Diary of an up and coming sociopath

My review of Issue #1 of the new Gargoyles Comic. I figure that about 3 people who ever see this link will care about that, I seem to be relatively alone in my appreciation of the cartoon, and the original creator coming back to write the series continuation in comic form is more or less aimed directly at me, so it’s hard to complain.

Also, while I’m on the topic of nerdism.

The Spider-Man 3 trailer is so excellent I wish I could sleep for a year just so the film would be out for me to see.

The Transformers movie teaser, by comparison, is utter crap. The whole thing smacks of a film that’s not even been started properly yet. Then, at the end, Michael Bay’s name appears in large letters and something inside me dies.

Sunday night we drove down to Oxford and went to Maxwells with Seb and Rach. I had a Lamb Shank, though I’m not entirely sure which bit of the Lamb is a shank. Probably best not to think about it. We had these vouchers from Tescos that made eating there practically free, and we all managed to feast adequately on a 2-course meal with assorted drinks at a cost of £7.50 each. A wonderful scam. Then we went back to theirs and I repeatedly thrashed Seb at DS games, though that’s expected since he doesn’t own one. He did better than Ian in Mario by actually beating me in one round, though.

Yesterday the tube was incredibly screwed up so we tried to get the bus in, which resulted in us being about 40 minutes late. First two full buses went past us, and we realised that it was filling up with people outside the station, because unlike us, they had gone to Northfields and discovered it was buggered, and hopped on the bus. We decided to walk up to Uxbridge road and get a bus, and as we were doing that a near-empty one passed us. Then we missed one because it didn’t stop at the stop we were waiting at, and a further 2 because we didn’t know they stopped where we wanted to go. We did get there eventually, but it was totally ridiculous. We left Ealing like 10 minutes before we’d normally expect to be at work.

Luckily, with spending all this time stuck on the tube, I’ve been really blitzing through my Pixies biography, Fool the World, which is amazingly insightful and puts all my favourite songs into context. Perhaps could do with a little more from the band themselves, but it’s their nature to be pretty quiet, so I can’t complain too much. There are loads of other contributers to make up for ther comparative silence, and the perspectives of people like like Steve Albini and Gil Norton are worth the price alone. Albini’s section has given me a new angle from which to view Surfer Rosa, in fact. I’d recommend the book to even passing fans of the Pixies. It’s just that good.

Seems like my illness is almost over, the previous assessment being grossly over-optimistic. It’s been a truly terrible week because of it. I think my decision not to take some time off work negatively affected the healing process. Without getting too graphic, I’ve had things coming out of my sinuses that could turn your hair white.

I expect there’s probably a day or two to go before I’m in top shape (for me..) but it’s not been too bad recently.

Yesterday Ian and I bought ourselves a DS Lite each from Virgin Megastore. I had been in two minds as to whether it was worth paying £100 for a slightly newer version of a console that I only got at Christmas, but I still have use for the original (pass-through card doesn’t work on the Lite) and Nikki no longer has to wait for me to finish gaming, she can just play on that one. The improved elements of the Lite make it a definite purchase if you’re on the fence, especially if you don’t already own a DS.

Today Nikki and I went to the O2 Wireless festival in Hyde Park. As previously mentioned, we managed to get free tickets - they seem to be quite literally giving them away, despite the face value of £40.

We turned up just in time to catch the tail end of Nizlopi doing their self-styled brand of “folk-hip-hop.” They were so terrible, and their style is made even more ludicrous because I grew up the same place they did and it just means that I hear nothing but middle-class whiteboy angst. Instead of sitting around being stuck with Nizlopi, we went looking for decent eateries and were very pleased to discover Shakeaway-ripoffs, the Shaken Udder had turned up, so they provided drinks for the rest of the day. Chocolate Orange milkshakes made with actual Chocolate Oranges. Excellent.

We wandered around the retail village for a while, looking for something interesting to buy, and eventually discovered a boxfull of bootleg finger-puppets knitted by some peruvians. they had piles and piles of poorly rendered characters - Winnie the Pooh, Woody Woodpecker, Snoopy, Fred Flintstone (the people running it asked us “If this is Fred, who is the short one?”, so we told them he was Barney, which they were greatful of because they’d been trying to remember, and then they told us that in spanish Barney and Fred are called Pablo and Peter, hence their confusion.) We finally settled on a Hulk puppet though.

We watched Beth Orton, then waited for the eels. During this time I managed to explode a bottle of Fanta over myself, so we were also waiting for that to dry out. The eels played a decent set, containing both old and new material. There were some truly hilarious moments, such as when they left feedback going for like 3 minutes during the middle of Souljacker. It’s hard to see whether the James Blunt crowd would get that sort of humour, much like how they covered Peaches’ “Rock Show”. After the set some Davina wannabe was doing live interviews with the artists backstage, asking generic questions, and E was giving some great answers that were leaving her plenty confused. When asked if he was happy with how the set went, he talked about how it was 100% great and the best set they ever did. When she asked what they has requested in their rider, he replied “Drugs, mainly.” and then when asked what other artists he was here to see, instead of giving a back-slapping circle-jerk answer like the others had, he started listing dead rock stars. At the end she asked him to high-five and thus ensued the most incredibly awkward exchange of hand slaps I’ve ever seen. I found it deeply funny, anyway.

After watching that, we left, just in case we ended up seeing James Blunt. A lucky escape, really. Good job it was free else we might’ve felt like staying. I imagine in the next few years as the popularity of the festival increases, it will get proportionally more engaging, but for now it was nice to be able to turn up, have a wander, see a few decent bands and get home without devoting an entire 18-hour day to the endeavour.

There’s plenty more wackiness that I didn’t mention, but for now Nikki has the photos so I’ll let those do the talking: O2 Wireless on Flickr

Ugh. I was pretty accurate with the illness thing. I managed to avoid a day off work (since I’ve got way too much to do to take days off) but by god it’s taking its toll. I can barely use the PC most of the day. I seem to be on the way out of it (and to prove, I wrote these comics reviews for NTS, though admittedly it took me 4 days when it usually takes 1)

In other, happier news, my new T-Shirt arrived today. How jealous you all are. I’ll take some pictures to share my joy with the world when I’m less, er, full of snot and headaches. Lots of illness has also meant lots of retail therapy, unfortunately. I bought the new Frank Black double album and a Pixies biography (Fool the World) so far this week, and there’s still way more to come. Good job I’m getting paid soon, really.

Ugh. Woe is me who has somehow contracted a disease. Quite how, I’m unsure. I suspect it might have something to do with the horrible heat of Saturday that left me eating my dinner outside while Josh and Damian attempted to construct a barbecue pit out of about three pieces of concrete and the barbecue that was literally picked up off the side of the road last year, the pit being necessary because the legs had rusted off at some point in the last 8 months. It worked surprisingly well.

You have to wonder what the people next door thought we were doing as it looked increasingly likely we’d start a major fire, but then these are the same people who drove us to the brink of insanity on Saturday morning with eastern-european inspirational rock played so loud I couldn’t hear the radio in my own room, and then who now have placed, in their garden, a severed fish head suspended in a wire cage, so maybe the threat of fire didn’t bother them much at all.

I could sense ilness coming on last night when I began sneezing more than one would usually deem normal, and then from the moment I woke up this morning with a sore throat it’s been one horrible minute to the next. Using the James Hunt chart of symptomatics, we can assume:

Day 1: More sneezing that normal, sinuses fine.
Day 2: Moderate sneezing, sore throat that feels not unlike my neck has been cheese-grated
Day 3: Sinuses bunged up, sore throat vanishes mysteriously.
Day 4: Sinuses pouding, sore throat returns, sneezes until nose bleeds. Day off work necessary to prevent stupid mistakes due to inability to focus on screen or concentrate for five minutes.
Day 5 onwards: Decreasing amounts of snot expelled throughout the day.

That’s usually the order of events. Or rather, it has been since I first noticed that every cold seems to affect me in the same way. I’m looking forward the the throat-soreness being gone tomorrow.

None of this really matters to my beloved reading public, though, I don’t expect sympathy (you bastards) - if you’re reading this, just breathe deeply and appreciate the lack of pain while you can.

This morning, through the sore throated haze, I managed to tie up the loose end of the book Ian lent me, Simpsons-writer John Schwarzwelder’s “The Time Machine Did It.” It has to be said, the jokes are quite funny but he can’t write prose for shit. It’s fucking terrible to read, which is a pity because the ideas are great and plot comes together nicely at the end, it’s sort of a bumbling detective sci-fi comedy in the Dirk Gently framework, he just doesn’t have Douglas Adams’ sense of timing or linguistic prowess. Still, now I can get back to reading A Scanner Darkly, an altogether more impressive piece of work.

I’ve recently been reading this little number on the homeward-bound commute. It’s a book about the creation and context of Doolittle, by the Pixies. What is easily one of my top-5 albums ever. The book is full of information I’d never heard before, and is written in the reverent-yet-gushing tone that makes me feel like I’m doing something incredibly good every time I agree with it. I also bought an OK Computer one that I’m hoping will be as informative.

Nikki and I somehow ended up with free tickets to the O2 wireless festival next Saturday. It was some Daily Mail promotion (not that we read it, you understand) and we could choose which day we went, so after writing off the ones that would require days off work, we were left with saturday and sunday and the eels are playing on Saturday, which made the decision pretty easy. Of course, so is James Blunt. That’s just wrong.

Yesterday I bought the collected Alan Moore Future Shocks, from the ages of 2000ad. I’m guessing it’ll be an interesting curio, and a good way to find out what the man who wrote the greats was otherwise capable of back before he became Alan Moore. I also had 20% off at borders, which shouldn’t be sniffed at.

Anyone who’s familiar with magic (or Buffy, or possibly in some way, an interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics*) will be well aware that good things have a price. Case in point: For the time I spent off work yesterday due to a power cut, I now needed to make up an equal amount of effort at work today. This meant that I had to utterly bust my ass working frantically for the whole day with nary a moment to even glance over the BBC headlines.

Which is a pity, because I got home and noticed they’ve added this great new feature (though it’d be greater still if it was available on RSS.) You can now get a list of the most e-mailed stories, usually a combination of a few quirkies, stories about freaks and stories about cuteness, of the kind people like to e-mail to other people. Current example:
Tabby cat terror for black bear

And to counterbalance the wackiness, you can also get a list of the most read stories. Current example:
Raid police apologise for ‘hurt’

Actually, that’s pretty wacky in itself. I wonder if the visionaries and futurists writing Judge Dredd back in the 80s realised how close to the truth they got it. So far the Metropolitan Bacon have managed to shoot and/or murder a handful of suspected terrorists who turn out to be innocent, but so far, no reports of actually shooting any terrorists. If they keep it up at this rate, though, pure unfeeling statistics means they’re going to puncture someone with a murky enough past that it’ll be considered a success.

Yesterday in the evening, we went to see Dave Gorman record another episode of Genius, this time with Armando Iannucci. The man is a legend, but I’m not sure the format allowed him to shine fully. I feel he works best when satirising rather than ad-libbing, and he was actually a little overshadowed by Dave Gorman’s far more exuberant personality. Definitely worth the money though. Because it was free! The best suggestion: “How about a film version of Tetris?” Fucking genius, as the name of the show suggests. They got the guy to play Tetris and had the crowd treat it as a spectator sport. After my brain has stopped thinking “It should be me up there!” (after all, I was damn well PLAYING Tetris on the tube when travelling to the recording) I felt as if I was actually getting a taste of what the world would be like if I was running things. I liked it.

*The First rule of Thermodynamics is: Do not talk about Thermodynamics.
“The Second rule of Thermodynamics is: Do not talk about Thermodynamics.

Oh, sorry, wait. The second rule is “No Smoking.”

About half 12 at work, a sense of combined glee and exasperation swept through the building as all of our terminals spluttered to a halt. Usually this means someone’s tripped over the power cord and they turn on a few seconds later, our work lost forever.

This time, though, they stayed gone. And then the lights went. Then everyone swore. At this point it was almost half 12. Ian and I were considering going for lunch anyway, so that tipped it. We buggered off in search of food, and then searching fruitlessly for copies of Scott Pilgrim (way to miss the bandwagon, James.) While looking for this, we tried to go to Blackwells, but the power was down there too. Not too unusual, since it’s the same building. On the way back, we noticed that almost every building on our block was still dark and powerless.

When we returned to work an hour after we initally left, the power was still gone. It became obvious that this was no ordinary glitch. Word on the street, as I understand it from my sources, is that over 700 buildings were out of the electricity. We hung around at work for a while, I read the last of jPod, but eventually we had no choice but to go home. Well we did have plenty of choice, but no-one felt like hanging around any longer when we didn’t have a definite time for the power to come back.

I’m working from home as best I can, but in practise that means checking my mail with the fan on full blast, my music on full blast, the curtains shut and a nice cold glass of coke.

I have gained new appreciation for Monday.

I had a moment at work the other day worth of a Coupland book. During a meeting, it emerged that someone we were going to deal with was called “Bruce Campbell.” As an unashamed geek, I found this amusing and smirked at the idea of sitting down to a meeting with Ash from Evil Dead. Unfortunately, not everyone was as well-versed as me, and the ensuing discussion as to what was funny involved me trying to explain Bruce Campbell and Evil Dead to people who simply didn’t remotely have the correct reference for it. It eventually reached some kind of conclusion when I started explaining that Sam Raimi also directed Spider-Man at which point the slightly glazed over looks disappeared at the mention of a familiar movie.

Imagine not knowing who Bruce Campbell is. Worse, imagine not even caring that you don’t know. Is that really a life worth living?

As Josh observes, moments like that are what seperate the geeks from the nerds.

I finally completed New Super Mario Bros. the other day, which was very satisfying. I had a minor crisis when I though I’d done the whole game, but found I only had a 2-star rating instead of 3, but I quickly figured out that one one level, in my quest to ensure I got all the secret exits I forgot to take one of the regular exits. Was it worth £30? Hell yes.

It greatly amuses me that I got to complete it before it even came out in the UK. I am part of a small elite for the next few weeks. Now back to Tetris DS.

I also got paid by IGN. I’ve got 180 days to wait for the dollar to drop significantly that I can squeeze a few quid out of the conversion. I’ll have to think about whether it’s worth it.

I did just save a few quid, actually. Comic Showcase in London is closing, so they’ve put on a massive sale. I procured for myself both volumes of Grrl Scouts, two of the few Mahfood works I do’t have because I was waiting for the right time to buy them. Which was obviously now. I also bought Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, an Eisner-winning series about the Fantastic Four re-imagined as some 50s-style comics. It’s better than it sounds. It was an incredibly odd thing for Marvel to publish, and the fact that it won an Eisner (the comics Oscars, basically) shows how great it is. I’ve never read the whole thing, so I’m looking forward to that. The three books cost me £13, which is, trust me, an otherwise unheard of bargain.