Tentacle Porn: A Lengthy History of The Octopus Diary

FRIENDLINGS!

Happy week before Xmas. I hope your credit cards are all maxed out and the scent of pine has wiped out all traces of pumpkin spice around you!

I just wanted to stop by the Octopus Diary for a nice fireside chat. 2016 will mark the 10-year anniversary of my blogging habit. It has been a wonderful thing for me to have this forum/format in which to communicate and I have no plans to quit, though I would like to make some changes. Upgrade. Renovate. Reinvent.

Octopus Art from 2012

My very first blog was written in 2006 on the hushed aquamarine backdrop of MySpace. It was just an empty shout-out to a galaxy known as cyberspace and it didn't get much of a response. But I kept at it, and soon I had a small circle of bloggers I shared my thoughts with--mostly my take on politics and the social constructs that made me go "WTF??"  Oh, and my morbid fascination with America's Next Top Model!

It was all fun & games back then.

The Octopus Diary didn't get its name until 12-19-08 when I branched off from MySpace and onto Blogger, where you still find me today. I kept to my satirical politics and social commentary, but also added some personal elements, which everyone loved.

Then in 2010-2011, things got really personal. The blog became my therapist and basically I wrote what I now know to be my "Bro Manifesto." [Always ahead of the game] : )))

My manifesto was much more literary and creative than most manifestos I've read, but the spirit of it was there. My fragile male ego was lashing out of its feminine entrapments and making everyone else go "WTF??"

Ahhh, those were lonely times in the blogosphere. And unlike the other bros with manifestos, I actually had a grand epiphany that did not lead to mass murder, but rather to a place of growth & forgiveness.

Octopus Art from 2015

At the end of 2011, as a reward for your patience, I decided to branch out again and include artwork with all the monotonous text I fed you. I tried a Wordpress location for my new venture & made a valiant effort to BRAND myself & become a Blog Emperor!!  [remember how big "branding" was in 2011??]

I renamed The Octopus Diary "The Centipeep Show!" and burrowed deeper into the soft tissues of the internet than ever before. What I found were lots & lots of people doing the exact same thing and doing it way better than I was. 

I was more of a Sultan than an Emperor. But I was enjoying my delusions of grandeur and just kept at it.

It wasn't until 2013 that I asked myself WTF am I doing here? Is this even a thing anymore? Do I have anything to say? Does anyone care? Do I still feel the need to dump the contents of my head onto this phantom platform?

And the answer was No. And Yes. And no. And yes. And…well…I'm still here.

Art from The Centipeep Show 2011

2014-2015 gave me (and everyone else) lots of heavy shit to handle. Lots of new scary things to consider about ourselves and the world. It was hard for me to coordinate my senses into anything resembling communication. It was hard to know where to begin a sentence let alone string a bunch of sentences together into something that made sense.

So I made even more art & put it here between my words just in case my words were big unreadable clots of thought that had no meaning the way I'd arranged them.

Somehow I kept doing that until I felt a little better and could see the meaning in words again.

Now I have begun a new journey that would be very interesting to document. Much more tangible and visual than some of the abstract, esoteric journeys I've documented here before. I'm changing. Upgrading. Renovating myself. It's a little scary to think of sharing this new journey, but I probably will…

…and if I can't muster the courage to do that, well, there's always the state of our world to report in a scathing unsentimental fashion with all traces of humor removed because...

…NOTHING is funny anymore. Not politics. Not cats. Not even dicks are funny anymore.

Will we (I) ever laugh again??

Find out here…

in the OCTOPUS DIARY 2016. 

Art from the 1990s before anyone even knew what a blog was

Art from 2014 when shit got weird

Art from 2006 when I was drunk all the time

Art from 2013 when life was good