Seriously I can't draw Craig Charles

Do you ever look back on something you have said and think "I'm pretty sure that sentence has never been said by anyone ever" ? 

I love when that happens. You feel like you have created something unique, and you now win at language and have earned yourself a bounty bar (bounty bars are the perfect prize treat to keep around because nobody else likes bounty bars). That is also exactly the sort of tiny victory that I need to convince myself that I have had a productive day.

It has to be unintentional as well. You couldn't just blurt out "I am going to Canada those curtains with face BBQ" otherwise you would quickly run out of bounty.

If you are a Canadian reader (apparently I have one..... who are you?) and you understood that sentence, I assure you that in the UK at least, it makes no sense.

So today I got my bounty bar for saying the words "Ugh, now I have to go and try to draw Craig Charles"

And I am pretty confident that has never been said. Unless he has a fan club somewhere with reluctant artists.

If you don't know who Craig Charles is. Firstly that amuses me to no end, as I am going to try and bring up Craig Charles as much as possible. Secondly, he looks very little like this:

It's a marshmallow frog....

Coaster Comics 4!

So it's time for one of those posts where I have some pictures lying around but they're not really ones I can put into a story or narrative... So I have to wait until I have a few and them put them together in a comics collection post under the illusion that this somehow counts as still having worked really hard on writing a good blog post.


Works for me! I'm going to chalk this day down as being 'abnormally productive'.


Well here goes. This is what I imagine when I hear that song on the radio, you know the one.... it goes

See that's just terrible. Firstly it's hardly original. It's pretty much exactly what the song says, I'm probably just branching into illustrating thoughts that you have all had already, and I don't really want to get too involved in that industry, what if one of you just kept having ideas about cheese? or Craig Charles? I cant draw Craig Charles.... that woman up there doesn't even have a nose.


Secondly that song is probably not on the radio anymore ( if you are reading this ten years later, it's definitely not on the radio, and radios were these machines that you had in your car or living-room, and you could turn a knob and it would find music in the air and play it to you..... And yes I'm sure one day you will be able to overthrow Belgium as rulers of Earth ) which highlights just how long I have to hold onto these pictures before I am in a desperate enough period to resort to using them... I don't think I even had a blog when that song was out. Not a waste of time now!!!


Moving on.

Yeah so..... there's that.


Finally this rounds winner for a Game Of Shark (Yes we are doing rounds now. Submit your ideas and I will attempt to make a movie poster for the winning film. The winning film may also be the one which has an easy poster to make... thankfully this rounds winner was) is! ........

It's exactly the same movie but with a much less imaginative title.... OK a slightly less imaginative title, Jaws was pretty bad. 

Mystery of the Rambalam

We all know and love 'Black Betty', the classic tune made famous by such artists as Ram Jam, Tom Jones and Spiderbait, played across the world at birthdays, weddings, funerals and other important events in our lives.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R044sleOW6I


But what is a 'rambalam'? Sounding like a catchphrase that belongs alongside 'yabadabadoo!' and repeated so often that one could assume the writers were encouraged to reinforce the phrase as much as possible by some outside force, perhaps paid for each mention.

You see that advert would completely make sense if Rambalam airlines had existed. Perhaps it never got off the ground......


Plane pun there


The song itself however does date back into the 18th century which makes my hypothesis unlikely. Apparently 'Black Betty' refers to either a musket, a whip or a bottle of whiskey. However as non of these items make the sound 'rambalam' then the word remains a mystery.


I have taken the simplest answer here as being most likely correct. Whoever wrote Black Betty was a lazy writer, had the beat and half enough words for a song, and improvised the rest with rambalams.


I have therefore taken it upon myself to improve on this 200 year old piece of cultural american history and finally finish the lyrics. The lyrics now require at least two singers but I think this means that it still fits with the original marching song roots. I think the new sound gives it a much brighter feel, surely a morale boost that those men have unfortunately never had the chance to use.


The tune is the same and the new lyrics in green are sang to the same beat as 'Rambalam' was.

Whoa, Black Betty (What's her name?)

Whoa, Black Betty (That's her name)

Black Betty had a child (How nice for her)

The damn thing gone wild (Ate a minister)

She said "I'm worryin' outta mind" (Stressin' out)

The damn thing gone blind (His own fault no doubt)

I said Oh, Black Betty (I'm glad he's blind)

Whoa, Black Betty (Gives me peace of mind)

Oh, Black Betty (What's her name?)

Whoa, Black Betty (That's her name)

She really gets me high (I'm sure she does)

You know that's no lie (We all know she's on drugs)

She's so rock steady (That'd be the drugs)

And she's always ready (Sir she needs help...)

Whoa, Black Betty (Where's she at?)

Whoa, Black Betty (Just follow the cats)

Whoa, Black Betty (What's her name?)

Whoa, Black Betty (Where's she from?)

She's from Birmingham (Where is that?)

Way down in Alabam' (Oh yeah that's right!)

Well, she's shakin' that thing (That's her cat)

Boy, she makes me sing (We've noticed that)

Whoa, Black Betty (And blind cannibal Tim)

Whoa, Black Betty (Let's not visit them...)

Nerd Facts 4! : ATTWSABNAETNBE! That's the only way I could shorten it into a reasonable title...

All the coolest people die young unless they are one of the many many exceptions that don't.


I'm sure the same applies to animals.


Therefore I bring you the Nerd Fact Of The Time Period! This time celebrating Awesome-Things-That-Were-Super-Awesome-But-Not-Awesome-Enough-To-Not-Be-Extinct.


Now I know you all love dinosaurs (If you don't love dinosaurs, please leave) but everyone knows about them. This wouldn't be an awesome nerdfact if I didn't attempt to find some new unknown awesome things. I have not made any of these up!



1. Name: Leedsicthys


Reason for awesomeness: Imagine a sardine....





Just a pretty boring little silver fish, swimming along with its mouth open trying to filter out some tiny morsels of food.


Now imagine a sardine THE SIZE OF A WHALE! and with a Yorkshire accent!


That's right folks. Before there were whales there were other things that do the same things as whales do.... it just happens that they were gigantic fish.


Leedsicthys was the largest of these, with sensible estimates of size ranging from 9-16m in length (a similar size to the Humpback Whale). It swam the seas during the Jurassic period and was discovered first in Leeds! Take that American giant dinosaur fossils... we have a giant sardine!

(Not actually a sardine, Leedsicthys was too awesome to leave any close relatives alive whatsoever)



2. Name: Odobenocetops


Reason for awesomeness: You look at a Walrus and you say "tusks are pretty damn awesome, if only more animals had giant walrus tusks"


And then you run through all the coolest options like a tiny frog with giant walrus tusks, or an angry badger with giant walrus tusks, or a deadly snake with giant walrus fangs.

Well there wasn't any of those... and I'm not even going to say an elephant either... that would be anti-climactic.


It was a FREAKING WHALE!


I literally know nothing more or this animal other than it lived 5-11 million years ago and was awesome enough to sleep with all of your  mums.



3. Name: Lystrosaurus


Reason for awesomeness: Around 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian era, there was an event colloquially known as 'The Great Dying'. It's a pretty apt name as 70% of all land vertebrates went extinct (worse than the dinosaur extinction event) and this essentially wiped the slate for the dinosaurs to rise to dominate the land.


But the Dinosaurs weren't the first to take advantage of the open world, that title goes to Lystrosaurus. Yes not even a group of animals like the dinosaurs, but just Lystrosaurus... on its own. Lystrosaurus spread so successfully that it is estimated that at its peak, 95% of all land vertebrates across the entire globe were Lystrosaurus! Imagine that!


Person 1: "We just went on a safari holiday to Africa!"

Person 2: "Sweet, what did you see?"

Person 1: "Mainly Lystrosurus....."

Person 2: "Isn't that the same as my European road-trip nature tour?"

Person 1: "Why what was that like?"

Person 2: "Mainly Lystrosaurus...."

Person 1: "Then yes"


Despite the 'Saurus' ending, Lystrosaurus was a Dicynodont, a link between early amniotes (reptiley-type-things) and mammals. It was these proto-mammals that dominated the land before the 'Great Dying' and were reduced to scraping a living and hiding until the dinosaurs finally snuffed it (except birds) 65 million years ago.


Lystrosaurus gets my awesome stamp by using the 'Great Dying' to be an enterprising motherfucker and become its own global super franchise!



4. Name: Opabinia


Reason for awesomeness: No-one know what the fuck it is! I'm not talking about regular folks who have never heard of it. But Paleontologists are genuinely rather baffled.


Opabinia is old.... very very old. It comes from a time known as the Cambrian when complex life was only just starting out and evolution was just throwing ridiculous designs at the wall to see if they would stick. Opabinia was one of these.


It has five eyes, a mouth that faces backwards, seems to swim with the use of strange fleshy lobes and has a long protrusion at the front reminiscent of "the claaaaaaaw" from Toy Story.

Awesome stamp for being a damn maverick!



5. Name: Therizinosaurus


Reason for awesomeness: Ok this one actually is a dinosaur. But on a scale of one to awesome, this one is at least a 17!


Therizinosaurus gets the awesome stamp for having the largest claws of anything ever! Whilst also being covered in feathers, having a pot belly and eating mainly plants.


Yep the most bad-ass daggers in natural history belong to a fat herbivore. This animal lived 70 million years ago in Mongolia and its remains were first thought to be that of a turtle.