Hello. It is July. This is the seventh monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter by me, Mike Rampton. That’s my name — treat it like a dressing gown, don’t wear it out. We’re looking at around ten jokes, a smidgin of self-promotion and a couple of unfinished fleeting thoughts.
1
I’m learning to count in Spanish but have never made it past ten. Not even once.
2
“I once saw a cat sneeze in Somalia.”
“Mogadishu?”
“Yes.”
3
“Our wheat and crops are ruined, and I have a headache!”
“Migraine?”
“Our grain, thank you very much.”
Last month, a book I’ve been working on for yonks — yes, more than one yonk — was finally announced. There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question: 213 Weird and Wonderful Questions About the World, Expertly Answered! is part of a newly-announced partnership between Nosy Crow and the University of Cambridge, bringing out unfeasibly great-looking STEAM-based children’s books. It will be published in October 2024 in the UK and October 2025 in North America. Here’s the announcement in The Bookseller.
(I live in Cambridge. That’s completely unrelated.)
This is both ace and completely ages away. It’s taken so, so long, and there’s still loads of work to do, but hopefully I’m at the bit where it’s mostly easyish and fun, looking at awesome illustrations and making the type of constructive remarks that the people from Cambridge University don’t tend to offer, things like, “Maybe this character’s bum could look a bit smellier.”
So, I am a big champion. I’ve updated my website accordingly — you know, for all my fans.
4
You shouldn’t feel bad in Jack and the Beanstalk when Jack steals from the giant: place no trust in Big Farmer.
5
What did the insect psychiatrist do when he realised his fly was down?
Prescribed it extremely small antidepressants.
6
A pirate chief asks his crew how to write the number two in Roman numerals.
That one, about the pirate, which has the invisible punchline “Aye aye captain”, is excellent, and came to me in the night. Sometimes little bits of wordplay arrive fully-formed in my head; sometimes it’s a bit of a wrestle. I spent about twenty minutes the other day trying to work out if there was anything in the idea that if the River Trent was called the River Trare, Stoke-on-Trent would be called Stoke-on-Trare, which sounds like “au contraire”. There is nothing in that, nothing at all. I’m less of a person for having considered it, as are you for having read it.
The name of the organisation 'Ofwat' makes me laugh. At the time this newsletter goes out, I will be at a wedding in a place in Wales called Pant-Y-Gored, which also makes me laugh a lot.
These are things I would put on social media if I still did it, but right after I left Twitter several months ago, it got really bad, proof that I am the best. There was a period where I really used it a lot, and I wonder how long the effects on how I think will last. I don’t want to join the new one, but at the same time, reckon I’d be incredibly excellent at it and become so rich.
I ran the hottest half-marathon in the world a few weeks ago. Not in the sense of it being exciting or trendy or talked-about, the sense of it being horribly, dangerously warm. Didn’t get a great time (or have an even remotely good one) and haven’t run again since. I need deadlines for things like that, so might sign up for another half-marathon around October, or I’ll never run again. Exercise brings me absolutely no joy. I’m not going to train for fun, only out of terror. Awful.
I was encouraged to download Strava, the fitness app. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable, broadcasting my incredibly pedestrian achievements, adding an extra layer of self-consciousness to it all that I don’t need (I look, when exercising, worse than anyone has ever looked — see above). Like, I get that broadcasting pedestrian achievements is what this newsletter also does, but I have a very strange job that I don’t think directly compares to that of anyone else I know, so it doesn’t feel like anyone could look at it and laugh derisively in quite the same way as they could with something like running.
If it’s not impostor syndrome, it’s something like it: an impostor syndrome impostor. Like how dare I present my accomplishments on a platform used by athletes? That bandwidth and those pixels are for stronger, more worthy competitors, not to be wasted on my prancing. It’s a bit like how it always seems mad to me when people have ‘comedy’ in their social media handles. Most of the people I met during my brief forays into the stand-up world were really funny, but some were properly rubbish and almost all of them had ‘funny’ or ‘comedy’ in their names. Like, I have a reasonably good claim on job titles like ‘writer’, ‘author’ and ‘journalist’ but feel slightly uncomfortable about all of them. My life is a bit like that film The Bourne Identity, except instead of someone not knowing who they are, I’m just slightly uncertain how to describe what I do for a living. It might not be like that film at all. I might not have seen it. I’m tired.
Hadn’t done anything for Kerrang! for a while, then spoke to both Steve-O from Jackass and my new favourite wrestler, Rhea Ripley, for them, which was fun. I’ve looked at, among other things, disembodied body parts, cannibalism and delicious floods for Cracked. Here is a deliberately useless piece I did for them for the Fourth of July. What the hell else have I been doing this month? Had a few meetings? Not got round to writing a few really exciting things that will be great when I do them? I went to a lido a few times, that was fun, ish. Eight lengths. Not a lot of lengths and yet too many lengths.
7
“I've made a thing that shares many of the qualities of an art board.”
“Easelly?”
“No, it was very difficult.”
8
I've somehow got into a conversation about ownerless vomit. I don't know who brought it up.
9
How does Zack de la Rocha go home from a lovely day at the seaside?
With a pocket full of shells.
The year is half over. Absurd. As you read this (nobody reads this) I am at a wedding, drinking myself into an appropriate state to deliver a heartfelt speech. Given that I am, at all times, a tightly-wound and imminently-exploding ball of stress (my FitBit regularly congratulates me for being active when all I’m doing is thinking about how behind I am with work) there’s a very real chance I’ll just, like, set on fire?
Thanks for reading, if you did. Please tell people about this. Tell them this Mike guy’s really good. I’m so good! Tell me that! HAVE A LOVELY MONTH
10
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING
Bart Simpson’s Favourite Superhero by Ray D. O’Activeman
Old-Fashioned Special Effects by Matt Painting
Get Out Of My Way by William Oove
I Want These Denim Shorts To Look Distressed by Freyja Little
I’m Not An Ape Anymore by Ivy Volved