Kapsulo

Fall 2026

Hey. I finally feel like enough has happened that I have enough to talk about. It’s been Six Months, let me tell you.

First

My mother in law passed in the beginning of May. That’s really been the driving force in my partner and I’s life in the last six months. I think we’re getting to a point where we’re done with all of that (my partner did most of the work, to be sure), but it’s been a lot of pressure. There’s been nice things to come out of it -- my partner’s uncle and his wife have been wonderfully helpful in getting the estate taken care of.

Furries.

May was also when Furlandia happened. It makes me very happy to have a local con, and to have been able to take the light rail right to it. And while I have thoughts about it organizationally, I had a good time overall. I got to see friend in the Artist Alley, see some cool dealers, and run around with a furry friend for a while and take pictures!

It did seem like they got about four times the amount of people they were expecting, which would strain any scaling their organization had to do. And I’m happy for that success! I do love Furlandia and I can’t wait for it next year.

Zines

About the middle of the year I hit my stride making zines. I’d been trying to make a new perzine for months, and had the idea of “what if I did one of these every month, as like a journal.” And banged one out for April really quickly. And then I didn’t follow up! But, the reason was that I also banged out two more zines really quickly: “Never Not Thinking About Pizza,” and “We Pitch And We Bat And We Stare Into Death.” The former is basically a recounting of every pizza place I can remember eating at, though not an exhaustive list, and talking about those places and the pizzas. It came out really well, and people have been enjoying it, enough that someone asked me to bring it by their shop so they can buy copies and sell them.

The latter is about the Garages. Are we surprised that I did something Blaseball related? It’s based on a document I wrote for my friend about the songs I like, and touched on the lore behind them. And while I debuted both of these at the Portland Zine Symposium this year, I posted the Garages zine early. The response was great! I ended up selling 10 physical copies to people, especially from Oceana, and just as many digital copies. And I know at least two members of the Garages have seen the zine!

The Zine Symposium was fantastic too. I debuted four new zines in total (the aforementioned perzine, these two, and a Game Boy Camera photo journal), plus I had my older stuff. I didn’t make a lot of money, but I made my table back and then some, met some cool people, traded for some cool stuff, and got to hang out with my partner and my friends (who had a table next to me) all day. I’m feeling very creatively fulfilled right now, and it’s intoxicating.

You can find all of these on my itch.io shop at https://bigdamnproject.itch.io

The Year of Analog Hobbies (continued)

After my venture with the Great Gatsby in the spring, I have been reading more! It helps that I’ve had a commute to read on, but I’ve also been reading books at night too instead of staring at YouTube. It’s felt so nice!

Here’s a loose list of what I’ve read this year:

And a couple of graphic novels too

Of the Christie books, I really liked Blue Train, and And Then There Were None. I understand that Christie hated Blue Train, but she’s dead now and she can’t hurt me. I thought it was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed my time with it. And Then There Were None had that classic setup of every character being summoned to a mysterious house for different reasons, and then being trapped there while getting picked off one at a time. I found that Christie didn’t quite stick the ending, but I enjoyed my time with the book overall.

Factory Summers was wonderful, the kind of memoir work that I’ve come to expect from Delisle. He has fantastic observations about his situations, and his line art is deceptively simple; he makes scenes that have depth and feeling with an incredible economy of lines. Well recommended, go read it.

I really wanted to like Chain Smoking Cat, but I couldn’t get into it. I know the main character is supposed to be an unappealing mess, and boy was she.

Lightning Round

I think that about covers it. I hope you’re well. Let’s keep going, okay?

-Kosmo