Last night I published a new masthead for the month of October with a tagline from a recent hatemail, seeing as how those charitable observations about my life are always the ones closest to the truth. This month's masthead will be the last one I design for the current version of this website, as we are launching a full redesign on November 1st. I'm putting that in print so that Jon will see it and feel a nudge in his backside. He's the one who has the majority of work to do, the coding and testing and making sure all the pieces tick and tock in the right direction. And although the design I've come up with isn't too complicated -- a little more white space here, a larger photograph there -- I do not envy the pressure he's going to feel in the next four weeks knowing that I am going to be over here looking disapprovingly on everything he does that isn't related to coding my website. Things like blinking his eyes. And breathing air.

To design this month's masthead I used a cut-out of this daily Chuck, a subtle, repeating background image from Squidfingers, and a few of the vector images found in Go Media's Arsenal, specifically ones found in Set 5 called Hooladanders 2. Those vectors only cost me $14.99, and I'll be able to use them in endless ways on a variety of projects. This is a resource I will go back to again and again, so you'll probably recognize some of these flourishes in future mastheads. I know, so predictable, when usually I'm all about throwing curve balls your way, like using the image of my dog with something on his head. You never see that one coming.

Also, the 2008 Chuck calendar will be available very soon, sometime this month. Sadly, we will not be offering a 2008 GEORGE! calendar, although some of you expressed that such a thing would make a perfect Christmas present for your grandmother. It's just that GEORGE! isn't very good at balancing things on his head, and his greatest talent, chugging 22 ounces of beer in less than four seconds? That just doesn't translate very well to the printed page.