Bringing Awesome to Weirdos Everywhere

Robot Messenger Bag by ArtsiBitsi

Recently I was asked to explain why I sell almost exclusively online, through Etsy, rather than through gift shops and bricks-and-mortar stores.  Aren't most people more comfortable shopping in person, where they can pick up and examine an item before deciding to buy it?  What kind of person would buy a backpack or messenger bag online -- solely from pictures?

I can relate.  I would never buy an avocado online.  And fortunately I don't have to, because there are lots of supermarkets that sell avocados.  I can squish as many real avocados as I like before deciding which one I want to buy.  (I don't really squish the avocados -- I'm just saying, I could.)

But suppose I am a weirdo from Smallville, Kansas and I want a sweet skull backpack or cthulhu messenger bag.  My local Walmart doesn't carry them and neither does the mall.  Shopping online is the best solution for a quirky non-conformist like me.

So my online shop is like a beacon and gathering place for fellow nerds, geeks, oddballs and weirdos worldwide.  Through the power of the interwebs, I am able to connect with cool people across the pond and down under.  

I Cthulhu, Do You?

As a fan of classic horror and a great reader in high school, I enjoyed stories by Poe, Shelley, Bram Stoker and Lovecraft.  I loved stories about robots and alien landscapes.  Probably I empathized more with the creatures in these tales than with the heroes who were trying to slay them.  For sure, I thought of myself as a stranger in a strange land -- awkward and full of strange impulses and appetites that I didn't understand.  

Now that I'm more grown up, maybe I can be friends with the monsters that live inside my head.  Or at least I can channel them into more productive directions.  I can take what is dark, and make light of it.

One of the monsters that I am finding very interesting right now is the Cthulhu.  

It's commonly pronounced kə-THOO-loo now, but this high priest of the Great Old Ones has had many names throughout time. Cthulhu are said to evoke abject terror in all who have the misfortune to encounter them.  According to HP Lovecraft, their appearance "yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings."  Sounds charming, right?

But like most monsters, Cthulhu have power.  The Great Old Ones are telepathic and "knew all that was occurring in the universe".  They ruled the earth before humans, but now they sleep, waiting to be awakened and dreaming of "new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."  Perhaps they still visit us, "moulding [our] dreams". 

All of this gives me very pleasant shivers.