Surprise! I decided to do an extra entry before the end of the year. I just got this idea before going to sleep last night and then made it today. Sorry to anybody who prefers the normal entries over the Finger Puppet Shows, that's three in a row I've done now! The normal schedule of two normal entries and one Finger Puppet Show a week will be back soon. I guess I'd better explain this joke, since it's a little obscure and only a small number of my audience might get it: That's John-Boy Walton from The Waltons, and in The Waltons they always spend ages saying goodnight to each other at the end of the day, but Pelly the Parrot will literally never stop repeating, so he keeps the process going all night! This'll probably be John-Boy's only appearance in a Finger Puppet Show, for two reasons: first, he's really hard to photograph and, second, he's a copyrighted character, and I'd rather use characters I make up myself. I just got John-Boy as a Christmas present from my Mum and I was eager to feature him somehow on my blog; this was the result!

This is my last planned entry for this year, but I might get an idea I like so much that I have to write it right away. I hope you like this Christmas entry too, I'm certainly proud of it. I think, after the very first, this may be my best actually.

All finger puppets can be bought here.

I must admit that I was a little lazy with today's Finger Puppet Show, I didn't take any new photographs for it. The pictures of Merlin and Dorium were ones that didn't get used, but were left over, from the photos I took for this strip, which this is a follow up to, and the picture of Jingle was taken directly from this strip. I have a really good one (or at least, I'm very proud of it) due for either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day though, so, keep an eye open for it!

All finger puppets can be bought here.

Remember that time when I said I'd write an entry on the 2012 doomsday predictions on December 20th of that year? If you do, well done, I am very proud of you. Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, I also remembered and so here is my entry on that subject. I'll go over each apocalyptic scenario that has been predicted for tomorrow and explain why they won't happen.
    Firstly, the Biblical rapture. Even if we assume for one moment that The Bible is one hundred per cent true, there’s absolutely nothing in it which suggests that the rapture is due to occur on December 21st 2012, no date is given (if anything, The Bible implies that it should have happened years ago). Plus, The Bible says that nobody can know when the end of the world is coming, only God knows, so it would be awfully strange if there were a way to figure it out based on cryptic clues wouldn't it? Since God knows everything, past, present and future, when it says that nobody but God knows, you can assume it means, nobody but God will ever know.
    Secondly, the Mayan calendar. December 21st is when the ancient Mayan calendar ends, and some people believe that this indicates the end of the world. Oddly though, the people who believe the calendar points to the apocalypse, are not the people who follow the old Mayan religion. Those who do follow it complain because the Mayan religion does not contain an 'end of the world' event, and they don't like others imposing one on it. Researchers tend to think today, that the calendar ends on that date, because of some mathematical measurements linked to the sun and the Earth.
    Thirdly, Nibiru. Apparently a planet is going to crash into the Earth tomorrow (a bit like that time in Doctor Who when Gallifrey came back and nearly crashed into us). But this is rather silly, I mean, with the other two, they feature supernatural aspects and so you wouldn't see signs of them coming, but if a planet was heading towards Earth it'd easily be seen in the sky. Since nobody can see one, I'd say we're pretty safe.
    Fourth, alien invasion. Some people believe that the world leaders are secretly shape shifting alien reptilian humanoids… Accepting that alone as truth is awfully hard, but even if you do, it's even harder to see the logic in predicting tomorrow as the day more of them arrive for a full scale alien invasion. If these shape shifters are among us, then they'd know that people have predicted tomorrow as the day of their attack, they'd know people are preparing for some kind of disaster and will be much harder to fight than on another day. Surely, it'd be easier to just come a day early or something? I'll admit, I don't know that much about this theory, but it just seems to have so many holes in it.
    Finally, planetary alignment. All the planets will be lined up with the sun tomorrow, so apparently that'll put a large dose of radiation into the atmosphere, or shoot out deadly solar flares, that will wipe life from the face of the Earth. Except that, it already happened once before, and before anybody thinks it, it wasn't when the dinosaurs went extinct, it was when humans were around. So, if it can't even wipe out the tiny human population of thousands of years ago, why should the even bigger population of today be worried? They shouldn't, because nothing happen because of it.

So that's all of the main theories debunked. If anybody was worried by them, I hope I helped a little. And, on the off chance that there’s a big coincidence and tomorrow is the end of the world, I better just add, I love you dearly.

On Thursday (the 13th of December) I popped into Bath and had a tasty dinner with my good friend David Tubb. I had an extremely delicious three cheese and cranberry pie and then the pair of us headed up to the university campus in order to do a few things. Once finished on campus, we headed into town in order to look in bookshops and other such fun pass times.
    Now, in Bath, there are lots of different kinds of people out in the streets: musicians, human-statues, Satan and lots of others too. On this particular day, David and I happened to run into a charity woman. She asked me whether or not I'd like to spare a few minutes to hear about her charity, and I thought she was from Concern Universal, so I told her that I already donated to that charity and carried on walking along with David. However, I was wrong, she actually came from a charity called ActionAid, and she told me so. As such, I began to slow down a little to hear what she had to say, David, on the other hand, did not want to hear what she had to say, so he grabbed my arm and started pulling me quickly away. The charity woman, in retaliation, grabbed my other arm and started pulling me in the opposite direction with equal force. For a short while, I was just stretched out between the pair of them as they played this strange tug-of-war esc game.
    "C'mon, let him stay, he wants to!" the woman said to David.
    David then decided to relent, and let go of my arm. For the next five minutes or so, the woman told me the facts about her charity and the poverty that they helped fight. Most of it was stuff I was already aware of, but I decided I'd listen anyway, perhaps I would learn some utterly shocking fact which I had been previously unaware of (I didn't, but...). Once she'd finished, I thought there'd be no real harm in making regular donations to another charity, so I started to sign up.
    "So what's your name?" she asked.
    "Adam Randall," I replied.
    "You're supposed to tell them your real name!" said David.
    For a moment, the woman looked a little concerned, but then David added "I'm joking."
    After another five minutes or so of getting down my information, such as address, phone number and bank details, she asked me my date of birth. When I told her 11th April 1993, she told me I was too young to donate, so it seems the whole thing was quite a waste of time. But that's not quite the end of the story.
    After that was all over, David and I visited a bookshop and looked around for a little while. Once we were done we headed back the same way we'd come. There was another charity woman there now, roughly in the same place.
    "Excuse me, how old are you?" she asked me.
    "Unfortunately, I am 19 and so I'm too young to donate. Sorry!" I told her.
    "I know, I was only joking!" she said. Which is a bit confusing, had she watched the previous encounter play out and then planned this little prank for us? I guess we'll never know. But now it’s the end of the story.

This video was kindly filmed by my brother.
So, anyway, I got an early Christmas present on Saturday: a yo-yo. I love it! It's my new favourite toy. For years I wished I could use one, and made characters in my stories able to just because I thought it was so cool. Then, when I finally got one on Saturday, I learned how to do it instantly! Now I can join that fine group of people who use a yo-yo, which includes the Fourth Doctor from Doctor Who, Jim-Bob Walton from The Waltons and Ness from Earthbound (who I don't really know anything about).
    It really makes me quite happy, because I never thought I'd be able to use one. Since I can use one of these, maybe one day I'll be able to play piano one day, another thing I’ve often wanted to learn... (yes, I know it's much harder!).

You've got to keep silent in the library!

Guest starring David Tubb.
All finger puppets can be bought here.

Take a listen to this song:

What did you think of it? Personally, after my first listen, I thought it was really bad. Today, however, I do very much enjoy this song, which is quite odd because I don't tend to enjoy dance music, and there's even a hint of dub step in there. But I like this song, in my head, it's a Christmas song. Around this time last year, a very good friend of mine showed it to me and, as I said, I didn't like it at first. But, of course, my friend did like this song and, as such, they played it fairly regularly. After I'd heard it loads of times (via them), it slowly began to grow on me. I kept getting it stuck in my head when I was sat around by myself at home. So, in the end, I headed over to iTunes and downloaded myself a copy. I listened to it quite a lot, mainly on bus rides and while baking pizzas, but, I kind of lost interest in it after Christmas now. Recently, I found myself craving the song again, so I listened to it. When I did listen to it, it made me feel really Christmassy and nostalgic for last year (obviously, this is because I listened to it a lot around Christmas time last year). So, for me now, this is a Christmas song. At the moment it gets listened to regularly, but I'll stop after Christmas day and save it for next year.
    I guess it goes to show that context has a lot to do with musical appreciation (or, at least it does in my case). Perhaps a song you hear all the time, but really dislike, will make you happy when you hear it again in old age?

Have you ever found yourself with nothing to do from 4pm to 6pm on a Tuesday? Well, by golly, I do believe I've found the thing for you: The Rush Hour Show. What is it, you ask? Well, basically it's a radio show which plays a lot of modern music as well as any requests from audience members. But, while the music is nice enough (although, they do play the song Gangnam Style a lot, and I've never really enjoyed that) the main appeal for me, is the conversation between my good friend Ben Wood and his co-host Daniel Young, it's always very entertaining, and even interactive if you use their Facebook page.
Click here for their Facebook page, and here for the place to go when you want to listen. Enjoy!

Also, by writing this entry, I realise that it has been a long time since I wrote any silly tongue-in-cheek entries about my friends. If anybody would like one about them, please let me know! I am more than happy to write them :D

EDIT: This is now called Monday Night Dinner and aires on Mondays from 6 pm to 8 pm.

All finger puppets can be bought here.