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This is an Outrage!

I have been tracking – on the Canada Post website – the journey of my new batch of giant squid light switch covers which have ironically been coming from Nova Scotia (ironic because they have giant squid there from time to time).

toastpost

Yesterday I noticed they were in Richmond so I was excited because I thought there’d be a good chance I’d get them in the mail today (Monday). I had them mailed to my work. I was at work from about 9:45 until 4:30 or so. So were 3 other people, on and off. So you can imagine my surprise when I checked at 4:30 to see that there was an “attempted delivery” and “notice card left” because somehow all four of us missed it and there was nary a notice card to be found in the place.

I went down to the West Broadway PO and I says to the lady “what’s all this then?” She checks her computer and tells me it’s not there. I say something to the effect of “you mean this information off the website is not accurate?
Isn’t the package scanned at these times at these places?” She tells me bluntly “No. Try again tomorrow.”

So now you know that the Canada Post tracking system is a bunch of bullshit. Just thought you might like to know so that you too can be OUTRAGED!

Thanks to David Herrold – from the 2008 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival

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Rate My Furry

UPDATED – I THINK I FIXED THE SURVEY

As you may have heard I’m working on a project for a roleplaying game based on the World Wildlife Federation of Justice. I pretty much know who my ringers are for which characters I will include, but I wouldn’t mind getting some feedback before I finalize.

So the question is, who are your favourite WWFJ characters?

Click Here to take survey

It’s just one page (plus the intro) and just one question, really.
Preview the characters on my WWFJ & Their Foes blog entry

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New Thickets Track on Child's Play CD

childsplay

Get it from the Penny Arcade Merch site!
http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/cpa08001100.html

Child’s Play Charity CD
Item#: CPA08001100
$10.00

Product Description
Do you like listening to great music, and helping children’s hospitals at the same time? Luckily for you, the biggest names in nerdcore have come together for the Child’s Play CD 2008. All proceeds from the sale of this CD go to Child’s Play.

Track List:

1. Armcannon – Go Go Power Rangers
2. The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets – Kill the Chupacabra
3. The Grammar Club – Underbeard
4. Select Start – Terra
5. The OneUps – Crash Man
6. MC Lars – The Lint Song
7. Anamanaguchi – Dawn Metropolis
8. Michael “Piano Squall” Gluck – Korobeiniki
9. Freezepop- Pop Music is Not a Crime (Mustin Mix)
10. MC Frontalot – Better at Rapping
11. Jonathan Coulton – Still Alive feat. Felicia Day
12. The Smash Brothers – Onett
13. Beefy – Game Store Girl
14. Jake “virt” Kaufman – Plasmatextor

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Announcing a Cthulhupalooza memorabilia auction to benefit Child's Play Charity!

Announcing a Cthulhupalooza memorabilia auction to benefit Child’s Play Charity!

URL for auction: http://tinyurl.com/cthulhucharity

OPEN TO CANADA AND THE US

Own a piece of Cthulhupalooza history! Cthulhupalooza was a benefit event in Vancouver BC Canada organized by Blackhammer Productions and The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets to celebrate the latter’s inclusion on Rock Band the video game. The event consisted of a Rock Band contest, a screening of the silent film The Call of Cthulhu (by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society) and a live performance by the world’s premiere Lovecraft inspired rock band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. The event benefited Child’s Play Charity, giving games and toys to sick kids.

Up for auction is a prize kit of Cthulhupalooza memorabilia including:

  1. A complete set (7) of Cthulhupalooza soda provided by our amazing sponsor Jones Soda. (Features: Spaceship Zero [bubblegum flavour]; SpaceCorp Reconstituted Space Effluent [root beer]; Colour Me Green Apple; The Thickets live at the Media Club as photographed by Adam PW Smith [cream soda]; The Thickets live at the Penny Arcade Expo as photographed by Adam PW Smith [cream soda]; The Shadow Out of Tim album cover [green apple]; Cthulhupalooza “R’lyeh Calling” logo [green apple].
  2. A set of 3 different Cthulhupalooza pinback buttons
  3. A Cthulhupalooza poster
  4. A Cthulhupalooza T-Shirt (size L or S, your choice) in military green, specially made for Cthulhupalooza volunteers, provided by our sponsor EmbroidMe Vancouver!


This is a one-time offer for fans of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, Cthulhu, Jones Soda, nerdiness and Child’s Play Charity enthusiasts.

Proceeds from this auction go to Child’s Play Charity!!!!

See http://www.childsplaycharity.org/ and http://www.cthulhupalooza.com and http://www.thickets.net
http://www.jones.soda and http://www.embroidme-vancouverfc.com/

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For Those of You Who Missed Cthulhupalooza

Not counting the special green shirts we made for the volunteers (black one shown here also available on my eBay site), here is the Cthulhupalooza-specific swag! Jones Soda was awesome to send us up these special Thickets pop bottles, which we gave out, raffled, and prized away.

A closer look.

These two images were taken by Adam of adampwsmith.com fame. He also helped out amazingly at Cthulhupalooza lugging equipment around and being generally useful. The photo on the left was from the Media Club, the photo on the right is from PAX.

A couple of Spaceship Zero-specific designs! SpaceCorp Reconstituted Space Effluent and the album cover by Chris Woods, logo design by Bob Fugger.

Colour Me Green Apple; the cover of our album The Shadow Out of Tim as photographed by Taylor Latour and designed by Chris Stewart; Cthulhupalooza logo drawn by me and designed by Josh Pratt.

The 1.5″ square pin.

The 1″ round pin.

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It is a Pretty Sweet Raygun

I’m always leery of art contests. Usually it’s a publisher’s scheme to not have to pay artists: “Hey, everyone send us a drawing of a scantily clad barbarian princess and we’ll pick the one we like the best and that one person will get their drawing published in a book and even get a copy of the book!!!” (Professional illustrators get all this plus money to live.)

Duncan sent me a link to [this contest] and I’d love to have that raygun but I wonder what “give perpetual permission to VP and GH to use the images without compensation” could be construed to mean in a court of law?

But, imagining I did submit, which of these two should I pick?

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The Animation Show 4 at Vancity – Mark it, Dude

Nov 29-30, Dec 10-11

Sat 7 & 9 pm , Sun 7 & 9 pm , Weds 9:15 pm , Thurs 9:15 pm

Returning to the Vancity Theatre after a successful 2007 run, The Animation Show is an annual feature-length compilation of the best animated shorts from around the world, exclusively curated by Beavis and Butthead creator Mike Judge. The Animation Show launched in 2003, making it the first festival of animation created and produced with actual animators at the helm. A sister series of high quality DVDs now supplement the theatrical tour with additional insights and brand new lineups of films—while the main Show remains a unique and unforgettable annual program that is usually gone forever once it is out of theatres. This year’s Animation Show is anchored by especially commissioned work from animators around the world. The show will include the films listed below, plus special surprises. For more information on the films see www.animationshow.com.

[more info]

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Cthulhupalooza! The details….

So, what’s gonna happen at Cthulhupalooza?

Well, there will be a Rock Band contest, for starters. You probably know that The Thickets got an exclusive track “Shhh….” on Rock Band this summer. Stewie and I have wrangled some hot amazing prizes from Jones Soda, Harmonix, Toy Vault, and others.

Oh, speaking of Jones Soda, they are going to provide us with literally hundreds of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets themed pops, including “Colour Me Green” Apple, Spacecorp Reconstituted Effluent, and many other cool flavours. This is exclusive to Cthulhupalooza in case you didn’t know.

We are screening the surprisingly great feature film “The Call of Cthulhu.” This is a silent film created by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, along with several other short Lovecraftian films like The Veil, The Summoning (for those who don’t read my blog, this last is the VFS short by the computer animation dept in which I get horribly killed by a Lovecraftian monster), and more.

Then The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are going to perform on the stage at The Rio with a brand new and one-time special costume presentation. No goat legs, no deep sea diving costume – something that we’ve always wanted to do but never had the venue for it. Now we do.

And the winner of the Rock Band contest can perform live with the band on stage for the track “Shhh….”!

Oh, we’re also making special Cthulhupalooza shirts and buttons – again exclusively for this event. And the whole thing is to support Child’s Play Charity!

Where oh where can you get tickets to this event?

From me of course ($16), or from any of these fine establishments:

Neptoon Records, Red Cat Records, RX Comics, Lucky’s Comics, Pulp Fiction Books (both locations), The Rio Theatre and Elfsar Collection in yaletown, High Life, Scratch Records and probably some other places.

If you only see one Thickets show, this will probably be the one to see. Just sayin’!

So visit http://www.cthulhupalooza.com to sign up for the contest (no extra charge! It’s FUN) and other details…

Don’t forget to listen to me on CiTR this Thursday – We All Fall Down every Thursday, from 13.00-14.00(PT) (that’s 1pm) on 101.9fm CiTR

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"How it Works" – How it Works.

There’s a podcast called The Skeptics Guide 5×5 at http://www.theskepticsguide.org/5X5/

They’re going over the list of logical fallacies and common terms in critical thinking (Occam’s razor, straw man, Pareidolia) and I absolutely 100% recommend that everyone check these out. They’re each only 5 minutes, which according to Kolja is the amount of time it takes to convert a 3.5 monster over to 4th edition (I am skeptical).

Here’s a sample which defines the Scientific Method The Scientific Method (click here)

Meanwhile a quote from badastronomy.com:

The Indian Space Research Organization reports that their Chandrayaan-1 Moon probe has entered what’s called a Lunar Transfer Orbit (or LTO), a path that will take it to the Moon. It has been orbiting the Earth since its launch on October 22. Technically, it still is orbiting the Earth, but this new LTO is a highly elliptical path that takes the probe very close to the Moon. On November 8, Chardrayaan-1 will fire its thrusters again, and that will slow it enough to achieve lunar orbit. From there, it will settle down into a much lower, more circular orbit, and then the fun begins as it maps our nearest neighbor in space.