Celebrating 12 Months Of Blog Goodness/Shite (delete as applicable)

It’s the ‘employee opinion survey’ time of year at BAe Systems. It’s the same old rubbish as ever; what do you think BAe Systems are doing wrong? Every year we fill it in pessimistically, slagging off everyone and everything. Things don’t change, but then again we don’t really expect them too. I’ll probably fill in the ‘any more comments’ bit at the end as I usually do with a request for monkey tennis. I’ve done this for about five years now but are there screeching gibbons playing ping-pong in the office atrium? Are there fuck!
Last Thursday we went to Liverpool to watch Franz Ferdinand and the Fiery Furnaces. The whole event was compered by Frederick Forysthe dressed in a Fred Flintstone costume. Well it wasn’t but I’m sure you get the poor humour attempt.
When did Liverpool have two academies? It didn’t have any a year ago and now it has two. How was I meant to know that? So we went to the wrong one and had to get a taxi for the short journey between the two. We have to go back next Monday so fuck knows how we’re meant to find our way there. They’ll have probably built a third and fourth academy by then.
Anyway it was a good gig, the Furnaces weren’t really my sort of biscuit but they were pleasant enough. Their bass made me feel odd though, I think particular frequencies upset my chest cavity and make it fear for its life. Earlier in the year I’d thought Franz Ferdinand were going to be the best new band I’d heard in years but after two ace singles the album sort of disappointed me. I’m going to check it out again though as the gig was great. It sounded just like the album played live but somehow excited me more. They didn’t play that long but it was most enjoyable, especially the fucking majesty of Darts of Pleasure. I couldn’t see at first but then ended up stood behind two midget members of Ladytron, a situation that allowed me to see all of a head and an upper torso on the stage. Woo!

We were down in t’midlands for the weekend.
On Saturday night we visited the Little Civic, a pub I hadn’t frequented for quite some time. The last visit has been etched in my mind since then (see blog from 19th May 2003), luckily this time I didn’t have any pant based problems. It’s a cool pub, they play indie music extremely loudly and it has a good atmosphere. I guess with music being played at ear shattering levels that it doesn’t aid conversation, yet it excites me to hear The Walkmen, Doves, Radiohead et al at such volume. We ended up leaving at about half eleven to catch the late showing of Dawn Of The Dead.
Zombies!
It’s unusual for me to see a film twice at the cinema, but there is always room in my heart for extra zombies.
On Sunday we went to the NEC in Birmingham for the memorabilia fair. The last time we went I’d really been looking forward to it but for some unexplained reason I was quite disappointed with it. I thought this fair was far better. There was the usual amount of tat that only a mental or freak would buy, but if you looked around you’d see something to catch your eye.
I kept seeing transformer toys that I’d had as a kid being sold for seventy or eighty quid. I could have been a millionaire! I spent about a hundred quid but could quite easily have spent way more than that. It’s hard to decide what my purchasing highlight was, probably either the limited edition drawing of Kurt Cobain, or the signed poster by Ken Foree.
Whee! I was excited that Ken Foree from Dawn of The Dead was going to be there, Marie took his picture as we walked past him and I think he thought that Julia (wearing a Dawn of The Dead t-shirt) was a dangerous stalker. He just came across as a lovely man and I eventually gathered enough courage to go and ask for his autograph on a poster. I walked away happy but then wished I’d got him to pose for a picture with me biting his neck. Or that he’d written “I *heart* zombies” on the poster.
Craig “loveable rapist” Charles was there, as were some of 1966 world cup winning squad. There was a huge crush around the table manned (or “ladied”) by Faith from Buffy. It made me laugh, yet also cry, at the sad faced men sat on signing tables which were getting little custom. There were several people there who’d been in Star Wars films…well they said they were in Star Wars but they were jawas, or people wearing huge latex masks. It could have been anybody. They seemed quite friendless, I wanted to give them a sad hug. At least Leslie Grantham wasn’t there this time, I wanted to get him to sign my DVD of Taxi Driver last year. Murdering swine.
I really enjoyed wandering around but couldn’t shake the feeling that for several of my friends the place would have been like heaven. I’ll have to take them down one day.
The laptop turned up yesterday. I think it may be “The Sex”. It’s very lovely, hopefully I’ll get to fully investigate it soon. I spent most of last night getting increasingly annoyed at my inability to set up the wireless network for it. I think I’ve found out what is causing the problem (blueyonder) so hopefully that’ll be fixed tonight. Then it’s full steam ahead for wireless internet.
A busy weekend looms ahead. Everybody is going out in Manchester on Friday, I’d like to go but have already spunked too much cash away this month so am yet undecided. On Saturday we shall be celebrating Johnny H’s birthday, on Monday (2nd anniversary!) we shall be going to see The Walkmen. There are some other things happening I think, I don’t know. Er, memory failure.