On yer bike son.

 So the good weather has given away to storms and rain for the next few days. We were mercifully spared any thunderstorm action here it did get awfully close over the past few days, enough for me to think about not hanging round at work and think about getting off early. 

The upshot of this was borrowing a Lime Bike I found dumped out (a common occurrence) to speed on to and off site, only to find that this was actually some dudes daily driver, he'd bought! Literally didn't know you could own one and thought they were rental only*.  Most of the time its marshalling them to a main road for pick up or using to get around if I'm pushed for time. 

My storm phobia goes back to being caught in a storm in Greenwich park with my mum as a kid and probably goes into autism stuff as well as I also hate fireworks too. So me driving round on a Ebike so I can avoid a storm is peak me. 

* So it turns out you can't actually buy one and just rent it to get around, in fact this all you can do with this which makes me feel much better. Sorry not sorry. 

Chinatown

Been uptown for the first time this year, and its the first time I've been round Chinatown for a few years, not since the start of the coof, when it was Chinese new year and there were lion dancers out.

All current new year celebrations are of course cancelled. No Lion dance this year and because of lockdown, none last year, either.

So decided to look around and play the slots, and visit a few record shops. No luck on the slots and such but have found out that Sounds of the Universe in Soho have a real nice doggo in their shop. Wondered who had their dog in the shop at first when I came in, and thought he was a service dog. Turns out he lives there, and only found out when he sneaked out the door and the owners had to get him back. 

Decided to head down Oxford street and take a look in Hamleys as I hadn't been in years. They have limited Peppa Pig, Pigs, i.e. in a coppers outfit. If that's your bag, they're limited edition.

Pig Pig

Finally heading down towards Bond Street, I saw a homeless guy with a black and white cat with him, don't know if he's a regular down that way but, kinda feel bad not dropping some change into his begging bowl now. A real nice cat as well.

See, a real nice cat.

Welcome to despair.

 Short one this, but have been going down memory lane again.

Met an old friend from school I haven't seen for about 25 odd years. Just walking down the street, a chance encounter that, had I gone my usual route, would not have seen at all. We got talking, and said he still sees some of the old crowd from BTEC days and that he's married now.

Further on I decided to look up another person I worked with back in the day and actually fancied at one time. She has a website up and does mixed media art, and I have to say its pretty good. Though as a massive nitpicker the cactus is actually Gonialoe Variegata (previously Aloe Variegata) but I'll let it stand.

You can visit it here.

In other news the Byuu post has been updated, and I've been slowly scanning bits and pieces, mainly old bits from the Brian Lamb exotic collection. I have a few old journals to scan, and for all you Hardy fans, have started on the Hooded Hawk mystery original, which is another extended directors cut, nothing major different yet.. 

Breaking down.

Feels like I'm going through a phase in my life where everything seems to fall apart. A few cases in point.

I suffered a choking fit in the cancer research shop yesterday, you know one of those where you can't breathe. After a while I got better but not before everyone thought I was some sort of plague carrier for SARS 2 electric boogaloo. They offered me a mask but I had my own with me. I know I'm fine but its that accusation that I'm not that carried over and it bugs me.

I tried in the week to get a photo of a cartoon guinea pig for my mum from an old diary chucked out, only for me to be cunted down by some Karen in the block asking why I was photographing her diary, she chucked out. I had no real reason that, only that I liked the design and that but of course I can't say that and fear took over and now I feel like I'm the monster.  Some how I just wish to be like normal people for once.

Last straw is the TV downstairs broke and we got lucky with grabbing a new one from Currys. Set up is a doddle but doing so broke Sky Q so now we have to get this working especially the small "satellite" box for downstairs TV, which is ironically closer to the router than the main Q box. Also we lost picture on the VCR and as we're back full time, grabbing has slowed significally. 

More Tapes

Still in lockdown,  Have decided to go through my VHS collection (minus the Pron,) to see what can be kept and salvaged and what cannot.

Today's videos are two from the early 90's it turns out. The tape labelled three Saturday shows has some football highlights from  the Rumbelows cup, with Ian Wright as today's studio guest. America's top 40 with Casey Kasem (Shaggy) and some awesome shade thrown at him by the presenter and the Onion Field as the featured film.

Our other choice VHS contained Streetfighter II Anime which I thought was a rip from Bravo but turns out its just taped onto an existing blank tape and when it runs out we have the back end of an unknown film from the BBC and Some Channel 4 kids programming.

Which is boss as it contains the last half of Mork and Mindy, an episode of a Bill and Ted cartoon (never knew this existed,) A white fang cartoon and best of all The Finder aka Finders Keepers.

This is based on a children's book by the same name and is Australian (same vintage as Round the Twist.)

Actually pretty good, and is the stand out find here. A little blond kid takes part in some intergalactic gameshow. He can find things with a magic beeper and the episode I saw they had a time barrier which accepted lost things from the real world. They have an archive here of episodes, up on youtube which I recommend you do.

Finally we had some stand out ads. A few celeb shots for British Gas, Boom bang a ban Burt Reynolds on gas fires and Gangster Bob Hoskins for cookers.  A few music promo bits which are going to be a bastard to pass (album collections for Madonna and The Pogues and a lazy comp for carnival greats which include tequilla and the Lambada).

Obscure standouts are Mitsubishi (fax machines) Geosafari (edutainment cringe) and Texas Instruments (graphing calculators which is a surprise.)

Oh and a nice primary coloured Channel 4 logo that looks like it's made out of paint.

A final note, we've switched videos from the DVD combi unit to a sharp standalone video and its getting better results, a few tapes are playing now including the 3 shows one which was a right bastard in all machines previous. We can see my cousins kids school play, from back in the 90's rather than listen to audio as previously done.

Coping with lockdown.

The corvid 909 / SARS 2 Electric Boogaloo lockdown crisis is playing havoc with all my plans.

There's no junk tour as all non essential shops are shut and you can't go out anyway.

Stuff I liked doing was browsing in Smiths and when I went Saturday there were signs up saying don't read the magazines do to Corbyn 101.

However I've found a way around this as several sites are dedicated to putting up pdf scans or rather rips of current media so I can read my favourite magazines and put them back on the shelf, just as downloads from a file host site instead.  It's only until lock down is lifted and we won't choke any more. 

Now to find a downloader that actually doesn't want me to sign up to some free plan or shiet.

 On video news I've hooked up the VCR and am going through my video collection via Obs and video capture.

So far I have found, a schools program which is dull, really dull, and has piss poor tracking issues.

An even worse tape that has Thames news and looks suspiciously like the Day to Day, except this is the 80's.

A vintage tape full of football from the 70's to 80's. A bit of Liverpool at their best, Arsenal with George Graham in charge and Tony "Donkey" Adams on the sheets. They are playing Sheffield United if anyone cares. And finally a bit of Brian Clough at Forest before the tape wisely shuts itself down.

Finally a bit of Channel U XXX a station full of hip hop trash mixed with the phone lines may actually dump the ads from this as the birds on here look genuinely ropey. We're talking sub readers wives level here. That is if I can stomach non stop hip hop from people who should be either a crime statistic or behind bars.

Stella Creasy and the Golden Shower

God knows who this will bring in, for the curious, though, this is two different topics, none of them relate to any extreme sex acts.  TLDR we saw an MP and found some obscure indie in a charity shop that is all.

We went to Walthamstow, again for the first time after their devastating fire that damaged the mall. Indeed six weeks on and one side of shops has been completely damaged including WH Smiths, which has closed for good it seems.

We saw the local MP, Stella Creasy, holding an local surgery, in the place that's normally reserved for the stalls selling chinese toys and paintball experiences. I can only imagine that her regular meeting room was damaged by the fire.  It's quite a come down.

She reminded me a lot of an old boss of mine, also blonde, and she also came across as faintly wet and useless, too. I don't normally see "celebrities" apart from Girls Allowed at Oxford Street HMV, and Bill Oddie, that is the extent of my celeb meeting. My parents have seen Boris Johnson out the front of Wimbledon tube, kinda puts my influence into a cocked hat.

Anyway if you're here for the whole golden shower bit. We picked up a bunch of records from the Sue Ryder shop. Including this, weird record.

It's either T.G.S. the golden shower or that is both the name and the record label. It turns out its the sort of indie rock that sounds a little bit like the Farm or The Happy Mondays. Basically that whole era of guitar dance crossover from the early 90's that is long gone now. 

Spent a good deal of time trying to find out anything about it, all the searches I put in, came back as german porn (i.e. piss fetish stuff, not really my scene to be honest.) Same with Vibe Tribe management, and the ambiguous names created as well as Drive Fever / Freaks demo the names of the tracks.  Putting QPR won't help either as I'll just get results back for Queens Park Rangers football club.

Best I can do is put a draft up in discogs, and a video up on my alt channel on Youtube to see if anyone has any ideas.

Ayia Napa resort and wildlife

So Ayia Napa then. A UK Garage hot spot back in the late 90's and such its branded as one of those party towns, and place that we visited for a day some ten years later.  Our hotel was the Tasia Maris Sands a small and friendly place overshadowed by massive building works going on in the vicinity. 

The staff were very nice bar one miserable cow on reception, but we'll let that slide.  There was a buffet style diner, with a limited but good stock of stuff to eat.  I miss having sausage rolls for breakfast as they were replaced with olive rolls which weren't that nice. Also really liked the Apple Baklava they served as well as spinach pie and dolmades (stuffed vine leaves, which always taste of lemon). As you can guess I go fully native when I'm abroad.

Cool Dude

Quite a nice area actually, despite it being Ayia Napa, there is no UKG now, replaced by Elevator Dance Music its bland equivalent.  If you like the main drag, and innumerable cunts on quad bikes and motorised scooters then be my guest Ayia is great. Me I'll be down on the wasteland with the plants.  As you can tell I'm no fan of Fuck off, Fuck off, Ayia Napa.

The harbour area is better and there are some good places but mostly its bars and clubs and the attendant pricks they bring. Also a metric fuckton of russians.  

Highlights of this being some little dude with a smaller version of the troll guy shirt I was wearing. His mum was hot and also a Slav.

I also regret not snapping the strip club with a Costa coffee next door. I guess there is a market for combined lapdance / coffee bar. You could call it Starfucks.

Waiting 3 hours for your main to arrive.

Also, look out around 8 pm in the evening in certain spots for wild cats. They hang around to get fed and are adorable. My favourite must be a man ginger clone who is often on his own but if you offer food then a load will rush out of the bushes to meet you.  Cyprus has capitalised on this and you can buy cards, and other tat with strays on.  

Those not prepared to wait can go down the beach and look under the trees for a glimpse of several shoe persons asleep and awake. Includes a small Morgana type black and white with one eye. 

Plants. and other stuff.

Black Chamaleon Cardiopatium Corymbosum

The good people of Nissi Beach are spreading awareness of local and endemic plants by planting out, or more likely, conserving what dune and wasteland habitat is left. As a result there are boards up and tags put in to describe what flora can be seen. So if you've a yen to see the Sea Daffodil or Beach Morning Glory its well worth taking a walk along the wasteland down to Ayia Napa and cutting back when you get to the harbour.

Also take a look around to see the bird life, here a few of the places have Swallow nests, including the bike shop and next door to Pow the Shop. Mostly its sparrows here, so get used to them hopping around, dust bathing and begging for crumbs. Be warned they get quite close.  

Also have a look out for lizards especially the Agama lizard, which is one of the larger European lizards, or the smaller snake eyed lizard.

Snorkelling has it own rewards and you can be sure to spot some Ornate Wrasse as well as mullet and Gilthead. As well as attendant puffer fish, refugees from the Red Sea (and beyond.) Invertebrates include, round the rocks some shrimp, and a mass of snails including the feared Cone Shell as well as less feared mussels and ceriths. We were lucky to see a weed covered crab and on one occasion out on the rocks, an orange nudibranch. (NB is Chromodoris now invalid as a name, everywhere I've seen this, has it as Goniobranchus.)

On land we saw a rose chafer and in our final week quite a few Painted Lady butterfly. All in all quite a nice trip out.

Tube

Woke up midweek with the oddest dream, that they actually implemented tube travel in South London.  Then spent the next 30 or so minutes awake going through what it would mean and what stations would be represented. I came to the conclusion thatan off shoot from North Greenwich on the Jubilee line that went on to serve Bluewater shopping mall, via Plumstead and Bexleyheath, would be the best bet.

For those that don't know, the tube only really serves London, north of the river Thames. There are great links to the east and west along with inroads into Middlesex and Essex. But there is only token support for South London with the Northern Line terminating at Morden going someway to redress the balance.

I know we have the DLR now but consider this. When I was small our nearest tube was Elephant And Castle, a long bus trip away, and no New Cross station, does not count. 

While doing research for this, I found one of my holy grail's, an actual inverted map that shows the extent of the lines if they were represented from a south London point of view.

There are links to Leatherhead and Chessington, World of Adventures in the south, and Tonbridge Wells and East Grinstead in the extreme south east.  Dartford seems to have sprouted an airport, as it correlates to where Heathrow is in its inverse form.  Croydon is mainly part of the Jubilee line now so its goodbye trams and hello tube.

Most of south London proper, seems to be the same with only Camberwell gaining a tube stop and a few stops for Peckham and Walworth.

The not DLR now terminates at Kingston in the west rather than at Woolwich Arsenal, and what ever the white line serves Kew and its Gardens, much in the same way the district line does now.

As a final note, at secondary school in design and communication, one of the projects was coming up with a tube line that served south east London...  The more that changes, eh.

Chums

Been working through the original Tower Treasure and am now reading Missing Chums for fun before transcription.  Yeah, I know I can just scan this using OCR, but the print job is quite ropy in places so you'll still need to proof read before you submit.

Incidentally would love this as its the kind of deep investigation that my robot mind craves, bur it's expensive and also murican.

Also have reached a part in Chums where Aunt Gertrude appears, lets just say that she is a much more unhinged in the original books.  She would definitely call the manager, that is a given.

Misc bits

A round up of sorts. with some bits and pieces I've come across in the past few days and weeks.
Mostly its to do with the phone I found, and such. But there are some bits from the transcription which may appeal to people.

Tower Treasure progress.

Currently 10 chapters in on transcription and have finished the revised edition these past few days.  I can say that there are parts of the book that are better than the original and parts that are worse.

Worse bits.  Include, Oscar Smuff being casually racist toward a poor Italian american grocer, Slim Robinson's dad having a secret gardening hobby, and a killer hobo added in the finale.

Better bits.  Include a reasonable explanation to Henry's debt (ish, its still pretty dumb mind), and the boys prank to stop Smuff is changed to a wild bonfire instead of a bomb threat from the black hand.

Oddly enough though the main story stays the same, including the reward money and the slang terms Smuff comes out with. That includes one thousand Iron Men which is a bugger to search for now the Marvel Universe is in full swing. This does not apply to one Tony Stark but instead to the silver dollar coin, rather than the notes instead.

In both the original and the revised edition he says this, which makes even less sense seeing as the coins have never been popular enough, with people apparently using the notes instead.

MI5 Stuff.

Been using this instead of my regular phone now I have googles lock busted off it.  We got a cheap pay as you go chip from evil everywhere, and am using that to do stuff now.  Will have to get a proper case for it as the one I have is open,  Both my old phones have a wallet style case which is useful.

Any way some stuff I found out,  there are some lights at the bottom either side of the home button which are used to navigate back and close programs.  Its not super intuitive but hope it helps.  Loving the camera mind, so have some photos as a treat.

Tufty

Ducks

Thrush zoom test

MI5

If you're hoping for the Great Airport Mystery to be up, then I'm still going through it.  Proof reading is sort of done, I'm reading through to catch any formatting hazards and typos that may have skipped through the spell check. Next week I swear it'll be done and you'll have a revised PDF to download.

Anyway today's topic, we've been lucky and found a phone and its one obscure motherfucker.  A Xiaomi Mi5 and not MI5, its Chinese, not part of the secret service.

Thought it was one of those demonstration models to begin with and not a real phone but when I switched it on and had a butchers its definitely the real deal.

A decent camera, and the UI on this isn't too awful, its a step down from the Moto G I have as a regular phone and about on a par with an iPhone which I use for work (also found), which it resembles in more ways than one.

I'm not kidding, its as if China decided to make an Android version of the iPhone with a little less of Apples notorious control freakery.  Below is a list of things its cribbed from the fruit company.

Sim slot that opens with a pin: check.

An unexpandable internal storage: check. (64GB so god knows how much Google takes up).

A stupid proprietary software that you have to use to add anything to it. Check and its a lot less cunty than iTunes which should be cast into the Fires of hell.

Edit. A stupid proprietary connector to connect everything with.  Apple Lightning, USB type C.

A User Interface that is closer to Apple than Android. . . erm. . .  pass.

There are some upsides to this though, The phone itself has two sim slots which is crazy, and it feels real nice which is a bonus. The only other thing is that I manage to knack it within a day.

I thought you could just hard reset it and set up with a new user, the trouble with that is that it still requires the old google account, and all its bastard data, to do anything with.  I'm banking on flashing the firmware will fix that otherwise I'm stuck in a boot loop of my own making. And I still don't know if the IMEI number is blocked.

FYI it takes a nano sim or two nano sims if you have different networks.

I don't know if that is part of the android experience or not, I didn't do this to my found Apple as the original guy didn't do much with it and could erase him from existence with ease without going through a hard reset.  Could have left it as it was, but would have had to rely on someone else's google account to download stuff and have no email or phone number of my own.

I guess its just the Gmail account that is the stumbling block here so maybe lineage OS or whatever they are calling Cyanogen Mod  these days, {Edit its Lineage OS}  Otherwise its down to the Indians in the phone shop to check it out.

Edit.  It was the Gmail account, had to look up for FRP bypass and managed to get a guide that worked, phone is unlocked but still has no sim to check if its blocked.

Wow, you are big pervert.

We got one of those emails, you know the type, someone playing at hacker claiming to have commandeered your webcam when you visit teh pron site and they want cash or they will have release pics / clips to all your address list contacts / friends / family / your dog.

I knew that it was bollocks straight away, not only because the Mail ran an article about the scam but because we have our cam taped up with black tape since we got it, that and it ended up in our spam folder with a big warning saying  this is a scam dude.  You are not seeing anything unless I stand in front of it and even then why would I take the tape of the cam.

It was sort of scary for a minute as it starts with a partial of an old password of mine (from Myspace and KVR and barely used for anything else), but then scrolling down and reading through it and that it required money to be paid in mickey mouse cash (bitcoin) or it will go to close relatives and people on my address book. So in all its going to fuck all people then.

Sadly though the worlds greatest "hacker" didn't have any badly mangled euphemisms for masturbation, just the line wow you are big pervert along with some broken English.  Which still made me laugh even though its true.

I can see how someone would get suckered in, it did seem genuinely scary until I realised how old the login info it was and that gmail recognised the scam straight away.  We ran a few scans to see if there was malware and virus on my system but it turned up fuck all.  In short if someone says that they have that they're bluffing especially if  your cam is gaffer taped over.

MSG Event Banstead

Don't know if I've ever blogged about this before but this my second trip to Banstead way out in Surrey at the edges of that London.  We have good reason to go there as there was an MSG event on in the hall there.  Its the Mesemb Study Group for those wondering what I'm on about.  A society dedicated to all things Mesembryanthemum, this includes popular genera such as Lithops and Conophytum and less popular genera such as Psammophora or the myriad weedy annuals such as Cleretum.

Being a mostly South African group of plants and such, they are currently in flower due to it being Spring there, so an autumn show is perfect to show them off.  A mix of 2 buses, the DLR and a Tube connection got us there and after last times failure to find the place we had a pretty good idea where it was.  Its off the main road as you head into town, for those wondering.

Its a nice hall and I paid my admission to go in. There was a bank of tables set out with show plants and at the edges various people I knew selling plants and such.  I got me a Titanopsis and a Mossia both plants I've never actually grown before along with a Conophytum Piluliforme which I've sort of grown (a few conos definitely not that species).

There are some decent show plants there including a giant of a Mestoklema in flower and an Astridia that was something special.  Also really old Mitrophyllum that was older than me.  I didn't stay for the auction which had a map of Namibia that was owned by noted field researcher Desmond Cole.

Going back was a nightmare, I decided to leave early to look around the charity shops and such, decided to take the Croydon bus back not realising that it goes around the houses.  Comes in the top end near the trams and there is a cracking piece of wall art of Astro Boy as you come in that's worth a look.  Took the tram and then some more buses before getting in about 6 ish, a good 3 hours travelling just to get home.

Edit Pics liberated from drop pox.

Astridia Hallii.

Astridia Halli a good 12'' / 30 cm in length.

Mestoklema Tuberosum Flower Details

One of the few tuberous rooted mesembs, this is a huge 2ft / 60cm tall and is around 50 years old.

Ebracteola Montis Moltkeri

A close up of this guy, grown by Eddy Harris.

Tanquana Hilmarii

A habitat type shot, that works so well.

Lithops

Finally some more familiar faces to end with.  Love this Lithops Karasmontana ssp Bella.

Conophytum Group

Comophytum group from Derek Tribble. There is a sneaky Othonna in there too if you can spot it.

Here comes a very special guy.

What I spectacularly failed to tell you about last weeks post is that I got on the bus home to find a friend of my was the driver. 

We keep in touch via facebook and have written letters before but we hadn't met face to face for a good 18 months and that was briefly.  So its a good thing he contacted me on facebook to say that it was his wife's birthday and that there would be a party at his place and would I like to come.

I gave it a few minutes to mull over I didn't know the place where he was living, and after googling it came back as a few streets away (I had an old address of his in Bexleyheath) so when a man says jack... you jack. 

It was pretty cool too, he has a cool cat that consistently tried to snag chicken from the table and a lot of kids there, mainly his.  His eldest had been to Tossa De Mar the same as me and I wished I could have asked him where he stayed (he went with the scouts) but mainly I remember it for him playing acoustic guitar and singing some odd blues songs with another guy. 

We got talking about the good old days and of people, of Beavis and Butthead, (we were fans and used to do the voices all the time back then).  All in all a good time, as they say online 11/10 would definitely go again.

Local Museum and River news.

This is kinda tangentially related to my holidays as I looked this up whilst abroad, but I've often wondered if the small river at the top of Wickham Lane had a name.

Apparently called the river Wogebourne or the Plumstead river, its source is in Shooters Hill and ends up somewhere in Thamesmead.  A few things intrigued me about this as a kid that I couldn't quite shake,

Firstly, there is something like a sewer line running under Gatling road about halfway down and always assumed it was exactly this. (more on this see point 3) 

Secondly an old neighbour long since passed once told me that there was a river running at the back of Wickham Lane, He basically lived and died in the house a few doors down and had a lot of local knowledge.  Also one of the people to get me interested in cacti.

Thirdly and this backs up point one, we were hanging around waiting for the van to pick us up in Blithdale Road garage area and had Thames water show up to check on what we thought was a sewer line. They told us, as we were bored and asked what they were doing, that it was actually an underground river and showed us it flowing quite heavily down toward the railway lines.

Putting this together we now can guess that it carries on, across Bracondale / Brinkburn and cut across Mottisfont road on the other side of the railway down toward Thamesmead.  I hope this is of use to someone.



Sad museum news.

It looks like our borough museum will be closing soon, its not a patch on what it was when it was upstairs in Plumstead library.  I guess the closing of the firepower exhibit hit it hard.

Catering to war and arsenal stuff (think munitions not the football club though they were local back then) its got a few cannon and uniforms and an array of shells (no really, still think munitions) and some borough archives.  Did a visit Saturday and they were some  really nice people there, its got a few things about making cannon and such but isn't what I came for.

What I came for was something like the old Plumstead museum the one I always had a look round when going to the library.  The one with bits of roman pot, and a stuffed fox and a whole display case of fossils from Abbeywood.  They had a humming bird whose feathers would turn from dull brown to a brilliant green when the light caught it.  Also there was a display case dedicated to bobs (an odd snooker variant) and other things from the thirties.  Where all this is now I don't know but I hope its not lost.

Edit 2021. I've added a picture of the river, when out for a walk today. Its only above ground point is on Woodbrook Road / Wickham Lane, before it cuts into the woods and carries on as an underground river.

My WIsh.

Been thinking a lot about what happened a year ago when some cunt cold called me saying he was police then proceeded to scam me out of thousands.  I will NOT forgive him though and rather than wish him and his accomplices would be tortured to death slowly, have come up with a compromise.

I would like to have 3 wishes, say for convenience that I've come across a magic lamp with a genie in through some nefarious means.  Thrown out at work would be my best bet, and through cleaning we have a genie appear and say I now have 3 wishes.

My first wish is to know exactly how many people took part in defrauding me, the fake cop,  the courier, the woman on the phone, and any other people that are part of the gang, and their exact location now.

My second wish is for the spells teleport and polymorph any object from the D+D players handbook to be cast with no saves and all modifiers applied in full. Any transformation lasts 8000 divided by 12 months ( a total of 666.666 years recurring)  unless I wish them to assume another form (still no save, form my discretion). The idea is to morph the person into a ring binder comprising there entire life, (preface is a litany of their crimes against me, the rest being the sum of their life experience in searchable form, and teleport them to my house to be read at leisure.


I 'd like to read through any knowledge contained in those binders, copy, scan and shuffle each life story into one pile discarding at random from each book, life skills and memories.  Severity of data loss is equal to your involvement, so fake cop you're going to have your life shuffled and most of it either shredded and burnt and  recombined with that blank pages, I'd say total corruption would be about 90%.  I'd like all life skills to be in an easy to read pictorial format, same goes for all your life moments.  Unlike you I don't want bank details, only what your life held.

Finally my third wish.  When I've finished reading through your life, and judged you on your actions, I want to change your form again, I'd like a Real Doll to be made from the fake bank bitch (final form negotiable), a pile of cash equal to be made out of the courier guy and for fake cop to be morphed back into a human with the instruction to go home by the most direct route imaginable and live out what I've left of your life.  If there are anymore players then I want them to remain as binders to contain all that I've removed from everyone,  their own lives included.
Happy Easter.
 

Hostage in Hammersmith

For the past few days I've had the most oddest thing happen to me, I've had records being held hostage so to speak from me.  The worst thing about this is how banal this actually is and has some parallels with Byuu and his recent drama with some PAL Snes games lost via USPS. 

I'll start with my story, a few days off from work and that and a trip out to Hammersmith on the other side of town.  A few successful things found including some Orbital CDS (Satan and Peel Session mainly) and quite a bit of over priced vinyl that included some that weren't priced up but were sufficiently new to me to pique my interest.  These included the Justin Robertson Mixes of Boss Drum by The Shamen and a Josh Wink remix of N-Joi Bad Things two cracking mid 90's dance cuts that I'll conservatively price at £3 for arguments sake.

Sadly though, these weren't priced and they couldn't sell them to me but the woman in charge said she would put them aside for me with my name on them and if I came back tomorrow she said they would be priced and ready to go.  So I decided to come back on the Friday and see if anything had changed but, nothing of course has.  I was told by a different woman that the person who prices vinyl wasn't in. 

So I'll leave it a week and come back and see if my situation has changed, but in the meantime my records remain hostage until someone comes back and prices them out.

In  the meantime have a look at a racially insensitive comedians record from Rhodesia that was also on sale there.

Futi Chilapalapa by Wrex Tarr.

Uptown Junk.

There's been a big update to what I wrote 2 weeks back regarding professional owl model Jenni Murray.  She's the "bird" who thinks its feasible to show porn in class to 15 year old's as part of a wider sex ed discussion.  I'm largely for this, if only to say this is the shit we don't do in life in general.  Although oral and anal does sound awesome to be honest.  Anyway, here is an article on the worlds worst website the Graun explaining it, the comments for once aren't totally vile either.

Also in other news we have a twitter account now, as a way of aggregating all the pages I used to follow separately and now like the loan company says, consolidate them in one feed.  Its @bear_or_bust if you want to follow or just read along and that.


London Junk Trip.

Haven't been up town in a while, so decided to have a look around and do some touristy things.  In the end I just went round the shops instead.  Not losing my shirt at the arcade place on Wardour Street, though I'm still £1.70 down from the Deal or No Deal slots.  Incidentally there's always a deal or no deal slot, go into any pub or club or arcade and there will be a deal or no deal there, complete with Noel Edmonds bastard face peering out.  Mostly though its looking at the record shops such as Phonica and Sounds of the Underground which are awesome.  I got a few of the more recent Fabric live cds including Ryan Elliot and Scuba. 

Didn't really do an awful lot of junk shopping but did check out the Salvation's Barmy charity shop off of Regent's street. Got a few nice things there including  for once some noise,  Satanstornade by Russell Haswell and Masami Akita better known as Veteran Japanoise artist Merzbow.  Sounds a lot like drilling into a derelict space hulk with a low background hum to add texture, not as unlistenable as I feared.  Also got Liberation by Jackie O Motherfucker a nice free improv multi instrumentalist band that sounds pretty 60's in tone, and a few unknowns that turned out to be a punk comp (terrible can't stand much guitar) and a Lemon Jelly single with samples from the same guy from AFX 14 Make a Baby and  an old Cassetteboy track too. 

Xmas is coming.

Well the decorations are up at work and fucksgiving* is over for another year which means it must be Christmas soon.  Had my first party of the season held in the carvery way out in the sticks (opposite Polhill in Badgers Mount).  Quite busy there to be honest and at times felt like I should jack it all in and go home, really don't like crowds and social situations much but stuck it out and didn't do too badly in the end.   Top tip get a refillable Pepsi so you can keep coming back and it won't cost you anything to top up, especially good for designated drivers, non drinkers and keeping children hyperactive all night.

Pretty good food and the like we had turkey complete with Yorkshire puddings which aren't traditional but damned tasty, also they had toffee ice cream complete with a big round wafer (a google search tells me its a stroopwafel) which was lovely.  Although I don't much care for toffees as sweets, anything toffee / caramel flavoured gets my seal of approval this includes Dulce de Leche as well.

Next event will be our annual works  trying to drink yourself into a stupor because its xmas and that, I'll think I'll feign Ebola to get out of this as I never really enjoy it as much as other folks do.

*edit forgot to say that fucksgiving is my name for thanksgiving do to the amount of fucks I give about thanksgiving.