Oh lord...

...Achewood is magnificent. I have just got to share this Fridays edition, which contains the relavatory comment: ""You know who never gets to give a high-five after a job well-done? A mortician". This fact is, of course, provided by a five year old otter.

Maybe I shouldn't post every little clip I make...

...but what the hey. The Movies is definitely something in which you can easily make pure schmaltz with the greatest of ease. I've definitely enjoyed learning it's strengths and weaknesses over the past few days but in the end, I would of course prefer to have a bunch of my own footage and the latest edition of FinalCut Pro. It's a damn shame that programs like that are made so prohibitively expensive for the average lad or lady at the very beginning of their career. All the more reason for me to hurry my ass back into London so I can start finding subsidised arts collectives like Ottawa's own SAW gallery.

Meanwhile, I just got my first haircut in England WOOOO!

Uh...

Yeah, so things are trundling along nicely. Sorry I haven't had any big, photo-worthy adventures lately! I wish I had! But mostly I've been a writin' and a jobbin' these past few days, in-between butting my head against numerous catch-22's present within the process of getting myself integrated into The System. Lord knows I'll have some useful advice for anyone who chooses to move to England once all this is said and done. Though it isn't all bad, I was pleased to find out that the government has a means by which you can get them to cover your transit costs to an interview - so that saves me 17 quid on trainfare for this Monday's excursion to Barking.

I've started to make my plans for Christmas and that, of course, feels a little odd in that they won't be in Canada (as I doubt I need to explain, it's not really an option yet). Little things like that and the way most people my age in England speak about snow (a distant memory from youth, wiped out by good ol climate change) has rendered this December fairly surreal for me when viewed through the lens of holidays and weather.

Ah well!

Heya

New DIRK HARDWOOD serial!

Also I got some more work done on the written bit, it is now an agonizing 9/10's complete.

Progress.

Speaking of which, screw immigration paperwork! I'm just sayin'!

Hot Dawg : Episode Two

So!

It seems that I have secured an interview for a data entry job on this coming Monday at 1pm in Barking. It would be for National Rail and though I normally wouldn't get excited about a data entry job, this one is quality for three reasons.

1) After reviewing the file sent to me, it seems my duties would be varied and interesting enough that suicide wouldn't seem a viable way to hurry up the end of the workday.
2) It is a full-time contract which runs through until April - thus I could keep looking for work in the meantime and would stand the best chance of getting something I want at precisely the time that the data-entry work would finish.
3) It seems to pay rather well! Not outrageous, but more than the 15,000 pa average which I've seen and certainly enough for me to move out of Reading and back into London with my own durn room n' stuff.

So the fingers? They are crossed.

Meanwhile, in celebration of the recent upswing in my days and the oncoming Christ-Mas, I allowed myself a treat. It's a computer game called "The Movies" which, as the title suggests, allows you to engage in amateur computer animation using basically the same universe and look as The Sims. Though you can enjoy watching little bars fill up from grey to green by managing a studio, the real draw was of course the actual film making. For my first effort, I thought I would do an introduction to a line of Dirk Hardwood serials, especially since I am having a devil of a time getting around to finishing the last written entry, between everything else going on. Hope you enjoy it! There are a pair of annoying typo's in the captions (which I have to use for dialogue right now, as I don't own a microphone) but otherwise I'm very happy with it.

This past Saturday evening...

Saturday night was a good load of old fashioned fun out on the towne to celebrate Alex's 25th. Despite unintentionally mating with a large flower (I got pollen ALL IN MY HAIR I WAS SO UNHAPPY) I had a great time offering my services as the photo lad, so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures just to make sure y'all don't get the impression that I just sit on the edge of a gin-soaked bed, sobbing uncontrollably while idly clicking my way through monster.co.uk. A single tear filled with manly sadness slowly finding it's way down the nape of my neck to settle in the mustard-stained trim on my "I heart the UK" t-shirt.

Sometimes...

....Shawn finds a prize in the pigsty!

Perhaps the ball, it has started to roll?

Wow, I just floated off and feel asleep like a newborn after cooking up some Shepherds pie last night. Waking up in my clothes at 3am, in front of a sketchbook while sitting in the den, was bizarre! But then I find that having to wake up to go to bed usually is.

ANYwho, okay so Sunday was a little raw with frustration over having done so much job hunting this year, but then Monday really made up for it. Having to get up at a specific time with an actual job to go to felt great and despite the early hour, I felt really energized by it. Checking my London A-Z on the train into Paddington, I was pleased to learn that Tottenham Court Road is (oddly) not in the actual area of Tottenham (which is in turn far to the north and slightly west of central London, AKA a pain to get to from Paddington). It's actually in central London and the company was at the south end of the road, right where it meets with good old Oxford Circus.



Remembering the data entry job I did just before coming over, I expected a kind of grungy farm (in that the facilities would resemble a barn) with several discount lunch tables all in a row, their clumsy joints straining under the weight of old computers and tedium. The building itself was in a rather depressing business park, a ways down the road from my old job at the Shoppe.

But lucky for me, it turned out that this wasn't some data entry farm but a small company which works in what I was told is a new sector in English business - the third sector, or "Social Enterprise", something which straddles the grey area where government and the public sectors intertwine for the purpose of charity. Thus I got my own bloody desk with a decent chair, nice computer etc. in an open concept office which was extremely pleasant and had a decent kitchen on top. True, I only dealt with them for three days, but I'd like to go out on a limb and say that the people were also very pleasant (though lacking kitchen facilities, as we all do unless we engage upon some truly radical surgery).

Though there was some copy and pasting, I actually got to type! OOOOOH. That may sound absurd, but at that last job I just used a word recognition tool over images of addresses on envelopes. I could go hours without using my left hand or 99% of my brain. Lord, if it hadn't been to save money for coming to England...

ANYwho, I found the office easy enough as it lay just to the right of this craven idol of Freddie Mercury. Another fun fact about England, or at least London to be sure, is that musicals are way more popular here - at least judging by the amount of press, posters and musicals. The world of English musicals also bears a passing resemblance to the world of Japanese advertising in that it is a sort of elephant graveyard for American celebrities past their prime. Do you miss the wild, clay-molding-while-dead antics of Patrick Swayze? THEN COME ON DOWN.

To my immense good fortune, there was a power outage around fifteen minutes after I got back from my lunch break on the first day. The company was told it would be hours before energy was restored, so I got to leave early while still being paid for a full day. The setback in work was also definitely responsible for my being asked to come back a third day - so I guess I can thank either faulty wiring or the first worlds wasteful attitude towards energy use for a chunk of extra cash. The following two days went smoothly and though I was pretty beat at the end of them, it still felt good to be working.

As for the third phrase, I kept thinking it would fit seamlessly into this update but now it seems a bit forced. I'll press on though, for you dear reader!.

The nut of it is that the first day was nearly sabotaged by my hunger for a snack. Right beside the buildings main entrance was a hot dog etc. stand that deserved the descriptor "hole-in-the-wall" more than any I'd seen before. Feeling oddly peckish and with a few moments to spare, I decided to buy a pastry. The Armenian behind the counter kindly offered to warm it up. I guess in Armenia "warm" is their phrase for "searing" and thus when I bit into the pastry I was treated to a molten chocolate ejaculation straight into my limp, salivating maw. I can still feel the oddly textured burn all along the right side of my lips. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that a strange car-collision of half-formed jokes about what was going on at that exact moment came into my noggin'. So the sound I made was a strange hybrid of yelping in pain, choking on food and laughter. For the rest of the morning, stupid, nonsensical porno film titles kept popping into my head and I can only hope that I wasn't grinning too stupidly. Ah well!

Finally, I saw this odd thing during one of my lunchtime walks. I suspected some kind of crazed, holistic institution but it turned out to be a large building firm. Huh!

Phew!

Thems was three long days! From getting up at 5:30am and spending about three hours commuting wrapping around nine hour days, I basically didn't exist outside of a data-entry context. Today, however, is a day to get things done! Haircuts (I need many), groceries, Christmas shopping maybe, further job hunting, doin' up a decent update on this here website and waging war on my overflowing inbox.

Phrases to look forward to in my later update
- Craven Idol
- Good Fortune
- Molten Chocolate Ejaculation

Today I skipped a day

Good gravy, I think I just lost a day to nothing much in particular. A yawning void of nothing much seems to have gobbled it away and I haven't replied to any emails, finished the Dirk Hardwood installment I have saved at the 3/4 mark, done another sketch with the new pencils I treated myself to and meanwhile I ache all over with my own crapulence. Ye gods, is this what it is to be unemployed to the extreme?

I haven't heard about the three week contract again, so that means I'll be working just tomorrow and Tuesday. Ah well, I can see myself feeling ten times the man I've been today around tomorrow night when I make dinner after coming home from work.

Just a reminder that I do read all your kind and encouraging emails and messages. I just don't always have the time or energy to reply to them as soon as I normally do....and once a year, maybe, I have a non-day like today.

Never had a non-day? I don't recommend it.

Pictures I forgot to post!

These pictures don't quite do justice to how wonderful a fall scene I came upon along the Thames, but here they are nonetheless. I actually gasped like a pre-pubescent Japanese girl getting her first Hello Kitty mobile/Nintendo DS/vibrator/fax machine when I rounded the corner and came upon this combination of two of my favorite things in life, Fall and A Cosmopolitan Major City.

Well, maybe this one does a little justice. Like Batman!

Finally, here is the front of the BBC head office.

Friday Update: Fuck

Oh boy oh boy, my faith is being tested here. By "faith" I guess I really mean, patience.

So I have two days of confirmed work on Monday and Tuesday for a different company near Tottenham Court. The three-week thing is up in the air due to some stupidity on the part of the hiring company (as opposed to the recruitment company). The recruitment companies claim of being able to pay me by cashable cheques turned out to be false, so I had to get off the phone and ask my hosts to use their bank information. Luckily, so I could call them back, the recruiters gave me the phone number for the wrong office! I'm also a fan of the fact that in order to claim my pay, I'll have to fax my timesheet to them. Ray covers that pretty well in the latest Achewood, so I'll leave it to him. A cartoon cat.

Between this and a lot of nonsense involving paperwork, lazy people and my trying to claim jobseekers insurance (re: the dole)...well, I can honestly say that I will never need to get in a bumper car match with a dozen mongoloids. I already know the feeling.

But then my spirits were lifted right back up by Richard Dawkins and John Stewart donkey-punching Ted Haggart (my apologies for the uploaders truly remarkable video signature at the end of the clip). Hot damn, I really need to pick up a dvd of Dawkin's The Root of All Evil? some time. Good ol' Andy Brown introduced it to me in the summer and it served as a good primer for The God Delusion. Apparently the BBC editorial board fucked with the title to make it more attention-seeking, which goes a long way to explaining it. But title aside, it's great.

Dilly-dallying with Dali

I think the interview went pretty well yesterday. The word "Excellent" was used more than once to describe my test results. Then again, I loudly used the same adjective when I got my foot caught in the train door while getting off at Paddington. But whatever, I'll (theoretically) get a phone call later today to confirm whether or not I'll have a three week data entry contract which would start on Monday. The pay is decent (eight pounds an hour) and though about a third of what I'll make will go to transit, the rest will still be very helpful. One interesting thing that the nice young girl I spoke with (I'll be damned if she was over twenty, thus "girl") told me was how hiring apparently heats up in January. As she was the third person from as many different recruiting companies to tell me this, I reached a point where I could believe it.

The job would be near Charing Cross, by and by.

So okay, I might not get into London until January, but that's fine by me. Whatever defeatist bastard coined that phrase about horses and hand grenades obviously never played darts - which is a much better metaphor when it comes to life goals. I'm just happy to know that there actually are some good periods for job hunting (another is April, due to the fiscal year). I swear that no matter the time of year in Ottawa, I'd always have a few people tell me of how that exact moment in time was total shit for job hunting. ANYwho....

So London was gorgeous yesterday and after the interview I made a point of trundling about a bit. It was nice, actually, since I managed to connect a few dots and now I think I have a much better handle on central London. PROTIP: The tube is a great way to get around, but you won't learn the city as anything but a grouping of circular patches around the stations unless you walk or bus a bit too. Plus it's much cheaper! The bus is about half the price of the tube and shank's pony costs as much as it always has.

I started by heading over to Trafalgar Square and I pulled the ol' camera out. As with most of Central London, it is drenched in history and I highly recommend taking the time to read all the informative plaques etc. Which reminds me, until recently I have only been reading half of any informative plaque, placard, poster or what have you. I actually had to remind myself that ALL of the text was in English here, thus throwing off the habit of a lifetime...

Eventually I found my way to my beloved Enbankment area and grabbed some lunch, which I valiently devoured in front of a watching crowd of some four dozen pigeons. Despite the fact that entire battallions of the buggers can be seen marching up and down most streets, I have yet to actually get shat on and for that I am thankful. Only that though, otherwise I'm an ingrate. I don't think I've even seen any birdshit! Perhaps they aren't birds so much as the finest concealed CCTV cameras that money can buy?



Heading over to the Saatchi, I saw they still had an exhibiton on the most wretched of artforms - manga - in the main area. But luckily in one of the sub-galleries there was a Salvador Dali exhibit! Knowing that Dali has always been one of my dad's favorites and having grown up constantly seeing bits of his work around the house, I couldn't see a reason not to go in. I gotta say I'm glad I did because it turns out I was powerfully ignorant about the man. Yes the melting clocks were a running gag of his, but there were others which should have been just as famous. Keep an eye out for crutches, spanish beans and disguised self-portraits throughout all his work and you'll see what I mean. In particular, I enjoyed his use of shelving coming out of the body as a means of drawing attention to all that we conceal inside ourselves.

Also, I thought he died ages ago (you know, sometime before Transformers and all that other 1980's crap which won't die) but apparently he only passed away in 1989.

Though I was wary of the kind of "worshipful-masturbation-to-cover-up-the-Emperor" nonsense you often get with "the greats", I was pleased to find that despite it's surreal nature you could often find the meaning within it which was trying to be expressed. Not that this is the point of art! I just have a strong distaste for people coming in after an artists death and slathering his or her work with their own interpretations until they eventually calcify into what the artist supposedly meant.

There were also many, many statues - again, I had no idea he had done anything but sketches and paintings. Dali also had no reservations about doing several series of works which were tributes to what had inspired him over the years (his series on Don Quixote gets my highest recommenation). He also dabbled in surrealist film making, which was constantly broadcast from a few mounted televisions, as well as photography and even a bit of jewelry. He truly deserves the title of "renaissance man".

Also, he apparently did a cartoon with Disney that took over fifty years to get to completion?

For a mere 15,000 pounds I could have bought a signed print, a print, of my favorite work of his...but somehow I thought that this was outside my current budget. Maybe after I get a job?

Minor Update

Got an informal interview/test for a data entry job in Paddington which requires me to come into Chancery Lane tomorrow.

Will they screw me about? WHO KNOWS

I'll have a White Irish please...

Good god, I was just signing up with another recruitment agency and eventually I got to the part where they ask if you'd be willing to give over your gender, race, religion etc. so as to help them meet their quotas. I always find this about as sensible and tasteful as making a point of telling people how many "ethnics" you know, so I opted out as usual.

Just to see, I explored the drop-down menue to learn how good ol' whitey is being categorized today. Instead of the usual "Caucasian" I saw three options.

1. White
2. White Irish
3. White Other

Somehow, I doubt I need to expand upon the numerous troubles that I - or any thinking person might - have with this list. Good gravy....

Chugga-lug Chugga-lug

If only to let you all know that I haven't gone and dug myself a burrow of unadulterated doom, I thought I'd mention that the weekend was beautiful. Though cold, it was closer to that familiar dry cold of Ottawa, and the sun was out at many an hour so as to illuminate the steady stream of picturesque scenes to be found during my three kilometer walk down the Thames. Along the way I came across the reason there were so many swans by the river last time I took pictures there, a full blown enclosure for the creatures. Having safely fed from human hands for years, these birds (some of which were half my height) are very characterful and not at all afraid to imply that maybe you should get out of their way.

I left my camera and all other gadgets at home, but next time I head that way I shall bring it to try and record some of the life-affirming scenes to be walked through along that path.

Today I'm picking up on some more leads and casting the net a little wider, so as to include good ol' data entry. I thought hard about this over the weekend and decided that, in the very beginning at least, it's really just an exercise in foolish pride not to accept anything less than one of the two specific job types I want in the long run. Casting my mind not too far back, to this summer, I have to wonder how much better things might have gone if I hadn't let pride cause me to quit two different jobs and then be thrust back into job hunting purgatory for weeks at at time.

Meanwhile, I've continued to plug away at the horror script and have dug up my copy of AcidForge so as to enjoy making a little music. As my buddy Joe would say, "Productive fun is the best kind".

It was s'posed to be so easy!

Okay! So it seems I didn't get the publishing job and the most likely culprit is the film stuff I left on my CV. Despite playing it down as "just a silly hobby", I was deemed too much of a....I guess we'll call it a "flight risk". To add insult to injury, a data entry company in Paddington called me yesterday with an offer of employment. Unsure as to my status with Mintel, I said "Sure!" as the pay was great (ten pounds an hour) and it was a short term contract which would earn me enough cash to get into London. The recruitment guy went "Great! I'll call you back later" then didn't.

Hooo boy.

So I'd be lying if I said I felt at the top of my game right now, but I'm hardly about to give up. I do think I'm getting close to the point of just taking a data entry job or whatever, though, so I can just get set up and continue hunting for film work. One of the nice folk I met in Camden said he'd help me get a job with a telephone charity fundraising company which would pay alright and offer flexible hours. Another week of this nonsense and I might just take him up on the offer.

Meanwhile I've been whoring myself out like the dickens, with more of a focus on film work since the bad news about Mintel. I've also been working more on the horror script, which feels like a sure-shot for reaching feature-length, and have been steadily adding bulk to the next Dirk Hardwood installation.

I wish I had more exciting adventures to post pictures from and all, but it's been a bit dull lately. Lots of job hunting and wishing I had a job, I'm afraid! Sorry guys, I'll have to take up bungee-jumping or alcoholism or something to spice things up.

In the interest of something cheerier, do check out the regularly updated art page of a gent who goes by the alias of "Posterchild". I think it's one of the best things he has done and it almost goes without saying that I greatly enjoy his "Evidence of Batman" series. His philosophy on the reclamation of public spaces by the actual public is also a great read. If you feel like supporting an artist, then you can do so with some of the t-shirts he has made out of his work. Finally, there is also a classic little movement he got rolling.

Jobbin'

Done up all pretty, I set off today so as to secure employment. Nearing Barbican station, I had a bit of an encounter with a woman who had an arse like a bumper car and a voice that could be likened to being stabbed in the kidneys while trying to enjoy watching your child take it's first steps.

That is to say, she was unpleasant...

...with me over my seeming to abandon a free paper on the subway seat which (she assumed) I had brought with me. I gave her a saucy wink and then exited, no time for temper tantrums today. Early for being early, I took a stroll around the neighborhood and was pleased to see that it had a small park and a large selection of pubs and restaurants which I might choose from if I need to buy a lunch. There was also one of those betting shops which are so popular here, adorned with several smiling Vinnie Jones posters letting me know that he would "do well by me, my son". This parlor was named "Ladbrokes" and though I understand they are betting brokers, it just doesn't strike me as wise to have that word in the name of a place which is trying to entice you with visions of cash. Kind of like naming a casino "Cash Strapped" or "Shitouttaluck".

The interview went fairly well, I feel. There were some last-minute skill bits, but nothing as bothersome as that Microsoft Word test. There was typing (la dee dah) and a sort of general "Are you stupid?" test. The latter is something I had to do at Greythorn recruitment as well and I have to wonder if there isn't some sort of sub-class of clever idiots who wank up a good CV, sound fair enough in the interview but then cannot do simple addition, multiply fractions, spell "indenture" or know the proper meaning of "effect".

Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so hard. I find that frequent use of spellchecker has brutally assaulted my own abilities and for the past few months I've been trying to avoid using it as anything but a last resort. The maddening thing about having an English degree (Honours too, you special boy you) is that you are often expected to be bloody infallible and a simple mistake will topple you off your high perch and place you straight into a large pile of what Ralph Steadman might refer to as gigoloshit. I don't know precisely what that last word means, but I'd marry it if the laws of man and nature would allow.

The pay turned out to be a grand above average for graduate jobs, so that's nice. There is a well-developed training program, 25 vacation days in a year and a semi-casual workplace (sweaters, but not novelty t-shirts or condoms). The job itself apparently is "Production Assistant" and would involve a lot of style editing over general proofreading, but whatever. It's something I can do for 40 hours a week and not just feel like I'm turning off my brain for eight hours a day while accruing nothing but a shit wage and more free radicals in my cells. Heck, some aspects which were described to me even sounded appealing to my taste for organizing things and changing them so as to remove the verbal chaff from the wheat.

They claim that I will know by Friday as to the result, one way or the other. I'm going to keep applying to other jobs, but I must say that I really do I hope I get this one. If all went well I could be living and working in London before the end of the month.

Switching from the micro to the macro, a decision was made today to dramatically raise traffic congestion charges in London by 2009 (giving folk time to adust their lifestyle to cleaner transport). The brilliance of this particular bill is that it changes things from a flat five pound fee to a gradiated fee based on the model of vehicle. Zero emission vehicles don't have to pay any fee at all...

I caught some BBC debate on the matter and it was hilarious listening to how rational the Green side were. Not only did they stress how this would benefit everyone and quote facts from reputable sources, but they made a point of explaining how families and small business could adapt without breaking the bank - usually while saving money in the long run. Meanwhile, the other side of the arguement just whined about the inconvenience of having to change business methods or tuning the family car to emission standards. There was no effort to expand upon the basic premise of "It will be a pain in the arse and I don't wanna and it will rape everyone's wallets" nor any attempt to meet environmental needs halfway.

It's just pathetic listening to this substanceless babyshit, but it is the defense of inconvenience which strikes me as one of the greatest obstacles for that understated job of....you know, saving the world. It's funny how hyperbolic that sounds, when it isn't.

Ok, I'm sorry - to apologize for soapboxing I will give you this. Some of you may have already seen it though, such is the internet.

Addendum
I actually found the company description of the job.

In case any of you felt like buying me something for no good reason...

....I'm just sayin'.

Man, I am sick of being on a budget.

So I've prettied up my finest shirt, slacks and jacket for the journey into London tomorrow. The travel route is plotted out on paper, despite being an absurdly straightforward tube ride on the Hammersmith & City line followed by a minute's walk at most. I've even researched the company a bit so I can sound appropriately keen. Yes, I shall be a sparkling lad with a cleanly shaven neck that just inspires confidence.

Everything is gonna be fine, just you wait.

Suitably Mirthless and Without Guilt

Just for a laugh, I thought I'd post this photo I had to take of myself to use in my Young Persons Rail Card application. I was pretty amused at how the site specified that you could not smile or show any real expression in the photo, despite the fact that the hair-jellied jackass in the website seems to be halfway through orgasm. Oh well! In case any of you were desperatly wondering what I look like after being told a bad joke, wonder no more.





In case you ever wondered what I would look like as an early 90's trading card from a series about hairy-chested rappers with names that will haunt them in their elder years, then lo this mystery shall be solved as well.

My Canadian Bravado Has Gone Cold and Fallen Off

Holy god......it's supposedly ten degrees warmer here than in Ottawa, technically. Yet I am freezing! The whole "wet cold/dry cold" dichotemy is true! I was all chuffed up about resisting the cold elements, drawing upon years of -35c Ottawa weather to give me the necessary chutzpah to laugh in the face of English weather.

But I ain't laughin'. Oh no.

Meanwhile, not much to report. Gonna go see a movie this weekend and perhaps have a drink with the lads. Otherwise life is pretty much in a holding pattern for me until this Tuesday's interview. I feel very confident though, since I have passed the difficult part (that skill test) and only have this interview for the purposes of selling them my chisled features. The "do-we-like-your-face" style of interview has never been a problem for me, so I have high hopes. The only worry is if they decide to screw me around like Lead Generators seems to be doing.

But ah well, we'll see what comes up.

Call me perverse, but the beautiful fall weather is driving me more and more towards work on my horror script. The tenative title is "Archbrook" and I am sticking with the age of my female protagonist (around 58) because it opens up a whole world of new and interesting possabilities. It's definitely shaping up to be a kind of mystery where the horror is implied more than it sometimes is in this genre. Why on earth the changing of leaves gives me inspiration to write of gentlemen cults and various prediciments in which to place an older woman, I'll never know!

But hey, it beats the hell out of writers block.