Freakspotting

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would they want to do a thing like that? They chose not to choose life. They chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got Cosplay?

Yes, Cosplay, the biggest threat to the country since Hitler and his sharply dressed army. But, unlike the Nazis, this lot know nothing of discipline. In fact a good dose of National Service would sort them out. If you have no idea what I am talking about, let me explain. Cosplay is the attempt by people with nothing to wake up for in the morning to dress up as their favourite characters out of comics or TV series. It probably all began with Trekkies dressing up like General Kirk or Doctor Spock, but has gotten all out of control with people dressing up as minor characters in the Legend of Zilda or E.T. The Extra Testicle. It gives them a sense of being, a belonging in a world that hates them. They gather together and perform strange little rituals, usually at comic conventions. Which is where I gazed into the face of madness. I was attending Thought Bubble, 'an annual celebration of sequential art in all its forms' (LOL. Just call them comics!) Ninjasaurus Rex had brought it to my attention and he was desperate to get to a Japanese restaurant in Leeds again, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. If only we'd killed one hundred Cosplayers with the same stone we would have come home happy men.

I arrived at the plaza between the Royal Armouries and the new Savile Building and gazed on what looked like a scene from the Fourth Circle of Hell. The avaricious with their cossetted material possessions danced about to the tuneless horns of Mars. Dressed as Manga characters. I panicked and telephoned Ninjasaurus who had been struck immobile by the scene of human degradation. Seeking comfort in numbers we banded together quickly and watched one anothers backs like hawks. Our fear was soon dissipated by the sight of the very chair SIR JIMMY SAVILE sat in:

Not only his Chair, but his car as well!! This was a man who was living the dream!

This was without doubt the best thing we saw all day and was well worth the ten pounds admission fee alone, but was nothing to do with the Comic Con. Which, frankly, was just loads and loads and loads of comics for sale. But then, what else did I expect it to be? Ninjasaurus saw some of his friends from the dark world of comic publishing and I bumped into the Big O, who rather kindly gave us a free comic each!

Cheers big man!!

Outside, the swirling mass of madness was gathering it's momentum and here are a few pictures to illustrate just what we saw. I beg you, gentle reader, do not allow your eyes to linger too long on these images...

Aren't you a little shit to be a Stormtrooper?

I wanted a photo, not a pose...

Electra's arse and Mario and Luigi. The mind boggles...

Is that a lightsaber or a lipstick?

Wrap up warm, love...

Interviewer: So what is missing in your life?

We retreated into the Armouries to look at real weapons, rather than over sized foam hammers and realised that we had a vantage point over the assembled freaks. After a few minutes of playing 'spot the tard' we both said in unison 'I wish I had a rifle.'

Sargent, three rounds rapid!

I was going to run up to him shouting 'Help! Help! Judge, I've just been raped in the Armouries toilets!' to see if he'd help, but I bottled it at the last minute. 

We finished the afternoon off by a visit to this authentic U-Boat which had surfaced in the docks.

It was captained by this fellow:

 

Skirnir

There is an Asian girl who works in the local supermarket, and it has thrown open a whole can of worms to do with communication. When I buy my produce and ask for a plastic bag I do it in English and she replies in English. Now, I am trying to integrate myself as much as possible into Icelandic culture, but far from being able to speak Icelandic I at least manage to say Hello and Thank You to shop assistants. It's not much but it's better than assuming everyone else speaks English (Which they do, by the way, but one must never assume). Turning back to this girl do I say Thank You in English, Icelandic or Chinese? Now again I'm only assuming she's Chinese, for all I know she could be Korean or Japanese although the Japanese are not generally known for being economic migrates. I would hate her to be Korean because I don't know what Thank You is in Korean. I learnt how to say Thank You in Chinese whilst in Singapore, but I don't want to come across as a patronising bastard who is assuming she's Chinese when she could, in fact, be Korean or Japanese. I know Thank You in Japanese, again learnt whilst in the country, but this really is hedging my bets with her background. I really could end up with egg on my face over that one. I also am not keen on saying Thank You in Icelandic, this is again an assumption, but I'm fairly sure she wasn't born in Iceland. She has an accent that isn't Icelandic, before you start calling me a racist. What do I do? This is a political nightmare!

China, Yesterday

Holy Shit, what a week. We have an impending 'enforced fun day' coming up. You know what I mean, everybody gets together to do some team building activities for the day then retires for a meal and gets drunk and it ends up with everybody telling everybody else what they actually think of them. I was OK with this idea if it was only happening on one day. Yesterday Bjarki unleashed a shit storm by telling us that they (The Fun Day Committee) had decided that we would all be going to a Summer House and staying over the weekend. I immediately refused. One day is fine, but an overnight stay means I have lost a weekend. We then got into a very bad tempered argument where I had to end defending my personal reasons for not wanting to spend a weekend with the people I have just spent the preceding and following five days (a total of twelve days straight) working with in an 8m by 15m tent (We measured it today). I like everyone on site with the exception of one person, (having said that I can tolerate them as long as we don't spend too much time in each others company) but the idea of spending my weekend in the middle of nowhere with the same people is my idea of Hell. I have been working in this career for the better part of ten years. Between ten and about six years ago I would have been the first to be up for this kind of activity. Now I am tired of the this hobo lifestyle that I lead, I am not happy with my particular situation but I have to put up with it. This is like an away job where I am not allowed to go home at weekends. Everyone else on site (With the exception of the foreign workers) can go back to their homes and other friends each and every night. I go home to someone else's house where my only possessions are what I can carry in a suitcase. My friends are ones I work with everyday and as good and nice as all these people are it is bliss when the weekend rolls around and I am allowed my own personal space. I am continually surrounded by and reminded of work so to slightly escape it for even two days is heaven. Maybe I'm a grumpy old man, I don't care, I know what I like and I don't like being forced to have 'fun' in the middle of nowhere with no escape routes. It turned out in the end that the committee had decided no such thing but had simply put the idea of a summer house on the table. Bjarki and I made our peace, so it was OK in the end.

Where I would prefer to be rather than at Fun Day

Thingtak played on Thursday night, they were playing with about four other bands of which the best was a group of fifteen year old lads, who played old bluesy rock covers but finished by playing the Dwarves 'I Wanna Be Your Pimp'. I ran into Ragnar from Skorpulifur who Sudoku supported the other week. He had a copy of the Icelandic glossy Celebrity gossip magazine 'Séđ Og Heyrt' (I have no idea what this means, any Icelandics reading, please let me know). There had been a photographer from the magazine at the gig and they had run an article on Skorpulifur in which Hannes, the singer, mentioned Sudoku. It went along the lines of; we played a few times with Sudoku a Ninja Metal band from Britain who wear Ninja outfits on stage.. Brilliant, thanks lads.

Skorpulifur Yesterday (Photo copyright Jo Taylor 2009)

One final thing before I finish and this gets too long. We moved offices this week, we are now underneath the Green Party's headquarters in a basement. We have to use their toilets, upstairs from our HQ, but because they are clean and we are not we have to practically strip out of our site gear and get hosed down in the yard. Not only that but you have to sneak past reception and through their coffee room looking for the toilet. What was once a three minute trip to the toilet has turned into an Odyssey for a piss. It's like Jason and the Argonaut's quest, except it's not a Golden Fleece waiting at the end but a Golden Stream.