perhapablog 500...and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

okay...

first off, HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYBODY!!



i hope that you all are able to spend time with family and friends and are able to take a moment to think of all of the things we should be thankful for.
i am, of course, thankful for all of you. thank you for your friendship and your patience, your kindness and, well, for showing up here every week so that i don't feel like i'm just sending messages off into the ether. i appreciate each and every one of you--thank you.
sharon and i will be splitting our time between our families today--early dinner with her family, later on with mine. we are just thankful that they don't live so far away from each other...
(jake will be waiting for us at uncle jeff's and watchin' football with his grampa...)

our pal, russ burlingame--you know, the guy who does the "what's perhapanin'?" column as a follow-up to each issue--gave us a very pretty write up over at associated contentin his latest piece entitled
The Best and Worst Comics of 2008

"If there's one book that deserves its audience to triple next year, it's Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau's The Perhapanauts (Image Comics). A smart, funny book about a group of supernatural characters (a bigfoot, a ghost, a chupacabra, a mothman and more) who investigate paranormal phenomena for the government is part Hellboy, part NBC's Chuck. Each member of its sprawling supporting cast has their own subplot, yet none of them overpower the narrative that's been chugging right along since these characters were first featured in a pair of Dark Horse Comics miniseries half a decade ago."

the rest of the list featured a bunch of other books that aren't the perhapanauts, so i didn't copy the whole thing.

if you'd like to check out the rest of this finely written and compelling article. i hope this link works...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1247764/the_best_and_worst_comics_of_2008.html?cat=38

thanks, russ!

as a little thanksgiving gift, i thought i'd give you a glimpse of some of the gorgeous covers we have lined up for the next few issues, fantastic covers done by some really talented friends of ours.
take a look.


here's an early version of one of the covers to the halloween issue (perhapanauts no.6, out sometime early next year) by aussie artist, matt pott. craig has the finished one, but i couldn't find my jpg of it anywhere.

check out more of matt's kooky, quirky art at www.mattpott.com



our pal, francesco francavilla--artist on such great books as the black coat, frazetta's dracula meets the wolfman, zorro--is such a super nice guy and was kind enough to paint this spine-tingling cover for an upcoming issue!

and, of course, you can see more of francesco's work at www.francescofrancavilla.com



and here's the cover to perhapanauts no.7, a high adventure 'haps story told from a totally different point of view!
it's the origin of the cricket!--and bedlam will never be the same...!

oh, yeah, and craig did this.
see more of his art blah, blah, blah at www.craigrousseau.com



and by special request from the leaf--though, at press time not yet completely rico-ized--here is matt's cover--inked by christian--that will accompany their interiors on a back-up story in perhapanauts 7. i'm not sure who's good, who's bad, and who's ugly, but i think the whole thing is just beautiful!


"five for friday"
men of letters

sure we remember chris claremont, john byrne, and terry austin on the classic x-men, but what award-winning letterer made that title look so crisp? it's all about giving a little thanks for those unsung heroes of the balloons and fonts--the letterers!

1. who was the letterer on byrne and claremont's uncanny x-men?

2. on walt simonson's thor?

3. on the sandman?

4. on dave sim's cerebus?

5. what is the art of (hand) lettering called?

bonus: name three other comic book letterers with distinctive styles.




so there's your 500th perhapablog--hope you liked it!
i did.
have a great thanksgiving, a great weekend, and
smell ya later!
todd

499

okay...

there is, on my blog's master dashboard, a little counter that i never pay attention to (not really a number's guy, you know) that has, apparently, been counting off the number of blogs i post and, wouldn't you know it, this is blog no. 499.

in honor of the holiday, i was planning on posting friday's blog tomorrow to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving, so tomorrow's blog will be 500.

it kinda caught me by surprise and i must say, i'm not really prepared. i'd like to thank my agent and my manager, my mom and dad, and, of course, the big man upstairs. i had hoped to put together a nice retrospective montage, with whitney houston's "didn't we almost have it all" playing in the background, as we look back on some of the blog's more memorable moments; the "five for fridays", the announcements of any new perhapanauts books or shwag, and, ummm...

hmmm.
y'know, looking back,
nothing really remarkable...

whatever.
here's some pictures of cats.







here's a look back at my very first blog.
i still don't know what i'm doing.

Monday, November 28, 2005
be gentle...
hey, gang! todd here.

welcome to our perhapanauts blog!

i'm assuming, of course, that if you're here you've already read
the first issue of our new comic, the perhapanauts, and were pokin'
around looking for more info, background, fun, facts, lies,
recipes, stories, sketches, anecdotes, scoops, and gossip about
your favorite new paranormal comic book team.

well, that's what we wanna do here.
i'll be posting here several times a week with new dirt on the team,
what we've got coming up, and insights into some of the weird stuff
i found out doing research for this crazy book. let me tell you, there
is some really bizarre stuff out there. i hope you'll stop by and check
it out from time to time.

and, until we can get a message board up and running, i guess we
can have some kind of interactionin the comments section below.

as you will prob'ly notice very shortly, i've never done a blog before
so i ask that you be a bit patient with me while i get this thing going.

thanks for checking this out.
and for taking a chance on the perhapanauts.
and for telling your friends. oh yeah, did i say that? no.
please tell all your friends about the perhapanauts too!
we can't keep makin' 'em if we aren't sellin' 'em.

thanks. see ya next time.
todd


be here tomorrow for 500.
we'll be posting some of the very cool covers we have lined up for you as well as some other cool news!
smell ya later!
todd

TV is a ass.

okay...

well, i've said it before, i'm no artist.
well, i'm not much of an artist.

i still draw my christmas cards--which i will be posting here and there through much of the holiday season--and the occasional birthday card or t-shirt design. at shows there are always two or three people who think it's fun to get a sketch from a writer.
this is the first time though that i've been asked to do one for someone overseas. i received an e-mail way back in the beginning of the year from a tellos/perhapanauts fan in belgium requesting a sketch of serra and, after offering all the appropriate warnings, i agreed to do it when my schedule permitted. and, while it has been a pretty busy year, i finally got it finished the other day.
like all artists, i'm not happy with it and feel that i was very limited with colors (it's colored pencils and i couldn't find my good set anywhere. i think my nephew stole them.)
anyway, dominique, if you're reading this, it's finally done and on it's way. thanks so much for your patience.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

tv is a ass.
yeah, we all have those shows that have been cancelled out from under us. we all complain and wonder why 'cause it was just so good! last year's writer's strike didn't help. for me, last year, it was journeyman. i loved the concept, the writing, the cast...but, like many shows these days, it was just never given a chance. the ratings come in and the show goes out and how are they actually rating these shows these days anyway?!? the nielsen polls are out with tivo and dvd. they're canceling everything good and leaving on such convoluted, forced, floundering dreck that hasn't had a solid storyline to follow in two years--i think you know who i'm talking about...
anyway, my latest casualty is my own worst enemy, a solid, well-written show featuring christian slater doing some of the best work of his career. it is smartly-written, compelling, and cancelled.
mark harris wrote a great column in last week's entertainment weekly outlining the vast wasteland that television is this season, and i agree whole-heartedly. what hurts me more is that they are getting rid of all the good stuff. who are these people?! and why do they hate intelligent shows so?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

that said, i couldn't sleep the other night and caught a fairly new--and scary!--show on sci-fi the other night called cha$e. a game show of sorts, 10 contestants are let loose in a park with the objective of finding their way out, racking up dollar amounts for each minute they can stay in play. in play because they are being hunted by a cadre of black-suited, black-sunglassed, hugo weaving from the matrix looking agents that walk and run like robots. there are a couple of "outs" written into the game, but it is a great hour of suspense and you oughta check it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the answers to the
"five for friday"

name the five classic film stars

1.

william powell
(and brian is so right, don't miss bill and...






2.

...myrna loy in the thin man and the four wonderful sequels as well! they're terrific!)






3.

boris karloff
frankenstein and the narrator of how the grinch stole christmas






4.

bette davis
whatever happened to baby jane and all about eve







5.

edward g. robinson
little caesar and double indemnity

now go netflix a movie by any one of them--you'll be glad you did!


okay--gotta go!
have a cool monday!
smell ya later!
todd

under the bed

okay...


because everybody seemed to dig our perhapanauts halloween scary story contest, and because i, sadly, have some funerary obligations today, i'm going to resort to my old trick of plugging (stealing from) one of my favorite spooky stories sites--YOUR TRUE TALES over at paranormal@about .com.
enjoy.

Your True Tales
November 2008

Under the Bed
by Phillip W.

This story took place in a small town in Alabama. Back in the early 1980s, my aunt lived in a house that was located literally in the middle of nowhere. The place used to creep out my younger brother and me, but we loved to go there because my aunt had four children. The house was very old and it had all wooden floors.

There was always an uneasy feeling when we were inside. For the most part, not much happened that was out of the ordinary when we were there. There were a lot of noises during the night, though. On several occasions, I heard floorboards creaking, as if someone were walking around. Most of this seemed to be coming from upstairs and sometimes in the hallway downstairs that connects the front of the house to the back rooms. Sometimes I also heard a thumping sound from upstairs at night. The thing is, no one stayed upstairs ever. There was just a spare room, a bathroom, and some small storage spaces up there. My aunt's room was downstairs, and we all stayed in a room down the hall from hers.

I rationalized that the sounds were caused by the wind, or the fact that the house was so old, and really never thought twice about it. I refused to ever go upstairs though. The thought that the place could be haunted never really crossed my mind. I just thought it was a creepy old house -- that is, until one night in particular.

Bedtime had come a long time ago, but us being kids we stayed awake and goofed around for a while. Eventually, we all fell asleep. This night I seemed to have a lot of trouble staying asleep though. I kept waking up periodically for no apparent reason. On about the fourth time waking up, I thought I felt a poke on the heel of my foot, which is what woke me. I rolled over and looked around the room, but nothing was out of the ordinary. I lay back down and tried to go back to sleep. After I had laid there for about five minutes, I started to hear a tapping sound. I listened for a minute, and that was when I came to the terrifying realization that the sound was coming from underneath my bed!

I was too afraid to look under it, so I just tried to ignore it and pretended to go to sleep. After it did it for almost 10 minutes, the tapping suddenly stopped. What happened next I will never forget for as long as I live. There was a lone window in the room, and that night the curtains were pulled back. I was facing the window, and just moments after the tapping stopped, a white transparent figure slowly moved past the window from right to left. It seemed to be walking on the front porch, which covered the entire front of the house. The figure appeared to have a glow to it, kind of like the moon has.

Needless to say, I was horrified. I froze in terror, with my eyes fixed on the window. My heart pounded so that it felt as if it could jump out of my chest. Fortunately I didn't see it again. I tried to rationalize what I had just seen, but I couldn't. We were in the middle of nowhere! There were no roads, no cars, no nothing, just a long dirt road and a bunch of trees. Everyone else was asleep, so I was the only one who saw this. I was too scared to sleep after that, so I just lay there for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I was thinking about what I had seen, and I remembered that sometimes my aunt would hang clothes out to dry on the front porch. This must have been what I had seen, right? Maybe it was a sheet or something. I asked her at breakfast if she had left any clothes out on the porch last night. She said she didn't dry anything at all the day before. There was no other explanation for what I had seen. Honestly, I really didn't think a sheet could have looked like that anyway. This thing's movement was too animated to be a sheet. I guess I just wanted to think that. After this incident I didn't want to stay there anymore, but luckily they moved not long after that anyway. To this day, I believe that this was something paranormal. Because there just is no other explanation, and I was definitely awake.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"five for friday!"
one thing that i find a little sad, as i get older and this crazy world seems to spin faster and faster, is how audiences these days, weened on hyper-paced, hand-held, almost seizure inducing films now find many of the classic black and white movies from the 30's, 40's, and 50's to be too slow, too tame, and too boring...
it makes me sad too to think that some of the very talented stars of those films might one day be totally forgotten.
in an effort to keep at least a few of them from fading into obscurity,
name the five classic film stars

1.








2.








3.







4.









5.


now go netflix a movie by any one of them--you'll be glad you did!


have a great weekend!
smell ya later!
todd

bits and pieces

okay...



cell phone

i was working a few years ago with a guy who went through, like, five of them in four months. he just had no luck with them. our favorite was when he got the fourth one, left it on the bumper of his truck and headed down the long dirt driveway with it. we could see it just bouncing there, but it didn't fall off. we whistled and yelled and waved our arms, and somehow he heard us and stopped.
that's when the phone fell off the bumper.
and then he proceeded to back back up the driveway to see what we were yelling about.
we started yelling, "no! no! no–"
crunch.

pulverized.

we laughed so hard, we cried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


just a sample of the artwork of joe pogan, a myspace friend whose sculptures just amaze me.
check out more of his stuff at www.joepogan.com

smell ya later!
todd

our own leanne

okay...

short one today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

leanne hannah is our own little triple threat. she's a fan, a friend, and a fantastic artist!
you've seen her post comments here on the boards from time to time and i'm sure that i told you that she has already finished doing the artwork for her first perhapanauts story--a molly ghost story which was written by our other good pal, scott weintstein and will be featured in the >sigh< upcoming halloween issue--and is eagerly awaiting the script for her second story. (which will be coming shortly, leanne, once i get out from under this mountain of work i'm buried under.)

she is talented, fast, and fun!

she is also the biggest karl fan there is.

i met leanne, however, when she timidly, quietly, offered up the original pencil drawing to the below tellos pin-up that she did as a tribute to mike. actually, i think it was more her husband, rod, who acted as her champion on that, introducing himself at our table in ...charlotte, right rod? and telling me of leanne's talent and shyness. (not so shy anymore now that you're part of the team, eh, leanne?) i was thrilled and touched by her pin-up and she told me that she would send it over when she had a chance to color it.

she sent it over a few months ago, i just hadn't known when to post it.

but here it is, folks-- i love it and thought you would too.



this is jared and charlie.
thanks for everything, leanne!
i'll get you that new script soon!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the answers to the
"five for friday"
supporting cast questions--

1. what was ed norton's wife's name on the honeymooners?

trixie

2. what was kramer's first name?

cosmo

3. what is alfred's last name?

pennyworth

4. what is jarvis' last name?

it is a trick question--his name is edwin jarvis

5. not in the title, what girls' names
are mentioned in the lyrics of these
classic rock/pop tunes...?

a. born to run

wendy

b. don't fear the reaper

juliet
(i maintain that they're saying "come on, mary" in the chorus, but kc--ever the studious researcher--says, sorry, no. i'm gonna call up buck dharma and make him change it, 'cause "come on, mary" is cooler...and that's the way it is in MY memory...)



c. more than a feeling

mary ann

d. is she really going out with him?

jeannie

e. fire and rain

suzanne





smell ya later!
todd

have a great weekend!

okay...

it's funny. i really had no intention of writing a "suspenseful" blog entry the other day--i simply wanted to reassure everyone that, though we've fallen behind schedule with the perhapanauts, craig and i are devoted to it--and you--and will continue to do the best we can to get it out as regular as possible. i didn't mean to scare any one.
but in that i unconsciously did, i can't tell you how much your comments and e-mails reassuring US made all the difference. craig and i have both been feeling a bit guilty, like we've dropped the ball, and reading your enthusiastic encouragements got us both back up and in the game.
so thank you.
all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

since it's been solicited in the most recent previews now, i guess it would be okay to post this awesome cover that chris did for his upcoming modern masters--a book/interview that we've been working on for a while now...
if you're a chris sprouse fan--and who isn't?!--you won't want to miss this!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"five for friday"
supporting cast questions--

1. what was ed norton's wife's name on the honeymooners?

2. what was kramer's first name?

3. what is alfred's last name?

4. what is jarvis' last name?

5. not in the title, what girls' names
are mentioned in the lyrics of these
classic rock/pop tunes...?

a. born to run

b. don't fear the reaper

c. more than a feeling

d. is she really going out with him?

e. fire and rain

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

have a great weekend!



smell ya later!
todd

addressing the issue...

okay...

while i've mentioned it here from time to time before, putting out your own monthly comic book--even with all of the magnificent help that image offers--is a lotta work. and, though i'm sure that many of you believe that if we're doing our own comic book we must be raking in the dough, we're really making no money. in reality, we are so 180º away from making money that it's just not funny. we have actually invested a lot more money into our latest image run of the all-new, all-different perhapanauts than we could really hope to recoup. and that's as we try to forget what we threw into the dark horse runs...
i don't mean to sound like i'm crying.

'cause the truth is, we LOVE this book! we LOVE the characters! we LOVE the stories! and we LOVE working together on it!



but still...not paying the bills.

in the current comic book market, a book needs to sell around 5000 copies to break even. to make any money at all for it's creators, it needs to get up around 6500. as did our run at dark horse, we've been averaging somewhere around 3200.

we do it 'cause we love it. and we love YOU 'cause you love it.
and we're gonna keep doing it for a long, long time.



however, we DO need to pay the bills.
and that's why the perhapanauts--originally scheduled to be a monthly book--has been more like a month-and-a-halfly. or a two-monthly. (oh, wait--that's bi-monthly.) fortunately, craig and i have both been blessed with some absolutely great work from marvel, craig aon the spider-man loves mary jane series, me on marvel adventures spider-man. and we'vbe both been given even more work in the last few weeks to keep us actually making money for the next year or so (more on this cool news later...!)

but see, that's where things slow down for our perhapanauts. the paying work needs to take priority. 'cause, y'know, it's paying. and while we long for a time when the perhapanauts might be paying, until then the other stuff has to take precedence.

so we apologize--profusely--for the delays and uneven schedule.
and we thank you, more than you could know, for your understanding and patience.



the way things look, perhapanauts 5 will be out just before christmas, and issue 6--our halloween special!--will be out in late january (take that simpson's treehouse of horror!)


--mike ploog halloween cover--


thank you, again, for your patience and understanding.
todd and craig

never a doubt in my mind...

okay...

my dear, dear friend, walt, 'e'd me the other day to let me know where i could find--and steal--the series of church sign photos i was talking about the other day.
and so here they are.

...along with my little diatribe on a little of what i believe.
i wrote this last week--in the moment--and, as i read it over today i realize that there may be one or two of you out there who might take some small offense in what i say here. if so, please, my apologies. all i'm saying here is that there are a few matters where my own personal beliefs deviate a bit from the traditional dogma (no pun intended.)

enjoy!












there was never a doubt in my mind...

as a kid, i was a happy little sunday school/church goer. i had lots of friends there--alison being one of my closest--and we would sing and play and sit through the sermon together, writing notes to each other and sharing whatever candy we got between sunday school and church up the block at the corner store. it was a fun time and a wonderful time.

but i had learned at a very early age, maybe when i was about 9 or 10, that i didn't believe all of it and that i could still be right with God believing the things that I wanted to believe that might actually go against the tenets that all these older people were so sternly whipping around. when i was about 9, as i said, our family dog, sniffy, passed away and my mom told me that i'd see her again in heaven. at church the following sunday, i was abruptly corrected by one of the respected elders of the church telling me that animals do not possess souls and so they do not go to heaven. i told him, rather sharply i guess, that he could go straight to hell, and decided that these guys really couldn't be trusted interpreting the word of God. (i was usually a rather shy and well-behaved kid, so you can imagine how this went over.) that was the first day i realized that, when it comes to all of that, i was pretty much on my own.

(just as an addendum: my next go-to with these nay-sayers was a few years later when my enthusiasm for bigfoot had me dropping the term "missing link" in just about all of my conversations. here, i was smartly corrected and told that there could be no "missing link" as God created man from the clay in his image. humbled and defeated, i slunk away...but was surreptitiously grabbed and pulled into a nearby doorway by yet another one of the consistory and told that HE believed in both--that if you widened your mind a little, evolution and creationism can really be the same story! i was set free!)

anyway, i never had any doubt. i KNOW that i'll be chillin' with jake--and my other two 'kids', hank and gretchen--in the afterlife. and mike. and my mom. and that we're gonna be able to fly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

trying to plan ahead this year (and this never works for me...), i started thinking about ideas for this year's christmas card. not that i am any kind of artist, but i did promise that, now that i have a cool scanner, i would share my homemade cards from the past, like, 15 years or so as the holidays approach. this weekend i went up and dug out my old portfolio, dusted off the pile of junk that was in there and got the cards in order.
i also found this, done way back in 1994, when i was still working on my first ever professional comic book for marvel, x-factor. i was a huge x-factor--and especially, strong guy--fan way before i got the gig and was ecstatic when i learned that I would be the one chronicling their adventures!! actually, ecstatic doesn't cover it.
i had fast become friends with my editor, the lovely and talented, kelly corvese, and remember doing this up as a birthday card. i think he liked it.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

and here are the
answers to the
"five for friday"

1. which kellogg's character wears a baker's hat?

snap

2. what was the name of the captain of the mayflower?

christopher jones

3. what famous horror magazine, abbreviated FM, was published by forrest j ackerman from 1957 to 1983?

famous monsters (of filmland)

4. who played the bizarre method actor, max schreck, in the 2000 film, shadow of the vampire?

willem dafoe

5. some classic rock trivia--

a. who was "born in a cross-fire hurricane?"

jumping jack flash

b. "woke last night to the sound of thunder,
how far off i sat and wondered,
started hummin' a song from 1962..."

night moves by bob segar

c. the band lynyrd skynyrd was named after who?

the boys' high school gym teacher, leonard skinnerd

d. "with this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground."

blinded by the light by manfred mann's earth band
written by bruce springsteen

e. "And I'll lie too and say I don't mind
And as we seek so shall we find
And when you're feeling open I'll still be here
But not without a certain degree of fear
Of what will be with you and me
I still can see things hopefully"

run-around by blues traveler


smell ya later!
todd

not meant to be

okay...

for those of you in the southwest, craig will be appearing at the wizardworld texas con this weekend!
if you're in the area, stop by and tell him 'howdy!' and pick up some perhapanauts stuff so his trip won't be for nothing!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a week ago, sharon sent me an email--many of you probably saw it somewhere as these things tend to make the rounds--featuring a series of photos of two churches in the south having a rather public--and humorous--debate about whether dogs go to heaven or not on the signboards outside their churches.
i thought it was funny, wrote up my own little story about it, and planned to post it here. unfortunately, the jpgs of the photos were so small that you wouldn't be able to read them, thus negating the whole thing.
it was gonna be right here, but i had to put it away. maybe, if i can find those pictures at a readable size, i'll post it again.

instead, here are a couple of halloween pics sent to me by our pal, ernie cooper!
this one is of ernie and his pal, peter griffin...





and another of his friend, rebecca modeling some of the evening's awesome blood-red freaktoberfest beer!





also, here's a dog who is very mad about his costume...
(folks, dogs don't like bein' dressed up...)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"five for friday"

1. which kellogg's character wears a baker's hat?

2. what was the name of the captain of the mayflower?

3. what famous horror magazine, abbreviated FM, was published by forrest j ackerman from 1957 to 1983?

4. who played the bizarre method actor, max schreck, in the 2000 film, shadow of the vampire?

5. some classic rock trivia--

a. who was "born in a cross-fire hurricane?"

b. "woke last night to the sound of thunder,
how far off i sat and wondered,
started hummin' a song from 1962..."

c. the band lynyrd skynyrd was named after who?

d. "with this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground."

e. "And I'll lie too and say I don't mind
And as we seek so shall we find
And when you're feeling open I'll still be here
But not without a certain degree of fear
Of what will be with you and me
I still can see things hopefully"


have a great weekend!
smell ya later!
todd

now's the time.

okay...

our own brian mulcahy sent out the get-out-the-vote word yesterday on the image forums perhapanauts message board and there was a great response to it all. it's good to see so many people interested in the election's outcome--wasn't always that way, y'know--and, while our recent economic developments are mostly responsible, i think that there were a lot of people who were just tired of being led down a road we never agreed to go down.

but regardless of your political affiliations and your beliefs, this IS a time of change. as all of the lauded guests (or are they conspiracy theorists?) agree on my new favorite obsession, coast to coast a.m., 2009 is to be a year of great change and many wonderful new discoveries! (of course, they're divining this from the stars and ancient prophesies, the mayan calendar and tesla's ghost, but they've been pretty right before...)

but we can make a change.
let me re-phrase that...WE can make a change.

this is a brand new day and i can tell you from my years of wearing what karl kesel refers to as my "big, loopy grin" that a positive attitude really--truly--makes all the difference in the world.
help others.
forgive easily.
be happy.


on craig's response to brian's election post, he added--

"this is an exciting and monumental moment for this country... and yet, sadly, there's still gonna be some folks who can't wrap their heads around this... read this quote in an AP story and it made me sad... and honestly confused how some people can see things SO differently...

A 73 year old retired accountant used words like "very disappointed" and "afraid" in considering an Obama presidency.

"I'm very afraid that we're going to lose our freedoms, that the country will be controlled by almost a dictator."

really?"


yes, a lot of americans, and, i fear, a lot of older americans are now as anxious as we've been for the last 8, fueled by all those stories and the propaganda that gets spouted out there before, during, and after an election. the outrageous becomes the accepted and fear is a powerful, powerful agent.

but we can help them. we can be patient and understanding and compassionate and help to reassure them that things are going to be alright. better than alright.
this is going to be an amazing time. a time for science and invention, for nature and our planet, for getting on the right track to create a future--and a country--we can be proud of. now's the time.

God bless america
and our new president
and all of you~


and i will smell you later!
todd

scary story contest: and the winner is...

okay...



well, i absolutely HATE being a judge in any contest, especially contests that involve creativity. i feel that EVERY artist (or writer--although i count them as artists also...) puts SO much of themselves into their work that it can't be anything BUT personal! and how do you judge a da vinci against a rembrandt against a van gogh against a picasso...? ALL of it is wonderful!

so, i made five of my friends do it...

and so here, having read through and collated their various notes and choices, is some of the feedback on our amazing entries. (there were all really good weren't they...?)

uriel's story/essay on cockroaches illicited some crawly responses...

mike's was noted as an interesting beginning...

one judge absolutely loved the historical nature of adam's hanging tale...

casey's tale drew comments for the romantic aspect of it and the power of love even over death...

gretchen's story about her grandfather made 2 of the judges cry...

jared's story got comments on both how well written it was and the spot-on pacing...

tagg's story--about the empty school and the janitor/ghost was easy for everyone to identify with...we've all been in deserted school hallways...(also noted was the freddy kruger factor...nice!)

christian's was noted as the most creepy, brian's just a bit too creepy...

ernie's story had unanimous comments for how very well-written and suspenseful it was (and was a very close contender for first place in a 2 to 3 split...)

but in the end, the judges choice for scariest story in our perhapanauts scary story halloween contest is...

Daisy Was a Good Dog by Warren Newsom!

comments from judges were that the story touched them more than the others (probably because of the dog...) and that the danger/threat remained unknown...and that's REALLY scary!

so congratulations, warren!!
though i have a picture of you from charlotte, please send a pic or two over for craig. oh, and your address--you got some stuff comin'!

thank you so much to EVERYBODY who took part in this more-fun-than-i'd-anticipated contest! you are all, as i've said, winners and every one of these entries helped to make our halloween season that much spookier! thanks!

i would also like to thank my 5 secret judges--and i will let their identities remain secret so that no one eggs their houses and so that maybe they might do this for us again... : )--thanks so much for your time and patience with me getting alla these entries to you! you made me job so much easier...

thanks to everyone!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~HALLOWEEN~~
"five for friday"...
name that ghost!

1. which shakespeare play features the ghost of the protagonist's father appearing to reveal the identity of his murderer?

hamlet

2. what ghost psychiatrist counciled a young boy who could see the dead?

dr. malcolm crowe

3. who played the recently-dead, reluctantly-evicted ghosts adam and barbara maitland in beetlejuice?

alec baldwin and geena davis

4. who is the friendliest ghost you know?

casper

5. what was the name of the ghost that haunted heathcliff's broken heart in wuthering heights?

cathy


smell ya later!
todd


i am so trying to win this on ebay--boo!