Profound Nonsense

So, a while back, I was cruising around TV Tropes when I should have been working, looking at random stuff, when I came across a reference to something called "Marble Hornets." Curious, I clicked on the link and read the entry. And thus began my descent into the Slender Man mythos.

The TV Tropes page goes into detail, but basically, the Slender Man is a mysterious, supernatural, and undeniably creepy figure that was spawned on a Something Awful topic where people were photoshopping ghost images and other supernatural stuff. It's since then gone viral to the point that "Marble Hornets" was created, along with several other stories. This week, I went to the Marble Hornets Wiki and watched all of the video entries to date (the last one was 9/6/11, which means that they've been doing this for about two years; good lifespan for an Internet viral video project). I was thoroughly creeped out. I will watch more, just not alone at night.

A friend has recommended another of the stories focusing on the Slender Man, Everyman HYBRID. I will probably check this out, because the guys doing Marble Hornets are doing the kind of sanity-warping Lovecraftian horror that I like right, and I'd like to see more. Plus, the strange viral nature of the Slender Man mythos is just fascinating. I keep expecting someone to start featuring it on one of SyFy's supernatural "documentary" shows. (If they did it as an example of the spread of myths in the modern age, that'd be really interesting. If it crops up as a Ghost Hunters special and those goombahs are hunting the Slender Man, it'll just be comedy.)

Eb Bob sez, "Check it out." Enjoy. Don't let the Slender Man find you.

Letters of Note

This site provides scanned images and transcriptions of letters sent to or by famous people. They're not necessarily important letters, but they are interesting, from a historical point of view. The one that sent me to the site was one from David Bowie to his first American fan (or rather, the first American who sent him a fan letter). You can find it on the site, under the link "My name is David Jones."

Give it a look.

From athelind:

The building that was the inspiration for Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium, which in turn was inspiration for DC's Arkham Asylum, is NOW a set of apartments. Here is athelind's summary, with links to the actual details.

EDIT: It's "NOW a set of apartments," not "NOT a set of apartments."

KT Tunstall sings "Walk Like an Egyptian." I think I need to look this girl up.

The amusing thing about this is that I was directed to this link by the LJ for a completely fictional person. Funky pseudo-ARGs....

Many people know that I like Emma Bull's writing, and over the years I've also become a fan of Will Shetterly's (her husband). Mr. Shetterly can be found at willshetterly (duh) and has a blogspot site that features his alternate history comic, Captain Confederacy, from the mid-80s. Eb Bob says, "Check it out."

Captain Confederacy: the Man, the Myth, the Legend that Never Was