Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Hmm. Never intended to leave a blogging gap this big but there are various reasons for that, I suppose. Not least is that it’s been alternately too quiet to bother mentioning, and then too not quiet for me to actually blog it. The multiple time constraints of self-obsession can’t always be accommodated. Still, I’m here now.

The biggest big thing, that I never mentioned at the time, was meeting Alan Moore. That was on the evening of the 12th - Seb, Rachel, Josh, Cappsy and I went to the London Institute of Edutainment (as I believe it’s called) and saw Moore himself being interviewed alongside his collaborator and partner, Melinda Gebbie, and interviewed by Stewart Lee at that. Lee did a great job of holding things together despite at least one amusing part where he clearly openly and strenuously disagreed with Moore’s opinion but didn’t want to offend him. The talk was about Lost Girls, which is going to be unavailable in the UK until 2008, so it was kind of strange in that regard. I have got it on import pre-order but I strongly suspect it’ll never arrive, between importation issues, copyright laws and limited print-runs. It was a great talk, anyway, with a Q&A session afterwards (though, almost disappointingly, no-one asked anything that might’ve been upsetting.) Moore is, despite his media-portrayed image of being an insane and bitter reclusive genius, surprisingly down-to-earth and convivial.

Given what we knew of the guy beforehand, Seb and I weren’t really expecting a signing afterwards, though we all took our stuff because hope springs eternal, and as I put it previously, the only thing stupider than carrying around your Alan Moore books all day for no reason would be not having any if a signing happens. To our barely disguisable glee there was indeed a signing afterwards, and if you’ll excuse the heavy use of quotations, Seb put it best when saying that it’s not often you get to meet someone who’s the best living, if not the best ever in their chosen field, and this was our change to do just that. I got both my LoEG’s signed and gibbered out some of my trademark barely-intelligible “oh-god-I’m-talking-to-one-of-my-idols” conversation that Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright once received. I get starstruck by the oddest people. After that we went to the Burger Shack on Charing Cross road (formerly named Smollensky’s) and then back home.

Later that week we went over to Seb’s and met his friend Ed, and I gave Cappsy another DVD full of The Goods, until his ‘net connection comes back. Having a ‘net connection and a TV that can act as a PC display makes watching downloaded things even cushier than it was back in the dark ages. While Lost and Galactica are still the top shows, it’s worth noting that Heroes is fucking brilliant and improves with every episode. On the other hand, I recently used a Windows Media Playlist and my PC to make a 24-hour Mitchell and Webb channel. I was thinking of expanding my output, in fact, to a full week of programming and making it subscription-based, so Nikki and Josh have to pay a fiver a month to watch it. I’m selling advertising spots in prime time if you’d like to inquire.

On Monday I was too ill to go to work (dizziness and sore throat) after becoming increasingly headached and worse across the day on Sunday. I spent the next 3 days at work in a quite substantial daze, going to bed like 3 hours earlier than normal and sleeping right through, and thankfully I’d already booked Friday off. After one day of feeling almost entirely back to normal, I now on Saturday find myself in the throes of a far more traditional cold. No idea if it’s related to the previous illness or not but it’s fucking annoying. My throat is killing me once again and I’m sneezing and all that shit. I’m supposed to be going back home tomorrow for the day but given how I feel, I’m kind of concerned about what my ability to drive will be like. I’ve got the Friday off again this week, but it’s pretty clear to me that for the second week in a row, I’ve chosen the day off at the wong end of it. Typical.