Breadpig has two dear friends named Zach. One is Zach Weiner, the esteemed and often unclothed author of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and one of our main cash cows collaborators. The other is Zach Anner, the comedian who took the world by storm first online, and now on TV with his show Rollin’ With Zach. And because we like getting confused in conference calls, we decided to bring the two of them together to provide a great night of entertainment, rare videos, comedy, and other Zachtivities JUST FOR YOU.

Oh, and of course, our cut of proceeds from the door will be donated to DonorsChoose.org classrooms in Austin.

So if you live in or near Austin, block off the night of the 26th! Tickets are on sale now through the Alamo Drafthouse website.

PS This badass event poster was made by Andrea Tsurumi, an illustrator who excels at drawing PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING. Also, big thanks to our friends at Amplifier for helping make this happen!

Seems like only yesterday when we were throwing Zach Weiner a party to celebrate his first-ever English book, but the prolific genius has already wrapped up his second compilation. The Most Dangerous Game is another 74 full-color pages of Zach’s finest work, supplemented with the second installment of the Choose Your Own Adventure from the first book. Also, all of Breadpig’s non-sustainable proceeds from the book are going straight to the fine folks at Khan Academy so they can keep turning the traditional education system on its head.

We will have a limited stock of these books at the SMBC booth at NYCC (#1724) on Saturday and Sunday, so come by early and get them signed by Zach! If you won’t be in town, you can also pre-order them off of our online store.

In case you’re concerned, this is more of a Rocky II than a Matrix 2 kind of sequel. I mean, just look at the polar bears.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Introducing…the Gentleman’s Single-Use Unlubricated Monocle

Many moons ago, there was a SMBC comic about a monocle in a condom wrapper. We love turning the bizarre into reality, so when Zach approached us with the idea of making these, we said yes immediately. Now, with the help of engineer-and-occasional-curler Ben Peters and the artistic touch of steampunk god David Malki!, we’re proud to debut these beauties at NYCC on Saturday.

How the Webcomic Publishing Sausage Gets Made (Panel, Saturday at 8:45 PM in Room 1A23)

An entire Breadpig vertical (Zach Weiner from SMBC, Alexis and Christina from Breadpig, and Jef and Joel from Amplifier) will show you a webcomics’ long odyssey as it goes from its home on the internet to a publisher, a warehouse, and finally into the hands of its loving fans. Our panel will feature funny anecdotes from behind-the-scenes of a publisher and pro-tips for making the shiniest, most profitable product. Think of it as the first stop on…

The Epic Webcomic Bar Crawl (Tentative start time of 10 PM, around the Penn Station area)

Jon Brence and Zach after a few too many last time we did this.

Breadpig and SMBC are teaming up with Cyanide and Happiness and the Oatmeal for the most epic bar crawl of all time. It’ll be like San Diego, but with many more bars. What happens when you get webcomic artists drunk? How many penises will be drawn? WHAT THE HELL IS WEINERJUICE?? Follow us on Twitter and find out.

Save Yourself, Mammal! is now available for pre-order*!

Why buy a book whose contents are already on the internet? Well, you’ll not only be supporting the hardworking and often pants-less genius that churns out a brilliant comic every day, part of the proceeds will also be going towards filling science classrooms around the US with awesome supplies through DonorsChoose.org. What’s not to love?

And remember: if you’re anywhere near New York, you can get a book EARLY by coming to the book launch party we’re having on May 8th, and then even get it signed by Zach himself!

* Pre-order means that the books DON’T EVEN EXIST YET but will be shipping on May 9th. Make an investment in your future!

We’ve been sitting on this one for a while now, so we’re so thrilled to finally announce it.

Save Yourself, Mammal!, the first ever compilation of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comics, will be debuting in April as a Breadpig-published title!

This is unbelievably awesome for a couple of reasons:

1. SMBC is one of the best webcomics in the whole world, and it will look SO COOL in print!
2. We’re giving away all the profits on Save Yourself, Mammal! to DonorsChoose, Stephen Colbert and Reddit’s favorite nonprofit. We’re looking forward to funding lots of cool science projects that will help today’s children grow up to become tomorrow’s scientists.
3. We get to throw a launch party!

We’re still working on the date, but it’ll be May-ish and somewhere in New York. If you’re in the area, you won’t want to miss this. In addition to an hour-long Q&A with Zach himself, there will also be an auction of one-of-a-kind SMBC merchandise! As with the book, all proceeds go towards DonorsChoose, so any money you spend is literally for science and for the children. Take that, Wu Tang!

We’ll announce more details here and on the Eventbrite as they are finalized; in the meantime, just be as excited as we are!

Beth sent us an update last week to let us know that the younger Midlothian Friends got involved, too–they organized a traditional pancake breakfast fundraiser and were able to raise $160 for the cause. She also sent us these great pictures:

Riley says: Awwww yeaaaaaaah

Enjoying pancakes

The Breadpig is incredibly impressed by these youngsters and their ingenius usage of the most delicious meal of the day for good! And hey, if you’re in the greater Richmond area, why not stop by the Thrifty Quaker (good review on Yelp!) and forage yourself a superhero costume before the end of the month? Adorable Laotian kids would appreciate it!

(Besides, does Midlothian not sound like a place out of Lord of the Rings? You know your inner nerd is itching to go look for hobbit holes!)

It’s just been officially announced that Salman Khan, our favorite Youtube educator, has been announced as part of this year’s TED speaker lineup! Awwwww yeaaahh! He’s going to be speaking as part of a lineup curated by Bill Gates, including Bill Gates, on the Knowledge Revolution. I hope they let him project his animations behind him as he talks.

We’d like to think that our campaign was as helpful as, uh, the support of Bill Gates, but really it doesn’t matter. The world’s greatest teacher is going to be celebrated and acknowledged on the world stage for his revolutionary approach towards teaching, and we couldn’t be more excited. Congratulations, Salman!

Don’t forget to pick up your Khan posters, available in MS Paint (see above) or Fairey, to proclaim to the world that you were into Khan way before he went mainstream. Proceeds go towards the Khan Academy. I made a graph to show you who the target audience of these posters are:

Is this you?

This month’s puzzle was created by my long-time friend, Matt Watkins, who offered us a panoply of different difficulty levels and made this one in just a few hours. Matt, Breadpig salutes your quick and creative thinking!

MATT IN SPACE! Well, on the Vomit Comet.

Hack Club is an occasional gathering where geeks can meet each other and bond over the sheer joy of dreaming big, learning, and creating. A semi-underground enclave moving from hideout to hideout like in the movies, where making badass stuff is celebrated above all else. You won’t get any fancy cheese platters here, but you won’t get any business cards or slick-talking recruiters either. We want to help take you back to the weekends you spent in your parents’ basement, madly coding on a constant drip of energy drinks.

We’re going to try this out for the first time on Friday, 01/14/11, and this time we’re partnering with LEGO, the best embodiment of the endless possibilities of creation we can think of. LEGO has supplied us with lots and lots of Mindstorms — you, over the course of 12 hours, will supply us with robots that will compete against each other in a sporting event to be named at the beginning of the night. We, in turn, will be providing late-night pizza, caffeine in the form of Stay Puft marshmallows from our wonderful friends at Omni Consumer Products, and other life essentials to keep you going. The winner of the competition will get fame, glory, and plenty of Lego Mindstorms to take home.

tl;dr: New York geeks, come play with Legos on January 14th at a geek-only competition in a secret location!

UPDATE: THE PUZZLE IS UP!

Q: Where is this going down?
A: To prevent just anyone from showing up and to boost the mystique of Hack Club, each Hack Club will be at a different, secret location! Only those 1337 enough to solve a (geeky, of course) puzzle will be granted the whereabouts.

Q: But you guys aren’t hackers! In fact, Alexis is one of them start-up business folks…
A: That’s true, but we love hackers (and Hackers, the movie) more than anything and we promise we’ll stick to ordering pizza and making caffeinated hot cocoa.

Q: Will there be more of these? Will these spread to other cities?
A: If we don’t set the whole city on fire, almost certainly! This is a pilot to gauge interest and learn more about what geeks want out of an event like this.

Q: How come the first rule of Hack Club isn’t “Don’t talk about Hack Club”?
A: Because if no one talked about it, no one would come! People are free to find out about and admire Hack Club all they want, but they still have to be a smart hacker to get in.

Q: Can I work with someone else to solve the puzzle?
A: Of course you can work with a friend or two, but we’d prefer that you not get a whole IRC chat room together. It’s not *that* hard!

Q: If I solve the puzzle, can I give the location to my friends?
A: Obviously, we can’t stop you from doing this. And we don’t mind you inviting other maker friends who would love to play with robots! However, we do ask that you not publish the location on the internets–that would not be very good secret-keeping, would it??

Luna and Rafael of ChangeFusion Nepal

Luna Shrestha Thakur left Nepal as a teenager because she found its patriarchy suffocating, especially for bright, independent young women like her. For ten years, she traveled the world and learned about different cultures and societies: she was so inspired by what she encountered that she wrote a book, A Journey to the Self, and published it for other Nepali youth with similar questions. The reception to the book was so positive that she returned to Nepal to speak and, eventually, founded an incredibly promising organization aiming to inspire a new generation of dreamers and changemakers. Breadpig is proud to announce that Luna’s organization, ChangeFusion Nepal, is our newest nonprofit partner.

ChangeFusion Nepal is named after, but runs autonomously from, ChangeFusion Thailand, an organization that promotes social innovation and development all over Asia. Luna got the idea to support and mentor young entrepreneurs from Sunit Shrestha, an expat Nepali working at ChangeFusion Thailand who was frustrated that there weren’t any social entrepreneurship programs in his homeland. When Luna expressed an interest to do just that, he offered her an interesting deal. He would personally arrange for her training and give her a few hundred USD a year for two years to get her organization off the ground; she would have to find all necessary additional funding, staff, applicants, and supporters. Luna accepted the offer, turning down a job opportunity in hospitality that would have paid her ten times as much for much less work, and she does not regret her decision even a bit.

In 2009, CFN ran a call for proposals of innovative social entrepreneurship ideas in Nepal. Of the 50 applications, a rigorous selection process chose 5 to become ChangeFusion fellows. The fellows received a small amount of seed funding (in the form of a loan) as well as copious training and networking opportunities to hone and develop their business ideas, which included: breaking the cycle of poverty for rickshaw drivers, developing a newly discovered olive forest into a sustainable agricultural resource for an otherwise impoverished village, empowering rural farmers to get fairer prices for their organic goods, giving children of prisoners a second chance, and preserving ancient Newari craft traditions. By the end of the year, the fellows graduated the program, all further along in developing their own sustainable businesses while also helping their communities. The best part? CFN’s operating budget for the whole cycle, including staff pay, rent, and seed loans only came out to about $15000 USD. That’s the type of return on investment Breadpig likes to see!

This year, Luna and her team are expanding and hoping to take in a total of 25 fellows. The first phase of CFN’s cycle is to get the word out about the 2011 fellowship program. To reach the youth in rural areas outside of Kathmandu, Luna and her team are spending most of December and January on the road. They are spending 3 days in each of the 15 zones of Nepal: at each stop, they are working closely with local partners to organize workshops about entrepreneurship for students while encouraging youth to apply for the fellowship program.

Breadpig is proud to be the primary supporter of this phase, which is so crucial in inspiring youth all over Nepal to consider social entrepreneurship as a way to improve their communities. In subsequent blogposts, we’ll keep you updated about what Luna and her team are up to, as well as showcase the business of one of the 2009 fellows that I had the opportunity to visit while still in Nepal.