Is it me, or

... has it started raining all the time just when I've started having to cycle to and from work on a daily basis? Actually, that's one of at least two reasons why I'm regretting taking the temp job. For another, it gets in the way of looking for something permanent - I've never had a temporary position before without the prospect of it becoming a long-term thing, and it's inconvenient when it comes to interviews and things. I know I wanted to get back to working fast, but it was a bit silly to go and take this one, I think. Still, I'm not sure whether to quit (which would probably look bad) or carry on and assume I'll still be able to find a real job (it doesn't really take that much effort).

Highley memorable

I haven't really hyped the UK Memory Championship here before, as far as I can remember, and today seems like a good time, since Phil's just announced the prizes they 'hope' to provide. It's in Highley, Shropshire, and I'm still not entirely sure where that is. But I was hoping to go there on the Severn Valley Railway (I did miss going to the Butterley steam railway place on father's day this year), only to find it's been washed away in the floods the other day. I'm not sure if that's a bad omen or not. Anyway, the first prize is flights, accommodation and entry to the WMC in Bahrain, which is nice. I did say a while ago that if I ended up with a free trip I'd give it to someone else, if I had the money to pay my own way, so if I do end up winning, I'll check my bank balance and see what I can do. There's a bottle of champagne for the winner too! I don't like champagne, but I've always wanted to spray it around in celebration. Hopefully I'll get the chance. July 14th, mark it in your calendars!

Bill Mantlo

If you happen to be passing a comic shop this weekend, go in and pick up a copy of Mantlo: A Life In Comics. It's a magazine/book/something all about Bill Mantlo, one of my all-time favourite writers of superhero comics. Even if you're not a fan, buying the book is a good thing - Mantlo was knocked down and nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver fifteen years ago, suffered permanent brain damage and all the proceeds from the book are going to the costs of his care.

Bill Mantlo, if you look at his work objectively, was never the greatest writer in the world. His dialogue is much too long-winded and stilted, and his stories are often more miserable and depressing than most people are happy with. Characters, when they're not being summarily killed off, will often spend pages lamenting about their own shortcomings and anxieties. None of the comics he wrote is hailed today as a landmark in the history of superheroics. But what he did do is write a heck of a lot - nowadays when a writer misses his deadline, the comic just comes out late. The publishers don't seem to care any more. In the seventies and eighties, if a Marvel writer didn't turn in a script on time, the editor called Bill Mantlo. He seemed to have an endless capacity for producing superhero stories that were always readable, and often exciting, funny and clever too. And his run on Alpha Flight was something that really struck a chord with me and played a big part in making me a comic fan today.

Picture the scene - it's the late eighties, or early nineties, I can't remember exactly which, I'm a young teenager and my comic experience has been limited to Transformers and whatever series had been the backup strip in Transformers. And a Spider-Man annual or summer special here and there. One day in WH Smith I found one of the paperback collections of the Marvel Universe handbooks, profiles of Marvel's characters from the Abomination to the Circus of Crime (it was only volume 1). Alpha Flight were in it, and they sounded like fun. A bit later, I can't remember exactly how or why, I ended up with a catalogue from the Nostalgia and Comics shop in Birmingham (or somewhere like that) and decided to order the latest issue of Alpha Flight, to see what it was like.

Actually, I didn't like it all that much. It was the penultimate issue of Fabian Nicieza's run, and that was the kind of comic you really had to sit down and study to make any sense of. Or I did, anyway. But I could see it had potential, stuck with it, and kept with it through the start of Scott Lobdell's run, which was a completely different style, still not a classic, but again compelling to a superhero-comic-newcomer. But after a year or so of this, I discovered the existence of back issues, and the wonders of the Bill Mantlo issues of Alpha Flight. And THAT was the kind of thing I'd been looking for!

For a couple of years, my aim in life was to collect the entirety of Mantlo's run on Alpha Flight - thirty-something issues of death, misery, characters recapping the events of the last twenty issues every time they opened their mouths and un-put-downably compelling stories. Yes, I also liked John Byrne's acclaimed original run on the series, but Mantlo's stories struck a chord with teenage me like nothing ever before. I got my brother reading and collecting them too, forced them on my best friend in return for having Judge Dredd forced on me, read them out of sequence, one or two at a time with months in between. I liked them a lot.

So this book describes a pretty significant person in my life. He wrote a lot of other great stuff, as I've discovered since - Spider-Man, Micronauts, Cloak and Dagger, many many more. A lot of them are long out of print and never collected, but I'm hopeful that one day we'll see a lot more graphic novels of his classic works. When it comes to people I admire in comics, the five people I wouldn't be the same without are Simon Furman for those wonderful Transformers comics that hooked me since the age of eight, Tony Isabella for an obscure Marvel Team-Up comic that found its way into a Spidey summer special and showed me that superhero comics could be something very much more than hero-fights-villain (it chronicled the supervillain Blacklash suffering a nervous breakdown), Kurt Busiek for dragging me back into comics in the late nineties when Alpha Flight had been cancelled and I'd given up on finding a new series that wasn't terrible, Alan Moore for just writing such amazingly, staggeringly good comics, and Bill Mantlo for those thirty-odd issues of Alpha Flight. Go out there and check it out!

No, I don't think I will

I think I'd be better off not splashing out on two German trips in two months, all in all. I'll stay at home this weekend and practice for the UK championship (three weeks and a bit to go! Woo! Even though I still don't really like the one-day events!).

Late

Sorry I didn’t post anything last night, I had a headache and went for a lie down at around eight o’clock, and didn’t wake up till two in the morning. And at that point there wasn’t much motivation to get up just to write a blog entry. I tell you, working for a living is much more tiring than sitting at home on one’s fat backside all day. Who would have thought it? So as a bonus, I’m writing from the office on my lunch break.

Anyway, I still haven’t decided whether to go to Germany for Sunday’s competition. On the one hand, I can’t really claim it would be good practice for the bigger championships coming up next month – it’s just speed numbers, speed binary and speed cards plus four disciplines in German – but it’s still a fun social thing, getting to hang out with the German memory contingent and see what everybody’s up to nowadays. Although I’ll get to do that on a bigger scale anyway in a month at the German national championship.

I don’t have a problem justifying to myself the expense of travelling to Munich for a weekend just to hang out with German memorisers for a day – I probably should, but I’ve got seriously reckless when it comes to spending my non-hard-earned cash these last few months. The main reason not to go is work, because I’ve only been here a week, I’ve already taken an afternoon off to go to an interview for a better job (and I feel terribly guilty about that), and I feel like I should at least try to give the impression that I’m taking the job seriously.

Hmm, sitting here typing this right now, that doesn’t seem like a compelling reason not to go. Well, I’ll think about it and make up my mind tonight. Assuming I manage to do my regularly scheduled blog post, maybe I’ll even tell you about it.

Why don't you get a job?

Thanks to the people who were going to remind me about the interview tomorrow, but I forgot to tell you that they changed it and made it today instead. It was funny - I knew it was in the same business park as Nord Anglia where I used to work, but I didn't realise it was in what used to be their Leapfrog nurseries head office before they closed it down and moved it all into the new place! I've been in that building plenty of times while they were still gradually relocating! In fact, when I got that job I had my interview in that very building (but not in the same room, which I was kind of hoping for).

Anyway, I think it more or less went well. They're interviewing loads and loads of people, according to the agency, but I seemed to make a good impression on the guys who were interviewing me. Or at least at the end of the interview they were still taking in ways that suggested they hadn't written me off as completely unsuitable. Although they mentioned (without being asked, I'm not that bad at interviews) that the work hours are 8:45 to 6:00, which seems a bit long. And it's only 20 days holiday a year, when 25 is normal for that kind of position. Still, perhaps I shouldn't complain about the job before I've even got on the second-interview shortlist. And it's still a great job, I'd be in charge of the whole accounts department, involved with every aspect of the bean-counting business, with three, count 'em, three underlings, and reporting directly to the really big bosses. So I still want it.

I probably won't get it, though.

To all the anonymice out there

I'm fairly certain the plural of anonymous is anonymice. 'Anonymouses' doesn't look right. Anyway, I seem to be getting quite a few comments on the blog just lately, which is great - there was a period when nobody was commenting at all, which makes me feel alone and unloved - but I would appreciate it if you'd put your name on the comments when you do! You don't have to use your real name if for some reason you don't want me to know who you are, just pick an alias and use it consistently. That way when I read my comments I can think to myself "ah, that Herbert Etheridge and his habit of mis-spelling the word 'a' every time he uses it...", rather than just feeling like I'm being shouted at by some unseen stranger in the shadows. I see the Zoomy's-Thing-comment-posting community as a friendly, social kind of gathering where everybody knows your name and we're all friends.

Of course, I would probably get more friendly comments if I made the kind of blog post with some kind of interesting and informative content, wouldn't I? Well, maybe tomorrow.

Aww, Sundays suck again

I'd forgotten that 'oh, I've got to go back to the office tomorrow morning' feeling that comes up on Sunday nights. That's the thing about weekends being special, it also means that they end. And I didn't get round to typing up my othello transcripts. Or ironing shirts.

Anyway I find myself without anything fun in my brain to write about tonight. So I'll just discuss the memory training I'm doing at the moment. The plan, and I've more or less stuck to it so far, is to do a speed numbers practice when I get home every evening, trying to memorise 468 digits in five minutes with somewhere close to good recall. I think I'm getting closer, but whether I'll be confident with it before the world championship, I don't know. I also do three packs of cards in an evening, and then if I'm not bored with memory, a bit of spoken numbers. I should really add binaries to the list too, but I do like to do other stuff with my evenings too.

Which reminds me, the South German championship is on Sunday and I still haven't decided whether to go or not. It does mean taking the day off work, and I don't get paid for days off on my temp contract, but then I don't really care about getting paid anyway. I think I'll see how this interview goes on Wednesday and then decide at the last moment.

Well, so much for Greece

Even though my chances of winning the BGP at the London regional today were strictly mathematical, what with there being so many good players at this one, I still played badly enough to demonstrate beyond doubt that I don't deserve to play in the world championship. Still, it was a fun day. The venue was a pub called the Bath House, just off Oxford Street and thus in the only part of London that I can find my way around without getting lost. It's another of those pubs with a history that boasts about it, although the fact that Karl Marx lived down the road doesn't strike me as particularly impressive. Nor does the fact that the lengthy official history on the wall of the meeting room admits that it has no idea why the pub was renamed the Bath House in the 19th century. It's never been a bath house or anything like that.

Anyway, an impressive 15 of us turned up at the historic silly-named pub, among them Graham, who unsurprisingly beat everyone. My game with him had an infuriating position that I sat staring at for ages, because I had what looked like it should be a really cool Stoner trap, but which just didn't work, and however I could try to play it, there just was no way to make it work. And a bit more staring later, I realised that there was also no other move I could possibly play except the X-square, so I had to play it anyway and resign myself to losing.

Not that I mind losing to Graham, I always lose to him, but then in the next game I made a really stupid mistake against Roy when I should have won, and then I also lost to Iain Barrass, who admittedly is much better than me and always beats me too, but I've been doing so well this season that it still annoyed me. And even more annoying, I didn't even get second place in the BGP! Geoff finished a horrible three points ahead of me, with David the clear winner. Not that you get anything for second place in the BGP, but I wanted it!

Actually, I don't really mind any of this at all, and I'm completely happy with the way the day went. I had fun. But it's also fun to lament about how badly I did.

Gene Genie

Robert performed genetic engineering and succeeded in creating a parrot with suckers on its feet, enabling it to climb up walls. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but the evolutionary advantage this gave the parrot and its many descendants soon led to humanity being supplanted as the dominant species on Earth. Driven out of the cities by the superior fighting ability of wall-climbing parrots, the entire human race was forced to set up home in the small Lincolnshire village of Herman’s Bum. Overcrowding was a problem.

Fortunately, Robert was still alive, and he quickly set to work genetically engineering a passing rabbit until its burrowing capacity was enhanced by a factor of ten. Soon enough, it had dug a large enough warren for every human being on Earth to have their own reasonably-sized accommodation under the ground, where the parrots’ sucker-feet would be hindered by the loose earth of which the walls were composed.

All was well for a short time, until the super-rabbit reproduced and its descendants burrowed to such an extent that they hollowed out the entire planet, leaving nothing but the surface. Humanity in its entirety was thus left rattling around inside the
globe in a way reminiscent of a handful of peanuts that have somehow been put inside a football. Dissatisfaction was rampant.

It was suggested to Robert, in a way that included obscenities, that instead of genetically modifying animals so as to make them better than human beings and bringing about the ruin of the planet, he might try his hand at performing genetic engineering on himself and either solving the planet’s problems or killing himself in the attempt. Either resolution, it was observed, would be a benefit to society in general.

Undaunted by his increasing unpopularity among all but his closest friends, Robert did genetic modification on himself until he had gained the ability to walk through walls. Because this made him better than the parrots, which could only climb up walls, he was able to return to the surface and install himself as unquestioned king of the planet, ruling with an iron fist over parrots, humans and rabbits alike. This, he maintained for the remainder of his natural life, conclusively proved that, despite what people say, genetic engineering is great.

Oh, and

I should probably also say a public many happy returns of the day to my brother, rather than just going on at length about me me me. Happy birthday, bro!

Little by little

I did a pack of cards in 25.94 seconds tonight. You might remember that a couple of months ago I was enthusing about a time of 25.98. At this rate I'll beat the 25-second barrier at some time in the 23rd century. It's funny, you'd think it wouldn't be as exciting to chip away at my personal best a hundredth of a second at a time as it was when I was just starting out with card-memorising and taking whole seconds off my record on a regular basis, but if anything it's more thrilling now than it ever was!

In other news, I've got an interview next Wednesday for a proper, permanent job that sounds really, really cool and exactly the kind of thing that I want. So everyone has to a) remind me to go to the interview, and b) cross their fingers for me.

sdaeh rieht edih dna nur yeht semoc niar eht fI

Ah, that's something I've really missed. Cycling home in the pouring rain without so much as a coat on because it was baking hot and sunny in the morning.

Ah well, I suppose it could have been snow. Or great big boulders. Anyway, I got an email today about the world memory championships, and it seems Bahrain is definitely going to host it. They've got a venue and everything. There might even be special rates for accommodation and plane tickets for the competitors, if we're lucky. And I'm sorry, I know the various organisers are doing a great job in providing this competition, for minimal or no reward, but I had to giggle at the line "The fee far participation in the competition has been fixed for the past few years, and will remain so again for 2007 at UK £30. As you can imaging this in no way reflects the actual cost of running the competition, so we are more than grateful to our many sponsors who are shown on the website. Please support them."

Seriously, I can't imagine many people will be celebrating only having to pay £30 to enter the competition when they have to splash out on plane tickets to Bahrain. Anyway, £30 from 50 competitors or so is £1500. I could run a world memory championship for £1500. Probably. Assuming lots of people wanted to help me and not get any money for doing so.

Handbags and glad rags

Well, I'm officially an office boy again. The coolest thing about the job is that they finish at 4:30! 4:00 on Fridays! And it's less than 15 minutes away by bike, so no lengthy commute home. That gives me plenty of evening time to lounge around doing nothing, or possibly practice memory stuff. Apart from that, it's a pretty unexceptional kind of employment, although I can't really judge based on today since, with impeccable timing, one of their servers was down, so I spent the day doing that old favourite, bits and pieces that can be done without using the main piece of software.

The building's on Newmarket Road, on an industrial estate where all the roads are named after race courses. I would like to know the reasoning behind that decision, but I'm not quite so fascinated that I can be bothered to look it up.

They just use your mind, and they never give you credit

I've got a job. A temp thing, three months I think it is (but I didn't write that bit down when the guy told me over the phone), starting tomorrow. It doesn't sound spectacularly exciting, but it pays fairly well, and it's only about 15 minutes away by bike, and it'll keep me off the streets. So back to the grind of ironing a shirt every single day, slaving away over a hot computer moving numbers from one place to another, mingling with other wage slaves. Ah well, at least it's entirely by choice on my part, so I can't complain.

I've even bought new shoes. Proper shoes, from Clark's, not the cheap ones that fall apart within a month of buying them. I haven't bought proper shoes since I can't remember how long ago. They're real leather, not other materials. I thought about buying a new suit and some shirts, too, but decided not to go mad. My old tatty ones will do fine, it's just a temp job. You don't expect temp accountants to be clean and shiny.

It's with Synergy Healthcare. They do industrial laundry, dental supplies and prosthetic appliances.

Mister Memory

You know, before I resign myself to life as an accountant again, I really should work out a stage show I can do with memory tricks. And by "I really should", I mean of course that I've been thinking about it this afternoon, and by "work out" I mean "steal from Boris". What I want to do, and I think it would look really good, is do basically what he did on a German TV show a few years ago, it goes like this:

There's a bunch of twenty or so tables, restaurant style, with two or three people sitting at each, and they each choose a meal from a menu with a choice of ten starters, ten main courses and ten drinks. I wander around each table in turn and they tell me what they're having, I memorise the whole lot without taking any notes, and then recount what everyone ordered. It'd be a piece of cake with just a little bit of advance preparation, and it'd look really good on Paul O'Grady's show or something else like that (I watch the last two minutes while waiting for the Simpsons to come on, every now and then). Then for an encore I can recite pi to a few hundred places until everyone falls asleep.

I was thinking I might like to try this, and a few other basic memory tricks, on an audience somewhere, sometime, to see how it goes over. It would be kind of a challenge for my organisational skills, but it would be cool to set up shop at the Edinburgh Festival and do a show. And I think it would be rather a groovy experience.

Behind the sofa

Doctor Who SCARED me tonight! Seriously, the bit where he blinks and the thing's suddenly about an inch away from his face, I squealed out loud. It was great! I don't think I've actually done that because of something I've seen on Doctor Who before, ever.

Anyway, it's time for another entertaining tale of the memory man who forgets things. You know I said yesterday that I didn't have any plans for the weekend? Well, actually, I had agreed to have lunch with Vicky and her great-aunt and uncle, and to bring Grandma along with me. But having agreed to do that, about a fortnight ago, the whole thing dropped out of my brain completely until Vicky sent me an email roughly an hour before we were supposed to meet up. Still, it was fun. But I really need to work on how to remember things other than playing cards.

Hooray, it's the weekend!

And while that might seem like an unusual sentiment from someone who doesn't work for a living, I've rediscovered the weekend feeling. I've been itching to do an hour cards and hour numbers practice, and I can't do it on weekdays, because I have agencies possibly phoning with exciting job prospects and things like that. And in the evenings there's things on telly or people to talk to and it's not really possible to set aside three hours at a time. But it's the weekend tomorrow, and one of those rare weekends when I'm not doing anything at all, so I can unplug that dratted phone and sit down staring at numbers and cards to my heart's content!

You know, sometimes, when I think about it, I think I might actually be a total sad case.

It's not just my blood group, it's my motto

My blood group, as I found out after my recent blood-donating episode, is B-positive. This is quite groovy, because it's rather uncommon, yet still allows me to get transfusions from about half the population if I'm ever running short. And, according to Wikipedia at least, the Japanese blood type theory of personality reckons that makes me creative, passionate, animal loving, optimistic, flexible and individualistic, if also forgetful, irresponsible, and self-centered. That's by far the coolest of the four possibilities listed there! I've always known I've got the soul of a hippy trapped in the body of an accountant (I'm a free spirit who charges £12 an hour), and this just PROVES it! I believe in this whole blood group personality thing with all my little heart, and I'm not even discouraged by the way that article suggests Mick Jagger is cool, controlled, rational, introverted and empathic.

I would also like to believe in horoscopes, but they never seem to say anything fun is going to happen to me. I read the ones in the Metro whenever I'm going somewhere on the train, and they're always good. There was a period last year when the stars were apparently urging all twelve signs of the zodiac to cheat on their loved ones, which makes me wonder what was going through the head of the paper's resident oracle. They also have a tendency to write things like "bosses are in a bad mood today, so you should keep your head down at work." Do the movements of the planets also predict the fortunes of bosses of Libras? I ask you. If I wasn't so enormously trusting and credulous, I wouldn't believe a word of it.

An epic, did I say?

The main reason I haven't written any huge long blog entries just lately is that there hasn't really been a great deal happening to me. I'm annoyed by how long it's taking to find a new job. I've got enough time and money to be able to pick and choose, but that's the kind of logic that only applies if there's job offers to pick and choose from. And to be honest, I seem to be having trouble even getting interviews for the good jobs.

I'm quite offended. Although I don't like to admit it in case people think I'm cool, I am in all honesty a darn good accountant. I know how many beans make five. I know how to present the information in such a way that it makes five beans look like a really good thing. I can tell other people when and how to go and count the beans. Admittedly I've spent the last six months indulging myself and my weird hobbies rather than diligently crunching numbers, but lots of cool people take career breaks nowadays. It's positively fashionable.

Someone give me a job! I need something to complain about!

What? No, of course I didn't forget. Don't be silly.

Wow, it's three minutes past midnight, I was about to go to bed after staying up late chatting on the internet and I realised I hadn't written my blog yet. This is a shocking memory lapse. I don't mind forgetting the important things in life, like names and appointments and things, but I pride myself on remembering stupid things like long numbers, packs of cards and writing my blog every night.

Well, I've written something now, at least. I seem to be slacking off with the big long blog entries just lately. I'll write a real epic tomorrow. Well, today I suppose. It's past my bedtime...

I'll Be Back

"The Terminator" is on Channel 5 tonight, and I feel like I probably should stay up to watch it. I've never seen it before, and it's one of those films that people just assume everyone has seen, and make reference to in everyday conversation. I lose count of the times someone has said to me "it's like that bit in The Terminator where..." or something along those lines. It must have happened to me at least once. And it is supposed to be a genuinely good film. On the other hand, I can't be bothered to watch it, especially with adverts in the middle. It's already on the list of films I should get the DVD of some day. Quite a big list, that one, but I'll get round to them when I'm old and retired and have nothing better to do with my life. Although it won't be DVDs then, it'll be space holograms.

Prohibition

Alcohol should be banned. No, not alcohol. Hangovers. The alcohol bit is fine. I was out drinking with my brother last night, and I haven't entirely recovered from it yet. I sometimes get the feeling I can't keep up with the young folk any more...

Anyway, I did manage to play in an othello tournament on kurnik today, and did no worse than usual. I seem to be drawing a lot of games in kurnik tournaments lately - two games out of eleven in each of the last two I've played in. I'm not sure if that means I and my opponents are playing perfectly or whether it's just random chance. I choose to believe in the perfect-play option. Sorry if this isn't entirely fascinating, but as I mentioned, I'm not in the best of shape today. Normal bloggery will be resumed tomorrow.

Whoops

Just remembered I'm going out tonight and staying over in Nottingham and I was meaning to write a blog entry this afternoon instead of this evening, but now it's time I was leaving the house and I haven't written one yet, so I'll just have to not write anything today. Except this, obviously, but this doesn't count. Pretend you didn't see it.

Connect-i-cut

While picking up books in my bedroom the other day, I found my atlas. I'd quite forgotten I owned one. I suppose not many people use them, nowadays, seeing as you can find all the maps you want on the internet. Life was more fun when you needed to look things up in books, I'm sure. Still, it came in handy today when talking to an American friend who lives in Connecticut. It occurred to me that I hadn't got the faintest idea where in the USA Connecticut is. North or south? East, west or middle? Not a clue. It took some finding, actually - I had no idea it was so small and tucked away in the top right corner there. Or that it's practically next door to New York. I'm quite shockingly ignorant when it comes to the geography of other countries. I also thought Delaware was one of the big square ones in the west or middle bits, but it turns out it isn't. I've never encountered, or as far as I know even heard of, anyone from Delaware. I need to go there and make friends.

Of course, while my atlas is fine for learning about the USA, I need to be a bit more careful with some other parts of the world. My atlas was published in 1987, and it still thinks there's a USSR, and East and West Germany. It's a useful historical artifact, actually - did you know Walvis Bay in Namibia was part of South Africa until 1992? Well, you probably either did know that or had no reason to need to know that, but it's something I only learned today after studying an outdated atlas and checking up on the internet. Learning is cool. Now I'm going to go and watch football for two hours and forget everything I've learned.

June?

This month has gone really quickly. The other day I was filling in a form and asked what the date was, thinking it was either the 25th or 26th, and it turned out that it was the 29th. I really need to get a job. I'm normally only one day out in my mental reckoning when I've got a job.

I'd also like to get a job sorted out quickly so I know whether I can go to Munich for the South German memory championship on June 24th. It's only a tiny little competition, what they call a 'regional standard', with just seven quick disciplines, but I've never done one before, and it fits in with the pattern of gradually working up to the world championship with increasingly taxing competitions (the British championship on July 14th, then the German on the 27-28th). I'm really in the mood to compete at the moment, I can't wait to get back into the memory championship routine. And I want to do well in a competition in Germany for once. Not counting the World Cup or Speed Cards Challenge, but every time I've gone there for a normal competition, I've done really badly. I think it's a curse.

I've bought a bookcase

Now I just need to put it together, pick up all my books and arrange them neatly on it. Sigh. I've had a flat-packed bookcase making my bedroom look even more untidy for the last couple of days. It doesn't seem fair that getting part of the way through tidying the place up only makes it worse than ever. There must be some fundamental flaw with the laws of the universe.

But apart from that, I'm feeling productive today, just because I had a big long interview with Hays Accountancy Personnel, who seem much more useful than the other agencies and likely to find me a good job some time soon. I have mixed feelings about returning to working life. On the one hand, it'll be great, because for some reason I think I'll be all the more disciplined when it comes to memory training and things if I have to schedule it around my work. I can go back to my old routine of doing an hour or so in the evenings when I get home, and longer sessions at the weekends. Whereas now, I can't do much during the daytime because I can't really unplug my phone while I'm at least technically looking for work. Not without feeling guilty, anyway. On the other hand, I've really got used to staying in bed till lunchtime whenever I feel like it.

Chewing gum for the eyes

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday after lifting my ban on showing off is that my Current TV 'pod' (that's what they call them. It's not my fault if no normal channels want to show programmes about me) is now available on the internet for anyone to see. Just click here. At least, that works in the UK and Ireland, I can't promise anything for the rest of the world. Search your local Current TV website and see what comes up, Americans.

And for those of you who want to watch something a little more worthwhile, I thought I'd do something a bit different tonight and, rather than thinking of something to write about, post a few YouTube videos I love. Hey, I do this very, very rarely, and normally this blog is cool and different. Besides, you can't deny this is a lot more entertaining than my normal posts.

Here's a very young Bob Dylan singing "Mr Tambourine Man" live at a folk festival in 1964. Absolutely wonderful.


KT Tunstall doing "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", doing all the percussion and backing vocals herself by means of a foot-operated tape-looping device.


Give your inner hippy a treat with Devendra Banhart and "Little Yellow Spider"


You can't watch this and not cry. The Muppets sing "Just One Person" in tribute to Jim Henson.


Okay, that's got them out of my system (and hopefully into your brains forever). Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Mass mouse murder

Sniffles is dead. In fact, there turned out to be two of them, but Deutero-Sniffles is also dead. Thanks for all the advice on how to humanely get rid of mice, but in the end, killing the little blighters turned out to be easier and not particularly troubling to the conscience. But today I banged my foot on my scanner and hurt my toe tremendously, which I assume is my punishment for being so evil.

Anyway, it must be roughly a week since I decided not to post anything here that sounded remotely boastful. I got 4320 in a 30-minute binary practice the other day, which I'm fairly certain is a personal best. Which raises an interesting thing about the way I memorise - with binary digits, I look at them twice. I go through a full journey (780 digits), revise it, then move onto the next, and keep going that way until I run out of time. Doing it my new, slightly-slower-but-much-better-recall way, I get up to about 5000 digits, a bit short of seven journeys' worth.

With decimal numbers, though, I go through a journey rather quicker - I see the image immediately when I look at the three digits, whereas with binary it takes longer, I can't see a group of ten in one glance. But this also seems to hinder my memorising, and if I try to do a 30-minute numbers only looking at them twice, it just doesn't work. I can do 8 and a bit journeys in 30 minutes, but have a huge number of gaps in the recall. I need to look at everything three times to recall it properly.

All of which is just fascinating, of course, but it doesn't really give me any pointers on how to get better. I suppose I'll just go on doing things the way I always have, making it up as I go along.

The joke only works with a Scottish accent

I've cleaned up my living room a bit. It occurred to me that having the floor knee-deep in books and papers and magazines and comics and things might make the place seem like a paradise to small rodents looking for a new home. I've even made a start on the bedroom, where I haven't seen the carpet for years because of the books all over it. Trouble with that is, I've got nowhere to put them if I do pick them up and arrange them nicely. So I've decided to do what normal people do, and get a bookcase. Maybe even a pair of bookcases, one on top of the other. I've got a high ceiling and own a stepladder, and I have got rather a lot of books.

It just worries me that keeping my books in a bookcase is so desperately conventional. I'd hate to turn my flat into a place just like any other. After all, if I pick up the books, I'll have to do the same with the clothes that cover the rest of the bedroom floor, and maybe find somewhere to put them too (I do own a wardrobe and cupboard, but they house my comic collection). And then what will distract people from the fact that I haven't used the vacuum cleaner or washed my bedsheets in about six months?

Mouse 1, trap 0

I set a trap last night for the mouse in my house, who I've decided to call Sniffles so that I feel even more guilty about killing him, but he not only ate the peanut butter without getting squished, but managed to break the trap so that it can't be set again. I'm dealing with a super-genius rodent here. But I've got another one now, and baited it with chocolate (and I tell you, giving up a bit of my Yorkie is a major sacrifice for me). And if that fails, I've got "Rodine mouse & rat killer", which I assume is what the cool kids are calling rat poison these days. There's a drawing on the front of a seriously evil-looking mouse and rat. But I'm reluctant to use this because it says on the back that "rats normally die within a week of eating Rodine, mice may take a little longer." Seriously, what kind of puny poison is this? Mice only live a year or so anyway, does this stuff actually do anything or are they just hedging their bets that it'll die of natural causes within a couple of weeks of eating it? And slowly poisoning poor little Sniffles is even more cruel and heartless than setting a trap to hopefully kill him quickly.

You know, I'm going off this whole mouse-killing idea. Maybe I'll get rid of the trap and just leave him alone.

Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight!

What I would really like to blog tonight is to quote my brother at length on the subject of comparing a 1980s episode of Thundercats to current real-world events, but I should probably ask his permission first, so I'll leave that for another day. Besides, it probably wouldn't be as interesting to someone not as familiar with the Thundercats cartoon series as the two of us. And there isn't anyone in the world who is. We both know every episode forwards and backwards, and have spent the past twenty years discussing every little detail of it. It's one of my many obsessions in life, and one thing I've been meaning to do for ages is to produce an exhaustive review and analysis of every episode for the entertainment of Thunder-fans worldwide. The recent release of the first 33 episodes on DVD must have reawoken a lot of people's interest in the cartoon, after all.

I envisage a new blogger page, updating daily with a new episode, detailing the latest exciting adventure of our heroes, and highlighting the good and terrible lines of dialogue, the bizarre idiosyncracies of individual writers, discussion of the many plot holes and artistic errors, all that kind of thing. I could write ten thousand words on each episode, easily, off the top of my head, and I'm sure there must be a few people out there who'd like to read it. It's just a matter of getting round to it...

I need more practice at going to interviews

I had an interview today for a job that I really didn't want, because it doesn't sound very exciting, it's a six-month temp contract, it doesn't pay enormously well and because it's in the quite literal middle of nowhere - the Denby Hall business park, near the tiny village of Denby, about ten miles away from here. Still, I decided to go along for the interview because I thought I could do with the practice. I worked out that the best way to get there would be to take my bike on the train to Belper and then cycle the three or four miles to the building. The interview wasn't till ten, but that left me having to get the 8:27 train, because they only stop at Belper every couple of hours.

Got to the station in plenty of time, bought my ticket, then realised I'd forgotten to bring my watch with me. This was going to make it difficult to arrive at the interview at the right kind of time, but I didn't have time to go home for it, so I decided to work something out when I got to Belper. Sat on the platform, reading the Metro newspaper, I looked up at the clock and noticed it was 8:27 and a half. 'Typical,' I thought, 'train's late as usual.' I got up and looked down the platform to see if it was coming yet, just in time to see it leaving. I was sitting on platform 6a, it was on platform 6b.

Faced with a choice between calling them to explain that I couldn't come to the interview because I'm too stupid to catch a train, or finding another way to get there, I went for option 2. 'You know,' I thought to myself, 'I can cycle ten miles in an hour and a half. Easily. I used to do it on a daily basis when I was living back in Tumby Woodside. And while I don't know the way as such, Derbyshire has what's supposed to be a very nice network of cycle paths going all around the county, with those little blue signposts showing the way. It'll be easy!'

And so I cheerfully set off on my way. And yes, it's very easy to find your way around Derbyshire by bike if you can just read signposts. Sure enough, having gone through Little Eaton and out the other side, I saw a sign saying to turn right for Denby. A couple of right turns later and I was thinking 'Something's wrong here. Firstly I'm going back the way I came, and secondly I'm on the dual carriageway. Ah well, if I keep going down here presumably I'll come to a turning for Denby. That's what the sign said, after all.'

Some distance later, I saw another road sign and realised the problem. The sign I thought said "Denby", actually said "Derby". You know, the big city where I live and the place I was coming from in the first place. It hadn't occurred to me that they're only one letter different. And the two letters in question are very similar in appearance, and if you think you're going to see a sign for Denby, it's only natural that you... yeah, I'm just extremely stupid.

Anyway, I eventually found my way off the dual carriageway, turned round and went back the way I came, and found my way to the interview at what was probably around ten o'clock (I hadn't thought to go home for my watch before setting off). The interview went well enough, although the man interviewing me thought I was hugely overqualified for the job, and although I tried not to agree with him for the sake of a bit of interview practice, he was entirely right. I need to talk to the woman from the agency - although I always say I don't care about career progression and things, I find that I do take exception to being put forward for what was basically an accounts assistant position. Maybe I am a dynamic go-getter yuppie, after all.

And since it was a nice day, I decided to cycle all the way back too, rather than getting some use out of my Belper train ticket. And I hardly got lost at all! And, to put it as politely as I know how, my bum didn't half hurt by the time I got home. I should go for long bike rides more often, it's fun.

Thomas! There's a mouse in the house!

Well, I declare. Heard a rustling noise in a pile of old papers and things, and saw a little mouse scamper out and disappear into the hole in the cupboard under the sink. I suppose I should do something about it, but the idea of setting a trap to kill something doesn't appeal to me hugely. My natural inclination is to let him get on with things and not disturb him, but then I suppose he might tell all his friends that I'm a soft touch, and the place will be overrun with vermin. The cartoony thing to do is to get a cat, of course, and set in motion a chain of events that will lead to the whole house being blown up by big red sticks of TNT while I stand on a chair screaming and lifting up my skirt.

I don't know why a mouse would come all the way up to my first floor flat, just to scuttle across the floor, however unhygenic and doubtless full of bits of food down the back of the cooker and so on my place may be. You'd think he would have found a place that's more convenient for the shops (it's a long way if you've got little legs, and the stairs are quite steep).

Because I banned myself from talking about the Guardian interview

Here's a comic for you. This is the second in my series of forcing-myself-to-draw-and-not-care-how-bad-it-looks comics - you can perhaps understand how bad the first one was if I tell you that this one is so very much better that I think it's absolutely brilliant in comparison. Of course, since you don't get to see the first one (my ego just won't permit it), you'll just see this and think "wow, he really can't draw." But I have been told that the child-like artwork just adds to the humour, so I'm going to pretend it looks like this deliberately.

Or if you don't like that, and because I haven't written anything silly for much too long and the following conversation is going through my head:

"Good morning. I represent the estate of your late uncle. My condolences on his recent death."

"I haven't got an uncle, dead or otherwise."

"Your aunt was secretly married to a man whose existence she concealed from the rest of her family due to his unsavoury reputation. This man is now deceased. My condolences."

"I also haven't got an aunt. Both my parents were only children."

"Your mother in fact had an identical twin sister from whom she was separated at birth without her knowledge. This sister is also now deceased. My condolences."

"I have video footage of my mother's birth. She couldn't have had a twin sister."

"The woman you know as your mother did not in fact give birth to you. Your biological mother was another woman who chose not to raise a child, preferring to live a life of carefree abandon and disregard for society. This woman is also now deceased. My condolences."

"Well... did any of these people leave me anything in their wills?"

"They did not. Good day."

He's the memory man

I feel that there's been too much about me in this blog lately, and not enough stories about a man who believes he's a branch of Woolworth's, but having written the latter and decided it wasn't funny, all I have left to talk about is my bit on Current TV. I saw it today for the first time - motivated by a commenter the other day who had not only seen it, but checked out my blog because of it, I thought I should really know what it was like so I can know what kind of thing all these new readers will be expecting. As luck would have it, I looked myself up on their website and found that I was on in five minutes' time. And it's actually rather fun! I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't appalled by the way my voice sounds on tape! I come across as a nerd, but in a funny kind of way. You get to see my living room, my cuddly toys, my video collection, my trophy collection (a great moment with me staring at one and, quite genuinely, saying "I can't remember what this one's for, actually...") and edited highlights of me memorising and recalling a pack of cards.

I don't know when it's next on - check out the website here or this might work better if you're American. It's one of those websites that redirects you according to what country you're in, so both of those might work for you wherever you are.

I hereby resolve not to do any more blog posts for at least a week on the subject of me showing off about my TV career, my othello talents, my memory records, my devastating good looks (I do look rather good on the Current thing, actually) or anything else.

The Radio Times is playing with my mind.

There's a film on tonight at 1:05am, called "GMT Greenwich Mean Time", and glancing at the listings I saw "1:05 GMT" and thought 'wait, is summer time finishing tonight? It can't be, it's May. Summer usually ends some time after June, I'm sure.'

I always feel a bit embarrassed about buying the Radio Times. It's so, well, middle-class. It's significantly more expensive than the dreadful, common, garish listings magazines full of nothing but soap opera gossip that nevertheless contain all the same information about what's on TV this week (probably more information, in fact, when it comes to satellite channels, because RT only covers them with great reluctance), but that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole (I disapprove of the middle classes on principle, but I'm a terrible snob). And it's a huge amount more expensive than just looking up the TV listings on the internet or my fancy interactive TV. But although I feel deep down that a working class hero like myself probably shouldn't buy the Radio Times, I just like it. So there.

I think this is a yay

I came third in the othello today, which is still a very good result by my usual standards - I won five games out of seven, and my two losses were 33-31 to Geoff and 34-30 against David, which is so close that it practically counts as winning. But after all my heroics in Cambridge, I was kind of disappointed by that. Still, it was a fun day, eight of us squeezed into Phil's living room in Mansfield playing othello all day in preference to watching the FA Cup final (I still haven't seen the result, so don't tell me before I watch the highlights).

And just to prove I don't just list the latest BGP standings here when I'm winning, the top of the table looks like this now:

David 590
Me 530
Phil 460
Geoff 460
Jeremy 410

I'd have to do something extremely heroic and unlikely at the last regional in London to win it now. Or nobble David before the competition, whichever seems easier. It goes 200 points for a win, 160 for second, 120 for third, then 100, 80, 60, 40, 20, 10, but the problem with London is that the likes of Graham will probably be there, making winning it extremely unlikely. And since finishing ahead of David in the first place is an unlikely feat in itself, well, I'm not booking my plane tickets to Greece just yet. I'll save it for when I win the nationals.

Something memorable I forgot

Last Sunday, the man in charge of the Bristol expo, I forget his name (it was something similar to, but not, Mike Allred), when we were introduced said "Have I seen you on TV? Your name sounded familiar." I suggested that he might have seen me on Child Of Our Time, the most prestigious non-Brazilian TV appearance on my sparse celebrity CV, and he said "Yes, with him with the moustache! I watch that!"

This very nearly counts as someone recognising me without being told who I am. I'm practically famous!

Trade secrets

I can't believe that I'm taking Saturday's othello tournament seriously enough that I'm a) preparing strategies for it, and b) reluctant to write about these strategies in my blog because I know that some or all of my opponents are going to be reading it. But it's a constant source of annoyance to me when certain players insist on playing the comp'oth opening against me, because I have some kind of irrational hatred of it and never play well when someone does that to me. So I've been working on it lately in an attempt to fix up this achilles heel of mine. 'Fix up' is the wrong phrase there. Shield it? Buy a proper armoured boot for it? Refrain from going into battle in such a way that my heel can be attacked? That can't be too hard to do, surely? Achilles must have been pretty useless.

Anyway, I was saying. So having done some proper opening analysis and learned the best way to deal with any eventuality if my opponent plays comp'oth, I thought it would be fun to blog about it (it was either that or talk about memory training again, because I haven't done anything else today). But if I do that, everyone eagerly reading this blog will analyse my analysis and find a way to beat me! So I'm not going to. Although I've already rather spoiled the surprise, haven't I? But this way, nobody knows whether I'm genuinely an expert on comp'oth now, or just saying so in a sort of cunning bluff to persuade them to play a different opening that I like better. Hopefully, now all my opponents on Saturday will be so confused that they won't play any moves at all, and I'll win on time!

May showers

I'm racking my brains for something to write about tonight, and the only thing I can think of to say is that it's been raining for the last week pretty much constantly. And what kind of blog talks about the weather? A very dull one, that's what kind. Or even worse, a very dull, ignorant and opinionated kind of blog that goes on to say that I bet there'll still be hosepipe bans and the government trying to stop me using my lawn sprinkler, because the government devotes its life to personally inconveniencing Daily Mail readers like me by lying about water shortages. So I'll stop now and just not say anything. That'll be much more fun to read.

New card smell

My new cards have arrived! I didn't get them from the people I ordered them from in the first place - they emailed me to say they'd run out of the Stratus cards, but could offer me 144 packs of the cheaper ones for the same price. I turned them down. I like Stratus, I'm not sure I could memorise anything else. Besides, the thinner cards just can't stand up to being repeatedly flicked over so well. So I got 36 packs of Stratus cards for about the same price from a bridge supplies website. They probably think I'm hosting a bridge club and making intellectual conversation about bidding systems. But I do really love the smell of new cards. It's hard to define exactly what they smell like, but it's nice in a hopefully non-addictive way.

Another significant landmark today - I got my ironing board out. I haven't ironed any clothes for six months now, but I took the iron to a work shirt and trousers. I feel horribly domestic. SF Group are setting me up with an interview at the industrial park down the road, although in contrast to what I said recruitment agencies always do, they seem to want to put me in an assistant accountant position, which is a step down from what I was before. I'm not sure whether I should be pleased or offended.

It's a working man I am

I'm meeting with the woman from the accountancy recruitment agency tomorrow, and I can't remember the name of the accounting software we used at my last job. That's the first thing anyone's going to ask at an interview. I'm going to either have to phone them up and ask, or just look like a complete idiot. You'd think I would have mentioned it in this blog, but even the time it stopped working, I just wrote "the accounting software". So it's official, this blog is completely useless as a chronicle of my life. I always suspected as much.

Shipshape, Bristol fashion

I'll start with the coolest bit rather than going chronologically, because I want the memory people to read it and they'll get bored with it if they have to wade through a lot of talk about a comic convention. So, talking with Kurt Busiek (wooo!) this afternoon about memory techniques, and he said "I do something like that, actually. Say if I want to remember the number 2083, I'll think 'well, Avengers #20 had Power Man and #83 was the first appearance of the Valkyrie', so I'll remember it as Power Man and the Valkyrie." How cool is that? He uses memory techniques based on his encyclopaedic knowledge of Avengers comics from the sixties! See, this is how you get to be my hero.

By the way, that was a paraphrase. I thought I shouldn't use the actual number he quoted to me, in case he was inadvertently using his PIN number or something. I'm sure he wasn't (you don't get to be my hero by being stupid), but just in case.

Anyway, it's been a very fun weekend. I didn't take my laptop with me, only to find that my stupid hotel had internet access via the telly and one of those infa-red keyboard things. At three quid an hour. But I nobly refrained from using it too much, and £6 isn't anything I'm really going to miss. Anyway, I did manage to leave the hotel room for extended periods in order to check out the expo. It was extremely cool in every way. I spent rather more money than I probably should have done on cool comics that I saw or that were forced on me by pushy creators. I got a signed copy of a book by someone I've never heard of that really isn't very good, I saw Jamie Smart and told him at unnecessary length that I think he's great. I got the latest Y: The Last Man collection signed by Brian K Vaughan AND Pia Guerra. There were expo staff people dressed as storm troopers, biker scouts, a tie-fighter pilot and Boba Fett. There were normal people dressed as Batman, the Silver Surfer, Rorshach and others.

Then today I had Ravinder filming me hanging out with Kurt Busiek at length. Seriously cool. We were walking up and down between the dealers' tables in front of the camera, exchanging conversation (not very sparkling from me, as I predicted, but I did get more coherent as the day went on). When someone stopped to talk to him, I took the opportunity to say to another passer-by "I'm walking around with Kurt Busiek!"

I also took in an audience with Brian K Vaughan, in which he was brilliantly witty and entertaining in answering questions from the crowd. I asked the last one - who would win in a fight between Agent 355 (from Y: The Last Man) and Old Lace (the telepathic dinosaur from the future from Runaways), and he replied, after some thought, that it would be a draw. And then they'd make out.

Then I had a lengthy private chat on camera with Kurt, encompassing a wide range of topics. And I got him to sign my copy of Thunderbolts #1. And just as he was leaving, he mentioned that he'd read my blog post of the other day. Seems that since he's got an unusual name, he puts it into search engines to see what people are saying about him. Very cool guy.

Decisions

A mid-afternoon post, in a break with all the traditions this country holds dear, because I'm going down to Bristol a bit later and I'm weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of taking my laptop down with me. On the one hand, I'm really having a problem lately with internet addiction (my only vice), and it would doubtless do me a lot of good to go cold turkey and not stay up all night chatting and playing. On the other hand, well, I'm having a problem lately with internet addiction and I really want to take my laptop with me. It's not a very well-reasoned argument, but it's one that I'm finding very persuasive just at the moment.

Greece is the word

Or at least, it's the word people are using more than any other today in response to questions like "Where is this year's world othello championship going to be held?". I'd really love to qualify for it, I've never been to that part of the world before. Not that I have any real chance of qualifying, but you never know.

Also in the news, I've ordered some new packs of cards over the internet. 48 of them, a big box that the makers presumably intended people to sell individually in shops rather than use for memorising themselves. But my old ones, that I've had since 2004 or even earlier, are getting a bit tatty and inclined to stick together, and now's the time to switch to new ones if I want to be comfortable with them before the competitions in July. It takes a bit of adjustment, and a bit of dropping the slippery new cards all over the floor and cursing.

And this is the real post

As you know (everyone reading this remembers everything I've ever posted on here before, right?), I'm going to Bristol for the comic expo this weekend. Ravinder's also coming to film, and, keen to make the experience in some way relevant to my memory stuff (I keep telling him that nothing in my life is, but he insists), he asked if any of the guests there created any of the various comic characters in my list of images. As it happens, they did, and now it seems Kurt Busiek has agreed to have a chat with me on film about it.

Kurt Busiek. THE Kurt Busiek! What the heck am I going to say to Kurt Busiek? Well, actually, I know exactly what I'm going to say to him. It will involve tongue-tied stammering and not being able to form a coherent sentence. Possibly shoving my copy of Marvels or Thunderbolts #1 at him and hoping he'll appreciate that I want an autograph. I mean, by all accounts he's a very nice guy, a lifelong devoted superhero comic fan who became one of the world's most talented and popular writers. We could theoretically talk at great length about comics, except that he's totally my hero and idol and I'm wildly unworthy of actually meeting him. Seriously, Kurt Busiek!

Rampaging Hulk

This is a bonus post, the one I was going to do last week but couldn't upload the pictures to Photobucket. It's not my real blog entry for tonight about the latest Zoomynews. But enjoy it anyway!

I think it's time this blog had a change of pace. Too much waffling lately about what I've been up to, not nearly enough pretending to be clever and knowledgeable about comics. So inspired by Lew Stringer's wonderful blog, here's a little treatise on the subject of Marvel UK's late-seventies comic, "Rampage". I didn't read it at the time it came out (I was born in 1976, it launched in 1977), but I’ve found quite a lot of them at car boot sales over the years.

In those days, before the Transformers comic showed the world that Marvel's British offices could produce their own material that was much better than the American stuff, British Marvel comics consisted of black-and-white reprints of years-old American comics. Rampage specialised in the adventures of the Defenders, a great favourite team of mine. It reprinted a complete issue of Defenders, 22 pages, every week, which was excessively long by the standards of British comics, which usually consisted of a series of six-page stories. And Rampage also had back-up strips, of course (nobody then believed British readers would touch a comic with only one story in it) - you could also read a quarter to a third of an American issue of Iron Man and Nova in every issue. Well worth 10p of anyone's pocket money.

What I like about Rampage is the covers. They used the same line art as the American comics, but re-coloured and re-lettered. Sometimes with the same words as the American version, sometimes subtly different. They seem to have been reluctant to use so many words on Rampage. For example, the speech bubbles on the cover of Defenders #30 go:

Hulk: NO! Hulk can't fight GAS!
Nighthawk: We haven't a CHANCE! Can't get PAST these choking FUMES!
Doctor Strange: We're facing our most INCREDIBLE foe -- and he may DESTROY US ALL!

Whereas on Rampage #30, they say:

Hulk: Hulk can't fight GAS!
Nighthawk: NO WAY can we pass those choking FUMES!
Doctor Strange: We're facing our deadliest foe -- and he may DESTROY US ALL!

Incidentally, the deadly foe was a tap-dancing super-villain called Tapping Tommy. On the other hand, the reprint of Defenders #2, which had no speech bubbles on the original cover, is enhanced by the bad guy shouting "Surfer! Hulk! Namor! None of you will survive the WRATH of the WARRIOR WIZARD!"

Occasionally, the re-lettering required some intelligence. They fixed the problem with Defenders #27, which showed Dr Strange intoning "The Baddoon WOMEN are far more SAVAGE than their men! Unless I strike swiftly, HULK and VALKYRIE are DOOMED!" This rather gave away what was supposed to be a surprise plot twist in the NEXT month's issue, that the lizard creatures the Defenders were fighting were in fact the females of the Baddoon species they'd been tangling with for some time. The Rampage version replaces Doc's faux pas with "The LIZARD CREATURES have risen from the MARSH!"

This, however, is the most interesting of the Rampage covers. Here's Defenders #17, published in 1974:

And here's Rampage #16, from 1978:



Notice that the Hulk's role has been strikingly diminished as it crossed the Atlantic. Now, the Hulk ("Marvel's TV Sensation", as they liked to call him in those days), was the only reason a lot of people read Defenders in the first place. A couple of later Defenders covers claimed he was in an issue where in fact he didn't appear at all. There's no way the UK Marvel people decided to re-draw the cover to make the Hulk less significant. They must have got hold of the original American art, which must have been altered before the American Defenders comic hit the newsstands to make the Hulk MORE prominent and sell more copies! And they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling Brits.

Another funny thing about Rampage is the issues of Defenders it chose to reprint. The earliest one I've got is Rampage #3, containing Defenders #2. So either the first two Rampages each only contained half of Defenders #1 (which wasn't double-sized) or they reprinted one of the three issues of Marvel Feature which introduced the team before they got their own series. I have no idea which. Rampage then reprinted a complete Defenders story every week, but skipped Defenders #9 and #10, which were part of a crossover story with Avengers (to get the whole story, you had to read an issue of Defenders, then an issue of Avengers, then the next Defenders and so on). Maybe Marvel UK repeated the whole crossover somewhere else, maybe they just didn't bother with it, I don't know. So from that point on, Rampage’s issue numbers were one behind Defenders.

However, as well as the Defenders comic in America, there was also ‘Giant Size Defenders’, part of Marvel’s experiment with longer, more expensive, quarterly comics. They didn’t catch on, and their only lasting legacy is the existence of a comic called “Giant Size Man-Thing”, but there were also five less innuendo-worthy Giant Size Defenders comics too. The first of these consisted of reprinted stories with a perfunctory framing sequence, so it’s understandable that Rampage chose not to reprint it. The second was a weird story involving the Son of Satan that’s in a very different style to the usual Defenders stuff, and I think I would have skipped it too if I’d been in charge of Rampage. But they also skipped #3 and #4, the first of which, although self-contained and having no bearing on the long-term plot, was absolutely brilliant, and the second containing a very significant moment (Nighthawk’s love interest has her arm blown off in an explosion, which is a very unusually graphic kind of injury for seventies comics) which is referenced repeatedly in future issues, but which Rampage readers never got to see. Rampage finally gave in and reprinted GSD #5, which was an integral part of a long storyline – they split it over two weekly issues and changed the cover blurb from “A complete Defenders story every week!” to “A book-length Defenders story every week!”

But then they unfathomably skipped Normal-Size Defenders #26, another part of that extended plotline, albeit one that consisted almost entirely of unnecessary filler. You can cut it out and still follow the story with no problems, but why would you want to?

Rampage kept on reprinting Defenders for quite some time, even after the American comic was a long way past its best, but finally gave in to popular demand and switched to reprinting Hulk and X-Men stories instead. Shame, really, because if I’d been a comics fan at the time, Rampage would have been my favourite.

Asking only workman's wages, I come looking for a job

So, the time has come when I need to find a job again. Well, not need, technically, but definitely should before my brain and body completely atrophy. I was going to get in touch with the agency today, but I remembered I was going to give blood, and that's scary enough without being stressed by job-hunting, so I've left that till tomorrow. Then I get the delights of trying to persuade them to put me forward for a job at the same level as the one I had last time, rather than a level above. Agencies never want to do that. They assume everyone has high-flying career aspirations rather than just wanting a semi-senior number-cruncher position that pays enough to live on. I'm sure I can't be the only accountant who doesn't want to become a financial director some day (they're always posh and almost always completely useless, so I don't think I'd be qualified).

Anyway, giving blood was fun. I filled in a form detailing all the diseases I haven't got, all the disease-infected people I haven't had sex with and so on, got talked through the whole procedure at staggering length, had a needle stuck in my finger and a drop of blood dropped into a test tube of green stuff. It did what it's supposed to, so then I went into the other room to lie down and have a whole lot more precious blood drained out of me.

The nurse put one of those inflatable squeezy things around my upper arm, and poked around at my elbow for quite some time, looking for a vein. "Hmm," he said, "there's one there, but it's quite deep. John, have you got a second?"

Another nurse in a swankier uniform came over, did the same thing with the squeezy inflatable thingy, poked my elbow and said "Hmm, there's one there, but it's quite deep." Exact same inflection, too. They must teach them to say that in nurse school. It seems my veins aren't in the same place as other people's, but the more important nurse found one on the side that worked fine. So it was just a matter of sticking another sharp thing into me, connecting it up to a scary-looking tube (which I tried not to look at too closely), lying around until it had finished, lying around for another fifteen minutes to make sure I didn't collapse or anything, commiserating with original nurse, who's a Sheffield Wednesday fan, about the terrible performances of our respective teams this season, having a cup of orange squash and a couple of biscuits and going home. Safe in the knowledge that I've done a Good Deed for the day. I can just hear my dad saying "You'll get your reward in heaven, old boy." I don't know why he always said that, since he wasn't religious in the slightest, but he did.

Since I don't think I've been quite boastful enough yet tonight, can I just talk about my othello game against Imre on Saturday? I've been looking at it with WZebra, on its highest setting, and it reckons I played just about as close to a perfect game as I ever have. I was a couple of discs ahead all the way through and just kept that lead, playing the good move every time. A couple of mistakes in the endgame, but he didn't find the line to punish me for them. I'm seriously happy with this game.

Also today (for a day when I've done nothing, it's been busy, hasn't it?) I won a set of dominoes in a tombola in the shopping centre. Woo.

Yawwwwwn

Wow, I'm tired. For one thing I've been getting up earlier and going to bed later than usual all weekend, for another, organising a memory competition is very nearly as tiring as competing in one. I'm knackered, to use the technical term. Despite that, though, Sunday was tremendous fun all round. Everything ran more or less smoothly and almost perfectly to schedule, we finished on time without too much trouble, there were no major disasters and really only one minor one (an unshuffled pack found its way into the speed cards event). Three entirely new recruits to the world of 'memory sports' who all seemed to have a good time and be planning to come back for more. Lots of entertaining memory talk at the pub both at lunchtime and afterwards. Two different film crews chasing people around with cameras and just adding to the sense of fun. A horribly noisy location that everyone in attendance was too polite to complain about. I started the day waking up at 5am, and finished it getting back to the hotel a bit before midnight after going for a curry with Charlie (possibly the greatest conversationalist in the world of memory, who I hadn't seen since 2004) and Jenny. I was even persuaded to have a go at the speed cards myself, and did 29.93 seconds in the second attempt, only to mess up the recall. Drat. Ah well, next competition is the British Championship down in Shropshire (which I must try to find on a map some time) on July 14th. I need to get back in training.

Not a blog post

I should be posting about the Cambridge championship, which went really well, but it's twenty to midnight and this hotel unreasonably expects you to vacate the premises by ten in the morning and I'm drunk, so I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Bow down and worship my othello-playing ability!

I've just stopped off at my hotel to enthuse about the othello tournament. I didn't win, but I came an even closer second than I did in Oadby, just losing to David on disc count. We only had the room until 5pm, so we agreed to have 20 minutes on the clock rather than 25, to make sure we could finish in time. Eight people there, so we started out on a seven-round all-play-all. Then Aidan turned up as well and rather threw things out of whack. In the end it turned into a nine-round all-play-all, with the last round played on the grass outside the school since we couldn't fit it all in in time.

I just seemed to keep winning, for some reason. I beat Imre again, although frankly that's happening so often nowadays I probably shouldn't even bother to record the fact. I also beat Phil and David, and was on 7 out of 7, until I lost my last two games to Jeremy and Geoff and let David catch up with me.

I've also just calculated the latest British Grand Prix standings, not for any big-headed kind of reason, just because I know all my readers are fascinated by the competition and it would be letting them down if I didn't post them here for the world to see. It goes:

Me 410
Phil 400
David 390
Jeremy 310
Geoff 300

I've never been in the lead in the BGP before! Even though you'd think I would, seeing as how BGP are my initials, so it's pretty much the law that I should win it every year. Two more regionals to go - can I keep it up?

Tomorrow's memory competition is going to be in the same room, although we don't get kicked out till six so, if everything goes really, really quickly and smoothly, we won't have to do the speed cards outside on the street. Hopefully it won't be quite as noisy in the room tomorrow as it was today, with infant chess players running around screaming in the background. It's the over-twelves chess tomorrow, so they'll probably be shouting and swearing and writing graffiti, or whatever teenagers do these days.

Guest of honour

I'm in my hotel in Cambridge, complete with wireless internet access in the room. Rather temperamental internet access that goes on and off, so if you're not reading this, it's because the connection died before I could post it. Went to the new Wagamama in Cambridge with Jenny tonight - it's a very cool place, and it certainly seems to be doing excellent business, there were people queueing up outside all night. Meeting Jenny, of course, is just the first of many social engagements while I'm here - it's the othello people tomorrow, and the memory people on Sunday (along with the TV people pestering me all day, of course). I feel like the Queen in America, only on a slightly smaller scale and with a more stylish hat.

I posted the above, then realised I forgot to write the bit that would justify the "guest of honour" subject line, so edited to add: when I checked in this afternoon, the man said "Oh, yes, they're coming to film you on Sunday," with a grin, and was excessively friendly and helpful. I also have the idea that they've put me in the nicest room (because it is very nice indeed). There are definite advantages to being a celebrity.

Inventory

There are lots and lots of things I need to remember to take down to Cambridge with me tomorrow. And unlike other times when I go away for the weekend, a lot of these things are essential, absolutely can't forget or the whole Cambridge Memory Championship will be ruined, kind of things. It's not like forgetting my toothbrush or to wear any clothes.

So, let's see. There's my laptop, lots of brown envelopes full of memorising and recall papers, lots of packs of cards, the snazzy timers for the speed cards event, my stopwatch so I can keep track of the time, my alarm clock so I can get up at the crack of dawn rather than oversleeping and missing the whole affair, scrap paper and pens, the prize money, the event timetable and rules, a map of the area so I can find the way from my hotel to the venue, my hat so that I look cool...

I bet I forget something. The laws of comedy demand that I forget something important and essential for the memory competition.

I was going to write about comics tonight

But the scanned covers I wanted to include in what would have been a very long and boring post won't upload, so I'll save it for another day. Although that does leave me without anything interesting to talk about at all. I'm watching the snooker at the moment, and as usual thinking to myself "I could do that. Easy." I tend to forget that I can't play the game until the moment I find myself at the table with a cue in my hand. It's a lot harder than it looks, you know.

On the other hand, becoming snooker world champion remains one of my ambitions. When I'm a millionaire (that's another one of my unfulfilled ambitions), I'll have a big house with a billiard room and two or three servants to keep the table in perfect condition. There will also be a log fire and lots of bookcases with three-volume novels, and everyone who comes in will be required to wear a smoking jacket, although you won't be allowed to smoke. Then I'll practice snooker every day and become brilliant at it and win the world championship. You see, I don't just have ambitions, I have practical plans to make them happen. That's the secret to success.

Nosferatu

I'm going to give blood. I've never done it before, and I've spent practically my whole life saying 'I must get round to doing that some time'. Which is exactly the kind of attitude I always criticise in other people. So I've decided to do it, next Tuesday when the blood-sucking people (I think that's the technical term) are next in town. Hopefully it won't kill me. I gather that it doesn't usually, but I'm not a big fan of having needles stuck in me.

I don't even know what blood group I am. I have a feeling that I'm A and my brother's AB, or possibly the other way round, but I'm not sure. I also have a feeling that mine is one of the more useless blood types to have, but that's probably just my natural assumption that nobody could ever find a use for bits of my anatomy.

Maybe I'll donate some platelets too. I hear that's all the rage these days. Or bone marrow. Or a limb. I've got more than I need already, and I wouldn't want to be selfish.

Be Prepared

I still need to print everything out for the Cambridge championship. It's surprising how much all those sheets of paper weigh, you know. Last year I felt like I was lugging a ton of bricks around with me. There's not just piles of papers, there's lots of packs of cards (at least it's just tens, not hundreds like the WMC), my laptop, and the snazzy timers for the speed cards (yes, we've got them this year, not the hopelessly 20th-century people with stopwatches). It's a good job I'm such a perfect physical specimen.

I wasn't going to write anything else tonight, but then I remembered that last night's blog entry was one of my occasional super-brief rip-off ones, and that makes me feel guilty about not giving my readers their metaphorical money's worth. So here's a second paragraph, for your reading pleasure.

I fixed my video!

That tape I trod on last week? Fixed! Thanks to Ravinder, who advised me that you can cut the clear plastic bit out without ruining it, and gave me permission to blame him if I did ruin it despite that.

Apart from that, I've done nothing else all day today, but I still have a great sense of achievement.

Windows, at all?

There are some things about Boston that are going to stay the same forever. The double-glazing saleswoman in the market who has spent every Saturday since time immemorial trying and failing to hand out flyers to passers-by with a forlorn, muttered "Windows, at all?". The graffiti on the wall behind Kwik-Save ("R.N. BOASTS WE SANK TWO IRAQI TANKERS") which has been there since the first Gulf War. The May Fair, on its way next week (notices already up telling people, all of whom must surely know already, that the market will move to West Street while the fair's in town. If people don't know, the complaining market traders will soon fill them in without the need for notice boards). George the friendly mentally-handicapped old guy who can always be found in the town centre somewhere on a Saturday, cheerfully saying good morning to everyone whatever time of day it is. The dishevelled exotic birds in the shabby aviary in the park. And a football team who can't win a home game against the worst team in the league who've had a player sent off in the first half.

When you support the second-worst team in the league, there are few occasions when you can look forward to a win with some trembling confidence, but this was one of them. And the omens were good - we had a whole eleven full-time players to choose our team of eleven from, Torquay had already been relegated and had nothing to play for but pride, the home fans had turned out in droves for once (attendance about 2600, roughly eight of whom were die-hard away fans who'd come all the way from Torquay) - and the Pilgrims started brightly. We could have had half a dozen goals in the first half, it's a long time since I've seen them look like they could actually score. David Galbraith in particular had an amazing curling shot from outside the area that Wayne Rooney would be proud of, which was tipped over the crossbar by an equally Premiership-worthy save from the Torquay goalie. Three or four more times the ball was somehow cleared off the line by their defence at the last second. Then one of their players was sent off for hitting Ernie Cooksey while the ball was at the other end of the pitch and he presumably hoped the referee's eyes were too. Still nil-nil at half-time, but it looked hopeful.

When a team comes out after the interval and plays much, much better, people tend to attribute it to an inspirational manager's speech. So I can only assume Steve Evans delivered the exact opposite in the dressing room, because the Boston who came out again for the second half were woeful. Torquay were still awful too, so it shouldn't really have mattered, but then they got a goal out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise. Another of their players was booked for shoving Cooksey in another off-the-ball incident (he's not much of a player, but he must be great at annoying people). The crowd, who'd been enthusiastic all the way, switched to yelling abuse at the Boston players, especially the defenders who seemed very reluctant to tackle the opposing strikers, or even move at all unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

But Drewe Broughton got an equaliser in the 83rd minute, and it ended up 1-1. Which could have been worse, I suppose. Basically, this means that it all comes down to the final game, away at Wrexham next week. If we win that, we'll avoid relegation (at the expense of Macclesfield or Wrexham themselves). If we don't, we won't. Goodbye, football league. And it's five years to the day since we won promotion, too. I personally don't think we have a chance of winning that game. I know it sounds disloyal, but bluntly, we suck. I'll keep supporting them to the last, but... gah! Maybe I'll switch to Derby County.

Movie star, a movie star...

I've been talking at great length just lately with Ravinder about this documentary. It does look like it's definitely going to happen, and it's really definitely going to involve filming me and everyone I come into contact with in Cambridge next weekend and Bristol the weekend after. And probably elsewhere, too. Actually, it's only really occurring to me right now that this might get annoying pretty quickly. It probably won't - I could tolerate Nick following me around, and Ravinder's more fun to talk to (and I'm not just saying that because he reads this blog). Although it is going to be a director in charge of the filming, rather than Ravinder himself, and I might not like her. And then there's the worry that I'm going to end up looking bad, and the billions of people watching the documentary will be thinking "gor, lumme, what a complete eejit that Pridmore person is". I'm assuming all the viewers will have a sort of cockney-cum-Irish accent, naturally.

I was actually thinking of emailing all the friends I can think of to see if they want to be filmed hanging out with me, working on the theory that the less of me and the more of other people in the film, the more watchable it'll be. But then last time around the VPS people were all rather reluctant to be taped at one of our get-togethers, just because they generally involve drunken and unseemly behaviour. I suppose we could hang out and be sober and seemly, but then it would just look boring.

Anyway, I'm going to the football tomorrow. An even more crucial, must-win game than the numerous other crucial, must-win games I've mentioned so far this season. If we win this, and it's only against Torquay so we darn well should, it'll lift us out of the relegation zone with one game to go. Woo! Now if only we can find eleven fit players, we're sorted. We'll survive for another season and then get relegated next year (about to go into a voluntary arrangement because of the huge debts, which will mean a 10-point penalty).

Noone know what I do, but everyone calls me "boss"

For some reason, everybody in the world has emailed me about the Cambridge championship today. Okay, partly my fault since I posted on the forum to confirm that the event is being filmed for a Channel 5 documentary (woo!), but also Aubrey has volunteered me to organise the rest of the Cambridge MSO event on the Sunday (he's somewhere exotic prolonging the human lifespan). It's just a case of telling the other competitions where to go, but that's liable to make me unpopular, because there's the big sports hall and a separate room, and I'm having the latter for the memory competition. However much the go and shogi players complain about having to share space with backgammon and chess. There's only a separate room at all because I pestered Aubrey into arranging one the other day when he sprung it on us that he'd only arranged the sports hall. If there was a bit more time before the event, I'd find another venue in Cambridge, but at a week's notice it'd be hard to come up with a cheap, quiet and small place. I hate being in charge of things. How did I end up in charge of things?

Creative fervour

I've spent the whole afternoon doodling. That comic strip I was artist's-blocked with last week - I suddenly had the urge to sit down and draw and not care how bad it looked, so I did. And once I'd started, I obviously didn't want to stop in case the enthusiasm evaporated.

Also spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with Ravinder about this documentary, and he specifically asked me to mention him in my blog, but I'll go into more detail about that tomorrow, because all that scribbling has taken up too much of my time.

Oh, and I don't think I'm quite ready to actually SHOW anyone what I've been drawing yet.

Tradesmen and the scraper still troublesome

I'm watching "The Diary of a Nobody" on BBC4. It's not a dramatisation so much as Hugh Bonneville reciting edited highlights, Talking Heads style, and I don't think it entirely works. It's not a book that really lends itself to TV adaptation (although it has been done before), but it seems pointless to do it like this. It's a lot more enjoyable to read the book yourself - this version doesn't really add anything and takes quite a bit out. It's part of the Edwardian season on the BBC, although I'm not sure what definition of "Edwardian" they're using, since the diary dates from the late 1880s. But on the other hand, that's the kind of pedantic observation that Mr Pooter might have made himself, so I probably shouldn't say anything.

Curse my clumsy great clodhoppers!

I trod on a video tape and now it doesn't work properly any more. It's one of the ones with cartoons taped off the telly, and there are some good ones on it too. The most irritating part is that I have a feeling I could maybe fix it, but that if I tried to do so I would almost certainly ruin it for good. The tape itself is all fine, it's just the plastic casing that's cracked and sort of pushed in a bit, and not in a way that I can just pop it back into the right place. Now when I try to play it it stops after a few seconds and starts rewinding.

I suppose this might be a lesson to me to store videos on a shelf or on top of the telly or somewhere other than just lying on the floor, but I don't have a history of learning this kind of lesson. But darn it, what if I want to watch "Go Fly A Kit", or "Johnny Smith and Poker Huntas" or "Scaredy Cat" or "High Note", or about 40 other classic Looney Tunes? I'm annoyed now.

Supermarket Sweep

Doing my shopping at Sainsbury's today, I found myself at the till behind a large, elderly woman whose credit card was declined. Obviously, this is an embarrassing situation for anyone to be in, so I did my best to pretend I didn't notice anything as she rummaged through her handbag looking for money. When she only turned up a single two-pound coin, I decided to volunteer to pay for her stuff myself. Random acts of kindness are always good. But while I was considering whether that was really, definitely a good idea, she was looking through her groceries to find the most important item and came up with a four-pack of cans of stout. This cost £3.29, and she asked if she could just have two cans for £2. When the woman behind the till said no, she demanded that another shop assistant go and fetch her a single bottle of Guinness, and wasn't prepared to listen when the assistant told her they don't sell those in singles either. She eventually stomped off to get one herself. I decided to save my money for a worthier cause. Having paid for my own shopping, I was just leaving when I saw her coming back with a single bottle that she must have pulled out of a six-pack, and contemplated hanging around to see the rest of the story, but decided to beat a tactful retreat.

Another consequence of me entirely running out of food items last night was that I had to go to McDonald's for breakfast because the supermarket doesn't open till 10:30 on a Sunday. I burnt my tongue horribly on a cup of tea and it still feels all burnt now. Perhaps I should sue them. Or perhaps I should just get into the habit of drinking tea more often, so that I can judge how hot it is without taking a full mouthful.