rest of the story is, I don't know if there's a single sentence to describe what is going on before Cthulu randomly pops out of the ocean. It's unfortunate, because this is literally the only important part of the story. It's like that Seinfeld. You know the one, yadda yadda-ing through sex. I was going to make a similar analogy until the 90's beat me to the punch.

Anyway, Cthulu shows his plan to wreck the world which is- *gasp* -already in progress. He shows the cult members a vision and the alcoholic girl's is posting comments on Facebook drunkenly. You heard me. Cthulu's plan is to end the world through Drunkbook. INTERNEEEEEEET! DAMN YOUUUUUUUUUUUUS!

Heh? That was anticlimactic. No, actually, that was more like reverse-climactic, negative-climactic, I have a huge climax vacuum in my pants (like space, not a special device that I'm running to the patent office to trademark RIGHT NOW).

I'm back. Anyway that's pretty much the story. I am tempted to say she saves it by having the cult leader quit his cult job in disgust at Cthulu's lameness, but that doesn't save me. I still had to read the damn thing!

Rathulings:

Ten Dollar Words: Millionaire out of 5. I'm going to admit, I didn't know what the hell ob·strep·er·ous  was until I looked it up just now, and why the hell can't you just say "noisy" or "annoying" (you're welcome)? And I used the internet to find that. You know, the thing this story says is evil?

And what the hell is "nutters," or a "lift," and how can you stand in a "flat"? Isn't it flat?

Lovecraft: Sleeping out of 5 (although she did warn us). I would say rolling in his grave but I don't think he really cares. He would probably laugh at the internet. It has nothing on the crazy shit he saw before brain drugs came along and numbed the scary out of us like the shit out of a fevered alcoholic on a bender involving heavy experimentation with laxatives. Have I already used that simile before? Anyway, just be careful with laxatives.

Cyber-Bullying: 5 out of 5. This girl's real problem isn't alcohol, it's fucking cyber-bullying. I really just brought it up to post this:

Love it. If some things I say seem similar to him, it's totally because he stole from me and not the other way around.

Overall: Umm... hmmm... whatever, 3 out of 5. Plotwise it was lacking, but like I said it was pretty good writing. I'm not going to be obstreperous about my criticism. Did I use that right? No?

If you want to read some totally obstreperous shit, like really, really obstreperous, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall