THANK YOU

When we stopped busing this evening, we had raised $635,415.04 for Child’s Play.

$635,415.04.

That is insane. Crazy, mind-boggling, weird, and totally wonderful.

The Desert Bus community is the very best community. Your generosity, kindness, humour, and general awesome keeps us doing what we do and together we raise an incredible amount of a very worthy charity.

So, thank you. Thank you for all you do for us and all you do for Child’s Play.

And congratulations. You are amazing.

If you’re not *quite* ready to be done with Desert Bus, please consider filling out our survey, so we can get to know a little more about you as we start planning for *gulp* Desert Bus 9.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/M3QYMJ5

This may be one of our last Donation Drives of Desert Bus for Hope 8, so make sure you get in on it!

We’ve set the bar pretty low on this one: it’s only $5.00 to get in! Before 10pm local time, donate $5.00 or a multiple thereof for an entry into the draw for the Mini Mystery Box! What’s in it? I don’t know! I’m not sure anyone knows!

(Yes, I know that’s only in two minutes, but how long does it take to make a $50 donation?!)

Taking a glance at our overlay, it appears that we have about 3 hours of bussing left, so let’s reflect a little on Paul’s rather extraordinary shift:

• We surpassed the Desert Bus 7 total (it was about $523k) and thereby became the earningest Desert Bus for Hope of all time! Of all time! As of right now, we’re sitting just above $600k, with a few earning hours still left to go!

• CBC Radio’s As It Happens covered us! The beloved interview-news program has is enjoyed across Canada and is even exported to other countries around the world!

• Paul’s shift surpassed $75,000 or so and became the earningest single shift in Desert Bus history! Of course, he passed that hours ago so as of press time he’s cruising somewhere above $140,000 and getting near to doubling the single-shift record!
• In fact, Paul’s shift alone has surpassed the entire amount raised by DB3!

• The muchly signed PS4 & PAX challenge coin became the earningest donation drive in Desert Bus history, bringing in $32,000 and more than doubling the old record of $14,000!

• We surpassed $600,000! Nice milestone!

• According to some funky James-rithmatic, since we’ve started, we’ve averaged $1.08 per second! WHAT.

According to the scoreboard we still have three hours of bussing left — plenty of time for some last minute surprises to come up!

Paul’s “Earn Every Dime” contest has a winner! Laserbeaks Fury was the winner for this clever little stanza:

Come all you fine girls of human descent.
You robots and aliens, with British accents.
I’ll tell you a story of toil and of strife
And the hardship that comes with a companion’s life

Well it’s off in the TARDIS to no one knows when.
Might be yesterday’s morning or the future again.
But you gotta keep running from all the nightmares,
Unless it’s a Dalek, then climb up some stairs.

And it’s hard, buddy, it’s hard
Travellin’ through all Space and Time
Well it’s hard, bucko, it’s hard
A companion earns every dime

Genius! Laserbeaks wins a Paul lenticular gif and some additional pig sweeteners besides!

Fangamer is the official supplier of Desert Bus 8 t-shirts, with proceeds from sales during the run going to Desert Bus for Hope! Founded in 2008, Fangamer specializes in creating unique accessories, apparel, figurines, and other merchandise based on your favourite games and geek fandoms. If you want an oven mitt that looks like a Power Glove or some post-it notes shaped like Nintendo cartridges, they’ve got you covered. But that’s not all; they also host podcasts, reach out to the community through Fanfests and conventions, and contribute to charity events—like Desert Bus for Hope! We are incredibly grateful to Fangamer for their generosity, and you can order your Desert Bus t-shirts RIGHT NOW; no pre-orders necessary!

You’ll never guess what we just did! As of a few minutes ago, we’ve officially eclipsed the grand total of Desert Bus 7, thereby making

Desert Bus for Hope 8 the most successful Desert Bus ever!

As of right now, we’re at about $555,000 and are scheduled for 156 hours of bussing! Huge thanks to all of you for tuning in, donating, and helping us help the children!

Workers of the world, unite!

Think your job is hard? Can you can express your daily grind through song? If you answered “yes” to both those questions, this is the contest for you!

Driver Paul recently treated us to a stirring rendition of “A Folksinger Earns Every Dime” and challenged you viewers to rewrite a portion of the song — let’s say a verse and the chorus — about your job! (For reference, you can find the full lyrics to the song here.)

The best entry will receive a Paul lenticular prize pack, sweetened with a D&D Dragon Ampersand sticker, some picnic chocolate, some Desert Bus For Hope 8 patches, AND Paul will sing your entry, live on the stream!

To enter, send your entry to [email protected] and use the subject line “Earns Every Dime”! The contest closes at 6pm local time!

It’s often said that you never know what’s going to happen here at Desert Bus, and for good reason. Moments ago we had a call from Penn Jillette, the selfsame Penn of Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, which is pretty awesome to begin with. But that was far from the end of it. Being an excellent fellow and great friend of our little enterprise, Penn spontaneously put up an incredible Las Vegas prize package for auction:

• 2 tickets to Penn and Teller‘s Live show in Las Vegas
• 2 nights in a suite at the Rio in Las Vegas
• Round of golf at Cascata with Emily Jillette
• 2 Tickets to Mac King
• 2 Tickets to David Copperfield
• Limo to and from the airport
• If you’re nice to Emily Jillette, she will also take you to dinner
• If you arrive by BUS, you can visit them at their house =)

As it looked like we were about to declare a winner, Penn dropped another bomb on us, something that had never happened before in Desert Bus history… he announced that the top three bidders would all receive the prize package! Boom. Our three, three, three winners who will soon be painting the town red in the City of Sin were:

1. mugenity @ $7,700
2. Impsy @ $7,613
3. omega_lairon @ $7,500

(Put those numbers together, by the way, and you come up with the formidable sum of $22,813.)

Formed in 2011 as the collaboration between siblings Steven Dengler and Ash Vickers, MegaCynics is a webcomic that follows the wonderful interactions in their lives. It is a story that encompasses video games, popular culture, hockey, friendship, family, sibling rivalry, nature vs nurture, good vs evil, wealth vs poverty, black magic vs atheism, and giant anacondas vs robot gorillas.

Steven Dengler is the Co-Founder, Co-Writer, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Megacycnics. Steve is well known to Desert Bus fans as a longtime sponsor and the King of Desertbus.

Ash Vickers is the Co-Founder, Co-Writer, Creative Director, and Lead Artist. Ash is well known to Desert Bus fans as the founder of Shame Tickets, being an awesome event manager, and her not-so-secret love of Speed Racer.

We appreciate everything that MegaCynics has done for us and welcome them back as a Sponsor!

We have just been in a Skype call with Penn Jillette, and he has given us a bit of a surprise LIVE AUCTION

– 2 tickets to Penn and Teller’s Live show in Las Vegas

– 2 nights in a suite at the Rio in Las Vegas

– Round of golf at Cascata with Emily Jillette

– 2 Tickets to Mac King

– 2 Tickets to David Copperfield

– limo to and from the airport

– if you’re nice to Emily Jillette, she will also take you to dinner

– if you arrive by BUS, you can visit them at their house =)

I apologize for the lack of GIF’s but this is happening RIGHT FREAKING NOW!!!!