�WHAT I LIKE AND WHAT I NEED ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS� The problem with trying to find a job in central London is that the places someone like me would want to work are all quite small because they tend to be independent. They have a small staff who generally seem to love working there so its rare that a vacancy comes up and it does they tend to get filled pretty fast. I dropped off a pile of CVs at places like the Prince Charles, the Cinema Store and Forbidden Planet but I guess I'll be treading water for a while before anyone gets back to me. Today I'll be looking around online for anything new and try and squeeze some writing work out of some websites that I like. None of the jobs that I fancy doing pay a lot but at this point I really don't care about that - I just want to find something that�s going to hold my interest. Plus we can always put up Duncan's rent :) A couple of months back when I was stuck in an office again I'd wander into bookstores and get a nostalgia kick but walking around them in the past couple of days didn't do a lot for me really. All the people that I spoke to seemed really nice and it's be interesting to see how a big central bookstore runs but I'm guessing that I'd lose interest working somewhere that�s too big - the larger stores seem to lose touch pretty quickly. Most of those large stores seem very removed from what I did at Ottakar's. I did find a small and totally independent bookstore that seemed like a cool place to work but as I was chatting to one of the guys that worked there a customer interrupted to ask for a copy of 'L.I.E.' by David Hollander. The guy I'd been chatting to had never heard of it - not too surprising - but I jumped in and gave a rundown on Hollander, his book and why tracking down an American copy would be a better bet than trying to pick up the UK version - this led to a quick discussion of new American authors and we swapped notes on Nersesian which she had read and Brautigan which she hadn't. All the time we were chatting I could see my bookseller friend getting a little pissed off - especially when I gave the woman a bunch of websites where she could pick up cheap books rather than ordering them there and then - oops. Oh well, fuck him for not being as well read. Damn, I like being arrogant. Penniless but arrogant - kind of suits me. The last time I was in this position was around three years ago - I remember sitting in the Poetry Cafe trying to work out my next career move when I got into a conversation with one of the girls who worked there. It was she who suggested that I should take a job in a bookstore telling me it was fun and that I�d love it. She was right. So figuring how well that worked out last time I struck up a conversation with a waitress in the coffee shop I was hanging in while waiting for Jess, Julia and Kelly to arrive. I asked her what kind of job I should be looking for and she looked me up and down and said with all apparent seriousness "you should be an actor - you have presence" Ha. So I point out that I've never acted in my life and she just shrugged and said it didn't matter as I would make a great character actor no matter what - "like Warren Oates" - ok, so now I'm stuck in a Murakami novel - I keep looking around for the guy dressed as a sheep to walk in. I go for a couple of months without meeting an interesting person and then up pops a Warren Oates fan serving coffee - turns out she not only likes The Wild Bunch but is also a big fan of Two Lane Blacktop and Ride with the Devil. What are the odds? So her shift ended and off she went - I really like kooky people... I need to start up more conversations with absolute strangers. The rest of the week I've been watching movies and wasting time on the Playstation. Still umming and ahhing over the Playstation 2. Final Fantasy X will probably push that one. Jess just finished IX and that was pretty stunning... So Duncan has moved in and that�s going pretty well. His room is all set up now and we got him a phoneline so I guess I'll get to piss around with his Mac in the next couple of weeks. Julia and Kelly are in the final throes of their trip. Kelly leaves late this evening for Manchester and Julie flies back sometime tomorrow. I dragged them to see Dog Soldiers and got trounced but some Texan who probably got pissed at me for giving America a good kicking within his earshot. I was slagging off Nickelback and he pointed out that they were actually Canadian... I can�t complain about the guy too much because 1. its rare that people score points off me and 2. he was in the cinema to see Dog Soldiers so he couldn't have been too inbred. The movie rocked even more second time round... good stuff. I need to work out what I�m doing with the rest of today so that�s it for now... more extra long blogging later. Mike is blogging to: 24 Hour Revenge Therapy by Jawbreaker