Indie Squid Kid

Lovecraftian, originally uploaded by jawboneradio.

Monster by Mail is the brain child of podcaster and cartoonist Len Peralta. The concept is simple–you give him money, and he sends you an original piece of art. Give him a little bit more, and you get a YouTube video of him creating your monster. At the time of this writing, the rates are $25/$35…a pretty good deal for original art.

When Len first launched the site, the rules were you had to give him an adjective, any adjective, and he would make a monster for you based on that word. Mine was “Lovecraftian.” Here’s the video.

Through the early iterations of MbM there were various other themes: cryptozoology, zombies, Halloween, etc. However, all you have to do now is give your monster a name and click the PayPal link you Len will make it for you!

Here is one I commissioned last Halloween. It is titled, simply, “The Were-Squid.”

When Len isn’t drawing awesome monsters, he is producing and co-hosting Cleveland’s best podcast, Jawbone Radio.

What Would Cthulhu Do?, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

I mentioned in my previous post that I used to work at the Bull’s Head Bookshop, the trade book store at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our offices were in the basement of the main Student Stores building, and, as a result, we had no windows. So, in what some might consider a futile attempt to disguise the bare cinder block walls, we took to decorating with with images cut from magazines, effectively turning our work space into a series of giant collages.

This is a small section of the wall above my desk, and it is a single unit composed of three separate elements:

1. Tessek the Quarren (aka Squid Head), who is obviously deep in thought. Taken from an issue of Star Wars Insider.
2. Two different shots of Vampyroteuthis infernalis, commonly known as the vampire squid. From some wildlife magazine or other.
3. The caption that ties it all together, “What Would Cthulhu Do”–cut from various book inventory bar code labels.