Indie Squid Kid

Dragon*Con has been over for nearly a week, which is plenty of time for the Internet to help me find all (well, nearly) the cephalopod-themed costumes from this year’s menagerie of the weird. Enjoy.

photo by vladeb

Davy Jones ( Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) from the Dragon*Con parade.

photo by Hueyatl

Netherworld squid monster.

photo by sarberry

Ursula the Sea Witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

photo by Clockwork_Dandy

The Fruity Oaty Bar commercial from Joss Whedon’s Serenity come to life!

photo by TheKingInYellow

MINDstyle’s “Stephen Le Podd” con exclusives.

photo by Sarcasm-hime

Cthulhu bustle!

photo by sudrin

Victorian cecaelia!

photo by Petrona09

It’s this guy! He’s back!

Like I said yesterday, Dragon*Con is this weekend, and I am rather bummed not to be in attendance this year. The con is more than just a science-fiction or comic book convention, it is a chaotic multi-media/multi-genre extravaganza celebrating every corner of geeky popular culture. Here is but a small tentacled taste of Dragon*Con from the past few years. All photos are from my Flickr account, unless otherwise noted.

Doctor Octopus (Dragon*Con 2008)

Stygian Depths booth (Dragon*Con 2008)

"Doctor Cthulhu" (Dragon*Con 2008)

Photo by Foenix

Cthulhu and Ichigo (Dragon*Con 2007)

Photo by Futuregirl_LeahRiley

"tentacle monster" (Dragon*Con 2005)

happy Cthulhu cake, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

It was never “official,” but you might have noticed that it’s been Birthday Week here at Indie Squid Kid. Yesterday was the birthday of one of my oldest and closest friends, and this was her cake! Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster, and she commands a legion of loyal minions who do her bidding at the drop of a hat. Most importantly, for six days every year we are the same age! Find out all about her creative works and ongoing projects at The Murverse. Mur isn’t nearly as cephalopod-obsessed as I am, but she does have a special fondness for H.P. Lovecraft’s betentacled elder god.

The cake is a recreation of “Cthulhu’s Day Out” by Ursula Vernon. (Ursula’s work has been featured here a couple of times before, as you may recall.) I don’t know who actually made the cake, but I will post that information here when I find out.

Update: Mur tells me the cake was made by Rebecca Hirschman (which is possibly misspelled, sorry!). Surprisingly, Rebecca is not a professional cake tech—she just loves to bake!

Today is my first Father’s Day as Indie Squid Dad, and it seems like the perfect occasion to introduce you to my Very Good Excuse for taking so long to resume this blog.

Meet Kid Indie Kid Squid (a.k.a. Commander Awesome)! He’s hanging out with a portion of my plush cephalopod collection. They’ll all be his one day, so it seemed best to begin the acclimation process early! Each of these stuffed toys will eventually make an individual appearance here in the blog, and I’m sure I have another box of them somewhere…

Kid Indie Squid Kid is wearing an Ahou Octu bodysuit (don’t call it a “Onesie,” Gerber has that trademarked!) by Finny’s Greens.

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.