camera club heritage costume shoot

bonython hall 2006Tonight was the Heritage Costume Shoot for Camera Club... I took 150 (digital) shots (a new record for me on my digital camera)... but not one shot was really of a model (although I did manage a couple of sneaky shots right at the beginning, just so I have a record of who the models were.

I've learned my lesson with these "costume shoots" at the club... even when I shot up to three rolls of film, I didn't really get anything you would call useful out of them. Partly because the costumes are shitty and partly because the people they put in the costumes usually just don't work. This time was no exception.

They took two very cute little raver boys and put them in tailcoats... one of them had multicoloured hair and the other one had a tongue piercing and raver bead bracelets on for the love of Benji... Don't get me wrong, they were as cute as all hell, and if they had been in their street clothes, I probably would have spent all afternoon shooting them, but in tailcoats... er, no... and thus, my film camera never saw the light of day.

south australian museum 2006Stu and I elected instead to wander up and down the North Terrace precinct, photographing "stuff"... which since it contains the University of Adelaide, the Art Gallery, the State Library and the Museum, wasn't really a bad call... all architectural detail and whatnot. And also, as an added bonus, after dark, all of those buildings get lit up by giant floodlights...

fountain - silver and gold 2006Of everything we photographed, we probably got the most distracted by this little fountain outside the Art Gallery... Stu especially, and we got lots and lots of shots of it.

We wandered around for about two and a half hours all up, and the two of us had fun... possibly more so because it was just the two of us... we did have a variety of hangers on at various times, but for the most part we were doing the double act thing we do so well.

What I decided I do need to do though is take myself (probably in conjunction with Ma) to the Art Gallery and Museum... I haven't been to either in a really long time and I think I'm probably overdue. Whether that will translate into a photo opportunity or not, I don't know, but I think it's worth a shot.

Because I got Stu to give me a ride into town, we stopped on the way back to my place so he could grab some food, and I have to say that the smell of his AB (if you have to ask, you're not ready to know...) really, really tested my "No eating after 8:30pm" rule... but I just enjoyed the smell of it and didn't partake.

Current Mood: tired by happy

movies: kinky boots

kinky boots - inspiration comes from all walks of lifeMa and I took ourselves off to see the preview screening of Kinky Boots tonight, thanks to the free tickets I won... and I made sure I remembered the tickets this time by leaving about 10 post-it's all over my apartment.

It was actually interesting to see how many people there were in the line for the movie, all clutching their email printouts and their Cinebuzz Club cards, and how many people ended up in the theatre... who knew!

There is such a total difference between American produced movies and their English cousins... American movies are slick and pretty and clean and full of either attractive or at least average looking supporting actors, whereas English movies, other than the Jane Eyre/Bronte Sister type period pieces, are quite gritty and real and full of the most extraordinary looking people... but REAL people.

Kinky Boots is one of those gritty types of movies... think The Full Monty, but with a man in a frock instead of "average" strippers.

It's also a "feel good, based on a true story" story... man has problem, man thinks of solution, man seems successful, man has setback, man overcomes it, man seems successful again, man has major screwup, man seems to have failed, man is triumphant, usually with a little help from his friends/employees/team/family/etc. One of those... but within that formula, Kinky Boots actually works well.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (it's "Chew-it-tell Edge-oh-for" for the record), last seen, by me anyway, doing a turn as the villain in Serenity, does beautifully as drag queen Lola. I think mostly its the big pumped up lips...

Although I have to say, putting on my Queer Pride hat for a second, it's another "safe" gay performance... Lola is essentially sexless, and unlike just about every single drag queen I've ever met, wears her drag for things other than her performances. That, ladies and gentlemen, isn't a drag queen, that is something more like a transvestite or a transexual.

Having said that, it's not exactly in the order of a movie like To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar... where you wonder why the drag queens just don't defrock... Lola, or rather, Simon, does appear sans drag.

And there are some genuinely amusing moments in there... like Lola's entrance into the factory and the beginning of the runway show in Milan.

Oh, and I really, really want to get hold of Lola's Boots Medley: These Boots Were Made for Walkin' / In These Shoes / Cha Cha Heels / Going Back to My Roots / Yes Sir I Can Boogie...

yani's rating: 3 feet of tubular sex out of 5

montage monday: orange

orange 2006We return to the Monday Montage Colour Theme... Red and Yellow and Pink and Green, (I already did) Purple and this would be Orange.

This one is for Andrew.

After considering the whole "I have a free ticket left" situation, combined with the "There aren't any new movies I really want to see" and the "I'm not driving all the way to Marion to see a movie I've already seen" issues, I decided against going to see something yesterday. What with Casanova last Tuesday, Mrs Henderson on Saturday and Kinky Boots tonight, I think three trips to the cinema in a week, especially since we won't have paid full price for any of them ($8, $10 and free, respectively).

On the subject of movies, I watched Jaws for the first time on Saturday night. Yep, for whatever combination of reasons, I've never seen it, and figured I should at least give it a shot... it's a bit crap really isn't it... I only got a scare once, and that was from the floating head, since I didn't exactly see it coming. Other than that, the shark just looks really really fake. The best part was probably Quint's tale about what happened to the USS Indianapolis... oh and the cute 70's swimwear...

I started reading Close Range last night, the collection of short stories that Brokeback Mountain comes from... I only read the first story last night (and Brokeback just happens to be the last story in the book), but I'm intrigued enough by the first one and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

I still don't have a sofa! If I don't hear from them on Tuesday I will be giving them a call on Wednesday to ask them what the deal is... this is just getting beyond a joke... it's a month now!

Speaking of Tuesday... tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Tuesday, but since I have Camera Club tomorrow, and Ma is coming down tonight, I'm going to make up a batch of "pancrepe" batter a little later and we're going to do the pancake thing a day early.

Oh, and I added linkbacks to my posts... I don't know that they're working completely right as yet (there are posts that should have linkbacks that don't, stuff like that), and they do seem to list the links I make, rather than any links from outside, but it can't hurt, right?

Current Mood: a little out of sorts

my walk

my walk 2006I've been thinking for a while now that I kind of need a definitive post about my walking adventures... something I can link back to when I mention my walks, and that kind of collects all the info together in one spot.

And my dork rating just went through the roof with that statement... *rolls eyes*

For a while I've been linking back to the post I did with the map, but it's not the complete map, since I went to another stage after that post... so I decided I needed to redo the map and make a full-on walk post... so here we go...
Oh, and for the record, the Very Blonde Dog on the map is so called because it's blonde, and it runs up (inside the fence) and barks at people, unless you stare it right in the face... then it stops... stoopid blonde dog...

Current Mood: i'm a big dork... still...

i'm going to hell...

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)Very High
Level 8 - Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Current Mood: sceptical

movies: mrs henderson presents

mrs henderson presents - the show must go on, but the clothes must come offSince Ma and I still had one free ticket left over from seeing all those movies in December and January, and since it runs out on Tuesday we decided it would be a plan to go and see something this weekend while we still could.

We did talk about going to see something we'd already seen again, but like I told her, I was more interested in having a new experience that wasn't necessarily going to be good, rather than repeating an experience I'd already had.

And since we've seen everything that's out that we would want to see, we ended up going to see Mrs Henderson Presents. Michael over at Pipedreams mentioned it the other day, saying it was quite good, so I figured it was probably going to be a safe bet, although I wasn't completely convinced, I have to say.

We decided on going to a very early session (10am, basically when the cinemas open) down at Marion, so we hopping in my car and drove on down there a little early so we could grab some breakfast. As we drove up the ramp and onto the upper parking level near the movies Ma said something about us having to go to the box office separately because of the free ticket, and I swore for about a minute straight.

Yes, you guessed it... I left the fricken ticket at home on the bookshelf. Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger! I cannot believe I was just that stoopid!

Fortunately Ma had an ample supply of the $10 movie ticket things that they've been giving out (both all during January, and just about every week in Saturday's paper), so we ended up using those instead. But since we're going to see Kinky Boots on Monday and I have Camera Club on Tuesday, the free ticket will possibly go to waste. I thought about going to the movies on my own on Sunday, but there's not really anything on that I want to see, even on my own (I would have gone to Brokeback Mountain again, but it's still marked "No Free Tickets"). We'll see...

Anyway, back to Mrs Henderson.

I said to Ma on the way down that it was probably going to be me, her and a bunch of old people, seeing as how it was an English movie starring Judi Dench and we were going to the 10am session. I was nearly right.... There was me, Ma and two other people... one was a very old woman and the other was her daughter, not quite so old, but still getting up there.

On the subject of Dame Judi, I have to agree with Michael... "The movie stars Judi Dench and me loves her, so it's hard to go wrong. She's such an old terrier isn't she? Grrrr." Indeed! She just rocks in this movie, she's at her feisty best and dishing out the lines and the insults like a classy old drag queen... just brilliant. Bob Hoskins definitely holds his own against her though, and the two of them work wonderfully well together.

For those of us inclined towards boys, all the breasts on display are neither here nor there, but we do get Will Young in all his 40's suit wearing, big chinned glory... and I have to at least rent this on DVD to see whether or not Mr Young is visible with his kit off during one particular scene... unfortunately it was too fast for me to locate him (I'm guessing he was either hiding behind a piece of clothing or set decoration though).

Even without Mr Young's possibly nakedness, it's a very strong movie, and definitely worth seeing!

yani's rating: 4 tableaux out of 5

free movie tickets!

free tickets!Thank you Greater Union Cinebuzz Club... this means that Ma and I are off to see Kinky Boots on Monday night, for free! I'd totally forgotten I'd entered the competition until I got the email just now. Yaaaay!

Current Mood: i won, i won!

photo friday: graffiti geisha

graffiti geishaThis is another shot from last week's excursion to the Aquarium...

The aquarium place was in the middle of this pretty industrial estate, and next door was a former skateboard shop which was heavily grattitied (both before and after it was no longer open by the looks of it). As we were leaving I noticed this very cool geisha graffiti and asked Stu to stop the car so I could jump out and take a shot of it.

God bless digital cameras!

Current Mood: lovin' the geisha style

random brent hotness

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yaniblog wallpapers

wallpaper © yaniboyI'm not even going to pretend this is an original idea...

I noticed the other day when I visited Rico over at filthygorgeous that he'd created (well, either him, or webmaster Kahil) a Desktop Image image on the sidebar of his blog... and at roughly the same time, when I happened to look at my desktop, I realised that Webshots had thrown up this bee image that I took (and then added to my Webshots galleries and forgot about) onto my desktop.

So I'm looking at it and thinking "Damn that's a good image... and that bee is like pin sharp! Hmmmm..."

And my "Hmmmm's" are always dangerous, especially the ones that lead to much Photoshopping... before I knew it I had about eight different wallpapers done... (actually the hard part was working out how to do the little "yaniblog" logo thing in the top corner... after that they were really easy to make).

Which means that you too can now have an original yaniblog desktop image/wallpaper for your computer! It's right there in the right hand column between the "more about me" section and my blogroll... I'm not sure that it's going to show up on individual archive pages, so you'll probably have to go back to the homepage...

I don't know how often I'll change the image, basically whenever I get bored with one I guess, and there probably won't be any repeats. The wallpaper is also 1024 x 768 for two reasons... firstly because according to StatCounter, about 50% of the people that use my blog have their screens set at 1024, and secondly it's what I use... so ner!

Also the image doesn't seem to lose that much detail when it gets stretched, so you people who live with hugely enormous monitors can just stretch it and live with the results!

EDIT: All the photos I will be using, including this one, have been taken by me, and therefore © yaniboy 2006, all rights reserved... *grin*

Current Mood: all creative-like

muffin recipe

my muffins 2006
Cheese & Bacon Muffins (left), Banana Walnut & Sultana Muffins (right)

I made more muffins yesterday... when I was on the phone to Ma on Sunday night I mentioned I'd made Wholemeal Banana, Walnut and Sultana Muffins on Saturday, but they were gone now... and she asked why I'd bothered telling her if they were all gone... so I decided that I'd make some for her... then I decided I really wanted to make some savory ones as well as the sweet ones. So I got very industrious... I made a batch of Wholemeal Cheese and Bacon Muffins, then, while they were in the oven, I made a batch of Wholemeal Banana, Walnut and Sultana Muffins... it all worked out really well actually.

So I decided that I should share my muffin recipe. The only drawback is it doesn't make those big huge mushroom shaped muffins... if makes, well, little cake shaped muffins like in the picture. They're nice though!

So the official recipe goes like this... but I'll add my version in italics afterwards...

Banana Muffins

240g plain flour
5ml baking powder
pinch salt
pinch nutmeg
100g sugar
1 egg
80ml milk
80ml cooking oil
112g banana pulp mixed with 12ml lemon juice

1 cup wholemeal selfraising flour
pinch salt
pinch nutmeg
1/2 cup of raw sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup olive oil
2 mashed bananas mixed with a little lemon juice


Directions

Sift together dry ingredients. Beat egg, milk and cooking oil thoroughly. Make hollow in centre of dry ingredients and stir in milk mixture and banana pulp. Stir only until all traces of flour have disappeared, even though the mixture appears lumpy. Do not overmix. Spoon into greased muffin tins, two-thirds full and bake for 30-35 minutes at 190ºC. Serve with butter and honey.

So there you go... that's the standard version...

Of course, for the Wholemeal Banana, Walnut and Sultana Muffins I add walnuts and sultanas, but I pretty much play the amounts my ear... although I think I overdid the sultanas this time around.

For the savory versions... I replace the sugar with at least the same amount of grated cheese (in the ones I made yesterday I put in at least a "cup" of cheese), and banana is swapped for around two handfuls of bacon cubes or sliced bacon or sliced ham or some sort of meat product. The nutmeg comes out, and pepper and a large pinch of dried parsley goes in. Last time I made the savory ones, I also added some sundried tomatoes that I had left over too.

And because I use this totally groovy blue silicon muffin tray I don't need to grease it... the muffins just pop right out!

Current Mood: pleased with myself

movies: casanova

casanova - a partially true story about lies told, virtue lost and love foundTonight's movie of choice was Casanova...

To be honest, I wasn't completely sure what to expect... I'd already seen the very brilliant Casanova miniseries, so I had some idea that it might be a similar story. Other than a couple of a couple of plot points (his mother leaving him, and him falling for a woman named Francesca), the two stories were very very different.

Of the two, I think I enjoyed the miniseries more... it certainly seemed more believable (for the most part) than the movie.

Casanova, the movie that is, is a good old fashioned farce more or less... some of the payoffs at the end are signposted pretty far in advance, but it's still quite an enjoyable movie. Lots of running around, lots of mistaken and assumed identities, a little slapstick, and a few laughs.

But I'm a sucker for that whole historical time period, all frock coats and powdered wigs and buckled shoes and sedan chairs and whatnot (also explaining part of the appeal of two of my other favourite movies, Dangerous Liaisons and Plunkett and Macleane)... I'm sure actually living during that time period would have been a whole other experience, what with the smell and the disease and whathaveyou, but visually I love it... so the movie gets big fat bonus points for that.

It's also no secret that I'm a Heath Ledger fan... and when we first see Casanova, the sight of Heath, all frocked up as mentioned above, plus eyeliner.... mmmmm Heath in eyeliner... well, obviously, I had a slight moment... but that was before the introduction of Charlie Cox as Francesca's brother... big brown puppydog eyes... quirky smile... ponytail... *sigh*... He's adorabley cute!

And I won't spoil the set up... but the final image of him in the movie, walking down the steps in the wig... *double sigh and whimper*

On the downside, other than some of the obvious gags and some of the slightly silly plot, there were about three spots where the film seemed to have been speeded up slightly for some unknown reason... all, I think, in spots that required comic timing to make them work, so whether they just didn't time things right and had to speed up just a couple of seconds to make it work, or what, I don't know... but it bugged me when it happened... and, to me at least, it was very obvious.

The other thing that stopped me from enjoying the movie to it's fullest was the two guys sitting near us... they kept talking during the movie, and I ended up shushing them three times, once just after the movie started and a couple of times towards the end.

People, if you want to talk during a movie, do one of two things... sit in a spot where there's nobody around you, specifically as far away from ME as humanly possible... or alternatively rent a damn video and stay home... then you can talk all the way through it to your heart's content.

These two idiots also weren't helped by the fact that the idiot closest to me was wearing some kind of plastic jacket... I never saw what it was made of, but it certainly wasn't any kind of natural fibre, because it made that kind of plasticy shushing sound that those kind of jackets make. And he kept fiddling with it... sitting forward in his seat, then sitting back, then sitting forward, then sitting back... and at one point he was playing with the zipper... He came very close to getting a punch in the face... stoopid stoopid people... Grrrrr...

What I really need to do is get some of these Movie Manners Courtesy Cards from Glarkware!

yani's rating: 2 powdered wigs out of 5

i taste fruity, apparently...

cocktail
















You taste like a cocktail. Your slight bitterness is covered up by your fruitiness.

People love to consume you over and over again until you fill them with the warm intoxication of you.

How do you taste?
brought to you by
Quizilla

Found via Naked Boy Chronicles

Current Mood: slept really badly

montage monday: green

green 2006The Monday Montage Colour Theme continues... Red and Yellow and Pink and now Green... and if you can guess where I'm going with this you get a gold star and a cookie...

I have to say my favourite shot from this one is the second from the left on the bottom row... the back end of a seriously green car... that's just cool...

What a difference an hour can make... I got up an hour later than usual this morning (my own fault, because I stayed up late all weekend), and so I went for my walk at around 8 instead of 7. And now I remember why I like to go at 7... at 7 it's quiet and serene and I don't see too many people... at 8 it's people everywhere, rush rush rush... much less conducive to a restful environment.

And still on the subject of my walk... I noticed on Saturday that I had my belt on the very first hole... which is saying something when at one point I had been wearing it on the very LAST hole... so yaaaaay me! My pants continue to keep falling down around my hips... so much so that I've started wearing my belt around the house, to do housework and stuff. If this continues then I'll need to go shopping for new pants. Yaaaaay me again! Part of me kind of wishes that I'd weighed myself back when I started this whole thing, since it would have been nice to know how much weight I'd lost... but I kind of think that could have been a little scary, so another part of me is glad that I didn't.

On the slightly non-helpful weight-reduction front... I made muffins again on Saturday morning... whipped them up first thing before I washed the dishes and tidied up... Wholemeal Banana, Walnut and Sultana Muffins... they were SOOOOO good... unfortunately they're all gone now... I've been using wholemeal flour for a while now... I started using it for making pizza bases, now I make wholemeal muffins too. I need to blog the recipe soon I think, it's a really simple one, and I use it as the basis for about a million different muffin variations... I've made Cheese, Bacon and Sundried Tomato Muffins... Blueberry Muffins... Sultana Muffins... Mixed Berry Muffins... basically just about anything I have in the house that can be turned to a muffin...

Would you believe I still don't have my sofa back... I kind of expected a call after last Tuesday, since the woman at Le Cornu said the manufacturer only delivers to Le Cornu on Tuesdays... but no... nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero, bubcus... it better bloody well happen this Tuesday or I'll be slightly more cranky... this is the beginning of the third week... how long does it take to replace ONE piece of webbing. I know they have to take the sofa apart to do it, but still...

After I finished blogging about Skyshow on Saturday, my geographically absent buddy J hailed me on MSN... he'll be here at the end of May *does happy dance*... and then about a week later his English boytoy follows him out, which should be interesting... and then they go back towards the end of June. At least he and I will actually get to spend a little alone time before the boytoy arrives, catch up on all the gossip and such, without having a theoretical third wheel (okay, technically I'm the third wheel, but it's J I want to catch up with, so the boytoy gets to be the third wheel)... I've been told that I have to be nice to this boytoy... I don't have an overly great record with J's boytoys... there's actually only been one out of the three that he's dated since I've known him that I actually liked... and that relationship didn't last (mostly, I think, because J didn't get to be in charge of the relationship). Maybe that's the prerequisite for J having a long term relationship with someone... I don't like them... interesting...

And speaking of J always reminds me of Mythbusters, since we had a regular Monday "date" where he'd come over and we'd watch it. I forgot to mention in last week's ramblings that Mythbusters started a new season last week... yaaaaaaay! Adam and Jamie blowing things up again! Gotta love it!

What I'm not that fond of it all the Mythbuster-wannabe programs... not only the English quasi-version, Brainiac, which seems to think that it's audience is a backwards thirteen year old with the attention span of a goldfish... hence all the girls of questionable virtue in questionable outfits... but Australia just came up with it's own variation on the English variation, and since all the good titles were already taken, called it Clever. And it really isn't... one presenter stolen from another network, six third rate celebrities all of whom work for the network in question, at least in some regard... one science advisor who's claim to fame is that he used to work for the science show on another network, and it's all a bit crap really. Especially when Clever steals the science from Brainiac who stole the science from Mythbusters... and it lost some of it's relevance each time... Can you tell I wasn't impressed?

I also wasn't impressed by the fact that Network Ten chose to move the kickass show, Surface, from it's supposed 7:30 timeslot to an 11:30 timeslot, without any ads, any fanfair, nothing... it was only because I went looking for it on the Ten website that I found it... and next week it gets buried even further, being pushed to Sunday night at 11:30... stoopid network...

And just when I thought that my Sunday night's would be empty without Carnivàle... CSI returns! YAAAAAAY! And we finally got to see the second half of the Quentin Tarantino written and directed two parter, Grave Danger... so good... so very very good...

Current Mood: pleased

underwater reprise

starfish 2006Some left over photos from the aquarium visit on Friday...

I really like this starfish shot... the only problem is that it's just a little bit blurred... either I moved, which is likely, or else I should have switched over to macro mode on my camera. But the contrast of orange and blue really works I think. From memory, it did have all five of it's legs, but the one that looks like it's been cut off was hanging off the glass directly behind it...

lionfish 2006This lionfish shot worked out better than I'd kind of expected... since I used the flash on it because the tank was pretty dark... that is, if you don't count the reflection from the flash in it's eye.

Current Mood: content

skyshow 2006

SAFM's Skyshow 2006...

twinkles - skyshow 2006100 Man Hours Administration
50 Man Hours Designing & Programming the Display
300 Man Hours On Site Labour
3000m of Data Cable
2 Computer Controllers
80 Firing Modules
20 Tonnes of Fireworks & Equipment
Over 2650 Firing Cues
30 minutes

And 66 very fuzzy photos...

Okay, so my decision to go down and photograph the Skyshow fireworks didn't exactly work out to plan... every single shot had obvious handshake on it... on some of the shots it's almost rhythmic... like my heartbeat or my breathing... but on quite a few of the shots I actually kind of like the effect...

Backing up slightly... I should probably explain Skyshow... lifting from Wikipedia...

Beginning in 1985, Skyshow is an annual fireworks event held in Adelaide, South Australia. The half-hour fireworks display is synchronised to pop music and presented by local commercial radio station SAFM.

kaboom - skyshow 2006That about sums it up really... it's an institution, but it's kinda daggy... but then SAFM is pretty daggy too... (although I will admit, I have the radio on at the moment, tuned to SAFM, because they're playing all the songs that went into the mix tonight... and oooh... they're playing Mickey... the original Toni Basil version... damn I love that song!)

Damn those 80's childhood flashbacks...

I've been to Skyshow once, not counting tonight... with a big group of friends... but the year Ludo and I lived in the apartment on Jeffcott Street, he and I sat on the balcony with the stereo cranked up and watched it from there, since our place backed onto the parklands where the fireworks come from... we missed a little bit of the "low" stuff, but it was fun anyway.

Because I'm so close to where it happens, usually I stop whatever I'm doing when it's on and tune into SAFM, if only to listen to the mix they use, since it's usually fairly decent. If I stand on my bed and look out of the bedroom window I can usually see the very top bits of the fireworks, although even if I don't I can hear all the bangs.

flowers - skyshow 2006But since I have a digital camera this year I figured I wasn't going to lose anything by going down and taking some shots... so I tuned my mobile's radio to SAFM, plugged in the headphones and took off... and since some of the best vantage points are on my walking route, it wasn't like I was flailing around not knowing where I was going...

Although, having said that, the first place I did stop turned out to be the wrong place for getting an uninterrupted view of the fireworks, so I hightailed it further down the hill (if you check the link of my walking route, I was actually right near where the Psycho Alsatian lives).

I have to admit, I was a little paranoid about having my camera stolen or something, so I kept an eye out around me, especially on the packs of roaming teenagers... you never know with that lot...

I don't know what it is about fireworks displays, its really nothing but coloured explosions, but there were definitely a couple of points where I was just going "wow"... particularly when the heart shaped fireworks went off... I mean how do you make a heart shaped firework anyway?

But as I messaged Stu while I was walking home...

Skyshow is like bad sex... lots of hype... lots of noise... and its all over in 30 minutes...

red white and blue - skyshow 2006And because people come from all over the place to watch it, the roads are packed for HOURS afterwards... of course, because I live so close, I could walk home before other people had even reached their cars... haha... suffer suburbanites!

Current Mood daggy but pleased

photo friday: discus fish

discus fish 2006What a day...

It was another one of Ma's days in the city for her course thing, which meant that I had to set my alarm so I could be up at 6:30am instead of my usual 7am to do my walk...

That of course meant that I started my walk before the sun had technically come up... which just seemed really weird.

I got home, got ready, Ma rocked up, took her into town, came back, picked up a paper on the way and waited for my Camera Club buddy, Stu to turn up... and it's only just 9am by this point...

Anyway Stu turned up and we went down to this aquarium supply store place called Fish Haven, I think, to take some photos of all the fish. I only took my digital camera, since I wasn't sure if I really wanted to be bothered shooting fish, and definately didn't want to be bothered developing a roll of film.

It was good though... I took about 80 shots, most of them ended up with either blurry fish or flash reflection... and some of the others were a little fuzzy, but I managed a few good ones, like this Discus Fish (at least I think that's what it was... it was what it said on the tank anyway). I might post a couple of the other groovy shots in the next day or so.

So after Stu and I were done at the fish place, which we actually wandered around for about an hour and a half, he dropped me home, and I just managed to download and go through all the shots I took, and then get online ready to do a post, than Ma called me to say she was finished early and could I come and get her.

After that we went shopping for a little while, and now here it is, nearly 5pm and this is the most time I've had to myself all day.

Not that I'm complaining though, it's nice to be busy, it just feels like I'm now trying to squeeze the rest of my day into this evening.

Current Mood: busy day

random valentine hotness

Today's Valentine related Random Hotness comes from my absolutely favourite photographer of the male form... Howard Roffman! I know I usually give you all two images on Random Hotness Day, but technically there are four shots here (the hearts were added by me though)... this is Bryan and Tyler from Howard's book, Friends & Lovers.

bryan and tyler by howard roffmanCurrent Mood: mmmmmm hotness

south park yani

I realise that I've already posted about this once before, but it seems that there's a new pseudo meme going on all over the place... turning yourself into a South Parker.

JDD over at Gay Empire and his partner Oscar did their versions of each other... and Michael Guy took his inspiration from Terry's effort. There are definately a couple of people I wouldn't mind seeing do their own South Park selves over at The South Park Studio.

I did cheat one teeny tiny little bit though and add in the "yaniblog face logo" in Photoshop afterwards...

south park yaniCurrent Mood: still amused

heath ledger circumcised?

is he or isn't he?As I mentioned once before, I run StatCounter on my blog for stats and things, and one of the things that it records is a Keyword Analysis... basically, what keywords people are putting into search engines that get them here to yaniblog...

There are a few words or phrases that keep coming up... Ginch Gonch is one of them, including both of the models I've mentioned, Kolten and Tym... as are the words to the Josh Pyke song...

But I have to say that one of the ones that seems to come up every few days is...

"heath ledger circumcised"

This seems to invariably lead them to the ABC's of Me page... which I can pretty much guarantee ISN'T what they were looking for....

So the question then becomes... is Heath Ledger circumcised?

Well, given the available evidence, it's kind of hard to tell... looking at him, I would say yes, but other people have said no, and it's not completely obvious... so I figured maybe a little detective work was in order...

According to IMDB, Heath was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1979... and from what I've been able to find out, the circumcision rate for Perth in 1979-1980 was around 38%... which means that there's a 62% chance that Heath is uncut. It also means there's a 38% chance that he is, at least partially (as some people have suggested) circumcised.

So I'm going to plant my flag firmly in the uncircumcised camp (so to speak), but if more definite evidence comes to hand, I'll review my decision later.

Current Mood: amused

valentine's camera club

february competition entriesAnyone who's been paying attention to my blog should probably have worked out by now that I have a temper... although maybe not, because I'm not sure I've actually let it out to play and then blogged about it... and if I have I don't remember. Anyway, he lurks in the back of my brain, all loud voice and claws and teeth, and only very occasionally does he get let out... which is usually a good thing.

I know what you're all thinking, you're thinking that this is another diatribe about crappy Camera Club judges... but no... this is a diatribe about dumbass Camera Club members... or the committee in general, or more specifically the Prints Secretary (ie the guy who takes the information about the prints)... he's just one of those people who rub me completely and totally the wrong way.

Tonight was no exception... Suddenly, out of nowhere there was a new rule about only being allowed to enter two images in each category instead of the previous three... which is total and complete crap, firstly because this IDEA was only discussed briefly at the AGM, and secondly it hasn't been announced anywhere verbally... supposedly it was in this year's program, but who reads the fine print, I mean really... if you're going to change the rules like that I would expect that you made sure everyone knew about it. So basically I told him that I thought it was crap, and that I was putting all six of my entries in anyway.... and he just kept doing whatever it is he does to rub me the wrong way (which I think is that he just doesn't listen and is stubborn)... which is when my temper got let off it's leash... and I pretty much threw a tantrum... okay, not the most mature moment of my life, but hey...

Of course other members felt they needed to either try and shush me (which is NEVER ever the right thing to do when I'm venting, it just makes me madder) or give me that whole "we're all adults here blah blah blah" speech while I stood there fighting the urge to just punch the dude...

In the end I spoke to Daniel, the club president and he was under the impression that the rule would only come into effect from today when he mentioned it to everyone.

Stoopid dumbass Prints Secretary...

Anyway, all six of my entries stayed in (like I was going to take any of them out) and I calmed down a little... although I did then just avoid the people who had ticked me off.

The judge was the female judge from last year's portrait competition... and she was a little more coherent this time around, which was good, given last time's performance. Stu, Mikey, Cat and I all sat at the back and made smartass comments under our breath most of the way through, which is a change, because we usually sit up the front and make smartass comments.

I ended up with two 8's (Bridge over the Yarra, center top and Samuel, top left), while the other four entries (Classical, center... Doorway, middle right... Little Birdie, bottom left... and Torso, center bottom) all scored 7's... which is fine because I can enter three out of the four again.

Normally the first competition of the year is jam packed with entries, but I'm not sure whether it was this fictitious "two prints" rule, or the fact that it was Valentine's Day, or what, but there weren't that many entries. Probably a combination of the two to be honest.

We went for coffee afterwards, and I had a Lipton's Green Iced Tea, which is fast becoming my drink of choice when I'm out and about. While we were in the cafe there was this EXQUISITE blonde boy with very close shaven hair... he was just breathtaking... I'm sure he knew I was staring at him, but hey, what do I care.

As we left the cafe and we headed back to the clubrooms so they could get their cars and I could take my regular shortcut home, we were waiting at the traffic lights and I looked across as the guy waiting to cross the opposite way and I nearly fell over laughing... my comment to the others was "Could he BE more gay?"... the guy was wearing a pale, pale, pale pink polo shirt (and under the street lights it looked almost white), white pants and white thongs... he was also holding the leash for a miniature grey poodle... except there was a woman with him... who was holding the leash of an identical white poodle... and they were obviously together (unless she was a particularly frisky kind of faghag)... I couldn't help but comment that he wasn't holding the leash of the poodle who matched his outfit... and wondered whether just before he left the house he picked up the white poodle, looked at himself in the mirror and thought "This white poodle makes my outfit look gay".... No dude... your outfit makes your outfit look gay...

Stoopid dumbass metrosexuals...

And sitting in those really uncomfortable "church hall chairs" for three hours hasn't done my back any favours after Saturday's misadventures... so I need to roll myself off my chair and into bed...

Current Mood: Ow... back pain... ow

valentine

my life in blue valentine
Vincent's Valentine Wisdom from My Life In Blue

Current Mood: stoopid madeup holiday

montage monday: pink

pink 2006Okay... this single colour Monday Montage thing is now officially a series... first Red then Yellow, now Pink. Only a couple of these are new shots though, the others are just randomly took during my walks. Technically I'm a big liar, because I knew this was going to be a series back at Yellow, and since I now have three other colours already finished...

And given tomorrow's date, the choice of pink actually wasn't intentional in the slightest... especially since I'd planned originally to post this LAST Monday.

Speaking of tomorrow, it's also the first Camera Club competition for the year, so I picked out the entries I'm going to use yesterday, I just need to print up all the stickers and paperwork and stuff, hopefully sometime today.

Given all my soreness from Saturday's adventures, I wasn't really looking forward to my walk this morning, although once I was out there doing it, it actually wasn't a problem... I realised why partway into it... all the muscles that are sore, in my legs anyway, are my "stair climbing muscles", not my "flat ground walking muscles", which makes a big difference... unfortunately it also means that my walk didn't really loosen up all the tightness in the first group... so I'm still sore.

On my regular Sunday walk to get lunch at the 7-day supermarket, well actually AT the supermarket, rather than on the walk to it... where was I... oh yeah... at the supermarket yesterday I was standing at the register waiting to pay, when I was confronted with an excessive amount of German Tourist Buttcrack... the guy in front of me was said tourist, and fortunately he was kinda cute, but his jeans were riding a little too low for his own good and he kept bending over... first to put his shopping basket away, then to pick it up again, then to sign his credit card slip thing, and his buttcrack was pretty much on display the whole time... and even when he was standing actually, because his pants had slipped down a little and the back of his top was folded up on itself. It was kind of half way between interesting and me wanting to just say "dude, seriously, pull up your pants!"...

While I was in the supermarket, I was grabbing the Sunday paper and took a quick look at the ex-rental DVD's they have and spotted the 2 disc edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for $14.95... and of course, because it scored a 9 on my "yani rating", I had to get it. Especially since it's still much more expensive in the shops. On the downside, when I got home and was leafing through the TV Guide that comes in the paper, I noticed on the DVD review page that there is now a DELUXE 2 disc edition... bugger, bugger, bugger... of course if the only addition is an audio commentary by Tim Burton, I think I can pass, because that man, while a visual storytelling genius, gives really shitty commentary.

Also in the TV Guide was a "review" for the first Australian season of The Biggest Loser... now, given the way that Network Ten has been saturating every single ad break with ads for the show I'm kinda turned off watching it (and probably wouldn't watch it from the beginning anyway... I prefer to wait until the annoying and/or whiney participants have been booted off), but this "review" by either Phillip Koch (who also happens to be the guide's editor) or Richard Clune was seriously offensive, childish and totally unnecessary. Technically I should have stopped reading it at the end of the first sentence when I got to the phrase "roly-poly types". But no, I kept reading and ended up really pissed off at it. It's yet another local version of a reality show, so I don't really expect the "critics" to love it, but I also don't expect childish namecalling... I mean, the "review" actually used the term "fatties" when a review of any other show would have used the word "participants" or "contestants". I did think about emailing the paper to tell them exactly what I thought, but we all know that I won't, so I'll just bitch about it here instead. Phillip and Richard... you're both dicks!

While I'm on the teevee front, I watched the last two episodes of Carnivàle last night... the last two episodes ever... which just goes to show that teevee executives don't know what the hell they're doing, because they canned the planned six season show after two seasons... which of course leaves the story hanging way up in the air. And it's even more of a shit because I never got to see the first season... it was on at the same time last year's Big Brother, well, the eviction shows anyway, so I never saw it. I got totally hooked into it from day one during the second season though, and I'm kinda pissy that there isn't going to be any more.

And on top off all of that, my sofa still isn't back... I called them on Friday just to find out what was what, and because it had to go back to the manufacturer, I won't get it back much before Wednesday or Thursday this week at the earliest (since they only deliver back to Le Cornu on Tuesday)... but the woman I spoke to, Sharon, I think, said she would call me as soon as they get my sofa back.

Current Mood: still sore, but better

hard rubbish saturday

Ow.

There aren't quite enough letters in that word to describe how very, very, very, very sore I am this morning...

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

before and afterYesterday, after all the weird dreamness, I went up to Ma's place to help her sort out her spare room and take some stuff downstairs so it could go out for "Hard Rubbish Week" (where the council comes and takes away all the old fridges, furniture, etc that people don't want anymore) which starts (in her neighbourhood anyway) on Monday. I figured it would be some appropriate brownie points racked up, so why not... and I also wanted to see if I still had The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in amongst all the books I have in storage at her place (alas, it turns out I don't have it anymore).

I listened to my old Hottest 100 cd's on the way down... well, one of them anyway... I need to put them into regular rotation in the car, there is some great music on them!

Anyway, I got there, I got "liquored up" on a litre of Famers Union Iced Coffee, and read the paper, then at about 10:30 or so, we headed upstairs to begin the assault...

I really, really, really should have taken a "before" shot of the room (although the "after" shots I took were a little dark so I won't use one of them)... but it was my old bedroom when I used to live there, and my old bed is still in it... big ugly thing that it is, which used to be my Nanna's bed... and it was pretty much right in the middle of the room, with a crappy old cupboard on one side and a big trunk on the other... with all kinds of boxes under it, and with about a hundred tons of crap on top of it... plus the other two hundred tons of crap in the room...

Now Ma is a packrat... which of course means that I have not only the packrat gene, but serious packrat tendencies... however, I've kind of worked through a lot of them (as has she, to be honest) and can let things so much more easily now (although then about six months later I stop and go... "hey, whatever happened to that thing... I want that thing now", which is always annoying... a prime example of that is The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe mentioned above... but I digress). I looked at all the crap in the room, some of which was mine, most of which was hers, and figured it was probably a good idea to tackle the whole room, the wardrobe, the couple of cupboards out on the landing, the whole nine yards basically... although, to be honest, I really didn't have that much of a fully formed plan in my head at the time, I just knew that there was a lot of stuff that needed to be looked at and a lot of stuff to be thrown away.

showtunes!One of the scary things we found as were were moving stuff out of the room was Ma's old LP collection... and if they were played a lot during my formative years (ie before I really remember them), then it's no freakin' wonder I turned out to be a big homo... In amongst some slight scarier stuff were some of the campiest looking records ever... plus four lots of "Show Tunes" (The Sound of Music counts as show tunes, right?), plus Cliff Richard and The Shadows (what's really scary is that Ma actually has that first album pictured on the Wiki page about them) doing some version of Cinderella (I was afraid to ask)... plus some guys in really campy matching yellow shirts... scary stuff.

What's even scarier is that they could be worth money these days...

After we'd gone through and moved all of the boxes out, and made appropriate piles for "to keep, to donate, to dump, to investigate, and to trash" (in all three of the other upstairs rooms, I might add), and stripped the bed back to just the frame, I brought up the subject of getting rid of the ugly cupboard. Ma was a little resistant at first, mostly because she wasn't sure where all the stuff in it was going to go, but then I looked in the wardrobe and told her that pretty much all the stuff up in the top of it was mine, and I didn't want any of it anymore (it was mostly old English comics and Smash Hits magazines) and that most of the cupboard stuff could go in the wardrobe instead.

I ended up throwing the comics and magazines out of the upstairs window (it was actually Ma's idea, but then she didn't follow it through) into the big recycling bin that Ma has, while she waited downstairs to scoop up any escapees and throw them back in the bin, which was fun. Nothing like throwing things out of a window on a Saturday morning.

Anyway, we went through the cupboard, threw a bunch of stuff away, found some of Ma's old diaries and about a ton of her old craft stuff. And then I got the fun job of moving the cupboard down the stairs and outside...

It wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be... at least after we stopped it thumping on every other step on the way down. Once that was downstairs, and we'd shifted the bed and Ma had vacuumed the room, we decided that it was probably a good idea to move all the "to dump" stuff downstairs to get it out of the way before we tried to work on putting stuff back. Of course that then led to us taking most of the "to donate" stuff downstairs too... which ended up being a very, very large pile (but given Ma's preternatural packing skills, it all fit in the back of her tiny hatchback car), including five suitcases of various sizes, old jigsaws, about a billion old teddy bears and some really ugly old clothes.

By the time we got everything downstairs, it was probably about 3pm, which is the "before" photo at the top of this post. I swear, it was about 5-10 minutes later that we got the first "lookie loo"... a guy on a big ride-on mower thing... who had a good look at things as he went past. He then came back with someone, and I distinctly heard the sound of wheelie chair wheels on concrete as the chair vanished... when we went downstairs to look we discovered that the suitcase with the broken/old VCR and a couple of broken photo frames in it vanished too.

Midway through putting things back in the spare room, Ma mentioned that she was sick and tired of her old chest of drawers (the bottom of some of the drawers were kind of busted and it was big and dark and ugly and has annoyed her for ages now), so after a couple of very unsubtle proddings, and basically showing her where all the other stuff could go, she set about emptying it while I carried the drawers, and then, with her help, the main body of the thing, downstairs.

A couple of minutes after we'd put it down there, I saw the same guy, again, having a look at it, this time with a woman, and called Ma into the spare room to look. They disappeared, and then I head someone say "hello" at Ma's front door, which was open. I went downstairs and it was the aforementioned guy. He basically got as far as asking "That stuff out the back..." before I told him that it was all for hard rubbish, and that if he wanted it, to take whatever he liked.

He went off very happy and a few minutes later we saw the large cupboard disappear from where it was peeking over the top of the fence... no idea how he took it wherever he was going though. We kind of thought he was going to take the chest of drawers too, but when we checked, it was still there... although someone had turned it 90°, to maybe take a look at the back of it or something.

As always with this kinds of major cleanups, there are always some things that you just can't throw away, no matter what, and one of those things for me was my oldest teddy bears... I went through and threw a bunch of other stuffed animals into the "to donate" pile, but there were several, including a bigheaded misshapen rabbit with big dragqueen eyelashes and a grey furry mammoth/elephant that I just couldn't part with. The ones I know I can never throw away though are Big Ted and Little Ted (yeah, I was real imaginative with my teddy's names... I think the rabbit was Rabbit and the elephant was Elephant).

little ted and big tedThey're both a big mangy now... Big Ted moreso than Little Ted... Big Ted lost his eyes and his nose and had all four paw pads replaced with leather because I wore through the sheepskin... which is also why the patch on his left paw is so huge, that was the arm I used to tuck under my own arm when I carried him around. He also has a big old bald spot on the back of his head from where I used to rub the sheepskin with my thumb. In contrast, Little Ted's plastic eyes are just scratched to hell, but he's mostly in one piece. He does have more of the emotional scars on his psyche though, since he was the one I used to go to when I was little and had gotten told off or whatever and bascially cry all over him... a fact that Ma never ever lets me forget, and brings up at all appropriate opportunities... like yesterday... *rolls eyes*.

I'll have to dig out and early photo of me with the two of them, just for contrast how they used to look with how they look now (and also make everyone go "awwwww" at how cute and blonde I used to be a billion years ago), but I'm too tired to do that right now... so that can be a "later" job.

Anyway... eventually, after we'd moved everything back into the spare room that was going there, and Ma could actually get into her bed again, even though her bedroom looked a little like she'd been playing with something thermonuclear, and the spare room was now the tidiest and most organised room in the whole house, we decided that we were both too broken and stoopid to care anymore and went downstairs to watch Surface and let the broken really kick in. Then we went out to get some Indian food... mmmmm... Indian food good...

As we were leaving, these two little boys, probably around 8 and 6 wandered past and asked Ma if she was moving and why all these things (although we were down to pretty much the corner pieces from my old sofa, the big chest of drawers, the broken blinds, a functional Venetian blind, and a couple of other bits and pieces by this stage, especially since Ma saw an ad on teevee for cheap vacuum cleaners with a trade in, so she went and snagged the old Hoover back inside) were on the footpath. When Ma told one of them that it was because she didn't want the stuff anymore he piped back "My Dad would like that" and she told him that if his Dad wanted it, his Dad could come and take it away.

We got back around 8pm or so... and as we turned into Ma's street, we were confronted by the "after" shot... one couch cushion and the broken blinds...

Looks like his Dad did like that stuff...

Because I was so tired and so sore and so at that edge of insanity by that point, I just lost the plot and started laughing like a crazy person... and for a little while I just couldn't stop... it was funny, but it just seemed so much funnier at the time. In the space of five hours, the folks in Ma's neighbourhood had reduced a huge pile of hard trash to one bent pillow and a broken blind... go grassroots recycling!

I had planned to blog all this last night, but by the time I got home it was 10pm, and I was just too tired and sore... of course, now I'm sore AND stiff (and not even in the good way), and I'm pretty sure I used muscles yesterday that I haven't used in a looooooooong time...

So today is going to be a world of taking it easy I think.

Current Mood: broken and stoopid