The Last Supper, Cthulhu style

We are Maundy Thursday and I thought I would sort of "commemorate" (as I'm a Godless heathen) on my blog with a bit of humorous sacrilege. I shared this picture on the blog last year in French. You can recognize the Last Supper, parodied with Cthulhu and other creatures from the Mythos. I guess you must read Lovecraft to truly appreciate, but it's hilarious.

La Dernière Cène, version cthulienne

"C'est fête aujourd'hui
Pour tous les amis
Qui ont répondu
À l'appel de Cthulhu"

Pour la mise en contexte des vers plus haut, veuillez lire ce billet. Sinon, l'illustration que vous voyez ici, je la tiens de mon frère Andrew. J'ai pensé souligner le Jeudi saint avec un peu d'humour blasphématoire et j'ai trouvé que ça faisait parfaitement l'affaire, parce que la Communion et tout ça.

Humour sacré

J'ai vu ce gag sur la page d'une amie facebook (la mère de mon filleul, pour ne pas la nommer. Je dois dire que c'est tordant. Mieux: c'est blasphématoire. J'ai un faible pour l'humour blasphématoire, parce que lorsqu'il est bien fait il déboulonne les lieux communs bondieusards. J'ai par conséquent décidé de le partager ici.

Writer's block?

I thought about putting some music, but I have done that very often these days and this is not a music blog, after all. And I did not want it to be an excuse to pass time when I am in the middle of a writer's block. It happens from time to time: when I was writing my thesis (solution: read a book, repeat if necessary), when I was that creative writing course ten years ago (already), and so on. That said, I usually had a deadline to overcome this (it is always the best repellent). That was the case when I was doing creative writing, and I ended up producing a pretty good short story, set in a fancy restaurant, which I blogged about before. I got to find it again, it is somewhere on a floppy disk and in writing. I got a high mark on it and used to come back to it from time to time. It wasn't easy to please academics, let alone impress them, but I managed to impress my professor, so I was really proud. I have to find it again, if only to remind me that even young and naïve, I had writing skills which I probably still have.

How did I get over writer's block then, apart from the fact that there was a deadline? I remember working on it until very late at night, even though there were classes tomorrow. I think part of the way I managed to go through it is that there was a story to be told. I had rewritten The Last Supper in a kitchen environment, with the head chef as a Christ-like figure and cocaine as the spiritual connection/ideal/thingie that was making him go on and ultimately suffer and die. My main character was a waiter who was an ambiguous Judas (as Judas should be). When I couldn't find the right words, I was just trying to get the story going, and then I could rewrite the boring passages and give the strenght they needed. Basically, I need to get some good stories to write here, and the rest will go from it.

Last Supper

We are watching Real Hell's Kitchen at the moment, a documentary about the stress that goes with the restaurant industry, sometimes leading to alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. I used to be a dishwasher in a fancy restaurant when I was a student, I remmeber how stressful it could be, especially since I was the lowest form of life in the kitchen (but the pressure on the others was tremendous too). It inspired me so much that I wrote a short story about it in a creative writing course during my undergraduate studies, rewriting the account of Last Supper through the lives of a kitchen staff, where the head chef/Christ was dying of a cocaine overdose. It was very appreciated. I might "publish" it here one day.