Deep in the Shit
over 5 years ago – Sat, Jan 19, 2019 at 12:33:58 AM

Hey! 

Geez, it's been a week already. I sort of feel like I spent at least one fortnight's worth of energy on last week's post. But here you vampires are, frothing for more of my delicious brain sweat. Just kidding. I love you all. 

It's been really great to read in the comments that some of you enjoy these updates. Even if I don't get around to responding to each individual comment, I am definitely reading them and distilling pure liquid encouragement from each and every one. Then I mix that with bee adrenaline and inject it into my eyeball and get super fucked. But seriously, my heart is super fucked on your support. I didn't really anticipate how much this would feel like a  community. Although we never met our goal of creating Arcane Bullshit: the town, we created something even better.  

No. Nevermind. A town would have been way cooler. Our town bird would have been a bear riding a horse riding a bear, and the streets would have been paved with whatever's much much cheaper than asphalt. That's pretty much the extent of my plan. I could also ask my friend Brad if we could borrow his projector. So we'd (maybe) have a projector. Please comment if you're an urban planner and you know of anything else a town would need. 

On to the business. 

King Shit Cards

This week I've FINALLY (I know, I've been promising it for a while now) started really focusing on the KING SHIT reward tier commissioned artwork. I'll share the completed artwork with those 10 wonderful backers between now and next week, and after they've had a look at it I'll share it here. The requests I received were  both personal and super ridiculous and they've pushed me to draw some pretty fucked up things. Here's the list of card titles:

• The Tower of Terroir
• A Cute Little Cat
• Le Mat (The Fool)
• Last Supper in Hell
• The Book Wyrm
• The Underwater Pug
• Ancient Egyptian Libra UFO
• Alien Ass-tronauts
• The Devil You Don't Know
• A Unicorn Driving Death in a Pedicab

Next Steps

I've started getting a few inquiries about when the rewards will be shipped. Because I decided to mail everything out myself, it's hard to estimate exactly how long the process will take, but I can give you this projected timeline (which is absolutely not a promise, but I'm going to try my best.):

• JAN 30: Cards arrive in Toronto
• FEB 2 - 28: Orders ship 
• FEB 19 - MAR 14: Kickstarter backer orders delivered
• MAR 14 - MAR 31: BackerKit Pre-orders delivered

So that's it. Things are about to get busy, but hopefully by the end of March this whole mess will be resolved and I'll go back to my humble life as a pro hovercraft pilot and sunglasses enthusiast. Also I will have an online store where you and your family members can buy Arcane Bullshit. I might also have one idea for a future project, which I promise is definitely NOT stolen from Nikola Tesla. Ok fine, it is..but my version is for cats.

As always, my eyes and brain and other head organs are available if you have questions. I'll keep updating you every week.

-EVAN

Arcane Bullshit Self Indulgence Explosion 2019
over 5 years ago – Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 09:22:19 PM

Hello beautiful creeps. 

I think today I will give in to the spirit of new year's sentimentality and ramble on for a bit about the evolution of Arcane Bullshit. Of course, we all know that the idea was revealed to me by an angel after I ate too many Ikea hot dogs and fell into a cave...but what else do we know? Do we really know anything for certain? I'm going to try my best here to re-assemble a timeline. If you love self-indulgent folk histories, unnecessary tangents, and spending your lunch break being confused and, ultimately, disappointed – Read on!

2011 - Bullshit Genesis

In 2011 I was doing very little creatively. I sometimes worked with and spoke to artists, and I had a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but I had not done much art. In school I mostly just handed in vision boards of my dream kitchen and everyone thought I was joking so I passed my classes. Anyway in 2011, my friend (who is an always increasingly brilliant illustrator), Dara Gold asked me if I'd want to share a table with her at a zine fair. Of course my first reaction was that this would be a great opportunity to share pictures of butcher's block countertops cut lovingly from decorating magazines, but something inside me said that I should dig a bit deeper. 

I don't really remember how the idea came about. I knew I liked tarot cards as art objects (one time on a dare I ate 7 death cards and they were fucking delicious.) There's something about the creepiness of the images and the bluntness of the words and the swirling metaphysical doubt we project onto them...It's like a messy fucking salad of hope and fear and freemasonry and weird combinations of animals. I wanted to make fun of that, because at that time I thought everything was stupid.

I can't exactly remember how many cards were in the very first deck. I want to say it was like 18. This was before Gordon Snapchat invented photography, so I have no record of this early incarnation. I know for sure that the original cards were: The Former Child Star, The The (called 'The End' back then), Look at this Fucking Hourglass, The Decision Maker, Sex Witch with Octopus (formerly the 'Hooker with an Octopus'), Rhubarb Tony, The Parasitic Fruit, Space Death, The Pregnant Babies, Thief, The Froodus, The Pyramid-headed Bird, and Double Caveman (Formerly 'Siamese Cavemen'). I won't get too much into why those names eventually changed, but at some point I decided I didn't want to use language that would alienate, exclude, or cause discomfort for anyone. If I'm going to make fun of anything, it's the underlying fabric of reality – which is fucking ridiculous. 

The original Arcane Bullshit deck consisted of images photocopied onto cardstock, then cut out meticulously by hand (I eventually bought a punch to do the rounded corners, but at first I did each of those with an x-acto knife). I wanted them to look somewhat fancy, so I packaged them in handmade silkscreened bags. I didn't really know how to sew or screen print, but I did those things. For fanciness.

I can't remember how many decks I made for this first commercial excursion. It couldn't have been more than 20. I also had the idea to use a linocut to hand-stamp each sheet of cards with gold ink, so there'd be a cool pattern on the back. This was a pretty bad idea, and that very first edition of Arcane Bullshit had this shitty gold ink that would come off when you touched it. 

That first zine fair (Canzine, for the Torontonians) must have been successful enough that I wanted to keep going. I must have sold some things, which was a big surprise at the time. 

2011 - 2013: Early Bullshit

After receiving a small amount of validation, I guess I decided to keep doing art fairs around the city. I would slowly add new cards to the deck and improve on the design. During that time the deck probably expanded to around 30. Keep in mind that I was limited by the number of cards I could print on a single letter-sized sheet, which I realize is a detail that is not interesting to anyone. But keep it in mind. 

I would always do just a little better than breaking even, but all of the real-life feedback kept me motivated.

One time my friend asked me if they could use the deck as sort of a prop in a real-life interactive play thing (which were all the rage in 2013). They changed all the card names to make them seem quasi-serious. 

Things were fine. I just kept showing up at Toronto Art fairs. And then one day, Jonathan Tarotpants, the famous New York Times Tarot reviewer, walked into the church basement where I was displaying my handmade cards on a cheap folding table AND EVERYTHING CHANGED. Just kidding. I just kept selling them to punks and DIY witches in haunted church basements for many years. Jonathan Tarotpants, if you're reading this, fuck you.

2013-2018 – Bullshit On-Demand

I might have the dates kind of wrong here, but after being snubbed too many times by a certain J. Tarotpants (No, not Joaquin Tarotpants,) I learned of a thing called thegamecrafter.com, which is a print-on-demand service specializing in indie board/card games. It's good. You just upload your design and now you can sell stuff to people all over the world with no risk whatsoever. Best of all, you don't have to cut out your cards by hand. I think they get monkeys to do it. 

During the Game Crafter years the deck expanded even more. I brought the total number of cards up to 50, and eventually introduced an expansion pack called Expanded Confusion with an extra 30 cards. There were a bunch of erratic and unprompted changes to the deck over those years. Dildo Wizard used to be called 'Dildo Wizard Crucifixion', 'Something' used to be 'The Stinky Computer', and there was a card called 'The Androgynous Cow Snake' that I just scrapped entirely because I couldn't get the scales on its penis right. I sold Arcane Bullshit on the game crafter until 2018, when I decided to seize the means of production by the horns and kickstart my dreams.  

Present Day, Motherfuckers

So, here we are. Arcane Bullshit has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a crudely animated short segment on the Tracy Ullman Show. And who can forget the time it did a crossover episode with Blossom where they went inside her hat and it was full of anthropomorphized famous historic hats. And of course, there was the ill-fated spin-off "Crystal Arcane Bullshit," which caused tumours in bats. 

What a long, shitty road we've travelled. 

But now, thanks to that one time when THOUSANDS of incredible humans from around the entire earth believed in my vision for the world's shittiest tarot deck and came together and recorded the chart-topping single "Don't they know it's Shitsmas Time?"...just kidding. We haven't done that yet. What we did do is raise a fuck ton of money to make the best version of Arcane Bullshit ever. And now it's almost done. 

I finally got my hands on a deck last week, and it is fucking miraculous. Please enjoy what is probably too many photographs of this new deck:

So thanks everyone. 2019 is going to be the biggest year yet for Arcane Bullshit. Here's a little gift for you guys, illustrating how I like to use my deck:

Until next time!

Yours in Bullshit, 

-EVAN

Same Bullshit, Different Year
over 5 years ago – Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 11:12:41 PM

Hey there, precious weirdos!

It is 2019 now, in case your local keeper of clocks hasn't told you. So that's pretty good. The twentieth year has always been my favourite part of any century. Here are some things you should watch out for in 2019:

• Birds remain a major threat. Pointier than ever.
• Waking up before 9am is still not advised.
• Dogs will continue to gain ground in the age old contest of which is the better animal, dogs or Derek L. Gillespie Sr. of Staten Island. 
• Scientists will finally explain clouds.
• Myrrh will become a condiment.

Sorry I didn't post anything last week. I settled pretty deep into the holiday fog and became thoroughly disoriented. There really wasn't much to report anyway. I'm still waiting on the gigantic shipment of cards that's going to displace most of the things in my apartment. I had a few decks shipped express, so I should be able to provide you with some images next week. 

I think that's pretty much it for now. By the end of this month I should be shipping things, so make sure your address is up-to-date in Backerkit. I'll send out an email before I lock your info into my system so you'll have a last chance to update things. As always, if you have any questions feel free to email me at [email protected].

Here's to a shitty 2019!

-EVAN

Happy Hole-idays
over 5 years ago – Sat, Dec 22, 2018 at 12:29:31 AM

Hey everyone!

I'm not going to try very hard with this update. I'm going to treat it like the years 1997 though 2010, and approach it with a cool indifference. Maybe something good will come of that, maybe I'll get stung by a bee (like I did in 2006). 

We have been in this relationship for almost 5 months now. Things are getting serious, but they're also getting pretty boring. Pretty soon I'm going to have to make some desperate, kinky moves to try and prove that I'm still interesting and not just another mannequin brought to life by a wizard with no real ideas about how to be human. For now, I'll just keep making vague promises about distant future somethings. 

Card Update

The cards are done being made! They're real. It's not just a vague promise! It's real! Pretty soon they're going to hop onto a ship and travel to my house, where they will most definitely take up my whole living room. Below is some evidence of their existence. You will notice that, in addition to being real, they are FUCKING AWESOME. The box turned out great, the black edges are the exact same colour as my empty, tar-filled soul, and the booklet, as far as I can tell, looks exactly like a booklet. 

 Shipping Update

So, I've now sent out all the rewards for backers in any tier which does not include a deck. If that's you, you can expect your stuff to show up any day now. If your shipment doesn't show up, please let me know. 

Before I send out the decks, I'll do one last check that I have everyone's correct mailing information. 

Other stuff

It's the hollow-days, so I've been running around buying things instead of working on King Shit drawings. I did, however, manage to get a bunch of sketches completed last week. I'll post them somewhere whenever I get a chance. 

I think that's pretty much it for now. I just really wanted to share those pictures and let you know that your trust in me is probably not completely misguided. 

If you celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Santa's only begotten son, Frosty the Reindeer, merry Snowpocalypse. 

Yours in Bullshit, 

-EVAN

Decemb-arrhea
over 5 years ago – Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 09:58:36 PM

Hey folks!

It's Friday again. Who knew it would be Friday so many times this year. If only there were some kind of pattern to it that I could figure out. They always seem to come in threes. 

Is that enough of a self-indulgent, jokey preamble to set a fun tone for this update? Are we having fun? Is that even allowed? No. This. is. Business. Let us transact this business before that horrid weekend is upon us again and all we can do is play video games and consume chipped potato. 

The serious business for this week is as follows:

Cards

Card production should almost be done. After that we'll just have to wait for the cards to travel across the sea. That will take a while. I'm still feeling like I can probably start mailing things out between mid January and mid February, but I'll let you know if anything weird happens. Don't worry - I have not scheduled any weekends during that time. There shall be no chipped potato.

Non-Cards

For those of you who selected anything but cards as your rewards, some mailing is now happening. I'm hoping to get many, if not all, of the non-card packages ready to ship this weekend.

King Shit Rewards

Progress is actually starting on commissions. I have finally remembered that drawing is fun. You just need a lot of hummingbird blood and expired NyQuil to summon the gorgon of inspiration, plus a nice pencil. So yes, that is going great. I've asked these 10 kind (yet fearsome) backers if I can share their art as I complete it, so you've got that to look forward to over these next few barren, wintry Fridays.  

Not Real News

• In 2019 Arcane Bullshit will be moving to a trade system. Payment will be accepted in the form of old birds' nests, warped records, and homemade anti-itch remedies. 
• Arcane Bullshit for pets to launch in 2021.
• Arcane Bullshit's highly anticipated entry into the consumer electronics market, the ShitPhone, will be unveiled next month. It's a 1936 phone booth with the spirit of a sassy coal miner trapped inside it. For just 16 joules of sanity, you can astral project to any of the 19 spheres.

The End