Two stores One old one new.

 For some reason I've been wanting to go up town for ages, but seeing all the Paleswine shills marching and such, have been put off. But seeing on the news that HMV has reopened, made me bite the bullet and actually go. 

They got some woman who has never set foot in a record store, to record it but at least she says records and not vinyls which to me is a capital offence. 

We were off to a good start as we saw a small cockermutt on the tube going down and while looking for either a Tom Carruthers new album or that Andre 3000 flute jazz thing (New Blue Sun) on CD, struck out, did well enough at Reckless Records to pick up several things from some pretty diligent bargain bin hunting. (Oh saw some pretty rare acid stuff for big bucks too, I need a Friend Farley and Love For Sale PDC which was new for me).

Won £5 and spotted this error message in the wild from the slots. 

More importantly this looks like this sort of machine is running under some sort of Windows configuration looks like 7 from the error message. Sorry for it being janky as they really don't like you taking photos in the slot halls here.

So the upshot of this is was HMV OK. Well it was mid, dance thing is small and its not the main store up on Oxford street where I saw Kawasu launch FF12 here and what looked like Axl Rose in a large moogle suit. Nor the Kinect thing where the bloke yelled at  the crowd to keep back every few seconds or so.  Its  the other one by Bond street tube. 

Finally we saw an antiwoke march which you won't hear about on the news. Seriously though, you won't there was only about 30 or so of them and they were well behaved.  Kind of blotted their copy books with some bonkers Piers Corbyn anti climate change bullshit, proving either brother is a fucktard.

Finally here is a stray memory does anyone remember a shop up town in the 80s off oxford street that had a load of mechanical legs in the window going it. This sort of thing but unclothed. Have this strong memory of it being in the shop window. 

 

 

Xmas adverts 2o23

 Its come to that time of year when the Xmas ads are upon us. Halloween is over and black Friday is now a thing seeing as we don't do fucksgiving here yet. So it all boils down to what the John Lewis ad is this year (Little Shop of Horrors rip off with Andrea Bocelli apparently.)

I'll give you a take on the ones I've seen so far. 

Good.

Lidls Raccoon saves Christmas. Pretty much what it says. A bin panda rescues a a stuffed toy and brings it home for  child. Contains doggo and a link to a stuffed toy for kids charity. 

Aldi. A homage to Charlie and his Chocolate factory. It seems the budget supermarkets are knocking it out of the park this year. This one is run by a Conker, and yes all the other veg do get their comeuppance like in the original.

Indifferent

Morrisons. A load of singing oven gloves and their more reasons to stroke a manovus* jingle. It should be cool but for some reason falls flat. 

Marks and Sparks Food. The main one I haven't seen, but this is more gloves, talking mittens and Dawn French as the fairy again. 

Edit. Now I have and it's just a bunch of people being selfish bastards.

Bad

Sainsburys. What does Santa have for dinner, which is bastard awful, I've seen this more times than I can think of. I think its two disprin and a kip for the next 364 days.

Revenge of the Desert Phantom Review

This is an odd one. The Hardys have a missing persons task, to track down a dead warlord's daughter and return her home. It means we get a trip to central Africa and the made up country of Zebwa bordering Kenya which they fly into. Seeing as the made up country is part desert wilderness and part Rainforest, I'm guessing its half Uganda and half South Sudan. As is typical in Africa the country suffered from civil war and  corruption. 

Also for some reason they've made a tsundere ginger Iola Morton. I repeat Dark haired sister of Chet, ginger. The back story here is that she is entering a beauty pageant to win a scholarship. Joe can't help as much as the case takes him to France. He does get a simp called Jim Gunther who she picks to help.

The winner is the girl they are tasked to find. The trip back lets them pilot some Metal Slug style mega tank and gas light us about the Hardys never firing a gun, forgetting the original House on The Cliff and Fox hunting bit in the Original Cabin island. Gunner Chet Morton is pretty fun as well.

All in all its not a bad story if you can overlook ginger Iola Morton, It feels like a prototype version of a casefiles story from 3 years later. Although Iola is killed by a car bomb in that time line. 

Anyway Original here UK version here. You aren't getting much different just Landrover spelt like that and a few French words added that may be in the original. 

 

New Beatles.

 Here is a weird thing, they've got a new Beatles track out (Now and Then) despite half of them being dead. It's part of the Free as a Bird thing which I have clear memory of being promoted on the Big Breakfast. With Chris Evans and I think news caster Phil Gayle or predecessor Peter Smith (just checked and its 95 so definitely Smith).

It apparently was part of this tape Lennon recorded before he died and was previously too degraded to be used. FFWD 25 years or so and thanks to AI there is a new Beatles track.

The  thing is, from a dance perspective, the Beatles did nothing for us. Radiophonic workshop did the whole experimentalism thing better and Kraftwerk would go on to be massively influential. There's only a few Macca tracks I like (Temporary Secretary and Check my Machine), 

Twisted Claws

Love this version, makes it look like a casefiles book

This is the 11th Hardy boys mystery. And one that is quite a bit strange. First of all its a smuggling ring based on a mysterious Caribbean island. The second it's all about pirates.

UK edition.

Quite what has changed here is anyone's guess. I have the original text file and a home scanned copy of the UK edition remake complete with cats drawn in the flyleaf. 

It has some similarities in common with the original, Pirate island / Smuggling ships called the Parrots, logs used for smuggling and a trip to Canada. But this is where it ends as this is a different story. Oh and an old book that details the Twisted Claw pirate lineage. 

Fenton Hardy tells the boys that he's onto an international smuggling ring targeting the De Graw collection in various museums. It seems that The Black Parrot, an old schooner is being used to transport it. The boys dress up as old salts and  try to blag their way onboard but none of the crew are friendly and end up in Canada. After many daring thefts they try to foil, they end up on the sister ship. Yellow Parrot winging their way to the Caribbean, paying a visit to the king of an unknown island that is the smuggler boss. 

Original

Frank loses his wallet complete with code book in. Pierre of the Black Parrot ship targets them to give them some papers from Fenton Hardy. When they fail to do so, he breaks in and scares Aunt Gertrude and their Bejayzus Oirish maid, Mary. When their mum comes back with a strange message they work out that their dad is kidnapped in Canada. Their trip there garners two of the Parrot gang captured and a daring rescue of their Dad from a forest fire. Later they get board on the Yellow Parrot schooner and manage to win over most of the crew. 

They reach Barracuda island home of the Twisted Claw smuggling empire. They sneak in and watch the strange meeting of the Parrot gangs .Back on board they get  the crew to mutiny when Pierre catches them and they send a last gasp SOS which rounds up the gang. 

Trivia.

Apparently the mystery island is 5 hours GMT behind where they live in Bayport..

You can read the original and UK version here and here.

AI Art

Elsa the undefeated

 We've been messing around with Bing A.I. putting in all sorts of stuff and seeing if the bastards in control will let us render it flesh. Its hit and miss our Pixar version of  the Chuckle Brothers was shot down and we had a few attempts to render Black Metal Nativity before hitting paydirt. But the only thing I've gotten a warning for is Drew Pickles being his swell self. It seems  they're onto him and his 308 mile long p-p-penis. 

 For those without a Microsoft account (had to reinstall windows without a serial, so yeah I have one.) there is also Craiyon which will produce some cosmic horrors and Stable Diffusion. 

Enough blather, you want to see cosmic horror. 

Edit It's given permission. Enjoy.

Tamest Aphex Twin

Vampire Savile

Bedtime Stories update or such.

 Just got done reading the Arctic Patrol mystery aka the Hardys in Iceland. And we have yet another cat this one is called Leo.  I'll add a photo of Leo when the printer isn't broken AF. But I'm drawing a blank on this as well. Guess it must tie in with the Uncle Weedle stories somehow, but I've long forgotten.