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A Conspiracy Involving 10,000 Scientists & Employees

My friend Kolja thinks that the moon landing is a hoax. A while back we were discussing it through email and he posed me a question. I sent that question to the folks at the Skepticality podcast and when they had Phil Plait from badastronomy.com they had him answer it. Here it is:

skepticality-83-for-kolja
You can hear the entire episode (#83) [here].

Perfect timing since last night they had a special moon landing Mythbusters episode on Discovery Channel followed by the 2 hour special In the Shadow of the Moon “Historical details surrounding the nine Apollo flights.”

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Cthulhupalooza Last Sketches

Also new guitar smash sketch forthcoming
Re: the second one below – too Christmassy? Or not Christmassy enough? Looks like the event will be happening in December after all.



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Some Nice Words…

I think I’m about to do my very first “trackback.” I hope I do it right, I’m not 100% sure what it is.

It’s for: http://diceofdoom.com/blog/2008/09/cthulhu-to-rock-too/

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PAX Diary Day Three

This time I woke up in the hotel room, again about a half hour before the alarm went off. I enjoyed my first shower of the convention! Deanna and I went to the convention center and picked up some food from the green room. I reorganized the merch booth and business was steady, some may say brisk. Deanna and I took the time to wander around a bit. On the way out I tried to cut through Wil Wheaton’s line of fans (much quicker than going around) but Deanna pulled me back as it seemed a photo was about to be taken. Wil saw us and said that he was so glad he met me in a casual atmosphere – it made him appreciate the show last night even more. I failed my Good Boyfriend Check and quickly said “thanks a lot, I won’t hold up your fans” when I should have said “thanks a lot, this is Deanna she’s a big fan.” Oops.

We visited the annex building where all the tabletop games were going on and I was catapulted back in time to organizing gaming conventions here in town. Even at the grandest conventions you cannot escape the musky, tightly packed rooms of young and not-so-young men rolling dice, slapping cards and trying to speak over one another. Good times!

While we were gone Wil came to the booth and refused to take free pins and stickers, but overpaid for our latest CD instead.

When we got back I organized a time for the band to perform Rock Band at the Harmonix booth. Allen and Stewie came with their media recorders and there was a lot of reassuring bandmates that it was set on ‘no fail’ mode. We watched a few musical numbers go by with other players to get the gist of things (Warren and I were the only ones who had played the game before). We entered the stage from the opposite side of the “regular” people waiting in line, which caused some confusion. One little kid (maybe 10 years old) didn’t get the memo and he grabbed the guitar before Warren. Even when he was clearly on stage with strangers and not whatever group he was supposed to be with, he was still gung ho to play and had to be escorted off stage by the staff. Too bad, I was all keen to get some new blood in the band. We played “Shhh….” as seen here:

The rest of the day went by mostly at the booth. Throughout Sunday business was steady since by that point people finally knew who we were. Adam and Deanna left early but Stewie stuck around till the end. We packed up our stuff and as I was leaving I threw a “Worship Me Like A God” shirt at Wil Wheaton. I hope he wears it in the spirit it was intended. Stewie, Warren, Mario and I had a sort of band meeting at a sushi place attached to the Max Hotel and discussed what to do about following up on the Rock Band coup. I retrieved the rental car from the valet and, being Canadian and not a car owner, I completely forgot to tip him.

Jordan and Merrick had already left in the van with our gear and merch so we met up to cross the border at the same time. There were absolutely no hassles getting everything back in the country and after I dropped Warren off in Abbotsford and Mario in North Van I finally got home, a huge almost year-long weight lifted off my shoulders!

We want to do it again next year – and this time: band manager!

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Hurried Scribblings

Well, it’s been a busy week! I’ve spent most of my free time looking for a place to live for me, Deanna, Kodos and Lunch, to no avail. We’ve gone as far as Lougheed and Edmonds too – BURNABY NO LESS! And of course getting Rhinosferatu done as you have seen. The band had a big meeting this week about a lot of stuff. Maybe in 2009 we’ll play the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear in Toronto. I’ve been planning for a very special rock show in November which I’ll announce properly when the time is right. We’re also getting ready for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland and I’m trying to find some way to share travel expenses – nobody (so far) from Van can give us a ride so maybe I can offer some seats on a rented car for the weekend? It’s gonna be fun! http://hplfilmfestival.com/ I left the helmet part of my costume at The Funhouse weekend before last which is a pain – I either need to pick it up on the way or make a new one before the fest. Oh – that reminds me! Our show at the Funhouse! Pretty neat. The Funhouse is a small bar similar to many in downtown/east van like Pat’s Pub or The Cobalt. We had a good turnout all things considered for a show that we only booked so that our work order would extend to cover the HPLFF. You see the way P2 visas for performers work is that if you don’t have a gig for more than a month then your visa is no good. But it turned out to be a good show with a good turnout and we sold CDs to boot. We played with The Keeper and Bloodhag – two nerd bands so you know it was a good bill. Bloodhag was hilarious and wants to play with us again so I’m going to invite them up to Vancouver for a show in January. Their schtick is short metal songs about sci-fi authors – they sang about Anne McAffrey, Douglas Adams, Frederick Pohl and of course H.P. Lovecraft. At the end of the show they threw out mass market paperbacks – I got an Arthur C Clarke.

In all that I managed to sneak in a game of D&D and also finally made it to the September Vancouver Comic Jam. Here’s one strip that I STARTED:



http://community.livejournal.com/vcj/ for more of that sort of thing.

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Rhinosferatu Complete.

Here are all of the pages to Secret Files from the World Wildlife Federation of Justice: The Ominous Origin of Rhinosferatu, including the newly uploaded Page 4. In print there will be titles and credits, but this comic is designed with no words.

Notes on page 4:
Panels 1-3: Another decision made from drawings defying comic panel conformity, but I think this comes across as three things happening virtually simultaneously. I had to look up photo references for splitting wood on google. I really like the hand grabbing the bat – it’s very Bruce Timm.
Panel 4: Look at all that flying pointy wooden debris. What could it mean?
Panel 6: This is the submitted version. I am on the fence about whether to keep that white blob in the middle of the panel or just have it 100% black. Vote!
Panels 7-9: I’m happy with how the dead bat turned out, even if this panel, like many of them, has shitty crosshatching which is something I’m trying to get away from. I’d like to gravitate toward the Steve Rude/Mike Mignola style of inking – flat blocks with tight, abrupt feathering where necessary. This last panel is one I struggled with a bit – this is supposed to be really the end frame. The stop. The period. Rest here. The end. So I tried to pull out a bit for a long shot that makes that sort of statement. Really the problem is pages 3 and 4 should have been stretched out to three pages not two.
Panel 10. The epilogue. I think that rabbit is hilarious. He’s such a prick!
THE END. Hope you enjoyed. Buy the “Historyonics” issue of CLOUDSCAPE COMICS – from me! – when it comes out.

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Rhinosferatu Page 3

Notes:
Panel 1: I cannot draw parallel lines it seems.
Panel 2: This is supposed to portray the climbing of the stairs and the nervousness of the rhino, more or less at the same moment, I’m not sure if I pulled that off. I thought the stairs would be a cool graphical divide between the two images but it might come across as if there are two rhinos in the same shot?
Panel 3: This turned out better than I thought it would, with all the cross hatching. I always save the perspective until last.
Panels 5-7: These are four panels. Does it look like there are four panels here?
Panel 8: Probably my favourite panel of the comic. Definitely my fave of the page.
Panel 9-11: Just realized I forgot to put a white border between panels 9 and 10. Oops.