h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

poor morrissey. there is no retirement for creative types. except death... it's like in trainspotting--the unifying theory of life being that 'at one point you've got it, then you lose it.' at one point i thought NIN's new album was a bit mediocre, (though it has its moments of undisputable quality) but i managed to convince myself that he's still got it. the fabulous multi-million-dollar live show doesn't hurt... razzle dazzle 'em, as fosse used say. but we'll see what the next album does. you never know.

Yeah, poor Morrissey, but he's still Uncle Moz.

Lovely weather here this week, went down to visit Jon (Zpoonz from my JL, as I'm sure you already know) and hung out for a bit. It was nice, we see each other stupidly rarely considering we only live half an hour from each other on the Northern Line. Kentish Town to Kennington - why not check the journey out yourself?

Otherwise, just working as per usual, and bracing myself to see my accountant next week I have finally decided to get my taxes in order, as i am currnely in no end of bother from various angles.

Oh, which reminds me, I am making shirts for the London Underground footie team, with my scurrilous design on the right breast. Hooray!

was watching a bit of the FA Cup finals...decided to quit while West Ham were still winning 2-1. so how did it come out? exciting first 30 minutes or so, even i thought. crazy stuff...i saw when the liverpool dude kicked the ball into his own goal. you must have been going mad over there.

so. oh yeah, designing the football shirts sounds cool indeed.
you realize if i had managed to get a real interview for that graphic artist job i would have had to put that forza fabulosity logo in my portfolio... something which only occurred to me after i'd admitted that i had no graphic design experience. oh well. i don't, really.

i did end up finally getting together with brett earlier this week. it was enjoyable, no major ill effects though i did have to kind of watch out for brooding spells for awhile afterwards. anyway. fortunately he's leaving town next month so i don't have to worry about how i would deal with actually having him in my life. can't explain it... i just identify very strongly with the poor bastard...
since then i've only met 2 guys that seemed even vaguely interesting enough. which is better than none, i guess. i'll take another crack at that cello player in the fall. one must move on...

i have saturday off instead of sunday this week. i need to get back on track and send a few more futile job applications over the web today.

well, here i am; how's life?

And hello. Yes, life is generally good. Tired now after a busy day at Camden - the Christmas shopping season starts pretty much now.

It's weird, I shift more t shirts on an average weekend now than I did in an average month during the entire first year of the business. Which has to be good. Have been working hard on the website - the new version is live, but not visible to commoners at the moment. It looks pretty much exactly like the last version, just a bit sharper round the edges and mechanically more sound. I have a new design doing well - Chav Guevara/Viva la Ringtone, but you won't know what a Chav is, so it will be a bit wastered on you, I suspect. The sparkly new site should be up in the next couple of weeks, to coin in on Christmas.

In the New Year I am planning a sojourn to Spitalfields for a couple of months, just concentrate solely on that and see if I can build up a decent base there. I like Spitalfields a lot. Gary (www.retrogt.com) and his mate - fellow East Yard urchins - trade there on Sundays, and regularly bring in over £500. I aim for £500 - £600 at Camden, for Friday - Sunday. Double those figures for dollars, which, as I explain to baffled American tourists on a daily basis, we use for wrapping paper over here.

Oh, might just be able to burn you a copy of the telly show, so I'll chuck it in your parcel when I get around to it.

So, in brief, that's all that's new from here.

right on. business is good, life is good, good. i actually do know what a chav is but if by "you" you're referring to americans in general... who knows. i am not sure how i know what a chav is, i suspect i learned about it from english flash animation e.g. fat-pie.com. damn internet.
it is really, really awesome that you made this t-shirt business work. 500-600 X $2 is a pretty satisfactory figure for a weekend's work, i have to say. and how long have you been doing this now? going on 3 years... at least?
so, yeah, i am currently in a motel room in new mexico, on my way to my grandpa's 80th birthday. then i have like 3 months left of my regular going-nowhere perpetual childhood life before i move to seattle for 3 months, then most likely come straight back to the same situation. at least if that happens i can invest a little more time in rock n' roll. by which i mean accordion/cello cover band which is in fact the best thing i have ever done... with any luck we'll play a couple more gigs before i leave, and assuming a life doesn't spring up around me in seattle and trap me there, i get to come back and play an art show in april, for our one fan. one fan is a record high, i'm/we're happy to have him.
well, back to watching Brass Eye and stuff on youtube.com til i can tear myself away long enough to attempt sleep... i kind of hate travelling right now. was brass eye just like a prototype for the day today, or would there be more apparent differences if i actually watched a whole episode?

Well, that figure is turnover rather than profit, but I survive comfortably enough on it. The trick now is going to be trying to reach a larger audience or whatever - I can't see how much more can be taken from the Camden pitch on a regular basis. The website is the obvious way forward, so am thinking of ways to do that. I might do like a kind of blog, or something. People say all the time that they like reading it, and it's sold 350 shirts worldwide this year, so I'll just have an updateable bit maybe or something. But yeah, I think an illustration of how far the company has come is that in the entire first year, it sold 1021 t shirts. This year, it will sell that in December alone - I'll be working every day from the 8th.

Yeah, it'll be three years in January. Although I think that after this year, I will need to think about where the business is going - it pretty much has outgrown the market stall, and I need to consider whether I want to put the stuff into shops, or vastly increase site sales. The latter is my preference, as it is easy money, to be blunt about it. But we'll see.

So you'll be in Seattle at Christmas? Presumably you'll come home for that though. Yes, fans are awesome, and I should imagine groupies have thier uses too.

Right, Brass Eye. It's what Chris Morris did after the Day Today. Then he did Jam/Blue Jam. He's just popped up in a semi-amusing sitcom called The IT Crowd over here, but on the whole seems to be a bit quiet these days. Currently being watched a lot by me are the excellent Peep Show and also Spaced. Peep Show is totally fantastic.

i'm heading off to seattle in january, actually. i scheduled it so i'd be home for the holidays and back in time for a wedding i'm attending in march. got 3 of those in the forseeable future; fun. veritable buffet of strangers and casual acquaintances to have unmarried sex with.

chris morris is so bizarrely funny he's psychopathic, really. i watch him in awe. but yeah, i'll look into those series you mentioned. is Spaced the one with Simon Pegg?

Yeah, Spaced is the one with Simon Pegg. Also well worth looking out for is the incomparable Green Wing. There has been a lot of good comedy over here recently.

As for myself, am working away and so on and so forth. Been at the old dears a lot sorting through my old man's stuff; he has a ton of Meccano which he collected from childhood which I am in charge of selling. All proceeds to go to the business, as stipulated in the will.

Weddings are always awesome to get laid at. You can't miss.

Right. Back to sifting through all the site orders that came in this week in the wake of the show being on telly again on Monday...

i thought we were going to get Spaced on bbcAmerica, but less and less time is going to comedy, alas.
we've got good dramas over here but that's all i know. House is good... i suspect i'm a bit behind the times with TV, sort of given up on it. i watch Project Runway, as you are probably aware. but generally it's a waste of time. unlike sitting in coffee shops posting messages all over the internet, which is pretty much all i've been doing this afternoon. but it's okay, i haven't had a chance to be self indulgent for, like, days, and it's very important to me.
heh. i should send you a couple tracks from our gig; lenna's boyfriend recorded us using his phone apparently, and the poor sound quality actually adds texture, i feel... i have had success e-mailing mp3's, i can attempt to send you one if you like. unless i catch you on AIM sometime. must be like 14:00 over there right now.
damn, i can't wait to be famous.
what's Meccano?

Yeah, House was on over here and got good reviews. It was the one with Hugh Laurie in it, right? I actually watch almost no telly at all except for footie. I am quite into watching whole series of comedy shows in one go, though.

Oh, there you are on AIM. I must go and say bello.

hello there.
just thought i would pause from piano tuning long enough to say hello, even though if you're still reading the lj you are fully aware of every crushingly dull aspect of my life.
so, what are you up to? alternatively, recite some interesting facts or theories to me and i will ponder them.
for example, one thing i've been wondering, in the wake of this Slam Poetry thing i keep hearing about(see my LJ for a link to an article and video about lincoln's slam poets. i don't love it, you probably won't either, but it's what's happening)... was there a time in human history when regular, common people read and, like, enjoyed poetry? the way a few people still read and enjoy books today? i know nobody reads poetry anymore, though the poet laureate of the united states (a nebraskan currently residing right here in lincoln, as it happens) has a syndicated column in the newspaper with a poem of the day or something. i read one of his picks once, it was about drinking tea and came with a meditation on how much it sucked when our teachers in high school made us read weird poems we had to think about in order to understand.
well, there's my thought and greeting. back to work.