That there is Gianni Versace. Just look at him, the rogueish Phil Collinsy pit bull of a man… who’d a thunk he would be up there in my ‘top three dead celebrities who I cried over when they died’ along with Roald Dahl and Tupac Shakur? I certainly didn’t. But there I was on the coach back from Alton Towers at 14 years old, crying my eyes out because “Versace will never design my wedding dress!! BAAAAAAA!!” (can I just interject here with a WTF!?! Since when have I ever wanted to get married!?) whilst unbeknownst to me I was sat in a sympathy portrait of Versace’s steps.

You see, it seems cream jeans, my first period, and the Alton Towers rapids had co-conspired to leave a particularly incriminating pink stain across the whole of my arse and between my legs down to my knees. The fact that I didn’t notice this until I got home and that NO-ONE HAD TOLD ME, made the situation even more cringe-worthy and embarrassing. To this day I still don’t know if anyone saw or noticed, but it does paint quite a picture, almost as vivid as the one on my jeans.

Did I go too far there? Yes, I think I did. Poor crying sad ginger child with the gory jeans bemoaning her lack of a designer wedding dress. As if anyone would marry HER.

So yeah, whilst you consider how excruciatingly embarrassing my childhood was, here’s a bit of Dear Mama by 2Pac to get you in the right mindset:

I used to cry to this every night before I went to sleep, no lie.

Sim xxxx

Just so you know, my last blog wasn’t a lonely hearts and wasn’t intended as such… so I hope those who have since contacted me asking me out on dates realise that their advances seem more than a little opportunistic rather than gentlemanly. I suppose I thought it would have been clear from reading it that I’m a long way off from wanting to find my ‘real man’ so to speak and am not looking for anyone at the moment. I’m happy being on my own for now. I know there I was writing about how I never get chatted up, but I wasn’t complaining! I quite like that I don’t.

On the plus side I am glad that the blog has touched a nerve with some people and that you enjoy my writing. I’ve always been pretty brutal with what I write, and honest. I write what I feel even when sometimes it isn’t always the cool thing to do, but then I’ve never really been one to try and collect cool points.

Sim xxxx

My biggest enemy is loneliness. Loneliness makes me do stupid things. It makes me stick around for years with people who make me really unhappy. It attracts me to the unsuitable and makes me overlook flaws and problems and pretty much anything… all because it is better than being on my own. Once you are on your own, well, that’s when you have to answer to the real you. You know, that person who would pipe up every now and again, telling you that what you were doing was wrong; that he really shouldn’t treat you that way, that you could do better. The same person you forgot about and suffocated with ignorance and fear in your quest to not be alone. The person you changed and distorted so that they would like you more. But changing yourself is never a good idea, and as much as you think that anything is better than having to sit down and confront the cracks in the real you, sitting in shitty relationships is worse.

I hate this feeling that I get once I come to my senses, the mourning of the passing of wasted time that I could have spent better focusing on something else. The key word here is better; I deserve better, I could do better, I could have had a better life. This isn’t arrogance on my part but self esteem. In an equal loving relationship I am an extremely good catch. I am caring, thoughtful, strong, witty, motivated, and ambitious, not to mention a helluva good cook. It’s a shame that more often than not, guys still find a girl like this threatening.

I’ve lost count of the amount of labels I’ve had thrown at me by guys who I have inadvertently intimidated. If it were all true then I’d be the biggest geek slut mental minger that ever walked the planet… but thankfully I have the sense to understand that name-calling almost always stems from inadequacies on the callers part (*ahem* girls, you know what I’m talking about here). Anyway, guys have been calling women they don’t understand names for eons, but in those days the most common word they used was ‘witch’. Just read The Crucible.

People are happy to make assumptions about others. I’m sure I’ve talked about it at length before. People tend to assume that I go out every night, get chatted up all the time and meet tons of guys… but ‘people’ don’t know me. I don’t do any of those things. I’m away a lot, I work hard. When I’m not working I stay at home and keep myself to myself. No-one apart from a handful of very close friends really knows me. When I do go out, I don’t really drink. One of the most common misconceptions about me is that I am drunk all the time. I have an extremely low alcohol tolerance and I’m allergic to caffeine to the point where only one or two drinks will send me hyper… but I’m not drunk, not by any conventional means. I always know where I am.

It seems there is apparent lack of assertive guys in the world. My biggest gripe at the moment is with guys who just don’t DO anything. Guys who don’t take the initiative, don’t make an effort, and don’t even realise it. I never get chatted up precisely because the majority of guys these days are like this. They are too scared to try.

So I’m going to call these guys (whoops, almost typed ‘gays’ there) the ‘Do Nothings’, because their default modus operandi is: ‘If in doubt, do nothing.’ A Do Nothing is someone who thinks they are grown up but has yet to try, someone who has yet to mature into their emotional intelligence and learn about consequences. They are guys who can only think from within their own shoes, who probably live at home or on someone’s couch, and will do until their late twenties/early thirties. They are artistic types; models, musicians, photographers, artists, who appreciate beauty but are unable to grasp what it takes to keep a hold of it. They live hand to mouth from day to day, and have no plans for the future. They work when they feel like it. They have little self-restraint when it comes to alcohol, drugs, or women. They lack any kind of assertiveness, if backed into a corner they will blame anyone, anything apart from themselves for their failings. They are completely unable to handle any kind of responsibility and are happy to have women pay their way through life for them without doing anything in return. God forbid they ever have to make a decision. They don’t take you on dates, open doors for you, or offer to pay for anything. They don’t remember your anniversary, or even your birthday and they don’t buy you flowers.

I used to be attracted to this kind of spinelessness. It was easy for me to date people like this as it meant I didn’t have to think about my own future. I could potter along in this bubble of ignorance, safe in my Peter Pan fantasies of never growing old, but I’m sick of it now. I’m sick of mothering people who don’t appreciate it, of never having anything nice, of always struggling and living like a student because my other half can’t be bothered to get a job. Of always being the last in a long list of priorities, of always taking the blame for things that aren’t even my own fault. There is nothing worse in a relationship than being undermined and taken for granted, it gnaws at your self-worth until there is literally nothing of you left.

Maybe it’s not the curse of the Do Nothings but the curse of being a Strong Woman. People don’t approach you and the ones that do just want to be looked after. While Do Nothings may do exactly that, nothing, they can sense a meal ticket when they see one, and nothing props up the weak quite like the strong. Here is someone who works so that I don’t have to! they cry someone who will look after me when I’m drunk and maybe even put up with my cheating ways because they think no-one else wants them! It’s a powerful game that doesn’t really have any winners.

After a while the Strong Women make the Do Nothings feel inadequate as constantly being looked after and paid for is emasculating. So the Do Nothings find ways to bring them down a peg or two. They figure out that other guys find their girl unapproachable and pick at it like a bad spot. They stop giving compliments, flirt with other women and cheat. Finally the Do Nothing has found something to do; destroy you and assert their masculinity. Sometimes they succeed, but they never quite count on the woman being who she was in the first place: strong. Strong Women always bounce back.

Personally, I’ve had enough of this. I don’t want to have to keep building myself back up again all the time, it’s tiring.

Which leaves the question of what I do want. Given the amount of time I spend alone waiting on various Do Nothings, I think I finally know. I want someone older, who doesn’t live on their Mum’s sofa, has no rock star aspirations, has a solid career, a sense of culpability… someone who is cultured, intelligent, and will look after me emotionally, who is fun and spontaneous and gets things done. Who is not intimidated or afraid to make decisions. Maybe this is all really old-fashioned of me, but it seems in this day and age men have forgotten how to be men.

I’m tired of Do Nothings, it’s time for me to find a Do Something, aka, a real man.

Do they even still exist?

Actually considering running away to Sweden to find a similarly tall and Skandinavian hunk o’ man, but I would probably end up with a troll instead.

Sim xxxx

Cases FOR the removal of photobooth on my macbook:

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So in the same way that in my job I probably ask people the same questions they’ve heard before over and over again (“Do you like armadillos?” “Did you used to wear special Mormon pants?” “Are you Satan?”) I thought I’d have a go at answering some of your questions, hopefully so that when anyone asks me a question in future, I can just refer them back to this, therefore avoiding repetitive strain injury on my brain.

I’m only joking, I like answering questions. It’s fun, unless you decide to become the millionth person to ask me what my favourite computer game is, then I might have to draw blood…

Via the means of social media I asked y’all to ask me 100 questions, which I will now begin to answer as truthfully as I possibly can, or as sarcastically. You decide.

1. If you could eat only one type of food for the rest of your life, what would it be? (via @noble_man)

Japanese food. That’s a type right? If it could be only one thing then soya… because that can be a milk, tofu, edamame… plus it’s pretty good for you and makes your tits bigger (apparently).

2. How did you get into journalism? (via @JordanDante)

The true story of how I got anywhere in life is far too elongated for me to condense into a short witty anecdote, so I shall save it for my autobiography. It involved copious amounts of llamas, a Siamese twin, and a general predilection towards kumquats.

I’ll go so far to say that I haven’t exactly lead an easy life but writing is something I have always enjoyed and been good at, although perversely my strongest subject at school was probably science. As for journalism, I come from a family of journalists… my Dad was at one point the editor of a newspaper and my Uncle is one of the editors at Empire magazine so it’s something I just grew up being interested in.

3. What’s the biggest thing that keeps you awake at night? (via FXHMantis)

My giant cock! Mwah ha ha! Seriously though, I have emetophobia so probably the biggest thing that keeps me awake at night is that; worrying about when I will next be sick and stuff. Pretty weird. I also went through a phase of seeing my dead best friend whenever I slept, but I wouldn’t describe it as scary so much, instead it’s kind of nice as I do miss her a lot.

4. How do magnets work? (via @jamiehibbard)

It seems the Insane Clown Posse are on a similar quest for knowledge, maybe you should join them?

5. Who was the friendliest band you met? (via @nealo88)

Dear me, ‘who was’? Surely it’s ‘who were’? Anyway, grammar fascism aside, the friendliest (and also the funniest) band I met were One Republic, closely followed by N*E*R*D*.

6. Why have you not done a photo shoot with Sophie Howard yet? (via @CybrHwk)

I don’t know why we never really crossed paths, as we started modeling around about the same time, and did a couple of shoots in the same place at the same time, but not actually together. Maybe it was because I was in a different division when it came to boob size… or maybe it’s because we do look a bit similar in the face to the point where we have actually sat down and seriously considered whether we are related or not.

We might rectify this situation in the future and do a shoot, but we’d probably be dressed as serial killers so I’m not sure how many people would want to see that. Our tastes are pretty niche.

7. Do you discriminate between Mac/PC users? (via @gahdjun)

Oh yah, all the time. I mean, it’s common knowledge all PC users have sex with their Mums so it’s important to be able to differentiate, I mean oh God, what if you were on a date with a PC user and didn’t even know it? To be that close to incest? It beggars belief.

On a more truthful note, no, I really don’t care whether people use a Mac or a PC, is it really that important?

8. If I’m paying you up for going to see Scott pilgrim vs the word with me? haha (via @alex_torry)

I love this, it’s the casual ‘haha’ that makes it. It sets it up so that, when I inevitably say no, said guy can brush it off with a ‘oh yah, I was only joking…’ when in fact they probably weren’t. I say no because I don’t tend to hang around with strangers who casually proposition me on the internet. If I did, I’d probably be being portrayed in a reenactment by an actress in a really bad red wig right now, on an episode of Crimewatch.

9. Erm, why weren’t you at Gamescom? (via @XG247_Dave)

Because I’m under contract to MTVHD at present and had to go to Poland to cover the Coke Live festival instead.

10. Can dogs look up? (via @jetpackfett)

I don’t know, ask Big Al.

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This is my room:

And this is my room:

And so is this:

It’s just mountains and mountains of stuff, things, clothes, masks, costumes, piles of books, CDs, DVDs, video games, dead dogs, and what is that? A Kings of Leon poster? Wow, this situation is worse than I thought…

My room is a disgrace. I dream of a day when I can fall asleep safe in the knowledge that my tat won’t engulf me and drown me as I slumber. When I can look down one day and SEE THE FLOOR. When I can finally let go of the pair of pants I’ve had since I was in my first year of university. They’re not lucky, they’re just old. I’m not this messy person this room claims I am, I’m… I’m… what am I exactly?

You see my room hasn’t always looked this way, all the way back in 2007 when I lived in a much cooler flat (in Shoreditch fnar fnar) I had a neat and organised room, it was all bright and shiny and clean and everything had its little home, it was the antithesis of my bedrooms’ current state. Now my bedroom resembles some Sao Paulo shanty town, and not in a good way.

How on earth do I acquire so much STUFF? How do I even possibly begin to contemplate housing it all? All these stray things, all they need is a good home. I’ve tried eBaying it all, but it’s such a monumental task, and I must say, I’ve grown quite attached to most of it, apart from the drawer of greying pants – that needs to go. How do I go about organising a room that cannot be organised?

What my room needs is a visit to IKEA, but alas I am car-less and live too far away, and everyone knows that place induces migranes anyway and you always come back with more tat than you left with… but hey, the hotdogs are nice. Ah, I dream of my room looking like this:

Even though that room is boring as fuck. I just picked it because it looked clean. Hmm… maybe add some leopard print wallpaper, some 6ft Jesus statues and some fairy lights and we’re talking.

JUST NO MORE KINGS OF LEON POSTERS.

I’ll keep you updated on my room’s situation, but right now the prognosis is looking critical.

Sim xxxx

People wonder why more girls don’t come out of the woodwork and admit that they like gaming, after the exchange in the blog below it’s pretty clear to see why they don’t. Being open about your gaming habit opens a whole can of worms… from girls, guys, and surprisingly, other girl gamers.

The most vehement attacks I have had about my career as a games journalist have been from girls, oftentimes gamers themselves, angry at the fact that I used to be a model and insistent that I only got my job because I am a ’slut that gets their tits out’. Now, there are a lot of ’sluts that get their tits out’ in this world, so if that were the case then there would be a lot of female games journalists right? Wrong. If you were on Family Fortunes you would SO be getting the ‘neh uh’ noise right now.

Firstly we need to address this whole ‘model = slut’ mentality that rears its ugly head every now and again. Sorry to state the obvious here, but taking your clothes off for a living has no bearing on your personal morals, it is simply a job. For all you conservatives out there, there is nothing wrong with the human body and the need to share and look at pictures of the naked form is human nature and has been around since the beginning of time. From Botticelli and Michelangelo, to Klimt and Gauguin, it has always had a place in art and it continues to this day simply because nude women are nice to look at.

Disregarding people for their career choices based on negative assumptions says more about your own personal foibles than theirs, claiming people are stupid, slutty, lesser humans because of a job says more about your own ignorance and hang-ups. So I used to be a model? So what? It doesn’t bother me, so it shouldn’t bother you. I still got my job by regular means and I’m not forcing anyone to look at me.

Now, as a girl who has gamed all her life this whole stigma attached to female gamers is pretty new to me, as I have never had any smack talk from any of my gaming friends. Me being a girl has never been an issue. It is only when I come out of the gaming closet and admit publicly that I like to play video games that the problems start. Well, you know what? It’s not going to stop me.

Gaming has, will, and will always be something that I enjoy and I am not going to let a few narrow-minded people stop me from doing it. Hopefully by setting an example it will make it easier for other girls to be more vocal about their gaming habits and less likely to attack each other about it.

Sim xxxx

What is with all the bitchiness that abounds these days? I seem to be noticing a lot of it on Tumblr and the like.

First up was some alt girl berating me and Von for having ‘bad personalities’ and being ‘too vulgar’, then when I called her up on it, that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to attack girls heavily associated with a magazine she wants to work for, she apologises by reiterating her initial point, that we “are both really good looking girls and I didn’t mean to upset either of you… but your personalities don’t really do it for me”. Wow, someone really A*’d at passive aggression school.

Now, I’d find this offensive if it wasn’t so stupid, as here is where I interject with the fact that this girl HAS NEVER MET EITHER OF US, so literally has zero idea of what our actual personalities are. She seems obviously unwise to the fact that we write in a journalistic style to suit the magazine, which I think oftentimes some girls forget is a Lad’s Mag… maybe they focus too much on having their pretty camera phone pictures published to show off to their friends, and forget that it is actually a magazine aimed at guys who like shitting, wanking, and farting. In that order. Sorry if the truth is too ‘vulgar’ for you to handle. I’m sure Von apologises for enjoying sex and being able to write about it in a funny, empowering way, and of course I apologise profusely for my bad personality, seeing as it is obvious that according to you, girls just shouldn’t have one.

And here is the rub, our fixed notions of what attractive girls can and can’t do. For example, they can’t be funny, nice, intelligent, enjoy sex, like games, or have a personality without encroaching on traditionally ‘ugly girl’ territory and incurring the wrath of some internet troll.

In my head I don’t group myself as an attractive girl, but I’m aware somewhat that other people might do, else I wouldn’t have been a model. Having been on the, shall we say, unpopular side of things I can see where the assumptions come from, my formative knowledge of attractive girls while in school was that they were mostly dumb sluts, but I WAS THIRTEEN and that assumption was borne out of fear and a tiny bit of jealousy rather than actual concrete fact. It’s not like I got to know any of them as they intimidated the fuck out of me. Which is perhaps the situation with the anonymous alt girl.

And onto troll number two, who is an altogether more simple creature. Sick of all these attractive girls ‘pretending to like games’ Troll #2 (let’s call him Dwight as it sounds suitably redneck) took a crack at one of my pictures on Tumblr that had been reblogged, declaring that I “couldn’t even plug a computer into a wall” and that I was inferior to his girlfriend who was smart because she wears glasses. I’ll just leave you with that thought for a second, as you realise what an insane douche bags we are dealing with here… as yes, that’s right, his girlfriend has got involved too spouting shit all over the internet.

This hatred directed towards female gamers from guys AND girls is not cool. Guys seem unable to accept that some girls like the same things they do, and girl gamers seem to possess not even a modicum of solidarity for girls who are interfering with their niche territory, even though it’s not really that niche as millions of girls play video games. Until I became the Games Editor for Front me liking games had never been a big deal, it was something I just did with my friends for fun and I never got any shit for it. But since then… I think the reality of an ex-model as a gamer can be a bitter pill to swallow for some people and provokes exchanges like this:

http://simwisesucks.tumblr.com/post/839227024

God forbid I should respond to anyone making a personal attack on me and call them out on it. Because, you know, people should be left alone to make half-assed judgements in peace without any fear of any kind of consequence and everyone KNOWS all models are stupid whores. This is the internet! Why, it was just made for trolling! Trolling, mentals, and cowards… because I can bet any money that none of these people would say any of this shit in real life.

These dudes need to spend less time on 4chan and it gets my goat that idiots like this exist, but then the best thing about clumsy fools like this is that they always fall over their own shoelaces.

In future? Delete. Delete. Delete.

Sim xxxx

Probably has a tiny penis, but he’s so fit.

I am looking for an offbeat, funny, and witty female gamer who is good at writing for an upcoming web project I am working on. Interests in comics and zombies would be a massive bonus.

If you think this is you and are available for a meeting in London next week, send me an email with some examples of your work to: alex.sim-wise@frontarmy.co.uk

Spanx

Sim xxxx

I’m in Serbia for the Exit festival and HAHAHA my room is fucking hilarious! It’s like if Robert Palmer ejaculated  into a cupboard in the 1980s and left it there for years and years, then this genetically modified frankenspawn came out of it, aka, my room. It’s basically a box room with a bathroom that looks so 80s I swear Eddie Murphy’s going to jump out at any minute to tell me a joke. It’s all black and red. I’ll take a picture of it tomorrow. In the morning I am going to sing Huey Lewis and the News in the shower, because you know, you probably have to otherwise the 80s police will come in and berate you.

Today was a fucken’ nightmare. I missed my plane by 1 MINUTE and then had to spend the day traipsing around Heathrow airport being fobbed off onto one unhelpful person after another, to get on a replacement flight, which then became two flights, so I had to go to bloody Germany, and THEN Belgrade. I’ve been traveling for the past 17 hours so I’m kind of bummed right now and just want to go to bed. Is it just me or am I always permanently tired?

It was my Mum’s birthday yesterday. Happy birthday Mum.

Sim xxxx

Here are some pics from Open’er festival. I’d write some words but my brain won’t work.

I think that is my best ‘I am a professional TV presenter and all that’ pose yet.

Caught in the act! I need to get me a pair of Ray Ban’s…

Click below for more pictures…

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So it’s the end of day 2 at the Open’er festival in Poland and I haven’t posted anything yet because I was SUPER tired last night and fell asleep as soon as I got in. I should be doing that now really,but I thought you’d like to know what I’ve been up to…

Yesterday I had an obscenely early 6.30am flight to Warsaw followed by a 7 hour journey in the van to Sopot, where we are staying.

It’s supposed the Monte Carlo of the Baltic regions and I took a walk around the town today and it’s really pretty, right on a beach. Our hotel is nice and does a BUFF buffet. Hmm… do you see what I did there? We weren’t filming yesterday so we headed down to the festival to check out some bands and saw a great set by Pearl Jam. The whole time I couldn’t help but think of this though (forward to 0:40):

After that we watched Groove Armada but I was freezing so wasn’t really paying attention.

Today we were up bright and early to do some filming at the train station for the intro to the show, which is called “Making the Performance” and will be on MTV HD soon. I interviewed Cypress Hill again and they were fun as always, if a little hungover from partying hard with Grace Jones (apparently). After that it was time to interview Die Antwoord which I was super excited about as I have been a fan of theirs since they appeared out of nowhere in January. I had tried so hard to catch their show earlier on and literally ran from one side of the festival to the other, but I got there just as they were finished their last song. I was SO gutted It is the hazard of working at festivals I suppose. I missed Kings of Convenience too.

Ninja and Yo-Landi seemed very sweet and humble, and genuinely overwhelmed by the amount of attention they’ve received. They have such a cool sense of style and I think Yo-Landi has the greatest hair cut of all time. She was so tiny and cute! She reminded me of Bjork a little bit in the way that she talks. Open’er is only their 3rd international festival but I think once their EP (out the end of July) and Album (out in October) are out they will go on to big things, especially considering all the famous fans they have. Yolandi actually turned down working with David Fincher to tour this year which is pretty cool! Instead they are working on their own film that will be directed by Ninja, based on their lives called The Answer. I can’t wait to see what they come up with! Their videos are so awesome.

Tomorrow we’ll be doing some filming on the beach in Sopot and then later on I’ll be interviewing Skunk Anansie so I better sleeeeep…

Sim xxxx

I have mostly been playing this on the non-broken PS3:

And amusing myself greatly by calling Cloud ‘Peniseyes’, Tifa ‘Tits’, and Aeris ‘Anal’.

Simple pleasures for a simple girl.

Sim xxxx

Further to my blog before last I have decided to volunteer at a local farm for one day a week, until my show run with MTV is done then I’m going to take a month out and work at an animal refuge in Guatemala.

My Mum’s been there and she said it was nice.

Sim xxxx

I WISH my Mum would find my skateboard, it’s like this one but in much better condition:

My Uncle gave it to me when I was a kid (it had been his in the 70s), and I hated it. I hated it so hard because it didn’t have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it and wasn’t flat and shit and made of plastic. Only now do I appreciate its true worth, now that my Mum has gone and lost it in self-storage somewhere. My Mum finding it would be the best Christmas/Birthday present for about ten years.

Please Mum, please find my skateboard…

Sim xxxx

Me and my Grandma. I dunno how old I am, but I look SMUG.