Mnemonics

Working on the weak spots in my world geography and coming up with mnemonics to help…

“My sad god gave back gold so little lads could definitely go to bed”

West African coastal nations from north to south – Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin.

“My bad god has eight nasty, crusty penises”

Central American nations from north to south – Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama.

The Caribbean is up next – hopefully I can avoid even more blasphemy 😀

Nectar of Mammoth

I never thought I’d have to add “wild mammoths” to the spam filter…

Did you know our ancestors enjoyed normal pressure? That’s right. They chased wild mammoths and lived in caves. But they had healthy hearts and had no strokes. And modern scientists from the University of Virginia just discovered why. It’s all because they had a “signaling molecule” in their tiny kidney cells that we don’t have. But the good news is — there’s an easy way to restore your kidneys’ “signaling molecule” by using something called ‘Nectar of Gods’. That’s because the ‘nectar of gods’ is proven by modern science to help get your blood pressure normal again. ⇒ Nectar of Gods restores normal blood pressure

I hope his pants get caught and a bloodbath ensues

Man there’s not a week goes by, not a week, that I don’t hear about a dingo attack on K’gari involving some bastard tourist that could have been easily avoided had some parent – I don’t care which one – but some parent conditioned them to fear and respect those dingoes!

Correcting the Record

Willie, Willie, Harry, Mattie,
Stephen, Harry, Harry Bratty,
Dick, John, Louis, Harry three,
One two three Neds, Now let’s see,
Richard two, Harrys four five six,
Edwards four five, Nasty Dick,
Harry VII, Harry VIII,
Ned the sixth who turned up late,
Lady Jane Grey, Philip and Mary,
Bessie, James and Charles contrary,
Ollie, Ricky, Charles restored,
James the second (most abhorred),
Will and Mary, Anna Gloria,
Georges (Four), Will Four, Victoria
Edward, George, then Nazi Ted,
So George the sixth stepped in instead,
Elizabeth, her reign unanswered,
Now Charlie III who has the cancers,

On Cryptids

There is a time in every weirdo’s life that they feel compelled to come up with a categorisation system for those strange creatures that lurk on the boundary between science, folklore and small-town tourism campaigns – cryptids! And for me that time has come today.

So gentle reader, please behold the Purple Wyrm Cryptid Categorisation system – which I must admit owes more than a touch of inspiration to Alex Flanigan of the gone but always in our hearts Cryptid Keeper podcast.

(NOTE: By default this system uses ‘boys’ as a categorisation term. Users should feel free to substitute this with whatever term – gendered or non-gendered – they prefer. Cryptozoology is a wide brontosaurus with room on its back for all!)

CLASS ONE: SHADY BOYS
Shady Boys are perfectly normal beasts seen under unusual circumstances that make them look all cool and mysterious. As an example consider the ‘lioness’ filmed lurking around Berlin back in the June of 2023 that actually turned out to be a wild boar. That boar is a very shady boy.

CLASS TWO: WEIRD BOYS
Weird Boys are perfectly normal beasts with some kind of condition or deformity that makes them look unusual or act in an unexpected fashion. The coyotes with mange that people keep trotting out as chupucabras (American subspecies) for instance, or the tailless iguana laughably claimed to be the Loveland Frogman (the Loveland Frogman is real and he is a wizard!).

CLASS THREE: LOST BOYS
Lost Boys are (again) perfectly normal beasts that have somehow ended up in places that logic dictates they shouldn’t be. The phantom kangaroos of the American midwest, or the Alien Big Cats of Great Britain for example. Vampires are not lost boys no matter what Joel Schumacher may tell you.

CLASS FOUR: OLD BOYS
Old Boys are beasts that we know used to exist, but are/were considered extinct. The poster boy for the old boy is the happy coelacanth, merrily swishing its tail at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in defiance of paleontologists everywhere. Should the various mega-cryptids of the Congo basin turn out to be real and turn out to be dinosaurs then they would be very old boys indeed.

CLASS FIVE: NEW BOYS
New Boys are beasts never before described by science. Regularly hauled across the earthquake-riven boundary between the continents of Cryptozoology (disreputable) and Zoology (respected) they are the most common class of cryptid and the only one mentionable in polite scientific company. The Vu Quang Ox (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) of Vietnam is a fine example, only having been admitted to the halls of respectable science in 1992.

CLASS SIX: SPACE BOYS
Space Boys are life-forms from planets other than Earth. Y’know, aliens. Be they disgusting little Greys, buff blonde Nordics, sexy Venusians or the giant Liberace who descended from a UFO to perform a concert in Fyffe Alabama in 1989, they are all space boys.

CLASS SEVEN: SPOOKY BOYS
Spooky Boys are things from realms and dimensions other than ours. Ghosts, demons, machine-elves, vampires, mothmen, Indrid Cold style Men in Black, Indrid Cold himself – basically anything that defies logic and is probably best not meddled with. They are the spooky boys – although it’s probably best not to call them that to their faces (for the ones that have them…).

CLASS EIGHT: IMAGINARY BOYS
Finally we have the Imaginary Boys. These are creatures that are entirely made up for reasons of humour, profit, entertainment, fraud, or just good old-fashioned mischief. There are many classic cryptids that must sadly be placed in this category – the entire contents of Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods for a start (barring some major scientific discoveries). Of course, the fact that none of these are real does not in any way detract from their value and importance. They may not be real boys, but they are all good boys!

So there we have it! Eight clear and unambiguous categories for all your cryptid classification needs. Classify nice now!

The Trooper

My earlier post about the Protomen’s album The Cover Up and their version of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper with each instance of “Russian” replaced with “Robot” got me thinking about what a more extensive conversion would look like. So I wrote one. Here ’tis.

You’ll take my life, but I’ll take yours too
You’ll fire your maser, but I’ll run you through
So when you’re waiting for the next attack
You’d better stand, there’s no turning back

The siren sounds, the charge begins
But on this battlefield, no one wins
The smell of acrid smoke and diesel fumes
As I plunge on into certain doom

My cycle engine roars, we break to run
The mighty roar of the robot guns
And as we race towards the android wall
The screams of pain as my comrades fall

We hurdle bodies that lay on the ground
And the robots fire another round
We get so near, yet so far away
We won’t live to fight another day

We get so close, near enough to fight
When a robot gets me in his sights
He pulls the trigger and I feel the blow
A burst of rounds take my bike below

And as I lay there gazing at the sky
My body’s numb and my throat is dry
A mess of wires where my arm had been
I never knew I was one of them

And if that’s not enough desecration of a metal classic, check this out…

The Immunisation Blues

Friday Morning: It’s my day off! Three day weekend! I’m gonna get so much done! Starting with that COVID booster I’ve been putting off!

Friday Afternoon: Hmm, I’m feeling a bit sleepy. A nap couldn’t hurt!

Saturday Morning: Yep, I really should have remembered how COVID boosters affect me when planning my awesome weekend…

Exothermic

Building a device to filter the isopropyl alcohol I use for stripping paint from models, and reinforcing some joins with string and superglue.

Remember that cyanoacrylate reacts exothermically with cotton!

Reason that nothing has happened so far, so presumably the cheap string I’m using doesn’t contain cotton.

Shrug and continue.

Five minutes later, smoke starts seeping from the joins.

“Oh, son of a…”

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