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From: Kevin Blackburn 
Newsgroups: alt.sex.cthulhu
Subject: POD: A FAQ for alt.sex.cthulhu
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 20:13:44 +0000
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The stars are right, that or its the 20th of the month, for ...
A FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) On The alt.sex.cthulhu USENET Newsgroup
        revised 20/10/98

WHAT IS THIS GROUP FOR?
        The description of, and discussion about sex, love, and lust with 
        beings of the Cthulhu Mythos, and other dimensional over-achievers. The 
        Cthulhu Mythos was first described to the general human population of 
        Earth by H.P. Lovecraft, though many others have contributed to the 
        Mythos.

        Sex with an elder being is unlikely to leave participant's sanity 
        intact, and is carried out at considerable risk to life and limb, and 
        limb, and limb, and limb, and limb, and limb, and .... 
        You have been warned!

        See HISTORY section below for further reasons.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?
        What do you think?

HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE CTHULHU?
        1) However he(?) wants you to.
        2) Don't pronounce it at all, it only attracts their attention, unless 
           you want that attention...
        3) "...and heard the ominous syllables which can be rendered only as
           Cthulhu" - H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu.

SHOULD I PRACTISE SAFE SEX WITH EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL BEINGS?
        You should be so lucky as to last for the incubation period of any 
        earthly disease if you have sex with Cthulhu!

WHICH ELDER BEING MAKES THE BEST SEX PARTNER?
        There are many opinions, but shoggoths come well recommended for sheer 
        versatility. Thus:
        Found posted by: Nyar@blibble.demon.co.uk, November 1994
        Retyped in by: Kevin@fairbruk.demon.co.uk(so typos are all my fault)


        10 Reasons why a shoggoth is the perfect lover
        ----------------------------------------------
        1) It can form any pseudopod, and thus can form the perfect extrusion 
        or cavity to suit your needs.

        2) It will sleep on the wet patch, or on the floor, or even in the 
        garage.

        3) It can keep going as long as you want it to.

        4) Since it has a different biological basis, it cannot give you any 
        form of STD, and thus barrier methods are not required. Please remember
        to wash your shoggoth in an antiseptic if sharing between partners.

        5) It cannot get you pregnant

        6) It can give you a back massage, answer the phone, open a beer, have 
        sex with multiple people, change the CD _and_ take dictation all at the 
        same time. (They also make good secretaries.) They do have a slight 
        problem with Microsoft Word for Windows though, no-one is quite sure 
        why.

        7) It can hold the door shut so no-one can burst in on you.

        8) It never suffers from impotence or headaches.

        9) It will respect you in the morning and will not leave you for 
        someone else (unless they happen to know 'bind shoggoth' as well. At 
        this point your shoggoth will get very confused, split into two 
        shoggoths, and bits of both will keep commuting between the two masses. 
        Great for parties.)

        10) It won't insist on you meeting it's parents. (If you do meet its 
        parents, lose 1d6/0 SAN.)

        Nyar - now all I have to do is learn to summon one...
        --------------------------------------------

        Advanced readers might be able to find the post:
                "THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SHOGGOTH SEX" 
                        by kayven@aol.com
        for further enlightenment (poke around those web sites below).
        
DOES THIS NEWSGROUP HAVE ANY RULES OF GOOD TASTE?
        No. 
        Surprising as it may seem, with the title of alt.sex.cthulhu, many 
        parents probably would not want their children to read some of the 
        articles posted. Posters may warn of particularly gruesome or extreme 
        articles, but there is no newsgroup convention demanding this. You 
        read at your own peril. If eldritch pornography offends you, please
        flee to the peace and safety of a different newsgroup.

ARE ADVERTS WELCOME?
        Adverts for products or services exclusively concerned with the subject 
        of the newsgroup are welcome. This includes personnels from elder 
        beings or willing sacrifices, adverts for sources of mythos smut and
        cthuloid sex lines and sex toys for shoggoths.

        ALL OTHER ADVERTS, INCLUDING THOSE FOR OTHER SEX PRODUCTS 
        AND SERVICES, ARE OFF-TOPIC AND NOT TO BE POSTED IN THIS NEWSGROUP.

ARE THERE ANY CTHULHOID SEX LINES?
        Any elder being worth the summoning can travel along phone wires, so 
        the illusion of safety given by using the phone is false. Thus
        the demand for cthuloid sex Lines is limited.

ARE OFF-TOPIC POSTINGS CANCELLED?
        To reduce spam, this group requires that proper obeisance be made
        to the Old Ones. Thus alt.sex.cthulhu is now keyword retromoderated 
        by the Great Cthulhubot (called by unbelievers the ascbot) and if this
        obeisance is not performed properly, the malformed posts will be fed 
        to Shub-Internet!

        A proper obeisance may be made in either or both of two forms:

        1) One of the following *Names* may be invoked in the body of the
          message: Azathoth, Byakhee, Cthulhu, Hastur, Lovecraft, Nightgaunt,
          Nyarlathotep, R'lyeh, Shoggoth, Shub-Niggurath, or Yog-Sothoth;

        or, for a transitional period,

        2) the six character string " POD: " may be inserted in the
           Subject field of the post. The leading space is not necessary at
           the start of a subject line.
        
        The latter is also recommended irrespective of keywords; see FINDING
        THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK

        During the transitional period, these keywords may also be effective
        in certain other headers.  This behaviour of the Cthulhubot is not 
        guaranteed, so don't depend on it.

        Postings that do not make proper obeisance will be cancelled by the
        "ascbot", with the exception of properly formatted FAQs and
        administrative postings.

        These cancels follow the "

SOME HISTORY
        From: pali151@netcom.com (Vidushaka)

        Hi, it's me again, the guy who newgrouped this newsgroup.  I figured 
        it's about time to reveal the hidden agenda of a.s.c., as the recent 
        FAQ I saw posted kinda missed this point (Who? Me? Ed.).

        Two things became very apparent to me awhile back:

        First, that people who know what Cthulhu is are relatively intelligent.
        At least, intelligent enough to have actually read a few books!

        Second, that USENET was getting eaten alive by 1-900-JACK-OFF phone 
        numbers, and that system admins and the like weren't going to do a 
        damned thing about it - after all, they make money by letting this 
        activity go on, and why should they cut off their nose to spite their 
        face?

        So I newgrouped this not only to discuss the possibilities of screwing 
        around with hideous, evil creatures from beyond space and time, but 
        also to encourage back-spamming.  That is, the 1-900 and similar 
        articles are usually posted indiscriminately to all alt.sex.* hierarchy 
        newsgroups; thus, they'd often land *here* as well.  This, in turn, 
        would encourage the people on this newsgroup to reply in a way that 
        would make the original posts the subject of as much ridicule as 
        possible.  After all, anyone who's reading alt.sex.cthulhu has *got* to 
        have something of a sense of humor!  By making intelligent fun of the 
        spamming 1-900 fools, it might, in turn, discourage people from using 
        the phone services.  A downturn in results from such spams would 
        (theoretically) reduce their number.

        Has it worked?  Probably not in the way it was intended, and it 
        probably never will.  Still, it's a good way to pass a few idle minutes 
        in constructive thought (if not constructive action).

        In any case, I just thought that this point might be added to the 
        existent FAQ (your obedient servant, Ed.), since it's a big part of the 
        reason this newsgroup was created in the first place.  This is NOT 
        meant to discourage people from doing other things with it (such as the 
        general posts, the stories, etc., that have appeared here); it's merely 
        intended to encourage more people to ALSO use it to have a good laugh 
        while the alt.* hierarchy descends into smarmy oblivion.

        Thanks, and remember:

        CTHULHU LOATHES YOU!

ARE PICTURES (GIFS, ETC.) WELCOME?
        This is not a newsgroup in the alt.binaries hierarchy, and so, 
        strictly, no. However, readers of the newsgroup are happy to see a 
        small number of mythos-related pictures. An ideal is perhaps that no 
        more than an average of 1 GIF per day should be posted, from any 
        source. Furthermore, posting "Does any one wish to see GIFs of ..." 
        messages before actually submitting the pictures is to be encouraged.

        HOWEVER, some Internet providers are strongly against such postings 
        by their users. You may want to find an appropriate binaries group and 
        post a pointer in this news group.

ARE THERE ANY ARCHIVES?
        From: Justin Martin Campbell 
        Newsgroups: alt.sex.cthulhu
        Subject: POD: A.S.C Archive

        The alt.sex.cthulhu archive is now up. You can check it out at
        http://www.cthulhu.org/smut/.

        I've got a few more stories to add, but it has a number right now,
        as well as pictures, and articles. Enjoy, and if you've got 
        anything to submit please send it to: stories@cthulhu.org. Thanks,

        Justin Campbell

FINDING THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK
        With the quantity of spam in the newsgroup it can be hard(!) to find
        on-topic posts. Some posters has taken to prefixing their subject 
        lines with "POD:", from the Miskatonic U. slogan "Go, 'pods, go!".
        Given that this also is one of the proper obesiances to the Elder Ones
        the approach is doubly recommended. Furthermore, some readers of the
        newsgroup, your humble author included, killfile any message not
        so prefixed, unless it comes from particular sources.

WHAT RELATED NEWSGROUPS ARE THERE?
        Not that they would admit it, but:

        alt.horror.cthulhu: addresses the more literary aspects of the Cthulhu 
                Mythos. Not a good place to send tales of wild eldritch sex,
                just reminders of where to find it. Also quite a bit on the 
                Call of Cthulhu Role-playing game.

        alt.horror.shub-internet addresses those elder beings who dwell 
                within the Internet. Be kind to this group, Shub-Internet
                has so long gorged here that on topic posts are very rare.
                If someone doesn't feed Shub-Internet soon she may break 
                forth and roam wild and free - if you thought spam was bad,
                think rogue canceller on psychedelics. Various people are
                cross-posting all their alt.sex.cthulhu posts there for 
                others who are having newsfeed problems, or are choking on
                the spam in a.s.c. No objections by Shub-Internet have yet 
                been seen, but I'd keep looking.

        alt.necronomicon: I've never looked, I don't know, shame on me. 

        alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime (more populous) &
        alt.binaries.pictures.erotic.anime - erotic anime art, but some of
                the art is girls and monsters, so ...
                These are the obvious places to post japanese-sourced pictures 
                of Cthulhu porn, and then pointers in alt.sex.cthulhu.

        alt.sex.hello-kitty: Hello Kitty, and perhaps more importantly Evil
                Goodbye Kitty, sometimes manifest in forms very reminiscent 
                of our own eldritch fan-favourites. Sometimes they even stalk
                our own "happy" hunting grounds.

        alt.coven.cthulhu - Not a clue what this is for, but it generally
                preserves an eerie silence. Oh, and H. West, uber-troll.

WHAT RELATED WEB SITES ARE THERE?
        Other than http://www.cthulhu.org/smut/, mentioned above you 
        could try:
        (all checked 20/10/98)
                
        http://www.wildlife-fantasy.com/tentacle.html
                Web of Tentacles

        http://home.pacbell.net/rlacher/warning.html
        *OR* http://members.aol.com/Davidsic/cthulhuporn.html
                Shub-Internet's House of Writhing Tentacles

        http://www.clothing-optional.com/toxic/
                Sort of commercial, but in the right spirit

        http://www.io.com/~djuneau/Podophilia.html
                Don Juneau's pages(as if the URL doesn't show this)

        http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~bs904/
                Andrew Nellis's work

        http://www.toddalan.com/~berglund/
                The Official Cthulhu Mythos FAQ

        http://www.naughtytentacles.com
                The naughty tentacles (a pay site, but what a pay 
                site, or so it was claimed)

        http://www.fastwww.com/thewomaneater
                The Woman Eater(the guy who runs it is trying to do 
                a low budget movie of some loony in an old country
                house feeding his dates to his pet monster from 
                beyond, sounds very Lovecraftian)
        
        http://www.scifi-fantasy.com/darkfiction/
                And Darkfiction has some stuff worth looking at on 
                this theme;

        http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necshog.htm
                How to summon a shoggoth (clever, but not nice)

        http://www.slack.net/~frogboy
                Cthulhu Sex pages

        http://www.toddalan.com/~berglund/ns9fic1.htm 
        http://www.geocities.com/~devon7/horror/BrianN.html 
                Some fiction by Brian Nutter

HISTORY OF THE FAQ
        13/8/95 Updated to mention alt.binaries.pictures.erotic.anime

        30/11/95 Added HISTORY section as verbatim from a posting to a.s.c.
                added Pronunciation section.

        29/6/96 Added Shoggoth section

        23/1/97 Removed pictures alt.binaries.pictures.erotic.anime
                suggestion, added stories note.

        23/2/97 Changed Archive section, and added mention of POD.

        19/6/97 Added mentions of the ascbot, removed old comments on 
                cancelling.

        6/7/97  Various improvements, inspired by Asicboy@aol.com.

        13/8/97 Various reorderings and tinkering, again inspired by 
                Asicboy@aol.com. Noted "THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SHOGGOTH
                SEX".

        20/9/97 Mentioned two web sites.

        21/9/97 Mentioned mirror of one of those sites.

        19/10/97 Added Boring Bits. Updated related newsgroups list. 
                Added URL's.

        27/1/98 Added another URL

        22/2/98 More URL's

        20/5/98 Another URL.

        3/9/98  Minor tidying.

        20/10/98 Checked & tidied URLs.

****** Warning - Only Boring Bits follow *******
APPENDIX : REALLY BORING PIECE ON REASONS WHY YOU MIGHT CONSIDER 
RETROMODERATION BAD

This is just a rant by the FAQs primary author, ignore it...

Cancelling Usenet messages (used by retromoderation) is fundamentally a
bad mechanism:

   It's misusing a method intended for an entirely different purposes;

   It generates a message per message to be cancelled per canceller  
   (cancel messages are now starting to be a few percent of the total 
   USENET messages!);

   It has no authentication mechanism other than ad hoc ones. That is,
   any kook, vandal or fool can write cancels, and those cancels look
   as good as "proper" ones.

   Addressing these points is what NoCeM is all about, but fewer ISPs
   pay attention to NoCeM than cancels, so ...

The presence of retromoderation is not clear to a new poster:

   The newsgroup name doesn't end in ".moderated";

   The charter at creation never mentioned it;

   And those poor little lambs who want to come onto USENET and not read
   newsgroups before posting are going to be so hurt when some big bad
   netcop stomps all over their now lost-for-ever masterpiece ('cos 
   they'll never figure out how to repost it, dear little losers that
   they are). And all this without any sort of warning. Such as in that
   FAQ that it be surely death to read before posting, or that odd
   collection of letters all the on-topic posts have at the start for
   presumably no good reason. Err, sorry, I'm ranting, I think this 
   reason stinks, but never mind, I can sort of see the nanny mind that
   thinks it proper.

   The people who argue this way would say the proper thing to do, 
   regardless, is create a new group, properly tagged, and properly    
   chartered. There are a variety of reasons we don't choose to do this:

        It's defeatist;

        It would lose us people who only pop in "from time to time";

        The propagation through ISP's of a new alt.sex newsgroup is
        likely to be atrocious to non-existent.

        The mod. hierarchy, a plausible alternative, is not currently
        fully functional (or at least wasn't when the decision was made)
   
In general, retromoderation merely means that one or more people cancel
messages for some reason or other:

   The fear is that the reasons may be censorious, or petty hatreds;

   And the fear is that, no matter how honourable the initial intentions
   the cancellers might go bad (who, us, worshippers of all the evil you
   might need?);

   And the fear is that the canceller might not reflect the group's
   desires;

   And the fear is that any set of rules are open to interpretation of
   what is on-topic.

   On alt.sex.cthulhu we address these fears in these ways:

        We discussed the matter, and no regular poster or plausible
        lurker objected (Ia, Ia, Kramer, get thee far from my side)

        We publish the set of rules on which we cancel, and don't
        deviate from those rules;

        The rules are objective: if the post doesn't have POD in the
        subject line, or certain keywords in the body, it is cancelled.
        There's no sense of judgement there - it is black and white;

        The cancellation is carried out by a robot run by an impartial
        (if most praiseworthy) outsider, Dick Depew, just in case we
        were tempted to bend the rules.


LEGAL GUFF, AS IF CTHULHU WOULD PAY ANY ATTENTION
(C) 1995-98 K. Blackburn, Kevin@fairbruk.demon.co.uk, except for items 
specifically acknowledged. This material may be freely distributed and
excerpted from, as long as the source is acknowledged, this statement 
reiterated, and no charge is made for distribution beyond reasonable costs.

-- 
Kevin Blackburn                         Kevin@fairbruk.demon.co.uk