Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Well, things are looking up somewhat, again. I have an interview next thursday for a gamestesting job up the road, for Sky Interactive, which is shift work between 7:30am and midnight. I wonder how the hell that works, personally, or why they need people testing games at midnight, but for £8-£10 an hour I’m not going to complain. Nikky, assuming you read this, that’s where you work, right? Near the Osterley stop? It’s not the career path I was after, but if it’s all I can get, I’ll probably take it while I try and find some slightly more technical or web-related work.

Of course, that interview isn’t what I’m most pleased about. This morning I was e-mailed by someone from a company I interviewed at the other week, saying that my name had been passed to them, and did I want to come in for an interview tomorrow? Obviously, my answer was a slightly less coarse version of “Fuck yeah.” and so tomorrow, that’s what I’m doing. There may be life left in that opportunity yet. Which would be good, because I really though it’d be an excellent place to work, and to get asked back is really something very encouraging. It was a big enough move in my favour when I got asked for the first interview, to be honest, so I’m hoping my chances of getting this (similar, but different) job are further increased by the fact I didn’t even apply, they asked me if I wanted to do it.

In the intervening time, I watched some Red Dwarf commentaries. The Fan commentary for Back to Reality is pretty funny. In fact, I think all the DVDs should have fan commentaries on. I mean, they probably don’t even need to pay them, and they can give a perspective the actors can’t. It’s especially funny when they all quieten up because they know a good line’s coming. For instance:

“Don’t fish swim south for the winter?”
“That’s birds.”
“Birds swim south for the winter? How do they breathe!?”

Utterly classic. It’s mostly due to Danny John-Jules’ delivery, but the sentiment itself is funny enough that the combination makes it great. Series 5 is probably my favourite series of Red Dwarf. One and Two have their charms, Three and Four have some funny stuff, but I think that by Five we’re seeing the best from the characters, the best Sci-Fi, and some of the funniest writing. Before it degenerates into the re-use of one-liners and ideas that Series 6 is. I’m really appreciating the model work in a new way watching series 5, as well. It looks great considering it’s 12 year old stuff.