Indie Squid Kid

A salty salute!|Atlanta Aquarium cuttlefish|photo by Natalie Metzger

Last night I discovered that PZ Myers recently linked to last week’s Dr. Aquaman post, a simple act that sent a surge of traffic to this humble cephalo-blog. So, if you are one of the 3,000+ new visitors, I say WELCOME PHARYNGULITES! (Or is it Pharyngulists? Pharyngularians?) I salute you in the manner of our people, and I invite you take a look around the place. Here at Indie Squid Kid, it’s Friday Cephalopod every day! (Well, more or less. I haven’t been my typical prolific self lately, what with my busted thumb and all.)

Like it says up at the top of the page, I’m a collector of all things tentacled—squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, Cthulhu…I love them all! Within this blog you’ll find many examples from my own collection of ceph-stuff, as well as items trawled from the deep reaches of the Internet. Don’t know where to start? My Eight Awesome Octopuses article was pretty popular, and if you like that, why not take a swim with Ten Sensational Squids? Additionally, I’ve got a few (semi)regular features you might want to check out: T-shirt Tuesday, Wednesday Comics, and Flickr Friday. You may also be interested in some of my past theme weeks, such as: Art Week, Movie Week, Music Week, Action Figure Week, and Cthulhu Week. Sometimes, people even send me Sightings.

So, welcome again to any and all new readers. Feel free to leave some comments if you like, and, if you think you might want to stay while, please consider subscribing.

Thanks, and stay tuned for more tentacular content!

(via Cephalolove, via Pretend Parades)

I had surgery on my right thumb last week, and, since it’s my dominant hand, I’ve been unable to do much of anything but watch movies and take naps. It looks like I’ll be living life as a lefty for at least another week, so updates to this blog will probably be a little sporadic for a while.

In the mean time, if you are jonesing for a cephalopod fix, check out any of the fine Internet-based publications in the Ika Maki list, page right.

(”Ika Maki” is, by the way, Japanese for “squid roll.” As in sushi. Sooo…it’s like a blog roll, but for squid! Get it?! Um, yeah..anyway…talk to you soon. I hope!)

Sepiadarium austrinum

[Image originally published in Cephalopods: A World Guide by Mark Norman.]

PZ Myer’s Pharyngula is a blog about evolution, development, and a myriad other aspects of the biological sciences. Myer is a fellow cephalopod enthusiast, and every Friday he posts an image of a cephalopod (such as the one shown above, from today) as part of a feature called, oddly enough, Friday Cephalopod.

Pharyngula is a member of the ScienceBlogs family, the source of many of the subscriptions in my blog reader.

I was very sad to discover last night (as I was cleaning out the cobwebs around here) that Laughing Squid’s squid.us blog shut its doors for good in January. Squid.us reported on squid sightings from all across the Internet and was the inspiration for Indie Squid Kid. It will be sorely missed, and I guess I’ll just have to step up and try to fill the multi-tentacled void that has been left behind. Fortunately the archives are still available so this important historical record is preserved for future generations.

Giant Squid 1955, originally uploaded by Tom Simpson.

While this has nothing to do with cephalopods depicted in artwork, I thought I should mention that Darren Naish is doing his own theme week over at one of my favorite blogs, Tetrapod Zoology.

It is Sea Monster week at Tet Zoo, and each day Darren explores a lesser-known beastie from the annals of cryptozoology–using his razor-sharp scientific mind to critically analyze the evidence for each case (such as it is). Like the title of his blog suggests, Darren’s focus is on tetrapods (i.e. reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds), so don’t expect any Kraken or gigantic octopi. However, sea serpents, giant tadpoles, plesiosaurs and prehistoric whales are all fair game!

Since I have no idea when you are reading this (although I am very glad you are!), here are posts in question:

• The Hook Island sea monster
• The Moore’s Beach monster
• Professor Sharpe’s sea serpent
• Tecolutla monster