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The Consumer

The Consumer Category

We bring you the chic and unique, the best and most bizarre shopping offers both online and offline. We offer you tips on where to buy, and some of the less mainstream and crazy, individual and offbeat items on the internet. Anything that can be bought and sold can be featured here. And we love showcasing the best and worst art and design.

The scandal of Motorway coffee costing more

motorway service station coffee

 

The Daily Mail has noticed that a coffee at a motorway services station costs more from McDonalds, Costa or KFC than it does from the same outlets not at a motorway services station. The explanation for this is really very simple – rent – and it’s the one explanation that we’re not given. Which is a pity because it is a very simple explanation.

Breaking up your journey with a coffee stop at a motorway service station? You may find it breaks the bank too.

An investigation has found that roadside stores charge up to 28 per cent more for a medium latte – costing motorists an extra 74p compared with the high street.

How desperately awful, eh?

Breaking up your journey with a coffee stop at a motorway service station? You may find it breaks the bank too.

An investigation has found that roadside stores charge up to 28 per cent more for a medium latte – costing motorists an extra 74p compared with the high street.

We’re given varied reasons for this, including the station operators claiming that it’s more expensive to operate such stations than general run of the mill services so therefore prices are higher. But it’s why costs are higher than matters and that’s rent.

The basic underlying story here goes all the way back to the very dawn of economics when David Ricardo published his book on rent, in 1817. If you can produce more crop from a piece of land then the rent on it will be higher than land that produces less. We can say the same thing by insisting that the cost of the land will be higher where there’s more money to be made. A third way of saying just that same thing is that the landlord always gets a chunk of whatever can be produced from a piece of land.

This is actually why Starbucks was making no profit – thus paying no tax – a few years back. They had lots of leases on lots of buildings that would be good to sell coffee out of. Because the landlords get a piece of that action places good to sell coffee out of have higher rents. Starbucks wasn’t making a profit selling lots of coffee but the landlords were doing just fine.

But that’s where there are lots of shops around. Starbucks couldn’t raise the price of coffee in those expensive places because if they did then we’d go to the one around the corner. Where prices were lower because they were paying less rent. That landlord’s share was thus coming out of Starbucks profits, not ours, the customers.

Now replay the same game but where there isn’t another shop just around the corner. We all know that lots of money can be made running a services station. Once people have decided to go there they’re a rather captive market though. So rents are high. But instead of those high rents coming out of the profits of the operators, they come out of our pockets in the form of higher prices. Because once we’re there we cannot go to another coffee shop.

There is no solution to this either. Just because there are only so many service stations, and once we stop at one we’re going to be doing our buying there, there’s lots of money to be had from running a service station. That means high rents – and that will, because of the lack of competition, lead to higher prices.

It really is all there in Ricardo’s book from 1817. It’s about time everyone understood it too, isn’t it? Two centuries being long enough?

Image: The Drive of Our Lives – The Heyday of the Motorway Service Station

 

Posted: 8th, May 2018 | In: Key Posts, Money, News, The Consumer | Comment


Subbuteo and the FA still still women’s football as a marketing gimmick

subbuteo-women game

 

In readiness for the 2018 Women’s FA Cup final between Chelsea and Arsenal, Subbuteo have produced a limited edition first all-female set. Marzena Bogdanowicz, the FA’s head of marketing and commercial for women’s football, tells us:

This new, all-female Subbuteo set is a reflection of the rapid growth that women’s football is seeing in the UK right now.

It is? Does anyone still play Subbuteo?

We aspire to greater equality all the way from board games to boardrooms, and every day we are striving to transform the future of the women’s game on and off the pitch.

 

The very first #Subbuteo advert ever seen in #Shoot! 1969-08-16

Subbuteo advert – Shoot! magazine – 1969

 

James Walker, of Hasbro, which make the table-top football game, adds:

We are incredibly excited to work with the FA to place focus on female footballers in this special edition of Subbuteo. Subbuteo has a rich heritage that reflects the nation’s love of football and this all-female playset is recognition of the vital role that women’s football has in our culture.

This is a little undermined by the fact that the set is not being offered for sale. You can only get it via competitions on the FA’s social media channels. The feeling is that Hasbro and the FA see women’s football not as a viable sport, rather as an opportunity to blow their own horns about equality, and that ‘women’s football’ is something apart from ‘football’.

Posted: 3rd, May 2018 | In: Arsenal, Chelsea, News, Sports, The Consumer | Comment


Age of Abstinence: Tesco makes bottles smaller to charge more for your wine

It’s not exactly a surprise that food portions are getting smaller. Public Health England is insisting that we should all be eating less, drinking less. We should all be having less fat, less sugar, less alcohol. So, what is a supermarket or food producer to do? Some things just cannot be made with less salt – it’s essential to make bread rise for example. And there’s really not that much point in an energy drink like Lucozade if it doesn’t contain any sugar. Nor, obviously, booze if it doesn’t contain any booze.

So, what to do? Why, just make the package size smaller of course! Which is exactly what Tesco is doing with it’s own brand wines:

One of Britain’s biggest supermarkets has announced shock plans to make wine bottles smaller.

A new 50cl bottle contains the equivalent of four or five glasses of wine while a 37.5cl one – half the size of a standard sized bottle – holds three or four.

It means shoppers will be able to crack open their favourite tipple without being tempted to drink a full sized bottle.

Well, OK, those for whom own brand Tesco wine is a favourite tipple – rather than an any port in a storm sup – have their own problems. And the idea that a half bottle holds four glasses is true only of those who serve in sherry glasses. Actually, I’ve found that full bottles of sherry can hold only six glasses but there may be an influence of journalists and booze occurring there.

It is however The Sun which manages to get things entirely wrong here. For it’s not just smaller portions leading to less consumption going on. There’s also the manner in which things become more expensive:

The 50cl bottles are cheaper – the Rioja Reserva is £6.25 and 75cl is £8.50. But it remains to be seen whether shoppers will be tempted by the slimmer containers.

Well, no, the smaller bottles are more expensive. The full bottle size is 1.5 times the 50 cl one. 1.5 times £6.25, some quick mental maths, umm, £9.3750 for the same amount of booze we can get in the 75 cl bottle for £8.50. That’s more expensive, right? 87.5 pence more expensive in fact, and to pull out the calculator, that’s 10.3% more expensive.

Which is why we’re not hearing all that many complaints from the supermarkets about the insistences of PHE. For PHE have indeed said that their demands that we all have access to less sugar, less fat, less booze, can be met by portions becoming smaller. Without the correct reductions in price to take account of how we’re getting less. The supermarkets love this, they get to sell us less food at not a correctly less price, that means profit! And everyone else has to do the same because it’s the public health wallahs insisting upon it.

The worst part about this rip off is that we’re paying for it through our taxes. Yup, you pay taxes, I do, to pay for Public Health England, who then demand that the supermarkets make our booze and sweeties more expensive. Be easier and simpler, surely, to bypass the bureaucracy and w all just eat and drink what we want, no?

Posted: 1st, May 2018 | In: News, The Consumer | Comment


Margaret Calvert creates Women At Work

Margaret-Calvert-Woman-At-Work

 

Margaret Calvert has produced her first print. Called Woman at Work, the print riffs on her fonts for British Rail and designs for the UK’s road signs with, such as ‘Man at Work’ – that silhouette of a man digging inside red-rimmed triangle.

Calvert has said of the man digging: “Man having difficulty with a large umbrella… Of course, once you see that, it just looks like a large umbrella, but I don’t mind that.”

“Not every project I’ve been involved in turns out as brilliantly as my Woman at Work print,” says Margaret, “having started life as an abandoned roadworks sign (jokingly referred to as a man having difficulty with a large umbrella) and ending up as a painting in the Royal Academy’s 2008 Summer exhibition. Now translated into a magnificent print by the superb skills of Matthew Rich, giving it a completely new dimension. The experience of working with the Jealous team has been inspirational.”

Spotter: It’s Nice That, Flashbak

Prints at www.jealousgallery.com

 

Posted: 28th, April 2018 | In: The Consumer | Comment


This might be the greatest bodywash commercial of all time


Japan raise the bar for soap and bodywash stuff. (Although I did think the supebaddie wold mutate into mom).

Posted: 27th, April 2018 | In: The Consumer | Comment


These standing seats are the plane travel of the grim future

Aviointeriors

 

No worries if you didn’t book a seat on your budget airline and don’t fancy the scramble to get one. This is the Skyrider 2.0 saddle seat, positioned by Italy’s Aviointeriors at “the new frontier of low-cost tickets”. The new frontier looks a lot like standing.

On the plus side, travellers sat on something that looks like those plastic mantlepieces you get to ‘rest’ on at bus stops need not worry about deep-vein thrombosis, biting their knees and asking other people to move. The Boston Globe says the Skyrider 2.0 (an upgrade on the Skyrider 0.0 (cross-legged on the floor) and the Skyrider 1.0 (tied by the wrists to the roof)) “makes perfect sense… the design allows a 20 percent increase in passengers per flight. It also weighs 50 percent less than a standard economy seat, lowering the fuel cost per passenger.”

Seats are now just 23 inches away from the row in front. More people can get on the same-sized plane.Smell that? That’s progress – and you stuck in an overstuffed flying tube like a flaying carcass.

Posted: 26th, April 2018 | In: News, Strange But True, Technology, The Consumer | Comment


What do 10,068 radiated turtles in a small home smell like?

What do 10,068 live radiated turtles in a two-floor home smell like? It was the stench that alerted the authorities to the home in Toliara, Madagascar. Soary Randrianjafizanaka, of the country’s environmental protection agency, the home was stuffed with the critters.The smell was “overwhelming”. But not in a lip-licking way – unless you enjoy the stink of urine and worse.

 

radiated turtle

 

 

National Geographic has more:

Randrianjafizanaka helped count them as rescuers loaded them onto six trucks that made several trips to Le Village Des Tortues (Turtle Village in French), a private wildlife rehabilitation facility in Ifaty, 18 miles north of Toliara. It took until early the following morning to transfer all the tortoises to the rescue center.

Turtle village?

The majority of the turtles taken to the rehabilitation facility are doing well, now that they’ve been cleaned up, moved into more suitable quarters, and provided with veterinary care. Unfortunately, close to 600 of the turtles have died since being removed from the house, due to dehydration or infection – the result of their long neglect.

Trading in rare turtles is outlawed in 182 countries.

“The rate of hunting of radiated tortoises is similar to the hunting pressure on American bison during the early 19th century, where they were nearly hunted to extinction when they once numbered in the tens of millions,” said Brian D. Horne, turtle conservation coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Species Program.

Of course, once upon a time, Westerners loved eating turtle. And if it was a local source of meat, surely many of us would eat them now. This story illustrates how something illegal creates a risky black market.

It wasn’t ever so:

During the Great Depression, gopher tortoises became such an important source of meat for rural Southerners that they earned a new nickname, “Hoover chicken” that honored, so to speak, our president at the time, Herbert Hoover. That species is now federally threatenedin Louisiana, Mississippi, and western Alabama, and is under protection everywhere it occurs. Diamondback terrapins, the beautifully patterned turtles inhabiting brackish waters along the East Coast, were harvested so heavily for food that the U.S. government started to get concerned about their vastly depleted populations more than 100 years ago.

Turtle is food for the masses:

For centuries, the flavor was legendary, and, really, nothing said American democracy like turtle. The poor man could often find a few slow-moving specimens hanging out at the backyard well, even as the privileged man sought out its refined flavor. Two days after voting for independence in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776, John Adams celebrated with a bowl of turtle soup; when the war was over, George Washington met with his officers at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan for a farewell frolic; and Lincoln celebrated his second inaugural with terrapin stew. Before Aaron Burr murdered Alexander Hamilton, both were members of the elite Hoboken Turtle Club.

More turtles is desirable, then. Let’s get farming…

Posted: 22nd, April 2018 | In: News, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


Action comics Number 1 yours for a bargain $300,001

To the attic in search of a pristine copy of Action Comics #1 (1938). It’s the magazine in which Superman appeared for the first time. On the Heritage Auction website, the top bid sits at an impressive $300k. The auction house hopes the bid will soar to double that figure at its Comics & Comic Art Auction May 10-12 in Chicago:

 

Action Comics #1 

 

Form the auction house:

“This auction has a chance to be among the largest comics auctions of all time, if not the largest,” Heritage Auctions Comics Director of Operations Barry Sandoval said. “It will be in a vibrant city that is easy to reach from just about anywhere, and we have an extremely strong collection of valuable comic books that will draw the attention and interest of comics collectors from just about everywhere.”

Action Comics #1 (DC, 1938) CGC VG 4.0 Cream to off-white pages(est. $650,000+) is among the most coveted comic books in the hobby. The issue generates major interest regardless of its condition, and this is one of the highest-graded copies ever offered by Heritage Auctions. Ernst Gerber’s The Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books rated it “scarce,” and CGC’s census lists just 40 unrestored copies. The first appearance of Superman launched the Golden Age of Comics, and every superhero that followed is in debt to the character created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster (artist). The issue also sits atop Overstreet’s “Top 100 Golden Age Comics” list.

 

http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Action-Comics-1-.jpeg

 

In 2014, a mint-condition of Action Comics No. 1 sold for a record $3,207,852  in an auction on eBay.

Spotter: Boing Boing, Flashbak

Posted: 20th, April 2018 | In: Books, Money, News | Comment


Craigslist closes personal ads as internet restrictions bite

You can no longer browse the personals section of Craigslist in the US. The owners of the online classified ads site have closed personal listings in reaction to Congress’s passage of a law that makes websites accountable for users who “misuse” personal ads. A click on the “casual encounters”, “strictly platonic” or any other romance-seeking connection tabs coughs up this message from San Francisco-based Craigslist:

US Congress just passed HR 1865, “FOSTA”, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully. Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.

To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!

Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) aims to curb online sex trafficking.

Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes the bill, stating last month:

“Facing the threat of extreme criminal and civil penalties, web platforms large and small would have little choice but to silence legitimate voices. Platforms would have to take extreme measures to remove a wide range of postings, especially those related to sex.”

The fear is that only the the most moneyed platforms will survive. Forced to err on the side of caution and view users as suspects, platform owners will shut down accounts.

You can still use the personal ads on the UK site. But the impact of the new riling is spreading. Reddit has switched off a raft of its community pages. On Reddit’s r/announcements we learn:

As of today, users may not use Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services, including:

  • Firearms, ammunition, or explosives;
  • Drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, or any controlled substances (except advertisements placed in accordance with our advertising policy);
  • Paid services involving physical sexual contact;
  • Stolen goods;
  • Personal information;
  • Falsified official documents or currency

Gizmodo notes:

In the comments of the announcement, it was further clarified that relatively benign activities like beer trades and e-cigarette giveaways are also likely to fall under the purview of this rule, which encompasses not just purchases but transactions of any sort.

So much for freedom.

 

Posted: 23rd, March 2018 | In: News, Technology, The Consumer | Comment


Unilever be gone: Marmite maker leaving Britain don’t matter a damn

The maker of Marmite, Unilever, has announced that it is to give up its UK headquarters and move to Holland. This doesn’t matter a damn. No, really, it’s a triviality of no import at all. It’s also nothing to do with Brexit, They even say this themselves:

Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch group, said on Thursday that Brexit played no part in its decision to choose Rotterdam over London for its single legal base.

It’s always useful to take peoples’ word for such things.

 

Asylum seekers and economic migrants swear by it

 

Unilever has always been a slightly odd company anyway. It’s long been near half Dutch anyway. And it reports its results, does its internal accounting, in euros as well, something a bit odd for a UK company. But then no large multinational is really from or in any one country anyway. There’s some slight importance, mainly due to where the senior execs get to live, to where head office is. Other than that it doesn’t really make any difference.

The factories are going to remain where the factories are. That doesn’t change when HQ moves. The company will still have its shares listed in London. Because you don’t have to be a UK company to do that. In fact, there are FTSE100 members who don’t do any business at all in the UK, they just use the stock market as the place they’re listed and that’s it.

The change won’t even make any difference to taxes collected. Now, as it wasn’t in the past, we don’t tax foreign profits made by companies with an HQ in the UK. We tax only on the profits they make from business in the UK. And we tax companies without a UK HQ on exactly the same basis. Foreign profits aren’t taxed by us, profits made in the UK are.

Unilever moving HQ to Rotterdam makes very little difference therefore. Sure, a few wine bars will miss the spending of the top execs but other than that, pretty much nothing. No factories will move, tax collected won’t change, it’s all a bit of nothing in proper economic terms.

Shrug, have fun over there folks is the correct response.

Posted: 16th, March 2018 | In: Money, News, The Consumer | Comment


Salma Hayek dresses like a Daily Mail reader

The hard working Daily Mail Reporter was helping readers sat in their Comfi-Gowns and support stockings identify the “Worst dressed women” at the Oscars.

Eyes are drawn to Salma Hayek, who came as a “Shiny disaster”. Her “dress was baffling to behold… serving as more of an eye sore than a style statement”. What a horror show.

 

Salma Hayek daily mail horror

 

And you too can get the look because just one line down, the same readers are told: “Shimmer in sequins like Salma wearing a Gucci gown… Whoever said sequins can’t be worn all over on a maxi gown must’ve not seen how good Salma Hayek rocked this one at the 2018 Oscars.”

Who said it? The Daily Mail did a moment earlier.

 

Salma Hayek daily mail horror

 

Baffling stuff.

Price on application.

Posted: 14th, March 2018 | In: Celebrities, Fashion, News | Comment


Super Seducer: the Playstation on Stream game where you grope women

 

How sad are you around women? If you aspire to James Bond levels of sadness – all that precise drinks ordering, flash cars and innuendo – then Super Seducer is the game for you.

With Super Seducer, gamers “learn state-of-the-art seduction secrets from the master himself, Richard La Ruina, in this incredibly valuable live action seduction simulator.”

La Ruina is the kind of character you first wonder if someone made up and second why anyone would  bother. With his tutelage you can say such things as, “If you’re not good at cooking you better be real good at sucking dick then” and “‘I like big boobs,’ and try and touch her boobs.”

A shadow of the one salient point La Ruina makes is in his line: “In the game that’s cool, in real life it’s totally illegal.” Quite. Fantasy is not reality. In our pornified world, it might well  be the motto.

Spotter: BB

Posted: 4th, March 2018 | In: News, Technology, The Consumer | Comment


The Sun teaches football fans how to look like fools

The Sun’s website continues to break new ground. A series of articles by By Shiela Subyr teachers readers how to look like a young multi-millionaire seeking new ways to spunk his cash.

The other day, Neymar, the PSG star, “paired his snakeskin biker jacket with skintight leather trousers complete with racy lace-up sides.” Shiela tells readers where they can how much for get the look and how much for in the paper’s ‘Sports’ section.

 

By Shiela Subyr the sun fashion football

 

An there’s more. Lots more. And when Sheila’s gone through the wardrobe’s of player who look like extras from Rich Kids of Instagram, she’ll doubtless work down the leagues until we find out what Barnet’s substitute ‘keeper is wearing.

By Shiela Subyr the sun fashion football

 

By Shiela Subyr the sun fashion football

 

In other sports news: Arsene Wenger’s jacket unzips.

Posted: 14th, February 2018 | In: Fashion, Sports, Tabloids | Comment


The eBay Bandit! Rob Wolchek and the great story of Kelly’s stolen camera

Great telly from the USA in the shape of Rob Wolchek of Fox 2 News Detroit. This is a great toy about professional photographer Kelly, who found the geezer selling her stolen stuff on eBay.

 

Posted: 29th, January 2018 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


New Leeds United badge looks like an advert for Gaviscon

The news Leeds United badge – the one on which the club claims to have consulted 10,000 people (how many of whom are Leeds fans is not know but I’d guess none) – looks like…the design on a bottle of Gaviscon, the treatment for upset stomachs.

 

SLAL-leeds-gaviscon

Posted: 24th, January 2018 | In: Money, Sports, The Consumer | Comment


Take home a topless Jeff Goldblum love toy

Jeff-Goldblum-shirtless-Jurassic-Parktoy

 

Who wants a Pop! figure of a topless Jeff Goldblum? Who doesn’t? Goldblum was shirtless and wounded in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park. And now the “Wounded Dr. Ian Malcolm” love toy is yours to take home.

 

Jeff-Goldblum-shirtless-Jurassic-Parktoy

 

Spotter: Consequence of Sound

Posted: 24th, January 2018 | In: Celebrities, Film, The Consumer | Comment


Data proves that owning a bulldog is for idiots

Thanks to David McCandless we know which dogs make the best pals. Considering six facts – intelligence, costs, longevity, grooming, ailments, and appetite – McCandless crunched the numbers and concluded that bulldogs are not worth the effort an expense.

 

best dogs to buy and own

 

best dogs to buy and own best dogs to buy and own best dogs to buy and own

 

Spotter:  Knowledge Is Beautiful

Posted: 23rd, January 2018 | In: Money, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


Sex with a plastic doll in Gateshead cost twice as much as a London prostitute

How much does on-the-clock sex cost in the UK? You can get a shag for £4 in Liverpool; £25 in London; and alcohol and cigarettes in Newcastle. Grim stuff. Bug not as desperate as the blokes spending £50 shagging used sex dolls in Gateshead. The Daily Mail reports:

Businessman selling sex dolls offers customers a £50 ‘try before you buy’ scheme for a half hour session at an industrial estate in Gateshead Customers can ‘test drive’ sex dolls at the industrial site in Gateshead for £50
Service was launched in December and business has had a ‘few’ customer since

The owner tells BBC radio:

“We’ve sold used dolls for a long time, which may come as a surprise to some people, but each one goes through anything from a one-hour to a five-hour [cleaning] process. It’s as clean as can be.”

Spotter: Daily Mail

Posted: 21st, January 2018 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment


Kazakh oligarch’s $179,000 wedding cake doubles as a starter home

To a wedding in Kazakhstan, where guests are touring the $179,000 wedding cake that doubles as a starter home for newly weds Amirzhan, grandson of Shymkent oligarch Serikzhan Seitzhanov, and Aruzhan, daughter of Kairat Satybaldy, a Kazakh businessman, nephew of the country’s president. Built by Renat Agzamov, a former Russian boxing champion, the cake is well appointed, with master bedroom, basement polo studio, games room and living quarters for umpteen servants.

 

Реализовали сложнейший международный проект🔥 диаметр торта 3 метра, высота 4,2 ( с тележкой) . Вес около 1500кг. С такими размерами доставить заготовки в другую страну – это ОЧЕНЬ сложно ! Но мы справились, потому что у нас самая сильная команда профессионалов в мире!🔥🔥🔥 Перед вывозом торта в зал – ровно 3 суток без сна, но результат того стоит! Благодарю свою команду за мощный рывок в космос 🚀 Просто ценю и уважаю каждого😘❤️. Благодарю принимающую сторону за очень тёплый и душевный прием🙏! Как приятно работать, когда тебя любят, ценят и уважают😘❤️. Ну и самое главное – счастья молодым и благополучия 🙏🙏❤️.

A post shared by RENAT AGZAMOV (@renat_agzamov) on

 

The icing on the cake is that, according to the World Bank, the GDP per capita for Kazakhstan is US$7,715.

 

Posted: 19th, January 2018 | In: News, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


If breadmaking was an Olympic sport this baker would win gold

Hail the bread maker and the paratha catcher.

Spotter: Boing Boing

Posted: 15th, January 2018 | In: The Consumer | Comment


Woman divorces husband after he spent $50,000 on a great record collection

record collection high fidelity

 

On eBay the story of a broken marriage and a big record collection:

My ex-husband was a big jerk! While that’s the main reason that I divorced him, the final straw was that he spent just over $50,000 buying a stupid huge record collection. Even though it was a good buy, and a sound investment (no pun intended), I felt the money (which was all we had and half mine) should have gone to pay off our mortgage, or put the kids through college, or saved for our retirement, or at least spent on something we could enjoy together, like a second honeymoon (our first was a weekend in Cleveland at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame).

While I honestly know next to nothing about records, he was thrilled and kept bragging about how these were all original pressings from the 1950’s, 60’s & 70’s, that it was the most complete gathering of collectible Rock, Rockabilly, R&B, British Invasion, Motown, Acid, Psych and Folk he’d ever seen (over 5000 albums and over 1000 45’s), and how rare it was that most had never even been played once (why would anyone buy a record and never play it?).

So that’s why I was so nonplused that he left the entire collection to me when he died (maybe he honestly felt some remorse? Nah). Anyway, I don’t want it, so I’m offering them all to you (it will probably take me months to list them all). Please feel free to make an offer on the whole darn thing, or to ask if I have a particular record, or any other questions (which I’ll do my best to answer; though again, I don’t know much at all). All prices are flexible (I’m basing them on what others are selling for), and I would be happy to entertain any offers.

Spotter: ClashMusic

Posted: 11th, January 2018 | In: Music, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment


Fire and Fury: Michael Wolfe’s Donald Trump expose is available as a pop-up book

“I’ve made a pop-up easy reader version of Fire and Fury so Donald can see what all the fuss is about,” tweets Happy Toast. The book, by Michael Wolfe, is making waves, accusing Donald Trump of not wanting to become president and being a doofus.

 

 

Spotter: @IamHappyToast

Posted: 6th, January 2018 | In: Books, Politicians, The Consumer | Comment


Former Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien honoured with mishappen statue

Football fans in Ghana have paid tribute to former Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien. They’ve erected a weird statue in his honour. The life-size totem to Essien stands in Kumasi, Ghana’s second city.

 

essien-statue-chelsea-ghana

Via

Photo: @addojunr/Twitter

Did the artist ever seen Essien in the flesh, or just view him on 8ibit video games?

 

Posted: 4th, January 2018 | In: Chelsea, Sports, The Consumer | Comment