quite the throwback

greetings

something of a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one recently. this would be in relation to the announcement of a film of The Mandalorian And Grogu, which is a Star Wars thing, look you see. it is, i would imagine, if not based on then a continuance of the rather successful (and generally well reviewed) television (or "streaming") series of the more straightforward name The Mandalorian. also it's only coming out in about 2 (two) years from this being written, which is to say it's out in 2026. 

the "fun" or interesting part here is that, and i suspect this is rather deliberate marketing, the promo stuff for this film, as in the first trailer, was only made available to a select audience at some sort of Disney event, one of them ones i think they call a "celebration". so of course someone in the audience videoed it off of their phone and of course this "leaked" onto the internet. 

by all accounts the lawyers lucky enough to work for Disney, with a pay level which you assume means they feel no need to purchase lottery tickets, have been running around making sure all copies of this illicit video have been "taken down". yet copies of it keep cropping up. perhaps by the time this "goes live" for people to read the official release "online" for the trailer has happened, but anyway, some images and what have you. 

gosh darn it, oh dear, blogger has gone its thing (which it occasionally does) and loaded up the images in the reverse order i intended. well, i can't be bothered fixing that, so here above is what was, i think at least, one of the last shots off of the trailer, featuring the loveable baby space frog and some of them engineer or mechanic frogs. it would seem they are piloting some form of small craft. 

my understanding is that the film has come about from that "writer's strike" what they had in America. them sort of things are something they have often, it seems. apparently a decision was made to just cobble together whatever ideas they had for the 4th series (season, if American) of the show and rather make a film. some disappointment in that, as presumably this means we won't be getting a new batch of episodes of it any time soon. oh well, hopefully worth it when the film turns up. 

i kind of know who that is in the centre, but the name escapes me. pretty sure he was in that animated series Rebels, which i gather (mostly from my known sons) was excellent, but i just never found the time to watch properly. 

marketing, i would guess, is why just enough copies of this bootlegged trailer keep turning up online. that or it's down to the more obsessive type of Star Wars fan, groups of which have been known to get all carried away and a trifle fanatical from time to time. it seems like just enough copies of this keep getting "taken down" so as to make ripples in the news, yet also just enough copies remain for fans to seek and see. not sure why Disney didn't just release the trailer proper immediately after their event, but then they are a somewhat more successful business model than me, so i will take it as a given they know what they are doing. wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about? 

oh, right. there's going to be a scene in it where the cute adorable space frog channels his inner Bruce Willis, then. might be quite class, that. 

contrary to popular belief, or view (or opinion), it is very much possible to get things removed off of an internet without a trace. you just have to be quite determined and, presumably, have an awful lot of resources, mostly of a coins of money nature. being exceptionally careful not to name names, a late 90s or early 00s video featuring some rather well known (and then young) footballers 'entertaining' a lady would appear to be vanished from existence. so too a broadcast documentary about a disgraced after death but previously celebrated DJ, filmed (mostly in a caravan) or made by a pop star who happens to be quite popular. none of them had anywhere near the resources of a Disney, so if they had wanted this gone entire from the internet i am sure they would have made it so. no matter how big or dynamic the internet happens to be. 

what i like most about this is the sheer thrill of seeing something you are not supposed to have. in this era of immediate release and instant gratification, one can sometimes forget the pleasures drawn from a hint of what was to come. so to speak. i wouldn't really wish (or care) to go back to the days of watching pirated films that someone had (literally) videoed in a cinema, but still, there was a charm to seeing something before the intended date. kind of. 

very, if not extremely, likely that the "proper" version of this trailer has been plastered all over the internet by the time this "lands" or "drops". but if these momentary glances, assuming Disney have something better to do that instruct them be taken down, have been of interest, nice one. 

live long and prosper!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

box

hello there

it might well be so that this post is of some practical use. not particularly for all, look you see, but all the same, maybe some of you. also those few remaining fans of Greta might be impressed. how curious it is that now she's an adult her mountain of fans has become a molehill. it's like they were all just using her to spout off any old statement and go "how dare you attack a child" if anyone questioned her. funny old world, as the saying goes. 

but, back to the sort of point, and back to quite some time ago. thirty five (35) years, at time of writing, or for simplicity, 1989. oddly there is the risk of spoilers here. if for some reason you are holding off on who won what was called the first division of English football in 1989, well, you may well wish to stop reading now, as all shall be revealed in the next paragraph.

as it happens it was that year what saw Arsenal win the league title. this might not seem all that remarkable, for they were and are a successful club. however, in this instance they had to travel away to Liverpool - as in play at "Fortress Anfield" - and beat Liverpool 2-0, otherwise it would be that Liverpool themselves were crowned champions. wouldn't you know Arsenal jolly well did just that. not too long ago a documentary, imaginatively titled 89, was released to celebrate it. or commemorate it, or just to ensure some acknowledgement of it existed. 

 

no, i have not seen it, but as you can (kind of) see in the above image i recently happened to buy four copies of it. yes, 4 (four). actually, now that i think, wasn't this the football season which was used as a kind of backdrop for the Nick Hornby novel Fever Pitch? i know they set the film version of it in America and changed the sport, but pretty sure the book was set in that there London (innit). 

shall, or will, i be watching one of my new four (4) copies of it? unlikely, i would think. what time i do find to watch stuff is generally spent watching rather trashy films of low artistic merit but exceptionally high levels of nudies. one really rather suspects that any nudity in 89 is going to be of male professional football players (or managers, i suppose. fans, maybe), and i am not particularly interested. 

exactly what compelled me to purchase 4 (four) copies of a film that i had little interest in and less (or if you will "fewer") intention of watching? basic mathematics. you may well be able to see that each copy of this documentary cost me 50p. yes, £2 in total for the four (4). now observe the below. 

that there above was the cheapest price i could find for replacement video (of blu ray) boxes. and they would seem to be "pre-owned" ones too, as in not brand new. paying somewhere north of £1.70 for a second hand replacement box seemed silly in comparison to obtaining a quite new, factory sealed one for 50p. so yes, likely i would have bought 10 (ten) copies if Poundland had stock of that many at this price. 

could i not be persuaded to watch at least one (1) copy of 89? not really, for the reasons listed above. which i am aware of you being aware of, i just started writing this and remembered what i wrote earlier. my half memories of the season are enough, i have no wish to "relive" it at all. generally my interest in football these days is, like the overwhelming majority of the population, limited to listening (with great interest) to what Joe Cole has to say about the game. 

for clarification (if needed) momentarily it was just the one (1) replacement box i required, pictured as it is above, sans the cover and disc of (or for) 89. what did i need it for? i picked up William a copy of the classic Live & Let Die, featuring Sir Roger, and the box was in a state of some distress, having had placed on it one of them really sh!t stickers what leave a gluey, sticky residue. every chance exists that i shall need replacement boxes in the future, and not necessarily to suitably house works of Sir Roger. on balance it struck me as a jolly good idea to get them whilst i could. 

perhaps i shall hold on to one (1) copy, though. it could serve as a gift of some form, one as likely to torment a Liverpool fan as equally as it would, presumably, please an Arsenal one. otherwise, well, the covers and discs of 89 are all off to "recycling", which is to say the bin. if someone decides to take such waste and place it in the ocean, well that's their choice, and if dolphins elect to eat them i would then question this concept of them supposedly being intelligent. 

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

sail away, cigarette, be free

yoho, ahoy

a tale of misfortune, then. or perhaps (possibly) one of them "omen" things, look you see. if not an omen, for i shall confess that i am not 100% certain i am using the word right, then a sign, a warning or even maybe a hint of what i should perhaps consider thinking doing.

this isn't the first time i have written such, but all the same it remains (very much) the case that i have no idea what draws people to read, well, whatever i put here. maybe it's to look at the pictures. certainly i am aware that when i used to be able to put images of a car wash here, in the greater good and glory of Commodore 64 mode, it led to some general enthusiasm. if i were to speculate then it would be so that i believe some would be interested only in reading of any particular misfortune which had befallen me. should you be of such a demographic, then you are in for a treat. 

let me try and describe the scene. it was late afternoon (or early evening) on a Friday. i had returned to my lodgings in my place of exile after a particularly hot, bothered and needlessly extended journey. as would be my wish i wished to go and have a cigarette (sorry). with it being lovely and sunny, but with a noticeable (and welcome) cool breeze, i went off to sit by the river which runs past my lodgings, and believe you me that is not as glamourous a thing as you may think. so, i sat down on a bench, light a cigarette (sorry) and placed the nearly empty packet, lighter and my phone beside me. 

if the above (vaguely) looks like a poor zoomed in image of a packet of cigarettes, or rather a cigarette packet, floating on a body of water, fear not, for it is so. yes, the breeze i mentioned turned into quite the gust. there was little i could do but sit and watch the force of nature lift up the packet of cigarettes, and the lighter too, and take them towards the water. 

gravity sort of assisted in easing my plight here, as the lighter, being of some noticeable heavier weight, simply fell to the ground. not so the cigarette packet. that, i observed, was lifted up a bit, seeming or appearing to dance in the air for a bit, before the gust or breeze died off. at this juncture the packet simply dropped down, alas into the water. 

my immediate thoughts, or comments, when this happened were indeed laced (if not strewn) with profanity. to my shame i confess i believe i at least thought, but likely said, something like "f**k's sake". well, would you not think or say something of a similar sentiment, if not so obscene? 

momentarily i did wonder if the cigarette packet could in some way, shape or form be retrieved. this was very momentarily indeed, for it was quite some distance down and, if we are honest, the contents of the packet were likely of no practical use. being even (or all the more) honest, that's the River Tees we are speaking of. once it was spoken of as holding the title of "most polluted river" in either the UK, or Europe, or all of the world. it has improved, but still. rather like an Edgar Allan Poe story which i can't off the top of my head recall the title of, things that go into this river do not come out the same. except in his story i think it was a room. anyway, i resigned myself to being only able to watch, and take pictures, and indeed (above) take some VHS mode video. 

by some fluke of good fortune this was not as bad as it could (or might) have been. it was so, dear reader, that there was but one (1) cigarette left in the packet (or box) when this happened. a real term cost of what was lost, by virtue of these being cigarettes from a better priced, independent distributor, was 35p. had i been smoking "official" cigarettes purchased off a shop (and heavily taxed by our most beloved government) the loss would have been around 75p. please, feel free to let it sink in just how ripped off, or if you will f****d over, us British smokers are. 

where has this cigarette (and packet) ended up? as in, which way was it heading? by virtue of the time and from what i could tell of the tide (i am no sailor) the general direction it sailed off in was that of the North Sea. oh. not sure it would have made it all the way there, for various obstacles would have been in the way. still, how lovely to think that maybe it's washed up in some interesting place like Norway or what have you. Sweden, perhaps, but such a sight may well confuse them, based on my thankfully limited experience with people off of Sweden. two, i think. one was nice, the other an idiot.

just how bad are pictures off of this phone of mine what has a camera welded to it? awful quality on the zoom. my understanding was that Samsung were "market leaders" for a reason. unless they sold me a dud, or i am in some way not using it properly, very disappointing indeed. 

one of them little nuggets of "information", or unsubstantiated "fact" that non-smokers like to throw around is that smoking one cigarette takes between three to five minutes off your life. really? unless they are talking about a theoretical or symbolic thing, based on how long it takes to smoke one, i am not convinced. were it so that someone took my (realistic) assumed life expectancy vs number of cigarettes smoked (thus far) then i would think the calendar would suggest i am to meet my demise, at the latest, by the end of this sentence. and, apparently not.

quite a few, to tie (by chance) all of this back to the opening, would suggest that maybe i should take this incident, or episode, as a sign. an "omen", if you will, or some sort of thing where nature hints at what i should do. with that, presumably, being that the sensible thing for me to do would be to throw all of my cigarettes into a body or water. that or not buy them. perhaps such is so, but i will ignore. 

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

experimenting with drinks

pozdrowienia

well, no. this is perhaps not going to be as exciting as the title suggests, look you see. an implication of the chosen title would be drinks as in drinks, you know, booze. perhaps sadly not. it may well be that i have a reasonable track record in that form of experimentation over the years, i write thinking of that time i finally got my hands on absinthe. also in recent years, i suppose, but only when my chums Butch and, as the central protagonist, Eddie Baby have insisted. maybe another time, another place.

so this is all about non-alcoholic drinks, then. or "soft" drinks, i suppose, as some call them. never really understood that, as there are plenty of alcohol based drinks one could get and be called "soft" for drinking, at least in some circles. to further limit (or dampen) any excitement you have about reading this, well, i am not sure that much experimentation has happened. 

recently i found myself in a provincial town, or if you will hamlet, of the flatlands of Lincolnshire. no, i would not care to name the specific one, and i am not at all sure why you would wish to know. from a mixture of boredom, necessity and curiosity i took a stroll around my (then) new surroundings and found one of them 'Eastern European' shops. which, if you don't know, does what it says right in the name given, as in is a shop what sells products imported from nations to the east of Europe. alas not all that far east, for i really do fancy giving Russian fags (as in cigarettes) a try one day. 

perhaps to my shame, but ultimately i would hope seen as innocence not ignorance, i had an idea that it was either a Czech, Polish or even perhaps Lithuanian shop. so as to avoid any unnecessary suspense, turned out to be Polish. the proprietor clocked that i was trying to work out what was what from images on packaging (mostly) rather than reading, so greeted me and asked if i was checking out some Polish treats. which i was, although i did not know the specifics of that until he said. 

as it happens i did try some of the sweets, and they were quite class. but title of the post refers to drinks, which was mostly what i went in for. it was quite hot, so it was, what with us getting a few really, really hot days of summer as July became August. 

no, i suppose, to be fair there wasn't all that much experimentation with drinks, for the names of the ones i tried all had the names of them on the labels in English. indeed, or for the record, i did try a few types of flavour of this "Tymbark" i found, but i believe two (2) shall suffice to showcase here. 

yes, as is so often the case with decisions i make, the pricing of these was attractive. quite exotic sounding flavoured drinks, in glass bottles with an unusual, intricate yet simplistic ring pull cap for 59p a go? i shall have some of that, thanks. 

for a sort of quasi review type thing, which (granted) some of you may be expecting, well. they were all really good - lovely, as point of fact - but all appeared (or seemed) to have the same taste. or flavour, if that's a more appropriate word. this flavour was distinctly and most decidedly of the apple which i  believe all of them stated they contained. maybe this is due to my natural sense of taste being if not destroyed then battered by cigarettes, but overall it was all apple. 

it was with a measure of disappointment that this was the case with even the "apple lime cactus" one, with me being quite excited by the cactus element. no, i had no idea that Poland was a home to such a level of cactus (cacti?) that they made drinks out of it. if it is so, then it is that they make apple flavour drinks from it. now that i think i seem to remember (or recall) a "cactus" drink off of Lidl that was alos not really as exciting as it sounded. still, you have to have a go. 

quite a good year it has been, for me, in discovering all sorts of different, or new to me, drinks that are not of an alcohol based nature. earlier in the year, regular readers shall recall, i embarked on quite the odyssey to the other side of the (known) world, where i experienced the merry delights of L & P. i do indeed look forward to having more of it, one day. 

right, well, i am sure you have things to do that are not reading this, and i probably have something or other to do which is not writing this. 

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

three inches of roth

howdy pop pickers

it is a truth universally acknowledge that if i wished for many thousands of readers here each day then all that would be required is for me to write of David Lee Roth. thanks to so many having good taste it is easily the case that my posts on Roth Tapes and Roth Asteroids have quite large reader figures, look you see. quite odd then that i write of a smaller figure for David Lee Roth. 

recently, as i am so prone to be found doing, i picked up some tapes. well, no, not actual tapes as such, but compact discs what had music on them. in some circles it remains far easier to just call (or refer to) them as tapes and move on. you shall not be surprised, based on the title and the many references in the first paragraph, to learn that (at least) one of them was off of David Lee Roth.

 

my David Lee Roth purchase in this instance, then, was the seminal Just Like Paradise single off of the equally, or none more so, seminal album Skyscraper. from what i recall, or at least i think this is so, this was the one with the video of him hanging off of some mountain playing a quasi heart shaped guitar. such is the way of David Lee Roth. as a plus, this CD single (or tape) has Yankee Rose on it. this is not just the zeitgeist of Roth; it's entirely possible that it shall be recorded in history as the last truly great song (or artistic achievement) any American achieved. 

whereas purchasing something simply for having "David Lee Roth" written on it is (very much) a formality for me, there was, oddly, a reason for purchasing this not related to the actual single. maybe out of a sense of nostalgia or possibly from a sense of practicality, the main motivation to buy this was that it was a 3" (three inch) single with an adaptor. i am guessing these things are getting to be increasingly rare. actually not even sure if i still have one beyond this recent acquisition. 

something of a "throwback" history lesson, then. above you can see the CD single itself, which is the disc in the middle, the silver shiny one with writing. the outer off-white (bone, beige, cream) disc is the adaptor. when the 3" single disc came along in the 80s it was so that some compact disc players could not handle them, so you needed an adaptor. unless there was some insane level of budgetary saving to be made i still can't work out why they ever bothered with the smaller disc. and no, i can't see how making 3" discs plus adaptors worked out as cheaper than standard 5" (or whatever) discs. 

from memory i don't think i have all that many 3" singles. somewhere in the collection is the Batdance one off of Prince, as well as a couple of Simple Minds ones. in respect of the latter, Belfast Child (or Ballad Of The Streets EP) and Don't You Forget About Me. also a Peter Gabriel one in the form of Sledgehammer. now, obviously, this one too. oh, hang on, there was a U2 one, i think off of the quasi album Rattle & Hum, but i gave that to the person i gave my copy of The Fly single to too. 

above, in the VHS mode that i have neglected for a bit, is a snippet of Yankee Rose. this is so you may hear how excellent it is, what with it being the last truly great artistic statement off of America. it's my favourite bit of the song, where Roth has a conversation with a guitar (played by Steve Vai, i think). honestly i could listen to the way Roth says "what" all day every day. 

back to (vague) memories of the 3" CD single and i promise you the novelty factor, if it even ever existed, wore off fast. the "adaptor" was unreliable, and usually you couldn't get the disc to play properly, or at all. now that i think on, the maximum capacity of these discs was (is) 20 minutes, which happens to the the "maximum" running time for singles the chart company set. you know, when charts were based on sales, and not how many computers the record labels of certain acts could get the songs continuously streaming on. perhaps that's why they tried these discs out. 

delighted that this 3" single at least came in a standard, "slimline" jewel case with the adaptor. which again makes it make no sense that they used a 3" disc rather than the standard. often these 3" singles were in very small cardboard sleeves. they were tricky to get the discs in and out of, and also quite a problem to store in the collection. bad idea all around, really. 

who knows, this post may well prove to be a celebration of the last 3" compact disc what i ever find and feel a need to purchase. it could just as easily be the last David Lee Roth related item i buy. for the latter i would hope not, but it's not like i am short on his stuff. 

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

cinema visit

hello there

it has been (most) decidedly so that this year has seen a fair bit of the unexpected. at the least for me (moi) and all that i thought i may do, look you see. certainly being present at two (2) gigs by the Manic Street Preachers and Suede (within a week) was a known quantity as those tickets were bought last year, but still one (at the least) was at the mercy of our train system. meeting Piers Corbyn and the elegant, wonderful Griffin Dunne were nice surprises. well, one was, and the former was a happy accident. but no, i didn't really anticipate three (3) cinema trips (and counting) this year. 

for this third (and hopefully not final) cinema trip of the year so far (2024) it was off to see a film which i thought was called Deadpool vs Wolverine, but actually happens to be called Deadpool & Wolverine. a subtle yet all the same important difference. to be perfectly honest it wasn't a film i was all that interested in seeing, what with the "joke" of Deadpool wearing thin on me about half way through the first film. but the boys, as in my (known) children, really loved it, and, well, why would one not go and see Hugh Jackman swearing and punching people?

on a (quasi) practical level it would seem you would have "had to" see a good deal more films and things that i had done before watching this. somewhat obviously having watched, or managed to endure, the first Deadpool films (both of them) helps, but also Logan (which i had not seen) and that Disney tv series called Loki. the latter is pretty much essential if you wish to have any vague understanding of the slight plot.

before i go into any sort of plot thing (weirdly linear i know) it is perhaps prudent, if not best, to put one of them *** SPOILER WARNING *** things here, applicable from this sentence on. plot? kind of something something Deadpool's universe is to implode because (remember the spoiler) Wolverine died, something something Deadpool not happy, something something Deadpool jumps across different universes (the "multiverse") to get a replacement Wolverine to mend things, something something. a quite clearly sellotaped together premise to allow for violence, high levels (as in nearly constant) breaking of the 4th wall stuff, digs at Disney and to be fair many, many laughs. perhaps the most pleasant surprise was that the Deadpool character can actually be very funny without the need for incessant, constant masturbation jokes as was the case in the first two. 

mostly, or on the whole, i enjoyed it. certainly it was (considerably) better than the first two of the Deadpool films, for it had elements of humour not all entirely related to a quick(ish) one off of the wrist. there was clearly much i was missing in not seeing Logan in particular, or the latter X Men films. no i haven't seen any of them since the first three (3) ones. had i not seen the first series of Loki it would be likely i would have been somewhat confused by the (ostensible) plot. 

going on what i can tell there's a lot of fuss, or excitement, about the numerous "cameo" or if you will surprise appearances in them. of the biggest, being Chris Evans (the proper American talent actor, not the horrid, rancid narcissist of debatable talent we are stuck with in England), well, the joke of why he was there in some "dumping ground for discarded super heroes" was quite obvious from the start. put it this way, there was no way he was there for the more celebrated of his two "hero" roles. they appeared to spend an awful lot of time setting up a "surprise" joke i would have thought everyone would have seen coming and just groaned. 

leaving aside the one (or possibly two) other cameo(s) in it that i recognised, rather likely that several others just went right past, below or above me. oh. so no, i can't tell you much of who(m) may be in it, as it could have been a cameo i plain didn't clock. 

yes, indeed, all (three) of my cinema outings have been at the rather splendid Ealing Project. and of course all on a Tuesday, for that is when the tickets are (considerably) cheaper. a large coke and medium, or if you will regular, popcorn cost me a flat (or straight £9). indeed i would have very much liked to return there for the new Alien film as and when it is out, but i shall not be in that there London place when it's on. perhaps they shall have cinemas wherever it is i wander. 

right, highly doubtful that any of this will have been of much use to anyone, but at the least i hope it was in some way (even briefly) entertaining. for what such is worth i do believe that Civil War has been the best film i have seen so (thus) far this year, but there's still a bit of the year (2024) to go. 

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

manchester in the area

heya

well, yes, no that (above) wasn't going to be the title, look you see. a more accurate one would have been to call this "manchester fags", for that is what all of this concerns. by that i mean the actual, correct and of course right use of the word fags, which is to describe cigarettes. unfortunately our friends in America have a rather (somewhat) different use for the word, and you get called a naughty if you use it. still, there's little wrong with quoting Ian Brown out of The Stone Roses instead. 

so, something of an ambition reached once more then. indeed no it is not a sensible ambition or one that i would encourage others to do. yet still, here we are. i have, at last, tried some of these fa...cigarettes what are called 'Manchester'. and so feel obliged to write of them. 

exactly what are these, then? well, they are cigarettes. assuming you would like a bit more better answer there, so far as i am aware they are a brand one would usually, or normally, hear of in America. perhaps it was so that they were a thing here in the UK, perhaps in the 70s, but i am unaware of then. my awareness of them comes purely from adverts for them in periodicals and other such publications, or if you will magazines, off of America and usually meant for that market. hence them being ads for products over that way. generally yes, these are all publications intended for members of the gentry what quite like admiring (so to speak) images (of artistic merit) of ladies somewhat undressed. 

provenance of my packs? well, now, no i cannot give such specific information. let's just say that these were off of a rather more independent distributor, charging roughly (or about) a third of the price that any packet of cigarettes would cost you down at a "recognised" retailer. not that the price of them is their fault, that's the bloody government and their taxes, that is. which is why so many of us seek out the services of independent, intrepid and very (very) helpful entrepreneurs. 

above is an image of one of the (two thinner) sides of the packs. no, i am not showing the other, for it is dull but also has a (presumably bogus) barcode on it. nice try, constabulary. what's interesting here, beyond the health warning you all should obviously pay attention to, is that the tar and nicotine levels, or content, are listed. so far as i am aware this bit of info got quietly dropped from the (ahem) more official brands of cigarettes, reason for such unknown. not entirely sure what i or anyone else was supposed to do with the information, but i suppose one could say it was "nice to know". 

nicotine and tar levels being on the packs is one of several "clues" (or hints) that these may well be quite genuine, bona fide counterfeit fa.....cigarettes. how truly wonderful if so. often i have heard tales of bootlegs being made and sold, but this would be a first knowing encounter. for the most part i had always assumed (or taken as a given) that the more independently distributed ones were ones what had somehow fallen off of a lorry, or a container, or from a duty free warehouse. perhaps just driven in from a place in Europe where they are a sensible price.  

how are the cigarettes? well, they are no Marlboro. coarse, i suppose would be a word that comes to mind, if not so harsh and "ideal for salty sea dogs" as things like Players used to be. no, i am not adding links to previous posts, but do feel free to search. upon lighting one of these up you are directly, indeed immediately, aware that you are smoking a cigarette. there is no careful cushioning of the experience. yet they are reasonably pleasant, and get the job done. at a most agreeable price. 

in the psychedelic like picture above you can kind of make out that the branding is very much there on the cigarettes. along with two lovely sort of gold stripes around the filter. should it be so that these were all manufactured in some bootleggers plant, well, credit to them for not doing a half job. also, the taste, or flavour or what have you is consistent cigarette to cigarette, packet to packet. so it's not like they have just shoved any old thing what vaguely resembles tobacco in them. true, it might well be that the filters are all asbestos or what have you, but them's the breaks. 

for actual provenance in regards to the origin, it does make mention that these cigarettes area a "rich blend of the finest Virginian tobacco" if that helps. yet the packet does make a lot of reference to how they are in some way English (or British). no actual place of manufacture or similar on the packs, but it does list a very generic sounding company with the helpful address for them being "London, England". let me ask a taxi driver to take me there next time i visit. 

this is a point i have made before, and shall make again. if it is so that these independently sourced cigarettes can be brought here and sold for £5 a go and all involved in the process - manufacture, shipping, sales - make enough money to make it viable, well that shows just how f*****g ridiculous the high taxation strategy of governments here truly is. no one is stopping smoking because they put the taxes up, they are simply stopping buying them via official channels. but of course the stats say that less, or "fewer", people are buying cigarettes, so they can boast and brag of making a difference. 

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

lost in a maze of my own making, no way out this time

ow do

indeed this is another of them "observation" things, look you see. and once more it's something what i gone done saw down in that there London (innit). well, i am spending more time in the place than i ever thought i would, but that has turned out to be not such a bad thing. 

blue plaques, ladies and gentlemen. these are put up, mostly, by an organisation (or institute) called English Heritage (i think). officially, at the least, for others - for fun or to prove a point - have placed them here and there. most famous of these recently (mid 2024) was a Lidl in Manchester, with theirs saying that Liam Gallagher almost played a concert there. anyway, generally (if not always) these plaques, what are blue, are placed on buildings where either someone of significance lived or otherwise did something of importance in the place. the one i saw was for the former, if that means the first of them two. certainly not the middle one. 

normally i would wander past these things oblivious, but for some reason this one managed to catch my attention. just as well that it did, i suppose. well, if it did not, this post would not exist. 

unlikely that you can make it out in the above, but that's a blue plaque proclaiming (or celebrating) that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once lived at this address. in 1811, apparently. 

due to my background in studying literature (which, no, is not immediately obvious from my writing skills on display here) i, from time to time, get asked about a preferred, "favourite" or most admired poet. it is lovely to be asked, as it allows me to unleash yet another quasi quote from A Bit of Fry & Laurie. so, when asked, i get to answer "i don't really pretend to understand poetry, i am an english student you see, not a homosexual". when this 'joke' inevitably (or invariably) falls rather flat, yes, i do put forward the comment that Shelley is a favourite. 

favourite poem? specifically off of Shelley? easy one that. as far as i am aware there is no copyright infringement on the go in me presenting it here for you. if interested. 

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

above is indeed one of them "close up" pictures of the blue plaque. dark blue, i suppose, if you would really care for specifics. not, it's not a good picture is it. let me give some consideration to getting a phone what has a much more better camera welded to it. very disappointing, Samsung. 

well, i can't think that all that many casual readers here would have all that much interest in my bad pictures or worse writing. but if you stumbled on this and enjoyed the poem, that's one decent thing what i have gone done with the day today. 

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

open up it's the pigs

now then

every now and then it is so that those what provide services, and those what regulate such, get it right. actually it's more frequent than that, look you see. when things run as normal, or as they should, no one notices, but then you wouldn't be expected to. instances of it not going right are always going to be more overt. we, the people, like to complain much more than we like to congratulate. 

i make such a statement on the basis of a (fairly) recent experience. several years ago here in the UK it was so that them in control of such came down quite hard on the subject of nuisance calls. for a while it got to be that one received unsolicited calls from all sorts of people, with the overwhelming majority being of a con artist or spam nature. not entirely sure who did what to bring an end to such, but for the most part it decidedly worked, as such calls are a rarity now. 

yet it is so that, of course, the odd one sneaks in. hence this post. i recently had one of these (or those) unusual and annoying calls. well, slightly annoying, as overall i was somewhat amused by the content of it. perhaps you can kind of guess the details of the call from the subject or title of this post, but i would like to think you picked up on it being a quote off of The Young Ones. as in the anarchic television show and not the Sir Cliff Richard thing. 

so there i was, enjoying some brief time off, when my phone rang. generally it would be reasonably rare for anyone to call me. one or two friends do, certainly, but in this great era of random communication i would normally expect a text or text based message. the number, what you can see below (and this is the first of many encouragements for you not to dial it), wasn't saved as a "contact" of mine, but also it just happens to be that i wouldn't have been surprised to get a call from one or two people. so, indeed, i answered it. 

upon answering i was greeted by that sound which i can only describe as a "blank silence", followed by the tell-tale "click" of the call being transferred to either a scam operative somewhere or, as was the case in this instance, a recording on a computer. actually, perhaps this was one of the first of all that "AI" business scam calls for me to get. with some curiosity if not interest i listened on to see what, exactly, the angle of the scam was in this instance. 

above is one of them "screenshot" things of the number what called. please don't ring it or message it, but also you are your own person, so do as you like i guess. but back to it.

the voice on the end of the line was a kind of generic American sounding lady. possibly a real person making a recording, but could just as easily have been a computer generated (as i mentioned "AI") sort of thing. quite a fascinating message. using mostly American terminology the call was all about how they had documents or warrants for my arrest, and that they were on their way to come and detain me. oh dear, that's not good. apparently it would have been possible to discuss avoiding this, so long as i pressed 1 to talk to them. so yes, i just hung up. 

not really sure how effective they hope this scam shall be, for i am assuming that if one did indeed press a button to speak then you (or one) would get asked to pay some sort of fine, which is likely you handing them your bank details or making a transfer to one of those "magic internet money" crypto things. such relies on the person being called being (exceptionally) prone to paranoia and having a panic attack prompting them to pay whatever to avoid prison. 

whilst i am no expert in such matters it's my basic understanding that the constabulary do not call to let you know they are popping by to arrest you. maybe they do in cases involving the rich and shameless, but not for us ordinary types. how lovely a society we would be in if the coppers made appointments to make sure it was convenient to come and take you into custody, though. 

my favourite scam call (not that i miss them) was that one where they called to discuss a major car or similar vehicle accident you had been in. those were some fun, as i used to like seeing how long i could keep them on the phone, with me discussing how yes, they must be calling about that rather unfortunate incident where i got decapitated. it generally took them longer than you might think to clock that i wasn't being entirely accurate with the information being handed over. 

determined scam artists are always (and forever) going to find ways to get through any barriers put in their way to target people. this is an unfortunate truth. but, as i mentioned, fair play and well done to just who(m)ever it is tasked with minimalizing how many get through and contact people. with some good fortune may it be so that all take my approach of listening for a bit for the novelty value and then hang up. 

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

reading stuff

hello reader

as has become almost obligatory, then, a comment that i just don't appear to be reading as much as i once did. sure, i no longer have lengthy daily bus journeys for verk, look you see, but even then it feels like my habit of, if (hopefully) not my interest in, reading has dropped away. quite likely due to me being a bit more inexplicably social than i had become used to. 

with such repeated statement out the way, yes, i have indeed read a further two (2) novels since i last gone done a post like this. as has become my way i feel compelled to write of them. not really reviews, i suppose, as that would suggest something practical. 

to continue with the way i have generally done this, coming up is a (VHS mode) image of the covers, then a brief overview, and then you head into the realm of *** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ***, so warned, you have been. 

first up then is the 4th novel off of that tall one who used to do Pointless (but still does the celebrity editions) and started off as a backing dancer for Sonia, or if you like Richard Osman. this one is the last Thursday Murder Club story for a bit. it's just as enjoyable and engaging as the others, but features some rather surprisingly predictable "twists". and then it is on to a fairly recent Scott Mariani novel, which yes means another Ben Hope adventure, with this one being The Tudor Deception. inexplicably it's a kind of "prequel" adventure, and would be flattered to be called average. 

provenance of my copy of The Last Devil To Die off of Richard Osman? i am fairly sure it was a Tesco, with their "club card price book of the week" thing likely meaning it cost me £4.50. so far as i am aware it is only people what live in London who go to shops that pay the full price for novels. them and those under the impression that WH Smith is the only place one can purchase books from. 

and the plot? other than a continuance of strands (or stems) from all of the previous ones, a friend of the retired gang who runs an antique store turns up dead. so of course they go and investigate, whilst also being distracted by matters deeply affecting their personal lives.......

overall this is superb. no, really. i (very much) doubt the world requires me to tell anyone how wonderful these novels are, going on the sales figures and the imminent (inevitable) adaptation of it all for the tele and that. the charming, wonderfully engaging writing style draws you in and makes it quite the challenge to put the book down and not read it all in one sitting. but yes, there is something of a but here, as intimated in the quasi introduction thing above. 

whilst i no way, shape or form does it affect the enjoyment of the novel, alas the sort of attempts at things you may call red herrings or macguffins are far too visible if not necessarily overtly obvious. blimey that sounds a bit like the sort of waffle i would hand in as part of essays many years ago. there is very little, if anything, in the way of surprise twists or turns here. not sure that this is down to me being able to "clock" how the author sprinkles clues because i doubt i am that clever. being drawn into this wonderful world of characters makes this kind of not an issue. like other series (i shall decline to name any), the fun has now become not finding out what happens next, but what the characters all do. 

being so engaged with the characters does have a price. there is (and you have had a spoiler warning) in this one the death of an important character, if not one of the main "gang of four". perhaps it is this turn of events which has led the tall one to give both himself and the (extremely large) Thursday Murder Club reading base a bit of a pause. yes, i shall read this new venture, i think it's a "step" or "in law" father daughter detective thing, a go as and when it comes out in paperback. but i am somewhat sad that it's highly likely, should i make it that far, i won't get to read another book in this series for a couple of years. 

such a delay, however, might not be all that bad. the risk of quantity over quality forever exists. and if one wished to see the danger of the former over the latter, one really doesn't need to go all that much further to find it than in the two books a year saga of Ben Hope, as written by Scott Mariani. 

once again (if it matters) the provenance of my copy of The Tudor Deception, which must number in the late 20s or early 30s of this series, was Tesco. i think they do it where if you buy it at the same time as you do a copy of the Daily Mail it works out somewhere south of £4.50 for it, but not by much. unless this is the one what i paid a sort of "full price" for as i could not be bothered looking for a deal on it. 

plot? as mentioned it's a "prequel" i suppose, set in 2005, long before Ben Hope has his school of killing excellence in, of all places, France. for what it's about, well, something something King Richard III, something something "distant heir", something something really valuable property, something something someone close to Ben Hope (of course) gets badly hurt, something something bombs, guns, knives, explosions, mayhem and it all ends with a vague idea of either justice or vengeance. 

one of the biggest issues with this one is, to state the obvious, a complete lack of peril or suspense. generally he survives anyway (that doesn't make sense does it) but in this instance there's never really any tension, for you know the protagonist (Ben Hope) will be OK as quite a few of us have read well over twenty adventures which happened after this. such might not be all that much of an issue if the actual premise or story was interesting, but it really isn't. all of this Richard III and the "killing in the tower" and what have you, as well as "long lost" or distant heirs to the English / British (mindful of the geographical history) has kind of been done. it's nowhere near as brilliant, informative or revelatory as what was probably the finest book Mariani has done in this series, The Forgotten Holocaust.

far, far too much of The Tudor Deception relies on highly convenient, contrived and downright absurd chance encounters. i know these are written purely for the joy and thrill of entertainment, but still, too often it feels like the writer is simply taking the p!ss here, as if he's in some way mocking us what go ahead and read the novels. yes, i have already bought the next one, which as usual with this series prompted me to go and read this at last. still, it doesn't rank as the worst in this series, for that title appears destined to remain with whichever one it was someone tried to cut the planet it half with a laser. saying that this or any novel is better than that one really isn't much in the way of praise. 

my suspicion is that generally anyone interested in reading either (or both) of these will likely have done so long before this post hit the internet. that said, of late i have indeed encountered people what have only just elected (or opted) to read the Richard Osman ones. in the remote and unlikely circumstances any of this has helped you to decide to read a book (or even not to read one), well, so much the better and delighted to gift such to a random internet stranger. 

right, so, anyway, on to the next book. and as it happens the one i wish to read next is a rather long one, being somewhere north of 600 in terms of pages. might well be a bit before i do a post on books, unless it happens to be really good and i go full tilt anti-social to read it as soon as i can. which may very well happen. 

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

disappointment, not resentment

greetings

oh dear. for some reason i am going to try and write of something called The Acolyte. this is, for those that don't know or don't care (yet for some reason are still reading) the, at time of writing, latest of things Star Wars what them people at Disney have gone done. it would be fair to say that this has all caused a bit of a stir online, look you see. whether it's a vocal minority or the loud majority i know not, but generally it would be fair to say most comments are rather negative. 

the show is certainly not the bestest greatest Star Wars thing ever. i would argue it is also not exactly what could fairly be called the worst, for it's not as bad as, say, Solo or The Last Jedi. my view, or if you like take, on it is that The Acolyte is one of the most interesting, clever ideas what they have had, but ultimately it is a clunky, frustrating experience. my understanding is that if one dares to be critical of this show you get labelled all sorts of "ists" and "isms", as it simply must be that your problem is all them non-white, non-male characters. i have every confidence such is true of some, but certainly not all. i am going to at least try and explore the "natural" dislike of it. 

plot or premise? actually difficult to give in a simple way, which underlines some of the issues. to have a go at it for you, and please note from here on out there be *** SPOILERS ***, it's all set some one hundred years before the 'prequel trilogy'. someone is going around killing jedi. the main suspect turns out not to be the killer, but the (possibly) twin sister of them. off the jedi go to try and work out who is doing it, to stop them and to maybe cover up some jedi business of indiscretion. kind of. 

what i really, really liked about The Acolyte was it was a genuine and real attempt to "subvert expectations" and delve into the "expanded universe" in a way which was not quite the "f*** you" delivered by them what made The Last Jedi. the premise was one of "hang on, no" it isn't so that those calling themselves jedi (or sith) have some exclusivity to all this "force" business. others that can use it are happy to do so without being labelled. having the jedi run around trying to vanquish a "threat" to their status as guardians of it all is an interesting concept. 

but, as i said, the execution of this all is a right f*****g mess. don't really think it is the actors and/or actresses at fault. some, but certainly not all, of the dialogue is all right, and the somewhat hammy nature of the acting isn't, if we are honest, all that out of character for Star Wars films. it feels lazy to say it, but the pacing and structure are just a convoluted mess. not sure if i can say one easily loses track of what the hell is going on and ends up not caring to try and work out what they missed or forgot, but i very much can say this is what happened to me in chunks. as in when they revealed the (presumed) big bad and it was all a "surprise" i was more like "who was he earlier again, please". 

every now and then i have, here, had a dig at them special "fanboys" (and to be fair fangirls) who have in the eyes of some plagued Star Wars enjoyment for years. them ones i generally describe as living in Momma's basement in Wisconsin (or similar), spending all their lives expressing their distress at absolutely anything Star Wars and finding it hard to come to terms with how neither George Lucas nor Disney ever read their ideas online and came straight to them with a billion dollars to make the most bestest ultimate Star Wars thing ever. but there is another side to this, which i shall get to, after a somewhat brief break.

certainly there's grounds to suggest Disney did kind of deliberately annoy (p!ss off) hardcore Star Wars fans in the last episode. well, last in particular. above is instance one. apparently that is Darth Plagueis. to the casual Star Wars fan this might not mean much, yet for a pretty significant amount of the fanbase this is a huge "expanded universe" character. were it so that Disney wished to make loads of money and get some largely positive feedback, well. a film or series of this character would probably go down more better than what The Acolyte did. instead they just have him lurking in some shadows for a few seconds. 

many years ago (north of 40) when we got our first ever video machine Mum & Dad bought us two videos for it, when owning videos was a rarity. they were The Muppet Movie and Making Star Wars. care to guess which got played most? yes. in that one (the latter) there was a bit at the end which showed kids at school in America making Star Wars films. mostly, for many years, i was like "wow, how come they get to make movies at school". however, over the years i have warmed to one aspect. the children are interviewed about their feelings on Star Wars and one young girl says she loves it as it "helps her escape from reality". and that one line is the root of all fandom of all nature.

at heart Star Wars, when it came along, was a simplistic, basic good vs evil story. even when they made everyone relatives of everyone in the progressive films. the outlandish, exotic and intriguing setting helped make it all the more magical. but that's the core. people fell in love with it all, i would argue, because for a couple of hours you could switch off and immerse yourself in a thoroughly enjoyable, simple and straightforward world. 

it is entirely understandable why people go and get all upset when someone comes and "does Star Wars" but in a way that's not connected to their feelings, what they have invested in it. by no means by that do i mean to in any way justify some of the outlandish reactions to the upset, and no i am not going to share some of the more outlandish (bonkers) comments people have posted. when all this "expanded universe" stuff came along in the form of books, graphic novels and what have you, it was fine, as you could very easily opt out of that. Disney coming along saying "no this is Star Wars and if you don't like it you are the problem you are not a proper fan" is a very big deal. messing with people's fantasies, telling them their thoughts are "not right" is quite a mean and dangerous thing to do". 

likely the worst thing The Acolyte did is right there above. set one hundred years before The Phantom Menace? right, Yoda will be around and likely in it. that's kind of why i kept watching. and the reward was a couple of seconds of looking at the back of him. oh. unless, like the previous "cameo" above, this is all intended as a "tease" for a second series, it does feel somewhat like they are just messing with fans. 

you can easily forget that Disney are perfectly capable of making mistakes. in the 80s they kind of nearly went to complete sh!t by seriously misjudging what audiences may want. but they used to learn from things like that and make a better product. exactly how The Acolyte, so full of potential and with truly great ideas, got released in the convoluted mess of a form it did is a bit of a mystery. 

no, i don't live in Momma's basement, and i am certainly not clever enough to have some brilliant, billion dollar idea for an "ultimate Star Wars movie". what i do have is a willingness to see what ideas and stories they come up with next. and back to thinking sessions, i believe, is the wisest approach they could take for now. 

live long and prosper!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!