it's time to go...

image © endemol southern star pty ltd 2006Like I said last year, it's time to go... Big Brother.

After fourteen weeks, fifteen original housemates, six intruders, two removed housemates (who didn't show up on the finale show I'm happy to say) and their two replacements.... that's twenty three housemates in all, which, I'm sure has to be the most housemates ever in, if not any BB house, then it's certainly a record for Australia...

After two Insiders (can we not do that again next year thanks BB), a mother and daughter combo and a turkey slap.... after more controversy, nudity, relationships and lies... after 14 mentions here on my blog, 106 website quizzes and over 250 hours of television...

The winner is... Jamie...

Which, I have to say, I didn't expect... I was sure it was going to be Camilla... and it also means that in the last three years, I haven't picked the winner of BB once... it's always been the runner up I was rooting for.

I must admit I really didn't understand the way the final voting graph showed up tonight... there were more evicts than saves, but yet the total for both of them still showed as a save... so I didn't quite get that one... but the end total was Jamie on 53% and Camilla on 47%...

This feeling is so weird every year... I'm all elated but at the same time a little depressed... it's all over... no more... it's that Post BB Sad...

I did really enjoy the way they did the finale though... with bringing all the housemates back into the house and letting the final two get their "Oh God!" and "You look so good" comments out of the way...

And then leaving the two of them in the house right up until the end... obviously the BB Wish Faerie was listening to my post this morning... since we got to see Jamie go insane after being announced as the winner, and then left on his own in there to run around like a crazy person.

He's a sweet boy though, even if he won't pull his pants up to save his life... part of me just wishes he'd never gotten involved with Katie though.... he could probably do better... oops... did I say that out loud?

One thing that I thought would have been really cool as Jamie left the house would have been if they'd turned all the lights off, leaving just the Diary Room anteroom light (and the passage beyond) lit... but that's just me, and I'm always up for a bit of ham fisted symbolism...

At any rate, $426,000 should at least mean Jamie can buy some actual clothes, and maybe get a decent haircut...

Well done Donkey Shlong...

Current Mood: post bb sad

monday musings: sunrise

sunrise this morning 2006No montage this week... I took my camera out with me this morning to do something, but honestly, although I was up much earlier than I have been for weeks, I just couldn't be bothered... so instead, this is this morning's sunrise... and a good advertisement for underground power cables...

I got visited by the Census Faerie on Saturday evening... the nice lady who's doing my area swung by to give me all the paperwork and whatnot... it's on 8 August, which is actually a Camera Club night, so I'll probably do the paperwork in the afternoon some time... especially since I can do it online for the first time this year... which should be interesting... It's weird... the census happens every 5 years... but I actually don't remember 2001 census... hmmm... well maybe I do, but not well... but I do remember the 1996 one clearly because I was living with Ludo at the time, and he refused to put his details down (can't remember if he did in the end or not)... he was such a tosser sometimes...

After my adventures yesterday, I realised that part of my big toe is numb... the whole left side of the big toe on my right foot, and a little bit of the left side of my foot feels like I've been sitting on it and my foot went to sleep... but without the pins and needles... I'm guessing it's temporary and probably has something to do with kneeling on a hard tile surface for too long... or else I just pinched a nerve somehow...

Oh, and I called about that parking fine I got... and was served by an overly perky sounding girl called Crystal (which just sounds too Big Brother related to me), and she basically told me that I was shit out of luck and that the road rule was a valid one (well DUR Crystal, I did used to do the court reporting for the minor traffic infringement offences when I worked for the Magistrates Court, I knew that)... but if I wanted to big and moan some more, I'd have to put something in writing for them to review... and after looking it up, I would have to show that "the conduct allegedly constituting the offence was merely a technical, trivial or petty instance of a breach of the relevant enactment"... which I actually think that it was... So I might put together an email in the next day or so and shoot it off...

I made an appointment to have my hair cut tomorrow... would you believe it's been about two and a half months since I last had it done? And it does really need doing... it's very much at that stage now... Unfortunately, because I left it so long, I'm fresh out of hairdressers... Rachael, who I was going to get to do it, has gone off to have her baby and do the whole mother thing... and Kathy, who was my regular hairdresser for ages, hasn't returned (if she actually is going to return) from wherever it was she was going (back to Queensland I think)... so I'm going back to one of the girls who cut my hair a couple of times in the past (before I ended up with Kathy I think), Christie... maybe I need to find a new salon... you know, in all the years I've been having my hair cut at salons (which technically isn't as many as you might think, since my aunt used to be a hairdresser at some stage, and I spent the first ten or so years of my life having her cut my hair), I've never knowingly had a gay male hairdresser... and yet Ma can't seem to get anything but big gay hairdressers...

After the nightmare I had back in April installing my new Norton Anti Virus software, my computer has suddenly developed a random error between Norton and, I think, Office... JOY! They're just not playing nicely... I keep getting one of those "reinstall office" type pop-up boxes, which then tells me that Norton doesn't support the "Repair" function and I should uninstall and reinstall it... screw that... I'll just put up with the little pop-ups for the time being... they're not that frequent...

Now, I know this is going to make me sound like a massive lamo (lameo... lame-o?), but I made sure that I got one of those fresh pasta and sauce things (I think it's San Remo pasta and Latina sauce) for dinner tonight... which in itself doesn't sound so lame... except for the fact that I got it specifically... I'm not sure it's a tradition or anything, but I have done it for a fair few... actually probably for every Big Brother finale, even when I didn't watch the series. Yeah, I know... big lamo... Interestingly, the first year I did it, I'd only really watched the Uncut shows, but watched the finale anyway... and grabbed the pasta and sauce up on the way home from work as a quick and easy dinner... but while walking home I then proceeded to trip and fall, tearing up both my work pants, and my knee... and ended up sitting, eating dinner and watching the finale with my leg up on the folding table so I didn't bleed everywhere... tragic really...

And now on to my penultimate Big Brother rambling... can you feel the excitement... can you... no, me either...

Okay, I will admit, I am kind of excited about tonight... sure, it's not the final two I would have liked since David was evicted last night... but I'm still really eager to see what happens with the finale. I just wish they still kept the housemates in the house when they announced the winner... and made the winner pace back and forward collecting their thoughts for half an hour while they interviewed the runner up... rather than bringing both housemates out of the house and announcing it on stage. I know they do it so they can milk the moment and leave the announcement until the very, very, very last moment (which I'm guessing won't be much this side of 10pm, even though the show, which starts at 7pm, is only supposed to run until 9:30... you would think, after all this time, they would just say, yes, we know it's going to run long, it always runs long, lets just say it's going to go until 10pm...

The other thing I'm very willing to hold my hand up to is crying like a big girlyman on and off all the way through last night's BB... first, during the daily show when the housemate's Mamas (and Camilla's best friend) came in... I actually nearly cried just reading about it on the website... but watching it, I did cry like the aforementioned girlyman... and weirdly, when Camilla had the cry/laugh reaction sitting by the pool, I was having the exact same reaction right along with her.

Then, after David's unfortunate eviction, when they showed a lot of him being emotional and stuff, I cried again... and then when they reunited him with Sherif, I cried A LOT... and was busy going "Awwwwwwww" (especially when Gretel shooed Sherif offstage so she could ask the 10 Questions, and David just wouldn't let Sherif's hand go as he walked away)... although I did note that they went to a really, really, really wide arena shot just after they were coming up onto the stage... seemingly, just in case the big gay farmer and his (actually not that hot and slightly French sounding) dark and swarthy lover decided to have, like, a man kiss, and scare the children and old people... big raspberry for whoever was in charge of the camera choices there... we had to watch Krystal and Gaelen snog up close and personal... wasn't that the whole point of David going into the house, to be treated equally!

Actually, it was very odd, I woke up at 6:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep... mostly because I kept thinking about David... well, David and Sherif actually... and the fact that I amused, having put together various things that David had said over his time in the house, to think that at some point overnight Sherif probably had his legs up over his head with David showing him JUST how much he'd missed him these past three months... but it was still very odd because it was an amused thought rather than a big sexual thought...

Now it's down to Whingerella and The Headband... aka Camilla and Jamie... although I have referred to Jamie by other names in the past. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's going to be Camilla... it's just a feeling... We'll have to see...

Current Mood: excited and a little nervous

sunday sauna supposed sexual safari

spa boyYep... I did it again...

Since today is the last Sunday of the month, it's also the Bears in the Mist day at the sauna... Honestly, I'd thought about it for the last few days after having seen a mention of it online (after not being sure whether or not they were still doing it), but wasn't completely sure whether I was going to go or not...

I managed to get myself organised and do everything I had to do this morning (check my blogroll, get some lunch, read the paper, finish up watching a DVD, etc), so by the time 1:30 rolled around I still wasn't sure one way or the other and figured I would do the same thing I did the first time I went to the Bear afternoon, and head over there, see if I could get a park, and if not, well, then I'd come home and find something else to amuse myself with... maybe take a drive and try and get a Montage happening for tomorrow...

It's probably a really dumb way to make the decision, especially since the particular spot I park in never actually seems to be occupied, so I pretty much know I'm going to get a park if I do down there.

And naturally, there was a park, so I took myself on in, paid, changed into my towel and did a wander... it seemed to take a really long time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness this time around for some unknown reason... which was kind of amusing later, when I was walking through the same spots but now with near perfect night vision... weird.... eyes are weird... people are weird...

On the plus side I didn't run into anyone I didn't want to see... okay, specifically that would be Marc... which was lucky, because I don't actually know what either of us would have had to say to the other if we had stumbled across each other. I'm sure he would have made some lame ass excuse and I would either have blown him off (the "off" in that sentence being important) or been an even bigger wuss and forgiven him... but it wouldn't have been good. Tres awkward...

On the down side I didn't run into anyone I did want to see... well, anyone that I already knew anyway...

I did see one of the guys that was there on the first Bear day I went to... I don't think I mentioned him before, but he has the most amazing tattoos... one massive tribal piece on one shoulder and this great arm band on the other arm that's actually elephants... I know, it sounds weird, but it's beautifully detailed. Anyway, he was there again... but I didn't speak to him this time (I complimented him on his tattoos last time... turns out he was American)...

There actually didn't seem to be THAT many guys there today actually... definitely less than the previous two times I've been of late... not sure why that was... but oddly, at the start of the afternoon it didn't impact my batting average that much... later on, well, we all have slumps... which was only annoying because everyone else wasn't having a slump... ah well...

I'll spare you most of the intimate details... but there was one guy who just didn't have good fellatio etiquette... you know the type... they insist on forcing your head down and want to make you go deeper... ummm... excuse me, I know my gag reflex thank you very much... that and he sounded like a bad porn movie a couple of times... and wanted to ask me too many questions... in the end I just had to tell him to shut up and enjoy it... he did compliment me on my technique though, which is always good to hear... *wink*...

Mostly though I did a lot of soak'n'bake between the wet sauna and the pool (which, I have to say, does do wonders for a boy's complexion as Marc pointed out to me once... my skin actually feels really, really soft and smooth right now)... it also gave me some time to play the observer... and one of the things I did observe were a few really pushy older guys... other twosomes (and occasionally moresomes) were hooking up in the steamroom, and these particular dudes (two of them in particular) just kept trying to join in... completely uninvited... the worst incidence of it though was during my final extended bake, where the twosome in question changed position three or four times to get away from this old guy, even leaving the room at one point, and he just wouldn't take the hint... when they came back into the room, he followed them in. Get the hint and leave them the hell alone goddamit! If you're sitting there and they start playing right next to you, then by all means, have a look, even stare... but if they move away, don't follow them...

I think I did bake for a little too long on my final bake... I was in there for what felt like a really long time... and I may have dehydrated my brain a little... I swigged down over a litre of water, took a couple of Nurofen and I'm still a little headachey. But it's completely self inflicted, so I'm not expecting any sympathy...

Anyway, when I eventually decided to take myself home (so I didn't miss the beginning of Big Brother), it was about 5:45pm... and as I came back to my car I was doing the thing I always do when I've left my car in that spot for an extended period of time, which is "Please be there" (I think partially it comes from the fact that a very long time ago I came out from the other sauna we used to have to find my window (on the driver's side) had been smashed in. Of course the car was still there, but I'd picked up a parking ticket...

RUDE!

And a complete crock of shit too... the ticket is for "Fail to park vehicle facing in direction of travel of vehicles"... in a LANE which is only actually wide enough for one car at a time anyway... yes, I was parked on the right hand side of the road (the only spot that there are actually parks) with the car facing left (if that makes sense)... basically if it had been a road with two lanes, I would have been on the wrong side of the road, but it's a freakin back alley...

I'm going to call them tomorrow and moan about it... but I have no doubt I will end up having to pay it... annoying really... and it's $31... not cheap for a totally trumped up ticket... Grrrr...

Current Mood: tired

defective...

I stole this one from Eddy, who, in turn, stole it from Nathan, who turned out to be the same type as me...


Brute
You are 42% Rational, 14% Extroverted, 57% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.
You are the Brute! You are introverted, arrogant, brutal, and more intuitive than rational.

Like a big, dumb animal, you are driven by your emotions more than your reason, and as a result of the fact that you care very little for the feelings of others, you tend to be rather selfish. You also possibly fling your own poo.

Because of your selfishness, you also tend to be a bit arrogant, seeing yourself as big or strong or smart or always correct. This makes you a stubborn, irrational, emotion-driven brute.

King Kong best represents the gorilla-version of your personality. Emotional, introverted (King Kong was isolated on his own island, after all), brutal, and arrogant (proud to be the largest ape on Earth!), Kong would probably get along very well with you, seeing as how you share many of the same traits. Aside from, you know, all the fur.

You probably keep to yourself and take great pleasure in watching fat people fall down stairs. (But who doesn't, really?) You probably also have dreams of becoming famous or well-known, but this most likely won't happen because your introversion limits your Hollywood connections.

Being introverted, ape-like, and arrogant isn't so bad, though. It beats being dead.

So your personality defect is simply that you act like a large, overgrown ape that thinks highly of itself whilst brutalizing buxom blondes. Or something.

Try to stay off of buildings.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
3. You are more BRUTAL than gentle.
4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.


The Personality Defect Test

Current Mood: raarrrr

photo friday: war memorial

war memorial 2006This has to be one of my favourite pieces of sculpture in the city... the War Memorial on the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue... mostly because of the angel I have to say... and not just because he's kinda hot and pretty much naked. It's actually a really beautiful statue.

The photo is actually from back in February, during the Heritage Costume photoshoot with the Camera Club, where Stu and I decided to photograph the heritage rather than the costumes.

Current Mood: can't complain

technorati

technoratiOkay, so I'm not always the quickest one on a particular bandwagon... Technorati isn't anything new, but I did discover it properly this morning...

I'd looked at it briefly before I think, but in my stats this morning was another link to the site, and I ended up checking it out.

Now, what I didn't realise is that most blogs are already listed on the site... including mine... and they even have a way for you to "claim" your blog as your own so that you can add your details to it.

So I claimed yaniblog as my own... then went through and listed my whole blogroll as my favourites... and there were only a few that had been claimed...

The site also gives you a list of the most recent posts from your favourite blogs... so it's part blogroll, part reader... which will be great when Blogger and/or Blogroller fall down and go boom...

I'm not usually the type of person to say "Oh, you should go sign up at this site, or that site, it's so cool"... I leave that to other bloggers who sometimes do it a little too much (I'm not mentioning any names though)... but in this case I couldn't help myself... seriously... go sign up...

Current Mood: i like it

random blox hotness

There's not really any great story behind today's Random Hotness... but in the light of yesterday's cat related post, when I saw the photo of model, Tim Bloxsome, with the kitty, I knew I had to post it... not that he's not gorgeous without the kitty...

tim with kittytim without kitty

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness

moujacat

moujacat 2001Technically this probably should have wound up as a Photo Friday entry, but it's been one of those "slow news" weeks... plus this will probably end up being one of those long and involved stories I'm so good at...

This is Mouja... he was my cat... for all of about 12 hours...

Back in January 2001, very early January actually... I had former buddy and my first model Dan over and we were chatting away... and because it was warm, I had the front door open, and, I think, the fan in the doorway... anyway, we're yacking away about goodness knows what, and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see movement.

And there was Mouja, front paws up on the doorstep, peering in, checking things out. I told him to shoo... which he promptly ignored... then when I shooed him a second or third time, he seemed to take off. So Dan and I went back to yacking... next thing I know, I see movement out of the corner of my eye again, and not only has he decided to peer in, he's also decided to run inside to check things out.

I tried to herd him back outside (but you know the old saying about trying to herd cats), which wasn't overly successful, so in the end, I scooped him up and took him down the street to the house I assumed he'd come from (since I knew the woman who lived there had a cat or two)... I dropped him outside, then legged it back home again.

Not five minutes later, he was back again (yeah, I know, it was a crap plan)... so in the end I just gave up the shooing and just let him be, since he seemed mostly content to hover around the doorway, although I think he also probably disappeared down "cat alley", the gap between my sofa at the time and the window.

Dan left shortly after, and before I went to bed Mouja decided he wanted to have a full on look around the place, and this time I shut the front door, just to see what he would do. He took it all in his stride... sniffed around the kitchen, then the bedroom, then the bathroom (which pretty much accounts for "the rest of my house"...

I've always described him as being a "teenage boy" cat... he seemed to be all paws and tail, and fairly young... which, at the time was just what I didn't really need, another "teenage boy" making himself at home and complicating my life...

Once he'd done his thing and sniffed all the rubbish bins and stuck his head in all the appropriate small spaces, I decided it probably wasn't the best idea in the world to keep him inside while I was sleeping, so I herded him outside eventually.

After I'd been in bed for a bit, I heard some noise from out the front of my apartment, and when I peeked through there curtains, there was Mouja basically sitting on my doorstep... and then he flinched and bolted away towards the front of the building... not because I'd scared him with opening the curtain, but because two of my incredibly dumbass neighbours at the time had decided that throwing things at him was an appropriate way to make him leave. Stoopid neighbours...

Had I not been standing there in my pajamas (okay, a teeshirt and underwear), I probably would have gone out and told them to quit it... as it was I thought about opening the door and letting him back in... but he seemed to have vanished, so I figured it was all for the best.

The next morning, the first thing I did when I got up was go to the window and peek through the curtains... and there was Mouja, sitting on my doorstep again. He looked up at me and mewed... so, naturally I let him in.

I picked him up, and he did that thing that cats do where they rub themselves on you... not because they're being sweet, but because they're marking you as belonging to them... ("This is mine, and this is mine, and this is mine")... anyway, Mouja rubbed his face against mine when I picked him up, so from that point on, I was pretty much gone...

I let him wander around the place while I took a shower... and because I don't bother closing the bathroom door (I live alone, what does it matter) when I shower, he wandered on in... which I have to say, was a little unnerving... having a cat watching me shower... but then he proceeded to lick the water off the shower floor... which I just knew couldn't be good for him. So I dragged myself out of the shower and put some milk in a little plastic container for him... but he turned his nose up at that (which is probably a good thing, you're not supposed to give cat's milk for people, right?), so in the end, I emptied it out and refilled it with water... and he was a little more pleased about that.

After my shower, I sat down to watch the morning music video show that was on at the time, and Mouja ended up sitting in my lap, watching along with me, purring like a lawnmower and getting lots and lots and lots of strokes.

I have to say, that was really nice... just hanging out with him, sitting there, stroking his soft, soft, soft fur and feeling that rumble of his purring...

Eventually it got to be about the time that I needed to get dressed and haul ass to work, but I wanted to take a photo of him, since he was being so very pliable and agreeable at the time... so I picked him up off my lap, set him down on the sofa (check out the badness and wrongness of my sofa at the time in the picture... but it was free, so I'm not complaining)... and he just melted into the same position he'd been in on my lap... didn't rearrange himself, nothing. So I grabbed my camera and took a shot. The flash went off in his face, but he just lay there looking at me, and just kinda blinked at me as if to let me know that he'd already worked out that I was weird.

After I got dressed and was ready to go, I scooped him up and dropped him outside before setting off for work. He followed me for a little bit, then turned around and wandered off.

And that was the last I ever saw of him.

He wasn't waiting around when I got home... and because I was heading out for the Moonlight Cinema with some friends that night, I don't know if he rocked up later when I wasn't home.

All that I hope is that he remembered where he actually lived and headed back there. But since he didn't actually have a collar, well, I kind of doubt it.

For the record, his name (and, I will freely admit, I'm not even sure he WAS a he), Mouja, doesn't technically mean anything... it was a term of endearment a friend of mine used, most often with her daughter... so, in place of something to actually call him, he became Mouja... and since he didn't stick around long enough to GET a name, Mouja he stayed...

And if you're wondering how I manage to remember all the intricate little details of something that happened over five years ago, I actually do remember most of it, but some of the finer details did come from an email I wrote Lownee at the time...

Current Mood: awww mouja

emotional iq

Your Emotional IQ is 109

This number is the result of a formula based on how many questions you answered correctly on Tickle's Emotional IQ test. But your Emotional IQ score is much more than just a number: it's an indicator of success.

Research has shown that people with high emotional intelligence scores - not necessarily those with the highest IQ scores - tend to be the most valued and productive employees and have the longest and happiest romantic relationships.

So, where are you most emotionally smart? Your test results show that your strongest suit is perception - your ability to pick up on what others are feeling.

Because of this, you are unusually good at reading people's verbal and non-verbal cues. You're especially aware of the subtleties of people's actions, and can feel out the vibe of a situation better than many. That gives you and edge many wish they had. People with high perception skills like yours, however, tend to rely on them to the exclusion of others. As a result, they sometimes have underdeveloped abilities in other realms of critical emotional intelligence like managing emotions, empathy, and being expressive.

The Emotional IQ Test

Current Mood: neither here nor there

montage monday: circles

circles 2006See what desperation and grasping at straws can get you... on the plus side, at least it's actually a Montage... It was easier than I thought to find an appropriate number of circles, even if there are a couple of repeating themes in there.

After using my pedometer for all of my walks last week, I can announce that my average number of steps is 7282... which I'm not sure is accurate, because I'm pretty sure that the pedometer is actually a piece of crap and is reading more than one step per step a lot of the time. I'm still trying to work out if it should be more or less steps on the days when I walk faster... I never was that good with spatial mechanics... or math for that matter...

I really, truly wanted to murder my neighbour yesterday... well, for most of last week actually... but yesterday specifically. All last week he'd been laying paving stones in his front yard... which should be fine, right... except they (he and his merry band of little work monkeys) need to cut vast numbers of them to size... so they were running a circular saw or whatever it is you use to cut big ass paving stones for selected periods last week... including a large chunk of the afternoon yesterday... and his front yard is situated right outside my bedroom window! Not so good! Never have I wished so hard for a workplace accident... stoopid man... he just needs to hurry up and finish the damn house already... it's been being renovated for what seems like forever... but which is probably more like eighteen months...

I changed the wallpaper in the sidebar yesterday, and I was looking at the few images I had left in my yaniwallpaper folder, and realised they were all from a while back and I hadn't made any out of recent photos... so, of course, that led me to going off and playing in Photoshop and coming up with fourteen new wallpapers. I'm not sure if that means I'm going to change them more often than I have been, but you never know...

This is going to be my second to last Big Brother related ramble for the year... well, it might be the third to last, since there will be my usual musings next Monday in the morning, and then most likely a final post like last year's after the season finale that night...

I was nearly right with my predictions on the eviction schedule last week... instead of a double then double then final four, it looks like it's going to be last night's double, then a midweek single this week, then a double next Sunday, leaving the final two.

It has to be said that I was actually a little shocked by Krystal's eviction last night... I was sure it was going to be Claire (who did get evicted) and then Max (I've been using the "Who Will Go" poll on the BB website to back up a lot of my guesses, and that's what the results were for this Sunday)... partly because I wanted to keep Chris in for a bit longer, since he's so cute...

I actually think it's going to come down to David and Camilla as this year's final two... it could be Jamie and Camilla, but I kind of doubt it... and I think it will be Max who goes on Wednesday... and then probably Chris and Jamie on Sunday...

If it is David and Camilla then I have no idea who will win... but out of Jamie and Camilla, I think Camilla will win... we'll just have to see I guess...

Current Mood: that monday feeling again

housemate sighting

bb's danielleI was going to mention this yesterday, but I actually forgot about it until late last night...

While we were up at Marion yesterday seeing Pirates... well, after the movie actually... we did the usual wander about the place, and as we were passing the stage area down on the ground floor I realised that there were a bunch of late teenage boys and early teenage girls hanging around... so there must have been something going on... when I turned and look, who did I spy but former Big Brother housemate and upcoming songstress Danielle...

From the looks of the advertising behind her, she was obviously there for some 3 Mobile related promo involving taking a photo with a housemate... I actually didn't notice that until I got home and looked at the photo properly, I have to admit... but I whipped out my phone and took a shot of her anyway. It's a little blurry/crap, but then it's my mobile camera, inside a shopping center, trying not to be completely obvious.

I have to say though, Danielle's lookin a little busty in the shot... I don't know if it's just the angle, or what... but boobage ahoy!

And as sad and tragic as it sounds, I actually got kinda nervous after I saw her... I think possibly because my brain was going "Well, you could have gone over and said hi and asked to take a close up photo" and I think it was the thought of that that was actually making me nervy, rather than just abject fanboyness of seeing a Big Brother contestant in the flesh...

Tragic really...

Current Mood: very lame

no justice...

You Are Elektra


There's really no superhero with more style than you.

Because who could beat being sexy assasin ninja?


Tom gets Superman... me, I get Elektra... where's the justice in that...

Current Mood: i'll get back to you on that one

movies: pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest

pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest - jack's backOh man... Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest rocks... Gold Class rocks... too cool... too cool...

This is the second time I've visited Gold Class, the first being for Brokeback Mountain, and it was just as cool as I remember... after all the screwups with ordering my tickets I was hoping not to get there and either having two sets of seats, or just the wrong seats... but no, everything panned out okay... well, everything except for the fact that when I showed the girly behind the desk my credit card (to confirm that I am indeed me I suppose), I then proceeded to leave it behind... luckily she took it over to the Gold Class food counter, so that wasn't a big drama (just par for the course after Thursday's fun and games really), and I actually didn't know that it was gone until that point...

And, for the record, I did end up getting the seats I originally tried to book online... yaaaay!

We ended up getting the Fisherman's Platter to share halfway through the movie... it seemed appropriate, given Bill Nighy's performance and appearance as Davy Jones... nothing like eating calamari and watching it acting on screen too...

I will give one word of warning, I guess you could say, on the movie... something I didn't know, but I don't think it would have affected my movie experience one way or the other... Dead Man's Chest is the first half of a two part movie... think two thirds of Lord of the Rings or the final two Matrix movies... conjoined stories that stop part way through. So don't expect the plot to wrap up nicely at the end of the two and a half hours.

Damn filmmakers (yes, Gore, Ted and Terry, I'm lookin at you three... bastards)...

I have to say that so far I'm undecided as to which of the two movies is my favourite... I think maybe it's Black Pearl... simply because it was the first one and I know it so well now, and it introduced all the characters... but this second one definitely runs an incredibly close second... partly because they could just jump right into the story without having to introduce characters and partly because there was two and a half hours of it... that's a lotta pirates... plus, Davy Jones and his octopus face... what's not to love!

Johnny is as broad and slacksticky and camp as ever as Jack Sparrow (Captain Jack Sparrow if you please!)... Orlando remains all sultry and brooding... and Keira actually gets a lot more swashing and buckling and much, much less fainting this time around (although the one scene with her fainting is actually really funny).

A lot of the supporting players are back again too... Elizabeth's father, Jack's crew, as well as the comedy pirate duo of Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook... gotta love them.

The action was as fast and furious as ever, and although I knew I'd been watching the movie for a long while, it never dragged or felt like things could have been cut out (King Kong, I'm looking at you now)...

Davy Jones and his army of "sea-phantoms" looked as amazingly lifelike as the skeletal pirates from the first movie, and, it turns out, were about as real (which really surprised me, I thought they would have been partially in makeup and then augmented by CGI... I guess I'll have to wait for the DVD special features to find out exactly what was going on there)... although I will say that a few of the shots featuring the Kraken seemed a little less integrated and stuck out to me more... maybe because of it's size and scale and the actions it actually had to perform (and the fact you can't put a Kraken in a motion capture suit like you can with real actors).

Oh, and like the first movie, don't forget to wait until the very, very end after the credits for an extra scene... it's not going to change your movie experience if you miss it, it's just cute...

And now I'm hanging out for the third instalment, to find out if all the things that I think are going to happen actually happen, and to wrap up all the loose plot lines... it's only a year or so...

Arrggghhhhhh....

Hopefully Dead Man's Chest doesn't take that long to turn up on DVD...

yani's rating: 4 Kraken out of 5

photo friday: red and white

red and white 2006I pass this garage on my walk every day, and I just like the colour combination of the red wall and the white birches...

To be honest, this isn't the first time this has featured in one of my photos... it was also in the Red Montage back in January.

I know it's not the best shot, but like I said, it's about the colours.

Oh, and for the record, the car inside the garage is the same red as the wall...

EDIT: I realise now I wasn't clear before... this photo is new, but I took another shot of the same garage for the Red Montage in January...

Current Mood: okay...

dead man's chest indeed...

now i know how jack feelsBloody buggery hell...

Why is nothing I attempt ever simple?

I ask ya...

Ma and I are taking ourselves off to Gold Class to see Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on Saturday... so I decided that checking up on ticket availability was probably a good plan this morning...

Turns out I was right... the evening sessions for Saturday were all booked up, and the two daytime sessions were already starting to fill up...

So I went through the booking procedure online, then called Ma to confirm my selections... then waited to call the cinema to doublecheck that we were getting the seats on the opposite side of the theatre from the entrance... which took about 15 minutes (the waiting, not the phonecall luckily)...

I called, confirmed they were on the opposite side... went to finish up my online transaction... and no... I'd left it too long, so the whole thing fell over and told me that it had timed out...

My own fault... but still a pain in the butt...

I went to start the ticketing process again... but alas, the online ticketing system was suddenly down (you think maybe I crashed the system?)... so I had to call the cinema again and book them over the phone...

But when I'd gone through all the information with the girly on the phone and we got to the bit about selecting the appropriate seats... well... the two seats I wanted, D1 and D2, they were still "on hold"... probably because of my aborted online transaction earlier...

So she went through the rest of the process, over 18, blah blah blah, turn up early, blah blah blah, non refundable, blah blah blah... before checking if the seats had become available... no such luck...

She told me she would try again in a little bit, and if those seats weren't available for whatever reason, then were there two others I wanted... I told her the two in front (C1 and C2) would be just fine...

But now I'm having a panic moment... what happens if the system actually did book D1 and D2 for me... and then the girly will book me C1 and C2 AS WELL... I'm guessing that in that situation they will refund the money... if not, those are suddenly very expensive movie tickets...

I checked my bank balance online and the money has been put "on hold" in my credit account... so I'm not sure if that's good new or bad news... hopefully it just means that the seats freed up and she booked them for me...

I'll have to call again later to check that everything went okay...

Current Mood: freakin

random crossover hotness

For this week's Random Hotness I'm going to revist my favourite photographer again, Howard Roffman...

I've already done Random Hotness posts for two of his other books, Loving Brian and Friends and Lovers... but this time he's reteaming with my favourite porn company, Bel Ami... Howard has already worked with their stars twice... firstly with my personal fave, Johan Paulik and then with Peter & Petr where he brought those boys into his world...

But now he's done the full on crossover thing with Howard Roffman Meets the Boys of Bel Ami...

boys of bel amiboys of bel ami

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness

midnight

You Are Midnight


You are more than a little eccentric, and you're apt to keep very unusual habits.

Whether you're a nightowl, living in a commune, or taking a vow of silence - you like to experiment with your lifestyle.

Expressing your individuality is important to you, and you often lie awake in bed thinking about the world and your place in it.

You enjoy staying home, but that doesn't mean you're a hermit. You also appreciate quality time with family and close friends.


Current Mood: kinda beige

movies: over the hedge

over the hedge - taking back the neighborhood... one snack at a timeOkay, so going to see Over the Hedge during the school holidays was maybe not the best idea we've ever had...

The cinema was just full of really little kids, who just seemed to spend the whole time going back and forth to the bathroom or something...

Sheesh...

Anyway, the movie wasn't bad... I wasn't sure at the beginning... I quickly worked out that it had almost the same basic plotline as Cars, but, then I don't think it's that uncommon a plot, just dressed up differently.

And it took me a little while to bond with the humour...

But the longer I watched it, the more I got into it. The animals were appropriately cute, and the voices really fit, although, like a lot of this kind of animated stuff, I keep thinking "Okay, so that's Bruce Willis... and that's William Shatner... Allison Janney... Wanda Sykes...", but there were a few voices I couldn't pick until I got home and looked them up.

Especially Steve Carell as Hammy the squirrel (who was definitely my favourite, with Bruce's RJ a close second)... I wouldn't have picked him as that voice in a million years.

My only real complaint is that Dreamworks Animation still hasn't really mastered humans... they can do human shaped things... but really humans, especially skinny humans... just not happening yet. It was the same thing with Princess Fiona in Shrek... she just didn't look or move quite right... and Gladys, one of the villains in this, is the same... funnily enough, big fat humans work okay... they obviously mastered that with two Shrek movies, but skinny and human is still giving them trouble.

All in all though, it was pretty much fluff... cute and entertaining fluff... but fluff...

yani's rating: 2 Verminators out of 5

crumble

half eaten crumble 2006On Monday I mentioned making apple, pear and rhubarb crumble, and got asked for my recipe...

To be honest, I don't really have one, I just make it up as I go... but I'll give it a try and see what we come up with...

This is just the way I made it today, you can adjust the quantities of stuff to suit yourself... you may need to make more crumble mix if you have a very large but shallow dish... and obviously you can make it will all apples, all pears, all rhubarb, whatever... but I like this mix, the pears cut the tartness of the apples a little, and add the sweetness, which means you don't need to add any sugar to the mush mix.

Apple, Pear and Rhubarb Crumble

3 Granny Smith Apples
3 Pears (something fairly sweet)
4 sticks of Rhubarb
Juice of 2 Lemons
1 and a half cups of oats
1 cup of sugar
Half a cup of flour
3-4 tablespoons of butter/margarine

Now, I only use wholemeal flour and raw sugar in my kitchen, so that's what I used... oh, and instant oats, but I'm not sure that matters... and the pears I use, I have no idea what kind they are, but they're round like apples, not so much pear shaped.

Peel and chop the apples, pears and rhubarb, then add to a big saucepan with the lemon juice (you can also substitute water or apple juice for the lemon juice if you're not sure a huge fan of things being a little "tart"). Cover and cook over a low heat until the whole things becomes mush (keep an eye on it, stir, and check for your desired level of mush). The whole thing comes out kind of pink because of the rhubarb.

Place in a oven proof dish and allow to cool a little (I left mine for maybe a couple of hours).

Combine the oats, flour and sugar in a bowl and mix together. Melt the butter, then add to the dry mix and combine with your fingers. It should reach a consistency whereby if you squeeze it, it becomes a solid ball but if you put your fingers in it, it will crumble (I stole that line from another recipe, but my mix should do roughly the same thing).

Spread it across the top of the apple mix, then cook in a very hot oven (around 200-250°C I guess) for about 20 minutes until the crumble is browned.

Serve with cream or good vanilla icecream.

Current Mood: yummy

yaniblog's first birthday

Picture it, Sicily, 1956...

Oh, wait, that's not me, that's Sophia... sorry... I watched very nearly the whole second season of Golden Girls yesterday... it gets to you after a while...

Let's try again... picture it, Adelaide, 2005... no, sadly, it doesn't quite have the same ring to it...

But either way it was a whole year ago today that yaniblog made it's maiden voyage!

I did some sums and in the last 365 days, I've made 437 posts (which, for the geeky amongst us, works out to be 1.2 posts per day)... and of those posts, there have been...
So here's to the last twelve months... now onwards with the next twelve...

Current Mood: happy blogbirth day

another monday musings

Alas, alas, no Montage this week... I had intended to do a winter themed one this morning (although, honestly, other than a lot of bare branches, I wasn't sure what that was going to contain), but I forgot to take the camera with me, so we have bubkus... so you're going to have to put up with a straight Musing post instead...

After a random comment on Friday night to Ma about forgetting, once again, to get some chocolate while we were in town, we decided to make a change to our normal Saturday shopping routine, and, after the regularly scheduled wander around Target and the supermarket, head into town to the Central Market, thus killing the chocolate bird and the fruit & veg bird with the same stone...

So now I have a fridge full of fruits and vegetables, and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to make with them. I did get some rhubarb to make apple, pear and rhubarb crumble with for Ma and I on Tuesday... which all got started again (as far as crumbles go) when I made apple and pear crumble for J and Monkey while they were here, the same night I made Tom's Chicken Curry I think... I hadn't really thought about rhubarb or doing anything with it myself, but the thought got forced into my head because the woman in front of us at the supermarket had some and the rather docile checkout chick didn't actually know what it was... to which Ma and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Interestingly though, after reading the Wikipedia entry, it immediately brought up fond childhood memories of eating a stick of rhubarb dipped in sugar... which makes sense, given the part of England Ma comes from...

The other fruit item I can blame people at the supermarket about are mandarins... as we were walking in, there was a teenaged girl walking out peeling one, and I just got the smell for it... so once we hit the market I just had to have some... and then last night, watching teevee, I realised I really hadn't had anything actually resembling a fruit or a vegetable for most of the day, so I sat there and ate four of them... mmmmm mandarin tasty smelly goodness...

It was fun at the markets actually... I mean the place ALWAYS reminds me of Lownee in some small way... and I think we only went there together once... but she knew her way around, and a lot of the places I hit are still places she originally took me... like the cheese place right in the middle, where she introduced me to their own vintage cheese... which is just divine. Other places, like the mushroom stall and the salami stall I may have found on my own, but I'm pretty sure that the fruit and veg stall I usually visit first is the one she originally took me to.

And yes, I did get my chocolate... although I could have gone to Goodies and Grains and gotten their amazing Couverture chocolate, instead, because I was having a specific craving for dark peppermint pastilles, it was off to Haighs we went... I also got some Rocky Road, and although their stuff is really nice, I ALMOST prefer my own homemade version... almost...

Then Ma and I rounded out the day with her first experience with Yum Cha (and my second)... and yes, I took her to the same place I went with Freddy (and no, I didn't tell her how I found it)... all in all it wasn't a bad day... and if I could have been bothered blogging about it on Saturday, it might have made a good post on it's own.

On a more general note... I've started using a new toothpaste (I know, but bear with me, this is going someplace, well, kinda)... Macleans Extreme Clean Zest Impact toothpaste... which has the tagline on all the ads, "toothpaste is no longer mint"... and when I say all the ads, I mean it... there has been a massive teevee campaign (plus I've seen the ad a couple of times at the movies), but the stuff has NO web presence, no website, no mention on the company's existing website, nada, zip, zilch... which I thought was odd... but going back to the toothpaste... it tastes weird... not bad, just... well... weird... in fact, the first time I used it, my mouth tasted like I'd been eating Starburst Babies... I think toothpaste was meant to be minty for a reason...

I got a new toy last Friday... a pedometer... I know, obviously the party never stops here at the house of yani, right... well, I strapped it to my waist this morning and took off for my walk... and it turns out I walked 7226 steps... or at least that's what the machine told me when I got home again... but I'm still not sure how far that actually is... since all this pedometer does is show me the steps... hey, it's was like a buck fifty... what do you want...

At some point last week I also heard from a former model about doing another shoot... he's a strange individual this one... we'll call him Tango I think... which is as good a name as any, since he keeps changing his own name anyway... like I said, he's an odd individual, but I always say that I get good shots of him because I'm trying to work him out through my photographs... we'll see what it amounts to though.

Now, random Big Brother stuff...

Last night, during the eviction, they did a shot of the audience and who did they focus in on but Dylan Lewis, monkeyfaced hotness, former VJ and star of Celebrity BB in 2002 and, it turns out, won (it only lasted a couple of weeks though)... technically it's neither here nor there, but it was just a blast to see him in the audience...

new housemate chrisNew housemate Chris (seen on the right, scratching himself) was shown in just his undies on last night's weekend roundup show... and while he quite literally has no butt, he is quite cute... all pierced and a little bit punkrock... and possibly a little bit well hung, it was hard to tell... if and when screenshots appear I might update this with a link... but nothing as yet...

There was also something I noticed last night that made me stop and think for a second... David, yep, good old Farmer Dave, the gay farmer... when he's talking to Gretel in the Diary Room on eviction nights he seems to become "Country David", almost "simple" in the way he speaks, his country accent becomes really pronounced... but when he's just talking to people in the house he's very often very eloquent and almost refined in his speech... just seems weird... I suppose that could be nerves, where he KNOWS for those couple of minutes that he's definitely on camera, and it throws him... but still... is he playing the game?

They announced last week that there's only two more weeks of BB, but we still have seven housemates... so, in theory, there will be two double evictions, leaving three housemates for the final... or a triple and a double, leaving two housemates, which is much more unlikely... we'll have to see I guess... either that or they'll do the two doubles, then throw someone out on the Monday, then have the finale on the Tuesday (although last year, the whole thing didn't finish until August)...

On the plus side, you won't have to listen to me babble about BB every Monday after that... on the down side, these Monday posts could just get a lot shorter...

Current Mood: vague case of mondayitis

teddies

little ted and big tedWay, way, way back in February (which isn't really that long ago, but feels like about a hundred million years ago) I went down to Ma's to help her clean up for Hard Rubbish week, and blogged about my old teddies (as seen to the right there, all manky)... and mentioned having to find an earlier pic of them...

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.

Well, guess what, it's "later" now... and when I was going through looking for the old photos of my room recently I came across the photo that I was talking about with me being all cute and blonde and preschooled and the teddies back in the day before they were all mangy...

teddies in the 70'sSee, look at that... how cute and fashion challenged was I...

Like I said originally, it's Big Ted that suffered more than Little Ted... look, he used to have a face, and not be quite so flat...

And that's quite possibly about the closest you're going to get to a full length shot of me... so make the most of it. I'd much rather exist as the million different versions that all of you out there think I look like...

Of course, if the universe was a nicer place, I'd still be a natural blonde and look as cute as the picture, just a lot older... but hopefully with better hair than I had back then... I mean check out the bowl job...

Current Mood: ahhh nostalgia

sociopath... bwhahaha

You Are 40% Sociopath

From time to time, you may be a bit troubled and a bit too charming for your own good.

It's likely that you're not a sociopath... just quite smart and a bit out of the mainstream!


Current Mood: doin good actually

photo friday: reeds

reeds 2006Another shot from the great Linear Park Walk extravaganza last week... it's all about the backlighting baby...

These are the same reeds that show up in the shots that went along with the original post, just from a closer vantage point.

Current Mood: can't complain

random twin hotness

I don't actually remember where I came across this week's Random Hotness... no... bad pun... not going there...

It seems like big curly hair is back for boys in a big way, and I have to say I'm loving the trend... especially when it's big blonde curls mixed with crystal blue eyes... and in this particular case, it's even better because it's two for the price of one with Brazilian twins Thiago & Dani.

And if they weren't gorgeous enough already, they're also models...

thiago and danidani and thiago

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness