Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Took a few days off work (Monday and Friday just gone) to try and get rid of some of my massive amounts of holiday, which I’m supposed to try and use up soon. I was saving it for Q4, but the recent move from Travel to Shopping (which officially begins tomorrow…) means that technically, I should’ve used it *before* Q4. Ah well. I’m down to 5 days left for the year so I should just about be able to get rid of them.

On Saturday Sam, Josh, Al, Ian and I went up to the good old Excel Centre and to the London MCM Expo. It was utterly packed this time, more so than any previous one. Utterly, utterly rammed, though not as bad as teh worst Memorabilias, it has to be said. The highlight of the day was surely the poorly-staffed Hot Fuzz Q and A with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, a report of which Josh has done for NTS. Even if the microphones were shite and the guy curating was being a bit of a dick, it was still excellent. Afterwards we got some Hot Fuzz promotional postcards signed by the men themselves. Elsewhere, I almost found myself buying more Genshiken-related figures, but just about managed some restraint. We played on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, a game so excellent I have since procured a copy. I bought myself some old issues of X-Men as my interest in the late 80s/early 90s Claremont swansong grows, including a brilliant issue where Rogue fights Ms. Marvel, in preperation for the next issue of Ms. Marvel which is going to have the rematch in. I know, I know, I’m a comic geek.

Later that evening, with Pegg-lust fresh in my mind, Nikki and I watched Shaun of the Dead, and spent some time trying to identify the locations with quite a large amount of success, though not least because we found a website that helped.

On Sunday evening we went to a music quiz at the Spinning Wheel near Northfields station, It was pretty good fun, not least because a music quiz means no chance of a sports round. We split into two teams, Nikki, Josh and Sam on one (”Musicwang”), and Me, Al and Ian on the other (”Fried Gold”). Ian was purely there for moral support, having no knowledge of music whatsoever, though he did buy us a drink. In the end, we came a close third to Musicwang’s second, and really we were doing much better than that because it was technically a 2-person team. The group that won was marking their own paper and also managed a clear 20 points ahead of us lot, so forgive me for being suspicious. It’s hard to say whether we’d go again because finishing late on a Sunday makes it quite inconvenient, what with work, though on the other hand it could be made to work. We’ll have to see. Good fun, anyway.

Today we went up to Rachel, Seb and Cappsy’s in loose celebration of that most American of pagan festivals, Halloween, and watched the utterly fantastic Ghostwatch, which I remember screwing me up quite badly when I was much younger. Our enjoyment was in fact helped by this excellent Ghostwatch guide from Phil, also on NTS. After fucking everyone’s minds up good and proper, we unwound with The Simpsons original Halloween special, which you’ll recall has The Raven in it, a short which single handedly introduced me to Edgar Allen Poe and literally led to my eventual purchase of his complete works. It still has its charm after all these years.