Ten Years Old

Ten years ago today I posted my first blog post here

I'd not thought about writing a blog before and I barely even read any - they all seemed to be about teen make-up reviews or really successful rich people wanting to tell us mere mortals how well they were doing.

One day I was searching for winter socks and Google randomly showed a picture of a girl wearing red tights standing in her garden. Back then I was not enjoying my job and was hoping to get back into graphic design and I often saved pictures from image searches just because they included colours I could use in design work for my portfolio. That red was amazing so I clicked on the picture and it took me to the Naturally Dapper blogspot (unfortunately long gone). Ugh - another teen blog was my first thought but then I read the post and it was so well written that I ended up reading every post in the blog over the next few days and continued doing so until it vanished without trace.

This spurred me on into creating my own blog which I initially published weekly, then monthly, then whenever. I discovered video games in 2017 and the blog was something I wanted to do but gaming won out (blame 2B).

I found plenty more great blogs via Blogger Central which also no longer exists. The creator of Blogger Central had her own blog about life in Ireland at a time when she was coming to the end of school life and preparing for university. Annoyingly I can't remember the name of the blog but it was a real work of art - informative and funny.

I briefly returned to blogging as a result of the Spaceships, Vampires and Very Secret Agents blog monthly writing challenge ('Blog Removed' - all the good one's have gone). My last post was on Christmas Eve 2017.

Life intervened in 2020 with family caring duties, the aftermath of a family death and moving house.

I'm hoping to return to blogging with a sort of web comic / short story series. I'd originally wanted to create an animated series for YouTube but quickly realised that it would take far too long with the very limited amount of spare time I have available. We'll see if that happens.

 

Catch You Later!

 

1984 Part 1

Back in September I posted some pics from a 1972 mail order catalogue - now I'm back with 1984!

People have different memories of the 80's - not surprising as there was a lot going on;  New Romantics, big hair and big shoulders, raves - it depends on when you were having most fun I guess. Most likely you weren't even born then!

So here's a snap-shot of just one of those years, 1984 thanks to the pages of the Brian Mills mail order catalogue for Spring/Summer 1984.

Pastel, pastel pastel...

 

Recognize the young guy in the blue? Well if you were there in the 80's you might remember the 1985 TV ad he starred in for Levi 501 jeans where he undresses in a laundromat

XBox versus Playstation 1984 style - Atari versus Phillips

 

Not forgetting some classy linen for your boudoir...

 

And finally that 501's ad...

 

 Catch You Later!

Tags:
#1984
#1980s
#1980's
#80s
#Levi
#Levi 501
#Atari
#Phillips
#G7000
#H2O
#Nick Kamen
#Kamen
#Pierrot
#Shogun
#Brian Mills
#mail order
#catalog
#catalogue
#pastel

1972 Part 1

A few years ago when I was clearing my grandparents house after they had passed away I found a copy of the Great Universal Stores mail order catalogue for Spring/Summer 1972. It was in the cupboard under the stairs and was a bit musty and dog-eared but there were no missing pages. It's a real insight into the fashion of the time and also how some fashions have hardly changed at all.

Here's the first instalment of a time-warp back to 1972!

First up are their overseas buying trips to Paris, glamorous offices in Bolton and Widnes, and the state-of-the-art despatch area (eat your heart out Amazon). But best of all is the tech guy and his IBM mainframe:

Ladies fashions

Cool teens

Cool dudes (not)

Father Ted can't even get 1 bar on his mobile

When I'm cultivating the garden I always wear 4" white heels

The catalogue has over 1000 pages so I'll post some more pics later. In the same cupboard I also found the Brian Mills Spring/Summer 1984 catalogue so I'll post pics from them later as well.

Catch You Later!

tags:

#1972

#universal

#catalog

#catalogue

#mail order

#retro

#clothes

#father ted

#funky

A Brief History of Daki

You may have never heard of dakimakura, or maybe a smutty smile has just crossed your face.

To be honest, 6 months ago I'd never heard of them.

 

They're long pillows designed for hugging and are usually adorned with either semi-naked anime girls or lissom anime boys. Sometimes they have other stuff on them but more of that later. Most have an image printed on either side (one usually being more undressed than the other).

They started out innocently enough and in their native Japan they still are used as comfort pillows:

 

 

However, in the mid 1990's Japanese companies identified a potential market for selling anime-themed covers for dakimakuras in order to tap the rapidly growing otaku market.

And so it began...

Here's a selection covering a range of tastes:

 

 

There are also some 'different' daki's as well:

 

 

 

Some people can get a bit carried away with their attachment to their daki. One guy in Korea married his (so it seems, but it may have been a publicity stunt): 

 



  

 

 

There are a huge range of designs, many of them way too pornographic to show here; just Google dakimakura and you'll see what I mean. And just in case you were wondering, no I don't own one!

 

 



 

Update 24 July 2015!

I've just seen this on Crunchyroll and had to add it to the post - it's a 23 foot long Monster Musume daki

More information can be found here:

http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-911419/23ft-long-dakimakura?pg=0

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2015-07-22/monster-musume-23-foot-long-miia-will-slither-into-a-bed-near-you/.90762

http://www.monmusu.jp/news/837/


Credits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakimakura
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dakimakuras
http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/pure-factory/item/r007423/
http://www.cospa.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cospa
http://www.ebay.com/
https://warosu.org/jp/thread/12224381
http://xaxor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Japanese-Dakimakura-love-pillows1.jpg
http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=1705225&view=all
http://i.imgur.com/tCKkzpf.jpg
http://ozandcerulli.tumblr.com/post/108236757648/i-got-my-daki-well-actually-its-for-oz-but-hes
http://fampar.livejournal.com/91279.html?thread=603279
http://imgbuddy.com/sebastian-michaelis-full-body-pillow.asp
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/10/01/three-reasons-to-sleep-with-a-huggy-pillow-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-an-anime-crush/
http://metro.co.uk/2010/03/09/man-marries-pillow-154906/
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1035238
https://poweredbysugar.wordpress.com/category/random-rambling/
http://www.himeuta.net/archive/index.php/t-775-p-28.html
http://animeyourway.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/your-level-of-anime-fandom.html
http://store.steampowered.com/news/posts/?feed=kotaku&enddate=1306901699
http://disown.dismagazine.com/products/emma-dakimakura
http://knowyourmeme.com/
http://www.aliexpress.com/
http://www.ebay.com/

 

tags:
#dakimakura
#daki
#hugging
#pillow
#otaku
#echi

31,536,000 Seconds

So my little blog has being going for a whole year. It seems to have come round pretty quick. I haven't posted nearly as much as I would have liked to have done but spare time is not something I have a lot of.

Over the last year I've taken loads of photos that were going to be the basis of new blog posts but I just never had the time to finish them, so for this celebratory (but lazy) post here are a selection from the posts that never were.

 

 

 

 

 

A big thank you to kensosha.blogspot for posting a link on Twitter to my last post on Selective Mutism; visitors went from 0 to nearly 40 visits (40 visits is huge for my blog).

 

 

I'm looking forward to the next year and hopefully my work-in-progress posts will appear soon.

 

 

Catch You Later!