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There’s a moderately interesting discussion about H.P. Lovecraft going on over at Metafilter, including mention of a unidentified underwater sound that researchers have nicknamed “Bloop” (listen here) and that some people joke could be Cthulhu. Looking for something to add to the discussion, I came across this interesting excerpt from a Salon interview with Stephen King:

Does your evocation of the Maine landscape owe anything to the fiction you read as a kid — H.P. Lovecraft in his books set in the woods of Massachusetts?

No, not really. I mean, it did at the time, when I was 13, 14, 15 — which I maintain is the perfect age to read Lovecraft. Lovecraft is the perfect fiction for people who are living in a state of sort of total sexual doubt, because the stories almost seem to me sort of Jungian in their imagery. They’re all about gigantic disembodied vaginas and things that have teeth. And that sense of the ancient New England landscape … very kindly, Lovecraft was a lot less interested in using the landscape as a place where reality was thin and sort of deserted in the New England community as he was in trying to express that kind of feeling of ancient life. So I had a tendency to copy that when I was a kid, and I think later on I just tried to go back and find a more realistic way to talk about the quality of that landscape. For instance, you know, when Lovecraft writes “The Dunwich Horror,” about Dunwich, Mass. I mean, in a way it’s a lot of idealized crap — he was a city boy. He didn’t live in the country. And what he knew about it he saw from the windows of buses going between Providence and New York City.

Well, apparently the Friday Five is back:

1. How often do you do laundry? When I start to run out of clean clothes. I sometimes think it would be simpler just to keep buying new socks.

2. What’s in a typical wash load? Typically, I mix clothes and detergent and water and let the machine take it from there. It’s more qualified than I am.

3. Front or top loader? Powder or liquid detergent? When will this inquisition end?! But seriously, top-loading washer because that’s what my apartment complex has. Liquid detergent because…um…well, just because.

4. Do you use fabric softener in the rinse cycle? That would require that I be in the laundry room when the rinse cycle starts, so no. I typically ignore my laundry until it’s done.

5. Dryer or clothesline? Dryer. Because I have no back yard and besides, what would you do if it rained?

I’m having a lot of fun being a part of 600 seconds thanks to my friend Sharon, who came up with the idea in the first place — or at least had the good sense to steal it from her friend Ben. It’s a collaborative weblog, ten minutes each weekday on a given topic, and so far I’m really pleased with the results and looking foward to seeing where this goes. Why not check it out and let us know what you think.

In his periodic e-mail newsletter, bad signal, Warren Ellis writes:

In the excellent book on 60’s/70’s Hollywood, EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS, a conversation with the EXORCIST director William Friedkin is reported, that took place immediately after he saw STAR WARS. Friedkin, who had just completed the difficult SORCERER, turned to Jeanne Moreau and said, “I dunno, sweet little robots and stuff, maybe we’re on the wrong horse.”

Elsewhere in the film world, I discover that apparently Morgan Freeman is at work on an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Rendezvous With Rama. David Fincher, who is slated to direct, describes it as “what it would be like if five satellite repairmen rather than scientists had first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.”

Now I guess I finally have to read it.