Do you want 2 tickets to the Child’s Play Charity Gala?

Head to http://desertbus.org/silent-auction-item/281/ and put in your bets!

Chapter 8 comes to us from 2nd time author Joshua:

Butts lept to his feet and charged Dong, trying to tackle him to the ground. Dong threw him aside, but Butts was able to pull off a piece of Dong’s sleeve, revealing a tattoo all too familiar to Butts, but one he had never seen on his old pal and former detective Dong-Ki-Kong.

“That tattoo, that’s the same as the Themiston cartel’s!” Butts gasped.  “How could you join them Dong? They killed Russ, they even killed your old partner Diddles!”

“Correction, Butts, I killed Russ and Diddles. He was getting too close, he knew too much for his own good Butts, so I took him out,” said Dong with a very unsettling smile. Rage burned in detective Butts’s eyes as he pulled himself up from the ground. He spit out one of his teeth as he reached for his gun.

“What are you trying to do Butts. There’s no way you’ll be able to pull your gun out before I give you a mouth full of buckshot”

“Why, Dong? Just tell me why you killed him. Why you betrayed us all”

“Money, Butts, just the money. Cartels pay nicely, as do the terrorists that hired me to take you two out.”

“What about the children, Dong? What about them? You’re robbing a charity Dong. How can you sleep at night?”

“Bus the children! Bus em’ all to the pit of bussville!”

Suddenly Dong felt a horrible pain in his shoulder. Behind him layed a horribly injured Dengler.

“You missed!” Dong said to Dengler with a laugh.

“I won’t,” said Butts as he let a round escape the barrel of his pistol. Dong turned back just in time to greet the bullet as it lodged itself in his chest. He fell to the ground and dropped his shotgun as he coughed up a mouthful of blood. Butts stumbled over and picked up Dong’s shotgun, taking aim with it at Dong’s head.

“Butts, y… you wouldn’t.” Dong said between coughs of blood. “Y… you know Russ wouldn’t want this, he wou… wouldn’t want you to ki..kill me for him. He wouldn’t want y…you the become a murderer for him.”

Not only have we surpassed last year’s total by over $100,000, for a total of $311,000.00 so far!

We have raised over $750,000 in the 5 years we’ve been doing Desert Bus.

That is 3/4 of a million dollars.

And we still have 8 hours left to go!

At 1:00PM, we will be joined by Russ Pitts, former Editor-in-Chief of the Escapist and good friend of LoadingReadyRun, who will be calling to wish us well, and chat with us for a bit. Russ has been in the games press for a while, and has been a driving force in making new media more accessible and interactive for end users. He’s a great guy, and we look forward to chatting with him.  Currently his writing can most often be found at his blog, http://www.falsegravity.com/

If you have anything you’d like to ask Russ about, you can post it in the comments for this post. Tune in to hear what he has to say!

I have to say, when I got in this morning and saw this collection of artwork, I was a little concerned. Amused, mind you, but concerned. What happened while I was away?!?!

Adam “The Garbaler” judged these himself and the winner is:

With a close 2nd and a good chuckle going to:

And 3rd place:

A big thank you to everyone who submitted and made wading through your submissions an interesting morning adventure  :)

Wil Wheaton, actor/writer and occasional LoadingReadyRun special guest, has always shown himself to be a genuinely nice guy, (even if he doesn’t always play one on TV). It’s not then surprising then that the law of Internet civility was given his name (Wheaton’s Law).  With acting credits ranging from Star Trek: The Next Generation, to Big Bang Theory, to Leverage, to The Guild, and writing credits including Just a Geek, Memories of the Future: Volume 1,  and Happiest Days of our Lives, Wil is well known as a Geek Icon.

He’s calling in at 10:00AM, have your questions ready and tune in then!

We hit $300,000 at 8:00AM on what will almost certainly be our last day (unless some deranged millionaire gets us going for another day, which would be awesome, but heartbreaking). We couldn’t more thrilled, since most of us are exhausted!

In honor of the Giant Creepy Doll auction, we held a Creepy Doll Art Auction! We’ got more art for this one than any other contest so far, over 85 entries! But at the end, we chose this one by Rhiannon:

The first runner up was this one, ALSO by someone named Rhiannon! I thought they were by the same person when I was sorting them (and trust me, this was CLOSE: BOTH of these are amazing).

Here’s a few other great entries (like the one from our forum friend Tensen):

Or this spooky one from Kelsey:

Here’s all the entries in one convenient location! There’s so much gold here, I’m gonna grab an ice pick and call myself Jeb, by cracky!

And one entry that was too late to be considered, but I wanted to include, is below.

We’ve been bussing for four straight days now. When you’re awake for that long, silliness undoubtedly ensues. Here’s some of the silly pictures that the chat and other fans have sent us.

Here’s a fan-submitted lyric sheet for the Twelve Days of Busmas:

On the twelfth day of Desert Bus,
The Moonbase gave to me,
Twelve hour shifts,
Eleven special guests,
Ten knitted plushies,
Nine Butts and Denglers,
Eight movie posters,
Seven men in dresses,
Six silly dances,
Five dollar facts!
Four ThinkGeek shirts,
Three Krashton fics,
Two DVDs,
And a portrait by Ken Steacy!

A portrait by Ken Steacy!
Llladies.

And here’s a great little haiku from Ojii:
砂漠には / 舞いの運ちゃん / キャラメルの
さばくには / まいのうんちゃん / キャラメルの
sabaku ni ha / mai no unchan / kyarameruno
In the desert / the dancing driver / the caramell

- ojii (Jonas O.)

AlexanderDitto challenged us to gather one fact from every person who visited the Moonbase over the past 5 days. Once Kathleen finished her shift this evening, she read the all aloud. And here they are!

01) “Pandas are more closely related to raccoons than Bears.” – Steve Butts

02) “All calico cats are female by genetic requirement.” – Kristen Lindsay

03) “Many corgis have specific colour patterns. People used to believe they were counts for fairies.” – Jamie Dillion

04) “John Roderick is the unofficial mascot of Xbox Kinect by the name of Captain Kinect.” – Stepto

05) “Grant Imahara has double-jointed thumbs.” – Grant Imahara

06) “Magneta is not actually a colour.” – LeeLee

07) “Cephalopods are not actually sharks.” – Ian

08) “It takes 10 floors for an elevator’s emergency breaks to kick in.” – Robert Khoo

09) “The whiptail lizard is almost all female, but they can reproduce silulating sex with other lady lizards, which will stimulate themselves into releasing a genetic clone of themselves.” – Jim Sterling

10) “Pomegranates grow wild in Afghanistan.” – Dix

11) “You cannot talk while inhaling through your nose.” – Mike Robles

12) “The pangolin’s tongue starts way down in the bottom of their ribcage.” – DoctorVancouver

13) “A group of mallard ducks is a ‘sword’ of ducks.” – Jer

14) “A pregnant goldfish is called a ‘twit’.” – Kate

15) “You can’t move your foot clockwise while you move your hand counter-clockwise.” – Kim

16) “Bison will sacrifice one of the herd to try and escape wolves.” – Bill

17) “Helium is a byproduct of nuclear decay and we are running out.” – Alex

18) “In 1983, Bill was the biggest baby born in the Huntsville Ont. hospital.” – Kate, Bill’s Mom

19) “Plants vs. Zombies was originally going to be named ‘Lawn of the Dead’ but it was changed due to licensing issues.” – Jeff Green

20) “There is a Bejeweled backstory.” – Jeff Green

21) “7-11′s head office is in Japan.” – Ian

22) “John Patrick Flatery, a.k.a. the voice of Sniper in Team Fortress 2, is married to Ellen McLean, voice of GladOS.” -Yahtzee

23) “Turtles like to eat pumpkin pie filling.” – Veronica Belmont

24) “The highest grossing family film of all time adjusted for inflation is the first muppet movie.” – MovieBob

25) “Bees will not fill in a space exactly 2 bees in size.” – Neil Gaiman

26) “At the time, the original Ninja Turtles movie was the highest grossing indy film of all time.” – Sam Logan

27) “A neutron start is so dense that if a piece the size of a sugar cube were to sit on the surface of the earth would weigh as much as all the cars in the USA combined.” – Phil Plait

28) “You cannot keep your eyes open when you sneeze.” – Ken Steacy

29) “The name Pez comes from the first, middle, and last letters in the German word for peppermint, ‘Phetterminz.’ The first candies were peppermint and came in dispensers shaped like lighters.” – Psychopez

30) “Mario was named after one of Nintendo America’s landlords.” – Peter Sagal

31) “Real buses tend to go faster than those in Sega CD’s.” – Dostrow

32) “Sea urchins do not age.” – Andre

33) “Slimer’s original name was ‘Onion Head’” – Peter Cline

34) “At one point Monte Cook could recite all of Ghost Busters from beginning to end.” – Monte Cook

35) “Liz is the coolest person Graham has ever met.” – Liz

36) “In the game Borderlands, the motion capture for the character Lilith in the opening bus ride scene was done by Mikey Neumann.” – Mikey Neumann

37) “Yaks milk is pink.” – Felicia Day

38) “Steve proposed to Kim Stockwood, of ‘Jerk’ fame.” – Steve

39) “The throaty noise pilots make is to stay on the airspace and let other pilots know that they cannot talk.” – Ash

40) “Horses can generalize.” – Notch

41) “Cows have anal muscles.” – C418

42) “Telltale has its very own Narnia.” – Seg (Ümloud)

43) “The original “Drink the Kool-Aid” came from the Georgetown massacre, but they really drank Flavor-Aid.” – Uberbeth

44) “The only sport for which the rules stipulate that you must play left handed is polo.” – Susan Arenott

45) “Hinged scissors were invented by the Romans in ~100AD.” – Tally

46) “Valve has an email set up for ‘gayben@valve.com’ because of how Gabe Newell pronounces his address.” -

47) “Sean Becker has never and will never eat a McRib.” – Sean Becker

48) “Pringles are mandated to be referred to as ‘potato crisps’ because chip manufacturers couldn’t compete.” – J. McElroy

49) “The first time Graham heard ‘Africa’ was the rap cover by Karl Wolf.” – Graham

50) ” The ‘over 9000′ meme dialogue was originally 8000 but was changed to fit the lip syncing.” – Paul

51) “Ben Edlund, creator of ”The Tick’ wrote the Firefly episode ‘Jayne’s Town’ including writing the song, ‘The Hero of Canton.’” – Johnny

52) “As a Freemason, Beej wants to be clear that it is not a ‘Secret Society’ but a ‘Society with Secrets’” – Beej

53) “The Bayer filter is 50% green, 25% red, and 25% blue because photos would look weird otherwise.” – Cori

54) “HillaryDuff.com and YugiohTheAbridgedSeries.com both use the same ‘custom’ site coding.” – Kroze

55) “Inside the human eye, the retina, is wired backwards. The light has to pass the nerves and connecting cells to reach the photoreceptor cells that will receive the light.” – Tina Hollands.

56) “Stephen Fry smells like roses and cologne.” – Molly Lewis

57) “Molly Lewis’ nickname as a little girl was Gorbachev, which was sometimes shortened to ‘Gorby’” – Molly Lewis’ Mom

58) “McDonald’s french fries taste different in Japan.” – Ashley Allman

59) “The suggested serving for the 1/2 lb. Reese’s cup is 1/6 of it.” – Keldane

60) “It’s bad luck for sailors to clink their glasses when they toast. The sound too closely ressembles the sound of the bell that tolls when a sailor is lost at sea.” – Brent

61) “It is illegal to die in the houses of parliament.” – Jaimie

62) “Black ants can bite, but they can only bite once.” – Kara

63) “Rhinos only run in a straight line.” – Ashton

64) “Carrots used to be purple.” – Chris

65) “According to Canadian minor hockey, when a referee drops the puck at the beginning of a period he faces the timeclock, but when he drops the puck during the middle of a period, he faces the players’ benches so he can watch out for any shenanigans.” – Matt

66) “Elephants purposefully eat fermented fruit juice to get drunk.” – Jess

67) “If an acronym is not pronounceable as a word (CIA, KDI, etc.) it is actually an initialism.” – Small Ian

68) “JoCo was a Level 5 Juvenile Theif.” – Johnathan Coulton

Thanks to AlexanderDitto for the fun and creative challenge!