Above is the first panel of a one-page comic titled "Strange Tales of the Pacific Northwest. Episode 34: 20,000 Legs Under the Trees", drawn by Lukas Ketner and written by Ryan Brown. The rest of the comic is an exciting, action-packed tale of peaceful tree octopuses forced to roll up their tentacles to defend themselves from a hungry cougar.

It was published inside the cover of an Oregonian magazine or some sort of periodical. I'm still trying to track down the details. The email address I have for Ketner returned a "no such user" error, so if you know him or Brown, please let them know I'm looking for them. In the meantime, if someone knows more about exactly where and when this was published (or would like to get me a physical copy), please email me. I'll update this post if I learn more.

Update 2007-10-30: The publication is The Bear Deluxe Magazine, issue #25, published by Orlo, a "nonprofit organization using the creative arts to explore environmental issues" based in Oregon.

Next year will mark the octocentennial of the Yeti-Sasquatch Transpacific Brotherhood accord, which was inaugurated with vigorous hand throttling by the Yeti and Sasquatch representatives at the 1208 Global Hominoid Congress held in Sakteng, Bhutan. The accord ended ninety-three years of hostility that started after a disagreement at a stomper tournament (the details of which were wisely forgotten).

Yeti arrive in Cascadia.

For 799 years since, Yeti and Sasquatch have enjoyed good barter relations and an open border policy that has led to close cultural ties between the two hominoids -- ties that are stronger now than ever. Yeti wishing to reach Cascadia for barter or to emigrate have long had to cross the Bering Strait on ice drifts during the winter months. This constriction in cross-cultural flow changed in the twentieth century when Yeti discovered and took advantage of human trade routes, and now Yeti can travel year-round by hiding in shipping containers bound from China and India to major Cascadian ports.

The next time you're down by the docks in Little Yetitown, do your meager human part to support the Yeti-Sasquatch Transpacific Brotherhood by visiting a Yeti bartering-post container, where you can browse the yak-dung sculptures of Yeti artisans or try a traditional Teh-Lma delicacy of live Himalayan sucker frogs.

Serious historians of international hominoid agreements, as well as hipsters who enjoy being <finger-quote>ironic</finger-quote>, can also buy Cafepress shirts (human sizes only, sorry) emblazoned with the official commemorative emblem -- which, by the way, uses my newly released font: Greensboro.

In Inkling Magazine's "Nerds Just Wanna Have Fun," Kurt Wong tells us about Nerd Nites, informal scientific symposia held in bars and clubs in Boston and New York where scientists hook up with vibrating tadpoles over lectures on synchrotron-based X-ray scattering, Z/W sex chromosomes, and worm poop.

If you don't know your fusiform gyrus from your fuel-efficient Prius, you might be out of your league at first, but put on your beer goggles (held together with single malt scotch tape) and you'll quickly become a vocal expert on every topic discussed. And if not, you can at least hope a fight breaks out when some drunk catastrophic limnogeologist pulls a Michael Richards and starts hurling untoward comments at uniformitarians in the audience. Now that's edutainment.

As you'll note, I did the illustration for the Inkling article, which gave me an excuse to draw this happy little camel spider:

I think he makes for an apt exemplifying topic illustration since, like potential Nerd Nite attendees, Solifugae are active at night, seek dark recesses, and get their nourishment from drink (Guinness and liquefied beetles, respectively... or, possibly, irrespectively).

Oh, and my finite apologies for the awkward and way, way, way too obscure (yet, oddly solvable) nerd pun in the title. There's just no excuse for that sort of thing.

Introducing the poster "A New Dawn for the Tree Octopus", issued by the Cascadian Department of Cephalopod Conservation to raise awareness of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus's plight. It depicts a lone tree octopus in the coastal forests of Hood Canal waking from her coniferous lair to a New Dawn for her species. Are you doing your part to help save the tree octopus?

(The poster was created by artists employed by the Cascadian Works Progress Administration, which provides honest jobs for honest barter to unemployed Sasquatch trained in the vector arts.)

Currently I'm making the image available on a mini poster, large poster, and postcards. If anyone is interested in having it on anything else, let me know.

As a bonus, the poster uses my newest font: Enemy Sub! (Actually, I made the font over a year ago and just procrastinated putting it up.)

Also, I updated the Tree Octopus logo used on the merchandise in the shop. I ate my own dog food by using my Duarte Centenario font, which, while not as patriotic as the previously used Tahoma, does look better with the rough tentacle ribbon image. If you bought a product with the older image, it's now a valuable collector's item. Sell it on eBay and get rich!

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