Hello!

In a week or so I'm going to be heading off to Madrid for a while, so I'll try to keep up with people's submissions, but don't expect a huge amount of paintings from me (I'd be surprised if you did, what with me averaging at about half a submission per year at the moment). Anyway, I'll try to keep up with this, but expect gaps.


I've still got one (very late) painting to post before heading off though.

Yes... music.

Around here, it's only really British/American music that is marketed at the expense of just about everything else, with the occasional English language band from another country thrown in. I was wondering if any of you people would have any non-English-language music (rock music preferably) that you could suggest. It just seems such a waste to me that there is bound to be a lot of really good music that I would be very unlikely to hear.

I want to hear your suggestions.

Also; my music. I tried to show people my home made music on deviantart soon after I joined, but inevitably, it was totally ignored. Don't worry, there's no singing, just instrumentals, and it isn't as embarrassing as you might be expecting. You can listen to the songs without downloading them too. If anyone is feeling benevolent, it's at;

[link]

So... for a change I thought I'd go for a slightly more political journal entry.

What does everyone think of the international controversy over the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten and their caricatures of the profit Mohammed sporting a bomb in the turban? (Amongst others) There have been international (Islamic) protests since they published it and now France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Norway have all republished it too, although the editor of the French paper that did so was sacked. Palestinians have been getting quite worked up (with guns no less), there's been bomb threats, Arab diplomats are being called away from Denmark, their products are being boycotted and cartoonists are in hiding etc.

So what do you think? Those on the various papers are all nasty provocateurs for publishing the twelve cartoons, and they are getting the reaction that they asked for... or is this an extreme case of not being able to take a joke, and an assault of the right of free speech and parody in a secular democracy?

I'm completely with the Danish paper on this one.

Thanks a lot to all the people that commented on the daily deviation thing, and of course thanks to =flesh-was-sweet for suggesting it in the first place.. it's all quite a nice self-esteem booster, or at least a confidence-in-my-ability-to-paint-not-bad-pictures booster. Thanks people. Anyway. My scanner still refuses to work so I've had to resort to the significantly more shoddy ..digital camera. So the paintings won't be very big, and you'll have to use your imagination with the fuzzy bits.

My computer broke, so that why I was away (...yes, I was away).

The internet's working, but that's about it.. I hope you're all having a good summer so far.