UK Watercooler 32: Fall Into The Meaning Gap

I have just been offered a job! It's all go!

I was googled! I don't like that. No.

Sounds fair to me, Kate, and Mark G very much OTM.

Congrats GG.

I am starting to be capable of being busy at this job, which is pleasing.

this pm I find out whether my 12 week notice period here is negotiable or not.

12 weeks!!!!!! WTF how is anyone ever meant to leave? Although if they are shedding people then maybe they will let you go sooner.

It's usually negotiable.

I thought that was what mine was at my last job, but... well. It wasn't. It also protects you and guarantees you a big payout if they decide to make you redundant.

Congratulations on being offered the job, Mark, and congrats on a good interview, Tom!

Despite all that, it still took my boss over an hour to provide the materials needed for me to get on with my job. And then we had a fire drill. Tra la la.

I mainly sent the email to cover my arse if this client complains about me, and specify exactly *why* this project is running over. (Even though it isn't running over currently, all of my end has been done due to my workarounds.) It's also just insulting for them to insinuate that I'm somehow wasting *their* time when it's been obvious from Day 1 who is wasting time around here.

Anyway, I'm now doing my documentation. Well, actually, I'm not, I'm eating delicious adzuki bean curry and checking my email, obviously. I cannot wait for this job to end.

Oh! Oxford people, go and see FreeLoveBabies tonight, because I cannot:

Show Time: 27 Mar 2008 - 21:00
Venue: the cellar
Address: 3 George St
City: oxford
County: Midlands
Country: UK
Post Code: ox1 2at

Or maybe I will, just to spite my job, and call in sick tomorrow. Grrr.

Oh, and here's the final finished version of that guitar I designed the last time I was in Northampton:

http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v216/225/64/778760598/n778760598_2591976_711.jpg

I got a genuine 1920's flapper film in the post on DVD, this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018673/usercomments

Wow, what a blast - a cheap exploitation movie from 1928! (it's full of lingering shots of the flapper girl's bare back and bare legs, and at times appears to have been shot by a shoe fetishist!) It goes from being fluffy and frivolous to suddenly quite serious in the middle, when the flapper girl's straight-laced sister (who is always running her down) dumps her husband and runs off with another guy, and flapper girl tears into her, calling her a "cheap hypocrite". The end, a crazy scene on a burning rollercoaster (!) is beyond belief. The title cards are all in '20's jazz-speak. Oh man

Aw, that sounds great!

Bloody recruiters... for the first time I was quite happy to get a very obvious call from a headhunter while in the office, so I went off in the bathroom and took it. Don't give me access to email, then the headhunters ring me. That's what happens.

But he said he would email me specifications of this role, and of course, hasn't. Bah!

My agent is supposed to call me at 6. I don't know whether to hang around here to take the call or rush off somewhere else. I don't want to rock the boat if the client hasn't complained, but I do want to register my unhappiness if there's any hint of problems.

I have now completed 10 pages of documentation in the course of the afternoon, so they can't complain too much. Sent it back to them and told them to get on with reading it, then get back to me.

So the ball is back in their court now.

It is not good to have such an adversarial atmosphere between client and consultant. :-( For either me, the client, or the project. This makes me very unhappy.
:-((((

Oh, sod it. Or maybe on both:

http://www.portrait.gov.au/exhibit/cecil/_lib/img/large/exhib_8.jpg

Friday. At last.

Pub tonight, anyone?

It's finally NOT LENT and no one wants to go to the pub with me. I'm going to do a cry. Boo hoo hoo. I'll just go home and watch Chariots of Fire. By myself. Again. Wah, etc.

Tzr just asked me to do ANOTHER review. A lead this time. WTF?

And why do I keep saying yes?

Because they love you?

The flapper girl from the film:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/2366656471_ebb47ed14e.jpg?v=0

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2358/2366657559_5a78448b79.jpg?v=0

i would happily go to the pub with you kate but they'd be closed by the time the plane lands :(

Flapper girl is excellent!

But with the time difference, surely it would work, Mitya? The russian pubs would be closing, but the Russian Bar in Shoreditch would just be getting started!

Not that I'd uh, want to go there.

Guess it's going home and making stir fry and watching CoF again. Unless I stop at a shop and buy some new films. I got my timesheets signed, but keep forgetting to turn them in. They owe me a couple of thousand pounds by now.

I'd come to the pub with you , but I live a million miles away.

I have four films on my HD, one of which I shall watch tonight. Should I watch:

Midnight Cowboy
Chinatown
Repo Man
Election

Repo Man! Plate of shrimp!

I thought I had that, but apparently I don't. Maybe I'm thinking of the soundtrack.

Where can I videos on TCR? That are not of a dodgy variety. I suppose I better walk down to the Zavvvvy or whatever it's called.

I would doubt that zavvvvvvvy has tapes either. The only place that seems to have them are small coprner shops with greying copies of when harry met sally and robocop.

I'll give Repo Man a go then. I hope it's not rubbish.

I like Repo Man. It helps if you're into early 80s So-Cal punk though.

Sorry, geez, I'm turning into an old lady. By videos I mean DVDs, natch. I can't stick videotape in my powerbook, oh no!

No, Repo Man is just funny, fullstop. It helps if you're into crazy conspiracy theories and like laughing at punks and scientologists and the government alike.

There is a great place on charing cross road, corner of old compton st, run by the grumpiest human in existance, that sells dvd's of silent films, old musicals, vintage comedies, black and white melodramas etc.

Off to norway, not through LOLT5, fortunately.

Repo Man is certainly not rubbish! It's very funny & weird.

Zavvi is a terrible shop. I'm amazed it's kept going TBH.

That sounds like a great place, Ed. I must take a look next time I'm in London.

I wonder if I can get down to Compton St. in my lunch hour. Probably not, and I bet if it's run by a grumpy dude, it will be closed by the time I get out of work.

All I really want is Brideshead, Bright Young Things and maybe another season of Bab 5. I've got to get through my upcoming unemployment somehow!

I am being forced to take a lunchbreak due to the developers doing updates on the DB. Lord knows what will be missing again when they are done. Sigh.

I have a strange craving for a bagel (probably due to dreaming about eating bagels) but I know there's nowhere around here I can get a decent one. Sigh.

You had a dream about eating bagels?

I had a dream about making toast once. It wasn't very good.

The toast or the dream? Or both?

Well, there was more to the dream than that. I went to visit my brother, at my parents' old house. And for some reason the Olympic Equestrian Team moved in to the farm next door. We had bagels for lunch, but I planted the carrots in the garden so we had no veggies.

HA HA HA. Tzr just asked if I wanted to go to a METAL FESTIVAL in Portugal later this month.

When are they going to figure out I don't actually listen to metal?

Nu-shoegaze gets lumped in with metal, doesn't it?

My dream consiste dof me getting up in the middle of the night to make some toast, but when I got downstairs there was no bread so I had to go back to bed. And I know it was a dream because I got some bread out of the freezer that evening. It was possibly the dullest dream anyone's ever had tho.

You definately should go to a portugese metal festival.

Should definitely go to Portugal, skip the festival, then do all the research you need on Portugese metallers by hanging out in Camden Market at the weekend

Think of all the lovely port.

I'd love to go to Portugal. But 1) expenses are not included, so you have to find your own place to crash and 2) the bands are REALLY terrible. It's not even nu-gaze metal or doom metal or drone metal. It's proper MEH-UL!!! and I'm quite, quite terrified of it.

Get Kerr to do you a 12 hour compilation

Maybe Kerr should go to the festival and pretend to be me!

Not if it's that kind of metal.

btw what band is the lead review on?

A Silver Mount Zion And Tra La La band.

I probably shouldn't be leaking all this to you, should I?

Ha ha ha, I have just turned my bandmates on to STEAM PUNK and they have fallen in love with it. Singer just asked me "Would you mind dressing as a Victorian scientist for our next photo shoot?" To which mine only response can be "Mind? MIND? Try and stop me!"

Oh no, I'm f*cked:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7315656.stm

That's a GYBE spin off. New album is pretty rock though. It's def not metal though so i think you should do it (as long as you give it a good review)

Im about to walk down the town to buy the new Terrorizer actually.
Look who is on the cover
http://www.terrorizer.com/images/issues/bigt169.jpg

Nadja are in it too in a Roadburn(psychedelic/stoner/spacerock/doom/drone fest) Special! A load of my online mates are off to that.
Hawkwind played it last year and Nik Turner the year before.
http://www.roadburn.com/frames.html <------- Next Weeks Line-Up
Unfortunately Electric Wizard and Grails pulled out of this years.

Terrorizer really is becoming KateMusic™ these days.

5ive are in it too. That's a great spacerock album!

OK, that SUCKS and I am now cross. Because I was originally supposed to do the artwork for the cover of that one. :-(

I would definitely have done a better cover than that. Grrrrr.

I am never going to get to do illustrations for anyone! They lure you in with this "oh yeah, you can do illos" and then you get stuck doing reviews for the rest of your life.

I am quitting after this one. I really am. :-(

You gotta bid your time til the chance comes. You're getting a lead review now. Stick in!

THEY offered it to ME. I had to tell them about doing it in post production and all that. And then they go and get someone else to do it. I'm going to email Stannard and go BAH to his face. Or at least his email. :-(

Database still isn't back up. But at least I have coffee now.