Today I had my last exam. It went pretty horrifically but that's besides the point, I am now officially out of education forever. I have no uni lined up, this is not a gap year, I am now officially a real human being in the real world who has to act accordingly. Now, I've been looking forward to this - as well as being completely fucking scared by it - since basically the moment I went to Manchester's Open Day & discovered the one uni course I maybe, on an off chance wanted to do, didn't exist anymore. Taken as a sign from the universe or whatever I thought fuck it, what's the point in going to uni to do something I don't need to just because I can't think of anything better. I know, I know, you meet loads of people there, it's not about learning blah blah. But I have amazing friends & I intend, in the course of the rest of my life to go on meeting amazing people. I don't know why I need debts, deadlines & 3 years of my life to do that. Uni is great for a lot of people but just not me. I feel homicidal every time I find myself on a campus.

So for now I intend to postpone the huge looming question, "What the fuck do I do now?" At least until September. So I have 3 weeks at home to finish books about Mexican drug cartels, turn my sisters old room into a craft room & listen to the Specials. Then it's off to Berlin & summer holidays until August. Then there's just August... So my internal school-alised clock can begin to panic, but instead of it being about going back to school/college it'll be about what to do with the rest of my life.

Sorted.

I'm getting on a train at 4 O'Clock to go & see Bright Eyes at the Royal Albert Hall. It's nice because I had completely forgotten about the whole idea until Jesus reminded me we had to book our trains. You see, we bought tickets way back in December/January as a joint Christmas & Birthday present to each other & because it's here, tonight, sandwiched between my exams, I sort of hadn't let myself think about it at all. & then yesterday I realised he's released two albums that I haven't even listened to yet, meaning he's probably not going to be going much of my two favorite albums. If he doesn't sing Lua though, I'll be well disappointed & both my present to Jesus & from him won't be very good. Oh well, feels exciting to be going to the Albert Hall. It's like proper music! Here's At The Bottom of Everything with my favorite lyrics to shout along too on I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. Poster source (he has had some amazing posters) & image source. (*edit: my normal music player doesn't work anymore! If anyone could help me out with some HTML that lets me imbed single tracks from a link it would be much appreciated. Comment or e-mail me, neonpeg@gmail.com. Cheers!)

We must talk in every telephone
Get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues in the books that we have read
And in the face of every criminal
Strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare.

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn't dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing.

We must blend into the choir
Sing as static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run.

We must hang up in the belfry
Where the bats and moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow
With just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.

I'm happy just because
I found out I am really no one.


Enjoy!

You know when everything just hits at once? Breakdowns (not mine), exams & beautiful Resort/Spring 2012 collections have been getting in my way of blogging. Sorry. I've also pretty much done nothing of interest in the last few days apart from revise & stuff I don't want on the internet. So... menswear. Totally logical I'm sure you'll agree.

My main issue with menswear are the male models. Their necks are as thick as their heads & for some reason their bodies are completely out of proportion with their legs. After a while it becomes strange to look at them, as if a new species has evolved through the endless slideshows. My second issue is that in principle I think all guys should wear suits. I know, I know. But teenage boys/young men don't hold out much inspiration when it comes to fashion generally. But there is one amazing looking black man who walks around London in an endless round of gorgeous (usually checkered) suits, complete with pocket squares. Here is proof then, that suits do not mean black & white funeral wear, more bright colours & slouchy fitted than bow ties & cummerbunds. Basically, Chuck Bass. Top-Bottom: Umit Benan, Neil Barratt, Bottega Veneta & not suits but also very lovely & much appreciated 50s referencing from Moschino.

Not a menswear blog.

"Consumer-driven modernism, it was in-vogue anthropomorphism, a swim through the guts and entrails of the world...a throbbing, pustulous, inflamed amusement-industry boil on the backside of Brooklyn."
My new obsession. Coney Island. The quote is from a book recommended to me that I finished a few weeks ago, The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. It wasn't such a great book even though there was parts of interesting tattoo talk the story was a bit overblown for me & I didn't really take to the main character. Anyway, Coney Island remained in my brain. It used to be a proper island don't you know, that they purposefully joined back onto Brooklyn. Pretty insane place from what I can tell, & it goes along (I guess) with my constant desire to go back to New York having not appreciated it before. I was a teenager, I was with my mum. I spent most of my money on American Apparel & a very lovely Anna Sui prom dress. The idea that there's a beach in New York pretty much blows my mind. I mean Central Park is pretty insane in the center of such a *city* city, but a beach? I'd love to go swimming there. According to a Coney Island blog I found there's a big business man trying to get rid of all the small shop owners to replace them with chains or something so I'm going to try & go this year.

Also, it's where Requiem For A Dream is set. HAS ANYONE WATCHED THAT FILM? Jesus Christ. It's a film that many people have recommended to me, told me was their favorite film or even thought I would be a connoisseur of due to my penchant for fucked up drug films (& books). But I spent a large portion of it - basically after the gangrene - with my hands over my eyes. Watching gang rape, amputation & electric shock therapy interspersed is not my idea of fun. We had to watch it to the end to see who died, BUT NONE OF THEM DIED. Seriously. I now own the DVD. Anyone can have it. I'd quite like to get it out of my house. I might just casually leave it somewhere. Or do you want it? E-mail me your address. Free. Honestly.

Anyway, yeah. Weekend. Coney Island is the shit. Photo source. Spent 2 hours driving to & from Melksham to get a projector today. Realizing that I am no longer an art student. But fuck I have a projector now! Expect lots of arty photography coming...soon. That's why my brain is shot. & I have clutch foot. Is that a technical medical term?

It should be.

My collages of Resort 2012

Brights: Top left, Zero + Maria Cornejo. Bottom left, Yigal Azrouel. Top right, Jenni Kayne. Bottom right, Michael Kors.
Prim & Proper: From top to bottom, Erdem, Alexandre Herchcovitch, Carolina Herrera, Donna Karen, Gucci, Doo.Ri, Jason Wu, Jason Wu, Doo.Ri, Erdem & Naeem Khan
Pucci Suits: Emilio Pucci...
Florals: Top to bottom, Jill Stuart x 6, Yves Saint Laurent x 2, Suno, Thakoon Addition & Alexandre Herhcovitch.
Prints: Top row left to right, Giambattista Valli, Pedro Lourenco, Stella McCartney, Naeem Khan. Bottom row left to right, Adam, Givenchy, Giambattista Valli & Suno.

More on the ICBFASHION tumblr. All images from Style.com. Stuck, cut & arranged by moi. One of the great things about blogging this stuff is I can just about justify the time it took me to make them. Still on course with the revision, but I have taken on other company after my *alone day*. Two weeks just two weeks left of my entire education.

Scary.

This Saturday Bristol's first Oxfam Boutique is opening on Park Street (number 77ish, next door to Boston Tea Party) normally I wouldn't blog this but as I start volunteering there in a couple of weeks I thought you guys would like to know! I did think that boutiques meant better quality stock & (unfortunately) it actually just means that instead of sending donations to a national sorting place, the shop keeps all the donations that are made to it & sells them. So, if you have any amazing clothes that you don't wear/want anymore & are near/in Bristol please, please donate them to the boutique! We need all the good stock we can get! From the 27th June I'll be there every Monday from 1.30.

Today is the first day this year that I have spent completely on my own (including phone calls!). I know that sounds lame but it's true. I live with my mum, I have a (practically) conjoined twin named Jesus & I basically text the Jayster all day normally. It's not that I don't like being on my own, because I do, but it just doesn't happen that often. After a morning of completing 3 past papers & not crying I rewarded myself by spending the rest of the day on my balcony admiring my awesome plants, listening to the entire back catalog of Reel Big Fish, painting Sailor Jerry tattoos in my Moleskine, cutting up pictures from the Resort 2012 collections, drinking ginger beer shandies (1/2 ginger beer, 1/2 beer) & creating a pool of black wax that I am somewhat transfixed by & may or may not be a safety hazard.

On the topic of Resort 2012 I've finally gotten round to posting collection on the ICBFASHION tumblr **HERE** I'll post up the collages I made today at some point as well. I'm quite obsessed with Jenni Kayne & the Pucci suits but Givenchy's show was today! Woo! Damn tumblr & it's maximum post limit. Now I was going to go out but having realised I should be able to spend one day alone, I'm going to have a bath & finish the shit out of Mrs Dalloway.

Laters.

I'm so tired it's ridiculous. I've been mindlessly cross-stitching since about five this morning but I have finished my vulva for the Shoreditch Sisters Embroideries Campaign to end Female Genital Mutilation. They're making a quilt of them. If you in anyway are able to apply images to fabric I totally insist that you get involved. You can make it as abstract (or realistic) as you want, just has to be 7"x7". All the details are here. I should be revising physics but I just can't, it's like a massive brick wall or something. I've made the flashcards & I lay them, my textbook & all the past papers out in front of me & even with the answers in my hand I have no idea how they got what they got. I don't know whether to cry or just...keep pretending time doesn't exist.

In other news I'm having somewhat of an existential crisis about the blog. It may be the lack of sleep or sobriety over the weekend, but I feel like I really want to do something. It's been amazing getting more followers recently, but I feel like I've done pretty well on getting awesome bloggers to comment regularly with interesting insights rather than for their own gain. But then it's so amazing when you feel like people actually read your blog, right? I feel like because I'm not a *fashion* blogger, or even a *political* blogger or an *art* blogger then I can't really ask for a concise audience either, do you know what I mean? But I know there are amazing people who, like me are interested in all sorts of things & it's so great to be able to find those people. Anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about. In conclusion: I might do some guest blogging on a politics blog about fashion. No?

I think this was mainly prompted by the South West Blogger Meet Up Dichohecho told me about. Because they're meeting up in Cabot Circus to go shopping, which I have a resolution not to do this year. & it made me think about how awesome it would be to actually meet some bloggers who think like me & are generally amazing. Maybe I should do my own & we can go charity shop shopping in Clifton (they get the best picks in Bristol...). Even though I have no money, am saving any I do have for Berlin, & should be chained to a desk revising Mass Defects. I'm tired & not making sense. E-mail me if any of this sounds plausible: neonpeg@gmail.com.

Awesome.

Spending the weekend with lots of sweaty tattooed men, trying my best to get hurt but not too hurt in many a mosh pit, not knowing the bands but moving like my life depends on their music. Still not quite over the hilarity of The Pretty Reckless being a part of it but well looking forward to Linkin Park as when I saw them before I crowd surfed for the very first time. I'm armed up with DMs & disco pants. Wish me luck. Photo source.

Gone Moshing.

I first came across colour infrared film over a year ago now when Dazed printed one of Richard Mosse's amazing Congo photos on their back page. I then did some vague research online before becoming baffled about having to order it from some dude who cut it himself (?). I then asked in London Camera Exchange in Bath where I was told about Barry who used to have some in his fridge. It all got a bit dodgy & so I left Barry - wherever he may be - alone with his fridge & his infrared film. But killing time on flickr the other day I did another search & found some amazing photos by this guy & many more. So maybe I should go back & investigate further... does anyone know anything about the mystery colour infrared? Maybe I should just get better at Photoshop. Or go back & try harder to find Barry's fridge...

Or not.

Timed post because even though my day will be dedicated to the person these songs are for, I couldn't leave my little corner of the blogosphere with nothing. Here is my 3 year anniversary mixtape for the sid to my nancy, the clyde to my bonnie, (in fact he's probably more like the sid to my bonnie with less heroin & guns. Anyway...) the artist to my French girl, the peanut to my bambi. I am talking smitten nonsense I know. But anyway here's my attempt at a love mixtape through punk, an ode to the be-tatted one in my life, but also to you guys for being rather awesome & lovely too. Personalized mixtape made here.

I hope you like it!

"I was in Helsinki when the founder Riittaa Immonen died & in the window of the Marimekko store they had replaced the bright fabrics with a simple black screen."

My mum is the one who introduced me to the prints of Marimekko & as I followed in her footsteps with a slight obsession with fabrics & prints every time we spot the famous red Marimekko poppy (including oddly, the other weekend, as a curtain to the changing room in a charity shop in Bath) we share the same "Ooooo Marimekko" noises. Because there's something just so... right about their prints. In the way Liberty's are wrong, but work. Does that make sense? I guess it's cause they're Scandie, hence being able to offhandedly publish a free newspaper with a whole page dedicated to well laid out repeated white kitchenware. Newspaper picked up on my brief Cheltenham escapade from this shop.

Lovely.

So the day finally arrived & after running some errands I went into Rise, an independent, because I still feel guilty about fueling Alex Turner's demise into a drug addled Chung bubble. I was actually pretty disappointed. *SHOCK* I mean, Arctic Monkeys have never been huge on album artwork, it all kind of went downhill since the first album (as you can see by the disc gif I made, I think I might be getting addicted to gifs) & when I got it home & dug out the other three I realized just how similar it is to Humbug, down to the weird eerie desert photo in the center. But this review by the ever lovely Alexis Petridis pretty much says everything that needs to be said, with better references. I still can't listen to Don't Sit Down 'Cause I Moved Your Chair though... I skip it every time. PLUS there will be 2 reviews of it in the next issue of SWEAT, one by George my Arctic Monkeys virgin friend & the *hardcore fan* that is me. What do you think? Are you gonna buy it? It's almost worth it for the awesome photo of Max Helders (my now favorite Monkey) in skates & a helmet. Or do you not care at all?

In other news I'm extremely excited! They have managed to produce antimatter for about 16 minutes! Plus Paul Dirac was mentioned in the guardian, which if nothing else, is awesome news for those with his equation that predicted antimatter tattooed on their arms. *ahem* It basically means they can look at it a lot closer, get a wider range of data & try & get some averages about it's behavior & where the fuck all the antimatter from the beginning of the world went. My money's on a parallel universe! You can read the article here.

Also feel the need to re alliterate - having spent so many posts on this blog explaining my varying states of depression - that I am extremely happy at the moment. This weekend has been lovely. It was Max's birthday & because me & Jesus are cheapskates & basically the same person, we spent £2.50 on the joint present of a cactus, then spent the whole night worrying it was a shit present. Max loved it, so did Cat even though she got stung (is that the right word?) by it almost immediately, opps! We, The People was good & I fell into bed, avoiding after parties like the plague & in fact fell asleep on the phone. Oh well. Now I need to do some physics revision & figure out if it's possible to set up a projector onto my bedroom wall... err... I'll explain on Thursday. This was a longer post than I intended it to be.

Sorry!

I may be extremely hungover, but I have enough clarity to understand how amazing these photos are (source). I kind of adore Kanye West, even though I feel like I shouldn't. Anyway everything is lovely, isn't it? It's been sunny for a couple of days & Max liked his birthday Cactus from last night (also he liked his party, hence the headache) even though I was having second thoughts & thinking of buying this instead when I saw it at work. The "Knowledge Retailer" selling drug books? Mind fuck or what. Going to see The Streets tonight, well excited. Two festivals in Bristol on one weekend? Maybe we are just the best city ever... Or maybe that's just the sound of summer becoming official. Also this week shall be awesome, I will have it no other way. Off to drink some orange juice as par Amber's holy hangover cure advice.

Peace.

Pricey: (L-R) Timney Conical Shell Print, Timney Collage Print, Ted Baker Bird Cage Print
Cheap: Dorothy Perkins 50s Floral Print, Oasis Floral Print, New Look Peacock Print


That time of year again where my pale skin & ginger hair have to bear the brunt of *summer*. So the plane/train tickets are booked & I'm going to be beside the seaside for at least a week, & when I went swimming this week I realised that all my bikinis are bandeau & therefore annoyingly liable to shrink whilst swimming. So begins the hunt for a non pornographic, non flash prone, understated, nicely printed, not too expensive bikini. I only need a top really, but they look so nice together! I'm not sure if this is breaking my nothing new resolution as I didn't really think about it at the time, but maybe it comes under underwear? So, wish me luck on the highstreet tomorrow! It's like going into the wilderness...

One of my latest physics revision displacement activities has been drying the rose petals from our garden, I meant to press them but actually the colour came out beautifully when they were dried. If you are anywhere near Bristol in the next week or so I completely insist you go to Ashton Court & round the back of the mansion to the Rose Garden. They're all in bloom & so frickin beautiful! My airing cupboard is full of multicoloured petals waiting to crisp... It also smells amazing & they're so different, I never knew roses came in so many varieties! It also helped when these little girls ran through picking rose heads off & sprinkling the petals, sacrilege but gave me perfectly new petals. GO.

Oh & hello to all the new followers recently. I had another displacement activity of going a bit comment mad, discovering loads of awesome new blogs, so hello! & welcome! & of course I love all the other readers too, so much! New or not.

L.O.V.E