gone are the days

hi there


during the course of the day today i picked up, look you see, some new literature for the 75% of my family that you all, by some distance, like and prefer more to the 25% that i presently occupy. and you are not to be judged, blamed or considered inaccurate for doing so.

what exactly did i pick up? well, for my (considerably) better half, one of them magazines which fill the heads of the ladies with all sorts of nonsense. for William it was something what had a toy sellotaped to it, i believe lego in this instance. for James it was the traditional values of the Beano, a whopper and apparently record breaking edition proclaiming itself to be number 3800.

it was with great interest that i saw the Beano promised some most smart competitions within its pages. it was, however, with some disappointment i saw how one entered them.

wow. enjoy this post as much as you can, for Blogger has for some reason decided to upload the images rotated the way around that i wished them to be.

i was expecting the competitions to be ones which saw you need to cut out something and post it to them, or even draw something and post it to them. gone, alas, are the days of that. to enter you had to either phone a premium number and give your details, or otherwise send a text / sms thing to them with your answer and the details. i am disappointed.

weirdly, though, this works out cheaper to enter. the text / sms thing costs 25p + the cost of a text charged by your network. should that per text charge be less than 40p (and in most cases it is), that i think works out at a varying amount less than a 1st Class stamp does. but that's not the point.

besides the various controversies around all this text / sms business (i have seen proof that some have run them long after the actual contest was closed), doing it this way doesn't really feel like you've entered a competition. it's got a very stale, cold and uninvolved feel to it, in truth.

oh i entered anyway, since i had some coins of money on that smart iPhone thing that Spiros gave me. i think they, for i entered two contests, are the first two text messages i have sent off it. mostly i use it for taking smart Commodore 64 and Predator mode pictures and sending them on.

what two contests did i enter? there was a smart one to win some fancy Star Wars lego sets, and then there was a fancy one to win some sort of smart Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles battle area. so, fingers crossed.

what's going on in this screenshot of the iPhone, taken upon my blueberry phone? my thwarted efforts to access "adult content" on it. whereas in most of the grown up world people are welcome to access what they like on the privacy of their own devices, here in repressed and censored England not so much. from what i remember that David Cameron fellow went absolutely bonkers one day and decided to insist that all phone and internet networks put a block on all adult content, with the definition of adult being fairly wide. to access it you have to jump through all sorts of loops. think, if you will, that episode of Im Alan Partridge where, in the privacy of his luxury suite in a Travel Tavern, the protagonist had to call reception and ask for them to "please make pornography come on my television" in order that he may watch a no doubt informative documentary on Bangkok ladyboys.

on a more serious note to the above, gaining access (which i haven't) reflects the unhealthy obsession and interest the people of England are assumed to have with racking up debt. in order to prove that you are allowed to access adult content you have to wave a credit card at them. i quite like the assumption that everyone, once they hit 18, signs up for the "variable APR" wonderland that is the unregulated credit card industry here.

it's worth noting that, as recently as 2000, 80% of all internet traffic used to be adult content. that changed radically in part due to the rise of e-commerce, but mostly with the dawning of "social networks", like that Twerker thing and that Face Snap Book Chat one. people are too busy, like, totes supporting gay rights causes and sharing images of cats to look at filth any more, it seems. yeah, there probably is a good conspiracy theory to be had in that, but i cannot be bothered.

a snippet, if you will, of the magnificent band Free doing All Right Now. i caught this by chance on one of them "best of the 70s" shows; one which had for some reason edited out Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile off of the Top Of The Pops bits.

the interesting thing about that footage is, to me, that it exists. i had always been led to believe that they only live footage of Free, and Paul is clearly singing live in the above, was of them at the Isle of Wight festival. nice one, then, that there is more of them out there.

at look at the Beano contest page in Predator mode? with Predator mode rotated the right way around for a change? i do not see why not.

i don't really think that a Predator would be interested in the debate between postal entries and text messages for contests in comics. as far as i can work out, the only contests a Predator is interested in are ones in which they have to stalk a great warrior, battle with him/her/it, make slightly homoerotic grunting noises as it kills the opponent, skin it, hang it upside down, rip out its skull and then lay claim to the skull as a trophy, or if you like prize for winning. but maybe that's just me.

anyway, fingers crossed i (ahem, the boys) win one or both of the smart prizes!



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