Rambolic

Does anybody else move their arms above and below their waistline to watch the blood run to your veins and back out again?  Maybe it’s just me.

I’m getting slack again with the blogging.  Hey well.  A brief history in time (a book I’ve not read but keep meaning to, after I’ve read the book currently on my bedside cabinet – The Fabric of The Cosmos… going slightly off-topic) would involve me explaining the themed international housewarming I went to a week last Saturday.  Clare’s just bought the house she was renting so she decided to throw one of her infamous themed parties.  I had weeks of notice but ten minutes before leaving I still had no idea what to go as, so I went as Baghdad.  As Tom said before I arrived, “wouldn’t it be hilarious if he turned up covered in bags and pictures of his Dad??” which just so happened to be what I did.  It was a bit of a late affair, the latter of which I don’t recall.  Anybody who has me on Facebook will see the pics.

No more gigs have been watched, unfortunately, and I’m staring to miss live music again.  I need to pick up my guitar more often.  The Mac’s still broken and I want it replacing, though that’s increasingly unlikely.  I still need to order the warranty.  I must sort that.

I’ve been playing a bit of GTA IV this week – recommend it to anybody – it’s a great storyline and very amusing!  The map it huge and I bet I’ve only seen about a quarter of it.  I also saw Iron Man last week – excellent movie!  But then I like most of Robert Downey Jr’s stuff.  Can’t wait for Tropic Thunder!

Today I ordered pizza and the delivery guy turned up and pointed at my t-shirt (it has an Edimax logo on it) and proceeded to converse with me.  He was deaf, so it kind of reminded me of working with Bijan years ago.  It was kind of odd to be honest.  It’s not often you stand on your doorstep talking to random delivery drivers, but to converse with a deaf guy when you don’t know any (British) sign language… well, it’s tricky.  I really should learn to sign.  Maybe I’ll look into that.  He was a sound guy anyway.  Oh, talk about unintentional bad taste pun of the week.

Yeah, that was a Quo reference. So shoot me.

I don’t know if many people in the US read this (okay, I don’t know if many people read this, period) but if so I don’t know if you’ll have heard the name Shannon Matthews which may or may not have been kicking about on the journo grapevine. To cut a long story short Shannon Matthews went missing the other week, and as missing kids cases go, a huge search and appeal was launched to find her… as was the case when Madelaine McCann disappeared a few months ago (a case which has yet to be concluded.) Maybe it was harsh of me at the time, but I did say that I didn’t think it was particularly strange that she disappeared as apparently she’d mentioned to her friends that she wanted to run away, and in my best efforts to judge books by covers I decided that the parents didn’t look particularly bothered. Yeah, they looked upset, but I didn’t get that “I’ve just lost my kid” message. Turns out their daughter was found at a family member’s house after the police stormed the property. Facts are quite thinly laid here, but the mother and step-father have both been arrested, currently being held in custody, for perverting the course of justice. The step-father has also had charged brought against him for obtaining indecent images of children… Oh yeah, and he tried to kill himself a few days later. On top of this half of the family have been charged for benefit fraud.

Apparently, the other week an episode of Shameless was aired whereby the family decided to get some cash by pretending that their child had gone missing, and it’s alleged that this has been copied. I’ve also heard that they allegedly asked the McCann’s for money they had received from fundraising, etc. You may also have noticed my customer service head coming into play covering myself so I don’t get my ass sued off

I don’t like being all serious, but I find all this fucking apalling. The family live in a struggling area about 15 mins drive from here. Yeah, I appreciate that people can do desperate things for money, but wasting the time of hundreds of people who’re helping you out of good faith, spending tax-payers’ cash on searches that don’t need to be performed when the police could be put to better causes (I don’t think I need to elaborate there!) is just horrendous.

Another estate, this time in Bradford, was on the front page of the local rag yesterday down to an organised fist-fight appearing on Youtube. It turns out that the subject was a friend of a friend of a friend (or whatever) and while it seems like I’m being biased I don’t blame these guys. The estate they’re from doesn’t have any suitable sports facilities. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s idiocy, but give the kids something to do! At least here we have a sports centre run by the council and plenty of activities, but they have a (normally closed) recreation centre. What amuses me is that the MP for Bradford South is no other than Gerry Sutcliffe, Parliament’s Sports Minister. You’d think that if anything he’d start at home. And I deplore his ridiculous comments about meeting with Youtube to ensure that they do not promote such videos again. Erm… I think he’ll probably find that it was deleted pretty sharpish.

On a brighter note I’m interviewing tomorrow to replace my colleague who’s leaving shortly. I think I’m actually interviewing for Customer Service stroke Sales, since my manager said we’ll employ him as a salesperson if I don’t want to give him the position. I feel all managery. I’ve never interviewed before, and still need to write down the interview questions as I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to be asking. It’s all fun.

Last night was PUSA night and, as one Kerrang! journo described a friend’s band a few years back, it was bouncier than a bare-backed bonkers convention (please bear in  mind that Kerrang! journos are rejects from the usual music press crowd that sit in a room with a Chambers thesaurus trying to lay way too much emphasis on cheap puns and one-liners.)

Support came in the form of very, very, VERY Japanese Electric Eel Shock – three kids, while managing to play their respective instruments to ridiculously high ability (as only the Japanese know how thanks to super-pushy parents) insist on writing songs that only consist of two chords with radio-friendly titles such as You Bastard.  Actually, I think I counted three in one song.  Not that that was any detriment to their entertainment factor – top class!

Next up was a (probably quite brave) Kid Carpet – a guy from the South-West armed to the teeth with sampling equipment, a Casio keyboard, more kiddy toy intstruments than I care to acknowledge exist and a microphone.  I’ve gotta hand it to this guy – he had more guts than an exploding whale.  It was a very fine line between musical genius and absolute tosh, and I think he achieved the former.  Very mixed reaction from the crowd here which probably helped the odd heckle.  “Thanks to the Presidents for bringing me on tour with them!  It’s very cool of them to do that – they didn’t have to!” to which one guy yelled “They shouldn’t have!”  It was all taken in good faith and fisty-cuffs didn’t break out.

The Presidents rocked as always, playing a couple of lesser known earlier tracks which everybody seemed to go down better than most of their later stuff.  Not that their recent albums are bad at all (some songs are genius) but I guess we were all twenty-somethings reliving our youth.  Notes were taken of kit I am required to purchase for our venture into the tribute world as The Prime Ministers of The United Kingdom.  Oh yes.  It will happen.  At least as soon as I can afford a guitar that I can afford to deface.  I was watching the guitbassism closely.  It’s a talent I shall soon master.

Well I’ve been knackered all week and I have no motivation to do anything productive. My Macbook Pro has been getting on my tits. The wireless has been as dodgy as a kid playing British bulldogs. It disconnects and the only way to fix the damn thing is to restart. I have Vista installed on here too, and streaming a movie the other night almost made me want to cave my head into a wall, given the number of times it decided to disconnect. It’s a good job WordPress auto-saves your drafts. I’m wondering whether to send it back to Apple for repair or to get a replacement from work. I don’t think work would be too chuffed though, since the guy at the disty gave me a stupidly good price on it, and work would be losing out on a few hundred quid if they replaced it for me. We’ll see.

I saw Stewart Lee on Thursday – semi-famous comedian from Fist Of Fun, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, and a few other TV comedies from the mid-90s. We saw him a couple of years ago in some pub in Headingly. Apparently last year he was voted 41st Best Comedian Ever in one of those shitty 47hr long Top 100 shows. Apparently, as a comedian, you only visit Huddersfield twice in your career and one of those times is on your way up… and this is his second time. The show seemed to be a whinge about his declining popularity and failed ideas for TV. Quite amusing but I couldn’t help but think that there’s some truth in there!

I was at Carl’s last night and we watched a movie and a couple of episodes of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – awesome TV show!

In other news: my colleague announced he was leaving yesterday. I have two weeks to interview and train somebody. I don’t think there’s anybody internally who would be suitable, and I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to training somebody from scratch. I fear that’s the direction in which we’re moving though.

After a decade of waiting (no, really) I finally saw Portishead play live tonight!  Absolutely amazing.  I’ve seriously never seen any singer mean and feel the words they’re singing like Beth does (or she should be an actor… that said, I saw To Kill A Dead Man.)  The sound was spot on, the songs were brilliantly executed, and visuals were great.  I was worried about the sound since the support band (Hawks and Hacksaws or something?) were quite tinny and you couldn’t hear them properly.  I was pleasantly surprised when I felt my clothes vibrating with the bass.  I fucking saw Portishead!

My friend Rachel was accepted into Oxford Uni today, so congrats to her (if she ever reads this!)

I’m hungry.  Somebody feed me.

Rik refuses to believe my theory that if you bang your head on your pillow seven times you’ll wake up at 7am.  He’s obviously a fool to himself.  When the next power cut hits town and he can’t find his mobile phone to wake him up who’ll be laughing then, ey?  Me – that’s who.

Okay, I set off a bit late to work this morning, still confident I could put metal to metal and make it to work on time, but for some reason (I haven’t found out why yet) the traffic was shocking and I ended up being ten minutes late, and making Rik even later probably.  I got to work just as my colleague was opening up since I didn’t arrive on time, and the alarm was going off.  I had to call the security company and let them know about the breach.  Well, they already knew – that’s what they’re paid for, so they said they’d send out an engineer.  Somehow this became my job (apparently I don’t have enough of these ‘responsibility’ things) and had to drop everything to check the security cams and try and figure out which sensors were which in the warehouse.  We have about 30 or 40 scattered around the place with ridiculous descriptions that make no sense.  I went for lunch and was pulled away again to try to find the main alarm control box, which nobody seemed to know the location of, and non-existent stepladders, which weren’t actually needed since the engineer neglected to inform me he’d already brought his own.  I then went back to ‘work’ and had to sign random documents from the security co. to acknowledge what work had been done whilst I was mid-call with a customer and not really concentrating on either.  I’ve probably signed away my pension.  Actually, I don’t have a pension.  That’s lucky.

Wednesday was sheesha night. Nando’s then sheesha. Markaz is still open, but they’ve had to hide the smoking area in the sheesha lounge – no more smoking in the areas you can see. Presumably this is still against the law, despite the fact you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t want to breathe smoke. Anyway, was good to see Waz again. We had Nando’s too, which is always good. We questioned the intelligence of the girl who took our order though. Not content with us ordering the same meal at once, she insisted on taking our orders separately. I’m not sure how, since we told her about five times that we were both having the same meal, but she managed to get one of them wrong.

Last night I spent out in Leeds, first in Jongleurs comedy club, and then into Bar Risa (their counterpart) for Michelle’s birthday. The comedians were… okay. Everybody else thought they were shit hot. I guess I’m hard to please when it comes to comedy! Which brings me around to my other area in which I’m a snob – Bar Risa were presenting a band. To be honest, they were good. What annoyed me, apart from their slant toward generic pop/indie genres, was their sound and kit. The guitarist, while being evidently talented, had a PRS guitar shoved through a myriad of fx pedals, plugged into a half-decent amp and mic’d up to a shitty cab. The drummer seemed to have a 3/4 size kit with some cymbals so small I’m surprised he had the accuracy to hit them. They also had the kit mic’d up which, for the size of the venue, was pointless. All you could hear was drums. I guess the sound guy didn’t even know since he was stood in the wrong place to actually hear what everybody else was hearing. Again, everybody else I was with thought they were great. They were talented, but I guess they’ve not seen many good bands.

Today Rik and I went car shopping. I took him to the biggest car place here which has apparently been closed for months, which I only learned today. We went to Batley and looked around one place… the sales rep seemed pretty pushy so we had a quick look and then left. I need to find out where all the dealerships went.

Following last week’s escapade watching a friend’s band I decided to see the Four Fighters on Friday.  It was good to see Clare and some other friends again.  I was also challenged at Guitar Hero.  Oh, they’ll crash and burn, don’t worry (actually, I’m not sure since I hardly play these days!)  Anyway, for those who hadn’t guessed, the Four Fighters are a Foos tribute with quite a good name for themselves.  I think I’m supposed to be designing and maintaining their website, but it changed recently since I’ve been slack and I need to double check said arrangement.  Requests were being yelled by the crowd, and it seems my opinion is valued since their singer, Iain, decided to ask for Big Al’s opinion.  “Hey, Johnny Park” was played.  Oh yes – I had spoken.  Anyway, I stood in the least ear-friendly position in the house and came out profoundly deaf.

Saturday I remembered I was supposed to collect a PC for Ste from work the day previous, so at 4:50pm I broke the land speed record and saved the day.  Phew.  That night was spent being fed by Ste (again) and playing some Viking and GH2 and GH3 before heading home at 2am.  Since it’s about an hour away, and in another county, I got home around 3am.  I then remembered that the clocks went forward, and 3am became 4am.  It was even stupider o’clock than I’d thought.

Sunday we went to see Gogol Bordello, gypsy-punk beat combo extraordinaire.  I have to say that I think they’ve got to be one of the most entertaining, if not the most entertaining bands I’ve ever seen.  I severely exceeded my jumping quota.  Apparently Simon from work was there, but despite his efforts I didn’t see him.  Seriously though, if you ever get a chance to see this band, go.  So much energy.

In other news, I’ve been struggling at play catch-up at work after James had skivalitis on Thursday and Friday.  In his defense he processed some claims.  I spoke to a customer I was dealing with a few weeks ago who happens to be an old TV presenter from Magpie, the cool kids’ Blue Peter.  She’s sound enough.  I have many other customers to call back tomorrow.  The joys of pretending to be management – yay.

Okay, I guess it’s expected in my line of work that I’ll come across one or two disgruntled customers. Only this morning did I have my eardrums perforated by some fool who’d broken his own case. But every so often I get something that’s worth mentioning to people. Last week I received a voicemail from a customer whose hard drive had been returned by him as faulty, but we’d found no fault – it was working fine. Now, I really applaud this guy for being able to string together such a lengthy intelligible sentence made up of predominantly foul language. I’m tempted to post the call recording, but I’m unsure about the legalities.

Any chance of any of you lazy idle good-for-nothing bunches of fucking idle shit-for-brains cunts can do anything? Leeds Trading Standards will be paying you a visit, very shortly, and if you can’t produce my fucking hard drive, that only I know the markings on, because it’s been specifically marked to ensure that it is not replaced of bullshitted about by you bunch of lazy useless cunts, and I’m gonna make sure you pay, double, what anybody else on this planet would sue the arses off you for. You bunch of fucking cunts.

Absolutely brilliant. Oh, and he wants my directors to give me my P45.