Monday 17 June 2013

Transformers I Flogged (And Why I Don't Regret It)

So this last year has been pretty messed up. It's felt for a long time like things are changing in a big way, and a couple of months ago I found myself suddenly far less attached to my beloved Transformers collection than I had previously been (which was pretty friggin' attached). Whereas it had for years been my pride and joy, not to mention my main source of self-worth, it suddenly felt like a giant weight around my neck, tying me down to places and habits I'd rather get the fuck out of.

After a fair slab of soul-searching and a few hours digging through instructions, I reached a point where I'd decided what (considerably reduced) shape I wanted my collection to take and that a lot of the ballast just had to go. Below are a few of the robots I ditched - most of them for far less than their worth - and why I couldn't give a rat's nut that they're gone.



Salvaged review: Playskool Go-Bots Buzzer-Bot

(I just found my original draft of a text review I did for the now-defunct Transforming Block blog that I got involved with a while ago. I still feel awful about that whole affair; I could have tried so much harder. But anyway, here's this thing!)

Playskool Go-Bots have always seemed a little bit horrible to me. Released by Hasbro in the early 2000s, at the height of my hatred/dismissal of all things not-G1, they were simplistic, inflated-looking weirdos created with the sole purpose of getting a generation of pre-schoolers hooked on the plastic crack before they even had time to know what the Hell was going on. Looking back today, I could retro-actively claim that I rejected the Go-Bots through righteous anti-consumerist disgust, but in reality I just thought they were bollocks.

And then about a year ago, I found one in a charity shop and honestly he fills my world with a loveliness so pure that if I died tomorrow I don't even think I'd mind.



Friday 1 February 2013

Thew's Six Albums of 2012

Okay, look, I'm gonna begin by straight-up admitting that I don't really pay much attention to music anymore. There was a time when I'd buy ten albums a week, but that was a time when I really, really gave a crap about metal and hardcore and mathcore and metalcore and death metal and grind and deathgrind and aggro-grind and genres and sub-genres and micro-genres and meta-genres of supposedly varied music that actually is just metal and shut up.

But that time is long past, and I now keep track of an embarrassingly tiny number of artists. I am old and I am bored and I am jaded, and it's time to admit that there is no difference between Ion Dissonance and Through The Eyes Of The Dead; Viatrophy sound like Caliban sound like Killswitch Engage sound like Hatebreed; Arch Enemy sound like Shadows Fall sound like Devildriver sound like FUCKING CHRIST I AM SO OLD, SHUT YOUR FACE.

So given my devastatingly low interest level in the music I once fawned over and lived for, you'll forgive me for only buying six albums in the last year. These are not my top six albums of the year; they're the only ones I could even be bothered to check out. Here's what I think of them, in reverse order of how much I like them.