Internet communities mean a lot to a lot of people. For some people, though, they’re often pretty hilarious — and by hilarious I mean they’re probably exclusively inhabited by guys who have backne and neckbeards. You know who I’m talking about. They sit in the back of college classes with their camouflaged pants and their It’s only funny until someone gets hurt …then it’s hilarious! t-shirts. Yeah, those guys. But there’s a different breed of internet community — that is, a community that exists in its purest form, electronically and scattered all throughout the country (and in Antoine’s situation, the world) bound together for no other reason than to dissect pop culture, play shitty golf games that Eli unearths or simply because we hate our roommates and seek the warm glow of the computer monitor for solstice from their arrogant sexual prowess.

This all began long ago, longer now than it seems, I suspect, with a project called Jebzig!. If Jebzig! was the question than I imagine octonaut is the answer. Yeah, Jebzig! was pretty sloppy and didn’t really have a clear purpose. We know, okay? We just like… well we know. But like the Nuremberg trials before, we’re out to set things straight. No, we’re not hanging former Nazis who sat in thrones of inscrutable power, no — we’re (the collective we, whoever that entails) creating a web site, a virtual notebook, a community of now grown-ass men — and we’re doing it behind the moniker of an octopus who travels through outer space. Be thankful, then, that our resident Kevin O’Dell took two ideas, two words, and cut and glued them together. If he’d left it up to me, you’d be browsing calamaricosmonaut.com right now, alright?

“I really like the ocean, man, but I like space, too.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Like… I don’t know! I just… I don’t know! Cosmonaut… octopus. Cosmopus.”

“That sounds fucking ridiculous.”

“Machine… Octomari… Machinist Octopies. Yeah.”

“Octonaut.”

That simple, eight-lettered word that, in a stroke of wordplay genius, Kevin O’Dell branded a collective group of young adults who have something to say and hope you’re listening. I sincerely do, you know. First posts are always difficult, you see, and this one, this very piece I’m writing now as my fingers click and clack on this shitty plastic keyboard (the Macbook Pro is occupied by my lady as of right now), is no different. All I can tell you now, after more than a year of waiting is that octonaut, this very site you’re looking at, it’s done. I shouldn’t say done, really, as it’s only begun. Fuck, that rhymed. This is a clean slate, an empty pad of paper. This is the reason we’ve gone through countless revisions and sleepless nights designing and coding this beautiful, working piece of online machinery. I could say something cheesy about “the tentacles of the octonaut sprawling outward to the far reaches of the internet” or something campy like that, but I’m not going to (despite the fact that I already have). Man, I really don’t want to say shit like that, you know? It would reflect poorly upon my person and, should I ever meet you — yes, you, the person reading this overabundance of useless drab I’m attempting to string together — you’d probably kick my ass, and I’d let you.

“Tentacles of the octonaut?!” you’d shriek, and I’d cower. You’d probably swat at me mercilessly with a tire iron or something, maybe you’d even resort to battering, I don’t know. I just don’t know, okay? Suffice it say, this is octonaut. This is the beginning of something that my colleagues (ho-hey!) and I believe could blossom into something beautiful, something worth reading– something significant.

By all means I implore you to register on our forum so that you can comment on our work, critique it, love it, hate it– hell, maybe someday write something for yourself. Like a campfire, this is a moment in the site’s inception that we must take full advantage of so that it survives the initial hump; to make use of our newly acquired medium, this online medium, this online home. To work so hard for something such as this, to have the opportunity to have octonaut flare up, to grow bigger and wider — that is something I want to see happen and something that must happen.

Jebzig! was merely octonaut in its adolescence. While not entirely a successful endeavor, it did house a good portion of important individuals who make up what octonaut is today and what it will be further down the road. By all means, one could rightly assess octonaut as being four or five years in the making. From the gangsta-laden masterpieces by our own Jacob Capo to the sharp-witted prose and vision of the illustrious and occasionally cynical (realist) Kevin O’Dell, octonaut is a unique breed of whatever the hell this site is even about.

Throughout the coming months (and more importantly, weeks) you’ll see octonaut expand as its tentacles sprawl outward content flourishes and diversifies. We’ll be keeping a keen eye out for potential writers and artists as we attempt to explain what exactly it is octonaut means. The “About” section needs a good deal of work and there you’ll find early octonaut drafts, archived Jebzig! content (some of it, anyway) and expanded literature about the writers whose words inhabit this website.

I truly hope I didn’t sound like too much of tool throughout most of this winded ‘speech’ of sorts, but somebody has got to say it, you know? That man — well — that man is me. I’m going to finish this — this thing which I have started. This is a prologue of sorts, you see. This is the part where it (supposedly) gets exciting.

Welcome to octonaut.