Watney's party seven

It's a bit of a dreadful admission, but once or twice in the mid seventies I wandered into the newsagents can came back out with comics about freaks in pervert-suits. Two things remain in my head about those things. One is the number and nature of the adverts attempting to persuade small boys to buy boxes of cards (The number and nature of the cards in the box was never specified) which they could sell to other people and thereby claim the sorts of things that appeared to appeal to seventies American boys: X-Ray watches, five-wheeled bicycles or hats with legs.

From this I deduced several things: In America, everyone is taught to sell useless things to everyone else they know from the moment they can walk under their own power. Success is measured in the amount of useless tat you can foist on other people, and you are rewarded with bizarre objects that have a subtext of Manliness (the rubbish version thereof that involves hitting people and shooting things). Women are either chattels or attracted only to men who can kick sand accurately.

The other thing that stuck in my head is 'Grit'. No-one I have spoken to since has any idea about it.

Object cavalcade

I have my winders box back. It was a sixpence ha'penny Shonkomat-7 PSU in the end. Mildly embarrassing from a 'should be able to fault-find better than that' viewpoint, but it does mean a spare Micro-ITX machine to play at Sandbenders with. Note that we don't do 'case mods' in this house; in that direction lies ugly tower cases with anime tits and UV-reactive intestines bulging out of them. It'll run BSD.

This means I'm now able to get on with a bunch of things that required sound or picture-furtling capability.

On the other hand, I also have a hand-crank music box that wants modification. I'd always hoped that any Max Max 2 emulation I might become involved with would feature large V8s and Virginia Hey, but it's gone more in the direction of boomerang-waving child. Oh well. My current plan is to put the tines on the thing back to front to see if different Beethoven comes out.

[Interlude: Comp.risks: The Movie]