One Week To Go...

So my time with Johnston Press' Pre-press department draws to a close. My compromise agreement is with the solicitor. I have a finishing date of 2nd of April, but I don't work Thursday/Fridays so my last day is a week today.

If I'm looking for positives, I could say at the very least this has been the catalyst to doing something more interesting with my professional life. I had an interview while I was working in pre-press for a position as a designer on a lifestyle magazine. After lying through my teeth trying to pretend that I gave a flying fuck about such dross, I decided I could feign interest anymore and it was time to do something that I got excited about.

But I'm not looking for positives. Not my style. Instead I'll pour a massive pile of scorn on the sheer mind boggling stupidity of allowing a newspaper to be run by accountants. Print media is in terminal decline. No wonder with morons like this running the show. Determined only to put out the cheapest product possible, with the most possible space available for advertising. Oh, and of course massive bonuses for themselves:

tales of nothing in particular

I think I'm going to have to make a serious assault on reducing my coffee consumption. I keep getting headaches which I presume are caffeine related more and more frequently. I've always been quite prone to headaches. But recently I've started waking up with a sore head which can stay with me all day. No amount of pain killers shifts it. Seems to be on days when I get up later, i.e. days where I've usually consumed a few coffees by the that point.

I've left the band I was playing with, Lords of Bastard, recently. I didn't have time to practice more than once a week, if that. Wasn't really enough time. Of course, then I get laid off. So I'm looking into getting another band on the go. Damage who I used to play with in Santo Caserio was looking to start something. Somewhere in Swing Kids, Born Against, Pissed Jeans country. Sounds promising.

On a more laid back note, today I've been rather enjoying Viva Terlingua, by JerryJeffWalker. I seem to have a lot of time for a certain strain of country stuff of late. My young self would be disgusted with me. If you haven't heard it, definetly worth checking out.

Kill the kids. Kill the man. Break Up the Band, and stay broken up thanks.

Have you heard the news? The Doors are reforming. Jim Morrison's Corpse has been disinterred at Père Lachaise. Right this minute the highly skilled Team at Jim Henson's Creature Workshop are rigging what remains of his corpse with a whole array of animatronics gizmos, so that the Lizard King can perform once again. Ray Manzarek informed the assembled press that technology will even enable Morrison's corpse to unsheathe its member and simulate masturbation, just like old times.

I jest, but lets face it, It's not entirely improbable. You don't expect much else from big dumb rock bands. Black Sabbath are slowly working through reforming all their line ups. Mark my words, their next project will be a reunion of the classic Forbidden-era line-up, complete with guest vocalist Ice-T. You must learn to live with such indignities.

I find the whole trend much more insidious when it starts to spread amongst the underground, Hardcore bands and everything that followed from that. You know. Everything that was an antidote to the clapped out bullshit foisted on us by hoary old dinosaurs. Lets not beat around the bush here. Names should be named. Fingers pointed. So point them I shall.

Portraits of Past, I'm talking to you here! WHY? What possessed you? Did the band come together by chance at the local Crack Dealers house? Did you, whilst high as kites and out of your fucking minds, decide; "hey, lets reform the band. Let's get back together and take a massive steaming dump on our musical legacy!". Did you see all these Euro kids running about creating awesome music clearly inspired by your efforts and think? "HE WE SHOULD BE GETTING SOME SORT OF PIECE OF THIS ACTION, WE INVENTED THIS SHIT!". Well boo fucking hoo. At least you got to live long enough to be appreciated. Some aren't so lucky. You should have taken your cult status and been happy with it.

Shit, we can't let P.O.P take the fall on their own. Cap'n Jazz, I'm looking at you! Moss Icon I'm looking at you! Swing Kids I'm looking at you! Yaphet Kotto (I'd be looking at you if you hadn't managed to blow it like the crazy drug Hoovers you are, thank fuck for narcotics), fuck Black Flag, sadly, I'm even looking at you.

I was trying to think if I had many musical heroes who hadn't pissed all over their shoes in some vindictive attempt to drive me insane. I don't like to tempt fate, but I feel reasonably confident in these picks:

• 1. Tom Waits- Unlikely to break up with himself. Or reform. (A safe bet.)
• 2. The Melvins- line-ups come, line-ups go. But Buzz and dale will Prevail. (Good Odds.)
• 3. Born Against- Unless it was some bizarre subversion to demonstrate how shit reformations are.  (Outside chance I've jinked this one).

This got overly long. I'm off to burn half my record collection.

Spanner in the Works

Last Wednesday at work we got dragged into the conference room and given the news none of us was particularly surprised to finally hear. Johnston Press are closing my dept (ad make up) and transferring the work we do down South. I'm effectively redundant. Although for nonsense legal reasons its not quite as straight forward, but the end result will be the same.

On one level this is a real pain. It knocks me on my arse financially. So now I'm going to have to scrabble to pick up extra work to pay the rent, and the saving that I was going to be able to do is right out the window, so no fun times for the foreseeable future.

But at the same time, its not particularly nice living under the constant threat of being axed. Now the blade has finally fallen its like a weight lifted off the shoulders. Lets face it, the job sucks, so I'm not going to cry about it. I'm pissed off I've only managed to get two months odd of it running alongside the tattoo shop when I've put up with it for two and a half years with this in mind. But hey. That's the way the Cookie crumbles Etc.... FTW.

Tear it all up and start all over again

I have a habit of tearing pages out of my sketchbook because their ineptitude angers me. This is probably a self defeating action. I love looking through other people's sketch books. I'm never offended by the roughness of anyone else's ideas. I love to see inside their thought process, their doodles, their roughs, I don't judge the content. But I seem to have trouble looking at my own work in the same way. If one thing on the page is annoying me I have to pull the whole thing out. I should probably get over this and lighten up a bit. Seems to be a recurrent motif for me.

Calm down you twat, its only life

I'm having a "JESUS SUFFERING FUCK" Monday. I'm beset by idiocy at every turn. Its making me want to drive my head into my monitor and end it all in a shower of sparks.

Started this morning with Ben Sheppard musing; "its amazing the public appetite for the John Terry Saga". What appetite you snivelling little shiterag? The retarded mess that poses for the media in this country chooses to force feed us pure swill for weeks on end and you have the cheek to accuse us of having an appetite for it? ITS THE ONLY FUCKING DISH ON THE MENU, YOU INANE DRIBBLING BUFFOON.

Then I get to work only to find myself waist deep in ineptitude. To the most part, the company doesn't seem to employ human beings in advertising sales. We seem to have some sort of pseudo-human troglodytes staffing the phones. Their idea of operating a computer seems to be smashing their fists into the keyboard then throwing shit at the screen like some sort of demented monkey. We then get a phone call from the Departments Head Baboon saying its our fault their charges are on a cerebral par with single celled organisms and we have to wipe up all the shit they've chucked about the place. This cycle repeats ad-infinitum, with no expectation of them ever learning Sweet FA.

Then there was this classic in the Evening News: "Touch rugby is similar to rugby but without the tackling, scrummaging, rucks, mauls, lineouts and kicking". So essentially, what we have, is fucking tig with a ball. Brilliant. Just like fucking Rugby then. I'm going to start a game called Pseudo-Golf, which involves sitting in a chair in the house reading a good book, about ANYTHING but Sports. It'll be fucking massive, thank you very much.

This is but a mere fraction of the events which have made steam shoot from my ears today. I think I'm close to critical mass and I have another two whole days of this crap to come. Any suggestions for morning news media that doesn't make me want to kill, well basically everyone, gratefully accepted.

Its almost here...

Excited is an understatement.