Sketches and Massage

Yesterday evening I was listening to another episode of the new series of That Mitchell and Webb Sound on the radio. It is a really funny show although, like all sketch shows, it is quite hit and miss at times. In fact I remember a sketch on David Mitchell and Robert Webb's TV sketch show, That Mitchell and Webb Look, they had a sketch that featured them behind the scenes of the show as "themselves" and Mitchell is looking through a list of sketches for the show and marking which ones are "hits" and which ones are "misses" and when Webb asks him what he's doing he explains that "every sketch show needs a certain percentage of deliberately unfunny material to balance it out."

Today was another very quiet day at work, and the work once more ran out in the middle of the afternoon, the reason I think is because they are trying to run two different systems to do exactly the same thing and they don't know how many people to assign to each system so they end up with too many people working on that particular task and it runs out. The complainers were in good form today. There are people in that place who don't stop yapping for more than five minutes from morning until night. One good thing was that I got a couple of days off later on this month. I'm taking the 21st and 22nd September off. The reason is that the 21st is a public holiday anyway, so I thought it would be fun to take some time off and on the 22nd I have the appointment at the dental surgery to have an x-ray and get my teeth checked out before I get my wisdom teeth removed. Also they had people coming round the office giving a free taster of the massages. I got one, and it was really nice. The woman rubbed my shoulders, the small of my back, the back of my neck and my forehead. The massages do feel great.

I got back home at around five, and had some microwaved macaroni cheese for my dinner.

Massage at the Office

Last night I was watching the first ever episode of Red Dwarf on DVD. It was originally shown in February 1988 and is kind of crudely made compared to what came later, but it's still really funny. It's kind of interesting how shows change as they go along and Red Dwarf really changed a lot in it's time.

Work was kind of average today. One thing that was fun was that at work they were doing a free taster of the massages that they offer. They had people coming round the office and doing massages for people at their desks. I had a head and shoulder massage which was really good and felt really relaxing.

I'm still working away on the Script Frenzy screenplay and so far I'm doing pretty well, with 80 pages written.

Last Few Days

On Monday night I was watching a film called Toolbox Murders, a 2004 film directed by Tobe Hooper, which was a remake of a 1970s slasher film. The film was set in Los Angeles and told the story of a young couple (Angela Bettis and Brent Roam) who move into a once very exclusive and glamorous Hollywood apartment building, which is now decaying but being refurbished. The woman takes an instant dislike to the place, as she's plagued by building noises in the dead of the night, as well as meeting the various eccentric murders. She also notices the occult symbols on the walls, and a small metal box with some teeth in sealed inside a wall. Also the inhabitants of the building are being picked off one by one by a masked killer, who murders using DIY equipment. The film wasn't too bad . It did have it's moments, but on the whole was fairly average. I've not seen the original version, but apparently the remake has absolutely nothing in common with it at all, except the name.

Last night I went out to the New Yorker with Alan for a couple of drinks after work. I'd been feeling kind of down, so I thought it might cheer me up a little bit. It didn't really. We drank far too much, and by the time I got home I was actually feeling even more depressed. It's okay at times having a real booze session during the week, but it really has to be very, very occasionally due to cost if nothing else.

Work has been more or less the same as usual. Any excitement about the moving of the rooms has long since vanished. There was a notice on the work intranet page today about the supposed pay deals, that we have been promised since July and still haven't got. We haven't even had the annual cost of living wage increase. Morale is pretty much rock bottom at the moment. The annual Lifestyle Health Fair thing was held today in one of the upstairs conference rooms. It was the usual amount of leaflets and stuff to collect, and there was also the annual free massage taster session. I went in for one, and found out to my horror that it was a foot massage. I had to lie on a kind of recliner thing with my feet in the air, boots and socks off while the woman sprayed my feet with something and then rubbed them with some kind of goo. I was really nervous about exposing my feet, which I have always considered the most unattractive part of my body (and that is up against some very stiff competition!) I only ever go barefoot in bed and in the shower, or swimming obviously. To be honest, I thought it was pretty brave of the woman to go anywhere near them without a full bio-hazard suit. To make matters worse, while I was being massaged, bare feet exposed to the world's gaze, I saw Gordon and Kym from previous rooms looking at me and sniggering. It kind of spoilt it really. The woman asked me if I had problems with my digestion, and I said no. I once had a full paid massage at work a couple of years ago. The woman doing that massage said that I was so tense it was a miracle I could actually move. It really felt good though. I'll have to get one again sometime.

This evening I went up to the Cineworld cinema with Michele to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age, directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film, which follows on from Kapur's 1997 film Elizabeth, takes place in 1585, where the devoutly Catholic King Philip of Spain, who wishes to topple the power of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First (Cate Blanchett) of England and restore the country to Catholicism. As part of his plot the Spanish King readies a vast Armada of ships to attack England, while at the same time Queen Elizabeth is being increasingly drawn to the adventurer Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). It was a very lavish film and pretty impressive. The story was very interesting, although I don't know how historically accurate it was. The performances were all very good.

Afterwards I went out for a drink and a chat with Michele, which was nice.