BWAAAAOOOOOM!' Dare to dream a little bigger darling, cos it's Rob's Random 5!

Good day to you! This week I'll be invading your dreams and planting thoughts about chicken, Sherlock Holmes, movies, Freakonomics and comics. Don't fight it; your mind is the scene of the Random 5! 'BWAAAOOOOM!'


Nandon't: Religion. I don't like it, but hey, some people do and as long as you're not some Bible n' Bandolier zealot then I'm fine with it. Follow your faith and may it bring you comfort. And there are alot of religions you can adhere to: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Jedi, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Paganism, why a whole Holy host of them. Lately though there's a new player on the block. It's places of worship are many and it's congregation numerous. It takes your money gladly and in return will fill you with a feeling of fullness and well-being. No, it's not New Mormonology, it's the Church of Nando's, and it's followers are Legion. Because lately everyone seems to talk, no enthuse, about Nando's as though it were the best thing since shoes, or mobile phones. They've been and tasted the menu's offerings and - Hallelujah! - they have been converted. The scales have fallen from their eyes onto their bone-strewn plates and the light they see is in the shape of a chicken. Now 'poultry-based proselytisation' is a term I never thought I'd ever use, but then I never thought I'd see people enthuse over chicken like it was the Second Coming with drumsticks.
Thing is, I don't understand it. I've been to Nando's once. Only once, but it was enough to form an opinion. I didn't choose to go there but I ended up there. I ordered the chicken, I ate the chicken. Was it good chicken? Indeed it was. Was it an amazing culinary experience? No. Really, no. It was just chicken. Chicken in a sauce, that's all. My brother used to work there, cooking the chicken, and he agrees with me it is just chicken. There's no secret. Jesus has not blessed it. God has not cooked it and seasoned it with magic spices. Can I emphasis this enough? It was just chicken.
So why do people treat a trip to Nando's as a real treat? Why do they talk of it as 'a special tea', somewhere to take the girlfriend, or - God help us all - something to Facebook about? Why do they enthuse about it with sparkly-eyed, greasy-fingered zeal, as though they have discovered some all-saving culinary religion? After all, lots of restaurants serve chicken and lots do it better than Nando's. Is it the service? Well no, as you have to trek from your table up to the counter to order like at a McDonalds. Is it the faux South American surroundings? Come on, I'm not even going to answer that. Is it that it's simple food that's tasty? Obviously it is, but other restaurants - restaurants with actual proper waiters who'll ask if you want more wine or a pudding - make tasty food and you don't hear people banging on about Ask or Frankie & Benny's. I really can't fathom why there's such a devotion to Nando's over other equally ubiquitous restaurants of similar quality. Can you explain it?
The only reason I can think of is that it maybe is just faith: faith in the knowledge that whatever town you're in you can go to a restaurant that's the same as it is in Swindon or Salisbury and have a tasty piece of fowl at a decent price. It won't be glamorous, it won't be a meal to remember, but it'll keep the kids quiet and you know it'll satisfy you. And in that sense of engendered comfort and satisfaction Nando's is a lot more like a Church than you might realise. A big, depressing church of chicken. Just don't expect me to ever join the congregation there. I'll be down the road worshipping at an independent restaurant with a good wine list and a specials board.

Ham Radio: Last Christmas I was given the Complete Sherlock Holmes on DVD. It's the collection of the fourteen Holmes movies made in the 1930s and 40s and starring the legendary Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. And they are fantastic. For the two weeks after Christmas my dad and I watched one a night - big TV, lights off; if we'd filled the room with cigarette smoke and worried murmurs about the Nazis it'd have been just like being in a cinema in 1940. If you've never seen one of the old Sherlock Holmes films you're missing out. You can pick any of them up on DVD for two quid at HMV, or as they're now public domain you can download them free and legally. Free! I'd recommend any of them, but especially 'The Spider-Woman', 'Pursuit to Algiers' and 'Terror By Night'. Just for now though here's the trailer for the superb 'The Scarlet Claw' (WooooOoooOoo!)

Great stuff. Well acted, twisty-suspenseful plots, occasionally hilarious, I love them. Basil Rathbone, with diction so crisp you could split an infinitive on it, is a perfect Holmes, and Bruce plays up the comedic side of Watson with a loveably bumbling portrayal. They're something the whole family can enjoy and at just over an hour long there's not a minute wasted. All too soon my dad and I had watched them all and were sad that there weren't more. But then I discovered the Sherlock Holmes radio plays that were produced in the 40s and also starred Rathbone and Bruce. About fifty episodes in all and they're as classic as old radio plays can get. If you've seen the 'Nightmare Inn' episode of Frasier you'll understand. They're half an hour long and while a little 'exposition-y' in places ("Look out Holmes, there's a man coming through the door! He's raising a gun to point at us!") the mystery/story is solid and the voice acting excellent. There's atmospheric organ music, classic radio sound effects, and a genial announcer who won't shut up about Petri wine. If you're after something to listen to while in the car or in bed (I listen to them while cooking) you should definitely give them a try. Best of all they're free and legal to download (public domain again, see). If you have iTunes you can find them there, and if not you can download them here at Botar's Old Time Radio, or here at the Sherlock Holmes Public Library. As I say there are a lot of episodes to choose from, so if you just want one to try out then go for 'The Out of Date Murder' or 'The Paradol Chamber'. Both are very good indeed.
If you do watch any of the films or listen to any of the radio plays then absolutely let me know. I'd love to know what you think of them.

Grrr...Kids: I want to see Toy Story 3 when it comes out. So do a lot of my friends. Unfortunatley, as it's a 'kids movie' (even though Pixar don't pander to demographics) parents will be taking their kids to see it. Now, I hate kids. No, that's not strictly true. I hate the kids of people I don't know. What I especially hate is having to sit in a cinema with kids as they always jabber and squirm in their seats and ask their parents questions about the plot and just generally detract from the moviegoing experience with their lack of movie theatre decorum. Parents, you may as well take a gibbon in with you for all the attention your kids pay and the noise they make. And why should people without children have to put up with the noisy loin-spawn of some desperate couple? We've paid the same admission and deserve to enjoy the film without your son/daughter's garbled, candy-stuffed commentary. Hey! This ain't Mystery Science Theatre, sweetheart!
So what do do? Well - and I don't know if this is an actual thing yet - but why not have 'no children allowed' screenings of Toy Story 3? That's right, showings of the film just for adults. Toy Story is fifteen years old so many of you out there will have grown up with it. You'll have been kids at the first one, teens during the second, and now adults for the third. We've grown up with Andy and his toys. Just because you saw the first as a kid why do you have to suffer through sequels surrounded by noisy toddlers and texting tweens? We were here first! Why can't we sit with like-minded people who'll appreciate the legacy and memories of Buzz and Woody; people who didn't get that coveted Buzz Lightyear action figure for Christmas the first time round? So for all us nostalgic twentysomethings who saw the first Toy Story when we were kids, lets us have the joyous peace of a 'no kids allowed' screening. No one under 18 permitted. Heck, I'd pay extra for it. Let those foolish adults with whining, drooling gibbon-children suffer through the ceaseless kerfuffle of a normal screening. But let me, a big kid at heart, enjoy a film that captured and shaped my imagination so many years ago. Because the last thing I want is to have my childhood spoiled by children.

Le Freak, c'est chic: Here's my book recommendation for the month. I did Economics at A-Level and while there are aspects of it that are very interesting there are also great swathes of it that are dull, so you might be reluctant to read a book that has a basis in economics. But Freakonomics and its sequel SuperFreakonomics are only economics books in the way they use the principles of economics (don't be put off by that phrase) to examine and explain everyday events and odd occurences. In the authors' Levitt & Dubner's words they explore 'the hidden side of everything'. Cool stuff, like how you can catch a terrorist simply by looking at their banking habits, why drug dealers live with their mums, and why a department store santa is like a prostitute. SuperFreakonomics also covers what to my mind is THE GREATEST EXPERIMENT EVER: teaching Capuchin monkeys how to use money. The consequences of the experiment are startling, and not in the way you might think. The books show you how things are always more intricate than they first appear, but can be simply explained just by looking at the raw data. Take for instance the sudden crime drop in America in the 1970s and how it was caused by an event that had nothing to do with increased policing or tougher gun laws; the landmark Supreme Court case of Roe vs Wade. Suddenly the poor single mothers who would have likely had children that would have fallen into a life of crime could have an abortion legally. The result? There were simply fewer criminals being born. Amazing. It's that cause and effect, whether created by money or morals or both, which Freakonomics deals with so well. Once you start reading you'll see how the oddest things are connected, and how some of the greatest problems facing Humanity can be solved with the simplest, cheapest solutions.
Beyond the books there are also the Freakonomics podcasts available free on iTunes, and the Freakonomics blog. As with the books they're very readable (or listenable), clearly written, funny, and informative. They cover everything from radio stations to seatbelts to counterfeit wine. I guarantee you'll come away feeling smarter.

Remember where we 'Parker'-ed: Finally, to see you off, here's a treat; a brief preview of Darwyn Cooke's 'Parker: The Man With The Getaway Face'. The 24 page 12 x 8 comic is out now and as well as being a self-contained story, acts as a prelude to the graphic novel 'The Outfit', released here in October. Copies of 'The Hunter' sold out at a blistering pace, so I'm already pre-ordering a copy. I know I keep banging on about how good Darywn Cooke is, so I think you'll have got the message by now. Just buy it. Here's the preview. That first page with him looking in the mirror is one of the most beautiful openers to a comic I've ever seen/read.

Well that's all for the Random 5 this time. 'BWAAAOOOOM' for now!

"Maybe it's the power coming back on?" No, it's Rob's Random 5!

Yes, it's the article that overturns the jeep of rationality and then knocks down the straw hut toilet of common sense. Rawr!

1. Spider Man: Spiders everywhere at Smedley Towers lately. So many that it's starting to look like Metebelis 3 round here. I'm fairly tolerant of spiders, up to the point where they become so big as to pose a threat to small furnishings and myself. The little ones, even the medium sized ones, I let roam free around my walls. It's the big fat ones or the quick ones with incredibly long legs that I have to take care of as they're noticeably large and tend to distract my line of vision with their size/rapidity when I'm trying to watch TV or work. Unfortunately it's only May and the worst is yet to come, as it's in August when the full grown B-Movie bastards literally open the door by themselves and scuttle in. Terrifying. I'm going to have to find some way of arming myself against them (shotgun and a Dyson?). If you know of any methods for spider repelling, do let me know. Time's running out.

2: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Traveller: Much as I'm scared of flying, there are still plenty of places I'd love to go visit, particularly in the US. I currently have a hankering to go to Boston. Don't ask why. I've heard good things about it from people and as a traveller I just like to just visit places I've never visited before and that aren't number 1 on peoples' 'Must See' lists. I've had more than enough holidays to Spain, thanks. The only problem for a young traveller such as myself is that I have no one to go with. And I've travelled solo before and it's rubbish. You just end up talking to yourself about what you plan to do tomorrow while trying to enjoy a drink on a lonely bar stool that feels conspicuously high. It also means you have no one to hold your camera for you or laugh at your passport photo, no one to have dinner with, no one to share the sights with, and, worst of all, no one to talk about your holiday experiences with once it's all done and the clothes are waiting to have the sand washed out of them. No, singular travel is like watching The Wizard of Oz entirely in black and white: you'll see the film, hear the dialogue, know the plot, but it'll just be lacking that one vital ingredient to make it truly special.
Of course, if you're lucky enough to have friends with the time-off and the money to travel with that's great - it's how I was able to enjoy Biarritz last year – likewise if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband/blob of sunburned sentient matter to accompany you. Unfortunately I have nothing of that sort (I mean, I do have friends of course, but, oh you get my point) and so I'm fated to drag the wheelie suitcase on my own. Is that such a bad thing as I've made out? Possibly not. You can go wherever you please whenever you fancy, and the actual act of travelling, the journey, is always easier when it's just one of you to worry about. But I'm sure you'll agree that the best things in life tend to happen with two.
So will I end up travelling to Boston or some other location? I don't know. Depends how conspicuously high the barstools are there.

3: Rawr!: A very huge thank you to all of you who are enjoying and spreading the 'Grandpa T-Rex' dailies. I have no idea how many people see them as Blogger doesn't have a site meter thingy, but that doesn't bother me as it's just genuinely lovely to know that even a few people like them, and it's nice for me to be able to put out a cartoon every day. This is a cartoon blog after all. But also doing Grandpa T-Rex cartoons satisfies my curiosity and love of dinosaurs. From the age of 5 to 16 I wanted to be a palaeontologist more than anything else in the whole world. Some kids just love dinosaurs. I loved to know more about them. In my spare time I read endlessly about dinosaurs and the men who dug them up. About the Bone Wars between Othniel Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, about extinction theory and evolution, and even hadrosaur dental structure (I was a junior specialist on the teeth of the Anatotitan at age nine). I learned the anatomy of a diplodocus, how a baryonyx caught it's prey, how the seismosaur got its name, drew anatomical drawings of a Pachycephalosaur to get my GCSE in art, everything. I drank up the facts. And sadly it was only mediocre results in biology that stopped me, else I would be digging up bones and not writing stories. It's a life I sometimes still dream and sigh about, jealous of alternate universe Rob's job as a palaeontologist, digging up bones in Death Valley and drinking celebratory scotch over a newly unearthed Janinosaurus (I promised I'd name my first discovery after my mum). Anyway, enough of that. Here are a few facts about Grandpa T-Rex...
-Grandpa T-Rex ALWAYS faces the same direction in his cartoons. You might have noticed this, you might not. There's no specific reason for this; that it's how the first few were drawn and after that it caught on and has now become part of the style of the cartoon. Plus, and I can't fathom quite why, he just looks better then drawn from that side. Anyway, it's become sort of the one unbreakable rule of mine that he can never face the other way. It'd just be weird otherwise.
-His tail tells you his mood. If you check back through all the cartoons you'll see that when he's happy, his tail is up. When he's grumpy or angry or tired, his tail is down. You might say that this rule is broken when he's being racist to a triceratops, but I think that's because he enjoys being a racist old man and telling people what for.
-You might wonder what time period Grandpa T-Rex lives in. Well, it's on a Thursday somewhere between the late Cretaceous and Now.
-My grandma, Granny Smedley, is where I get a lot of inspiration for Grandpa T-Rex. The other stuff is old people cliches. My Great Uncle Bob is where I get some of the look for him. The rest is pure Tyrannosaur.
-Grandpa T-Rex's slanted half-shut eyes just sort of caught on. In the first two cartoons they were only drawn because he was squinting or sneezing, but they help him look like an old dinosaur and so they stuck.
-He ALWAYS wears a cardigan, but other items of clothing worn include a bow tie, flat cap, driving goggles, a trilby hat, night gown and night cap (his cardigan is under his night gown, honest).
-Old people always know another old person who really riles them up. Grandpa T-Rex's nemesis is Old Mister Spinosaur (who I always imagine to talk like 'Old Jewish Guy' on The Simpsons). Why a Spinosaurus? Because Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus is cool (told you I wanted to be a palaeontologist) and because it looks sufficiently different to a T-Rex. Also because that Spinosaur and a T-Rex fight in the atrocious Jurassic Park 3.

4: The Reader: I'm going through a big non-fiction period at the minute, reading books on science, history (weird history, like the history of Coca-Cola or the life of J. Kellogg), social interaction, psychology, economics and quantum mechanics. I've said it before; I have a super-massive soft spot for quantum mechanics. In fact I haven't read a piece of fiction (not counting graphic novels) since the first weeks of January. Nearly six months. Ooh! Shocking! The last fiction book I read was Jasper Fforde's ffrankly disappointing 'Shades of Grey' and since then I've had a hankering for learning stuff. I don't like it when I'm not being taught new things. Makes my brain feel stagnant. Not all the books I've read have been great, but there have been some un-put-downable ones. If you fancy a break from fiction, or just want something new to add to your reading pile, here are my recommendations for non-fiction books covering everything from sherry to spaghettifcation. They're all ones I've read or re-read in the past six months and are well worth a gander.

Flipnosis (Kevin Dutton): Great book this. Read it through from cover to cover and stopped only to make myself a cup of coffee. It's all about the art of split-second persuasion in our world; from how it works in the Animal Kingdom to its uses in our everyday life. It tells you what babies have in common with psychopaths, how sitting on your hands will help you avoid being punched, why sex sells, how a single word can change your entire perception of someone, how you can unrdetsnad tihs snetecne eevn touhgh it's sepllnig's all wonrg, and that in the wrong hands persuasion can be wielding almost like a weapon. It's jam-packed with case studies, stories and anecdotes that help you understand the subject matter without ever leaving you feeling overwhelmed, and author Kevin Dutton has a really relaxed and likeable style. A brilliant examination of a cutting-edge science that might even help you in your own life.

A History of the World in Six Glasses (Tom Standage): A really accessible history book that examines civilizations and progress through six individual drinks: tea, coffee, wine, beer, spirits, and coca-cola. It's full of interesting facts (like how Tab, the clear cola, was a product of the Cold War) and while not the most in-depth study it really gets across just how important drinks have been and how they've shaped our culture and progress through the years. The section on Coca-Cola is particularly entertaining, as it's a drink with a short but intriguing history.

The Goldilocks Enigma (Paul Davies): Why is the Universe just right for Life? Is the Universe pointless? Is there a Multiverse? Is it just turtles all the way down? Paul Davies runs through everything from flavoursome quarks to dark matter with a lucidity and simplicity that will please even the most physics-phobic reader. It's one of those science books where you can tell the writer has a real passion for the subject, but who also knows not to get so carried away as to boggle the minds of his audience. At the end of each chapter there are delicious bite-size summaries of all the key points, so if you can't quite recall what spaghettification is, or you want to sum up M Theory then it's all in GCSE revision style bullet points. A great book that'll leave you questioning not just your existence, but the existence of everything.

Bad Science (Ben Goldacre): You'll have probably seen this one when you walk into Waterstones as it's won a lot of praise over the past few years. Rightly so, as it's a laser-sharp, sometimes uncomfortable examination of the scare-mongering medical journalism that has become so popular in the past decade, taking you through how shaky statistics, half-truths by pharmaceutical corporations, and the jabbering nonsense world of homeopathy have all turned us into a nation obsessed with an unhealthy obsession with health. If you hate The Daily Mail's (so called) 'Health' section then you're gonna love this book.

Made in America (Bill Bryson): I must have read this book about six times or more in the past three years. Bryson does history and science as well as he does travel (A Short History of Nearly Everything is a wonderful book and one I intend to re-read soon. Mother Tongue is also great), and Made in America is him at his best. It's packed with obscure, entertaining and amazing facts about everything that made America the nation that it is today. Language, food and drink, sex, advertising, sport, movies...everything is covered through the nation's history. Learn what cock ale was, how the railways basically commanded time, how a bet on a horse heralded the movie industry in California, where the first hamburger was invented, how a Presidential assassination led to air conditioning, and what the American national anthem originally sounded like. Funny, factual and fascinating.
If you've read a really good non-fiction novel then I'd love to hear about it as I'm always on the lookout for something new to read on the train!

5. Ore-Oh: I don't like Oreos. There, I said it. Feels good to get it out actually. I always thought I did like them, but then my consumption of them has largely been in an oblique manner; in milkshakes or ice creams. I actually had one in its standard form the other day and much to my surprise it wasn't a pleasant experience. I can't quite explain why, except to say that an Oreo feels very much to me like a chocolate Bourbon that didn't quite make the mark. The chocolate biscuit doesn't taste chocolatey and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth and the bit that is quite good, the filling, is nowhere near plentiful enough. I'm aware you can get ones with twice as much filling in, but frankly it still wouldn't be enough to overwhelm the chalky brown biscuit that's double-teaming it.
It doesn't help that it's a biscuit that thinks it's more than the sum of its parts (you ain't no custard cream, Oreo!) by building up its own set of 'instructions', displayed prominently on packaging and in remote-smashingly aggravating adverts with children so annoying that you could throw them into industrial biscuit-making equipment. 'Pull it, lick it, dunk it'? Don't tell me how to eat my fucking biscuit, I'm British! We put ours on the saucer in readiness for dunking! Honestly, it's the only biscuit I know of in the whole world that comes with unnecessary suggestions for consumption. Hob Nobs don't come with a 'Dunk me twice to soften me up, then eat me!' command and nor do Fox's Party Rings demand you put wear them on your fingers and nibble the icing off them before throwing the biscuity residue to a passing crow. No, they don't care how you eat them. They just want you to enjoy them. Yet somehow the Oreo has the balls-out audacity to tell you how it likes to be eaten because it thinks it knows how you'll enjoy it best. Split, licked, put back together and then dunked in milk? What a fucking liberty. I'm not five, I like to dip my biscuit in my tea or coffee and then eat it, not perform surgery on it. I will not have a sub-par biscuit ordering me about, no sir.
Mind you, despite its massive shortcomings and irrational serving suggestions, the Oreo's still not the worst biscuit on planet Earth. That award goes to those godawful pink wafers. You definitely don't want to get me started on them.


Right, sorry for taking up so much of your time. More cartoons to follow. Now go find something useful to do.

"It's a trap!" No, it's just the return of 'Rob's Random 5'!

That's right Darth Vader! After a long absence it's the return of the blog post that force-chokes the life out of common sense, but promises no disintegration. This week we've emerged from Hyperspace early for the following: Mantras! Proud parents! Proud presents! Logos! Geordies! And pictures!

1) The words I live by:

You're a wise man Mr. Wells...

2) Photo-no-no: (I warn you in advance, the vitriol flies in this rant)
Is there anything as annoying as a proud new parent? Well, alright, maybe, but as I get older people around me are starting to do 'grown-up responsible things' like getting mortgages and starting families, and that's fine, but oh-my-goodness if you ever have a child and try to show me more than one photo of your brand new pride and joy then I will likely effect violence upon you. Oh great, you and your wife/husband did what billions of others throughout the course of time have done and made a mewling little poop factory – hoovering up food and attention and turning it into vile nappy mess that you'll tell anecdotes about at the next dinner party. So? It's not like it's the first one ever or it can shit gold or shoot lasers from its eyes. There's nothing worse than having to look at shot after shot after shot of some person's freshly-birthed Mini-Me as they give running commentary on each picture, usually with diabetically-sweet 'awws' and 'ohs' that make them seem like they've forgotten what their child looks like after two seconds, only to be reminded by the next identical photo. And even if their baby looks like the end result of a drunken night between Quasimodo and a badly weathered Notre Dame gargoyle you have to – have to – say how bonny it looks, not just once, but shot after shot after arrrrrrgh! Why do you have to carry more than one picture around with you?! Isn't one good enough? The whole tedious process is a form of highly-refined brain torture. I imagine that it could be used to extract information...

Sorry, rant over. Of course, I'm not a father, so I can't fully grasp the obvious natural pride that new parents have. But let me make this promise: when the day comes that I am a proud parent I will not bore my friends with endless snaps of Robert Augustus Plainview Smedley Jnr. There will be only one. And he'll most likely be dressed as a Jedi.

3) Logo-a-go-go:
If you head over to C. A. Marshall's blog, you'll not only find a wealth of information about the World o' Publishing, but also a rather handsome blog logo.

Nice, isn't it? It speaks literary and fun. I'm happy with it and glad Cassie is, not least because it took a lot of coffee and paper to come up with something that I thought was just right. What can I say, I'm a perfectionist. It features Jane Austen, Mr. Darcy, a sheep and Mollie the dog, all enjoying a good book. And here's a little fact for you: the writing on all the paper is mostly unreadable - and that's on purpose - but if you look closely here and there you can pick out the odd word, including the opening line of 'Pride & Prejudice' and also the phrase 'drawn by Robert'. Crafty! And Chris, for whom I also designed a logo, doesn't know this, but if you play his logo backwards it syncs up perfectly with 'The Wizard of Oz'...

Anyway, I'm always willing and happy to design free logos for people. It keeps my drawing hand and eye in, keeps the creative juices from freezing, and above all it's fun. Drop me a line if you fancy one.

4) Goggles!:
The heat given off by the number of candles on my birthday cake (I feel so ooooold!) was so ferocious I had to have eye protection to blow them out...

5) Wor Bat-villain...:
Why aren't there more Geordies in TV and Film and Books? It's a crime is what it is (I say that as a Northerner, even though I sound like I was born and lived in a hot air balloon for my whole life), and so I was delighted to see the World's First Geordie Super-Villain in the latest issue of Grant Morrison's 'Batman and Robin'. That's right – a villain from tha Toon, complete with broad accent (I love that he actually says 'Divvent ye knaa') and colloquialisms that will no doubt confound the some of the American readership and maybe even a few Brits. You can see some of him, named Old King Coal, here. It's fantastic, sinister, and at the same time also a touch hilarious. But you'd expect nothing less from the Glaswegian comics maestro Morrison. To have a Broon Ale swigging villain battling Batman may just be my comics highlight of the year... well, until the next 'Parker' comes out in October.

Well, that's all for this week. Until next time, take care. Now, as it's Pancake Day, go an enjoy some circular cooked batter. I know I will.

"Hello, ooh, new teeth, that's weird...but not as weird as the return of Rob's Random 5!"

Did you miss me? Best not answer that. Oooh so many things bubbling in my mind! Why don't villains hold their guns by their side like they used to? Is a bloody shovel and a bag of lye on your doorstep enough to keep trick or treaters away? What does a horse trying to take off a pair of jeans look like? Whatever happened to Secret Squirrel? Does a teabag think it's having a lovely hot bath when it gets put in a teapot? None of these questions will be answered!

This week there's Milton madness, Logos a-go-go, the brilliance of November, and Smedley sartorial style. Leave your brain at the door and your bum on the chair, it's 'Rob's Random 5'!

1. Robert Smedley, Wary Fiend: It's not often - or ever even - that I start a post with a quote from Milton's 'Paradise Lost', but why not break the havoc of a lifetime? I've had this line on my mind for a while now.

"Into this wild abyss the wary fiend stood on the brink of Hell and looked awhile, pondering his voyage"...

I didn't like 'Paradise Lost' when I studied it at Uni - it was long and difficult and the prospect of studying 'His Dark Materials' later on in the course meant that my mind never quite locked with it. I was preoccupied with the excitement of being able to study one of my favourite books of all time and the prospect of enthusing in an intellectual manner on the subjects of daemons and parallel worlds and the War against Authority. But that above line from 'Paradise Lost' is one that lodged in my head when I read it and has since stayed there. The 'wary fiend' is Satan (not as bad a guy as you might think in 'Paradise Lost'), who leaves his newly-built Pandaemonium in Hell to go and initiate the fall of Man. And to do so he has to cross an area of absolute nothing known as The Void, described fantastically as 'the womb of Nature and perhaps her grave'. It's a place of total chaos and total nothing - no light, no dark, no up, no down. The Void makes Aberystwyth look like a bustling metropolis. And yet from it comes everything; good and bad, brilliant and dull. The Void is where it's all made and destroyed. The Void has to be crossed if he's to get to his goal.

And right now I feel like the wary fiend.

No, I don't intend to bring Original Sin into the world. But I do have a purpose; a goal that I want to get to, career and life-wise, and right now I'm standing on my own brink, staring out at The Void that we all have to face at some point in our lives: the chaos of uncertainty about our future, the multitude of difficult choices we have to make, the fear of the unknown...all that potential in the womb, waiting to be born. That's how I see my life right now. I'm not the only one. Everyone stands on their own brink, staring at their own 'Void'. I can see where I want to be, just like everyone does, and I can see that metaphorical Void of great possibility and problems that has to be pushed through in order to get to what I want on the other side.


And I've just taken my first step into it. Not everyone does. Some people will stay on the edge, comfortable enough with the Pandaemonium they know, wanting more, but never brave enough to attempt to leave their spot and trek into uncertainty. Others will dive in, wading through the chaos and thriving on it. I'd like to think I'm somewhere in the middle. But I've learned that if you choose to throw yourself into that uncertainty then you don't have to do it alone. Among the gloom of naysayers there are brilliant, shining people out there who'll support you and believe in you, even when you don't believe in yourself. The fact is that you can always ask for a hand to hold.



Unless you're going to initiate the Fall of Man. Then you're on your own.


2. Logo-rhythmic: I've been meaning to do a new, updated logo for a while now. Last week I got my chance.

Lovely. For those who like to know, it features Professor Hippo, a penguin, the Ice Cream Wicked Witch, the Drunk Beer, Mr. Hyde, a mischevious monkey, a polar bear, and 'That Random Octopus Monster' that crops up in everything and yet has never featured in an actual cartoon. Weird. But what's this new logo for? Something new. If I told you anymore I'd have to set the dogs on you. You'll see soon enough...

3. November: I love love love November. It's a brilliant month. Absolutely fantastic. You may disagree. I could write a whole solo post about why I love this month, but instead I'll just compile this list within a list of reasons why November is great, and by the end you might just agree with me...:
Bonfire Night: There's something so incredibly Human about Bonfire Night: a group of people huddled together around a warm fire, eating and being together as they stave off the darkness and the cold and the misery of encroaching winter with furiously beautiful lights and sound. I love it. That sense of everyone coming together and enjoying an experience as one. It's like Christmas in that sense. And only Christmas succeeds Bonfire Night in terms of the indellible marks it leaves on your sensory memory. My most vivid memories include Bonfire Night, especially the ones that were held at school back when I was only 9 or 10 years old, and that's because the whole event provokes all 5 of your senses (not your 6th sense though - being psychic just spoils the surprise of the fireworks). There's the sight of the night sky breaking open with colourful fire, the taste of sickly sweet toffee apples, the deafening cacophony of fireworks so loud they make you flinch, the smell of the gunpowder drifting through the chilly autumn night, and the touch of a sparkler through a gloved hand; and they're all rolled together in one beautiful sensory cloud that you'll never quite forget, no matter how full your brain gets. Bonfire Night always takes me back to those moments, makes me feel like a child again, with all the magic and wonder that went along with it. And it really is magical, if only for the way it gives us all a happy feeling in the middle of dark nights and bleak months. Like I said, it's incredibly human. And we do it so very very well.

The Smell: Oh yes, November has it's own smell. It lasts just for the month and no longer. No other month has it's own unique odour and nothing is so nicely sums up the entire 30 days quite like it because it's a mixture of everything that happens in the month: there's the smell of smoke from coal fires, burning wood, lit gunpowder, crisp leaves on damp soil, the fresh scent of a crisp, cold early morning (isn't it weird how 'cold' has a smell?), the musty aroma of coats and scarves that haven't been used in months, the warm tang of central heating slowly starting up. They all form one great olfactory orchestra playing a single November-smell symphony and what a great smell it is. Breathe it in and make the most of it, because it won't be around till next year, and soon it'll be overwhelmed by the cinammon-scented arrival of Christmas...

Remembrance Day: There's a dignity and pensiveness that comes with November and it's brought by Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday. It may seem odd that I'm putting it in a list of why I love November, but I include it because it's an occasion that makes us stop and think, about the past, about what we've lost and why we should be thankful for what we have, and we don't do that often enough. Once again it's an event that brings us all together in common spirit, albeit with great solemnity. It's a day of immense pride and thankfulness for those who gave it all so that we can have it all, and so that folk like me can ramble randomly and you can read it. It is of course, by complete calenrical chance that it falls in November but in a way it makes sense that it does: close to the year's end and in a quiet part of it, at a time when people are starting to look back over what they've accomplished in the past months; it's another moment of reflection and recollection in a month full of them.

Christmas is just around the Corner: This is a good and a bad thing. On the one hand you know that it's fewer than fifty days until Santa stops by, but on the other, November has it's thunder stolen by a day that doesn't even occur within it's borders. You see, November often gets a little lost with all the pre-Christmas hooh-hah that goes on, and people and shops and businesses get so caught up in the festive season so early that the last days of autumn are swallowed up instead of savoured. December really is the drunk girl at the party - the one who wants all of the attention and screams 'this song is all about me! no one else! me!' while waving the gin bottle around. And poor, meek November, with it's quiet, beautiful Autumn days never gets the attention it so richly deserves. I really don't like seeing Christmas stuff up and rolling in November. It feels wrong and too premature. By all means, on the 1st of December, go crazy for Christmas, because I love it and I will too - but give November a chance to show everyone what it's all about.

Because as I've said, it really is such a great month.

4. Ssssssmokin'!: I love this website, Gentleman's Emporium. Stick a pair of Converse with any of these outfits and I'd wear them. Really, I think everyone should go back to dressing like this (trainers allowed). A few months back I bought this coat and it's a beaut: all swishy and...well, swishy. Fantastic. If it wasn't for the ridiculous amount that has to be paid on import taxes (damn you, HM Customs!) then I'd buy more stuff from there, especially this smoking jacket that Chris alerted me to. Oh-hoho! No, I don't smoke, but what man wouldn't want to gad around the house in one of these? Only a troglodytic buffoon would turn his nose up at it! It's a shame that such items of clothing are not in style - every chap would look 30% more dashing if he had one of these in his wardrobe. I can only hope that at some point there'll be a revival in Victorian and Western fashions, or a surge in steampunk interest to take the catwalks by storm, so that clothes like these are more widely available. Or maybe it's best if there's not? Maybe it's better if you stand out from the crowd with some piece of 1900s finery, rather than blend in? I'm not sure. What I am sure of though is that I'm going to write to Santa and ask him for that smoking jacket!

5. Naught about the Noughties: Who named this decade 'The Noughties'? I'd like to meet them. And punch them in the face. It really is such an awful name for the first ten years of a grand, new millennium. When the 1900s dawned no one named them the 'Nineteen-Noughties'. No. Because people didn't want to be remembered for the embarassment of living in a decade that sounds like a bag of low-calorie sweets. The 'Noughties'...honestly, I despair. And yet it occured to me the other day that we're in the last two months of this execrably named decade. That's right, a whole decade has passed us by. It's been quick, hasn't it? I remember the start of it - a new year, a new decade, a new millennium, a new start for everyone everywhere. 'Look to the future now, it's only just begun'. The 20th century and everything in it was gone, and it was time to forge ahead in this new frontier. The Smedley family wore tuxedos and watched the fireworks ripple across the valley below us and we, like everyone else on the Earth, breathed in the air of a hopeful new era, eager to see what this futuristic sounding '2000' and beyond would bring.

And what have the first ten years brought us? How has the world changed? Has it improved or atrophied? Are we better, wiser, more hopeful as a species? Errm...the short answer is no, not really. Yes, we've had certain great strides, socially and technologically, but there have been so many setbacks to our brave new world. We've seen terrorism on a massive scale and on our very own soil, we've seen wars begin and dictators fall but conflict continue; there have been natural disasters and human-caused suffering on unimaginable scales. The new millennium gave us YouTube and Twitter and Facebook and wifi and iPhones and with all that new technology it's never been easier to highlight not just the good but the very very bad. I sound terribly pessimistic I know, and you might well disagree with me. There have been good things, really; great feats of human achievement, but it just seems that they've been lost in all the bad things that have happened. I think it's clear that I haven't thought much of this decade. But then, what do you expect when you name it 'The Noughties'?

But I'm not going to end on a downer. Never! You see it's like I said, we're in the last two months of this decade. The Noughties are done and the Tens are a-coming. A new start for everyone. Soon there's going to be a new stretch of ten years, ripe with possibilities, and we wary fiends will all stand on the brink of it, eager to make of it all we can. Eager to make it better than the last ten. Eager to make it a worthy part of that shiny new millenium we were all promised. So what if this decade has been a bit rubbish? We've got a fresh chance to improve. We learn, move on, and make the 'Twenty-Tens' a stellar decade: a time when we all just try to be the best we possibly can, whatever good or bad comes out of the chaos. If we all do that, just think how much better everything will be and will seem, especially when we look back on it ten years later.

The Noughties are gone. You've got a new start coming. Put on your tuxedo and meet it.

Well that's all for this week. Hope you've enjoyed another spoonful of randomness. As the RAM said to the computer, 'Goodbyte!'

"I'm your huckleberry, and this is Rob's Random 5!"

Questions questions questions! Which 90s movie provides the title for this week's post? What would a good last meal be? What's so interesting about a mug? Remember Sammy Jankis? What does a bookcase say about someone? Is Autumn as great a month as I think it is? And is this, the 16th Rob's Random 5, the last? All these questions and more will be answered!

1. Dinner at Eight: One of my favourite chefs, Keith Floyd, died last week. His were the first cooking shows I saw and remember watching. He had a great talent for cooking really good, hearty grub - especially big, 'one-pot' stews and casseroles - and doing it in an accessible fashion. The main reason I liked him though is because he was passionate about food without being pretentious about it (which is somewhat of a rarity on cooking shows these days), and he didn't care if things went wrong in the cooking process. And of course he was most famous for using wine, and sometimes cooking with it to. His old adage 'one glass for you and one for the pot' is one I stand by every time I cook using wine, although maybe not in such volumnous quantities (check out his interpretation of 'a dash of white wine' in the video below).
Apparently he died a happy man, after enjoying a delicious three course meal with his wife. There were oysters, pheasant (or partridge, I can't remember), and a cider jelly, all washed down with lashings of expensive, fine wines. A delicious sounding last meal, and it got me wondering what - if I could choose - my last meal would consist of. Would it include my mum's pea soup? A nice piece of sea bass? My own cheesecake? A bag of chip shop chips? They all sound good, but this is a last meal we're talking about here. The last thing you'll ingest and digest in this Universe. There are no rules: you can have anything and as much of it as you want. So what's it gonna be?
Eventually I brewed it down to the following: pizza (although I'm not sure what kind yet), two double cheeseburgers, a Melton Mowbray pork pie, some Heinz baked beans, my mum's sweetcorn pancakes, my own vanilla cheesecake, a tub of Ben & Jerry's chocolate brownie ice cream, all washed down with a bottle of '82 Margaux and a bottle of 35 year old Glenlivet. Yeah, I realise there's little that's good for you on this, but this is a LAST MEAL - there are no consequences.
So that would be my last meal. But what about yours? As I said before, what's it gonna be? Perhaps it'll be a chicken cooked by none other than Christopher Walken?

Yes, that's really him! It's not the only time he's been seen cooking chicken...

2. Book Look: The BBC ran this article about bookcases (and did you know 15 Ikea 'Billy' bookcases are made every minute?) and in it asked the intriguing question of why we display our books rather than store them away in a box or out of sight. I'd never thought about this before; that there really is no reason to put your books in a place you can't see them. I've always subscribed to the mantra that books decorate a room. If I didn't have my books on display there would be a big space on my wall. Granted, I could fill it with a cool suit of stormtrooper armour (WANT!), but it wouldn't be the same. There's something so aesthetically pleasing about a space crammed with such a variety of books; it's like a supremely personal piece of art because it looks good and is constructed from your life and tastes. What you have on display says a lot about who you are. A bookcase bursting with several editions of Proust and Mollieux probably means you're either brainy, boring or a lying show-off, a bookcase filled with a wide variety of genres and authors shows you're an well-read and well-rounded individual, whereas shelves with graphic novels squeezed on them probably means you're my kinda person! Looking at my bookcase it's easy to tell what kind of person I am: Jasper Fforde and Philip Pullman nut, lover of the Classics, and a two shelf-long fan of Batman comics. That makes me... well, I'll let you decide. What does your bookcase say about you? Are you a show-off? According to the BBC's article there's an element of this at play in all bookcases, shelves and biblio-oriented displays. Books have a "hallowed air" about them; a sense of prestige that comes from a time when books and manuscripts were for the very rich and privileged (see: every mansion/haunted house/period Regency home) and symbols of status and erudition: that you were not just rich in pocket but also rich in mind. Over time, as books have become cheaper, this notion of monetary status has waned but we still take pride in displaying our books, either because it may be a rare and sought-after first edition, a book lovingly kept since childhood or a gift from a friend. And like anything that is treasured, you want others to see it and share in your passion. This sense, not of 'showing-off' - because that words sounds too pejorative in this context - but of putting books on display to be admired by yourself and others, runs through every bookcase. For the collector there's the 'hoarder's thrill' of seeing an ever-expanding collection, and for the viewer the chance to nosey around, play detective, and learn a little about a person from what they do (and don't) read. It's like exploring the museum of an individual's life - their tastes and passions expressed through the texts they've accumulated.
Really it would be a shame to store books away in a box or out of sight. Everything about a book is designed to be looked at and touched and pored over. Putting them on display not only looks and feels great but means they're always there for you or a friend to pick up, flick through casually, and enjoy. But the best reason of all is that you spent your hard-earned cash on them, so why not enjoy them? Otherwise you may as well just bury your money in the ground and never buy another book again. I love my books, I know you love yours, and I'm always going to have mine on display. Plus, it's gonna be a while anyway before I save up for that stormtrooper armour...


3. A Mug's Game: Chances are that, whether you've got the builders in or the relatives round, you'll have to make a fair few cups of tea/coffee for thirsty guests. But isn't it awkward trying to carry more than two at once, especially if youcan't find/don't have a tea tray to put them on? Designer Jonathan Aspinall certainly thought so, and then came up with an idea so genius that it akes you smile just thinking about the simplicity of it: interlocking mugs. Brilliant! They each have a sticky-out bit and a sticky-in bit so you can link them together and carry up to six at a time. Haha! As someone who loves a good mug I can't help but love it (it still doesn't beat this mug though - I got one of these for a birthday and now drink out of little else). And if you don't pay a lot of attention to your beverage bucket of choice, you should: the mug you chug from says a lot about you. For instance, if your mug has a football on it then chances are you like football, if it if it's one of those Penguin Classic Books ones you're probably an avid book reader (the exception to that rule being my brother, who could not dislike books more), and if your mug says 'World No.1 Sex Machine' you're probably a massive ass-hat, because everyone knows official confirmation of 'World No.1 Sex Machine' can only be displayed on soup bowls and gratin dishes. Plus, science has actually proved that drinking tea or coffee out of your favourite mug makes it taste better - it's all to do with psychology and nothing to do with the hallucinogenic effects of toxic mug paint. So with so many mugs around there really is no excuse for a boring old white mug, unless you're indulging in post-postmodern irony or you break a lot of mugs. Yes people, we really are in the Golden Age of mug technology: blackboard mugs, global warming mugs, mugs that tell you how hot your tea is, freaky teeth mugs, mugs for the blind... Drink it up folks, it doesn't get any better than this.


4. Autumn: You could practically hear Summer finally snap and give way to Autumn this week. All of a sudden the humid mess of rainclouds and sporadic sunshine we vainly class as 'Summer' vanished and made way for distinctly cooler weather. The nights are growing uncannily shorter, the sunlight is weaker, and the air is crisper. The trees are on the cusp of dropping leaves and soon that sickly-sweet rotting plantlife smell will fill the air. I never used to like Autumn - it was always associated with going back to school, and being forced to play rugby on swampy pitches, or having to do Thursday CCF practice and stripping/assembling a rifle in the mud as a Sergeant bellowed at you. But now I'm no longer at school it's a season with better connotations. Autumn is all about walking through the woods kicking through piles leaves, sitting in front of the fire with a book and a wee dram o' whisky, getting your scarf and mittens out of the cupboard for the first time since March, standing on the station platform waiting for your train and making condensation clouds with your breath, coming out of work or uni or a bar and going 'Wow it gets dark early now doesn't it?', and knowing that Christmas isn't all that far off. Of course it's not all great. There are trillions of sticky leaves to clear up, colds and flus slither through the population (and oh boy won't this year be fun, what with everyone thinking they'll have the Pig Pox), and the dark mornings make getting up early a foreboding chore, but these are the prices you pay for that cosy feeling you get when you're sat in a warm house on a chilly Autumn night. Heck, at least it isn't winter.
I'm not sure what the point of this bit of this post is - maybe it's just that I like Autumn and enjoy rambling on about things and this is a collision of the two. Anyway, Autumn is a pretty good season. It won't fill you up with false promises of sunshine, blue skies and beach weather like Summer does, or with the never-appear fairytale snow scenes of Winter. It's a reliable old period of time. Leaves fall, the weather gets colder, we all catch cold, and your bed becomes an attractive hibernation unit. You know what to expect and there are never any surprises. And after the unpredictability of the British summer I like that a lot.

5. Doggy Style: File this under 'O', for 'Oh So Very Very Wrong'. A French design firm has launched a sex doll for dogs. Yes you read that right: a sex doll. For dogs. Apparently it's meant as a replacement for the usual victims of canine carnality such as cushions and neighbour's legs. The dog romances this instead of your granny's ottoman. Terr-ific. And people wonder why I don't like animals. Apparently it's easy to teach your hound to hump it and, I quote, "To clean it you just have to pull the hole out and wash it with soap and water". Charming. I think they were talking about the doll there and not your dog.
I'm not a dog owner so I don't know what people who possess pooches think of this. To me it just sounds wrong. Maybe that's just me though. I always thought there was a 'snippier and snappier' solution to such a problem as an...'over-excited' dog. But what do you think? You can read the article and see a picture of the item here at Digital Spy. I think it looks like a balloon animal hound of the Baskervilles. Plus it costs £360. Couldn't you just nail some planks of wood together into a vaguely dog-shape for much less than that? Actually, best not; you don't want your dog getting splinters...or catching fire from the friction.
Anyway, I hereby submit this as evidence in the case that 'Life is Getting Weirder'. Good job I've got this blog to cope with it all...

Well m'dears, that's all for this week's Random 5, and for the next few months as my job as 'Robert Smedley: Action Accountant!' commences next week. There'll probably be one more cartoon up before next Friday but then that'll be it for a little while. Once I get into the routine of early mornings, accountancy homework, wearing shoes that aren't made by Converse, and audit stuff I'll be back posting the Random 5 and cartoons on a more regular basis and the oddness will continue. And don't worry, I won't be yakking on about the heady world of business. It will not be mentioned at all. This blog is a work free zone (plus I'd get fired for breaking ethics codes and client confidentiality and I don't want that) and it's just pure cartoons and craziness here. And many thanks as always to you fine people out there who regularly read my random rantings and put up with me. I do very much appreciate it.

So until next time, take care, and keep watching the skies... unless you're driving and then you should probably keep your eyes on the road.

Good night!

"Report back to me when it makes sense..." it's Rob's Random 5!

This week the Random 5 is Looking at Books, In praise of ice cream, and Fontastic Fun. It's all brought to you by the letter 'H', the number '9', and the advice 'Never go dancing on a frozen lake'. And for film fans who want to know, this week's title quote was provided by the excellent 'Burn After Reading'. Speaking of reading, that leads us nicely onto Random No.1...


1. Book Trailers: Movies have trailers. TV shows have trailers. Videogames have trailers. Caravan parks have trailers. Books do not. Well, they don't usually. But sometimes the Lion will lie down with the Lamb, the Cat will dance with the Dog, jaffa cakes will rain from the skies, and a book will be given a trailer. I don't know if you've ever seen a trailer for a book - they're incredibly rare (unless you've seen a Harry Potter film, in which case you've seen one enormous trailer for a book). But once in a blue moon one will appear on TV, or in the case of this particularly well-produced one, online...

That's a finely crafted, funny, trailer. It looks lovely and the costumes look great and the 'sea monster' (can it be a sea monster if it lives in a lake? Maybe it's just on vacation) looks impressive for a short ad. And that's the problem. It's all about the 'look'. Let me explain.

Trailers for books are so rare because trailers for books NEVER work, and that's because the medium they're using to sell that product doesn't fit the way the product is used. Trailers and advertisements sell things through a visual medium and that works great on things you can see like cars or movies or breakfast cereals, but not on books. Because the thing you buy a book for; the story - and this is going to sound rather metaphysical - doesn't really exist: it's all in the mind. And there's no way to advertise something that's all in the mind. A book is just words and you assimilate those words and process them and conjour up your own images and sounds and smells and voices for each character, and the images and voices you come up with in your head will be different to the ones someone else comes up with in their head. The 'product's' (and by product I mean book) meaning and value and thus worth differs from person to person. It's like whenever a book is turned into a movie and half the people go 'That's exactly how I imagine 'X' looking' and the other half go 'That's not how I imagined 'X' looking'. A book is such a personal experience that it's impossible to sum up a definitive experience and definitve interpretations of the characters and market it as such in a visual form without alienating part of your intended audience. The success of a book lies not in how it's characters are portrayed on a screen, but in the interpretation by the reader and you can't advertise interpretation. A movie is a visual medium so advertising it in a visual medium works. A book is a textual medium so you have to advertise in text: show quotes of what other people thought of the book, or come up with a snappy tag-line for it, or have an interesting jacket cover. And you don't need trailers for that, just a poster.
So that's why it's so weird and jarring when you see a television advert for a book - it's a friction between two very different mediums of entertainment. No advert for a book will ever match the feeling you get from reading those first words and the excitement you get at plunging deeper into the text. No advert will ever be as personal as your take on a book. So you get ads like this and this that tell you about the book but can come nowhere near to the emotional response or imagination the actual product will elicit. I have to admit, that this one, for Neil Gaiman's brilliant 'The Graveyard Book' is the closest thing to a good book trailer, thanks in part to some illustrations from the book and Neil Gaiman's excellent narration, but even as you watch this trailer doesn't it feel like a second hand experience of a first-hand medium?


2. In Praise of Ice Cream: Sometimes I lose all hope in Humanity. I look around and see the cruelty and ignorance and the suffering and the hatred that are very worst, indellible hallmarks of our species, and I just despair. But then I remember that the Human race invented ice cream, and the world seems just that little bit more habitable. Let's face it, ice cream is great. There's something comforting and fun about it. Maybe it's nostalgia for the childhood and the infinite summer. Maybe it's a reminder of a fabulous holiday in a warmer climate. Maybe it's just that it's delicious. It could be any of a thousand reasons. In fact there are very few reasons for people not to like ice cream. It comes in every flavour imaginable, from the classics (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry etc), to the imaginatively indulgent (chocolate brownie, strawberry cheesecake, rocky road), to the gourmet (salted caramel, lavendar custard, ginger and rhubarb), to the weird (I've eaten bacon and egg ice cream, [and even a sardine sorbet but we're not talking about sorbets here] and there is a place in the Lake District that makes a Baked Beans ice cream, which I wish I could have tried), so there's bound to be a flavour for everyone. Lactose intolerant? There are milk-free ice creams out there for you. Fat man? There's a low-fat option for you my good sir. Diabetic? There are sugar-free ice creams for your delectation. And how do you want to eat that ice cream? On a cone? In a bowl? In a float? In a Sundae? Maybe blended up in a milkshake? Maybe you want sprinkles or chocolate shavings on it? Or caramel sauce, or chocolate sauce, or strawberry sauce (we called it Monkey Blood when we were little)? Oh the variety! Ice cream is the great all-rounder. It's a dessert on its own, can be served with other flavours, or can be effotelssly paired with another dessert (apple pie and ice cream? hells yeah! treacle sponge and ice cream? double hells yeah!). Ice cream doesn't take itself too seriously either. It's the dessert of fairgrounds and beach holidays; of birthday parties and pick-me up treats. It's associated with sticky smiles and good times*. No one has ice cream at a funeral, although they should because then it would soften the blow of a sad day and go great with that really dry mysterious cake that always gets served. I've just decided I'm going to have ice cream at the service where my ashes will be shot up in that giant firework. Ice cream and booze. What a great time everyone will have then. Really is there nothing ice cream can't do?! Well, stay solid on a hot day, but I believe I read somewhere that Willy Wonka had been working on that...
Seriously, if you can think of a better dessert than ice cream then let me know because I haven't tried it yet. Young & old, rich & poor, fat & thin, dog-person & cat-person, ice cream's great for anyone. Go get yourself a couple of scoops now. The world will instantly look a better place.






*Well, mostly good times. There is that tired Hollywood cliche of a jilted woman sitting in her dressing gown eating the stuff right out of the tub as she weeps and watches Bridget Jones' bloody Diary. But I prefer to think of it as a tool of consolation for the lady in that event, so even then ice cream is great as it's cheering her up. I won't let you turn my favourite dessert into sad, 'break-up' medicine, Hollyweird!


3. Hope you haven't just eaten!: Sometimes ol' Ma Nature will flat out surprise you. And then she'll disgust you. But either way Nature is so much more interesting and freaky than the Attenborough-narrated killing of a gazelle (I didn't mean David Attenborough was killing a gazelle and narrating as he did it) we think it is, and at times can show us the sort of things that are confined to our imagination and cheap sci-fi. There's more to our natural world than lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) and here's a round-up of all the fun, scary, weird stuff that teachers never tell you about.

Take for example the famous 'Carolina Sewer Creature', which looks like the vanguard of a gross alien invasion force. It's actually made up of thousands and thousands of annelid worms all coiling around one another, with an individual worm's movement stimulating the whole mass to look like it's one enormous pulsating mass of wrong. It freaks people out when they see it and that's unsurprising because it looks entirely foreign to this planet.

If you thought that was bad, check this thing out. That cute critter's called an Isopod and it's a parasite. It gets into fishes mouths, eats their tongues, and then replaces the tongue with itself. That's right, it takes the place of the tongue. Aaagh! Kill it! Kill it with fire! Seriously doesn't that sound like something from a space-horror movie? And yet it's frighteningly real (well, it's only frightening if you're a fish). Why weren't we told about this Mr. Attenborough, why?! Staying on the theme of fish, how about this fella here, called a barreleye fish, who has a transparent head. A transparent head! Frea-ky.

Out of the water it's no safer. There are giant carnivorous pitcher plants in the Philippines capable of eating rats. It's only a matter of time before they discover a Triffid and then we'll all be done for.

But I've saved the best for last in this list of weird Nature. How about a parasitic fungus that infects ants and turns them into mind-controlled zombies? Oh yes my friends, it exists! The fungus spores enter the ants' brains and force them to do their bidding, making them walk along the ground until they reach a desirable location. The spores then kill them before the fungus explodes out of the ants' heads and grows, using the dead ants as a source of nutrition. Cripes! Just imagine if that fungus evolves to use that trick on humans... 'shudder'.

So what have we learned from this brief trip into weirdness? Basically Nature is terrifying and you should just stay well away from it. Or at least pack a flamethrower.


4. Little Lord Font-leroy: There are lots of good 'create your own' font websites, but FontCapture has the merits of being free and dead simple to use, allowing you to turn your own handwriting into a fine font. You can even make up symbols to represent different letters and numbers. All you need is a printer and a scanner and you're good to go, with the site giving you step by step instructions in 4 easy steps. Even for a technofool like me it only took fifteen minutes and then I was typing in my own messy script, making all my documents look like they'd been written by a drunken chimp in an earthquake. It's a great way to personalise your work and if you're fortunate to have neat handwriting then you're all the better off. Give it a go whynot.


5. Colouring-In: Apparently I have mild synesthesia, which is where the stimulation of one of the senses stimulates another as well, or maybe more than one. It's the kind of thing where you see colours when you hear music, or taste things when you hear a word. Mine is the common one - colours and letters. So basically, the letter 'A' is red, Thursdays are Indigo, and the word 'Cameroonian', which was featured in the last blog post, is brown. You might have it too, or in a different form, and not know it, and you only have to take a simple test to find out. It's not even a medical condition really, as it has no effect on your life. It's just sort of a...thing. And not even a thing you can use to win a bet or impress women. What's the point in it all!
From a young age I always pictured the days of the week in different colours when I said them or thought about them. In my head they look like this: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And the alpahabet always looks like this to me: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. That's as far as it goes though, so really it's of no use whatsoever. I wish I had the type where you saw colours when you heard notes. Now that would be cool - like having your very own light-show at a concert. Might even make Lady Gaga bearable. Some people have the same thing except wth numbers rather than letters (which would make maths more fun). Other folk have much more profound symptoms, like smelling grass or toast when they hear a particular word. Apparently there are a ton of different ways it manifests through the five senses. So if 'M' is blue, or 6 is green, you may have synesthesia too. Weird, huh? What an odd tool the brain is.

Anyway, that about rounds it up for this week. So as the sun sets on another blog post, and the autumn nights creep in, it's time to say goodbye and leave a completely random blog post with a completely random thought: 'An apple a day is good business for the apple industry'.

Goodnight!

"Of all the bars in all the towns in all the world...it's Rob's Random 5!"

It's been a busy old week and true randomness abounds, ranging from musical form and the undead, to weird lunar activity and my favourite modern day author. Oh, and this week's 'Rob's Random 5' is sponsored by Johnson's Asbestos - 'If you can find a more lethal asbestos, it's just not Johnson's!'.

1. If Rob gives you Lemons...: Here's some music to enjoy while reading the rest of this blog post. I've had this song stuck in my head all week. Hopefully it's jaunty tune will also put you in a good mood for the rest of your day.

Incidentally, and still on the musical theme, I was reminded of the 'ghetto blaster' the other day and wondered why such a great product name had all but disappeared. Perhaps it's because it sounds less like a music player and more like some kind of concussive sonic projector that the military might use to destroy vast tracts of inner city housing...

2. Brains, Mr. Bennet, Brains!: I picked up a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the other day. I'd heard much about it and read much about it and always assumed I'd hate such blatant literary pandering to the horror market. Man was I wrong. As ever, I read the first page in the bookstore, and I was hooked, what with talk of polishing muskets with which to slay the undead. My mate Charlie, who works in Waterstone's also recommended it to me and then told me it has ninjas in. Well, there was a Rob-shaped hole in all the walls and bookcases between me and the till. I started to read the book on the train home and really enjoyed it. More than that, I started to get engrossed in it. Now I'm not here to write a review - you can find them all over the web - but I would like to admit that it's a book I'm really enjoying. There is one caveat to this, which is that in the back of my mind it feels like an author's work has been used to generate success for someone else and in a fairly easy fashion: just taking a text and adding in passages about zombies. It's a nagging feeling but on the plus side it does mean that even in the most boring sections of the book you are urged to keep reading, knowing that some fun zombie action will take place in a few pages.

I tell you what I would like to see zombies in though: Around the World in 80 Days. I'm also currently reading that and it's a great book. The only thing that could better such a ripping yarn is seeing Phileas Fogg undertaking a bet to try to circumnavigate a zombie-blighted globe, attempting to travel across zombie-infested nations in an attempt to get back to London and the zombie-free confines of the Reform Club, now a Gentlemen's bastion against the undead hordes: ("I say Charleston, I got one of the blighters with my blunderbuss!" "Jolly good shot Carmichael! Care for some more port...?" "Indeed I do! Where's that butler? Don't say the undead hordes have got him!" And so on and so forth...) That idea's my baby though - anyone who tries to steal that idea will have Passepartout to deal with...

3. Mooning: (I should probably point out that there aren't really any spoilers here, but if you want to watch the film without knowing anything at all about it then skip this) Chris and I went to seen Moon and by God it was good. I mean really good. It was sad and uplifting and bleak and hopeful all rolled into one giant lunar ball. And like There Will Be Blood and others, it's one of those movies that the more you think about the more it gives back to you and the deeper and better it becomes. It's a film that, if you let it, will stick in you mind well after you've seen it, posing you moral questions about the worth of a human life, even when that life is one of thousands of identical biological copies. It's not giving anything away to reveal that Sam Rockwell's character Sam is a clone and one of many - you learn that early on and in a surprisingly twist free fashion. In fact, one of the things I really liked was how low-key the discovery of the clone's clone was and the quiet, almost bemused way that Sam deals with finding a man who looks exactly like him. No, Moon forsakes the cheap drama of a twist and instead goes for the deeper drama and complications of what happens after that discovery. And while it contains cliched motifs (the HAL-like computer, the creepy isolation of space, clones) the film never resorts to cliche. It takes those well-worn ideas and makes completely something new out of them. Sam Rockwell does such a good job of acting 'with himself' that I actually forgot it was just one man acting as two different people, save for one brilliant, seamless scene where he plays ping-pong against his clone. Technical genius. The Sam clones fight and talk and one looks after the other and when you think that it's all one actor doing that - and doing that so damn well - it's just mind blowing. What makes Sam Rockwell's performance all the more remarkable is that it's really just him carrying the entire movie. He's the only human being we see who isn't on a computer screen or talking through a speaker. He's the only real person and yet is he even a real person? The company certainly doesn't think so. It builds up an incredible feeling of isolation while at the same time challenging you to think about the big questions: is a clone a proper human being? Do they have the same rights as a human? What is it that makes us human and individuals? And the fantastically ambiguous ending will leave you wondering just what will happen to Sam and the larger moral issues of the world that made him. For a small film it leaves a big impression on you. And then there's the little personal touches that add to the depth and charm and reality of it all - the Chesney Hawks song that plays when the alarm goes off, the post-it notes on Gerty, the failed Helium 3 collector renamed 'Judas', the food containers marked 'Soylent', the painstakingly made model village, and the 50's pin-up pictures in Sam's room. It all adds up to something deeply moving in the context of the film: personal touches that aren't really personal - they're just extra deceptions in a life that is already one giant lie.

It's such a shame that Moon had a limited release. It's thoughtful sci-fi in the vein of 2001 and Blade Runner and it deserves to be seen by more people. Catch it on DVD when it comes out. You won't be disappointed. Now, if you'll excuse me, my 3 years is up... time to head back to Earth Gerty.

4. Twitter Quitter/Facebook Off: I gave up Twitter this week. Deleted my account. It just wasn't something I got into. Hardly anyone I knew was on it (and those who were I keep in touch with via the phone and Facebook anyway) and anyone famous I was following Tweeted far too infrequently (Charlie Brooker being the exception - his live Tweeting of the X-Factor on Sunday was hilarious and the only reason to watch the damn show). And then there was the problem that I soon found I had nothing to Tweet about. I realised life is really rather mundane, and I didnt want to be one of those people who tells others every little thing about their lives like 'Third cup of coffee today - now I'm off to the toilet!'. And when I can text people or email them or put status updates on Facebook Twitter just seemed superfluous to my life.

Facebook also came under my scrutiny this week as I realised I was getting tired of it. I didn't want to quit it - I need it to stay in touch with people in far and not so far flung places - but it just seemed that Facebook was getting a little...crowded with irrelevant stuff: nonsense quizzes like 'What kind of car are you?' 'Which Metro station are you?' (WTF?!?!) or 'What does the colour of my pee tell me about my future?', hundreds of unedited photo albums made by people out on their weekly piss-up, friend recommendations for people I've never met, and way too many adverts for pointless things that do not interest me. The whole thing has become one great mass of mostly useless information and now it's like looking at the aftermath of a high-speed collision between a lorry of junk mail and a manure truck. I just want a simple Facebook - a Facebook that tells me if someone's sent me a message or tagged me in a photo. And there really should be an 'update filter', to filter out all the status updates I would like from the ones that would just annoy me, for instance people who constantly do nothing but complain in their updates about how they're 'going to the gym but hate going to the gym but also hate being fat'. I don't know how that filter would work exactly - a dictionary and a sieve, I imagine. Get working on it Facebook!

5. Looking Fforward to New Ffiction: I vividly remember the exact moment I became a Jasper Fforde fan. It was at the very first line of his very first book 'The Eyre Affair'. If you haven't read it I won't spoil it for you, but it really is one of the most memorable lines in modern fiction. Since then I've awaited every one of his books with the feverish anticipation of a feverish child on his first trip to Disneyland. So it's very exciting to see that Jasper Fforde has some tentative teasers for his new book series 'Shades of Grey' on his excellent site (seriously, if there's an author out there with a more comprehensive, fun and fan-friendly site then I want to know!), including some nifty black and white and read pics and a Chromatic Spoon Test. The premise of the book - colour perception and the social standing it gives you - sounds great, quirky, and the stuff of classic Fforde. Although I must admit I'm rather peeved that it comes out in the US before the UK... Still, never mind. As a massive Fforde ffan (yes I even went to the very first Fforde Ffiesta in Swindon - it was ffantastic ffun), the prospect of an entirely new series of books set in an entirely new world is something very much to look forward to, particularly as 2009 has been bereft of any new books from Jasper. After what he did with books, vampires, time travel, and the world of nursery rhymes, I'm really eager to see what inventive things he does with the colour spectrum. Until then, I'm loading up on boojum bullets and heading back into 'The Eyre Affair'...

"That's no moon...it's Rob's Random 5!"

1. Parker: In the last Random 5 I mentioned Darwyn Cooke (who's my favourite comic-book artist/storyteller and who I really can't praise enough) and his graphic adaptation of the first book in Richard Stark's 'Parker' series. Well, I was delighted to see today that the first print run has sold out and the publisher IDW is running a second print. This comes after Cooke's adaptation was rightfully praised by everyone reviewing it - from the New York Times to Entertainment Weekly. It's astonishingly good and I can't wait for the next three he's adapting over the coming few years. Even if you're not a fan of comic books or graphic novels I'd urge you to buy/read it because frankly it's the best piece of fiction published this year, and I don't say that with hyperbole.

2. Twitter: I joined Twitter last week and I have to admit I'm not really getting it. Maybe it's because I'm still getting used to the whole thing or because I find myself with nothing to Tweet about, but I just don't find it very interesting. It's me, I know. I don't lead a terrifically interesting life and when I do have something I want to say the chances are that 140 characters isn't quite enough room for my insane and pointless ramblings. I use Facebook for my craziness. And I find that a lot of the people I want to hear from aren't actually on Twitter or don't Tweet very often (Darwyn Cooke, where are you? Jasper Fforde, Tweet more often!). To be honest, if it weren't for Stephen Colbert's hilarious Tweets, and Wil Wheaton's geek-centric updates I might have given the whole thing up several days back. For me Twitter is still very much on a probationary period. Impress me Twitter!

3. Science: Did Cancer get cured without my knowledge? Or did someone invent anti-gravity while I wasn't looking? No? Well then get back to f**king work Science and start coming up with my anti-Cancer jab and my hover-bed, because right now some of your research is a little, shall we say, 'Pub-talk based'. This week there was a widely-published report from a Canadian University about the possible effects of an outbreak (or should that be 'ootbreak'?) of zombies. Apparently if zombies were real we'd all be screwed. However, as they are not real, I find myself wondering what the point of the whole thing was and wondering if I should have become a PhD scientist so I could study, oh I don't know, the mating rituals of dragons, or the effect of Wi-Fi on unicorns. Please, if you are a scientist doing reasearch on a stupid/pointless subject then put down your test tubes and titration sets and go help out the scientists working on worthwhile endeavours. That way we can all have our cancer-curing hover-bots when we're living on the Moon.

4. Shooting Stars: I am extremely excited to see that Shooting Stars is returning to TV. In honour of this good news, let's summon down the Dove from Above

5. Trunk-nology: This article on io9 caught my eye, partly because it's the Best Article Title Ever, and also it's a story that will warm your heart. Awww... Also, it features cool technology. Lazy/pointless scientists mentioned in '3', this is what you should be doing!

'...and featuring Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln, it's Rob's Random 5!'

Paper weapons of Mass Destruction, where I got my moral compass, and as ever, there's 100 points and much respect if you know which TV show has been quoted in the blog title (big clue: it spawned 33 and 1/3 films)


1. Fat Daddy: Last week I learned how to make origami water bombs. Cue much wet fun. But as ever, I soon got bored and decided to test the boundaries of paper construction by building incresingly bigger ones, resulting first in the 'Harlequin' (named after its jaunty colour scheme), and then in the Oppenheimer of origami water bombs. I present to you: 'Fat Daddy'...

Magnificent, isn't he?

Actually, this is 'Fat Daddy Mk II'. The first 'Fat Daddy' broke apart in my hands as I was transporting it to the test ground, releasing 2 pints of water onto the hallway carpet. Ooops! Still, 'Fat Daddy Mk II' has been reinforced with sturdier paper to prevent such a mishap occuring. Oh, and you heard right - this bad boy holds 2 whole English pints in his mighty belly. Testing occurred successfully today, and the whole of my village was washed away as a result. Good work, Fat Daddy! (salutes). I'd make an even bigger one, but I think I'd be straying into 'Paper Lantern' territory...

2. The Moral of the Story: Did anyone else who grew up in the UK ever watch/see Tales of Aesop? This was my favourite show when I was just a gurgling little infant. It's just a shame they only made 13 episodes of it. Tales of Aesop was narrated and voiced entirely by the legend that is Tom 'The Doctor' Baker, which makes this all the better. It had characters with great names like Mrs. Bite the wolf, Geraldine Donkey, and Boris the Lion, and there's something so home-spun and hand-crafted about it all that you'd have to have a heart of stone not to love it. Honestly, this is classic TV. I'm going to make my kids watch this. How else will they learn what's right and wrong in this world unless a talking lion helps tell them? My entire moral compass was gained from watching this show... plus, it's hilarious to hear Tom Baker voicing a cockney lady wolf.

So I hope you all know what to do the next time you're involved in a dispute over sausages or any other item of charcuterie.

3. Parker: Normally graphic novel adaptations of books are terrible, but I've been reading an adaptation of Richard Stark's gritty crime novel 'Parker: The Hunter', drawn by my favourite comic book artist/author Darwyn Cooke. It's a fantastic piece of work that combines a cool 60s 'Mad Men' look with a grim noir storyline and some shockingly brutal (but not gratuitous) violence. Even though it's done in just pen and blue ink it looks fantastic, which pages I would happily put in a frame and hang on my wall. The novel has been translated really well to a visial form in both action and story. Parker is a really great anti-hero and while you never really like him, you definitely find yourself rooting for him as he hits New York looking for revenge. The publishers IDW have a great 20-something page preview which is worth looking at just for the first page and its first line. Take a look HERE

4. Twitter: Apparently Twitter went down for a few hours today (Facebook did too. Grrr!) due to some kind of cyber-attack. I just loved the irony of thousands of really ardent hard-core Twitterers wanting to tell each other and complain to each other that Twitter wasn't working, only for them to have no Twitter platform to be able to do it on. D'oh!

5. Paper Titanic: I just learned how to make an origami sampan (a flat bottomed boat). Will this lead to me making a paper sampan large enough for me to sit in? A Fat Boaty, perhaps? Almost certainly. I'll keep you updated on how it goes. Invites to the ship's christening for its maiden voyage will be in the post.