Cthulu + Cartman = BFF

So last week at the very end of South Park, BP unleashed Cthulu from the Gulf of Mexico. A nice little homage there. Tonight's episode was full-blown Lovecraft. Unfortunately, no video is available just yet. Cthulu is on a rampage, lots of South Park residents are in the cult of Cthulu, and Cartman is trying to endear himself to the Great Old One to help seek revenge on his friends, who kicked him out of their super hero club.

But it gets better than that - more characters than just Cthulu and his cultists made an appearance. There were very distinct Mi-Go floating around. None of everyone's favorite other-worldly socialists (the Yithians) as far as I could tell. It all went down in New Orleans, which is of course a well-known hot-bed of Cthulu cultism.

Most important of all, a long-running plot theme of South Park appears to be a fundamentally Lovecraftian device! Kenny, who is normally a forgettable side-character, takes center stage in this episode as he pieces together the mystery of his own apparent immortality after being regularly killed off. The chant of the cultists takes on an eerie significance for him:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die."

Is it just me or is there a critical mass of Lovecraft going on? I know devotion has ebbed and flowed, and I'm certainly a relative newcomer, but it seems to be all over the place. And once At The Mountains of Madness hits theaters there will be no turning back.

I really need to ride this wave and write something up on Lovecraft's economic thought... empirical tests of ABCT, gross job flows in the late nineteenth century, and job creation tax credits can all wait, right?

Oh ya... we're in a depression... I should probably look into those things a little too.