Creepy Doll #31 Needs a Home
December 16th, 2010

Posted by Matt

AUCTION NOW LIVE

The Creepy Doll is back! Again! The bad news is: this means that the Desert Bus auction winner of Creepy Doll #31 has mysteriously backed out of the bid, making Tally’s craftsy bunny ears droop with sadness. The GOOD news is: this gives all of you one last chance to own the last of this limited run of terrifyingly adorable dolls.

This is your official stand-up-and-take-notice warning that we will be silent auctioning Creepy Doll #31 next week. Starting at 12am on Monday, Dec. 20 and going until midnight on Thursday, Dec. 23, the Creepy Doll will be up for auction online, with proceeds being donated to Child’s Play (naturally). Watch this blog and the Desert Bus and LoadingReadyRun twitter accounts for further details as to where the bidding will take place.

Keep in mind, this is a very special Creepy Doll. Not only is he the 31st of only 30 numbered dolls, he also comes with all the festive paraphernalia he’s stolen from the other holidays. His hands even have velcro sewn on so he can hold these items. The winner of this auction will receive:

– the 31st Creepy Doll (numbered on the bottom)
– his scythe
– a Valentine’s Day box of chocolates*
– a St. Patrick’s Day 4-leaf clover
– a Thanksgiving drumstick*
– a Christmas Santa hat
– a Halloween pumpkin
– and a special Creepy Doll coffee cup sleeve, so he can stare accusingly as you drink your morning coffee or tea. Do you really need that much honey?

Bonus: Because this is a very special auction, and because she’s been at her incessant crafting again, Tally is going to sweeten the pig… with a pig! Should the bidding for the doll reach $1000, the winner will also receive his or her choice of one of the three plush pigs pictured below, also crafted by Tally, in post-event honour of Desert Bus.

So your instructions are: Read blog, bid on doll, get pig.

Desert Bus Craft-Along 2010
May 14th, 2010

Posted by Matt

Calling all craftsy, artistic and creatively inclined people: the Desert Bus 2010 Craft-Along is here! Desert Bus 2010 starts November 19, 2010, and it’s time to start preparing.

That’s right, in this blog post you’ll find Craft-Along guidelines, contact information and even an instructional video from the Desert Bus cat-girls themselves. Can you handle it?

 Here is how you can participate, in three easy steps!

 1) Make your craft.  Please email [email protected] to let us know what you’re making though.  If you have any questions or concerns about what to make, the appropriateness of a particular craft or idea, or anything else you wish to discuss with us, we’d be happy to discuss it with you.  We’ll also provide you the address you can send your craft to when it’s done!

 2) Ship your craft in recursive packaging. We want to minimize the time we have to spend packaging and shipping prizes, in order to maximize the time we can spend on camera during Desert Bus, entertaining you with silly songs and crazy dances. To this end, we ask that you double wrap your stuff before shipping it to us. For example, put your craft in an unaddressed, unsealed envelope. Then put that envelope into a larger envelope on which you will write our address and your return address. Then ship it. Or, put your craft in a box that has plenty of blank space for us to write on, then wrap the box up in paper and write our address on that. This way, all we have to do is remove the outer layer of packaging, address the inner packaging to the auction winner and ship it. Then we can get right back to the business of making you laugh at our outrageous antics.

 3) Once you have shipped your item, go home and send us another email. In this email please include: 

  • Your full name (If you would like your craft to be credited to a nickname or forum name instead, please notify us of this in your email.)
  • Your full mailing address
  • What your item is
  • If you have one, the url for your website, Etsy store, Deviant Art page, or anywhere else you post photos and examples of your work. We will include this link on www.desertbus.org so that people can see more of your amazing work. 

Send this email to [email protected]

DEADLINE: Your Craft-Along item must be received by us no later than NOVEMBER 1, 2010 in order to be included in the Craft-Along. We strongly recommend that you mail your item several weeks ahead of time, in case of delays or general post office screw-ups. Stuff happens. 

Points of Interest:

The Craft-Along will function a little bit differently this year. All but a few Craft-Along items (selected by intensive review and several committees – which really means selected by the illustrious Rosco P. Jangles IV, possessor of Canard Knowledge) will be displayed in silent online auctions over the course of Desert Bus. 

All Craft-Along items, along with all other Desert Bus prizes and auction items, will appear on www.desertbus.org a couple weeks before the start of Desert Bus, for your perusal and to build drooling anticipation.

With Gratitude:

We’d like to say a special thank you to all the wonderful LoadingReadyRun fans and forumites who, entirely of their own volition, began the wonderful Craft-Along tradition last year. You guys are awesome! We absolutely cannot wait to see what amazing arts and crafts you will come up with this year!

That’s everything – now go get crafting!

Desert Bus for Hope 2: Bus Harder
November 18th, 2008

Posted by Matt

Here we are. It’s mid November, and Deser Bus 2 is just on the horizon. I’d like to appologize for leaving the announcement so late this year. We encountered a number of complications over the last couple of months, and we weren’t able to finalize the details until last night. We’re scrambling a bit to pull things together, but rest assured, Desert bus is happening, and it’s going to be even better than last year.

First off, as you’ve probably seen in the announcement posts, it’s going to begin at 6:00PM on Friday November 28th. It’s Thanksgiving weekend for the yankees, I know, but hopefully you can find time to fit us in between the turkey and the pumpkin pie, or somewhere in between the pie and the requisite midnight turkey sandwich. At the very least, you’ll presumably be home with your families, rather than out at work, so may I suggest you take the opportunity to introduce them to LoadingReadyRun, and get them in on the Desert Bussing action?

The second thing to know is that we’ll be running from Victoria, BC again this year, although we have a location other than Bill and Morgan’s living room. If you live in Victoria, keep an eye out, I’m sure there will be opportunities presented to meet the team or prticipate in a more direct way than simply watching the feeds.

We’ve also finalized our roster of drivers for this year! Returning to the driver’s seat are James, Bill, and Morgan. I’d have thought that they’d learned their lesson last year, but I guess I was wrong. Paul has been dropped from the lineup this year so that he can direct his focus to the technical elements – the stream, recording elements of the event, lighting, audio, the chatroom, and so on. We’re hoping to have things go a little more smoothly in the technical area this year, and we think freeing Paul up to handle it was the right move. Replacing Paul in the lineup this year is our very own Jeremy Petter. I think he’s pretty excited about taking the wheel this year, so I hope you’ll all be out in force to support him as he drives his legs of the trip. Graham and Kathleen are taking the roles of official pit crew this year, they’ll be ever present at the driver’s sides, supporting them and the audience in whatever capacity they require. And if you haven’t figured it out already, I’ll be handling the communications. I’ll be your main point of contact whenever I’m around (which should be essentially all the time). I’ll be handling the blog, updates, running the twitter feed, and moderating the IRC channel. additionally, I’ll be frequently checking e-mail, and keeping you up to date on dollar totals, and special events. You’ll be able to contact me in a wide variety of ways over the course of event, and if you have any questions, or comments, feel free to direct them to [email protected], or [email protected] . I’ll be checking both regularly.

Paul will be launching the new, improved Desertbus.org in the next few days, so check the site periodically, and see if it’s up. We have a lot of plans for this year’s drive. Some of those plans we’ve finalized, others we’re still pulling together. I’ll be filling you in with more information as it becomes available, so make sure you’re following one of our many information streams, either the twitter, the announcement thread in the forum, the blog, or www.desertbus.org .

We’ll see you on the open road!

-Matt