Examples of Crap I Waste My Money On: Bootsale Report 10!*

This week’s wander through waves of other people’s unwanted consumer goods was slightly marred by me having another fucking cold, old lawn ornaments and dusty porcelain loses some of their sheen when you’re feeling like utter crap - but it was self-inflicted suffering so I expect no sympathy, I wouldn’t give it if it was you. Anyway the big news was…The Dirty Stall was back! And this time I remembered to take a picture of (some of) it:

This is most of the action figure section (there’s one more row or so), the rest of the stall stretches to the right, a van’s worth and then at least this again but filled with video games, including a box of Japanese SNES carts, bit weird. I would have taken a lovely dramatic shot of the whole thing but I felt really self-conscious and this was the amount of stall I could fit in while hiding behind the stallholder’s van. I’m really behind this stall, for the third week in a row it’s turned a good bootsale into a great one and every week he’s had new stock, where does he get it from and more importantly, how does he get it so dirty in the small amount of days he has it? Does he just live in a place where it does nothing but rain topsoil and catshit? And if so (and in certain parts of Wales that’s entirely possible) why does he leave his stock out in the open? Anyway (again) here’s the haul:

Not especially impressive, though this does cut out the four books and two bags filled with Crazy Bones because I got indecisive about framing and shit, I get very uncertain when ill, Still the Edgar!Bug, She-Spawn and DragonFlyz figure (Fryte) made the trip worthwhile, throw in a bunch of possibly racially offensive sharks, Bam Bam Bigelow AND a Clefairy and it’s hard to grumble. If I always seem too happy and pathetically chuffed in these posts, it’s cos I am – getting Corps figures for 50p each genuinely makes me pleased with life.

The Long and Winding Five Nights At Freddy's 2.0*

It’s really time to update my Long and Winding Five Nights at Freddy’s post. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location and its DLC has…added and changed the way we see the implied story-line in the FNAF games, to say the least. So once again I’ve spent a lot of time on YouTube, Steam, the Five Nights at Freddy’s wikis and now, TV Tropes – which is surprisingly helpful. There will be many unmarked spoilers ahead, you have been warned, I am wearing pants though, so that’s good.

Five Nights At Freddy’s is a franchise based around a chain of family restaurants – Pizzerias to be precise – that use animatronic anthropomorphic animals heavily reminiscent of Nolan Bushnell’s Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and it’s old rival (and current owner) ShowBiz Pizza Place. The first and second games take place at two separate Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza locations, the third a theme park attraction based on those restaurants, the fifth the storage and showrooms for Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental and the fourth in a house of a child who was injured at a restaurant. Each game is a point-and-click indie survival horror game and although the exact methods differ between the four games they all share the same simple gameplay and goal – use what you have to keep yourself from being killed by the animatronics, though from Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (FNAF2) small bonus mini-games in the style of the Atari 2600 home video game console were added to give more of the backstory of the franchise (and further scare players). All five games were created and developed by Scott Cawthon and are available for PC (via things like Steam) and iOS.

Examples of Crap I Waste My Money On: Bootsale Report 9!*

I have painted so many fences, I have painted so many fences I now resent fences, I have painted so many fences I close my eyes and see fences, I have painted so many fucking fences that three and a half hours of walking ‘round a dustbowl looking at other people’s unwanted tat felt like a long soak in a hot bath. I am so dusty; I look like a half licked Cheeto.

Today’s bootsale experience started off looking far from promising, it was cold and gloomy and below average size and I felt like dogshit, passing out levels of feeling shit, it came on pretty much as soon as I arrived - but by half ‘way round the sun was shining, I’d had a shitty burger (I’m the only person for whom market food heals rather than ills it seems, well the only person who gets this reaction when they’re sober anyway) and I left with three carrier bags full of dirty toys and a happy feeling, and dust up/in every-fucking-where.

While your thoughts on Space Precinct may ultimately be the decider here as far as I’m concerned there’s no duds to be found, sure that’s just a cheap hollow plastic Pokémon just under the Warlord’s left hand but it’s also Octillery:  a fucking bazooka octopus, there’s never buyer’s remorse with a bazooka octopus. Now let’s waste a thousand words or two talking about some of them in some more depth eh? And as always I know that what I’m about to spotlight is nowhere near the best items in that picture, that DragonFlyz figure? I wasn’t even sure it was released; the dinosaur bloke next to The Sandman? Never seen one in person before in four years of buying, that Valiant annual is from 1973? it’s old enough to be a grandfather – but fuck that, let’s talk about Page 3 Girls and Playmobil, so are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin:

Haunted Pokemon*

I haven’t had a chance to really rave about Pokémon on here, which is strange and sad because I fucking LOVE Pokémon, in the League of Things I Obsess Over it’s only slightly below the joint champions of Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’ve been with the franchise since Generation 1, well since Red & Blue came out in the UK anyway, we were – typically – late in getting Pokémania (but dammit we made up for lost time with millions of pounds, outraged teachers and the odd stabbing) and haven’t missed a Generation since. Amongst my various other interests? Ghosts, derelict buildings and the horror genre, these I have no made a secret of on here. Funnily enough, as this is called ‘Haunted Pokémon’ these two interests all intersect in one big excuse for me to talk about Pokémon. Hopefully if you existed and were reading this you’d have a passing knowledge of Pokémon and know that the game is an RPG with battles based around an elemental game of rock-paper-scissors using Types (Fire Type, Electric Type, Steel Type etc.) and would know that Ghost is one of those types, or at least remember the episode of the cartoon with Haunter in it. If not, then I’ve just told you this so it’s all good, let’s move on, because you see Ghost Type animals need a habitat and that leads to the Pokémon world being littered with creepy places – places of rest, haunted houses, supermarkets, the Pokémon world is fucking filled with scary places and I’m going to pick one from each generation of games and/or their remakes and chat about them for two paragraphs apiece. That’s what this post is about so are you sitting comfortably? then I’ll begin:  

Examples of Crap I Waste My Money On: Bootsale Report 8!*

Bootsale season has begun again! Dunton Bootsale - my favourite haunt for other people’s crap – is back on! How was it? Big, motherfucking big in fact, I had my suspicious (I’m criminally sad remember?) we might be looking at a nice size bootsale; very good weather was predicted, it was very good weather the day before, the kids are on school holiday (something about some bloke being killed with a cross and buns and eggs by a giant rabbit or something like that? I dunno) and it’s very early in the season but fucking hell it was so big it was ‘on the other side’ *gasp!*. It wasn’t a ghost bootsale, it just means that they couldn’t physically cram any more sellers onto the regular half of the massive field they use and had to start using the other side of it, where the cars usually park, when Dunton Bootsale is on the other side, it’s at its healthiest with the number of stalls legitimately into four figures.

It was dusty, it was hot, it was dusty, there was no clouds, no cover, it was dusty, there was a 30 minute wait if you wanted to pee, did I mention it was dusty? Crying children, shouting stallholders (everyone knows the best way to break the language barrier is to say the exact same thing they didn’t understand the first time again, but this time much louder) and the smell of Eastern European bald spots sizzling in the sun. But I was upbeat (a rarity for me), I’ve spent a solid 7 days in bed having gotten so run down both physically and mentally all I could do was sleep and watch Midsomer Murders while living on chocolate, Night Nurse and anti-depressants so I was raring to be anywhere, but especially at a huge bootsale, hopeful that I could start the season off right with a decent selection of dirty old stuff, I overachieved:

Seriously my ‘haul’ (and hall, actually, as that’s where they currently are – just by the phone table) includes Spawn’s boss, Skeletor’s pet velociraptor¹ and Killer Croc – when you can say that those represent only a fraction of the stuff you brought home with you, you have gone well past the point of ‘decent selection’. Everything was insanely cheap too, like pre-eBay days cheap, Malebolgia there was a fiver but he was an anomaly that completely messes up the figures, nothing else was over £3 and most of it was under £2, bags of stuff for 25p, Ninja Turtles for a £1, it was just like old times, god I’m knackered and so, so dirty. And no I’m not going to explain that Tomb Raider in her bra and knickers because, at the moment, I actually can’t.     

Quick Crappy Review: Mattel DC Comics Multiverse Suicide Squad Katana*

To put it mildly I didn’t like the Suicide Squad film, to put it truthfully I fucking hate the new Suicide Squad film. Some of that’s on me and inability to let go of the John Ostrander era (the film owes as much to the Nu52 Suicide Squad as it does anything else) but a lot of it’s on them for making yet another dark, disappointing and horrible DC movie, Christopher Nolan has a lot to answer for. I liked ‘Boomerang, I hated the Joker, Killer Croc has had so many looks and personalities it’s really impossible to do him ‘wrong’ and it was basically a Batman spin-off film. And yet I bought an action figure from it, why? Well because I really like Katana’s costume in it, it’s an evolution of her weird robot-like Nu52 redesign, approximating it using street clothes because DC is terrified anyone will figure out that one of their superhero films is a superhero film, but it works and for me this is the first time Katana looks as badass as she’s supposed to be, devoid of the awkward sleepwear Red and Yellow costumes of her Outsiders days or the soulless and uneven robotic Nu52 look.