Heroes In a halfshell.

Been staying with my aunt for a bit as my cousins daughter is down from Scotland so excuse me if I come across all loved up like a wuss. I've talked about her before here and is about the closest thing I have to a soul mate / daughter never had, with a staggering amount of things in common we share.   Anyway we got talking over the laptop and she showed me the Turtles Wikia page via as she likes the new TMNT series, and I talked about my love of the old show and how the Turtles arcade game was a big draw before the Streetfighter boom.   I may have done how Sky did it back then but along with the Lensman and Robotech these were the really greatest shows on their long forgotten Premiere movie channel, they were bought by the BBC and they became the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Every now and then they fish out a massive terrapin thats been terrorising the lake fauna at some backwater pond and its blamed on the Ninja Turtle craze.

We got round to favourites, she liked Usagi Yojimbo, the samurai rabbit, I had a thing for Baxter Stockman the hideously mutated fly guy and she showed me what he is now, and its not good.  I loved the campy old designs there was just something about Baxter a foreveralone with a bugs head, now hes young, Cybernetic and... black.   We had a short discussion on the rest of the shows she really didn't like Gennosuke Usagis friend and I said he looked like Bebop the Rhino from the old shows. 

Most of my time I've been showing her some stuff, she drew the line at Dr Rabbit is a Racist the classic Waxinator poop and also disdained Protomans theme from Megaman 3 (we watched the cartoon in English for the first time as previously I'd only seen a German dub).  I also spent an enjoyable saturday laughing at silly names on Animal Planet with her, my favourite: Randy Farmer, worked for the Houston SPCA turned out to be an actual farmer for bonus lols.  Oh and winding her up about puppies vs zombies (babies) a really lazily put together show with tat from youtube.

Teenage feline Turtle Watchers.

Finally we'll leave you with a bonus snap from holiday as its sort of Turtle related. Some adorable strays looking over the animals (and wondering if theres room to make a meal of one)

Nonce Sense = no sense.

One of the most soul destroying things about reading the Daily Mail, isn't reading about Kate Middletons pregnancy or any other aspect of her overprivileged life but the campaign bits that sometimes arise. 

Be it to stop various things like the EU or plastic bags, but mainly its to get rid of pornography and put all pornoviewers into some sort of death camp where they cannot taint the regular populace (subs please check), oh and to stop "children" from watching porn online. 

Looking over the campaign from the beginning its morphed from getting David Cameron to offer in an opt out clause on all ISPs, to getting Google (and they really have it in for Google) to banish Paedophilia from the net and drive it onto some god forsaken TOR portal where it can be cut loose from normal viewing (which of course it already is).

Reading the comments there is an eye opener, as most do not want a block on Porn (even one that has been conflated up to Child Porn which by default is banned in most countries worldwide) and equate it with a short step to censorship.  Even the Daily Mail, where this shit started, is basically telling him to keep his own house in order before sorting this out and that its an unworkable prospect.  

I've wanted to do a piece on this for a long while and thanks to some high profile cases in the media, that say that if you watch bent ref media online or offline you'll go out and commit an noncecrime nows my chance.  I don't know if its true or not, I'd love to know what kind of research was done on this because what I'm hearing sounds like the old one about "Grandfather smoking 20 a day and living to his 80's and not got cancer" style anectdote rather than some peer researched paper on a control group of paedophiles living in the community. 

I don't know about other paedo stuff having no knowledge of that world but I will say this a lot of people are technically buntymen now (myself included) and its all due to the tabloids. 

Cue Linsey Dawn McKenzies Sunday Sport Debut.
"As McKenzie approached her 16th birthday, the Sunday Sport tabloid newspaper expressed an interest in turning her topless debut into a media event. Throughout June and July 1994, it published provocative pictures of McKenzie, touting her 34GG bra size and counting down the days until it could legally show her topless."

Or would you prefer Sam Fox
 "In 1983, at the age of 16, she began her modelling career on Page Three of The Sun".

Yeah back in the 80's and 90's you could quite legally see what we would call *child porn in the red tops and there was not a peep from anyone.  In fact that is banned by law now, just goes to show how attitiudes change.

Hornchurch Junk Tour.

For the first time in ages I got to do a junk tour.  We normally head toward Romford or Walthamstow both places that have proven lucky in the past, this time though we decided to go off the beaten track. 

First of all though I've been to Hornchurch before its not really to look around and mainly for a nature walk around Elm Park which lovely though it is is in the totally opposite direction.  What I did notice from these ramblings of mine was a load of charity shops in the main town.  This is where we started.

I'm not kidding either there are something like 6 - 7 shops for such a small town, including a Sue Ryder and a St Francis Hospice.  Oh and for some reason when I went they decided it would me music day, so not only was there a pub with a live PA and a shouting clown, they had  a few bands out side the shops including an old man singing I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts for that extra surreal sensation. 

Transport links.
Hornchurch tube station is about a quarter mile outside town so beware of that if you are not used to walking or a just fat and lazy.  Thanks to planned engineering works I had to catch a train at West Ham instead of the tube and change at Barking to catch the tube onward.  Although in hindsight getting off at Upminster would have been better.  Fun fact:  Upminster is a place I was fascinated with as a child as well as Central Line stop Theydon Bois, sadly I've never been to either. Anyway back to the finds.

I managed to snag a few good books here too. We got Superfreakonomics and a Gary Larson anthology both highly recommeded especially if you have a fetish for cows in 60's glasses or odd economics (why is a $2 brass like Father Christmas*).  We also spied some non armada Hardy Boys Detective stories which I would have had if I didn't already have them.

But most strange of all we got a few games, they had a lot of PS1 titles and were pretty sure its where PS1 games go to die.  Along with the inevitable stack of  *FIFAs they had Pro Pinball the Fantastic Journey for just a pound, haven't tested it in EPSXE yet but shouldn't cause too many problems.  Finally we decided to have a nose around Romford and was overjoyed that nearly every bus went there.

Oxfam in Romford is a great place to buy CDs and we got the excellent Global Communication 76:14 and the not so excellent Sharon Stoned Sample & Hold album (despite it looking like it was all electronic its just a nancy boy Indie pop record). Plus some old Soma releases (Percy X) and that was the makings of a grand day out.

The back end of nothingness

By the time you read this I'll be dead..... of boredom.  Its Wimboredom final and by the time this is up then Andy Murray will either be the greatest ever living Briton or Scotlands answer to Jimmy White.  Not that I'll be sitting watching at all.

Oh and serious note now I've mentioned snooker our thoughts go out to Ali Carter who's currently undergoing treatment for testicular cancer.  Best of luck and hope that they caught it early enough to be treatable.

TV the End.

This is the final bit from holiday TV and is really just a small thing about Orbyt.tv which had a channel but through googling turned out to be an Android Spambox for games and viewing and I suppose Media.

Spanish Speakers / Hablamos Espanol Aqui Para Informacion.

I also found out the real name for a clip from a mystery kids show I've had on my YT channel for ages.  Its from M.I.C a sort of catalan version of Morph, though this came from  a shop that had toys for sale as well as DVDs.  Maybe one of these days I'll come across some Stories without words stuff.

Bugging and Lawrence.

I can't really care anymore about what our clouseauesque cops got up to in the 1990s, regarding phone taps and surveillance of suspects, however Doreen Lawrence has gone up in my estimation as its emerged that she banned the ANL and Trotskyists from marching after Stephens death.  Oh and for more background information Anorak has some more nice info here regarding the case.

Opuntia

Better news now as this came out over the weekend. It lasted for all of Friday afternoon before fading.

Flower

Bud

This was one of my neighbours plants that I inherited when he died.  Opuntias are known for being tricky to flower in the UK as they require room to mature and bulk up in size before they are mature enough to bloom.  Coupled with the fact that they are vicious bastards with easily detachable spines and joint stems, you'll see why this is an event and a big one at that.

I first noticed the bud coming back after holiday and while excited didn't really expect it to do much.  However this weekends scorching temperatures must have been enough to get it to flower.

I'll see if there will be any fruit formed from this but to be honest I'm not hoping for much.

Finally clearing out a cupboard we found this which we brought back from our first trip to Mallorca back in 1993.  Going to see what I can find out about this.

Complete with copier adverts.