Outer space, or things I done did recently...

Networking
I went out this week to a networking event that was by and large a collection of lovely people trying to get ahead. Everyone was attentive and interested in you and what you did, because they were glad it was possible a peer could have your job and because they might need you in the future. It wasn't one of those usual meet'n'greets where you're thrust into a room with 20-30 of the most ambitious people in the world, who'd happily rent their child to Gary Glitter to get ahead, or some other zeitgeisty simile. You get the picture. However, because 99% of everyone was so nice, it thrust the spotlight on to the one wanker of the proceedings, who would have been able to blend in easily, had this been your usual networking event. He was one of those priveliged boys who the world owed £200 to, basking in his completely bumbling persona masking the pungent whiff of self-importance. He could help you, you see, and he didn't need to know your work, he could tell just by meeting you whether you were a generator or a dampener and he chose to bestow his light on me for the entire evening, revelling in all the stories of how he had helped him and her out and she was because of him and he was because of him and after a while it became apparent, this man makes a good coffee, which is why he has a job. He doesn't so much have his editor's ear as the key to his caffeine-intake. Is the most dangerous/useful man to know or a glorified gopher?

I'm still sending him my manuscript.

Choosing a Band Name
An old bandmate and I have been toying with making tunes again next year, after a healthy hunger-inducing 2 years apart. We get each other. We're a good match, kinda like Murtagh and Riggs (second Lethal Weapon reference today), in that we both have our way of doing things and getting things done but together we're a deadly entity, some might even say, a lethal weapon. Which brings us to band names. We've outgrown our old moniker you see, as it aged us by having the word boy in it. So we're looking for something classic, something cool, but something that also says what we're about. Something that's not a generic abstract concept like Blur or Oasis. We want to be something like Pulp or Smog and actually have a name that conjures an image in your head akin to the music you will eventually hear. I want to call us Agent Scully but my bandmate thought it might make people think we're ginger-haired females. He wanted to call us Kem Cho (Gujarati for 'how are you?') but I felt it made us a little too efnik. We discussed The Coloured, Theescunts, The Mike Hunt Quartet, Silver Humps, Humped to Death, The Hunchback of Wiltshire Ham, Shitter, Brick Hithouse, Borstal Boyzz, Twatfunk, Cumfunk, Spanky and the Wank Hankies... But nothing... what's in a band name anyway? More later as it transpires...

Maybe we could just be called 'Too Old for This Shit'.

Meeting weirdos
In the first minute of a meeting I had with my new department manager in my swanky new job, she told me of an affair she had with a famous musician, winked at me, told me the organisation I had joined was fundamentally flawed as it had no direction, laughed at silence and told me to 'Stop it! You're making me laugh', told me I had a twinkle in my eye and couldn't wait for me to come out of my shell and stop being shy, awkward and new, complained about my line manager's time-keeping because she had come in an hour early once to leave an hour early, and told me a ghost lived in her attic.

I'm actually scared.