Never Go Back
Revisiting old TV programs, computer games and other pastimes of our youth can be a fun but frivolous waste of adult time. With the advent of youtube etc, these distractions are now just a click away. But you should be careful when seeking out other areas of a misspent youth...

Way back in the day there was a video. A VHS cassette to be precise. It was owned by a certain Rob Bluett, who for a short period of time became the single most popular boy in our school. For he had come by a genuine porno flick and was the sole proprietor and fabulously wealthy owner (for a 13yr old in 1987) of a video rental business that stocked only one movie, with a waiting list to rent it of over 10 weeks.

How he obtained his poorly copied, exceptionally fuzzy version of the 1978 production, 'Inside Marilyn', was the stuff of school legend. Some say he somehow managed to get served in a Soho fleapit. Others say he grabbed it on a family holiday to the Netherlands. Whilst further opinion suggested he found it unexpectedly in a Ghostbusters box from the local Showtime Video. Whatever its origins were, he certainly made hay whilst the sun shined.

For £10 a weekend or £5 a night, Master Bluett rented his movie out to the whole school. An exceptionally organised entrepreneur, Rob kept a neat diary of who had the film, who had requested it and forward planned whole terms of advanced bookings - all detailed meticulously in a bright blue notebook. There were even rumours that some of the richer boys had paid fortunes to take Miss Marilyn home for the holidays. The school divided itself into two groups - the 'seen its' and the 'hadn't seen its'. I was desperate to ingratiate myself into the former.

And then it was my turn. I paid my £10, grabbed the cassette and hid it carefully, counting down the hours till school was out. I hit a problem immediately. The only VCR in our house was planted firmly in my parent's bedroom. The bastards would only bring it down to the TV room once a week for the supervised rental and viewing of a PG movie. So it was not until Sunday afternoon, when they finally buggered off, that I had the chance to see what all the fuss was about.

Wow. My young mind was blown. Raised on a diet of 3rd hand Playboys and the awful European films that Channel 4 used to show, hardcore pornography was an incredible, epoch-defining discovery. What a movie! It was in wonderful un-dubbed German, replete with snazzy 70's pure porno muzak. I must have watched it 10 times straight that day. But then it was Monday. And then I had to return it. But I didn't want to. No fucking way. So I created 'The Lie'.

Bluett met me at the gates, already surround by a gaggle of desperate renters, I was plied with questions: 'What was it like?' 'How many times did you do it?' 'Is it true he comes all over her face and then she swallows?' 'Will it work on Betamax?'

Bluett simply stood there, pen and notepad at the ready. 'Hand it over Marshmallow, I'll be late for double maths.'

'Um. I don't have it.'

'What? You better bring it back in tomorrow AND pay another fiver AND a fiver late fee.'

'No, you don't understand. I don't have it. No one has it. You see my dad caught me watching it. He went mental! He grabbed it, demanded I tell him where I got it and when I refused he destroyed it. He pulled out all the tape and attacked it with scissors. Its gone. Marilyn's gone.'

I'd expected what followed. A flurry of punches, kicks and even phlegm, which continued every morning for a good few days, until the mob's anger finally subsided. But I bore every bruise without pain, without fear and without anger, for she was worth it, Marilyn was worth it.

For a year I watched that movie. Soon we purchased another VCR and from 1am, when the house slept, I watched. And I watched. And I watched. My non-school friends would rush over at weekends. We'd play marathon sessions of table tennis and Monopoly, with the victor winning five long minutes alone with Marilyn.

I knew every scene. My German was excellent. I'd absorbed the names of every actor, producer and cameraman. Still to this day, there is not a movie I have seen more. But then the inevitable happened. She broke. There was a cry from the video as tape slipped off the mechanism and found its way into the machine. A horrible wrenching sound as the motor ground to a halt, stopped in its tracks by yards of precious tape. I tried but there was nothing I could do to save her. The tape had split, crunched and torn itself into multiple pieces. She was dead.

There was no burial. Just weeks of mourning. I missed her. But time is a great healer and soon I forgot her. The world was moving on. Other tapes began to circulate. Real girls were being discovered. School ended, life began and Marilyn disappeared into a dusty, dark corner of my mind.

So there I was, 25 years later, poring over accounts at 3am, when something - I have no idea what it was - brought to mind that day at the school gates and Marilyn, and the memories of the time we spent together. But this was 2013, not 1987. Memories are now preserved electronically, they can be summoned in an instant. So I searched for her.

Did I know the film name? Inside Marilyn. Did I know the star? Of course, Olinka Hardiman. Did I know the director? None other than Walter Molitor. In under three seconds I'd found her. In less than a minute I watching her again. Within five minutes, I'd died a little.

You see it just wasn't the same. Sure, it was the same film, the same scenes, the same German dialogue that I knew off by heart - but something was missing. In an instant I was whisked back to the heady days of 1987. I was 13 again in the most powerful way imaginable. All the weirdness, the awkwardness the loneliness of a teenage boy came flooding back. Anxiety over my appearance, my (then) pure hatred of my parents and younger sibling all washed over me with a dark, irremovable sickness. It shook me to the core and I lay shaking as if a time-traveling version of my younger self had appeared to mock me. All the accoutrements of my successful adult life seemed to fade and wobble. I rushed to turn it off. And slowly, thank God, the present came back into focus.

Some things are best left behind. Permanently.
( Albert Marshmallow is a completely irredeemable cunt, Wed 4 Sep 2013, 13:49, 76 replies)

Slight (as in complete) RP
When I was a nipper I had a favourite toy which was this walking robot. It stood a tall 10 inches and had a light display in it's chest. When it was powered up by some batteries it would march forward, stop, then do this light display and repeat the process. Twas not gifted with great variety, but it made alot of noise and looked cool.

One day the batteries run out. Robot noise becomes quiet plastic statue to the 4 year old. Obviously the 4 year old wants this resolved so I bring this to the attention of my father. This was my fatal mistake.

He has a look around the house for some batteries but he can't find any so instead he decided to test out something else. He opened up the battery compartment and connected a spare CAR BATTERY to the +/- points in the battery bay with some jumpleads and some wire. All is ready then dad flicks the "on" switch....

Robot noise went beserk. STAMP STAMP STAMP LIGHTS STAMP SMOKE STAMP STAMP LIGHTS STAMP FLAMES STAMP LIGHTS LIGHTS FLAMES FLAMES FLAMES....
Dad disconnected the car battery but it was too late. The robot had run straight into a wall and was currently burning itself to the skirting. He runs out to the bathroom, grabs a cup of water and soaks the melting circuit person drying it to the wall, a lump of disfigured toy with the smell of plastic death emanating from it.

"Oops....errr...sorry son." says dad, who promptly legs it. Mt mum comes upstairs to find me sitting blank-eyed looking at a black stinking skirting board pizza mess saying "Daddy broke it".
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 21:23, 2 replies)

Mine was not a well off family...
...so in the 70's and 80's when the summer holidays rolled around, that invariably meant a holiday in England. Which usually invariably meant Cornwall to us. Being from oop north, this always entailed loading the family into the knackered old car my father possessed on a Friday evening and driving south throughout the night.

Naturally expecting two young lads to sit on the backseat for hours without fighting or trying to wind each other up is wishful thinking on the part of parents everywhere, so dad would bollock us with all the colourful invective he recalled from his army days as a tank driver. So we'd sit sulking in silence. Or not silence. Because the radio had Johnny Mathis, or ELO or ABBA. To liven up the proceedings occasionally I'd vomit.

And because the first vehicle dad learned to drive was a tank, he drove everything like it was a tank, which often meant the car would break down somewhere along the line, usually because dad thought the car would go through or over things. Though we often broke down in some spectacularly pretty places, so there was that.

Cornwall has some pretty stunning beaches. But if, like me, you don't like beaches because the sun turns your milk white skin into a seething angry red torment from hell, then having to remain fully-clothed on the beach because sun lotion wasn't good enough in those days, kind of defeated the point.

Still, there were always the amusement arcades, if you'll excuse the exaggeration. Oh the thrill of putting your 1 and 2p pieces into the machine holding thousands of them and watching the shelves slide back and forth and not push any of that copper into the dispensing slot for you to collect. For a similar thrill you could always throw your money down a street grate. The best video game at the time was space invaders. Okay at the time but looking back now, Christ.

So the highlight of the trip was always going to the cinema in Newquay, which we did when it rained, which was every year. Something I could easily have done at home.

I vividly remember the first foreign holiday we had. We went to Scotland! Scotland!! It was almost exotic. We stayed on a caravan on a farm so every day smelled of cowshit. There were so many horseflies I was covered in itchy bites including, puzzlingly, on my nutsack. I had to bathe in calamine lotion so looked like Mr Blobby. A Mr Blobby whose yellow spots itched and oozed and weeped and looked like a vivid warning poster against the perils of unprotected sex.

Seriously, fuck Scotland.

As a remedy for venturing to the foreign hell which was Scotland, the next year we went to Skegness. In the days before blue flags and standards, the sewage outflow pipe from Skegness came out about twenty yards from the seas edge on the beach, which we discovered when my brother emerged from the sea like the Monster From the Black Lagoon covered in shit on day one. So we spent the entire week not going in the sea. We got really good at Swingball.

Such were our holidays I used to long for the simple pleasures of staying home and watching "Why Don't You?".

Getting my own passport and job showed me you could actually have fun on a holiday.

tl;dr - The English don't do holiday resorts well. The Scottish are worse still.
(Dildo Bugger destroyed a ring on, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 17:49, 25 replies)

Panini Football Stickers
Me and my mate Chris were reminiscing about collecting Panini football stickers, and had a moment of realisation that now we both had full time jobs, collecting the full set of football stickers would be so much easier.

A couple of £50 purchases each meant we had tonnes of stickers in the book, and a load of swaps. Of course at the age of 30, not so many swappers to swap with.

But there in the back of the sticker album was the answer - they did swap events at many football stadiums and our local one, at St James Park in Newcastel was only a week away. How we giggled, we would just go down and swap away. It would be a hoot. A funny story for the chaps and we would fill in our albums in one fell swoop

...

I have never, and will never, look more like a paedophile. We wandered around a room full of 10 year boys with our swaps for about 5mins enduring the suspicious and hostile stares of their fathers and the worried looks from the staff until we, without swapping one single sticker, sloped out of the event never ever to mention it again.
(aneraseroflove excuse me...i have to go to space now, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 17:57, 1 reply)

Well
I grew up in the West Midlands in the 1980s. My parents drove a brown Mini Metro which was starting to rust. We went on holidays to caravan parks in the UK, including one in Scotland where the outdoor pool was so cold I cried.

Once a year or so we'd have enough money to go on holiday abroad, and we'd go to the Costa Del Sol for a week, where we'd get horribly sunburnt in the day and spend the evenings in bars called things like 'Bonkers Bar' run by dodgy looking blokes called Les from Essex who'd make horrible blue cocktails in an effort to chat up underage girls (which was generally considered alright back then).

On the first non-school uniform day at big school, I wore a shell suit jacket and got punched. Other things I got in fights for during my school years included being posh (we were penniless but I didn't have strong Brummie accent because my parents weren't from there), having a Mum who was a lezza (she had short hair), and being clever (I once read a book that I didn't have to).

On a weekend, we often took a trip into Birmingham to go shopping. This was before the modern redevelopment, and it was a bit like if Hieronymous Bosch had done set design for Blade Runner. In the 1960s. With concrete as the only medium.

The highlight of a week was on a Thursday night, when we'd have takeaway curry and watch a marathon of VHS recorded episodes of the Bill.

Am I doing this right? It was genuinely a bit shit, though...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 17:48, 4 replies)

FUCK THE PAST AND FUCK THE PRESENT
I LIKED THIS SONG BACK IN 68 AND IT STILL ROCKS, BUT IT WAS THE WHOLE PACKAGE, NOT JUST THE GUITAR LICK. BUT IN 2013, FUCK SHITPANTS NUGENT. HE IS ALL TOUGH, BUT WHEN IT WAS HIS TIME T5O HAVE BULLE4TS WIZ BY HIS HEAD, HE SHIT HIMSELF HERE AT HOME. FUCK HIM AND FUCK HIS DENIALS. EVEN IF IT ISN'T TRUE, IF YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO TELL THAT STORY, NOW YOU OWN IT SHITPANTS. NO GETTING AWAY FROM IT.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:46, 17 replies)

TV itself
Not the programs - that's been covered by other users - but the technology of media delivery itself.

Imagine, if you can, a world with just three channels. Channels which only broadcast for a limited number of hours in the day; for the rest of the time there was a test-card, if you were lucky, or a blank screen with a high-pitched whine if not. I remember watching the "Information for TV Service Engineers" in the morning, simply because it was a cartoon. And the Open University programs, when there was nothing else to watch, which was large parts of the day.[1]

Now also remember that there were no DVDs or videos to buy or rent, no box sets with killer extras, no +1 channels, no catch-up services or channels endlessly repeating classic shows. Repeats themselves were frowned upon; it was seen as "cheating" for a station to re-show a program. You couldn't pause or rewind, you couldn't Sky+ the series... If you had to go out when your favourite program was on, that was it: you'd missed it. And then you couldn't join in with the discussion of the program next day at school / work. You had lost your place in the social paradigm; you were a pariah. I remember the family got stuck in traffic, and missed the first 10 minutes of the first episode of Blake's 7 -- it was probably 15 years before I finally saw those 10 minutes.

So, next time you settle down to watch the director's cut with cast commentary, while the other half catches up with their shows on their iPad next to you, and your PVR is recording the next series, send up a silent prayer to the TV Gods.

[1] Actually, the OU had a lasting effect on me: I saw the Computer Programmers sitting at the consoles in the background, sporting bushy beards and wearing denim flares, rather than suits - even though they were At Work! - and thought: Yep, that's the career for me...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Mon 2 Sep 2013, 11:39, 28 replies)

At work not so long back in the canteen
And talking to younger colleague. Looking out the window I saw a mid-80s Renault 5 park up.
"Ooh, an old Renault. Not seen one of those in years" said I. "What's yours called?"
"What?" she replied
"The advert from the 80s, the tagline was 'the new Renault 5, what's yours called?'."
"What's a Renault 5?"
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 4 Sep 2013, 10:10, 5 replies)

Only Humans Carry Their Past Around, Their Past Around
As a Time Lord (or Gallifreyan at the very least), there is no such thing as the past for me. From my privileged viewpoint, all of Time and Space exists coterminously – past, present and future – in one eternal instant. The past is the present of that moment and the future of a previous moment. The present is the past of the future and the future of the past. The future is the present of that moment and the past of a future moment. The past is also the past of a future moment, and the future is also the future of a past moment, and the present doesn’t actually exist as the present moment is always passing from the past into the future (or the future into the past, depending on your point of view). That isn’t even taking into account all 93 dimensions. Wibbly wobbly, bollocky wollocky and so on and so forth.

A further problem exists when one considers the phenomenon – or phenomenomenon – of nostalgia; as a being who experiences time coterminously, I cannot experience ‘nostalgia’ as the past does not subjectively exist for me. Everything is a good or as bad as it ever was, is, or is likely to be.

Therefore, this week’s question is meaningless to me.

That won’t stop me answering it, though, if I consider ‘the past’ to be a segment of my own personal timeline existing at a reverse tangent to my present temporal juncture as a hyperplexoid polychronic interface within the time vortex yielding a magnifactoid switchback hysteresis which subtends to a gravitic accelerator linked to my Artron energy signature.

I can thus examine my memories of any segment of this ‘personal past’ and ascertain my current feelings towards it, and, if they are positive, check the veracity of said feelings by examining the segment as it actually happened through my Time/Space Visualiser, and then identify any disconnect between my memories of the segment and its actuality, and conclude if the resulting dissonance constitutes a counterbalance to the positive feeling – or ‘nostalgia’, if you will – that I now experience. I can then also examine the segment against my current node-state and identify if there are any material differences between them to ascertain if I am actually better off ‘now’ than I was ‘then.’

Okay. Running examinations now… downloading results…

Interesting!

It seems that a period of my prior personal timeline – I’ll say ‘past’ to make it simpler for you apes - that best meets the definitions of this week’s question is the five years I spent on the colony planet of Arketoria. My current feelings towards this segment are – or were until I ran this experiment – positive, as I helped a lot of people, had some great sex and made many cakes.

But the reality, as examined through my Time-Space Visualiser, was somewhat different...

Arketoria was a tough planet, with an arctic climate like northern Alaska. High velocity winds, blizzards and earthquakes were common. Precipitation was low, the soil was arid, water scarce – it really was an inhospitable shithole. Yet the colonists were tough and set about establishing a settlement in the form of a town called Destiny, basically a cluster of steel huts surrounding an atmosphere converter (you know – like the one in Aliens, in fact very similar, James Cameron got that spot on).

I arrived there ten years after the establishment of Destiny. I was fleeing from the Oabex-Mengoxtra conflict where I was acting as personal military consultant to the Feag Mengoxtra itself. Things had got pretty hairy during an Oabex bombardment of the Mengoxtran Battle Moon Foowounga, and I had become separated from my TARDIS. I escaped from Foowounga in a lifepod together with a young Mengoxtran female called Oooalaquaia, who sadly did not survive long (naughty old me!). After I’d cleaned myself up, I managed to soup up this pod to warp me halfway across the galaxy. Thus I ended up on Arketoria.

I crash-landed a hundred miles from Destiny and somehow managed to walk the entire distance, honing in on the psychospoor of the 125 surviving colonists. By the time I arrived at the settlement I was close to death and on the point of regeneration – but those good people took me in, fed and watered me despite their lack of resources, and I was soon nursed back to full health. During this incarnation, my third, I was a strikingly handsome male of about fifty years of age in appearance with short jet black hair and piercing blue eyes. I must have looked like a god to that rag-tag bunch of terraformers. They’d suffered over the last decade – disease, famine, feuds and murders had all took their toll. They’d lost almost a third of their number. They were glad of another able body to help around the place, and, feeling nothing but gratitude towards my saviours, I made myself as useful as possible. Of course, during those first days I sent the usual tesseract to the High Council requesting they locate and return my TARDIS to me. The response was immediate but abrupt: ‘Pending.’ So there I was stuck there on Arketoria with all these colonists. To take my mind off the wait I truly threw myself into my work. Firstly I sorted out their irrigation system and then constructed a more sensitive earth tremor detector to give them all ample warming to get into the shelters before quakes struck.

Then I opened a cake shop. My Battenburgs, Black Forest Gateaux and cheesecakes – made from the mini food machine I carried – took the Arketorians’ minds off their sorry plight, however briefly.

I took a wife and several lovers, of all sexes, and they were glad to give themselves to me, however sadistic my tendencies. I did not indulge myself fully in my fantasies of torture (which would come to fruition in my next incarnation) but I did slap a few of them about a bit. They seemed to enjoy it though.

One day the food machine ran out of raw material and that was a dark day for Destiny. No more cakes! Luckily, I had a fine singing voice and put on shows for the colonists singing hits from Olde Earth like We Built This City On Rock And Roll, Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, Eat Y’Self Fitter and Atmosphere (the Russ Abbott one, not the other one).

An even darker day dawned when a brace of Sontaran battle cruisers landed on the planet. We had no way of standing up to their might, so we were fucked. Fortunately, the Sontaran Commander deemed Arketoria to be of no strategic military importance, so after stomping around in the dust and shouting a bit, the potato headed clone cunts fucked off.

Worse was to come – for the Arketorians, that is. Yes, you guessed it – Daleks! Those bastards aren’t fussed about military strategy, they just want to destroy anything and everything humanoid. I woke up one morning to the sound of shrieks, screams, sizzling energy bolts and metallic cries of ‘EXTERMINATE!’ and I knew instantly that Destiny was doomed – and so was I. I must admit I sobbed and whimpered and cowered on the floor of my shack, meekly waiting for the end. Then, to my intense amazement, a familiar wheezing, groaning sound reached my disbelieving ears and my TARDIS materialised before my eyes, in the form of a giant banana with a zip down the side, and the words ‘Here you are you Shobogan tosser’ emblazoned on the banana skin in glowing neon pink tubing.

Did I hesitate, did I pause, did I think, ‘hang on, better see if I can save any of my Arketorian friends’? Did I bollocks. I unzipped that giant banana and was inside in a flash. My hearts sang with joy to see my old familiar coral-blue console room and I dematerialised the fuck out of Arketoria and deleted the banana configuration from my Chameleon Circuit, restoring the outer plasmic shell of my TARDIS to its default setting (a small Napoleonic fort).

As for the Arketorians, well, I can only conclude that they were all exterminated, each and every one. Unless, of course, that other Doctor in his ridiculous outmoded Type 40 turned up and saved them. I never checked. I could now I suppose, using my Time-Space Visualiser...

...hang on...

...no, he didn’t. They all died.

Ah well.

And so, having examined this segment of my personal past, I can conclude the following:

1. My current feelings towards this segment of my personal past are (or were) positive, as I spent the time helping people, making cakes, singing songs, having great sex and fixing irrigation systems.

2. The actuality of the segment, as examined through my Time-Space Visualiser, is that it was a stressful, arduous period of my life where I was trapped in a cheerless shithole at the mercy of Sontarans, Daleks and the weather, just twiddling my thumbs waiting for my TARDIS to turn up. The cakes, songs and sex were brief distractions, and if I am honest the sex wasn’t that great with those poor stringy undernourished Arketorians.

3. There is therefore clear dissonance between my memories of the segment and the actuality; therefore, ‘nostalgia’ has distorted my memories of this segment of my personal past.

4. Examining the material difference between this segment of my personal past and my current node state, it is plainly obvious that I am miles better off ‘now’ than I was ‘then.’

Therefore, to sum up: yes, the past (or this particular segment of my own personal timeline existing at a reverse tangent to my present temporal juncture as a hyperplexoid polychronic interface within the time vortex yielding a magnifactoid switchback hysteresis which subtends to a gravitic accelerator linked to my Artron energy signature) was a bit shit.
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Mon 2 Sep 2013, 22:39, 19 replies)

Fool Circle.
*This may or may not have happened. Sadly the theme is somewhat true.*
My mate Tobey is a nice, gentle fellow. Caring and nurturing, he's always worked hard and done the very best to look after his family. Including his parents and grandparents (whom he was very close to as they helped raise him and his sister whilst his parents were out at work). Particularly his Grandma Ethel.
After many years of hard slog and finally getting a promotion and some tidy bonuses Tobey and his missus Dianne decided they wanted to move out of their palatial 5 bed, 2 bathroom home with yard and swimming pool in their gated suburban community to closer to the inner city lifestyle. It would be expensive, cramped and their two kids would have to be uprooted from their schools and friends but Tobey would have much less of a commute and they could go to a fancy coffee house just around the corner.
In short Tobey and Dianne are wannabe hipster douches. Wannabe's because most hipster douches are younger and don't have kids. Put it this way - after years of being a fellow FPS gamer with me Tobey, on Dianne's extensive technical advice (all the other mum's at playgroup had iPhones) and his entire family "went Apple."
Yeah.

But anyhoo aside from that they found a place in North Perth. It was only 3 bedrooms and 1 toilet/bathroom/laundry. On a piece of land much, much smaller than their suburban block - no yard to speak of. It had been renovated about 10 years earlier and cost about AU$400,000 more than they were going to get for their old house. It was about 3 doors up from where Tobey's grandparents had raised his parents (before they had become more affluent and moved out to the suburbs - where they could afford bigger houses and more land). Oh, and the cafe strip was 'walking with a pram distance'. So they put their place on the market 'subject to sale' and headed off to their bank to talk mortgages.
About 6 mths. later Tobey decided to pick up his grandma Ethel from her nursing home on her 92nd birthday and take her home to show off where they lived. Now Ethel was old and infirm but still as sharp as a tack. So there her and Tobey were sitting on their narrow veranda enjoying some wine spritzers after lunch when Grandma leant over and said to Tobey,
"Where are all the children?"
Thinking he meant her great-grandkids he said -"Oh, inside on the wii."
"When we lived here you couldn't drive down this street quickly for the number of kids playing in it - including your parents. There seems to be a few young families nearby. So, where aren't the children outside playing?" she asked.
"Oh", said Tobey catching on. "Their parents are too scared."
"Scared of what?" Ethel asked.
"Umm - pedos, strangers, people hooning in cars, drug dealers, prostitutes. You know all the things that happen in an inner city 'burb nan." said Tobey absent-mindedly.

"So you're telling me you moved from your big house in a suburb where only the people who lived there were welcome, where you had a much bigger house, yard and you had a pool. To this place which cost you more and where you are too scared to let your kids out the front door because of all the deros?" asked Ethel.
"Well, yes." said Tobey.
"Tobey, you're an idiot." said his nan.

tl;dr - Can you remember as a kid being told to "make sure you're home in time for dinner"?
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Sat 31 Aug 2013, 7:05, 18 replies)

the 1970's were a wonderful enchanting time for me
that was my childhood decade. As soon as we got into the 1980's my wide-eyed childhood innocence had gone, spoiled forever with a decade's worth of strikes, umemployment, greed, hairspray and lamborghini shoulder pads. The 1970's should be a time I can look back with fond memories of "It's A Knockout", "Seaside Special" and "Jim'll Fix It". "Top of The Pops" with Dave Lee Travis, Gary Glitter, Jonathan King and the Jackson Five.

Is it a decade I can now look back on with fond memories?? Is it fuck!! - all my memories are spoiled, tainted, defiled forever.

I would have still been able to look back with great fondness of the 1970's if it hadn't have been for those pesky kids keeping all that fiddling a secret. They all knew it was wrong but did they stop a bobby in the street and tell them what was going on, like all the public service adverts on telly told them too? Did they fuck, they just let it go on and on and on and on in secret. Don't tell me they didn't see all those "Charlie Says" on the telly - they were on every 5 minutes. But no, they all kept it to themselves for 40 years on purpose just to spoil my notstalgia. Well I hope all their teeth fell out from all the sweets they accepted from all those popstars in cars, the selfish fuckers!
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 16:44, 6 replies)

Dial-up internet paid for by the minute.
Whenever I hear people bleating that they can't get a reliable 80 Meg download speed from their shitty ecoshack up in the arse end of some mountain in some fucked up part of Wales it makes my blood boil.

When I first started using the interwebs I had a 14.4k modem that would take 5 minutes to download half an image of Lindsey Dawn McKenzie's tits before giving up because invariably my girlfriend had decided to call her mum on the downstairs phone - which cut off the modem. While she was blathering on to her mother on about pottery mugs or whatever other shit she'd gibber on about I had to sit upstairs with a slowly diminishing semi.

And for the privelege of this we got to pay BT for every minute we were connected. When my girlfriend and I were hooked on Ultima Online we were sometimes online for 4 or 5 hours a night. Our quarterly phone bill was often over £300.

I remember the glee when NYNEX cable did a deal that you could make a local weekend phonecall for as long as you liked for 50p.

Demon Internet's local telephone number in my town: 01625 509666 - 3 day long phonecalls, bitches.

....aaaand relax
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 9:57, 3 replies)

The Past was a bit shit because.....
"In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us
modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of
moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors
stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma
of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the
tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and
unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions,
and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour
milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank
beneath the bridges and in the palaces.The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his
master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion,
and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to
hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or
destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench."
(Patrick Suskind)
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 15:58, 4 replies)

It used to be
that if a growing boy wanted to see norks he had to find an old jizz mag somewhere, most likely one found under a bush in a park or something similar, and wank to weather-beaten photos that might well have someone's muck on them besides. (Or worse.)

Now a quick Google image search will turn up anything that your Rule 34 twisted little minds can imagine, and the only muck you have to worry about coming into contact with is that of whoever else uses that computer. (Protip- don't use your parents' computer. Just don't.)

EDIT: in case I wasn't clear enough, don't make your parents' keyboards sticky, and also don't send them to their graves with the images of what you've been Googling for when they happen to look at the History, you grotty little sex pests.
( Wanderer, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:49, 3 replies)

"Rewind to start of Side 2 and press play"
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(McChinaman banned, Wed 4 Sep 2013, 11:28, 4 replies)

The covers of computer games
were so much better. They promised so much.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 4 Sep 2013, 10:05, 13 replies)

Watching the last Ashes Test when my daughter wanders into the room.
"Who are we playng."

"Australians" I reply.

"Oh. We always beat them."
(Brigadier an old boot sitting on a man's face - forever, Wed 4 Sep 2013, 7:56, 19 replies)

Long time lurker 1st time poster...
And apologies in advance for lack of length and funnies, be gentle!

The past may have been shit for a lot of reasons; due to once being a child/teen I remember not having a disposable income, not having a car, not having any plans for the future or anything in particular to look forward to. But it was when I was over a friends house about 2 years ago that I heard the line I'll never forget. (And apologies again in advance as it wasn't the most profound or funny thing ever mentioned, it just stuck with me).

We were both bored on a slow Sunday with not much to do, no one we knew was around that weekend and we were pretty poor it being late in the month, but not late enough for Wage Fun Times. He just said "you know when we were younger we never had to sit and think of things to do involving money or anything like that. Just hanging around together was enough". And it's true. When we were younger we could waste hours trying to hit the telephone lines with stones or throwing balls (behave!) at each other in the fields or a hundred other seemingly inane activities. But as we got older it became less socially acceptable to do that and we were more inclined to spend time (and wages/dole money) in the pub.

Although that's not to say they ever stopped being fun we just, kind of, grew out of doing that all the time.

*runs away before being shouted at over the interwebs for time wasting etc*
(Panzerfaust, Wed 4 Sep 2013, 1:13, 11 replies)

Star Wars.
It's not actually that good.

Carrie Fisher is average-looking.

Darth Vader isn't that cool.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 8:53, 47 replies)

1976
Everyone old enough to have been alive in the decade that fashion forgot bangs on at every opportunity about the long hot summer of 1976 when we played in the hot sun from dawn till dusk, without a care in the world.

The truth for me was that I spent most of that summer indoors, with itchy, puffy eyes and a nose that somehow managed to be both blocked and running at the same time. Oh, the joys of hayfever.

Later in the summer, once going outside was bearable, we did of course enjoy the company of a bumper crop of wasps, those winged bastards who delight in scaring perfectly rational people into acting like small children, or windmills, and then stinging anyone that looks at them a bit funny.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Mon 2 Sep 2013, 22:17, 12 replies)

hmmmm.....
I would have to say Carlton Television.

We loved Westward, and TSW for Gus Honeybun, then Westcountry took over - which was disappointing but at least they were still local. then the kings of shitemasters Carlton took over our beloved ITV station. apparently having our local news broadcast from Bristol (we live in Cornwall) is fine. and then you have ITV complaining that the audience figures have dropped in Devon and Cornwall by over 70%!

What the frigg thought that moving our local news to over 140 miles away we would just sit there and take it? we all started to watch Spotlight on the BBC instead (which now coincidently has the highest percentage viewing figures of all the regional BBC news shows.

rant over.
(TIMBIonline available for any passing drunk sailor, Sat 31 Aug 2013, 18:33, 17 replies)

I was in the bath with Sean Lock the other day. We bathe together on a regular basis and the main
reason is for me to make sure that he does not go wallow in the idea that his best years are in fact behind him.

"Rastacise, was genius." I says to him. "The whole 15 storeys high and the radio show were brilliant."

Week in and week out, him offering encouragement. However, the other week things started to go a bit strange. It was about the point when the bath water starts to become less than body temperature, a bit grey, the Mr Matey isn't as foamy and conversation has come to an end.

"The 8 out of 10 cats does countdown needs a rethink," I proposed, as a conversation.

"Why?" says Sean.

"Well, that Joe Wilkinson is to say the least dated and I am not sure the nation is grabbing onto his bosom nor indeed is he clutching the nation's bosom."

At which point, Sean stands up and I clearly see his urethra start to open and spiralling out of the urethra comes what I can only describe as piss. Sean had accidentally pissed in the bath and because I was so shocked my mouth was agape and his piss went in my mouth.

We laughed about it later but our hearts weren't truly into the laughter. I cancelled the next bath night and instead went to Chariots II and watched old re-runs of unsatisfying gay pornography on the large screen plasma.

Washed up old comedians will never trump iniquitous visits to gay saunas with re-runs of old pornographic films starring Aidan Shaw.
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 23:13, 1 reply)

The middle school approach to gym nakedness
Youth was nerve-wracking, full of abrupt demands to comply with irrational rules. I remember the transition from elementary to middle school as being particularly worrisome. In elementary school, recess was carefree, but in middle school, physical activity was more regimented. I worried about showering with other boys. What good could come from that? I lost sleep over it.

First came the gym clothes. We were required to purchase clothing and write our names on it using magic marker. Since the ink bled, the letters had to be large to be legible, but of course, the larger the letters, the shorter the name had to be. Planning the damned thing was hard. And no mistakes either.

Then there was the jock strap. I didn't know such exotic semi-clothing even existed, but to protect our precious balls, we were required to wear one. The arse, of course, was fully-exposed.

The locker room was a dark warren of lockers packed with smelly, sweaty clothing, lorded over by my classmates, a pack of baboons. Resembled the opening of "2001: A Space Odyssey", excepted that they were all hairless.

The first day of gym class, I stripped down, and carefully put on the jock strap. The locker room fell silent. I looked around and realized everyone's mouth was agape. Despite the clear written requirement, no one else had actually complied and bought a jock strap. Everyone else had briefs. I was the only one with an exotically-exposed arse. Much hooting from the baboons.

The shower was a nightmare too. I had a protruding breast bone from inadequate calcium nutrition when I was three, and it attracted attention. At one point, I was the target of a towel-snapping attack by a cluster of naked baboons. I lunged to grab a towel, missed, and grabbed the baboon leader's bollocks instead. Which led to much more hooting and an accelerated attack.

These days, if I want physical activity, I go to aerobics classes full of exotically-dressed women. Better for the psyche.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 19:05, 2 replies)