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hey there


for some reason a couple of "random" posts i did a few years ago have had significant reads, or "more hits", of late, look you see. whereas i really just write this all to amuse myself (you will observe a lack of adverts or any other means of making money off it), i am not immune to or insulated from observing what people who are so kind as to come and look at all of this wish to see. so, then, a somewhat brief, off the cuff return to all things random. this will, but of course, look at things from the past, since i have not used my special powers to look at the future of late. perhaps i will soon.

i would imagine, or guess, that the increased number of reads comes off of people scouring for vintage, amusing or all of a sudden culturally relevant pictures and articles from the past. this is so they may spread them across various social media things, for likes and upvotes but also to bring cheer to all who see. nothing wrong with any of that, so far as i am aware, and let us be honest there are far worse things people could be doing with all this technology.

anyway, off we go. in terms of chronology and a semblance of order to how things appear here, you may find that it is all non-linear and indeed non non-linear at times.

twenty five years ago (assuming you are reading this in 2019) was a time when portable cd players, often alluded to as a "discman", were very much a thing, in the same sense that mp3 or other such digital devices were not. it was so, though, that the cassette based personal stereo, the walkman, was still king for mobile music. why? a CD was a very expensive item to wander around with, the batteries on a discman burned out very fast, and the laser was prone to "skipping" as you walked. the cassette ruled, for it was cheap, easy to make at home, and the batteries on a walkman lasted a fair while.

for just measurably south of forty years i have made use of a walkman, or other such cassette devices (strictly speaking only sony devices are to be called a walkman, for they own the trademark, copyright, etc). i would like to think i know that which i speak of, then, and let me assure you the one pictured above remains my all time favourite one. not entirely sure of the specifics, but i have been through 2 or possibly 3 of these, with the demise of each unit being overuse and my fault, as in not via a flaw in the mechanisms.

it is important to note that the above is off of 1985. should you opt to read this in a linear, or if you will non non-linear way, well, doing so (noting the year) will make for all the more of a rewarding experience. maybe.

this, 1985, was all pre-EU. the relations between European nations was all just the EC or EEC, i forget when which was which. it related purely to trade and other such economic agreements, with virtually all of the European nations still having their own currency, and to some extent all such countries appearing to be quite exotic (and expensive) holiday locations, rather than cheap and easy to access.

learning French is quite a useful thing, i suppose. however, i do wonder about the wording there. just how is it that one would "surprise themselves" learning French if they opted or otherwise elected to knowingly sign up for a course to do so?

by 1989 - a mere four years later - you can see in the above how this Linguaphone crew (or business) had substantially upped the game. see, i told you it would be rewarding if you were patient. or maybe it isn't, anyway. apparently they sensed a change, with people travelling further away and indeed people from far away increasingly coming to the UK. so, they increased the number of languages they offered you to learn, presumably by surprise.

did any of these courses actually work? i have no idea. presumably yes, and continue to do so, for very similar courses and learning packs are sold to this very day. in terms of learning another language, i have not seen any need to. for me the old fashioned way, simply repeating what i said, in English, slowly and loudly, and in the face of a non-English speaker, tends to work just fine.

quite a controversial section is coming up now, so you may wish to either skip over the next two or so images, or indeed just stop reading now. up to you, really.

ah, yes. Scandinavian video. this is all to do with "adult entertainment", of if you will erotica.

some people really need to get over themselves. it might be that they do not care for filth, or that sort of thing, but the truth is it has driven most of the technology we use and take for granted. how so? well, in reference to home video, much of the early success of home video in the 70s and early 80s was down to it allowing people to watch this sort of thing in the privacy of their own home. on a very much related note, a deciding factor for victory in the VHS vs Beta war was the fact that the adult entertainment industry opted to make VHS their chosen format. very similar has happened in this century, with Blu Ray beating off HD DVD due to erotica being available on Blu Ray and not the other.

how (unless you have had someone print this out) you are reading this was also driven by the same industry. for the first ten or so years it existed, it was calculated that some 80% of "internet traffic" was driven by erotica and very much that sort of thing. now we have an expanded idea of what we can use the internet for, when you include online shopping, social networks, "streaming" or downloading music and films, the overall amount of traffic for erotica and that sort of thing across the entire internet has now dropped to 78%.

was it the case that home video involved a similar percentage of use back in the 80s? it was not far off, at least not in the UK. for much of the first half of the 80s you couldn't really purchase mainstream films on video, only rent them. so, you had blanks that you recorded stuff off of the tele, and a few mail order companies agreed to sell you filth on video, to watch again and again.

in terms of recording things off of the tele, some chose to record films (usually pausing the breaks when recording off ITV or Channel 4), but mostly it was Bullseye that people used home video recording technology for. as he was required to go around the world, performing miracles and brokering peace in various international relationship matters, Bullseye was not shown all around the year. to counter this, people simply bought some Memorex or Scotch blank video cassettes, and made recordings of every episode of Bullseye that ITV cared to screen, so that they may watch it on a Sunday evening during those rather nihilistic weeks when it was not being broadcast as standard.

yes, the above is a promotional advert for Bullseye during its most hedonistic period, which of course was 1985. that is indeed an image of the controversial - and never repeated - instance of The Krankies being allowed to appear, a couple of decades or so before "wee" Jimmy Krankie left the band and pursued a career as the leader of the SNP. exactly which of her two careers has been the most successful is debatable, but certainly is not for me to have a mass debate on.

back to (possibly) less controversial stuff, then, with this advertisement from our friends in America, dating all the way back to 1976. no, the one that came after 1975 by conventional measurements of such, and not the other 1976. glad to clarify.

i think the world is already full of encyclopedia references, with people going "ha ha ha, look at how many books you had to buy for hundreds of (insert currency) and store, when now you can get even more information right on your phone for a fraction of the cost". they are right in what they say, but i am uncomfortable with this being used as a reason to joke or laugh. we are, i believe, quite prone to taking for granted the remarkable leap in technology, the advances we have made in spreading knowledge and the rapid ways in which we can now access that sort of thing in south of forty years, or if you will during my lifetime. to where next, i wonder.

something which paradoxically has gone backwards over the same period is, of course, attitudes towards smoking. we, as a society, have regressed somewhat, deciding to blame smoking and particular cigarettes for all ills in the world, whilst for some reason promoting the use of rather dangerous stuff such as heroin instead.

this was not always so, of course. in more enlightened times smoking was encouraged and seen as a symbol of sophistication and class. and what could have been more sophisticated or classy than smoking a pipe?

a similar offer to the advert above today - particularly the freepost address element - would be an extremely welcome thing. there is absolutely no way in the current climate, of course, that any tobacco producing company would be able to send off free samples at all, never mind on the basis that someone had simply requested such.

or perhaps they would. i mean, i do not know for certain. for some reason it has not occurred to me to pen a letter to them what make Marlboro and so forth, asking them to send on a sample so that i may know if i would like to use their products. let me go and fetch the stamps.

to barely remain in the 1980s, it was of course so that the 80s marked the last time we could witness one decade pass into another for reasons of itself. once 1999 rolled around it was, of course, all Prince references and wondering about the coming of a new century and new millennium rather than just a new decade.

providing entertainment to see out the decade was a formidable challenge, then. this was all the more true of the classical broadcasters, who had the very recent emergence of satellite tv in the uk to face down.

whereas i do not have information to hand as to how the state broadcaster, the BBC, handled the change from 1989 to 1990, for some reason itv opted to go for a Cilla Black exit and welcome. quite a bit, if not all, of the reason for this would have been due to the immense success of the shows what she did for itv during the decade, in particular Blind Date and Surprise Surprise.

did i happen to watch this televisual feast? not that i can recall, no. this was all somewhere around thirty years ago, so i can't remember with any sort of precision what i was doing. actually, i think i may well have been at a party at someone's house. or maybe i was at home, which is quite probable if one of the BBC channels had something with Hugh Laurie in it on, or indeed on with him in it. but no, now that i have had time to have a little think on the matter, i am almost certainly definite that i happened to be at a party this particular new year celebration.

what was the approach of Channel 4 to the matter of the best thing to broadcast on the instance of the last new year eve changing to a new decade that could be celebrated just for what it was in itself? an interesting approach, to say the least. you can kind of make out in this image that they went right ahead with an idea to broadcast something called Sticky New Year with Julian Clary.

let it not be said, then, that Channel 4 was not always belligerent, courting controversy and seeking open confrontation as and when it could. as the channel did not even exist at the start of the 80s i suppose there are some who would say that they had no business marking the end of it, but i find that unfair. many of the things what made the 80s smart stemmed from Channel 4, after all. in this i speak of The Tube, with their giving a break to Frankie Goes To Hollywood and of course broadcasting Fish out of Marillion naked at around 6pm. and really, really smart comedy shows such as Who Dares Wins and, really, just that, but i suppose also Whose Line Is It Anyway. and they broadcast Cheers, too.

to go back, or return, to the world of encyclopedia books, here's a gem of an advert which i observed as i trawled around the internet looking for things to place in this post. at the risk of inflaming tensions again, i felt it best to share it.

my biggest concern about posting this is, of course, rattling the cage of those who have some sort of vendetta against me, claiming that i am not a "proper" fan of either (proper, 70s) Battlestar Galactica or indeed InterGalactic by the Beastie Boys.

but that said, maybe i am giving such opponents ammunition, for no, i never did own any of the items above. well, not that i can recall, no. i certainly would have liked to own them, but as you can see it's a bit irrelevant or a moot point for the smart iron on transfers were apparently sold out before anyone could even buy them. oh.

one last picture, then, and possibly relevant to how you may be looking at this post. also, quite a nice sort of "bookend", really, for just as the first image was, so too this last image is a gift from that Argos place.

yes, some 25 years ago (assuming you are reading this in 2019), a relatively decent computer (with monitor, speakers and a quite boxy mouse) would have set you back one pound south of thirteen hundred pounds, or if you like one thousand three hundred. in this day and age, of course, you can get a far more powerful computer than this for (significantly) south of 10% of that fee. oh, if only the same reverse inflation (deflation?) applied to cigarettes, most happy would my life be.

right, well, anyway, that's more than enough random. for now, at the least. presumably something in this has been of interest to you somewhere, hence you reading this far. and thanks for doing so.




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