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As I've scanned the internet, of late, I've noticed there's been much talk of UFOs, UAPs whistleblowers and back-engineering. Is there anything to it? Or is it all hogwash and balderdash?
I cannot say. For, truly, it is one of the great mysteries of our time.
But there is another mystery. An even greater one.
And that's what will the topic be for today's Speak Your Brain?
It could be anything. That's the whole point. Whoever makes the first comment gets to decide how the conversation goes. And that comment merely needs to be made in the box below.
Therefore, be sure to make that comment and propel this site into a whole new cosmos of discourse.
Posts
48 comments:
What’s been your biggest buyer’s remorse item this year?
(Or in the last couple of years if you’ve been lucky this year)
*Happy for this not to be the only question! Also happy to step back if a better question appears!*
Biggest as in ‘most disappointing’. Not ‘most expensive’
Thanks for the topic, Matthew. I'm struggling to think of anything I've bought in the last couple of years that's left me down. I shall give the matter more thought and see what I can think of.
For me it's usually food and drink that disappoints. I recently bought a vegan "pork pie" which tasted horrible. I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian but I do like to try vegan products and they are usually nice (such as vegan chocolate) but I won't be buying a vegan pork pie again. I also tried a bottle of Bundaberg Australian root beer which tasted like cough medicine and a bottle of Robinson's Orange & Pineapple squash but I couldn't taste any pineapple, only orange.
I've got buyer's resentment at the cost of everything at the moment, Matthew, but that's not really what you're asking.
I did regret shelling out for a Jah Wobble double lp on Record Store Day this year, which was surprisingly disappointing. But after selling it on eBay I was a tenner up, so can't complain.
Anyhow, the spiral of the year is expanding to its widest point - hope everyone enjoys the summer solstice. There's a live feed of the sunrise at Stonehenge here, starting at 4.00 (that's 23.00 EST for Americans) -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2KHYef-LRU
Grianstad an tsamhraidh sona daoibh.
-sean
Mrs. Charlie has Celiac's which means even a whiff of gluten in the food causes 12 hours of "flu like symptoms."
We went to a pizzeria, Gia Mia, which swore it was safe for those who had Celiacs. I should have known better when the teenage waiter asked "Are you gluten insensitive or is it a preference."
My brain and heart were saying, "the cooks (probably an exaggeration) were a bunch of lazy shits and don't care if they feed you a little bit of gluten" if it's a dietary preference and thus could botch the whole thing up. Who knows.. teen-aged waiter might even forget between our table and where he places the order and say its "dietary" and not medical.
Either way, 4 AM the following morning the "flu like symptoms" kicked in.
SEAN, STEVE - Yes it was Bronze Age of Blogs by Pete Dorey!
COLIN - I think Lew Stringer had the excellent blog on DC Thomson or more broadly British "funny" comics?
Either way both were excellent and I am sorry they've become cultural artifacts.
I recently bought a pair of Adidas Broomfied trainers online that should have been grey suede with a colour coded grey sole. When they arrived they were actually light green with a white sole. I'm not sure a man of my physique can quite pull off the resulting look. At least they were the correct size and are fine for yard work. I probably won't risk online shoe purchases, moving forward.
Colin, Bundaberg (the town in Queensland) is well-known for Ginger beer and rum, which locals rather like in combination. I didn't realise they produced root beer, which I recall tastes like germolene (dentist mouth wash) from the one time I tried it forty years ago.
DW
Hmmmmm....disappointing purchases. Well, I've picked up plenty of cds over the past couple of years (actually, probably a couple hundred cds). Most pretty cheaply, which leads me to gamble on some unfamiliar titles. While there have been many that I found most enjoyable, there have been some which ended up in the 'get rid of' pile. The most recent such cd was the soundrack to the tv series "Lost" (season 5). It was the work of Michael Giacchino, who I generally like a lot. Sadly this one left me cold; pretty sparse musically.
Food-wise, I recently tried a bottle of honey lemonade from a Louisville KY store called World Market. It's a fascinating store, selling imported items from all over (most appealingly, they sell Aero bars). Anyway, the lemonade was awful. I can't even name it because I pitched the bottle away promptly.
BTW Matthew, would you be offended if I flip your question? Specifically: Any purchases that really exceeded your expectations?
As to this, I've two. A cd found for one dollar at a local flea market called "Ultra Lounge"; a Capitol records compilation of, well, vintage lounge music. It turned out to be Amazing! Now I'm always on the lookout for such discs, especially Martin Denny.
My other 'more than satisfied' purchase is the tablet I'm currently typing on. A Samsung Galaxy SF FE, Christmas gift from my wife. Best tablet I've ever had, a real gem of a device.
Charlie, Pete Doree is on Twitter now and has produced 5 comics based on Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (humour type books) . Lews blog "Blimey" was an excellent UK comic resource and is still available to view online.A
Make that S7 FE; obviously I'm a dubious typist...
Hi MCSCOTTY! i do occasionally revisit lew stringer’s blog! But i just searched for pete doree’s and, whilw i see the benerable intro page with the cover of Action 425, there are no posts!
Alas… no twitter here. I spend too much to much time ad it is with SDC, Facebook…
Charlie
HI REDARTZ! I must tap into your CD wisdom can you (or ANYONE ELSE) recommend a good 60s “lounge” style CD ? You know… maube a little Astrude Gilbert, Dionne Warwick, Spidey Cartoon jazzy stuff???
Much obliged, Charlz
Colin -
Bundaberg is horrible isn’t it?
Have you tried Virgil’s? That stuff is lovely, though it’s very expensive so I haven’t had it for quite a while.
Charlie- as for good lounge music- a great introduction would be one of the two "Ultra Lounge" cds from Capitol. There is actually a whole series of these discs, but there are two "Welcome" cds that feature cuts gleaned from all the others. One has a wild leopard skin /neon cover, the other has a bamboo/ tiki cover. An ebay search will offer many, you can't miss these two. Indeed, I bought it originally just for the cover.
Also, Rhino records has a good one titled "Cocktail Mix- Bachelor's Guide to the Galaxy". Has a great cut you'll recognize from Warner Brothers cartoons...
For me, buyer's remorse is rare, as I usually only read books by & about tried & tested authors, who are favourites.
However...
A couple of years ago, I downloaded a kindle book about "the 4 principles", whose author wrote utter garbage (buyer's remorse there). Also, modern Moorcock disappointed, as opposed to his brilliant early stuff.
I agree with Sean, particularly about the energy companies (recently I learned a family friend's paying considerably less than myself.) Their bosses are capitalist crooks!
As regards food, I rarely get buyer's remorse, as I usually only buy 'value brand' foods. Once in about every 20 Tesco microwave liver dinners, you get one with hardly any liver in, but that's compensated by the usual generous portion (for £1.70). Vegan 'beefburgers' were bumped up by 25p in Tesco, but at Asda they are still £2 for 8 burgers - so buyer's remorse is curtailed!
Agree with DW about shoes. My most recent pair's laces snapped, within my first 2 weeks of wearing the shoes! In general, it's virtually impossible to buy a decent pair of shoes for middle-aged feet, at a fair price.
As a cheap skate, my buyer's remorse is different - it involves missing out on what seemed like a bargain.
For example, when I learned of Doc Martin's "Shoe For Life" offer, it was suddenly pulled, just as I was vacillating over the high initial outlay! Imagine, a capitalist company obliged to give you a new pair of shoes, every time they wore out! Probably too good to be true, and some kind of con involved!
Similarly, the Dacia Sandero (cheapest UK new car) was £5999, a few years back (well, maybe a decade.) Now, the cheapest model is £13,000. My 18 year old car having trouble starting (actually not starting at all, right now), an opportunity missed perhaps, 8 or 10 years ago? Then again, a car is getting too expensive to drive at all, in the very near future.
Phillip
When equipping my art studio, I bought some shelving units with cube shaped sections. About a cubic foot, each of them. And I got some stiff, black, fabricy, cube-shaped drawer things that fit in them perfectly snugly. I keep art gear in these and books in all the empty places that don't have drawers.
But after I moved in, I decided I needed some more of the drawers to hide more gear away. But just to keep things interesting I ordered grey ones rather than black. And when they arrived, they turned out to not to be snug, a couple of inches too small in all three dimensions.
I've now replaced them with proper sized black ones and the grey ones are being used to divide up some of the black ones into a big cube and an l–shaped bit around the outside.
So it's those grey drawers for me. And this may be the most boring comment ever to appear on this blog. Don't shoot the monkey.
Hey dangermonkey, do you know if there's a decent brand of black drawing ink in this country these days?
Phillip, Doc Martens have been a bit iffy for a while now. Their quality control seemed to go out of the window in the last years of the 20th century.
The last new footwear I bought was a pair of Caterpiller boots. Not cheap, but you get what you pay for really, and I actually found a reasonable-ish price online. Doing my bit to destroy the high street!
(What has the high street ever done for me anyway?)
Unaccustomed as I am to even slightly deviating off topic... I was just reading in the paper that in the unlikely event Rishi Sunak's government succeeds at halving the rate of inflation by the end of the year as promised, recent opinion research shows that only 23% of the public understood that meant prices would still be going up. The rest were fairly evenly split between thinking they'd stay the same or actually go down.
No wonder they always vote in idiots.
-sean
Thanks for the tip, Sean. I'll look caterpillar boots up!
Phillip
Matthew, I've never heard of Virgil's.
DW, my local Tesco sells Bundaberg ginger beer too but I haven't tried any.
Charlie, I remember you left comments on Lew Stringer's blog.
Phillip, my last two pairs of shoes were bought from Trespass, the outdoors/hiking shop, because I couldn't find anything in Clark's or M & S that appealed to me.
Also Phillip, buying new laces separately works out considerably cheaper than getting new footwear!
You're welcome.
-sean
Colin - I haven't heard of Trespass, but I'll look that up, too. Thanks!
As well as laces of poor quality, another bugbear of mine is synthetic soles, which seem to start to fail after 18 months, even with supposedly reputable brands. Rubber soles are perhaps preferable.
Matthew - apologies for accidentally nudging your topic onto footwear!
Phillip
I blame DW, Phillip.
He bought up his trainers first.
-sean
Sean - Yes, indeed. I got the problem sorted out, but it's a poor state of affairs when laces fail on a new pair of shoes. Besides, the special laces, required for deck shoes, cost me much more than regular laces. Rant almost over! If & when those shoes fail, I'll consider your & Colin's tips. After all, Samuel Windsor who made those deck shoes (which I bought because they were fairly priced, & rubber-soled) has gone bust. Enough of this shoes nonsense!
Phillip
Didn't see Sean's last post, before posting!!
Phillip
Lew Stinger had a great blog… but did he seem a little salty at times? I felt like i got bitch slapped for spelling DC Thompson wrong lol.
I'm afraid mine is quite boring as well.
After two hover-mowers that blew up after a year or so, we decided to get a regular mower, and bought a German one that was highly recommended.
It hasn't blown up, but it weighs a ton, it has really badly designed grass box mechanism and I wish I was using a hover mower again.
On the comics side of things, I recently bought the Walter Simonson THOR omnibus. I found the digital recolouring makes it unreadable. It's terrible, it's like watching a colourised black and white movie. On looking it up online, I see much ink has already been spilled over this topi - I wish I'd known before I bought it.
Colin - have a look for Virgil's root beer. Have one as a treat. Because unless you've won the lottery, you won't be buying it regularly.
Charlie - my mother has an allergy to peppers: red peppers, green peppers, chillis, paprika. She gets terrible stomach cramps at even the slightest trace. I have had to be quite forceful when ordering at restaurants. Quite direct.
Philip - I really love Michael Moorcock's 60s and 70s stuff, but I read his recent-ish semi-autobiography 'The Whispering Swarm' and it was so bad it's put me off reading anything new of his ever again.
Redartz - my main hobby is trawling through thrift shops looking for CDs [I don't keep most of them - I rip them at full resolution and give them back to charity]. And I have had many many lovely discoveries doing that.
Thanks for all the answers!
Matthew - My reaction to 'The Whispering Swarm' was the same as yours!
Phillip
Beat deal out there is SDC!!! Free, fun, and fervent followers of fandom!!! Charlz
Phillip, my Trespass shoes look nice but they are supposed to be waterproof which they aren't! Also one of the shoes has started splitting at the side but you can't notice it so I keep on wearing them - I'd assumed they were made of leather but it seems not. And the insides are lined with fabric which gets worn away over time. I bought my current pair in 2019 then bought an identical pair in 2020 which are still unused in the box. In my experience you can't beat Clark's shoes for quality - I have a pair I use only when it's raining because they are waterproof even though they weren't supposed to be. But I'm rather fussy when buying shoes and none of Clark's more recent styles appealed to me which is why I ended up buying shoes from Trespass.
Charlie, I remember some idiot leaving a comment on Lew Stringer's blog claiming that Brexit would revitalize the UK comics industry - and Lew replied by calling him deluded (which was certainly true).
Michael Moorcock's 60s and 70s stuff is a mixed bag imo. On the one hand you have books like the Runestaff series and on the other, say, 'The Condition of Muzak' or 'Byzantium Endures' (yes, I know thats early 80s, but that's close enough for me), and the rest are at various points in between.
When I was growing up he was the perfect writer to be into really, as there were appropriate Moorcock books for pretty much any age; and by association any number of areas into which he could lead you, as he did comics with Howard Chaykin, was linked with JG Ballard, and would talk up Phillip K Dick and even William Burroughs. Not to mention that he was in er, Hawkwind (perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it)
The only relatively recent thing I've read by him was an autobiographical piece in Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic mag. Which I liked.
Oh, and I heard his Live At The Terminal Cafe lp from a few years back, which wasn't actually live, but a concept album based on a mid 90s novel of his called Blood featuring (mostly) dreadful country rock. Which I did not like. At all.
-sean
Colin, I'm trying to recall whether that was me.
#notthedeludedidiocyivotedfor
-sean
Sean -
I was into the Cornelius books, and the darker fiction like Behold The Man etc. I also liked Warlords Of The Air etc.
But I never picked up an Elric or Runestaff book in my life.
I keep meaning to read ‘Byzantium Endures’ and the sequels but haven’t yet.
There’s a couple of them sitting on the shelf taunting me for currently reading pretty throwaway Dennis Lehane thrillers.
Late to the party, but here goes:
I’ve been buying old sci-fi digests on eBay and recently found a full-year set of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION that had lots of stories by authors that I like, for a very reasonable price. The Seller had posted all the covers and they all looked to be in really great shape. As an added bonus, there wasn’t a single address label to be seen (I would say the majority of sci-fi digests on the secondary markets are subscription copies, and those labels are god-awful to look at and nearly impossible to remove without damaging the cover). 12 beautiful vintage mags for about a buck-fifty each, plus postage — what a deal.
I send my money, the package arrives promptly, the mags look great…but they all smell bad. Like REALLY bad.That awful super-acidic moldy smell. Sometimes, when a deal sounds too good to be true….
b.t.
Colin - For shoes, lasting 4 years is pretty good, these days!
According to today's Sky news, Clarks is inventing the shoe of the future:
https://news.sky.com/story/the-future-of-shoes-will-it-include-foot-scans-a-gaming-engine-and-tesla-like-factories-12901075
Sean - Exercising restraint, I'll allow yourself to explain early Elric & Hawkmoon books to Matthew!
Phillip
b.t. - Just out of curiosity, do you collect Astounding/Analog?
Phillip
I could explain the early Elric and Hawkmoon books Phillip, but I'm not sure you'd be that keen on how I did it. Sorry, but Matthew has it about right on Moorcock imo.
The first Moorcock book I ever read was 'The Jewel in the Skull', which I loved at the time... but I was a kid, and it definitely did not impress me on a reread years later. Although all the anti-British stuff in it was still entertaining, obviously (;
Perhaps Granbretan has its origins in Brexit...?
-sean
Sean - What a coincidence! My first Moorcock book was 'The Jewel in the Skull', too!
Phillip
Sean - I wouldn't be offended - Moorcock isn't Dostoevsky. Explain however you see fit! To me also, Matthew's right about early Moorcock good, later Moorcock bad. However, Elric stuff reflects a personal mindset aged 20/21, that's fascinating to revisit. The Nobel prize for literature - no!
Phillip
In retrospect, the Hawkmoon books are the weakest of Moorcock's generic fantasy novels, Phillip - he's been quite open about writing them in a matter of days for the money so he could concentrate on work he was actually more interested in - and the Elric stuff is better. And 'The Eternal Champion', the actual book of that title, is quite good...?
Although I can't speak for any revised versions, and my memory could be off since I've not been keen to go back to any of the books after trying 'Jewel...' again. The closest I've got is with the recent French Elric 'graphic novel' adaptations, which are worth checking out.
The Craig Russell ones are good too, especially 'Stormbringer'.
-sean
Charlie - Just to let you know, Pete Doree's Stan & Jack is available here:
https://petedoree.bigcartel.com/product/stan-jack-1
It's a lovely little comic, full of witty caricatures of Lee, Kirby and a whole host of Bronze Age comic creators. Genuinely funny with an ever-escalating sense of lunacy. Okay, Pete's my mate so I'm biased but I really think it's worth checking out.
Ref. The Bronze Age of Blogs, Pete had a couple of "cease and desist" letters from lawyers over the amount of content he was posting. Rather than take any chances he basically deleted his entire blog. It's a real shame but understandable. A very similar thing also happened to Joe Bloke ( aka Joe Ackerman ) who also had to "disappear" his very fine blog Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures. Who remembers that one? I'm sure our host, Steve, does...
Philip:
Yes, I do. Also, GALAXY, IF, ASIMOV’S, etc.
Sean and Matthew:
For me, Moorcock is very hit-and-miss across ALL his series and genres. His various series usually start well (even Hawkmoon) but become dull and/or repetitive quickly. It’s as if he just loses interest in his characters and situations, but y’know, gotta put food in the table.
Most of the post-STORMBRINGER Elric books are weak regurgitations of familiar tropes (when they aren’t bloated WTF head-scratchers like the “Moonbeam Roads” trilogy). I love THE FINAL PROGRAMME and most of the next two Cornelius books, but after that they get way toostream of consciousness for me. THE WAR HOUND AND WORLD’S PAIN and THE WARLORD OF THE AIR are both pretty great — but the sequels to each are absolutely inessential. Etc etc.
I’ve tried reading his more “literary” books (MOTHER LONDON, BLOOD, the Col. Pyat books etc) but found them all tough going.
Simon B:
I absolutely do remember the Grantbridge Street blog, used to read it frequently, and always wondered why it disappeared so abruptly.
b.t.
Philip -
I really liked Mother London when I read it in the very late 90s. But I'm not sure if I could manage it again.
I liked 'Mother London' too - and 'Byzantium Endures' and its follow ups - but otherwise b.t. has a point, that even Moorcock's more interesting stuff can get a bit hit and miss (I'm not convinced 'The Great Rock n Roll Swindle' really needed Jerry Cornelius).
-sean
Actually, thinking about it, although I'm not so keen on some of the later Jerry Cornelius stories I would definitely read a Brexit-era new one. Jeremy Corbyn is a great Moorcock-type analogue name, isn't it?
And there's something of the Bishop Beasley about Boris Johnson...
-sean
I have a hard cutoff for JC stories - pretty much after the original quartet.
Everything after that feels really brittle: seems to be trying very hard to be the most glib, the most cynical, the most unpleasant. Which should work in the punk-era stuff but it doesn't. And 'Firing The Cathedral' was unreadable.
A Brexit JC story kind of writes itself, though. Just from your suggestions I can already see how throwaway and smartarsed a book it would be [this is a reflection on Moorcock, not you].
I don't mind some of the later stories, but you're right Matthew, Moorcock isn't the one to do it. But other people have done Jerry Cornelius stuff - he is supposed to be an 'open source' character - so it could be done in an interesting way.
Not the entropy I voted for...
-sean
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