Freezing rain

 It's snowing as I write this¹ and I'm not a fan of snow, as I've mentioned many times before. Increases the likelihood of me falling down and severely injuring myself. I'm an old man, you see. But tomorrow the weather forecast says it's going to get a lot warmer and just pour down with rain all day, and then be cold again the day after. "I wish it would make up its mind," as old people like to say. Personally, I just wish it'd be summer. But the BBC weather for today also says there's a chance of freezing rain, so I can't stay mad at the weather or the BBC for too long, since it reminds me of a truly wonderful comic...

If you haven't read Phoebe and her Unicorn - The Magic Storm, by Dana Simpson, then please go out and buy it now. It's really brilliant in so many ways, I can't recommend it highly enough! Or just borrow my copy. It's a definitive text for Phoebe's second-best friend Max, another cartoon hero of mine.

Now, will someone do something magical with the weather, and make it summer again?

¹ It's Saturday night as I write this. I'm trying to write a blog a day, in advance, and post them in the early morning. But the one I posted this morning seems to show as being posted the previous evening, so the whole system has already broken down. I think I'll just go back to posting things whenever I feel like writing something...

Let's get memorising!

The Memory League World Championship is kicking off once more! I'm not in it, on account of not being good enough, but it's still very worth watching! And the matches are streamed live on Memory Sports TV, so tune in and watch over the next month! It really is fun and exciting, even if you know little or nothing about memory sports! (See, this is the exact opposite of my post two days ago - this is getting the comic fans who read this blog to start liking memory competitions!)

I really like the double elimination format. It really adds to everyone's enjoyment of the event! And makes it all look more complicated and clever, which can only be a good thing.

Am I ever going to scale the lofty heights of the ranking list, and qualify for future world championships here? Probably not, but I'm going to start by getting back in practice at the whole Memory League thing, and then just maybe work on improving my scores in the Images and Words disciplines - because you can't really get by in competitions here just by being pretty good at Cards and Numbers, even if my scores in those still count as 'pretty good'. I could probably improve my performance all round with a little more dedication, so maybe I'll give it a try...

A Methuselah of a blog

I've been blogging here for a long time now. In fact, it's been more than twenty years, if you count the couple of silly things I posted in October 2004 when I first heard about the concept of "blogs" and created one. And in July of this year, we'll reach the twentieth anniversary of when I actually started posting things here!

I only think of this now, because one of my favourite blogs to read on the internet, Dirty Feed, is celebrating its comparatively measly fifteen years of existence - a mere Jared of a blog compared to mine, and the name sounds a bit, well, dirty, but you should really check it out anyway! It's mostly about the production of TV comedy, and there are so many wonderful and fascinating pieces of writing there, you can get lost in it for days! I don't think you can say that about my twenty years of rambling on whatever subject comes to mind.

But perhaps I should follow that example and list the most popular things I've written here? Or maybe just one of them - because by far and away the most read article here on Zoomy's Thing is the Krypton Force videos! It's been so consistently popular over the years, attracting actual human people who've contacted me about it and not just robots, that I'm rather impressed. I think it's played a big part in increasing awareness of those British bootlegs of American bowdlerisations of Japanese cartoons, which can only be a good thing!

So here's to another twenty years, if I and Blogspot both live that long!

No Place To Run

 I should write more about old comics I like but that my readers might not have heard of. It's all part of my plan to get people who read my blog hoping I'll share some kind of memory secret reading comics and watching cartoons too. I won't rest until everyone reading this blog is fully conversant in all my weird hobbies and interests!

So I was just re-reading Marvel Team Up Annual #7, from the summer of 1984. It's an extra-long story in which Spider-Man teams up with five members of Alpha Flight to try to escape the clutches of The Collector. It's great. But tucked away in the back pages, there's a little five-page backup strip, and I'd forgotten just how cool it is!

"No Place To Run", written by Bob de Natale (who wrote a handful of backups and fillers for Marvel around this time; this one was his first) and drawn by David Mazzucchelli (who was drawing Daredevil at the time, and was probably used to having his name spelt wrongly, like in the credits box here) is a story about the ordinary people who live in the mad world of the Marvel Universe.

It's a long-established law of superhero comics that the presence of people with godlike powers waging constant war with each other somehow doesn't prevent the normal human world from existing. Readers just have to ignore the logical inconsistency. But around this time, people started to write about what it's like to be a normal human in this crazy universe. It was a central theme of the definitive text Watchmen in 1986, and reached its pinnacle with Astro City in the nineties - but this five-pager filling up the space at the end of a Marvel annual predates those, and captures the feel perfectly!

There's an ad for war games between pages 1 and 2, and an ad for comic subscriptions between 2 and 3. The reader isn't really encouraged to stick with this story. But please do read it here, and enjoy!

Playing the Aasvogel

 I thought I'd quote Adrian Mole as the title of a blog post, to create a sort of theme of new year's resolutions. I remembered a funny section of his diary in which he resolved to "learn a new word and use it every day", which was followed by something like:

January 2nd - I'd like to go to Africa to hunt an aardvark.

January 3rd - And then I'd go south and hunt an aardwolf.

January 4th - How interesting that aasvogel should be a kind of musical instrument.

After which he gives up. So I looked up the passage, which I haven't read for twenty or thirty years, and found that it goes:

Saturday January 2nd 

How interesting it is that Aabec should be an Australian bark used for making sweat. 

Sunday January 3rd 

I wouldn’t mind going to Africa and hunting an Aardvark. 

Monday January 4th 

Whilst in Africa I would go south and look out for an Aardwolf. 

Tuesday January 5th 

And I would avoid tangling with an Aasvogel

What? It STARTS with "How interesting..."?! I always remembered that the whole joke was that on the third day he gave up trying to work the new word into any kind of sentence and just wrote the dictionary definition! And it isn't! There's not a proper punchline to the series of diary entries at all, it just stops!

My version is funnier. I think we need to rewrite The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ to make it right, and give me credit as the co-author. It would be only fair. People used to jeer at me for looking like Adrian Mole, as I've probably mentioned several times before. Although I'll probably never write anything funnier than the entry for January 7th:

Thursday January 7th

Nigel came round to look at my racing bike. He said that it was mass produced, unlike his bike that was ‘made by a craftsman in Nottingham’. I have gone off Nigel, and I have also gone off my bike a bit.

And yes, I do know that "Vogel" means bird, and that "Aasvogel" is unlikely to be a musical instrument if you think about it. But I never have thought about it, and just kept my mistaken memory in my mind all these years. In my defence, though, I probably read the book for the first time before learning German, so it's understandable that I never made the mental connection. Luckily, we have the internet now, and I have just today, for the first time in my entire life, looked up the word "Aasvogel" to find out what it means. An archaic South African word for vulture, apparently. So now you know.

I was going to half-heartedly suggest resolving to write a new and interesting blog post every day in 2025, but now that I've actually learned something this morning, improved my general knowledge when it's not even half past nine yet, I feel very accomplished already. I don't need any resolutions. I can just go back to bed.

66 years on, you can't beat the Chipmunks for Christmas!

"Dave, I've been asking for the hula hoop for years. I would like to ask for something new, like roller skates or a new stereo. But I just got to get that hula hoop first. Please Dave.I feel I've been very patient."

 

The Kids of Class 2B

A great traditional thing to find under the tree on Christmas morning is this year's Bash Street Kids Book! Of course, the ones from the mid-1980s, when I was young, were the best, because things were so much better all round in the good old days. But the Kids were of course around long before I was born, and are continuing their misadventures unabated even today, so it's good to see there's at least a Bash Street Kids special on the shelves of Smiths right now, to delight the latest generation of readers!

You might remember how back in May 2022 I went on about how the Kids weren't as good as they used to be, only to find immediately afterwards that the good people at DC Thomson had taken my words to heart and revamped the strip once again. This new collection reprints the strips from that relaunch, with the usual smattering of bonus features to fill the 68 pages (including covers), it's a great successor to the classic books, and I heartily recommend it to anyone still shopping for stocking-fillers!

(Although six ninety-nine for a comic? Spoilt brats these days, getting such expensive things in their stockings. We were happy with a satsuma and a kick up the bum!)

Now, introducing the cast is an important part of this kind of comic, and for me the definitive roll-call of the Bash Street Kids came in the Beano Book 1979 - perhaps more because of it being the first one I read rather than any great literary merit. But I can still reel off that list of the classic nine characters, and I remember being grateful to have a proper checklist, since the weekly adventures wouldn't usually identify everyone by name.

A lot of the strips in the 1979 Beano Book still ended with violent, brutal and furious corporal punishment being meted out on the heroes by a parent or teacher. This was phased out over the eighties as fashions changed. Teacher hasn't wielded his cane in anger for many years now. This year's collection, though, gives us a very nice introduction to the Kids and their personalities - even to the extent of telling us their full names!

Wilfrid's name is misspelt, which is annoying. The Beano needs to hire me as a proof-reader to catch things like this. I inherit this pedantry from my dad, who was a teacher very much in the mould of the Teacher of 2B, and "Wilfird" makes me want to descend on the Beano offices with a cane of my own...

But apart from that, these names aren't all new! They're historically-established, in many cases, dating from the text stories that appeared in the Wizard comic in 1955! I don't own any of these classic comics, but they can be found for sale at reasonable prices in places like here and here. I'm so desperately poor at the moment, that I can't really buy them myself, but... it IS the season of giving, and if anyone was looking for a last-minute gift for MY stocking...

Anyway, the "Bash Street School" stories in the Wizard were narrated by Sidney Pye, and included characters like Death's Head Danny Morgan, Fatty Brown and Jimmy Smiff. This was before the comic in the weekly Beano had settled down into a fixed cast, but the main stars were already there. It's good to see the Kids have, mostly, kept their earliest identities!

A few points - Danny is short for Daniel (that's what Teacher always called him), so that should be mentioned here. Smiffy, as mentioned above, was a Jimmy in at least one Wizard comic, although to be fair he's not the type who can always remember what his name is. His surname, though, has always been given as Smiff rather than Smith before now. Stevie's real name is Super Star? Did he legally change it, or did his parents want to call him that? And check it out - Toots is Kate! I don't know if that's ever been mentioned before...

Yes, I approve of this. Long may the Bash Street Kids continue to wreak havoc!

The crazy 1986 calendar

The cartoon talked about in yesterday's blog post was first shown in October 2022, making its British debut in December that year. The book Cosmic Frontier that Gus and Hunter geek out about (and which Luz's mother was similarly geeky with when she was younger) was written in the nineties about the year 2008. "Can't wait for that new year's party!" Hunter enthuses.

All these dates might be confusing to some, but they feel perfectly natural to one who grew up in the golden age of the Transformers comic published by Marvel UK! It just puts me in mind of the strange chronological confusion of the Transformers' adventures in 1986, as published in the British comic.

By the summer of 1986, the Transformers comic had settled into a nice pattern. The monthly American comic could be reprinted, each issue split in half and spread across two consecutive weekly issues of the British title, and the other two or three weeks of a month could contain original British material, fitting cleverly in between the action of the US stories. And by this time, the British material was much, much better than the American stuff it had been created to fill in time waiting for! It was always a big disappointment when we had to go back to the American stuff after a really good run of British adventures written by Simon Furman!

The summer and autumn of 1986 was glorious - fifteen consecutive weeks of British material, with "In the National Interest" followed by the sensational "Target: 2006!" That was the story that unlocked the way to write British stories going forwards - the American stuff was becoming increasingly interlinked and harder to squeeze British side stories into, but they could now write stories set twenty years in the future and not conflict with the present-day American material at all!

Which is good, because both the UK and US stories in 1986 got into the habit of mentioning specific dates, and in 1986, it all got a bit weird. Here are four pages from the UK Transformers comic...

Transformers №84, cover date 25th Oct '86

(British Transformers comics were published a week before the date on the cover)

Target: 2006 takes place over a five-day period, with maybe a day either side for the prologue and epilogue. One day in the middle of this period, as shown on the time-travelling future Autobots' screen there, is the 11th of October, 1986.

(I mean, I suppose they could be writing in the American format, and it's the 10th of November, but no. By the year 2006, we'll have eliminated all these strange foreign ways of writing dates and standardised everything to the correct British format!)

And so after the whole time-travel adventure has been resolved, we can move on to further adventures for the present-day Transformers, and go back to reprinting the American comic...

Transformers №89, cover date 29th Nov.86

(I'm copying the erratic punctuation of the date on the cover of each British comic here, just because it's another thing I find fascinating. Just not quite fascinating enough to write a full blog devoted to it, just yet...)

This is reprinting the first half of the 21st issue of the American Transformers comic, cover-dated October 1986 and published in June. And set, very specifically, on July 4th. But it definitely follows directly on from Target: 2006, because that story is written to lead into it, with the Insecticons (including Bombshell, seen here), travelling to Earth to go on this mission. Time seems to have gone backwards.

But then, America is a weird and unfathomable place to the young (and somewhat dim) ten-year-old British reader of the time. It was probably news to me that the 4th of July was some kind of special day over there, and I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd told me that in America, July 4th happens in November.

Incidentally, notice that the Marvel UK people have corrected the spelling of "colourist" as usual, but have left "penciler" untouched. Unusually sloppy! But let's move ahead another month, for the Christmas issue of the British comic!

Transformers №93, cover date 27th Dec.86

It was traditional to have a Christmas story in British comics, even if, as in this case, we'd just had four weeks of summer-based American stories and another two to come directly after it. And actually, this British story kind of puts the lie to my claim that the British ones were always better than the American - this one seems like speedily-written filler stuff produced at the last minute when someone realised it was Christmas!

But it's definitely shortly before Christmas 86. Buster Witwicky has put up a non-reusable banner in his bedroom to prove it to us! Does he buy a new one with the current year's date every December? The boy's got too much pocket money.

And again, this one makes specific reference to stories that have appeared in the British comic in the last few months. Even throwing in a last-minute rewrite of the dialogue to cover up for Trailbreaker being in this story when he was meant to be near-fatally damaged during Target: 2006. So we've gone October-July-December in our stories so far - the next one must take place in 1987, right?

Transformers №95, cover date 10th Jan.87

We're back to the American continuity. This is the second half of the 23rd American issue, dated December and published in August 1986. Which makes the date on Donny Finkleberg's cheque there all the stranger - it's October 4th now?

A certain amount of time passes between issues of this continuing story, but it doesn't really feel like three whole months have elapsed since that July 4th adventure. The humans don't seem to make much progress in these three months, and the robots must have spent a lot of time sitting around doing nothing in that period if it really has been that long! And why did an American comic published in late August throw in a date of early October? Has the British time-travel continuity spread across the Atlantic?

I think Donny has just got understandably confused by the way the 1986 calendar works. It was a strange year, but a very fun one if you were a dim-witted ten-year-old who loved Transformers comics!

Let me count the ways

 I have a habit of falling in love with fictional characters. And of using the phrase "falling in love" to excess, even though I acknowledge it sounds all kinds of weird. Don't like weird, don't read my blog.

But when I use that expression, I mean I've found a character who reminds me of me, and who I want to take care of and protect from the world forever. The latest of these (although he hasn't supplanted Simon the chipmunk, who seems destined to be my number one crush forever) is Gus from The Owl House.

Here he is declaring his dream to become an ambassador to the Human Realm and re-establish contact with the giraffes (which of course were banished from the Demon Realm and exiled to Earth long ago, for just being too freaky).

In an attempt to pin down exactly what the magic formula is for this kind of obsession (and fit it into the right number of characters on social media), I compiled a list:

Why I love Gus:

He's a sidekick, and he embraces that role in life

He's little, but he gets to play with the big kids because he's clever

He always cheers people up with a friendly word of support whenever they need it

He loves his dad

He needs more hugs! People don't hug him enough when he's upset!

Also:

He's really really cute!

He's actually a super powerful witch!

He gets really geeky about the things he's interested in!

He's totally me. Exactly the kind of character I identify with.

... Which I think about sums it up. Yes, I do see myself as a perpetual sidekick to other, cooler people. I'm well aware that some, even most, of the people I associate with don't see me like that at all, but I assure you it's true. And Gus is the always-cheerful sidekick to the main characters and their myriad adventures and problems in this series!

But the one episode that really makes me want to hug Gus is "Thanks To Them", the first double-length special of the third and final season. Luz the Human and a small group of Demon Realm friends have become trapped on Earth, leaving behind everyone else to an unknown fate. Luz is hiding the fact she sort of caused the whole thing, introducing evil Emperor Belos to the all-powerful Collector. Hunter is concealing his discovery that he's an artificially-created Grimwalker clone. The others, like Gus, are just dealing with losing all their family and friends...

Luz's mother is impressively accepting of the existence of the magical Demon Realm, the universe-threatening danger and also her daughter's bisexuality, but she's clearly a bit old-fashioned when it comes to sleeping arrangements. So Luz and Amity (involved in a romantic relationship) get to share a bedroom with Willow and Vee (the latter of whom is a shape-changing basilisk in the form of a teenage girl), while the two boys, Gus and Hunter, are sent to bunk down in the basement. And this gives them a heart-to-heart conversation at bedtime...

Hunter is showing off the shirt he's sewn pictures of wolves (mystical beasts from the Human Realm!) to. He cut his finger on the sewing machine, but he's very happy with the result. Gus admires his handiwork.

That looks great! You know, you've been smiling a lot more since we've been here.

Hunter hides the shirt behind his back, and waves his hand in denial.

It-It's not like I don't want to return! I just, uh, need a way to pass the time. That's all.

He folds up the shirt neatly and puts it down by his mattress, getting into bed. Gus settles down into his bed on the couch.

No! It's good to see you happy! One of us might as well be. 

Awkward pause. Hunter looks at Gus, whose usual cheerful mood has dissipated. Hunter is completely unequipped to deal with other people's feelings, and can only wait for Gus to continue.

What was it like to be in the Emperor's Coven for so long?

Hunter thinks about it, lying in bed.

I... trained a lot. I studied a lot. I wasn't really allowed to be around the other scouts. But weekends were nice! I got to leave the castle for missions!

Do you miss it?

I miss... knowing who I'm supposed to be.

Gus rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling. Hunter does the same.

I miss my dad.

Gus tugs the blanket up closer around himself. Another awkward pause. Hunter's got a reply this time.

We'll find a way back. We have to.

Gus leaps back out of bed, beaming again and grabs a book!

Oh my Titan! That's a line from this book I found! Cosmic Frontier! It's a story that takes place in... the stars!

And so the two of them get excited about bad science fiction and cheer up again! I really love this scene. It tugs on my heartstrings so much, and it's a shining example of what's so brilliant about The Owl House!

(Although to be fair, I feel the same towards Simon when a girl's going to find out he wrote a love poem about her. I think the secret ingredient to win my heart is just nerds needing hugs.)

Your latest HSBC savings account statement is available to view

I don't really need an email from my bank to tell me that my latest bank statement is available to view. But if they have to send one every month, do they have to illustrate it with weird staged photos like this one?

I'm almost certain that nobody has ever shown such delight and excitement on reading their bank statement online. Or rejoiced in their bank balance while sitting in a scenic location and enjoying an al fresco cup of tea and bowl of fruit.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe people do that all the time if they're the sort who can afford a state-of-the-art wheelchair or a height-of-fashion woolly hat? But there's no need for the bank to rub it in like that when they're emailing paupers like me about their meagre balance!

All eyes on Vaduz

 I've mentioned before that I love the Nations League. I mean, I'm not really bothered about whether England can avoid messing everything up against the Republic of Ireland tonight, I'm unmoved by Scotland's crunch game with Poland tomorrow and only take a passing interest in what happens between Wales and Iceland the day after. No, the one that fascinates me is the clash of the titans in group D1 tomorrow night, when Liechtenstein play the mighty San Marino!

Is there anyone in the world who hasn't been blown away by The World's Worst Football Team's amazing run of form this autumn? They won a game in September! Conquering the comparatively high-ranked Liechtenstein (currently ranked 200th of the 210 national football teams recognised by FIFA, and thus ten whole places above San Marino) and recording their first win since 2004 (also against Liechtenstein, in a friendly), bringing the all-time total to two games won! And they followed it up in October by drawing with Gibraltar! The San Marino Stadium in Serravalle has become a fortress, where the Sammarinese are unbeatable!

And now they travel to Liechtenstein knowing another win will put them top of the table and promote them to the unheard-of heights of Group C in the 2026 Nations League! Even a draw will get our heroes a play-off against one of the two best fourth-placed Group C teams (currently the comparatively huge countries of Luxembourg and Latvia) and keep those promotion hopes alive! It's all terribly exciting.

I'm not a knight

 There's been a rash of people asking me for memory advice lately (someone dug up an old post on the Art of Memory forum, and so a lot of other new memory-training enthusiasts discovered it and me), and despite all my polite requests, these people still keep addressing me as "sir".

I really don't like that. I get this from my dad, who would often get a new kid in his primary school class who tried to 'sir' him, and got the inevitable reply "Don't call me sir, I'm not a knight!" But it does bother me unreasonably when people call me Sir, or Mr Pridmore, or anything like that. I don't like honorifics. I don't merit any kind of deference or submission, and if you think I do then you're labouring under a misunderstanding as to how the whole friendly learning environment of memory sports works.

I mean, I know I have plenty of friends who would never dream of calling me sir, and doubtless no end of deadly enemies who would contemptuously refuse to call me sir even if I asked them to, but there's just this contingent of people who insist on doing it. Please don't, everyone! Thank you!

Safari Jo(e) does it again!

 There's a big elephant in the room of my occasional posts about the comics work of people who wrote my all-time favourite cartoon, Thundercats. I do have fun appreciating the varied and fascinating comics produced by the likes of Leonard Starr, Bob Haney, Howard Post and Ron Goulart in the course of their long, productive and successful lives, and I'd like to share more wonders from people who wrote really great Thundercats episodes and contributed in one way or another to really cool comics too. But there's a shortage of people who fall into that very narrow category, and there's just that one name that I haven't really been able to do an article about.

And that's Stephen Perry. I've refrained from writing about him for two reasons. Search for him on the internet, if you can find him among all the other notable people with the same name, and you'll only find one thing - the gory details of how he was horribly murdered in 2010. Maybe with a few added notes to the effect that he was penniless and unhappy before he died. It's the kind of thing that deflates a light-hearted ramble about comics, whether you actually mention it or not.

I might have written something before now anyway, if there was a comic of his I wanted to admire at length, but that's the second problem right there. His Thundercats writing was really, really great! There should be some other work of his out there that could captivate me, right? And I've tried my best to plough through Timespirits, which sounds like a personal project that would give full scope to his creativity, and I can't even finish it. Don't ask me why. Likewise, the opening story of Psi-Force, where Perry had the job of introducing the team of pre-designed new characters - something he should have been very good at - doesn't capture my interest at all. There must be something out there, surely, but I've never found it yet.

But someone has been chatting to me on the internet about their recent discovery of the wonders of Thundercats, including reference to this very specific subject, so having got all that bad stuff out in the open, please join me in scrutinising Safari Joe!

Joe with an E, you'll notice. That's the name that appears in the title card of the cartoon, and when they made a toy of the character, he was Safari Joe with an E too. But for some reason when the cartoon episode was adapted into comic form, with Steve Perry again the only credited writer, he'd changed for some reason into Safari Jo!

That's the title page of the 14th issue of Marvel's Star Comics Thundercats series. A bit of a strange double-credit for Steve Perry adapting the teleplay of Steve Perry, and when it was reprinted in the British Marvel comic they only credited him once, but at least it doesn't leave us in any doubt as to who wrote it!

Apart from a few new narrative captions, the script of the comic is basically identical to the dialogue of the cartoon. And it was a story specifically written for the animated form, which loses something when reduced to a comic. There are just two fun points worth talking about in detail...

In the cartoon version of this scene, Wilykit's line "I thought Panthro fixed it!" is missing. Safari Joe's quip is still there, but is a completely meaningless non-sequitur! I mean, even with the feed line it's still pretty meaningless, but at least it doesn't come completely out of nowhere. I assume it was in the original cartoon script, but somehow ended up being cut out to trim the episode for time, by someone who didn't really think it through. It's good to see the comic adaptation making some sort of sense of it, at least!

And incidentally, this whole spaceboarding scene is a specific reference to the earlier episode The Time Capsule, written by Peter Lawrence. This is intriguing, because Thundercats was a series where individual writers had an amazing amount of freedom to do their own thing without editorial interference! It's very rare to see such continuity between episodes written by different people! Which leads into the second fascinating difference...

The technical details of the Thundercats' powers and weapons are a lot more extensive in the comic than they were on screen. Maybe cut for time or pacing again, or maybe added into the comic script because technical jargon works a lot better in written form? But that's not the really fascinating bit. The bit that's really fun is Tygra's weakness - "Tygra cannot swim."

I don't know if that's something Stephen Perry randomly made up, or if it was a line from the character bible. Cheetara's weakness (can only maintain top speed for short distances) is certainly a defined character trait, used by head writer Leonard Starr elsewhere. But then, that's a standard feature of real-life cheetahs, while real-life tigers are excellent swimmers. So who knows?

The point is, that's not how it sounds on screen. In the cartoon episode, we get the absolutely ludicrous line "Except when he's invisible, Tygra cannot swim."

That was clearly an editorial change to Stephen Perry's script. It's handwaving away the episode The Fireballs of Plun-Darr (written by William Overgard), in which Tygra does a lot of swimming. Most but not all of it while he's invisible. Watching the episode for the first time as a ten-year-old, I thought this line extraordinarily stupid and thought they would have been better off just not lampshading it like that [people didn't say 'lampshading' in those days, but you know what I mean].

Because this is exactly the kind of thing that Thundercats never did! As mentioned above, each writer just did their own thing and nobody changed their scripts to fit with what some other writer had said! Except in this case. Was it Peter Lawrence's editing, or Stephen Perry noticing the discrepancy and fixing it? I'd like to know. One of these days I'll track Peter Lawrence down and bombard him with hopelessly minute questions about a cartoon he made forty years ago, but I'll wait till I've gone completely insane first.

Because Panthro's only weakness ("Panthro fears bats") in the following scene is also contradicted by The Fireballs of Plun-Darr! The comical ending of that episode tells us that Panthro's scared of spiders! And neither Lawrence nor Perry felt the need to add an "and spiders too" to the cartoon or comic script!

So that's the fun of Safari Jo or Joe - rest in peace, Stephen Perry! A great hero of cartoon history!

Return of the Hat

"There is probably no better proof of the accuracy of that definition of man which describes him as an imitative animal, than is to be found in the fact that the verdict of humanity is always against any individual member of the species who presumes to differ from the rest. A man is one of a flock, and his wool must be of the general color. He must drink when the rest drink, and graze where the rest graze. When the others are frightened by a dog, and scamper, starting with the right leg, he must be frightened by a dog, and scamper, starting with the right leg also. If he is not frightened, or even if, being frightened, he scampers and starts out of step with the rest, it is a proof at once that there is something not right about him. Let a man walk at noonday with perfect composure of countenance and decency of gait, with not the slightest appearance of vacancy in his eyes or wildness in his manner, from one end of Oxford Street to the other without his hat, and let every one of the thousands of hat-wearing people whom he passes be asked separately what they think of him, how many will abstain from deciding instantly that he is mad, on no other evidence than the evidence of his bare head? Nay, more; let him politely stop each one of those passengers, and let him explain in the plainest form of words, and in the most intelligible manner, that his head feels more easy and comfortable without a hat than with one, how many of his fellow mortals who decided that he was mad on first meeting him, will change their opinion when they part from him after hearing his explanation? In the vast majority of cases, the very explanation itself would be accepted as an excellent additional proof that the intellect of the hatless man was indisputably deranged." 

So said Wilkie Collins in 1857, the golden age of hat-wearing. If only we lived in that era now, but I'm doing my best to keep the hat-wearing dream alive. I've been sadly hatless most of this year, after the previous one was blown under a tube train in February or thereabouts (which was a refreshingly new way to lose a hat, considering that I normally just accidentally leave them behind on trains), and what with having no money I didn't really want to splash out on another one straight away. But today I couldn't resist the sight of a cool black hat on sale on a market stall, and splashed out a tenner on it. No longer will Victorians think me mad when I invent my time machine and go back to the good old days!

Collins goes on to observe of his hero Andrew Treverton: "Local reports described him as having bought the first cottage he could find which was cut off from other houses by a wall all round it. It was further rumored that he was living like a miser; that he had got an old man-servant, named Shrowl, who was even a greater enemy to mankind than himself; that he allowed no living soul, not even an occasional charwoman, to enter the house; that he was letting his beard grow, and that he had ordered his servant Shrowl to follow his example. In the year eighteen hundred and forty-four, the fact of a man's not shaving was regarded by the enlightened majority of the English nation as a proof of unsoundness of intellect. At the present time Mr. Treverton's beard would only have interfered with his reputation for respectability. Thirteen years ago it was accepted as so much additional evidence in support of the old theory that his intellects were deranged. He was at that very time, as his stockbroker could have testified, one of the sharpest men of business in London; he could argue on the wrong side of any question with an acuteness of sophistry and sarcasm that Dr. Johnson himself might have envied; he kept his household accounts right to a farthing, his manner was never disturbed in the slightest degree from morning to night, his eyes were all quickness and intelligence—but what did these advantages avail him, in the estimation of his neighbors, when he presumed to live on another plan than theirs, and when he wore a hairy certificate of lunacy on the lower part of his face? We have advanced a little in the matter of partial toleration of beards since that time; but we have still a good deal of ground to get over. In the present year of progress, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, would the most trustworthy banker's clerk in the whole metropolis have the slightest chance of keeping his situation if he left off shaving his chin?"

... and I fully support his views on beardiness, too! I do take personal credit for making beards fashionable again, having worn one since the time when nobody else did, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before once more we live in enlightened times when anyone venturing outside the house hatless is shunned as a lunatic!

By the way, you really should read "The Dead Secret" - it's a criminally overlooked masterpiece of Collins' early days as a writer. Read the book, wear a hat and a beard, or I'll think your intellect is deranged!

Not enough hours in the day

 Except today, of course. Today has the right number of hours, apparently. I don't know if it's the extra hour or just that I've been so busy just lately, but today I've got so much done, I'm really impressed with myself! I've talked to all the people I've been needing to talk to, sorted out everything I've been needing to sort out, generally done everything. And it's only quarter past five now!

I should live on Mars. Days there last 35 minutes longer than days here, I'm told. It's clearly what I need, and the commute to work would be easy enough if I build a fast spaceship.

It's an improvement!

 The first two rounds of the Microsoft Excel World Championship were a lot of fun! I certainly found the first one easier than the second, but I wasn't too disappointed with how I performed in both. And I did say Brittany Deaton is awesome, so I don't mind losing to her. Reaching the round of 64 is a new high for me! Onwards and upwards next year!

This is the important bit of the draw:

But if you want to look at the whole thing and notice that my scores wouldn't have beaten a lot of opponents, the full details can be seen by squinting at this little picture, or clicking on it. The tasks for the morning session (yellow in the left-hand border) were different from the ones in the afternoon session (green), so the scores aren't comparable between the two.

Now I can happily spectate the remaining rounds, especially the climax in Las Vegas at the start of December! Excellent!

Weh!

I've now finished watching The Owl House, and still think it's awesome... what am I going to watch my way through now? I need to find some more good cartoons I haven't previously heard of. I'm going to ask everyone for recommendations! Any suggestions will be gratefully received!

Or maybe I'll watch the whole series again now. Especially the ones with Gus in a starring role. He's my new hero.

A favourable draw?

 Well, I avoid the top seeds in this year's Microsoft Excel World Championship. My bit of the round of 128 looks like this...

Mmm, it's not impossible for me to win the first round, if I have a good day (Jesi Lipp seems to do better than me slightly more often than not in these things, but it's kind of close), and even vaguely plausible I could get through the second round too (although Brittany Deaton is kind of awesome). Let's see what happens next Saturday afternoon, anyway! Let's get Excelling!

DNA doesn't lie

 But it does wander around Europe a little, if you follow Ancestry's ethnicity estimates. And I'm glad to see the latest update has nudged me just a little bit closer to being English once again!

If you haven't been following my occasional blog updates, I did a DNA test in 2022, and got this estimate of where my genetic origins might lie (based on comparing my DNA with that of other people with "deep roots" in specific regions). It had a surprising chunk of Scandinavia, both on my mother's side (not impossible; her father was more cosmopolitan than the Yorkshire origins of the other three-quarters of my heritage) and a mysterious 1% of Norway on my father's...

When they updated it the next year, I'd got 7% more English than I was before...

And now, in the October 2024 update, I've inched another 1% towards being a Full English Breakfast!

Sweden and Denmark have been split in this latest one, and 2% of it has ebbed away from my mother's side, while that bit of Norway has disappeared from my paternal genes altogether!

And now I'm significantly less Scottish than I've ever been, and not at all Welsh! Instead, I've acquired a little bit of "Germanic Europe" and a little bit of the Netherlands!

It's nonsense, of course - my dad's side of the family tree are nothing but working class midlands/Yorkshire ever since the dawn of time. I suspect the confusion comes from the branch that sprung up from the primeval sludge of Rutland - that's the kind of element that could confuse any kind of modern scientific testing! But the point is, I'm still gradually increasing my Englishness, which can only be a good thing, right?

Outstanding achievement in the field of excellence

 Woohoo! I admit I was worried about my chances of qualifying for the Microsoft Excel World Championship this year, with not having done all that great in the monthly competitions. That left me needing to get through the big qualification round to select the remaining 68 competitors to join the 60 who'd already qualified. And since it's divided into regions, I had to be in the top 22 Europeans (out of 194 entrants), excluding the lucky people who'd already secured their place and could just take part in this final challenge for the fun of it.

And maybe 'fun' isn't the word. After the hour's time limit was finished, I was a LOT more worried about my chances of qualifying! But I needn't have been - it turns out the tasks really were unspeakably difficult, and nobody (not even the REALLY great guy on the livestream who always shows us all how it's done) got close to the maximum 10,000 points. My measly 4,400 was enough to put me in European 6th place, provisionally.

It might still be corrected before the final results are announced, but that should be enough to guarantee me a third consecutive prestigious place in the grand final round of 128!

Now, can I get beyond that first round for the first time? I just have to hope for a lucky draw, avoiding the top seeds...