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Before we get into talk about sea monsters,
let me again state what regular visitors already know. You can click on any of the black and white cartoons (which this month come from The March 1994 Kidnews section of The Chicago Tribune) to see bigger versions, read babbling asides on their creation, and purchase the original art for your home and office. Also this month, you can click on the letter on the left to see some hate and love mail from the tween readers.
But enough of that cartoon stuff, what about great tentacled beasts? Looking around for some sort of background image to place under the cartoons this month, I stumbled upon one of my favorite images from my Toledo, Ohio library frequenting childhood.
It’s by Pierre Denys de Montfort and I probably saw it in the book Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis. A Montfort statement I’d like to believe is true, although I only read it on the internet, so believe at your own risk is, ...if this representation [bottom left] were swallowed, he would next represent a cephalopod embracing the Straits of Gibraltar.
Thanks to the wonder of the Google Image Search I found the colorized version that I put in the background. The faded shades of which remind me of a flannel childhood pajama pattern, which causes a drift backward in time to further youthful reminisces [insert ethereal music cue of your choice here]...
Not sure exactly why, but before hitting my teeth on the concrete edge of an inground swimming pool, reaching puberty, and seeing the movie Jaws I was fascinated by the water and swimming. Maybe it was viewing Jacques Cousteau on television, or looking up whales in the encyclopedia, but I decided that an adult vocation that might not suck would be that of oceanographer.
I began to check out all the books the Sanger Branch had on submarines, fish, oceans, etc. The idea that there were giant things under the sea that nobody had seen was fascinating to me. Specifically a squid that had an eye larger than a dinner plate was something I couldn’t seem to shake (seeing the Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea only re-enforced things).
The paper labels of canned fish items in the grocery store became another source of fascination, these little drawings of ships at sea and fishes from other countries really caused my mind to wander. The gap between this ideal fantastic vision vs. actually seeing a fish in real-life die on a hook, have it’s head cut off and get scaled, was another blow to the idea of reality living up to dreams. And don’t get me started about trying to put a worm on a hook... Ewwwww...
So long story short, the damage was done, and I continue to wander in imaginary cartoon worlds rather than actually helping our world through hands-on scientific inquiry. Not sure if this was really the right choice, but what’s chu’ gonna do? Wanna see my etchings?
As always thanks for reading. Email (or is it e-mail with a hyphen?) is always welcomed; as are any order form purchases you’d care to make.
Your tentacle fetish chatroom buddy,
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