Gardenia #163

"Your Greatest Fan"
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Gardenia #162

"EWE're Being Watched"
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia531.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia532.html

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Gardenia #161

"All of us serving EWES"
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Gardenia #160

"At The Bank"
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Gardenia #159

"Ewes Bank"
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia527.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia528.html

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Gardenia Part 158

"Check In Desk"

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia523.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia524.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia525.html
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Gardenia Comics #158

"Black humor"

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Gardenia Comics #157

"Black Speech Dictionary"
(Plus a comic about Veggie Tales! lol)

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia519.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia520.html
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Gardenia #156

"Inappropriate Transfer"

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Gardenia #155

"Cupcake's Bonus"

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Gardenia #154

"Critical Care"

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia513.html
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Gardenia #153

"Pant, pant"

Cupcake and her friends listen to rocker Doggy Demon arguing with a giant pig troll!

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Gardenia #141

"Special Request"

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Gardenia [Part 151]

"The Black Speech"

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Gardenia Comics [Part 150]

"Marching to Castrovolvo"

Cupcake and her friends trek toward the ominous Castrovolvo.

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Gardenia Comics [Part 149]

"Marching to Castrovolvo"

Cupcake and her friends trek toward the ominous Castrovolvo.

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia506.html
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Gardenia Comics [Part 148]

"Slapping a demon"

Doggy Demon gets slapped by Kimpap the panda.

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia503.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia504.html
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Gardenia Comics [Part 147]

Slap Happy Kimpap!

http://ottercomics.taur.net/qax/gardenia/Gardenia488.html
http://ottercomics.taur.net/qax/gardenia/Gardenia489.html
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Group Publishing: Incredible Things Won't Happen Here - Creativity Not Welcome

Impersonal "personalized" rejection form letter #1

August 24, 2009 Dear Christopher: Thanks for submitting your proposal for Gardenialand Bible Adventures. Unfortunately, the proposal doesn't fit with our current publishing needs. Please don't let this discourage you. We consider several factors when deciding whether or not to pursue a project. For example, our current line-up may be full, the timing of your project may not fit with our present needs or market, or a similar project may have already been submitted. We appreciate you taking the time to submit your ideas for our consideration. Please keep us in mind as you continue to create new book ideas. We'd love to see your creativity at work! Best wishes as you continue a career in publishing. And thanks for sharing Group's concern for the church! Sincerely, Proposal Review Team

Don't mail manuscript submissions to these addresses

I found these addresses in an old Writer's Market. They are old. If you write to any of these, you will get a "Return To Sender Address Unknown" stamp:
Jill Benjamin
Del Rey Books
200 E 50th Street
New York, NY 10022
~~~
Creative Dimensions
818 Main St. Suite F
Pleasanton CA 94566
~~~~
The Overlook Press
149 Wooster St
New York, NY 10012
~~~~
Michael A. Denio
1420 W. Glen Ave
Peoria IL 61614

Gardenia Comics [Part 146]

"Troubling Thoughts"

Cupcake becomes worried about her friend's recent changes.

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Gardenia Comics [Part 145]

"Hoofing It"

Karen Demon decides the limo can't take the rough terrain. So they walk.

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Complaints about Photoshop 5 LE

1. They put the website hyperlink above the marquee tool so you accidentally go online when you don't want to.
2. Everyone defends Adobe, so whenever someone exposes a defect in the product, the complaint is ignored, and everyone tells you to just live with it and work around it instead of having someone fix it. People just accuse me of being incompetent because I don't adapt to their user unfriendly software.
3. The reason for the above is that they hold a monopoly on the art software market.
4. The developers are idiots who push the envelope in wrong directions (such as inserting sound) while making the envelope ironclad in ways it should have been improved. Soft headed slobs.
5. I had to use Gimp to open a picture because Photoshop crashed every time I tried to open it. It's obviously too wimpy to open a picture file of a certain size.
6. The bar on the bottom of the work window is not a loading bar. It is a bar that measures how long it will take for the program to crash.
I wanted to resize a full color image down to 5 inches in size from its original size, but your program is too much of a sissy to run it. I was only trying to resize a 1500 pixel color image down from 5 inches to two and it crashes. It's frustrating how the program takes so long to load picture files of a certain size, only to crash once they're open, or once you make even a minor change to the file.

Assignments for crazy people

Assignment 1: Steal all the milk from all the supermarkets and put it
back in the cows

Assignment 2: Find out which species of rodent is the most flammable.

Assignment 3: Put on a tutu, glue two live wiener dogs to your face, and prance around the subway terminal screaming 'Stop looking at me!'

Assignment 4: Set up a stand outside of K-Mart with a plate full of frozen peas
and a sign reading 'Take one!' If anyone asks you what the hell you're doing, give them a button that says 'I asked about the peas'

Assignment 5: Itemize everything in your cat's litter box for the next seven years
and mail a report to the President with a note saying 'Here!'

Assignment 6: Go to a McDonald's Playland, tie Mayor McCheese to the back of your car, and drive away at 90 mph. When a cop pulls you over, roll down the window and
indignantly ask 'WHAT?'

Assignment 7: Become the manager of a major professional sports team, then refuse to travel to other cities, insisting they come to you instead.

Assignment 8: Get a black and white horizontally striped suit, a mask, and a bowling ball with a small length of rope hanging from it, and tiptoe around the airport.

Assignment 9: It's time to find out what urinal cakes taste like.

Assignment 10: Make a sign describing the 1993 E.Coli incident at Jack In The Box. Go to one of their restaurants and superglue it on the wall beneath their company history.

Assignment 12: Buy several video game password books and piece together bible verses from the letter and number combinations. Share your findings with anyone who will will listen and say it's a sign of the apocalypse.

Assignment 13: Write a long religious tract based on the premise that Speed Racer drives a car called the "Mark 5" and mail it to every religious radio program you can think of.

Assignment 14: When you've got five feet of snow on your drive, don't go for the shovel. Use dynamite instead.

Assignment 15: Pee on random people in the office.

Assignment 16: Spend an hour shopping for gifts with your dad. After wrapping the presents, wait until he's not looking and take everything to the thrift store.

Assignment 17: Buy something nice for yourself, then painstakingly wrap the item. A minute later, act surprised as you unwrap it. This should become easier when you become advanced in years.

Assignment 18: Go to the video store with a magic marker. Cross out the word "trilogy" on all the Matrix movies and write in the word "Matrices".

Assignment 19: Punch a random person at your workplace. It doesn't matter if they're your enemy or not. They will be after you punch them!

Assignment 20: Buy the entire series of Star Trek TV The Next Generation episodes AND the movies. Edit out all the made up technical words with dirty words, names of diseases, and famous politicians.

Assignment 21: Find your old college, high school and middle school teachers, and demand they all give you the lesson time you missed due to snow days, sick days, or times where they made you watch videos.

Assignment 22: Send hundreds of messages to Microsoft telling them to reroute the life support system in your room to computer memory power so your computer can stop crashing. Who cares if Star Trek isn't real? Neither is the place where it always asks you to send the messages to.

Assignment 23: Write a letter to the president and other elected officials demanding they recount the votes you put in during mock elections in middle school.

Assignment 24: Try to convince your coworkers that your office and your entire city is actually a place in Russia, and you're being experimented upon by Communists.

Assignment 25: While watching a movie at the theater, wait for the most awkward time in the film and suddenly yell "Noooooooooooo!"

Assignment 26: Impress your dentist. Rig up some kind of dental appliance that will allow you to etch clever designs on your teeth with soda pop and citrus.

Assignment 27: Find a church directory and mail everyone on the list a random picture.

Assignment 28: Find out if Samuel Jackson was right about sewer rat tasting like pumpkin pie.

Assignment 29: Try bungee jumping with paper clips.

Assignment 30: Make a lace outfit. Combine it with lots and lots of Velcro.

Assignment 31: Wash your car with an SOS pad.

Assignment 32: Pick up smoking, and smoke while you're on a treadmill.

Assignment 33: Go fishing at Seaworld.

Assignment 34: Bring a brick into the bowling alley. Use it instead of a bowling ball.

Assignment 35: Go to a Westboro Baptist funeral protest with your own sign. One that reads "WHO FARTED?"

Assignment 36: Create a rock band, go through the club circuit until you get famous, and then during one of the musical numbers near the start of the show, loudly tell
your band, "Let's take it home, boys!" And then pack up all the equipment and instruments and actually go home.

Assignment 37: Take a Plan 9 From Outer Space DVD and remove all the sound, replacing it with the complete works of Frank Zappa.

Assignment 38: Take a roto tiller and a lawnmower to the city garbage dump, then go around blowing shredded trash around while yelling "whee" at the top of your lungs.

Gardenia Comics [Part 144]

"Unscheduled Stop"

Karen Demon suddenly realizes she has an albino in the back seat, and a missing coffin!

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia498.html
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Gardenia Comics [Part 143]

"Boo!"

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Gardenia Comics [Part 142]

"Frankenbob: RELOADED!"

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On the way to Sedalia

The Sinclair station at Highway 50 and Lover's lane is an interesting place. Its interior resembles a grocery store and they still sell Decade cigarettes, according to the sign out front. The cash register has a conveyor belt, and there are public restrooms behind the cash register. When I came there, they had plastic over the cold case. This is not a great place for getting sausage egg biscuits, but the locals probably stop there for groceries regularly. There was an algae covered pond behind the store, which was kind of unusual.

An open letter to Hank Hannagraaf and CRI

There has been a failure of communication. After I heard the Bible Answer Man program that advertised a magazine that condemns the movie Avatar as occult, I knew that your organization was using the wrong method to correct the problem. Christian groups that do protests like this only advertise the thing they intend to warn people about. When Christian groups protested Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson and Golden Compass, it only made these people richer. You are cursing the darkness instead of providing a light. I made a suggestion that we make a product to combat the problem. A novel that is like Avatar, but Christian. I wrote it back in 2006 before the movie came out, but it's similar enough to be a good response. "Send us the review," you said. You did not read my message carefully. I was not suggesting yet another review cursing the darkness. I was proposing that we try to lighten the darkness by doing something proactive instead of reactive. So I sent you my manuscript. A pitiful spark in the very darkness you were cursing. Your response was that you didn't have time to read the manuscript. Sure, you have time to waste on things like watching Avatar and telling us how occult it is, but you don't have time to read my manuscript despite my note that I am willing to wait for a thoughtful response. I would have even published it through Lulu had you even bothered to look at it instead of making me think you actually wanted to do something about the problem. You didn't even give my novel to someone else to review, which would have worked for me just as well. Instead you told me to send it to a major publishing house. This is like telling a man in a wheelchair to take the stairs to your office. I have been trying to get published for some time, but the novel is too Christian for the mainstream and too science fictiony for Christian publishing houses. This is all to say that you should stop moaning and griping about the movie Avatar. You are doing nothing but advertising it, and you're a little slow on the uptake for criticizing it now instead of when it came out. I think you are just jealous of James Cameron's money, and you like how the blue creature's face makes the letters stand out on your pamphlets.

Gardenia Comics [Part 141]

"Monsterphone"

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Gardenia Comics [Part 140]

"Uh-oh!"

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Gardenia Comics [Part 139]

"The end of the Zero Room"

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Terra Incognita by Emil Malak

Comments on the website found at:

http://tiuniverse.com
(http://tiuniverse.com)

and the screenplay:

https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://tiuniverse.com/images/stories/screenplay_done.pdf&embedded=true

I was surprised to find this guy Emil Malak actually had a website. I wanted to find a copy of "Tale of the Blue Crows" but you can't find that anywhere online. Unfortunately, if it exists, it is buried under a million websites saying what a loser he is, which really doesn't help me purchase a copy of his screenplay.
Generally, when I see stories about obscure writers suing big companies for the rights to high grossing movie productions, I tend to root for the underdog. I mean, after all, everybody has seen whatever famous movie it is that came out, and nobody has seen the writer's work, and it makes me feel like someone is repressing the freedom of the writer, gagging them so they can't express themselves. I don't like the idea of a big company silencing people, so I felt sorry for Emil.
I understand how you can feel like you've been robbed of what makes you "you", and nobody, not even your closest friends and family members believe that anything has been stolen. It hurts to think that someone has ripped off your idea, and made something that people will always consider better than your own personal work.
However, as much as I tried to like Terra Incognita, there are several problems with it.
First of all, the website is painful to use due to all the flash content, and is weighted down with excessive legal warnings, which is like putting a concrete wall over the barn entrance after the horses have all run out.
The character designs are pretty disturbing, especially the fat sumo wrestler guy and the pink panda that looks like she's posing for Playboy. I mean, what's with the excessive amounts of pandas? That certainly wasn't in Avatar. The Aztec dude makes absolutely no sense in regards to the plot of Avatar, making me wonder why exactly the author sued. The purple zebra character looks like something that ought to be on a furry website. In fact, most of the stuff pictured looks like that. Only if you squint do you come to the conclusion that perhaps the concept of half animal people is somewhat kind of sort of like Avatar. Some fairly good designs were photoshopped and slapped on generic photographic backgrounds, as if the webmaster thought that the world would end if he didn't throw all that stuff up on the website right now. The strongest characters out of the whole lot, I feel, are the weird giraffe lady with the strange ears and the giant crab guy. The rest of them are disturbing for various reasons.

The only character designs remotely similar to Avatar were the blue bird lady (she's a bird, not feline. That's a bit of a stretch) and the generic army guy (if you're going to sue over that, you might as well sue James Cameron for copying the General Chaos Sega Genesis game).

The screenplay, as much as I wanted to read it, would force me to sit staring at the screen for hours at a time. There was no text only version for the blind to put in text readers. I am not blind, but I use a blind people's text reader to avoid eyestrain. The screenplay is about 111 pages, and it's set up on Google docs, where the text is stuck in a series of png images, and sideways, so that even if I did manage to print out every single page, my text scanner probably would screw it up. I tried in vain to find his screenplay at Amazon.com, despite how I'm sure that he'd make a mint out of the controversy alone.
Alas, it was not meant to be. I tried to open the png files in Abbeyreader Sprint but it just copied a few lines, so I'd be forced to print out all 111 pages and then either scan them in one at a time or just read them during breaks at work. That's really too much work, which is a total disappointment.
From what I could glean without too much eyestrain, the plot of the screenplay involves a child in a broken home, which already has nothing to do with Avatar. If the picture of the genie and the Aztec are any indication, I think there are probably more strange differences beyond that.
So then I checked out his Youtube channel. I hoped to see some animations featuring his interesting characters, but all it had were videos of the guy and some damaging comments about how he's suing everybody in town, which totally destroys my perception of his character. A man who sues movie studios that much can't be too concerned about actually making great screenplays, OR getting a screenplay accepted. ("I still remember that lawsuit you threw at us last summer. Pass.")

It seems he gets very few comments on the website, probably because every post is screened (unlike Phantasmo's Cheese Factory). Maybe it's just because he deletes all the negative feedback or something. A shame, because by removing everything but a post a month or two months ago makes the site look dead.

Gardenia comics [Part 138]

"Loose ropes"

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Joe and Sharon Keefe-- Giant spiders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFw7-khE-go Down in Venezuela, there's a spider that crawls, Crawls through the jungle where the forest rain falls, And it's the biggest spider in all the world. It's black, it's hairy, it's as big as your foot, With 10 inch fangs, It could bite you if it could, And believe it or not, it's the favorite food of the natives... They catch it and they cook it and they eat it with delight, They snack on the legs and the thorax at night, And after savoring every bite... They use a fang for a toothpick. National Geographic sent some writers to the scene, To get a taste of this strange cuisine, They said it was deliciously in between... Shrimp and lobster. Now I bet you anything some business man Will come up with a brilliant plan To open up across the land Giant Black Spider restaurants. ...Where waiters will be wearing spider hats, Spiders will be slaughtered and cooked in deep fat And served with deep fried jungle flies that... Taste like chicken. And they'll go and tear the rainforest down, To catch every spider that can be found, And turn them into ground brown spider burgers. And they'll put out ads where nothing's said, Just Michael Jordan popping his head through a great big spider web... Eating a tarantula sandwich. And they'll fry them and you'll buy them and you'll eat them with a grin, Spider juice will dribble down your chin, And when you're finished you'll go back again... For more greasy fried giant spiders. Down in Venezuela where the jungle winds blow, A sleepy giant spider in his spider bungalow, doesn't care `cuz he doesn't know... He'll soon be someone's dinner.

Gardenia Comics [Part 137]

"You'll slap your mama!"

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Gardenia Comics [Part 136]

"Raising a stink"

http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia484.html
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Gardenia Comics #185

"Musical Torture"

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Gardenia Comics [Part 135]

"A little traveling music"

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