Dracula's bottom hurts less than you'd think
including a new conspiracy theory, some literary toilets and a joke about a bank robber
Hello. It is June 2024. This is the eighteenth monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter of knockabout fun and abject distress written by me, desiccated scarecrow and careers advice cautionary tale Mike Rampton. I hope that, currently, you thrive.
It’s only taken eighteen of these — a year and a half, probably about 35,000 words and over 200 actual proper jokes — but it’s happened: I have a book for sale that I can link to and promote to all five of you.
There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question is out on October 10th from Nosy Crow and the University of Cambridge. It’s really good — slightly due to my efforts but mostly due to those of the incredible people who illustrated, edited, designed, commissioned and fact-checked it. Any help getting word out would be massively appreciated: retweeting this or re-LinkedInning this or sending people towards this link, for instance. It’s currently cheaper on Amazon than anywhere else. Or if you work at a publication I could potentially write something related and plug-laden for — What It’s Like Being Such A Flipping Genius, or something like that — please get in touch.
1
“I just had an encounter with Mike Tyson in a supermarket.”
“Spar?”
“No, just a chat.”
2
A friend of mine is attempting to pleasure himself 200 times in a day. I bet he pulls it off!
3
Have you heard about the bank robber who robbed so many banks he was executed? 50,000 volts… is how many he broke into! So they hanged him!
I spent May lurching from one late project to another, somehow never feeling like anything got finished. In my weakened state I’ve become convinced of something.
The vast majority of conspiracy theories require so much organisation and cooperation and so many unbroken oaths of secrecy that I just don’t believe them. But I’ve come up with one.
Whatever I play on Spotify, if I then let let recommend me things, within five songs it’ll get to the Offspring. I listen to a fairly broad spectrum of music (both kinds, pop-punk and skate punk!) (I jest, I also enjoy genres as diverse as nu-metal and novelty metal!) (I continue to jest, I have extremely interesting varied taste and am a fascinating individual and insist on introducing myself as such and will never stop!) but it always happens.
I don’t dislike the Offspring — I am 41, wear glasses, say “dude” a lot and saw every American Pie film in the cinema, of course I like the Offspring — but don’t think I’ve ever deliberately put them on. Something within Spotify has algorithmically decided they’re definitely in my wheelhouse though, so it keeps playing them, and now it’s in a self-perpetuating thing where it keeps playing the Offspring because it’s always playing the Offspring, even though I’ve never chosen to listen to the Offspring. The lead singer is a clever chap, with a PhD in HIV research, and I feel like he’s behind this and up to no good. I can’t quite join the dots, but something is awry.
Also, I always thought that the Bon Jovi song where he sings, “I’m a cowboy / On a steel horse I ride / I’m wanted / Dead or alive” was about motorbikes, but apparently it’s about the life of a touring rock star, so the “steel horse” is probably a bus. That’s really, really, rubbish. What an idiot. A bus is nothing like a horse. I’m quite tired.
4
“Let’s go to a party and get drunk with the armour-clad psychoanalysis pioneer Sir Carl! After all, the knight is Jung!”
5
“I’m going to play a prank on Sigur Rós involving mailing them something heavy, having paid insufficiently for it to be delivered, so they have to pay, because I hate that type of music.”
“Post rock?”
“Yes, that is what I am going to do, due to my dislike of dreamlike ambient pop.”
6
“Do you think I’m dressed appropriately to meet a 1990s football icon?”
“Shearer?”
“You… think I should wear a more see-through outfit to meet Roberto Baggio? Okay.”
I read something the other day that said this month marks the 100th anniversary of Dracula being portrayed on stage. I read Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker about a decade ago and mainly remember that, the first time we encounter Count Dracula, one of the most iconic characters in all of horror, the character narrating at the time, Jonathan Harker, needs a wee. This is paraphrased, but it goes something like “There was this guy, I think his name was Count Dracula, he said I could have a wee so I had a wee.”
I recently read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) — which it is absurd for me to even mention given that one reader of this newsletter is a world authority on H.G. Wells — and that starts with (again, paraphrased) “I thought my bottom would hurt more than it did, because sometimes I sit in bad chairs that hurt my bottom, but this was a good chair, so didn’t hurt my bottom particularly.”
I definitely had a third example of this, another oddly undignified moment from a genre-defining classic, but can’t remember it. Captain Ahab getting his testicles stuck in a drawer or something. Jay Gatsby walking through a door carrying a plank slightly too wide for it? Jane Eyre putting a biro up her nose? Can’t remember. Elizabeth Bennet slipping in a dog mess? Gregor Samsa sitting down with some cereal and accidentally sitting on his keys then leaping up and spilling his cereal everywhere? No idea.
There definitely was one though, and it was enough to prove the point that if you want your book to still be enjoyed 130 years after you write it, the introduction of your most important character should be accompanied by the narrator using a coat hanger to unpick a wedgie.
7
“Years ago I saw Ricky Gervais in one of those parcel-and-stamp mailing-things shops.”
“Post Office?”
“Between series one and two I think.”
8
“I asked a lot of questions about a pal's private life at a big gay march last year, I can't remember what it was called.”
“Pride?”
“Yeah, I pried into a pal's private life at a big gay march last year, I can't remember what it was called.”
9
I wanted to go to John McEnroe's fancy dress party as Gary Oldman's character from the Harry Potter films, but John wouldn't let me.
May in numbers: No idea, the wheels have really fallen off in terms of keeping track of things. Spent a while trying to make a joke along the lines of “Freeze your brai-i-ain, in your just-expired head / Hope they find a cu-ure, though you’re already dead”, being part of Alanis Morrisette’s ‘Cryonic’ work, but gave up. Considered opening a Prohibition-themed bar that only sold gone-off drinks and made people sick, called a Speakqueasy. Had an idea for a protein supplement called Muscle Leany with the slogan “Be neato”. Jumped off a big diving board. Played some pinball. Read several good books and one that was so good it made me want to stop writing. Had a nice chat with a barman about ghosts.
Project updates:
I got an email recently saying that, somehow, PROJECT BACHELOR CHOW, an entirely finished non-fiction picture book, is four spreads too short. Oh nooooooo no no nooooooo I thought I’d finished nooooooo no no no nooooooo.
PROJECT POPPLERS is oh god I completely forgot I was meant to have written this, it’s a whole book, I’m a whole book behind, how has this happened, oh my god.
PROJECT SOYLENT COLESLAW is, aw cripes, there was an email wasn’t there, it came in when I was in Tesco and I just shoved it out of my head to concentrate on paying for my crisps, oh no, it’s all so late, I’m probably going to prison.
Yep. Dear lord I’m tired. Feel free to PayPal me £5.30 for a lovely grown-up pint. Or just tell me I’m good!
Next issue: July 5th. A new government away. Don’t vote for the bad people, they’re just so very bad. HAVE A LOVELY MONTH
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WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING
Johnny B. Goode At Throwing Fruit by Chuck Berry
Frank Herbert’s First Sequel by June Messiah
Where That Smell Came From by Maria End
Chickens In Yachts by Henry Gatta
Enormous Testicles by Megan Utsack
