Tescoed: Rapunzel and Internet Groceries

There's a new Princess in town as Disney's movie Tangled hits these shores and soon Rapunzel will appear besides the traditional trinity of princesses (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White) on all sorts of merchandise.  Only the womenfolk in my household saw it (until it is on DVD) and so I'm forced instead to cartoon on the difficulties of being locked in a tower with long hair and getting your groceries over the Internet.

P.S. The more observant of you will have noticed the change in domain from cartoonsidrew.blogspot.com to http://www.cartoonsidrew.com/ or even cartoonsidrew.com.

Solar Flares For Slackers

Apparently the sun has just woken up from a period of being a bit sleepy and a series of eruptions is currently sending waves of sunshine particles towards the earth's atmosphere.  According to scientists and the media this will either knock out power grids, mobile phones and satellites or merely make some pretty lights in the sky (i.e. they don't know).  My 4-year old daughters reaction on seeing a picture of the blazing sun on BBC News 24 was to shout "Ahh the big fire, save us from the big fire" which is about the level of some of the coverage.

Todays cartoon depicts the opportunities this provides for people who require excuses.

All Roadworks Lead to Home

Spring is here and todays cartoon celebrates the blossoming of roadworks everywhere on my commute to work as Councils who have let us to endure weeks of potholes after the tough winter frantically try and use up their road maintenance budget before the next financial year.

Ok the wintry weather may have left us with 1/3 of Scotlands roads in 'unacceptable condition' but why have they decided to make all their repairs at once?

At the risk of sounding like an ill-informed Jeremy Clarkston I think the Romans could teach us alot about road construction at this time.  Non residential roads should be flat and not littered in speed bumps, traffic calming and pot holes.  Nor do we need electronic traffic signs that smile at you when you are doing the speed limit or cycle lanes in areas where cyclists prefer to use the back streets.

Roman roads were a major feat of engineering.  They weren't the first to build roads, the Persians had a system of public roads but at the height of their power the Romans had 29 great military highways leading to Rome and 80,500km of paved roads.  When the Romans withdrew from Britain the roads remained in use as major trunk roads and even today some modern roads overlie the ancient roads including the Fosse Way which used to run close to my Nanna's village in Nottinghamshire.

The Romans used cement in their road construction but it was left to the Arabs to use tar on their roads in the 8th century AD.  Eventually we came to modern tarmac which is smeared lightly on our roads and forms the bumpy coating on pot holes and speed bumps that we drive on today (or in my case stay stationery on waiting in traffic jams).

Solomon's Speed Date Night

Second Valentines/Bible cartoon where we address the question of what polygamists do on Valentines Day.  As often is the case I'm not that interested in the answer just the comic potential of what King Solomon who had many wives (mostly foreign) would do with his great wisdom.

The invention of Speed Dating was credited to a Rabbi who wanted Jewish singles to meet as many new people as possible.  I don't know who invented Date Night but my friends seem to think it's an American idea whenever my wife and I declare on Facebook we are abandoning our offspring to go out together for Date Night.  However I'm pretty sure I invented Speed Date Night the way for polygamists to spend a bit of quality time with their many wives on occasions like Valentines night.

Footnote: Just in case any biblical/historical scholars take issue with my cartoon I drew the wives with veils so they would look the same.  I'm fairly confident the custom of the time was for woman to wear veils except with their husband but then again they didn't have restaurants with table cloths (although I could be wrong on that count too)

Eden Cards - Adam's Dilemma

One week to go until Valentine's day and this cartoon reminds us of the perils of picking Valentines cards for your beloved from a range of pre-packaged sentiments.  I like the idea that Adam having chosen the names of all the animals would struggle to pick a Valentines card for Eve.

Hokey Cokey Hospital

Today's cartoon is about hospitals after I had to return to my local one for some post-op splint removal.  Hospitals can be a bit grim I wish they were more like this.

On a unrelated note did you know that no-one knows where the Hokey-Cokey comes from.  There are theories of course about the Blitz, Shakers, ice-cream and 17th century popular rhymes but in this modern omniscient age with Google and Wikipedia how can we not know?  What is Indiana Jones doing about it?  Forget tracking down the Ark of the Covenant or the Crystal Skull I think the next film should be Indiana Jones and the Hokey Cokey!!

How the Dinosaurs became extinct

I was wrong in my last cartoon about the Sky commentators gaffe not running more than a few days.  The war between the sexes is ignited again with talk of dinosaurs and banter.

Why are men who refer to women in old fashioned get back in the kitchen ways referred to as dinosaurs and if they were what does that say about the female dinosaurs and their hopes of survival.  Hence the cartoon.