Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Tomorrow’s apparantly a big day for work, the first of the month involves a lot of stuff happening which means I’ll be working flat out for a few days, which is kind of reassuring, because to be honest if I’ve got any complaint about the last couple of days it’s that occasionally it’s too hard to find work to actually do. It’s far more boring to try and find a product category that I can work on than it is to actually do the work on one.

Today I tuned in a bunch of radio stations and fast deciding that Radio is an inherently shit medium, despite Lauren Laverne’s presence brightening the end of each working week day. I’m constantly swapping channels to try and avoid the crapper artists. I’m not feeling much of a genre mix, either. Radio 2 seems to enjoy playing Elvis Costello and those people, XFM is by far the best, but it has to be in the station’s charter that they play Franz Ferdinand every 3 songs (and the godawful new Razorlight single. Ugh. At least the new Kasabian single (Cutt off) is pretty good,) Virgin seems to be playing the songs that XFM dropped last week, and Radio 1 is laughable. I listened to Eminem once, D12 once, and the rest wasn’t totally indistinct shite, and the DJs are all insufferable. I’d kill to have a decent metal station, if only for the variety. I miss Kerrang. I am going to have to remedy the music situation as quickly as possible.

Speaking of Kasabian, which I did ealier, I think the first lines of the new single are really excellent. They go: “John was a scientist/he was hooked on LSD/Interested in mind control/and how the monkey held the key.” There’s layers in them there lyrics. Even if I do hear a little too much of the Stone Roses in Kasabian for my own comfort. I’m also going to praise David Ford’s new EP, two songs in particular, New York and Finding my Feet; the combined running time is almost 15 minutes, but for acousting songs they’re lyrically and musically strong enough to carry that length of time. Let’s hope there’s a tour of some kind I can attend in the coming months.

Oh yeah, this morning I witnessed my first tube based argument. An old guy wanted someone to move their arm so he could use the armrest, and that guy, for whatever reason, declined. It ended with the old guy’s helper insisting they get off at this stop and wait for the next tube, and the old guy saying “If I was younger, I’d punch your face in!” to the younger guy. Personally, I don’t see what the big deal was about an armrest, but it was apparantly in demand. I’ve also started noticing rats on the tube lines now. I don’t know if I’d just never looked down there before, but almost every time I’m there for a couple of minutes, I can see one run past. They’re pretty small, not like plague rats or anything, but I’m happy enough because wildlife amuses me. It’s like Pokémon, only real. I guess this is the substitute for the squirrels we used to have in Oxford.