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random blondie hotness

Thursday, February 02, 2012

I have no idea who this week's toned little blonde Random Hotness is... but I'm running a little behind schedule with everything this evening... I still need to finish drying the dishes and make sure everything is organised for the morning.

We're off to Melbourne tomorrow for "WhoTrip2012", so I've got three (progressively longer, louder and more annoying) alarms set for 5am just to ensure I get up at the right time... and it also means the blog will be "dark" until Monday...

Right... things to finish...

Current Mood:

#janphotoaday

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Anybody who follows me on Twitter or Instagram would have noticed that I've been taking part in FatMumSlim's Photo-a-day Challenge for January.

I've enjoyed it... it forced me to take at least one photo a day, it made me think about how best (within my plans for the day or what I had around the apartment) to exemplify the theme of the day.

And I made sure that I used the same Instagram filter for each shot so they would all match up as a group... which fortunately is one of my favourites anyway.

January Photo-a-Day Challenges

Day 1: Me
Day 2: Breakfast
Day 3: Something I adore
Day 4: Letterbox
Day 5: Something I wore
Day 6: Makes me smile
Day 7: Favourite
Day 8: My sky
Day 9: Daily routine
Day 10: Childhood
Day 11: Where I sleep
Day 12: Close-up
Day 13: In my bag
Day 14: Something I'm reading
Day 15: Happiness
Day 16: Morning
Day 17: Water
Day 18: Something I bought
Day 19: Sweet
Day 20: Someone I love
Day 21: Reflection
Day 22: My shoes
Day 23: Something old
Day 24: Guilty pleasure
Day 25: Something I made
Day 26: Colour
Day 27: Lunch
Day 28: Light
Day 29: Inside my fridge
Day 30: Nature
Day 31: Me again

Some were a little harder than others... especially since I don't do portraits (Days 1, 20 and 31)... others have been opportunistic grabs on the way from A to B (Days 8, 16, 21, 28 and 30), others were planned out days in advance (Days 10, 18, 25 and 26).

And I have to say that my favourites are Days 1, 10, 12, 21, 23, 26 and 28. But if you really pushed me it would be a toss up between Days 21 and 28.

The challenge for February is on FatMumSlim's website.

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 470

Monday, January 30, 2012

Suffering from a hefty dose of ennui just at the moment...

Unconscious Mutterings...

Every day :: Eat, sleep, poop
Rinsed :: Hair
Funeral :: Coffin
Whitening :: Teeth
I am :: You are, we are Australian
Cooperate :: Teamwork
Blazer :: Private school
Valley :: Uncanny
Difficult :: Me, quite often I'm sure
Service :: Bad

Current Mood:

arrietty

Saturday, January 28, 2012

I think Arrietty is the first time that I've reviewed a movie that I've seen in the cinema after already seeing it beforehand. Okay, maybe the second time, but the first one doesn't really count.

It was slightly different because I originally saw the Japanese version, and this was the (UK) English dubbed version. And it didn't really make a lot of difference to my enjoyment... I think there were a couple of dialogue changes here and there, but nothing major. And the odd occasion where any English translation is a little bit... clunky. Or else the original writing was clunky, but I prefer to think it's the translation.

It's based (in an even looser way than say, Howl's Moving Castle, which ravaged the original story... whereas I think just took the concept and the names of the characters and left pretty much everything else) on the Borrower books by Mary Norton, which I will admit that I'm not familiar with. I know they exist and I know a movie version has been done before with a very young Tom Felton, but that's about it. So I can't comment on what has been included and what has been left out of the source material (although looking at the previous movie, it looks like Arrietty had a little brother that didn't survive the translation).

Like almost all (if not all) of the Studio Ghibli movies, while it's a very beautiful and very Japanese looking movie (you know what I mean... it's instantly recognisable as a Ghibli movie), it is a little slow around the middle... but not horrendously so.

The voice cast is solid... nobody that really stands out as great or below par though, but I will give some kudos to young Tom Holland as the voice of the young boy Sho... it's not a straightforward role since Sho has to display a certain fragility that I think Holland gets just right in his performance.

I'm not sure if the fact that we saw the UK version made any difference, but the only thing that wasn't translated in the whole movie (other than a couple of unimportant signs) was the note that is left under the sugar cube. It would have been easy enough to do, either with dialogue... and it appears that the US version may have an onscreen translation. For the record, the note reads... *very mild spoiler*... "You forgot something".

Even with it's slight flaws, it's a very endearing movie, although not the best Ghibli has ever made.

yani's rating: 8 sugar cubes out of 10

pervy summer shopping

I always get the shopping done so much quicker when Ma is getting her hair did...

Less than half an hour this time, even if I didn't go into Target or go across the street to Coles/Woolies for anything.

On the downside it was one of their Stocktaking Saturdays. I get that they do it on a Saturday morning so that they can call in the maximum number of teenage part time staff (as well as others I'm guessing come from a temp agency of some kind)... but Saturday morning... seriously.

Anyway, I did the Supermarket thing around the Stocktaking thing, got one of the competent Checkout Boys (seriously, this boy make look completely vacant, but he's one of the few who uses his initiative when packing the stuff into bags) and made it home, unpacked, read the paper and was half-assedly watching kid's TV on ABC3 when Ma arrived.

And it's been another hot day, and we still didn't really have much we wanted to do, so we decided to go and see a movie at Marion and use the free passes I got as part of the "earlybird prize" for renewing my membership at the gym.

But first we needed to stop at the Village so I could bank the $190 worth of silver coins I bagged up earlier in the week. And I was served by a woman who seemed to either be really new, or else was a little bit stupid. Plus, bank staff really should be able to add 90, 60, 30 and 10 in their head, right? I mean even I can do it and I'm shithouse at Math.

Then we drove (in my car, naturally, because of the air-con) down to Marion.

You know those days when you go to a major shopping mall and you drive around and around and around and around and around and around the area you want to park in and it takes forever for your particular path to coincide with somebody actually getting to/in their car and giving you a space?

Today wasn't one of those days. It was a "Oh, I'll go down here... oh look, people going to their car... oh, they're going to the next row... wait, no they're not, it's that car there... waiting, waiting... SPACE!" kind of day.

I like those days.

So we parked, went and swapped the bits of paper I had for bits of paper that would let me into the cinema and then wandered about a bit.

And wandered over to the toy department in Myer and went through all the Lego minifigs they had in the box on the counter. Because I'm tragic. And got two of the major ones that I really wanted... so I'm happy... for now.

Then we grabbed some water and some grapes from Coles and headed off to the movie (more on that later).

When we came out of the movie we wandered around a bit and got something to eat.

There is something about Westfield Marion during the Summer... and that something is tall, tanned, buff, tattooed, lithe, blonde, redheaded, singlet wearing, half naked, slightly bogan dudes. Not all at once you understand... although often many, many of the things all together. If I wasn't already hot and sweaty, it'd make me hot and sweaty. In a word... phwoar!

Also, buff, tanned, blonde twenty-something twins. Lordy.

Anyway...

That was about it really... we wandered about, I perved a LOT, we left.

Current Mood:

photo friday: melbourne street funk

Friday, January 27, 2012

I'm... in a funk. I think. Actually I don't really know.

It's all the things I've mentioned before... it's the weather, it's work being incredibly dull (today was really, really dull given that almost everyone seemed to be taking the post Australia Day Friday off), it's the feeling that I'm completely unprepared for the trip to Melbourne next Friday (which I'm not at all unprepared for really... although I do have a bunch of things to check and do before we leave... so I don't know what that's about), it's just... I dunno.

But it kind of results in me not really being able to concentrate on anything properly.

So I think I'll just leave you with this Melbourne street art and wander off...

Current Mood:

random oz hotness

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Today's Random Hotness happens to coincide with our national day, Australia Day.

I have no idea where these particular naked beer drinking, barbequing, surfing, cycling gentlemen are from, but it's exactly the kind of party I wouldn't mind attending!

So long as someone offers me a beer and a sausage...

Happy Australia Day everyone!

Current Mood:

pre australia day musing

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

On the eve of Australia Day... here's a collection of the places I've been around the country in the last twelve months. Which I actually find really, really amazing given that distinct lack of travelling for the first 30 years of my life.

I'm also slightly freaking out that this time next week I'll be packing my bag for Melbourne. And then less than two weeks after we get back, the Fringe starts! February is going to be massive!

This bout of hot weather seems to be eating away at both my brain and my patience like acetone dissolving styrofoam. Normally I would suggest I wasn't sleeping well because of the heat, but it's not like I have trouble getting to sleep and I'm not waking up during the night. I just think that maybe the quality of the sleep I am having isn't so great.

Or maybe it's just that the world is full of petty annoyances...

Like the fact that my employment agency is making me fill out every single bit of paperwork again as though I was starting with them for the first time. So I spent about 45 minutes this morning filling my name in about a dozen times on various bits of paper. On a number of them I really just wanted to write "see the previous forms because nothing has actually changed".

And the fact that when it's hot like this I just don't want to be bothered tidying the house up, so it all feels a little blah.

Although the world is also full of things that are good...

Like the fact that the sixth series of the Lego Minifigs is finally available in Australia! I knew this because Ma brought me two figures yesterday, so today I figured I'd head over the Myer just to see if they had them in yet. Turns out they did and there was a woman standing at the counter with one of the staff going through and essentially feeling the packs looking for certain ones.

I could have hovered around waiting for her to go but instead I walked up said "can I join in?"... because I'm as tragic as hell. Fortunately there was a second box so I spent about 20 minutes of my lunch break going through and feeling up EVERY! SINGLE! PACK! in both of the boxes to try and find the ones I wanted from this series. And I think ever single staff member from the toy department wandered past while I was doing it and asked if I needed any assistance... and I was all "no, I'm good, just feeling up the merchandise".

It turned out to be a good plan because not only was Myer having a "buy 2 get 1 free" sale on everything in the toy department, but out of the six I bought, three of them were the ones that I specifically wanted (one was okay, the other two were duplicates). Of course, because I was nice and handed over a couple of the ones that the other woman was looking for (for her daughter... so she was after the girl/female figures), I still need to stand around and feel some more packs to try and find the others.

And even though the cool change doesn't come in until Saturday afternoon, I'm still going to enjoy having the day off tomorrow for Australia Day. Not that I really care about the actual day, but hopefully I can get the house a little cooler.

Current Mood:

tinker tailor soldier spy

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

If you're looking for something layered, occasionally complex, but beautifully performed, then Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is your kind of movie.

It very much feels like they've taken the bag of excellent male British actors, turned it upside down and out has fallen a sublime cast...

Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy... they're all amazingly good.

Oldman really does steal the show as the protaganist, George Smiley, though. He loses himself in his roles at the best of times, but I don't think I've really seen him in anything quite like this before.

But he has always been one of those actors that while you always recognise that he's Gary Oldman, he's never just playing himself. There is always so much character there. And Smiley is no different. There's no hint of Jim Gordon or Sirius Black or Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in his performance.... it's definitely somebody new. And it's beautiful to watch.

I was also impressed by Cumberbatch... although in a lot of ways his character feels a little bit more like it's designed to be the audience's entry point into this work... but the role is a world away from his performance as TV's latest Sherlock Holmes.

But essentially everyone who appears on screen is brilliant.

The plot is more than a little convoluted at times... and there are flashbacks and flashsideways switching of time and place that are occasionally jarring or at least confusing. And I did work out who "done it" as it were quite early in the movie... but that was more about a hunch based on actors that turned out to be correct rather than the plot being transparent.

And while I understand that everyone who goes to a movie goes with their own particular set of baggage and essentially everyone sees a slightly different movie because of that...

But there really was a whole bunch of very British, very repressed, very upper class, very "public school" homoerotic sexual tension going on throughout this movie! Of course it didn't help that I was getting the main character slightly mixed up with Guy Burgess who was the inspiration for the movie Another Country (who also happens to feature Colin Firth, oddly enough).

Even so, there's a thread of the queer that seems to run through the base of the movie. Or that could just be me.

It also looks amazing! Somebody said to me recently that a movie they'd been watching perfectly nailed a certain time period... and this does too... everything feels very grubby and dark and real but also perfectly of the era (the 1970's). But it's not in your face about it... it's just beautifully authentic (or at the very least it feels that way, since I wasn't actually running around London in the 70's).

To pare it back to it's essence, it's a wonderfully written (slight plot confusion notwithstanding), beautifully acted and wonderfully detailed movie.

yani's rating: 9 chess pieces out of 10

unconscious mutterings 469

Monday, January 23, 2012

I shaved off the proto-beard yesterday... it lasted for either 23 or 26 days (I can't actually remember when/if I shaved during the week after Christmas). It was straggley, half-assed and only looked good from certain angles.

Can somebody point me in the general direction of this post if I ever say I'm growing another full beard?

Also, I fucking hate Summer/hot weather more than I can possibly articulate...

Unconscious Mutterings...