Red Rocks!

I love red! I think it’s awesome, awesome like Def Leppard, and kittens, and Tony Todd, and Saturdays, and Christmas, and pizza, and horror triple pack DVDs and Magic Sand…….


Yup, I do love red and it’s the hair colour I’ve stuck to most enduringly. While I have had many a ridiculous hair colour in my time, red is the one I always come back to, it suits me, it makes happiest, I feel most comfortable and most like myself as a redhead. And, as far as I’m concerned, you can never be too red.

However, recently, I’ve been a bit blue. Not for any particular reason, just a bit down, kind of like how you feel just after Christmas when all the excitement is over and you are faced with going back to work/school and the long, bleak months of cold and snow and ice and sleet and general freezing misery stretch out ahead. I hasten to add at this point that I’m absolutely fine, this current, vague existential ennui is just a passing fad that will dissipate instantly just a soon as I spot something shiny and get distracted, so nothing to worry about.

Now, to get back to the point (kind of), one of the reasons I am wee bit down is because of my day job. My day job sucks, it’s a monstrous parasite that is slowly destroying my soul with its monotony and general hideousness (I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way). Fact is that I’m ill-suited to my day job, it utilises absolutely none of my skills or pervious experience and training, and, in fact, to all intents and purposes, I could be replaced with a wire coat hanger and no one would probably notice, productivity might even increase. But ultimately we all have to do what we have to do to make ends meet, especially in this current climate. Really I need to find a new job, but again, this current climate makes that difficult. I did, however, have a job interview last week. I didn’t get it. I’m still not at the point, but, trust me, I’m getting there. It wasn’t a great job, I didn’t particularly want it except that it was a little more money for 10 less hours (this will give some idea of the pitiful wage I am on at the moment, it’s shocking, it really is). I was, however, glad that I did the interview.

Interviews are horrific, no one normal likes interviews, I utterly hate interviews, I dread them, largely because I really don’t like talking myself, I know that you are not going to believe that for a second and justifiably considering all I seem to do here is witter on about myself, I’m doing it now, for heaven’s sake, but really it’s true. By nature I’m really a self-deprecating person and don’t generally feel the need to be constantly patted on the back for every little thing I accomplish, consequently I tend not to make very much of any achievements I make, in a public sense, and I am often self mocking. This isn’t through any lack of self-confidence or self-esteem or anything silly like that, quite the opposite; I’m secure in myself and don’t feel the need to make myself feel superior in any respect, more significantly it’s my sense of humour and you have to work with what material you have. Add to those facts that I’m British, and we generally find that kind of self praise and boastfulness distasteful. All of this combined gives you the reason I hate interviews - I’m just not very good at them. But despite my clear inabilities in this vital area, I do generally tend to come across quite well; I’m intelligent and eloquent, I have diverse experiences, I’m personable, I’m kind and genuinely interested in others, I have a lot of pretty darn great qualities, but I never get any job I interview for and this is really quite limiting. But again, ultimately, this is largely my own fault and I know it is. When it comes down to it, when a lot of people interview for a job a lot of them are going to be excellent and when an employer comes to making a decision as to who employ in the real world the vast majority are more likely to pick the more conventional looking candidate over the blousy tattooed broad with ridiculous hair and too much make up. I do not mean this as any negative reflection on anyone involved in any of these processes, absolutely not, or on myself for that matter, but I’d be naïve not to recognise that that is downfall for me. But, when all is said and done, that is my fault, not theirs, it’s my decision to look the way I do, and I’m fine with that (I’d like to point out that I do scrub up fairly well). I could tone myself down; hide the tattoos better, dye my hair a more natural colour and wear more subtle make up, effectively I could be someone else for the sake of employability, but I don’t want to. A long time ago I made an informed decision that I wasn’t going to comprise myself to conform to what society may expect from me, or I may perceive that it expects, I am happy to be me, and, for the most part, people generally accept that without question and that’s just great, and people who know me love me because of these factors not in spite on them, and that’s even better.

So yeah, I’m an unemployable unnatural redhead and I’m proud!! That really took a long time to get to the point, many apologies. Anyway, to cheer me up in the face of defeat, and to celebrate my unashamed redness and the individuality in all of us no matter who we are, where we come from, what we believe and who and what we love, I have complied a pictorial jubilee of images of red in horror and genre film, TV and literature.

Yeah, red is awesome. And I got two pics of Ron Perlman as Hellboy in there, did you spot that? Hell yeah!

Just wanted to add to anyone who has emailed me recently (by recently this could mean the last few months), my email account is being weird, I keep replying to emails and then it sends me them back a few days later claiming failure (this is actually quite depressing symbolic of my like at the moment now I come to write it down). I will continue to seek resolution to this issue, please don’t think I am ignoring anyone because I’m absolutely not, I will respond as technology ceases its conspiracy against me. Damn machines.

Foot Watch 2011

I’m off for my second lot of cortisone injections next Thursday. Whoo hoo! Although I know what to expect now, I’m still none to happy about this state of affairs. I will, however, get to spend quite a few days on the couch as I won’t be able to walk, so if anyone has watched anything awesome recently that they think I should see please let me know, I shall have a considerable amount of time on my hands.