Cthulhu Party Convention Ends in Unspeakable Horror

Best of Circle Jerk at the Square Dance.
Originally published September 18, 2008


INNSMOUTH - The national convention for the Cthulhu Party devolved into a chaotic, malevolent orgy of macabre rituals, dreadful atrocities, and cosmic disaster that ultimately failed to produce a nominee for the president of the United States.

Inside the black, Cyclopean walls of the Miskatonic University/Bank of America Sports Arena, the convention began on a positive note. Scaled creatures from the depths of the ocean, bat-winged abominations from the frozen voids of space, sentient pools of protoplasm, and human worshipers driven mad by the knowledge of these beings all entered to a jaunty, non-chromatic tune played on a choir of demonic flutes.

However, all eyes and other sensory organs focused on the Elder Things and Deep Ones. During the highly contested primary campaign, the two groups clashed over the presidential nomination. The Deep Ones once again argued for Cthulhu as the president, as they had since before the concept of democracy had been conceived by the races of man.

Breaking with tradition, the Elder Things instead threw their support behind the mad god Nyarlathotep, uniting behind the slogan “Crawling Chaos you can believe in.”

Both groups attempted to sway the independent Mi-Go delegates to their side, with the Deep Ones offering human sacrifices to the winged, crustacean-like creatures. The Elder Things decried this as bribery and threatened to feed the Mi-Go to the bubbling, ravenous, eye-covered Shoggoths if they didn’t cooperate.

Speaking through a possessed human interpreter, the Mi-Go responded, “We did not fly all this way through the black abyss of space-time to be talked down to by a bunch of beings with cilia for brains. So fhtagn you, we’re for Cthulhu.”

Amid gutteral, alien shouts of “Yes we Cthulhu! Yes we Cthulhu! Yes we Cthulhu!”, the octopod-headed high priest of the Outer Gods appeared before the delegation to accept his nomination. “My friends,” Cthulhu began, “it is time for us to put our aeons-old differences aside and instead join together, so we may return this planet back to its primordial values.”

The Elder Things staged an immediate slither-out, but not before several of their Shoggoths smothered and absorbed the pro-Cthulhu Louisiana delegation. An epic battle broke out on the convention’s non-Euclidean floor, as psuedopods flew, wings flapped, and mouths gibbered in a horrific maelstrom of cacophonic rage that caused CNN’s political team to go insane and flee the convention. Journalist Anderson Cooper was later found in a Manhattan Starbucks, dazed, bloodied, and screaming for “a skim latte with extra AAAIIIEEE!!!”

As the conflict intensified at the convention, the Sports Arena shook on the precipitous cliff on which it had been constructed, eventually breaking off and plummeting into the black waters of the thrashing sea, before Cthulhu could be formally nominated. While there is no confirmation of its fate, local villagers say they expect the Sports Arena to rise again from the sea sometime before the Super Tuesday primaries in 2012.

The ending was not all bleak and horrific, however. Although his nomination remains in tatters and his followers are presumed scattered along the ocean floor, Nyarlathotep did accept an offer to join the John McCain campaign as a consultant.