Rule One

I recently got back into collecting and the market in terms of physical buying its absolutely piss poor which is understandable given how shopping trends have gone over the last few years plus online is king now. Manchester and the close surrounding area isn't too great for a collector these days.

Smyth's and to a lesser extent the Entertainer just get hammered by scalpers orders on release day so it's especially hard to pick up certain figures. To those who may not have the money, time to buy exactly at release or don't have a store close by there's now a reliance on the selling groups who've cornered the market and some sellers just rip the piss out of people and even then it's a gamble that a seller will deliver on their word. Just finding a toy shop/seller is a rarity and because of the online market, it's very rare to find a bargain/deal as they can just slap it online and someone will pay what they want/a bit more for it.

I can understand some smaller chains like that A1 slightly jacking up the price of chase as they don't know if they're getting a chase figure in themselves when the stock hits because they could hold on to it until that current line dies down and sell it for way more because that's exactly what the scalpers do. The only chase I've seen in the wild is the Trish Stratus chase  (Red and White outfit.) and I was surprised to see that but also the store had two of them. The other one was still on their shelf on New Year's Eve buried behind the AEW figures no-one wants to buy for £20 or slightly lesser.

Looking about, unless it's something very specific, older loose figures are a money pit, older boxed figures can fetch a decent price depending on condition/who it is and everything now is about Elites. My friend is an Ultimate Warrior nut and has a very impressive collection but he's spent some crazy money attaining that and is finding it extra tough when each new Warrior line comes out. He's going to be shelling out at least £100 for the 3 new warriors that are due at some point this month.

I'm very selective about what I buy (Mainly Bret Hart/Hart foundation stuff and belts.) as I'm collecting just for me and rarely sell anything but I can't justify shelling out for some of the prices wanted these days. I didn't even know about half the lines released because they'd gone before they practically hit the shelves, I've tried getting the Elite Hollywood Blondes but finding a Brian Pillman figure with accessories at a semi reasonable price is non-existant.

Sorry for rambling but I feel the peak for collecting has passed and I've come back in at the wrong time. Has anyone managed to get any deals recently? I picked up Jack Gallagher (Boo), Chad Gable NXT and Enzo Amore Elites boxed for £25 a few days ago. I couldn't pass that up and two of the three are for a friend. I only wanted the Gable myself.

A friend of mine, affectionately known as "Bog Roll Bob" on the account that he never has any and has offered up everything from newspaper to kebab wrappers to guests who've been caught short at his has been subjected to tissue related hijinks for the past couple of months.

So far we've:

Ambushed him leaving his house, launching toilets rolls at him.

Walled his front door over with toilet rolls.

Been sent every possible sample of tissue we possibly could to him.

Sent emergency parcels of tissues/toilet roll to him/his mum's house, we even paid someone to deliver toilet rolls to him when he was sat in the pub.

We're hoping he has enough to see him through the early part of next year now or at least keep a spare roll for guests.

We also sent him a Dwayne "The Cock" Johnson dildo for Christmas which he had to pick up from the local sorting office. He's complained that it's too big for him so the groups now planning to send him sex guides and all the lube we possibly can.

2 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Then just stay home and watch the original (not you, just people with that view). I don't understand what people really expected from Afterlife. It did exactly what I expected it to. Pay tribute to the original whilst making a film for a new generation of fans. 

And I'll say it. Ghostbusters is a 7 out of 10. Nostalgia does a lot of heavy lifting. It's not as funny as you think, it isn't as scary as you remember. It had a great cast, with a good script, at the right time. It is not the masterpiece people will tell you it is. Films like Back to the Future hold up much better than Ghostbusters do. We watched Ghostbusters before Afterlife and my daughter thought it was good, but enjoyed Afterlife more (and probably because she could relate to the characters more).

The expectation/interpreting is up to the individual. You liked it, I didn't, big deal but somehow I'm wrong?

After 20+ years of wrangling through will they/won't they, legalities and other nonsense another Ghostbusters was greenlit, given it had a $75 million budget, a wealth of talent both old and new and this is best they could roll out?

The story is weak, hackneyed together from old lore whilst having no direction going forward and overly relies on nostalgia, it offers nothing to new viewers and there's zero warmth in the new characters that standout with only Paul Rudds goofing off that dragged it along at times.

The mum was a grade A arse, female Egon is just a poor imitation of 2016's Egon ripoff but she did the best she could. Podcast is annoying and his jokes are laboured to even younger audience members and the less said about the Stranger Things skeleton with the charisma of a broom matched only by his love interest, the better. 

$75 million, 2 hours and they couldn't string out a simple story that made sense and didn't just wildly jump from scene to scene and expect the viewer to pick up the fractured jigsaw pieces that don't really fit. There was zero peril in this compared to what Ghostbusters 1 built up so well into a satisfactory ending.

If you rate Ghostbusters a solid 7/10, its still 7/10 better than Afterlife.

There was 20 of us who watched it together, young and old and there wasn't 1 of us who said it was anything more than passable.

And there's another one due out in the coming year... Great.

@LaGoosh I think that if the 2016 version was called something else and didn't use the Ghostbusters logos/etc people would probably look at it more fondly as an acceptable afternoon movie.

Ghostbusters Afterlife

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. *Continuous Michael Scott No Gif*

No no no no no.

Angry boomer type here. Just no. Paul Rudd carried this 2 hours of crap. Get fucked.

Aside from the shite CGI and weak enemy, the all female Ghostbusters was way better. (And this is coming from someone who thought it deserves better praise than it got from the boo boys.)

Farewell my youth, it has been shat upon from a monstrous height.

The Paido forum was exposed as well moderators user reports. 👀👀👀

Don't touch coffee and not the biggest tea drinker but I'm an exclusively Earl Grey wanker. It's stops any sort of tea conversation and unless you're a guest at mine, eliminates brewing up.

If I'm being a ponce, it's 2 sugars and a slice of lemon/spoon of honey. I once had the misfortune of someone making me a brew with milk, the filthy degenerate.

12 hours ago, Tommy! said:

Also someone on here did a video of TNA highlights or show opening to Ain't no pleasing you, does anyone remember who that was and where it was on here? 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-GoKfY04g

The wonderful @chokeout made it 6 years ago.

Lads, ladies and good people of the forum, I apologise for the quality of it all but that's a fucking fish leg and I could not share this with you all.

Needless to say, this fat fucker finished it.

23 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Oh shit, Slapnuts had a haircut again.

@Keith Houchen Unless you've got everything on 24/7 there's no way your bills should be that high especially with the "price cap" initiative. I'd get on to your provider pronto and get them to correct it before everyone else rushes to do so as October hits.

I got my "Your bills are going up again" today and through working out my usage will be paying around £2300 for the year for electricity and gas. This is for a busy household where the washer/dryer is on every day. Working it all out, £300 of that £2300 is for standing charges.

Contact your providers, then the CAB if possible and if you ring Manchester City Council there should be some department in there that may be able to help with power costs given your circumstances. It won't be easy and I hope it works out better than forecasted for you.

5 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

I have seen my future self.

 

Lofty aspirations there, chief. Norman Pain (The bald one.) and Patrick Kearney (white hair and tash.) are top notch and their fellow old boys, Pete and Bas are just as good.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvt_7mlX-Z0

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5o0lm2

Hope you enjoy.

If you don't acknowledge a Chinese larping as a as Chippy Tea then you're xenophobic and a right wing noncebot.

Checkmate racists.

@Devon Malcolm Have you tried Renewal?

https://www.renewal-nw.com/

They are close to Edgeley and generally aren't afraid to move stuff if you explain the circumstances to them.

The alternative is that if you or someone you know has a Facebook account, post items on marketplace/local groups as there's no end of people who are looking for stuff, especially if it's free.

INTERNATIONAL TRACK AND FIELD!

Holy shit how did I forget about this! Getting blasted on a Friday night and four of us sitting around the TV legitimately trying our hardest to out do each other. I had a game changer and it came in the form of a trainer sock. (Please be high brow with wanking jokes!) Slip it over the two main button masher fingers and it never failed. That was until my mate Paul banned me from going round his unless I 'played fair'.

Big shout out to Tony Hawk's bastard brother Dave Mira BMX, I loved putting the jump cheat on and seeing what crazy combination I could come up with. Shame what happened to him though.

@Uncle Zeb & @SuperBacon As much as I hate my brother and have thought about strangling him Homer Simpson style countless times I acknowledge that he has lifelong legitimate problems. It doesn't fully excuse what he's done and there's a long, long list of similar behaviour, I wouldn't wish or see any harm come to him. However if his precious X-Box SX suddenly burst into flames, that would be nice too!

Thank-you to @FelatioLips for evoking so many memories of the PS1 too, great thread.

I can't remember who brought it up but did anyone do the double Multiple-Taps? I remember spending some weekends at a friend's house with a bunch of us squeezed into a packed living room playing Micro Machines V3, FIFA, Street Racer and sitting around waiting for our designated turns in our Knockout Kings/Smackdown games tournaments.

I was also mercilessly ribbed because I brought third party equipment along. I had see through Connect Pro (IIRC) pads, multi tap and memory cards. Mad Catz equipment was acceptable though for some reason. Ah, to be young again.

Speaking of demo discs, I'm pretty sure that everyone jizzed themselves when Playstion Magazine Disc 42 was released with the Metal Gear Solid demo. Through them I discovered the amazing Anna Kournikovas Smash Court Tennis and there was a Micro Machines rip off that was incredibly good to play.

Did anyone encounter a problem with copied versions of Smackdown 2 when it was due to be released? It was a big thing in our area as someone managed to get a copy of it and that was copied many many times over however, the season mode would always crash/you could never get past the first years King Of The Ring event. Other than that it satisfied our wrestling fix until better working copies became available.

The PS1 has always been a blessing and a curse for me.

I loved my multiple PS1's but the reason I had multiple instead of just the one was my cunt of a brother. (He's still one.) Christmas '97 is when it unexpectedly rolled into my household and seemingly the rest of the road too. I had asked for a new bike/sports equipment but instead got a PS1 with two pads, two memory cards and about 10 games. Alien Trilogy, Overboard, Ridge Racer, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Soul Blade, Crash Bandicoot and few others that I can't remember off the top of my head. I was blown away, it was a monster upgrade from my Megadrive that had served me so well.

For the first few months of '98 I bummed those games until my uncle borrowed me a few games, the most memorable, Resident Evil, holy shit I was encapsulated by it but my brother, this began his journey into gaming that has reached freakishly unbearable depths that he's never been able or wanted to come out from. I'd never would have begrudged him using/playing on it but he never ever asked, he always assumed that he could play it whenever/gave a shit that it wasn't his and already had a track record of not looking after other people's items.

From there he did everything he could to get on my PS1 disregarding that it wasn't his and although younger, still knew right from wrong. In a short space of time, he broke a game, deleted my memory cards clear and gave away Alien Trilogy to a kid on our street for nothing, with no explanation given to this day. This culminated in him breaking my TV and original playstation by trying to to plug the aerial in the TV because I took to disconnecting it when I went out in an effort to stop him from getting his hands on it. His pushed the TV off the stand and crushed my PS1 as he'd put it on the floor trying to put the wires in. He didn't even get punished for it.

I didn't get another one for about 4 months as I had to scrimp and save up the little money I earned from working market stalls (Setting up early doors, loading vans, etc.) and managed to buy one of a mate for a cut down price because he had no care/use for it.

That lasted 6 months before my brother was up to his old tricks again and it succumbed to him stabbing the laser with a screwdriver in a fit because I'd hid my pads in my latest attempt to stop him. I had it repaired by selling a few of my good games but he did the same again shortly after.

My third and final playstation came to me through the generosity of my Grandad in Spring '99. He also bought me Brian Lara Cricket, Premier Manager 98 and a FIFA 99 for a ridiculously cheap price in a Cash Generator because they had no idea what they had on their hands.

Slogging away on various North Manchester markets during the summer of '99 is where late to the game, got into copies. I got myself a plug in cartridge and began adding any old shit I could get my hands on until learning from a market trader who specialised in copied media how to copy games/etc. I bought a low level pc off him and maxed it out as best as I could using parts from Micro Direct and became a small enterprise in school by selling off copies of my copies for cheaper which in turn funded my ever exploratory weekends.

I'll always be thankful to Andy the perv who lived a few doors down who gave me a copy of Jenna Jameson interactive. That was a gold mine for me and made me bank for the rest of my high school days. I sold copies for £5 and I don't think anyone whinged about having to pay either.

As my copied collection grew, my originals shrunk as my brother was now appeased with very own PS1, decided the best way for him to get new games was steal off me. At one point he traded off my FIFA collection, FF 7, 8 and 9 and Resident Evils 1, 2 and 3 for his fix. He still doesn't believe he's done anything wrong when it's brought up in conversation.

I enjoyed way too many games to list here but one of my favourites was late into the PS1 run which was World's Scariest Police Chase's. For me, it was so much fun, limited but so much fun. The best console I have had up until I got a PS4. Most of the stuff doesn't hold up today but I wouldn't want it any other way. I still have NTSC Persona 2 discs/covers somewhere in my house that I foolishly didn't cash out on years ago when it was worth something. 

In short I loved the PS1, my brother is a cunt.

@RalphyV2

From what I've seen of him it should be Two Gram Tony, one for each nostril. I don't think he can handle more than that, like a 90's kid on a 'sugar rush'.

Still don't get Keith's blistering hatred for him though.

29 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Sorry for the double post. I tested positive again this morning, and the LFTs are still showing a pretty strong positive. I've put the result in the app, and it's saying I need to isoate for 6 days again, but work are saying that because this monday is 10 days from my original positive test they want me to go back in, even if I am still testing positive?

I tested positive 6 days in a row but have been negative since. Keep an eye on the T line of your tests, if it's not as red/strong as the C line on a positive test then it generally indicates that you're clearing up.

As long as you test negative in the next few days you should be good to go where work is concerned however it's important to do what is best for your health. If you're still testing positive after 8/9 days, I'd get in contact with medical services.

Hope you recover as quickly and as best you can. I'm still not right from this. It's sapped what little energy I have left, just can't seem to get in the swing of anything without it feeling like I'm constantly carrying a hod of bricks.

How are you doing @jazzygeofferz ?

After a week and a bit of an absolutely draining experience, I've tested negative two days in a row.

I'm pretty sure I caught it whilst out in Manchester but can't pinpoint a moment where I've been particularly close to anyone aside from the train journey to and from and I was masked up for them.

I've no idea what variant I've had, all I know is that I don't want this again and wouldn't wish it on people. Luckily I only passed it on to my brother but was shitting it that it would make its way through the family as I'd seen them just days before.

The symptoms have been mild, the worst of them was feeling like I had a brick stuffed in between my ears and a very swollen throat but only on one side.

Hope everyone is ok and all the best to those who unfortunately contract it.

I gave up on wrestling a few years back, I don't know what happened but I just don't have the patience to watch anymore. I mostly know about things through Twitter and the good posters of here these days.

I've even lost the love of title belts too, something that I never thought I'd give up on. When Reggie Parks died, I wanted to do a thread on him about his everlasting contribution to the industry but just couldn't muster any sort of enthusiasm.

I don't find joy in it anymore and nothings pulling me back at the moment.

28 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Sacrilegious!!

Normally I'd agree but If you'd seen the portions I got on the last 2 visits then you would probably draw the same conclusion.

A one off sure, I'd take it but they tried to have me over for 2 portions of chips that were combined half the size of the picture I posted and 2 sausages for just shy of a tenner. (Not all for me either!) Just not sport that, especially as they weren't offended when I asked them to put a few more chips in.

Finally, a half decent chippy is nearish me. (Oceans in Glossop.) I'm on a a reduced diet so it's chip muffin/barm/regional wrong'un term for the foreseeable future.

Wright's in Manchester have been proper stingy with their portions as of late as well. Still good quality but not worth the price.

And to get this thread back on track...

A few years ago I met a woman on a night out in Liverpool and she was way out of my league but she made the first move and was like a rash on me. Initially I thought my friends has put her up to it but we agreed to meet up again and I was sure once she saw me in the daylight, that would be it.

We went on a few dates and things were going good couldn't believe my luck but I noticed that she kept calling me by a different name, Steven, here and there.

After meeting her close friends they all started calling me Steve/Steven so after a day of thinking I was the butt of a joke I asked what the deal was.

The deal was that I looked a spit of her dead ex except I wore glasses. She and her friends shown me a ton of pictures and we did look very similar but not so much that couldn't pick us apart in a line up.

We agreed to try and work on it but she just deep dived into thinking I was Steve, saving my number as Steve, tagging pictures on social media as Steve, etc. So I had to call it off. I felt like a right twat but I couldn't pretend to be someone I clearly wasn't.

We stayed in contact for a few months afterwards just so she wouldn't have a complete meltdown but I couldn't be Steve. She's doing alright now though as she got married to another guy named Steve (I don't know if that's his real name.) and had a few little Stevie's.

@Frankie Crisp Good luck with everything, as much as I enjoy the tales of dating mishaps and misadventures, I wish you all the best.

22 hours ago, patiirc said:

 

Thanks for the replies 

Yes, she's still on the rent, there's no bail conditions as she's not been questioned or arrested yet, and Non molestation order is proving more difficult than expected to get as the only certain place to serve things is her work address as I've no idea where she is since going awol in December.

She's still got house keys and  Ican't change locks until either she's off the tenancy  as with no bail condition and no address for Non Molestation I cant do that whilst she has rights of access. Small Claims was a pain but with some negotiation they can serve on work address. 

She's given notice to quit entire tenancy, to the Landlord, but the Landlord hasn't given an updated tenancy agreement, and the letting agency say that the contract is rolling with her on it..

Poison Pen Letters, random texts and silent phone calls have started last few weeks but police cant yet link the two

She's still the main named bill payer on Gas and Electricity and still  on council tax. I've paid these all in full on my own since moving in but can't update as not named on gas and electricity bill. Until shes off tenancy, which hasnt happened either. 

I'm absolutely at my wits end hence asking for any advice possible

If your ex has been AWOL since December then surely it is a signal of deriliction of responsibility of their duties in regards to your shared property. Have you filed a missing persons/receipt of concern with your local police? If not, do so as it shows that haven't been around and can be used in future proceedings. Use it to notify your landlord/letting agents as a point of reference.

Depending on your circumstances, as long as you notify your landlord and they are ok with it, you can change the locks. If your ex then decides to return for possessions they can go through the local police and you/they can arrange their presence when they do so. As long as you don't deny them their belongings within 7 days of them reappearing/claiming them, they don't really have any recourse. (Check your local CAB/councils housing guidance.)

With regards to your billing predicament, a letter of acknowledgement from your landlord that you're the sole bill payer going forward from Date X should be enough for any utility companies to change. If not, just get someone to phone up as your ex and cancel everything then you apply as the new tenant/bill payer to them. Bit low but it's been done and worked before.

Finally log every bit of communication you have with police, landlord, agencies/etc and order it so you have a clear concise layout for going forward with everything.

Stay safe, well and please use a little nous when posting in threads.