Are you tired of the same old Christmas songs on the radio?
I’ve got you covered!
This song is a cry for help Christmas letter from a family that is being held against their will protected by evil robots giant metal Santa Claus’.
During the late 90s, when I was between six and nine years old, I was a giant Spider-Man fan!
I never read any of the comics, I was more into Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics when I was little.
In Norway we have a tradition where each year the television channels air shows with a Christmas theme that has a new episode each day between December 1st and December 24th.
This is the story about how the main character in Anubis: Dog of Death started out as a minor villain in my unmade ‘Doctor Who’ comic books.
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In the summer of 2016, I contacted the artist John Barry Ballaran, to order a painting for my girlfriend for Christmas.
It would portray David Bowie and Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor from ‘Doctor Who’, battling an army of cybernetic creatures by shocking them with their electric guitar riffs.
The finished work would have a very realistic style, but long before the painting was done, John sent me a sketch of how the layout of the painting would look.
To me, this looked like something straight out of a comic book!
At this point, I had wanted to make several ‘Doctor Who’ comics for a long time.
Ever since I discovered ‘Doctor Who’ at 15 years old in 2005, I have always had countless ideas for stories set in that universe.
When I was younger I used to dream about the possibility of running that show, and even after admitting to myself just how unlikely that is, I still had a need to get all those ideas out somehow.
And while I could simply write a fanfic, I had imagined these ideas as television episodes, so I felt many of them needed to be visual to truly express what I wanted those ideas to become.
So I asked John if he would be interested in attempting to make a ‘Doctor Who’ comic with me after the painting was done, and he said yes!
I ended up writing a script for a one-part story, and asked John to draw a test-page.
I decided to make a mixed drink for this month’s geeky recipe, and it is naturally Halloween themed.
It is a slight variation on a mojito, with extra lime and mint leaves, topped with a frozen “brain” containing water and blackcurrant juice.
For a single glass, you’ll need to mix:
4 centilitres of lime juice
6 centilitres of soda water
7 centilitres of white rum
1 whole pot of chopped up mint leaves
Jonathan Coulton was born on the 1st of December 1970 in New Haven, Connecticut.
He had hopes of becoming a musician from a young age. So while studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree at Yale University, he was part of several bands with fellow students. Most notably the collegiate a capella group The Yale Whiffenpoofs.
Back in February, I shared my favorite song from each ‘Miracle of Sound’ album.
This proved to be very difficult, as there are so many great songs there!
So I have decided to make a Top 10 or Top 5 list for each album, depending on how big the album is to begin with.
5. Welcome To The Family
We are quickly closing in on the month of Halloween, and I wanted to reflect that in this month’s geeky recipe.
The result is a beety bloodbath of a dish, a feast fit for any vegetarian vampire, werewolf or cannibal.
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(Serves 2 monsters)
1. Boil two large beets for 15 minutes, or just buy boiled beets.
2. Cut a small piece off each beet, so that they are flat on the underside, and can stand still on a surface.
3. Use a knife and a spoon to scoop out each beet into a bowl.
4. Take the pieces you cut off from the undersides and insides of beetbowls, and slice them into pieces. They should look like gory meat chunks.
5. Set aside two tablespoons of diced beets, and put the rest in a small pot.
6. Add 1,5 deciliters of water and a half tablespoon of vegetable bouillon powder.
7. Bring it to a boil, then mix it all together with a hand-held blender.
8. Adjust the taste with salt, pepper and a small squeeze of lime.
9. Serve the soup in the beety bowls, and decorate with the diced beet chunks you put aside earlier.
10. Watch out for vampires!
Back in February, I shared my favorite song from each ‘Miracle of Sound’ album.
This proved to be very difficult, as there are so many great songs there!
So I have decided to make a Top 10 or Top 5 list for each album, depending on how big the album is to begin with.
A song about one of my favorite ‘Game Of Thrones’ characters, Daenerys Targaryen.
The Unburnt, The Breaker of Chains and The Mother of Dragons!
I love this song for many of the same reasons I love DOOM, the game this song was based on.
‘Overwatch’ has in many ways captured the spirit of good character-based cartoons like ‘The X-Men’, and this song would be a great theme-song if they ever were to make this an actual television program.
I would so watch that!
Another song based on ‘The Witcher 3’, this one focusing on the ‘Blood and Whine’ expansion pack, the end of Geralt’s journey in the games.
An ending I prefer over his ending in the books.
1. The Man Who Rocked The World
I saw some similarities between one of the pictures my mother sent me from when I was ten, and another my girlfriend took of me after a hike this summer, so I decided I would combine them into one image, alongside one of my favorite quotes from Doctor Who.
I am ten in the first image, 28 in the second.
The quote is from the Fourth Doctor story ‘Robot’, from 1975.
Back in February, I shared my favorite song from each ‘Miracle of Sound’ album.
This proved to be very difficult, as there are so many great songs there!
So I have decided to make a Top 10 or Top 5 list for each album, depending on how big the album is to begin with.
10. Man and machine
After visiting Cardiff I took the train back to England, and traveled north up to Newcastle, Northumberland.
After dropping my rucksack of at a hotel, I hopped on the bus out to Alnwick Castle.
I had traveled to this particular castle because this was the castle which had been used as the filming location for Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter movies, ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’ and ‘The Chamber of Secrets’, and had as a result informed the look of Hogwarts in all subsequent films.
In the movies there were of course a lot added to the castle in post-production, mostly in height, but I did not mind. Hogwarts was a place I had wanted to visit ever since I devoured the books as a child.
While doing research for this post, I learned that the castle had been used to film many other things than just Harry Potter, but one of them made me really exited.
In February of 1983, Rowan Atkinson and his co-stars were filming around Alnwick Castle, as it would double as King Richard IV’s castle for the first Blackadder season, titled ‘The Black Adder’.
Blackadder is one of my favorite comedy shows, so I wish that I would have noticed that when I was there.
After I was done soaking in the Hogwartsian atmosphere, I took the bus back to my hotel.
And after a night in Newcastle, I started my journey southwards, to France!