Warming Up

My daughter is a big fan of the song Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and is singing it a fair deal and occasionally putting ketchup on her nose to appear like the eponymous hero of the song.

Whilst the song has a pseudo Ugly Ducking charm to it, the story of a spurned and mocked creature who turns out to either overcome or cash in on the thing that makes them different, it also falls at the same hurdle. There are no repercussions for the other creatures that mock the afflicted animal and the song pretty much implies they did nothing wrong.

So just as the message of the ugly duckling isn’t that it’s OK to be “ugly” or wrong to judge people by subjective aesthetics, but that you can just hope that your beauty blossoms late or you ended up in the wrong nest and are a different species, with Rudolph, the other reindeers actively mock him for having a different coloured nose to them and ostracise him from their community,. Surely they are going to prison for race-based hatred or at least be made to apologise. No, as soon as Rudolph’s luminous nose proves useful to Santa, the mercurial other reindeer suddenly love him and declare that he will go down in history. Not, you will note, add that he can now play with them.

I think a verse where Santa shoots and eats one of the bad reindeer as a warning to the others, who all then humbly apologise to Rudolph for their shallowness and nose colour assumptions. 

Or at least a verse where Rudolph tells them all to fuck up and he doesn’t want to be their friend.

I finally got round to the final count on the SCOPE collection total for the RHLSTP tour (and Fringe) and it’s come in at £6705.48 (not including any texted donations or the money we raised for getting names in programmes). Nowadays money is tight and people carry less change so it’s less than we’ve made in the past, but that will still make a huge difference to the lives of many people, so thanks for your contributions. If the Christmas mood takes you (and just because the Tories got in doesn’t mean you can’t voluntarily pay a bit more tax if you’re doing well) then you can make a donation here

As it seems unlikely anything significant will occur in this last week and a half of the decade I completed the 2019 entry for the history section for this website.

On balance it’s been a good year with some professional setbacks and personal sadness. 

RHLSTP with Graham Fellows (John Shuttleworth/Jilted John) went up today, in audio only 

I also did an unboxing video and audio to let you know what you can win in the end of year monthly Badger draw

You can still gain entry to this (and every subsequent monthly draw) by becoming a badger at gofasterstripe.

Plus all the other shit mentioned in the video/audio (plus ad free audio pods - which I forgot to mention).