The Afterword

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I sent a message to another member of the massive (I won’t say who), to ask why he had chosen his particular picture. I thought it was a splendid pun on his username. I received an email back confirming my suspicion.
So why did you choose your particular profile pic? Is it someone you admire? does it show your secret side?
Mine? All mine show have shown a fez, (the best headgear ever).

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  4. A picture of Babe Paley in Vogue. It’s from a photography exhibition I went to recently which was largely disappointing apart from this one. There’s just something about the look on her face…

  10. The Silver Surfer, Norrin Rad, Herald of Galactus, Soarer of the Spaceways.

    Because when I’m not posting on here, I roam the cosmos at faster-than-light speeds searching for new worlds to be devoured by my master.

  15. My current persona is a Mervyn Peake illustration for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Peake’s writings and drawings are a constant source of inspiration. Don’t shoot the albatross!

  19. Michael Nesmith of them Monkees. I made it my Twitter pic early on and it seems to have stuck as my brand. You’ve got to brand yourself, you know.

  23. Well, it’s a fifer, innit? It’s by Edouard Manet and I quite like it. Of course, it has sod all to do with the fact that I am a native of the Kingdom of Fife, which is the origin of my nom-de-net.

  26. It’s how I got my nickname. I started a band around 1979. Some of us also did stage musicals. We were in the pub after rehearsals, trying to find a band name. On the back of a musical score were a list of other musicals published by the same company (Chappell, I think it was).

    One of them was Jorrocks, written by the same dude that wrote Half A Sixpence. We became ‘The Jorrocks’. I picked up the nickname when workmates heard the name of the band. Only a very few people still know me a Jorrox now.

  27. Ray n’ Maggie from Love and Rockets by the wonderful Jamie Hernandez. It reminds me of the GLW and me before kids. Love it so much we used the pose for a proper photoshoot.

  30. My avatar is annoyingly metametameta.

    It’s a woman from the cover of a 1991 guidebook to Berlin. I confessed to the AW to falling in love with this noble fraulein in my tender-hearted youth, and one of our number had the smarts to track the image down, so there she is.

    It’s a way of saying I am just as much of a dumb-ass as I was when I was 17. And I dig crazy chicks.

    (if you’re experiencing deja vu, this is an answer I gave to ContraryArticle last week)

  31. I am a man who changes his Facebook profile photo more often than I change my underpants. So here I just took the first photo that came to hand.

    It’s a tree in our local square in Kärrtorp . My daughter Zoe is swinging on the feminist swing. And in the background is Reflexen, our wonderful local fleapit.

  37. From the cover of the 1980 compilation, Axe Attack. K-Tel’s finest moment, responsible for introducing many an unsuspecting young thing into the joys of buying records with devils on the cover.

  38. It’s purple, my favourite colour (which I have gone on about at least once in the old blog) and a star as I make iridescent shell mosaics in the shape of stars.

  42. Mine is hopefully obvious. I tend to use things I might have picked as badges in the early 80s. So Trojan or Tamla, or a Rickenbacker guitar have all featured as avatars. And when I’m not doing that I used to do monkey pictures in various online places over the years. May revive the monkey habit. So to speak.

  43. It’s a version of the famous His Master’s Voice logo that I’ve got standing on top of a speaker in my home, made with a plastic pig and a pencil sharpener in the form of a funnel gramophone.
    I thought it appropriate because the gramophone was/is the Afterword symbol.
    I sometimes use it as an image when I make mix-CD’s for people, under the name of “His Farmer’s Voice”…

  45. I’m no looker, and usually look like terrible in photographs. When I rejoined I flicked through the (few) photos on my phone and found one of me just after my daughter had tried to paint my face. It seemed an amusing one to use. When I uploaded it, it was rotated through 90 degrees, which made it even funnier, particularly when cropped. So I stuck with it.

  48. I wanted it to be a pic of a 1979 early version NR500 Honda. Anyone on here who has the faintest idea what I’m on about, fair play to you.
    But the file was too big.
    So I made it my favourite akkadakka album instead.

  49. It’s a close up from Everything Everything’s first album ‘Man Alive’. I also love foxes & I’m dressing up as Mrs Fox for World Book Day this Thursday!

  54. Hang on, I didn’t add one, and yet…

    Ah.: “If there is a Gravatar associated with your account email we will use that”

    And, it turns out…

  58. Nickname when I was doing my apprenticeship was Reg (real surname close to “Perrin” (if you mishear it slightly), hence the Leonard Rossiter connection.
    However, my natural stance of hands on the back of hips, gut pushed forward and general dithering in speech and mannerisms marks me closer to Rigsby in character.
    (The grotty cardigan just tops the whole comparison off)

  59. I typed ‘Smudger’ into Google Images not knowing what to expect and the first few hundred pictures were of a train off Thomas the Tank Engine called Smudger. Never knew it existed until then.

  60. It’s one of the few pictures of me which doesn’t make me want to punch myself repeatedly in the face. Mangled through PaperArtist so you can’t really see me, natch.

  62. It’s a portrait of me by the C19 illustrator Tenniel which appeared on the label for The Famous Charisma, on which my first album purchases appeared. A rather more colourful version graces my upper left arm.

  63. When I joined Twitter I read that it was a good move to add some kind of pic, rather than just retaining the egg logo. So I grabbed almost the first thing that came to mind – nothing more profound than that. I suppose I’m comfortable with something frivolous and stupid – rather than something more personal (like a pic of Bobby Moore, a boyhood hero, or the hook and cross BOC symbol, a long time favourite band). Having chosen it I didn’t feel I could change it, so it’s remained on Twitter and also joined me here, not least as I use the same name.

    I quite like the way people routinely change their pics on Facebook, but that’s where I’m using my real name.

  64. I was the one Hubert contacted. He was very kind to say he thought it a splendid pun, but I just thought to be Pajp (or “pipe”) on the one hand and “not a pipe” on the other was quite fun.

    As I told Hubert in my e-mail, just before I joined the Afterword, my wife started calling me ”Pajp”. I don’t know why, but I thought it a good name to use on the site. My wife is Hungarian, so I adopted what I thought would be her spelling of the name and then the Magritte picture came to mind.

  66. Fluff Freeman. A DJ I loved when I listened to his Saturday rock show back in the early 90’s on Radio one. There are MP3’s of his 70’s Radio shows available on ebay, I bought them and they’re great to flick thru on the commute with ipod/headphones. Fingers crossed he remains a saint in my eyes and never dragged into the youknowwho shite of DJ’s past. A legend!

  69. Its a photo I took of my shadow, a communications horn and rainbow coloured tarmac in the grounds of Clitheroe Castle. It’s bright, anonymous(ish), in the town I was married and one I have yet to better. Also found on Twitter.

  73. It’s my Linn Sondek: served me well since about 1982 and probably my most-prized possession . The Ittok turned up about 10 years later. I do love vinyl.

  74. It’s the “beachball with claws” alien from the sci-fi film Dark Star. On the old site I had a fisheye lens image of the crew but this time out I opted for the pesky alien. Dark Star is the one film that reminds me most of my carefree teenage self; it reminds me that the world (and indeed the universe) is still full of infinite possibilities. I watch it when I want to remember that being a proper grown up doesn’t have to stop me from being a proper kid.

  75. Tom Bqker (Doctor No.4) describing Jon Pertwee (Doctor No.3) as a “tall light bulb who just glitters”.

    He also described him as an ” insufferable know-it-all that I avoided at every opportunity” but Doctors never get along with their different incarnations

  79. As a representative of the NoProfilePic clique, I couldn’t help noticing, while browsing the “The Massive” link looking for familiar names, that a few of the (am I supposed to call them) tiles we’ve been awarded are a bit, ahem, Swastika-like. As someone who feels no desire to “pic up”, I’m glad the abstract I was allocated was not that of certain others.
    If you feel your tile betrays a sympathy for a totalitarian regime, or genocide in general, can you switch it for another tile, or is it like Countdown when you get a “Q” but no “U” and you just have to make do..?

  80. It’s Goldfinger and Oddjob on the golf course.

    I joined a golf website and when I registered they said “Add a photo so people will remember you better” so I picked the first golf related thing I thought of. I used the same photo when I signed here

  82. The first music I listened to was on this particular type of radio, hence the username. I wish I had found something that would tell more about what I like, my passions, but I would be still searching, so it is this radio.

    As a child, I used to think that an old radio would only play music from the time it was created (fifties radio fifties radio program, seventies radio, what was nowadays music), and in one way, it was true.

  88. I woke this thread up from the dead partly because it amuses me to read people’s descriptions of avatars they no longer have. (Including me – I have never had a crush on Cosmo Smallpiece)

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