Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I’m currently at Nikki’s, considering whether to go and buy some discreet headphones (for work) tomorrow. A large part of what’s driving me insane about the radio is the repetion. The endless repetition. And finally, the repetition. In addition to the repetition. SO much repetition that the repetition because so annoyingly repetitive that when you hear the DJ annunce that they’re going to have some Zutons for you after the break that you want to rip off the headphones and hurtle them through the 12th storey window just so you never have to hear that shit again, but unfortunately you can’t because were you to do so there’d be nothing left that was remotely like a distraction that didn’t directly interfere with your ability to do the job. At least music is a passive activity.

XFM’s adverts are horrendous. I mean, really bad. Maybe as an exercise next week I’ll transcribe a couple and then let you know how many times I’ve had to listen to them. I could probably do their Napoleon Dynamite advert right now, so constantly has it been played. The hilariously tragic thing is, the advrt is literally a bunch of quotes about how great the movie is, but it fails to convey even the tiniest detail about the film. Napoleon Dynamite. PG. Contains a character called Pedro, and apparantly some dancing. That’s all I know about this film. That, and the fact that if I ever come face to face with the hideously annoying human who is asking the questions in the radio clip I would be inclined to crush his fingers to pulp with a hammer.

Hang on, I was talking about headphones. Yes. Discreet inner-ear headphones that I can plug into the soundcard and use to listen to proper music. I could take my giant headphones, but people don’t seem to use them around the office and I’m not trying to turn myself into some kind of headphone renegade. Let’s hope there’s a shop open tomorrow which’ll cater to my needs.

On a lighter note, today Nikki and watched about 85% of Notting Hill. A Richard Curtis/Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant film of the kind I am unwilling to pay for, but that I’m quite happy to watch on an evening in with my girlfriend, when it’s free and there’s nothing else interesting. It had about 3 good jokes, and it was all incredbly predictable, and contained lots of awkward scenes of Julia Roberts standing around. I wouldn’t even say it was a great example of the genre it represented, really. I was far more entertained by hearing the woman who is Alice in the vicar of Dibbley saying “fuck” and looking in the backgrond of shots to see if I could spot everyone’s favouritely named Notting Hill eatery, Sarnie Asylum, which I believe has since been renamed/replaced by the far less hilarious ‘Cafe on the hill.’ Actually, I am reminded that I should go to Notting Hill at some point, since I’ve never been shopping in that area of London, nor had a proper wander around it.

We also went to Cov today. I picked up the final ever issue of Demo ending a year of great comics, and I bought the gifts necessitated by Kelkoo’s “Secret Santa” dealie. There’s a tenner I’ll never see again. Actually, I should, but christ knows in what form… £10 worth of gadget shop junk, if I’m lucky. Still, I’ve tried my best, in that I just got Nikki to chose the stuff, and then she’ll wrap it, and then I can give it in and hope that the person receiving it never finds out it was me who bought them all this rubbish. It’s very hard to buy generic gifts which will suit any age (I had a gender, obviously) and interest. However, if that sounds like a horrendous Christmas tradition for some of you, imagine how much glee I was filled with when December 20th was announced as Yahoo’s “Bring your children to work day.” You all know how I love children. Sliced up in a ed wine sauce. Actually, I think it said “Kids” in the e-mail. I’ll have to check that. I could bring in a pair of goats. The other loophole I was thinking of exploiting was just taking Nikki. “She is carrying my unconceived child.” I would say. Sam sugegsted I just claim she’s my stepdaughter, but I suspect there’d be some odd looks and I’d get “released” from my contract quite fast.