Days Seventy-Four to Eighty-Two

I‘ve been doing a bit of job searching, but haven’t found much to apply for. Lots of the jobs I’ve seen are either too junior or too senior (although this isn’t always reflected in the salary!), still, I have a few months left where I can afford to be choosy about what jobs I apply for.

My reading has most been comics or newspaper based recently. Highlights include Faith Erin Hicks and Jordie Bellaire’s Nameless City Vol. 2The Stone Heart, Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham, Nathan Fairbairn and Simon Bowland’s Nameless, Chad Fifer, Chris Lackey and LNJ Culbard’s Deadbeats and old Batman stories (part of the British DC piecework series) titled Strange Apparitions.

The Stone Heart continues Rat’s and Kai’s adventures in the Nameless City, things start out happy with the good vibes from Vol. 1 continuing over, but it’s not soon before things take a dark turn, then a darker turn and then an ‘Empire Strike Back’ turn. Vol. 2 is a great read, it’s just a shame that Vol. 3 is the last we’ll see of these characters for the foreseeable future. 

Nameless is kinda the opposite of The Nameless City, a horror comic about God coming back to Earth (sort of) and this is the Old Testament fire and brimstone and anger and smiting type of God! It’s an enjoyable read and kinda uplifting, it kinda reminded me of the Parallax View (the book more than the film), Blow Out, Escape From New York, The Thing, Donnie Darko (and others) where the bad guy/thing doesn’t win, but neither do the good guys at best they can walk away or they’re dead.

Strange Apparitions has this weird story featuring Alfred’s cousin, who has a game changing heart transplant technique, which he will destroy unless Batman is able to catch a murder and in do so prove humanity’s worth!!!

There's also a nice Nick and Nora cameo:

Deadbeats is a fun jazz and zombies romp set in the twenties. The main characters, Lester, Hank and Willie, are set up quickly as fully rounded people who accidently stumble into Lovecraftian zombie outbreak and then kinda stumble out of it! A good fun read. 

And last Wednesday’s NCBD had plenty of great reads:

Psychemagik have a great offer going on their Bandcamp page, 100 great tracks for a fiver (or more), the only downside is that it’ll take a while to work your way through them!

I’ve also got the new Black Angels album, Death Song < http://theblackangels.com/>, which continues the Angels psychedelic shoegazery adventures. Check out the album and then go buy it.

I also picked up a couple of older CDs:

Can’t believe it’s 20+ years since Dig Your Own Hole and Fun Lovin’ Criminals came out, although that does mean that the stigma of liking the FLC is gone (I remember James Lavelle (or it might have been DJ Shadow) calling them Top Shop rap). The Lawless OST has a great country version of the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat and I hope that there are some other gems on there. The same with the Soft Cell CDs, I’ve liked what I’ve heard, bit I haven’t heard much. And if Ghoststory is half as good as the other School of Seven Bell’s albums it should be a blast.

The medication my GP prescribed, Serc, does seem to be working and I’m feeling less dizzy/faint/about to collapse when I’m out and about, although part of me wonders whether it’s the medicine working or if it’s a placebo type effect. Guess I find out when I go back to the GP to review how it’s working.

And I’m finally getting around to figuring out where to hang my Primal Scream plane:

Which is meant to be like this:

But come out as too purple (so maybe I should re-do the paint job?)

I also made a (Lego) car: