Friday, June 24, 2016

this used to be my playground

hello there


it has, all things considered, being something of a busy week, look you see. all sorts happening, as it were, at a personal, local, provincial, national and i guess international level. there's absolute stacks of stuff to speak on, muse about, contemplate and discuss. but let's ignore all of that and once again wallow in the sentimental hygiene of nostalgia that is crying for an obsolete technology and thing from 30 years ago.

of the many interesting things what i did this week few resonated with me quite as much as being allowed to wander the grounds of Marton Shops. yes, true, this is a place that i could freely go to any time i so wished, but there was something somewhat poignant about me being delivered, by chance and slight design, during a central point of the week.

yes, this did indeed mean that i could lament the falling of the petrol station, and the absolutely awesome video rental store that was an intrinsic part of the shop on the petrol station.



yes, behind me is where that video store on a petrol station once stood. i don't know for certain, but i would be sure that the petrol station got torn down when someone clocked that having a whole load of partially flammable petrol and diesel right next to a school was not such a good idea. that or the small mall shopping thing which stands there proved more profitable for the landed gentry who own the grounds.

i see the sense of generation entitlement has, dear reader, taken hold. it is, according to that twitter or twerker thing, "not fair" that the vote was counted one way, as "old people" voted the most for out, and so their will has been imposed on the young. yeah, sure, it totes makes sense to reverse that, and have the losing vote - to remain - stand instead, because young people wanted that. that makes sense, and i say that in a flippant way, but scarily to these f*****g millennials with their sense of entitlement that skewered fairness does make sense.

the quite scary aspect is that, in order to prove that "old" people somehow slanted the vote in an "unfair" way, i find myself for some reason counted as "young", for they fiddled the figures so that anyone under 50 was "young". yes, me, going on about an old petrol station site, is for the purposes of millennials getting the instant gratification of what they want always,  now considered to be in the youth of today. cheers.

what were the greatest moments of the video shop at the petrol station? loads, and ones that i have probably mentioned before, time and time again. and here they are again. the shop took the brave and bold decision to stock The Empire Strikes Back, one of the more popular Space Trek movies, on Beta only. they also wouldn't let us rent a film called Pleasuredome even though we were Frankie fans. it turned out, alas, that it wasn't that Pleasuredome off of Frankie, but rather the sort of tape a lonely gent would rent in pre-internet days. and, well, it was via that video store i disovered gems like Mean Machine (proper Burt one), They Call Me Bruce, ETN The Extra Terrestrial Nasty, Stripes, He Who Finds A Friend Finds A Treasure, Blade Runner, Firefox and other such things.



yes, that's right - instead of petrol (all leaded, all the time), diesel and smart videos, now all you can get at that place are Greggs pies, bookies pencils stolen off the bookie and some dental work. the shop you can see at the fore, to the right, is now some sort of beautician. it was a paper shop, and i bought the paperbacks of First Blood and Lethal Weapon from there. yes i still have both.

all news outlets should be banned and prohibited from showing those twitter or tweker posted tweet comments as if they were actually valid news items. they are not, they are mouthy, off the cuff and instantly forgotten things. using them as a gauge of public opinion is dangerous and wildly incorrect.

what was the last ever video i rented off of the petrol station? good question. after i stopped living within walking distance of it, and didn't go round to either Mike or Jason's to watch Beta only releases (we had VHS, they didn't), i used other video shops. i have a suspicion my last rental was Aliens, Body Double, Nightmare On Elm Street 2 or even maybe a Chuck Norris film, like Invasion USA.

anyway, you all carry on with your river stream loaded down film things, briefly pushing a view that everything should be equal, fair and all can be free to say and do what they want, so long as the result is exactly what you want it to be because you're entitled and as a consequence right. i'll just sit here, making a music tape, remembering how smart video tapes were and carry on being statistically young so long as that suits some sort of argument.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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