My Set goes up in Member Review in 14 hours! I am pretty excited becuase it was shot so long ago (September last year!) so it will be great to finally share it.

The Set is titled "Flautist" becuase I have played the flute for 17 years, so I wanted to include this. I also wanted it to be very green, becuase that is my favourite colour.

JMP did a great job with the photography andRidley did a great job with the Photoshop. Here are a few preview pic. I hope you like them.

Oooh a new Blog!

Not too much to report I am afraid, but I am offering my services free of charge for design work.

I am bored with working in an art gallery, so I have decided to really apply myself to getting a tattoo apprenticeship. This requires me to produce a portfolio of appropriate designs to show I am serious.

I have produced a few designs that I like myself however I need to get experience of doing custom design work, this means I would like to do some designs for other people.

If any of you would like me to design a tattoo for them, just get in touch and we will work something out. I don't want paying for it, it would just be awesome work experience for me, if someone I didn't know got a tattoo that I designed. Just drop me a line and tell me what you are interested in my working on, and I will have a go at producing something. I have a degree in fine art, so I am fairly skilled at drawing, so I am sure I could produce something we both like, and if you don't want to use it, that is cool. At least you have a free drawing and I have something to put in my portfolio. Simples!

Wow, a new Blog. It's been a while! Firstly, thanks so much to Sauda for making 2 new default pics for me. They both come from the set I am about to submit, which I really like, so fingers crossed for that.

NYC was amazing. I love the place it is like London but loads better. It is a lot cleaner and less polluted for one thing (I could actually see stars in the sky) but I really liked the way that things seem to work a lot better, if that makes sense. The streets are wider, so there is much less of a traffic issue (Londons traffic jams and the never-ending road-works are a major bug-bear for me, right now), the pavements are wider so you can actually walk down the street without constantly bumping into people, and the city seems a lot easier to navigate. I always thought that New Yorkers were a stressed-out neurotic bunch (see Woody Allen) but compared to Londoners, they seem really peaceful and happy. The city seems sane somehow.

Here are some obligatory goofy holiday snaps. My Geek Pie hair-do is visible throughout.

He stayed at a really lovely hotel on the Lower East Side. Here I am holding up a copy of the (not so lovely) New York Post hostage-stylee in our room.


The restaurant in the hotel was also gorgeous. I often find the decor of places like hotels really cheesy, but I thought this was really chic. I love the wallpaper and black chandelier. You can just make me out in the corner of the photo (looking like a stroppy cow)


Our nearest subway station was Delancy St. Here I am taking a last desperate pull on a Parliament before descending into it.

The subway confused me somewhat. I didn't like the names of the lines, they are all named after letters, rather than words. I like the poetry of The London Underground. I can remember names like "The Northern Line" way better than "The F Train", this is probably the only thing I think London does better than NYC.

I enjoyed visiting MoMA, because I work in an art gallery myself.

and took a lot of photos, my favourite being this one of my boyfriend.

People kept asking him about his glasses, and one guy told us we looked like "Bonnie and Clyde" which I thought was really cool.

I saw this poster near Radio City Music Hall and pissed myself laughing at it. I am such a massive Alan Partridge Fan


We did loads of cheesy tourist stuff, stuff I mock holiday-makers in London for doing, like visiting Liberty Island


and going up the Rockefeller Building. They had this light installation in there, in which coloured lights follow you around the room. This was a lot more fun than you would imagine!


I did loads of other things, but I don't want to bore you all (even more than I already have) so I will finish up now. I want to go back to The US as soon as possible (now I know they will definatelly let me in the country!) I want to check out the West Coast next time. I have always thought I would like LA.

Aaargh, just over a week until my holiday in NYC! I am so excited! I have to remember to fill in the weird visitation permit online, that you used to be able to do on the plane, before I go (which I probably should be doing now, rather than hanging around on here, perving)

I am going to The US with my boyfriend and we are meeting up with one of my best friends from London over there. Because I am a Brit, my boyfriend is Irish and my friend is French I am calling this trip "THE INVASION OF THE EUROTRASH"

I have quite a lot of friends and associates over there, so it will be nice if rather weird to see these people on home turf. I am not looking forward to feeling like a tourist though, because I cant stand all the obvious tourist-types we get in London, so I don't want come across like one of them.

I am sure I will post loads of photos from my holiday on here (I know I am rubbish at posting photos on here!) the hotel that my boyfriend and I are staying in looks really posh. I have never stayed in a posh hotel before, so that will be an adventure in itself!

I am also gearing up to finally submit a set on here. I cant believe it has taken so long for me to get round to this (I have been on this site for like, a year and a half!) but I have wanted to bide my time and send in something decent. Producing and SG Set is a lot more complicated than I initially thought, when I first sent in my first submission (which I have subsequently deleted, and I am still rather proud of, even if it was grossly inappropriate) I have not wanted a repeat performance of that!

I love you all.

SGUK Rocks! I took part in their "Secret Santa" this year and got some amazing presents. Apparently you aren't supposed to "name and shame" your, erm...benefactor, but I have PMed them to thank them. I felt I needed to mark the occasion, though by writing a Blog about what I recieved.

I got two books, one being "Future Shocks" by Alan Moore.


Which I have been reading for the past couple of days. I have enjoyed it a lot, which after my extreme fondness for "V for Vendetta", I am not surprised in the slightest.

I also received JD Salinger's "For Esme-With Love and Squalor and Other Stories", which I haven't started yet, but I know will be awesome too, on account that for the past 14 years or so, "The Catcher in The Rye" has remained my all time favourite book. I love the fact that JD Salinger has remained in an adolescent strop with the world for all of his life. We need a Holden Caulfield to keep the rest of us sane.



When I received "with Love and Squalor" I knew I had heard that title before, somewhere else. Then I remembered that it was also the title of the best "We Are Scientists" album. "We Are Scientists" liked paying homage to cool stuff on that album. They also recorded a video for "This Scene Is Dead" which was a pastiche of the work of the artists; Gilbert and George whom I am somewhat of a fan of. I have never seen this video played on TV, which is a shame on account of it being so shit-hot, so I thought I would post a link to it here, so you can all appreciate it's wonder.



Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. It isn't that much fun for me, on account of me being an Atheist Vegan, but you know.....it is always cool to have time off work. I plan to spend the festive season sleeping and watching trashy TV (but not at the same time) I am particularly looking forward to the inevitable "kick-off" on Eastenders, which always cheers me up, becuase it makes my odd family look relativelly functional!

Anyways, signing off for now. I love you all.

ASBO x

People, who worked with me last weekend, will recall me wandering around clutching a copy of the graphic novel "V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. I was so engrossed in it, that you couldn't get a coherent sentence out of me, other than my pointing out pictures in the book, whilst saying "fucking hell, check THAT out"....

I have been familiar with "V for Vendetta" for a long time, but this was the first opportunity I had to read it (I know that there is also a film by the same name, but for reasons to numerous to write down here, I have no desire to watch it, because I think I would spend the duration, hurling abuse at the screen, so I am just going to pretend it doesn't exist).

I got sucked into V, upon reading Alan Moore's introduction, which contained the most British sentence I have ever heard;

"I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it anymore"

The book continued in the same tone of dark, slightly suppressed, very British anger, but was oddly the most uplifting thing I have read, seen or heard for a very long time.

"V for Vendetta" is a kind of beginners guide to Anarchist Theory. Much as I hate dystopian novels (see a previous Blog I wrote on the subject earlier this year) I really dig this one. The action takes place in a nightmarish, future London during 1996-1998. The main paranoia during the 80s (when V was written) was the threat of nuclear war. V is written under the premise, that had a Labour government got into power during the 1980s, then all the American Missiles in The UK would have been removed, and as a result; we would have never been a target for annihilation. In the 1990s portrayed in V, the rest of Europe (and pretty much all the world from the looks of things) has been destroyed apart from The UK, which having been plunged into the chaos of nuclear winter, has been over-run by a Fascist government, going by the name of "Fate".

British People have never really gone in for Fascism, or Totalitarianism of any kind, we are just not wired that way, however in the case of the events leading up to "V for Vendetta", it is quite easy to imagine how Fascists would be given the opportunity to take over. As one of the "good" characters in the book Eric Finch, (interestingly enough, shortly before killing the hero) says;

"We couldn't let the chaos after the war continue, any society is better than that, we needed order" so the background of the story, (unlike most ridiculous dystopias, especially those set in The UK) is actually fairly convincing.

V wears a Guy Fawkes mask to conceal his identity, and one of his first actions, is to blow up The Houses of Parliament. The whole Guy Fawkes reference made "V for Vendetta" a nice seasonal read for me. November the 5th, Bonfire Night, and the annual burning of Fawkes' effigy has always freaked me out somewhat.

Throughout the book, V blows up a lot of London's prominent buildings, and cool as he is, he often conforms to the cliché of a violent Anarchist which could quite easily be seen by readers such as myself as offensive. However, his violence is counter-pointed by his psychological observations about Anarchy and the non-violent behaviour and principles of his apprentice and eventual successor; Evey Hammond.

The morality in "V for Vendetta" is often rather ambiguous, (which I like a lot). For a hero, V does a lot of horrendous things, aside for his fondness for blowing things up, and murdering people in a rather sadistic fashion, he also physically and mentally tortures the 17 year old Evey Hammond over a period of time, in order to "free her because he loves her" In spite of this, I found V to be one of the most believable and admirable fictional characters, that I have come across in a long time.

The two most likeable and conventionally "good" characters in the novel are Evey Hammond ( a teenage prostitute who V rescues from the secret police who are going to murder her, and he subsequently trains to become the new V) and Eric Finch, a detective who is charged with finding out who the terrorist V is, and bringing him to justice.

The reason that I think that "V for Vendetta" is a Beginners Guide to Anarchist Theory and not just an enjoyable comic about blowing stuff up, is because of the twin epiphanic moments that involve Evey and Finch during the novel.

Evey is falsely imprisoned by V, and Finch takes LSD in the derelict concentration camp, in which V was held and experimented on. In these extreme conditions, both characters reach the Kierkagaardian conclusion that everyone who turns to Anarchy experiences at some point. I am slightly thick, so I am limited in my abilities to describe this properly here; I suggest that if you want to learn more about what I mean by this, you read "V for Vendetta" (but don't watch the film, which I am sure sucks).

Aside from all this, there are some really nice motifs in the novel; the obsession with the number 5 and the letter V, the roses. The fact that Rose Almond; the future assassin of the president occupies dressing room 4 of the night-club where she dances. It is this type of symbolism that keeps the novel from sprawling and gives it a symbolic epic quality.

Before I finish writing, I feel I need to mention my fondness (or lack of it, in the case of the evil Helen Heyer) for the female characters in the novel. "V for Vendetta" could quite easily be a totally blokey book, considering its content and format, and especially considering how old it is (Moore and Lloyd started work on it in 1980) and as such, there is a real risk that the female characters could have been weak or boring (but hot, obviously) side-characters, as so often is sadly the case. However they are just as complex and dodgy and heroic and evil and good and screwed up as all the males in the novel. In fact the most relevant and inspirational character, Valerie, the dead actress from cubicle 4 in the concentration camp, who is the main influence on V and his ideology, is not only female, but gay. There aren't nearly enough heroic lesbians in literature, so kudos to "V for Vendetta" for including one (and in Valerie, they really did include a good one).

Whilst obsessing over the novel on Sunday, I was interrupted by a co-worker, a wonderful Basque Lady who said "V for Vendetta? Anyone who says they don't enjoy that, well they just don't like reading" which pretty much says it all really.

This past week has been insane! I have been massivelly ill with a cold, whilst looking after a rock band from NYC who I have arranged a tour for. You havent seen life until you have experienced sleeping in a room with 5 excitable American Musicians, whilst feeling like crap, beleive me!

In more SG related news. I managed to delete my old Hopfuls Set from MR. I have mixed feelings towards it though. I recognise that it sucked technically in so many ways, but I also think some of the photos in there are cute, and were pretty good for a first try (I had never gotten naked in front of a camera before) so I still hold it in affection. So much so, that I have decided to post some of my favourite photos from this set on my Blog, in black and white, becuase this solves the fucked up colour anomalies!

I am obsessed with Anton Newcome again. I had a huge fight with the singer of my band on sunday, and the next day I got a long email apolgising for his behaviour and saying that given my current opinion of him, I must think the band are very similar to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. It is a long time, since I have read something that has made me laugh and cry at the same time. Not only has it made the singer and I best freinds again (and this can be a lot more nauseating to people we know, then when we are fighting all the time) but it has re-kindled my strange obsession with Mr Newcome.

Anton Newcome is the ego-maniacal lead singer of BJM. He is arguably more famous for his bad behaviour, than he is for his musical tallents. Youtube basically exists for me to follow his progress on film with a mixture of fascination and despair.

This video of a BJM performance in LA is too funny.


"Fucking motherfucker broke my sitar, motherfucker"!

even better, is this little gem. It is more about BJM Guitarist; Jeff, however Jeff's musings on the world cannot be ignored, becuase they are so, like, inciteful. I laughed, I laughed hard.





Watch it from 1.45 onwards, you wont go away empty handed. I am sure Jeff is not taking the piss. Anton's wisdom that "everyone together is the eye of the pyramid" is a fine example of the perculiar type of global paranoia that kicks in when one has partaken in LSD.

Seriously, real people can be far more funny than comedic creations at times. I also find Anton's Lonsdale T-shirt really funny too, for some reason.

I am back!

I also paid to come back here too! No longer can anyone call me a Hopeful-freeloader! (allthough in real life I am a bit of a Little Ms Guest-List, but I am not one on here now). It only cost like $29 for a year, i mean what is that, like £20, I am a bit of a povo, but even I can afford that. All that entertainment for such a low price, is well worth it.

As a weird coincidence, on the very day my free Hopeful account expired, I was actually in the studio with Jeff Meads shooting my new set! It was a really proffesional and productive shoot, and I have seen the photos now and I am really happy and proud of them already. I can't wait to see what they look like when they have been Photoshopped. I just wish I looked like that all the time, I scrub up well when i am not hungover or covered in paint, or knackered from lugging musical equipment around.

On that note, this weekend has been very busy for me, because I have been largelly pre-occupied with The Shoreditch Shuffle Festival that is taking place in East London and is organised by Whose Jack Magazine.

Yesterday I was round there all day becuase one of my best freinds had an art exhibtion there, and tonight the band I manage are playing a gig. I have been properly acting like Little Ms Guest-List round there, and I fear that I really am becoming a Shoreditch Twat now. Oh well.

Anyways, hello everyone. I am glad I have come back. I have missed my SG Account a lot more than I thought I would. Since I discovered the therapeuic qualities of the Girls Only Group, I have never looked back!

I saw a documentary about Ricky Gervais on Monday and it featured a clip of his 80s Band "Seona Dancing". I decided to look for more clips of this on Youtube and I found this interview he did with Richard and Judy about it.



The thing is, people take the piss out of Gervais over his past, but I don't know why. A lot of music I listen to nowadays sounds a lot like Seona Dancing! Plus I think he looks really hot in the video, a bit like David Bowie.

Gervais apparently used to manage one of my favourite bands "Suede" for like a week or something. This impresses the hell out of me. That said, I don't like The Office much, especially the 2nd Series, I find it a bit too depressing and I really hate Chris Finch. I once met his comedy partner Stephen Merchant in a nightclub on Brick Lane, when he tried to cop off with me, however I really put him off, when I opened my big gob, and started rambling innane drunken nonsense to him. I wound up going home with some art student that night, if memory serves.