I wrote an essay for Christmas last week. New Years, I am taking the week off. But you don’t have to miss an essay just because I’m being lazy.

Instead, I invite you to return to a previous piece. Any will do. But this time, let’s play the Lovecraft Adjective Game. As you read aloud, replace every adjective with “natural.” I just did this with one of my earlier essays, and I am laughing so hard I’ve fallen on the floor and I’m rolling around with the empty Champagne bottles. Or that might be the continued consumption of Champagne. Hey, it’s still the New Year.

This is, naturally, inspired by this brilliant piece from Better Myths.  Mr. H.P. Lovecraft loved him some adjectives, and I find it both wonderful and terrible that he and I share this foible. If you’re not into sorting through the whole (fantastic, do it) piece, here’s the relevant bit:

“…fun fact
HP Lovecraft is a HUGE FAN OF ADJECTIVES
the more syllables the better
sometimes it can make reading his writing very difficult
but luckily i discovered a trick
which is that you can replace almost every single one of his adjectives
with “spooky”
without any loss of meaning
let’s try it on one of the paragraphs from the sailor’s account!
AHEM:

“I suppose that only a single mountain-top, the spooky, spooky citadel whereon spooky Cthulu was buried, actually emerged from the waters… Johansen and his men were awed by the spooky majesty of this spooky Babylon of spooky demons, and must have guessed without guidance that it was nothing of this or any other sane planet. Awe at the spooky size of the spooky stone blocks, at the spooky height of the spooky, spooky monolith, and at the spooky identity of the spooky statues and bas-reliefs with the spooky image found in the shrine on the Alert, is spookily visible in every line of the mate’s spooky description.” “

Happy New Year, friends. Thanks for reading. Next week I will write you a real new thing.