random blended hotness

Today's Random Hotness comes from The Face of Tomorrow project, via TheOtherAndrew. These are the two faces for Sydney... one from Bondi and one from Sydney University.

Of the two I think I'm more partial to Bondi... and interestingly, I think there are more of the original faces from Bondi that I find attractive. And while both of the blended faces are very attractive, when you look at the original faces, it does seem, to me at least, that the blended versions are lacking in some character. Or maybe it's just that the individuality has been averaged out...

Current Mood:

realistic pseudo dream

Obviously it's the week for weird dreams... after Andrew's odd Martha themed dream, I had a doozey of a strange dream this morning... and it was so strange I woke myself up at the end, and actually got out of bed to find a pencil and paper to jot it down before I forgot it.

I have to say, this one, unlike the other dreams I've had, seemed a bit more real at the time... so much so that after I woke up I had to remember that it hadn't actually happened...

In the dream I think that my Nanna had just died (in actual fact she died when I was 17)... and had left me this weird wooden compass thing on a stick... kind of like a spoon with the compass where the bowl of the spoon should be... but it wasn't a compass that pointed north, it pointed towards whatever it was that I was supposed to find/be looking for.

Anyway, Ma and I followed it once... but went left instead of right initially, and I think ended up in what looked like some kind of computer strategy/puzzle game... I know there were levers that needed to be flicked and conveyor belts and things... but that could actually have been a completely separate side dream...

Eventually I followed the compass thing again, but to the right this time... and started out in the car, but ended up walking, and I don't know that there was a logical reason why we stopped riding in the car.

While we were walking, I picked up a fluro tube and tried to make a phone call to Raury (not with the tube, but while I was carrying it)... but didn't get any reply...

And then we found what it was we were supposed to be looking for... graffiti, written on the side of what I think was a kindergarten, allegedly by my Nanna (and if you knew her, you would know how completely ridiculous that thought was).

I can't remember what it actually said now, I just remember that in the dream it made me cry like a big girlyman... and that, for whatever reason, the text flickered back and forward between the painted text and "real" printed text... which I thought at the time was kind of weird...

The text also started off with "Yani", rather than my real name... which didn't seem weird when I was dreaming, but seems a little strange when I think about it, if only because I didn't BECOME Yani until about five years after Nanna died... because, you know, logic and dreams go hand in hand... not...

And the final really weird thing was that at the end of the message was a note from someone who was a friend of Nanna's (although this person has to be a dream invention), called, I think, Mabel, Mavis... something like that... and at the very end of it, she mention Sunshine-Eddy... something along the lines of "I hope you find a boyfriend as nice as Sunshine-Eddy"... and honest to god, I have NO idea what the hell that was about...

I'm just going to chalk that bit up to the fact that I've been thinking about his painting quite a bit the last few days... honest!

I think the whole dream pretty much was a product of me needing to get out more or something though...

Weird...

On the plus side, at least this dream didn't have a bunch of random celebrities in it...

Current Mood:

movies: the prestige

Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called The Pledge; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't.

The second act is called The Turn; The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary.

Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it, that's why there's a third act called, The Prestige; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before.

That's the dialogue that opens The Prestige... and I have to say, it pretty much sums up the whole movie... and, interestingly enough, the speech is, in itself, a "Pledge"...

I'd heard bits and pieces about this movie... and when I first heard that it had Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians, I was very much up for it... then I found out that it was going to be about turn of the century stage magicians rather than, you know, Harry Potter type magic, I wasn't sure about it... then I saw something else that made me think it was a little of both, so I was back in again... I'm a complex little Muppet really...

But I have to say, I'm so very glad that we ended up going to see it... it was definitely worth it.

It is a little confusing in spots... not greatly, it's more that there's a lot of jumping around between the "present", the "recent past" and the "past leading up to the recent past"... but after a while it all starts to make sense (there was only actually one spot where I thought we were in one time period and it turned out we were further back) and you get into the rhythm of it. And because some of the stuff you're being shown is "The Pledge" (although some of it isn't), it does seem a little slow in a couple of spots... not so much that it drags, but more, I think, because you're eager to get onto the next part of the adventure.

And I can't honestly think of another movie that I've seen for a long, long while where everything doesn't seem to be completely tied up in a neat little bow with all the t's crossed and all the i's dotted at the end... you're still left wondering "So how did that bit work?" about one of the plot points... or at least, Ma and I were... although I think we kind of nutted it out (whether correctly or not I don't know) in the Post Movie Roundup in the car on the way back to my place.

I'm kind of hoping that the director doesn't go and spell it out at any point on the DVD... since this is definitely a movie for the collection...

yani's rating: 4 Transported Men out of 5

montage monday: statues

I went with a whole statue theme for this week's Monday Montage... and you know what... in all the houses I go past every day on my walk... not one garden gnome... lots of ladies from the school of "Show Us Your Ta-Ta's"... but no gnomes...

Well this weekend was a much more successful shopping adventure than last week... maybe because we didn't go all over the place trying to track down something that nobody seemed to have... makes everything seem so much more productive when you can actually find what you're looking for.

I got the presents I was looking for for my cousin's two girls (plus a couple of things that I didn't intend to get, but I think will work nicely)... well, to be honest, I got one and ordered the other, but then Ma called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she found the thing I'd ordered somewhere else...

I also got Ma reasonably organised with her stuff too... instead of just wandering around Marion aimlessly as we usually do (I don't know why, but we seem to go from one end to the other, then back to the first end, then back to the far end... then back... well, you get the idea)... halfway through we sat down, had a drink and made a list... then went back and hit those stores specifically, in some semblance of order, and she was able to cross a bunch off stuff off her list. I also dragged her into one of the clothing stores and loaded her up with stuff to try on because she'd mentioned that she didn't have her "Christmas Outfit" yet... and we walked out with a couple of outfit choices actually...

On a completely unrelated topic, since Jamie Durie's appearance on Oprah in America this week I've been getting a few hits on StatCounter for the phrase "nate berkus jamie durie couple" (and of course, after saying that there are going to be any number of folks hitting this post)... and because I've mentioned both Nate and Jamie at least once (okay, I've mentioned Nate on more than one occasion) I guess people are finding their way here... (and for those of you who have no idea who Jamie Durie is, GuyTVBlog does a nice recap)... but, for the record, unlike other Aussie celebs I could mention, I've never heard any kind of rumour about Jamie's orientation being anything other than hetro... so, as nice as it might be to imagine Nate and Jamie getting busy, I'm sure it's just wishful thinking...

Did I mention that I met Jamie Durie (very briefly) once, back when he was still a stripper? Yep, Manpower came to Adelaide and I went along with three of my girlfriends from work... a room full of slightly crazed women, male strippers and one lone gayboy... and then afterwards they signed autographs for everyone... I bought a poster and got, I think, three of them to sign it, Jamie included... true story...

I'm going to attempt to make Thai Chicken Sausage Rolls (okay, I know, without actual "sausage" in them, they're really not "sausage rolls") either sometime this week, or maybe next week... there's a place in North Adelaide that makes something similar, and I really like them, so I'm kind of hoping I can come close to replicating the taste... I'm guessing in advance that it could be a big old disaster, but we'll see...

Oh, and a moment of silence please... my fairylights died last night... *pout*... granted they've been working every day for at least three years, and they were only cheapass lights to begin with... and one set had already given up the ghost a few weeks ago... but last night the other set got brighter for no apparent reason, then were going bright, dull, bright, dull (never good), then crapped out completely. I'm going to have to be on the lookout for one of those "rope lights" in the post Christmas sales...

Current Mood:

painting: brent

I'm so not having a productive painting day...

Maybe because it's hot, maybe because I'm a little distracted, I don't know...

Okay, I did get stage two of the Asian canvas done, but then I screwed up the last bit and had to wipe some of it off and paint over it... and I started something new, maybe for one of Ma's friends, but I'm not sure about it... and then I realised that when I put some orange paint on it, I managed to get little orange specks on the Asian canvas that I'd rather stupidly put on the floor next to the table to dry... so then I had to go over it with a fine brush and try and pick up each and every little orange speck... I did pretty much finish this purple stripey canvas that's probably for me (although where I'm going to put it, I have no idea), but it's kind of missing something, but I don't know what... and I'm afraid that if I do too much to it I'll overwork it, and that never ends well...

So I officially give up for today...

This is something that I actually finished two weeks ago... and, once again, it was a piece that didn't quite go according to plan...

Technically this is the third part of the Blogger Series... although this one kind of comes from a different place than the Eddy and Tom canvases... rather than coming more from a verbal/mental place, this one very much comes from a visual place...

Mostly, I guess, because the subject in question is a lot more visual... Brent Corrigan...

Actually, that's kind of weird in and of itself... when I painted it he was still Brent, but now he seems to be in the process of "reverting to his true self", Sean Lockhart (and for the record, there's something so engaging about that surname, I don't know why, but it just grabs me)... so maybe this should actually be "Sean" and not "Brent"... but anyway...

Either way, I chose to focus on something that is, in my eyes at least, instantly recognisable as "Brent" (or "Sean"... but let's not start that again)... and contrary to the image above, that's not actually his ass (although it is a very nice ass)... but rather, the star tattoo... which, yes, does happen to be very close to his ass obviously... but, to me at least, sums him up in more ways than one (both because he seems to have that star quality and because once you've seen him, he's instantly recognisable)...

I sketched out something in chalk first that was a little bit more representative of, well, his ass to be honest... and came out really well I thought... but when I came to paint it, because the paints just wouldn't play ball the same way the chalks did, it ended up way more subjective and abstract than I was originally going for.

Interestingly enough, I think the way it turned out actually says something about the journey he's been on in a bunch of different ways... the winding road... the whole concept of coming back up after being down and reaching a higher level than where he started... you know... all that good pseudo-psychobabble stuff that I honestly didn't think about at the time, only after it was finished...

But in the end I actually like the result (and hopefully, so does he).

I did email him about it, with copies of the photos, but I haven't heard anything back from him yet...

Subtle, ain't I...

Current Mood:

private stuff meme

A couple of days ago, and somewhat uncharacteristically I gotta say, Eddy did aprivate stuff meme (the fact that it's mostly sexual is the uncharacteristic bit, not the fact that he did a meme)... and while bits of it were also covered by the I Sex Meme I did a while ago, who can resist yet another meme...

Not me...

1. Can you count all the sexual partners you've ever had on two hands? Errrr.... no...
2. When did you have your first sexual experience? Around age 12 I think.
3. Do you like boys or girs? Boys.
4. Have you ever had a threesome? Twice... well, three times if you count the one where the guy's partner just watched...
5. How old were you when you first touched yourself? Honestly I have no idea.... around 11 maybe...
6. Have you ever dreamed about having sex with a teacher? Yep... Year 9 Maths teacher and Year 10 Science teacher...
7. Have you ever dreamed about having sex with an animal? Not that I can recall, no.
8. Do you like toys in bed? Not particularly.
9. Do you like to be spanked? See above...
10. Does size matter? In general, no... so long as it's neither so big or small as to limit your options...
11. Who was your first crush? That I remember? Probably Michael J. Fox actually...
12. Do you enjoy oral sex? Depending on who it's with (sometimes I get bored halfway through), but mostly, yeah...
13. Have you ever had anal sex? Yes, yes I have...
14. Did you enjoy the experience? Again... depends on who it was with... sometimes yes, sometimes no...
15. Do you shave your private area? Do I? No... Have I ever? Yes...
16. Do you have wet dreams often? Nope.
17. Have you ever been tied up while having sex? Yes indeed...
18. Have you ever tied someone up while having sex? Oh yes...
19. Do you believe bisexuality is real? Yes... I just think that a lot of people are more one thing than the other and that makes people confused...
20. If you could sleep with a celebrity legitimately, who would it be? Honestly, I can't think of just one... I mean, if I had to I could come up with a list of about twenty... but there is no one name that stands out...

Current Mood:

anxious much

Your Social Anxiety Level: 44%

You have moderate social anxiety. It's possible that you have a serious social anxiety problem. But it's also likely that you can help yourself, by getting out more and trying new, scary activities. No one's secretly judging you. So be yourself, and if you screw up, just laugh.

Are You Socially Anxious?

Current Mood:

photo friday: green

Another dip into the archives for today's Photo Friday...

These are both from my second Linear Park walk. Well, the nasturtium is actually in Linear Park, the curled leaf thingy was next to where I parked my car.

On an unrelated Photo Friday note, I'm feeling much better than I did yesterday after the dental excursion... the antibiotics are doing their thing and my jaw is now the size of a small island rather than a whole coutry... I was varying degrees of sore, uncomfortable and unhappy all through yesterday, but I've pretty much been okay since I got up this morning... although I am petrified of knocking the area where the tooth was.

I was actually pleasantly surprise this morning when the receptionist (at least I think it was her) called to see if I was going okay... sweet... but odd... especially since I'm going back in in a couple of hours so the nice dentist can have a look at it.

Current Mood:

n've nst een oo ah ennis

Translation: I've just been to the dentist...

But it's a little hard to make a coherent sentence out loud when half your face is melted off from the Novocain and the left side of your mouth is packed with gauze...

The ongoing dental issue I mentioned a while back finally reared it's head in such a way that I couldn't go on ignoring it... which means that after ignoring the slightly sore tooth since about Monday, I woke up this morning with the left half of my jaw swelled up to the size of a small country... Bolivia maybe... or Cuba... and since I know that there's only one place on the body where swelling + warmth = good times (and it isn't one's jaw), I took myself off to the dentist.

This is the same dentist that I used to go to about 100 million years ago, give or take a millenia, and is quite near the place I used to work in North Adelaide (and the only job I've been fired from)... so I'm sitting there in the waiting room, trying not to have a panic attack of some sort, being assaulted by a plethora of old and not particularly welcome memories... and, saddest of all, plotting out in my head how I might blog about it (yeah, I know... I so need a life)...

Then finally I was ushered in to see the female dentist (yay for female medical professionals... although scarily enough this one had the same first name as the previous dentist I used to see there), explained the whole thing to her, she had a poke around, took an x-ray then told me the whole thing was infected and the tooth would need to come out (which I already knew, I'd just been putting it off)...

So after what felt like 127000 jabs of Novocain (or whatever it is they use here, I assume it's the same stuff), and the dental nurse woman holding my hand for part of it (I'm not sure why exactly, I was okay with gripping the sides of the chair and breathing shallowly, but she felt the need to grab my hand... I think I squashed her thumb...) my face achieved that lovely melting/numb/rubber quality (and as I type, the inside of my ear is also numb)... and she attempted to pull the tooth...

Which was a production in itself...

But it came out eventually... and now, in addition to the Novocain I have a wad of gauze in my mouth which I have to keep in there for an hour, half an hour... something... I dunno... I was only half paying attention when she gave me the whole "what to do now" speech... she also gave me some antibiotics to kill off the infection (and, let me tell you, trying to swallow two antibiotics and two painkillers at the same time, while drinking water, with a half numb mouth that's packed full of gauze... that's a skill and a half in itself)...

I have to go back to see her tomorrow so she can check on it, and then will probably have to go back and have a full check up later.

So, even though I have nobody to blame but myself, I'm going to go and hang out on the couch and watch DVDs and generally feel sorry for myself... in between the massive amounts of pain as the Novocain wears off that is...

Current Mood:

random jesensky hotness

This week's Random Hotness is one I've been meaning to post for a couple of weeks, but keeps getting pushed out of the way by more "topical" hotness... it's hot, tattooed model Jonathan Jesensky... I grabbed these shots from his website, which unfortunately is a complete and total trainwreck... or it was when I was last there anyway.

Never mind, at least he's cute...

Current Mood:

what's on my fridge

Andrew always seems to find the best visual meme's... I guess it must be a Flickr thing...

You've already had a half-assed view of the stuff on my fridge when I showed off the photo of my kitchen, but this time you can actually see what's on there. Given where it is though, there's really not any good place for getting a shot of the fridge... it always ends up too dark... and there's only so much brightening you can do in Photoshop to things that are white...

Anyway...

1. Joe Phillips "Little Bear" dress-up magnet... he's currently undressed because I realised he was getting a reverse tan line and his arms were paler than his body from the sunlight...
2. Elephant magnets... and the one on the right is holding up the flyer for my street's big dumbass Christmas party, so I remember when it is, and can avoid it like the plague...
3. Lifeguard magnets... these are really old... at least fifteen years... and I may or may not have stolen them originally, I don't remember...
4. Flat bottom taco magnet which came with some other Mexican brand food item... it's holding up the scribble drawing J did ages ago and I stuck on the fridge, and a flyer for the Dolphin Cruise that I picked up in Port Adelaide...
5. Cybertart Bunny Bones magnet I got from Melbourne, which has the name of the Indian place Stu took me to for lunch a couple of weeks ago under it...
6. My Wish List...
7. Photo of Mouja the cat...
8. Random magnetic hotness from DNA magazine...

I also have some stuff around the far side too (but trying to get a photo from that angle would have been near impossible)... three goldfish (for luck/prosperity), a little movie poster magnet for Teenage Monster, another magnetic hotness from DNA and a magnet with "useful numbers" on it... Police, Gas Emergencies, Lifeline, stuff like that...

So, yeah, that's my fridge...

Current Mood:

i give him six months...

Ian Thorpe announced his retirement yesterday...

I happened to catch part of his press conference during the afternoon news... and my first thought after watching him speak and play the pronoun game about this "person" who helped him make the decision?

"I'll give him six months to a year before he come out..."

That is, unless he ends up doing something teevee related.

Hey, I could be wrong... media reports are saying that the "person" is actually a sports administrator (and a woman)... and I just finished reading Greg Louganis's autobiography, which could be further colouring my opinion...

To be honest, I've thought the same thing about Thorpe for YEARS... and I figured there's no point in saying, six months down the track, when he does finally announce it, "Oh, I always knew it"...

Time will tell I guess...

Current Mood:

deities

When I mentioned "Machine Washable, God of Clothing" in yesterday's post, it actually sparked off a whole other set of memories....

Way, way, way back... back when my apartment was actually Lownee's apartment (we switched... I moved here, she moved out to Golden Grove to share with Ludo)... she and I were having a "girly bonding evening" here (actually I think that was the same night she spilled the pasta sauce on the carpet... which is now where my teevee is)... and she was lamenting her lack of, well, pretty much everything actually...

I don't even know who came up with it, but suddenly we were actually building a little altar to the five deities that she wanted to invoke, and adding little icons or offerings, I'm not sure which... we switched off the lights, lit a candle and some incense and I channelled my inner holy-man and invoked them on her behalf...

Cha-Ching, God of Finance... with his offering of a small pile of coins...
Vroom, God of Cars... with his offering of either a toy car or else a picture of the car she wanted...
Rental Agreement, God of Housing... with his offering of the rental properties from the newspaper...
Job Guide, God of Employment... with his offering of, I think, the course she wanted to study so she could change careers...
Hubba-Hubba, God of Love & Smoochies... who I honestly can't remember what his offering was...

I couldn't tell you what I'd said, but it all sounded very "official" and I told her not to remove the icons/offerings or the incense ash...

And what do you know... within less than six months she actually had all the things she asked for in one form or another...

She got the course, which meant she could then get a better paying job (which takes care of Cha-Ching and Job Guide)... which also meant she could afford a new car (Vroom)... and she and I swapped apartments and she moved in with Ludo (which sorted out Rental Agreement, and then, ultimately Hubba-Hubba)...

Scary...

Of course, Lownee and I being Lownee and I... not only did they become shorthand for lamenting our lack of any given part of our life, but their names were taken in vain on more than one occasion.

And when those five weren't enough to cover all eventualities during our frequent emailing, we added to the pantheon... all of whom come under one or other of the original five in one way or another obviously...

Flicking through some of our old emails, these are the ones I could find... I'm sure there were others, but some of them got like one mention and were never brought up again...

Scruff, Demigod of Lust
Mindless Chatter, Goddess of Friendship
Svelte, Goddess of Slinky Figures
Blowwave, Demigod of Haircare
Strepsil, Goddess of Health
Urgent Deadline, Goddess of Workloads
Schlepp, God of Moving
and the latest addition... Machine Washable, God of Clothing

Current Mood:

montage monday: brewery xmas

I got inspired by the theme of today's Monday Montage when Ma and I were out and about on Saturday... we happened to drive past the Brewery's Christmas Riverbank Display... and I figured it would probably make a halfway decent Montage, so I went back yesterday and snapped some shots.

For the record...

The display's history evolved from an idea by South Australian Brewing staff back in 1959 to tidy up the Brewery's back yard and plant trees and grass. As an additional attraction, each Christmas the area is adorned by an attractive display of Christmas decorations. During the 1960's staff of South Australian Brewing built more display items, and many still remain today.

Interestingly enough, the display is actually a part of the Linear Park system (which goes all the way from the hills to the ocean)... although I don't know that I would have made the connection if I hadn't done far too many things involving the River Torrens and Linear Park of late...

I have to say, the display is one of those things were when you're a kid it's all magical and interesting (especially since a number of the figures actually animate to a limited degree... but seen with adult eyes (and during the day too I guess, as opposed to lit up at night), the whole thing has a slightly sad edge to it...

And the whale in the middle of the top row made headlines last year when the river flooded, sweeping away various parts of the display, and Mr Whale broke his shackles and took off down the river...

Oh Lordy... speaking of Christmas, the closer it gets to that silliest of seasons, the more Ma and my adventures on Saturdays turn into a shopping orgy of some kind... not always a successful one, but quite often many and varied in it's scope.

And I think it's also the reason why I don't bother doing a post-shopping round up on Saturdays (other than the fact that I would have a whole world of not very much to ramble about on Montage Mondays)... I'm just too damn exhausted by the time Ma toddles off home on Saturday afternoon... even with my weekly exercise, it still knackers me out...

Anyway... this weekend's adventure was a whole world of Random Christmas Shopping... and we still managed to come back with pretty much nothing for anybody other than the pair of us... part of the problem is that Ma knows who she wants things for, but not what she wants (yaaaaay, the inability to make a decision, gotta love it)... whereas, in this instance anyway, I knew what I wanted (things for my cousin's two girls), but couldn't bloody find them in the places we went.

After the usual food shopping adventures, we hit the Red Circle Boutique, and because I'd been having a Fashion Crisis earlier that morning and couldn't make up my mind what to put on (as well as the fact that a lot of the stuff that I have is actually starting to swim on me... yay), I decided to have a look in Menswear and see if they had anything halfway decent... it's actually been a pretty lean time of late trying to find anything with any kind of style. But, for whatever reason, the appropriate gods were smiling down on me (which, in this situation would be Machine Washable, God of Clothing) and there seemed to be a ton of stuff that, on the hanger at least, looked pretty good.

And the double bonus? The stuff that I picked was either one, or in one case, two sizes smaller than the teeshirt I was wearing (and at least two or three sizes smaller than some of the stuff in my wardrobe), and it all fit! Like really well! Yay me! Granted, some of it looked kind of shitty once it was off the hangers and on me (which I'm choosing to blame the designers for), but there were four tops that actually looked really good (including one that I wasn't sure about on the hanger... horizontal stripes, never flattering... but that looked amazing once it was on). And double double bonus, they were all about 25% off... yay again.

After the fashion related frivolity, we headed into town, to revisit the East End Rundle Street Markets again, and we went back to the stall that sells the "quasi twisted designs on cloth bags" I mentioned once before... only the stall was sans the purple haired girly from last time... anyway, they're now doing the same quasi twisted designs on teeshirts, and they look AMAZING... and really professionally done... so I ended up talking to the equally nice lady who was manning the stall, and she may be able to organise an appropriately sized teeshirt (since all the ones they had there were not only way too small, but also all women's sizes) for me... she's not 100% sure since they're having trouble with their teeshirt process at the moment... but fingers crossed... and I'll so be blogging a photo of the tee if I do get it...

I also realised that next time we plan on hitting the markets, I REALLY should take my camera along with me... I'm not sure how easy it would be to take a lot of shots around the stalls, but there's very probably a montage in there somewhere.

Then after the slightly overheated fun of the Market, we hit Borders again (bloody emailed vouchers... 40% off anything last week... 50% off children's books this week)... and while we were in there, I noticed the first book in the His Dark Materials Trilogy that Andrew mentioned a while back.

That then made me pick it up when I saw it at Kmart later (in a whole other shopping location)... and turns out it was only $6... in hardback... I nearly fell over right there and then... they had the whole trilogy actually, in hardback, $6 each... I only realised later on that I bought the books completely and utterly on Andrew's very brief recommendation of the first one... and the fact they were $6 each obviously... I didn't even read the blurb on the dust jacket... which I always do... even if something is recommended, I still read the blurb... whoops...

Since we were looking here, there and everywhere for Christmas Ideas, I steered Ma into The Body Shop, which actually turned out to be a very good idea indeed... I asked the Nice Retail Girly behind the counter about their Tea Tree Mattifying Facial Moisture Gel (which I used to use back when they just called it Tea Tree Moisturising Gel... which would have been at least fifteen years ago now... scary), and after being massively indecisive for a few moments (mostly because I was trying to back away from actually having to buy anything then and there), she gave me a little bit of the gel, and a little bit of the For Men Face Protector in little sample pots to take home. Woohoo for being indecisive!

I did end up buying a bracelet for The AIDS Trust of Australia... it's like my Livestrong bracelet (well, they're all knock offs from that concept really, since, as far as I know, the Livestrong one was first), but like most of the non-Livestrong ones it doesn't feel like it's as good quality... plus it's grey, so that just clashes with the yellow. I'm not sure if it's going to be a permanent addition, I might just wear it up until World AIDS Day, since this whole wearing two bracelets thing could get annoying really fast.

Oh, and I've discovered something else I don't like about the new Blogger system... if you add a post, name it one thing, save it as a draft, go away, come back, then rename it before you publish, it keeps the old title... which is why the Photo Friday: Mirrored Junk post actually has "photo-friday-jacaranda.html" as it's URL. And it's particularly annoying because I like to have a bunch of unpublished posts waiting in the wings... and now I can't (or, I can, but I'd have to name them the right thing right off the bat).

And I mentioned this in the comments of the No More Lemming post, but I figured I would mention it here too... Larry's "no more blog" thing lasted a grand total of like two days... he's got a new blog... silly Larry...

Current Mood:

painting: tom

Tom, Tom, the Blogging Man...

This is Blogger Canvas #2: Tom...

When I originally mentioned the whole concept of both painting and the blogger canvases, I said "Tom would feature blue"... I think it's mostly because of his blog design rather than anything else... but it suits my mental image of him anyway...

And I always feel that Tom's writing is very "straight lines"... which isn't a bad thing, I just mean that it goes very clearly from A to B, and you always get the feeling he hasn't left anything out... but at the same time there HAS to be stuff that we don't see... which is why the straight lines (or straightish... given my inability to paint really straight lines freehand) all criss-cross like that... nothing seems to be hidden, but there are layers there... there's depth... and maybe some stuff that's hidden way in the back.

I'll also add that, for no real reason really... each of the layers has five stripes...

That, and the fact that in person it's a little brighter than it seems in the photo, but I can't get too much more brightness and contrast going or the top lines loose detail.

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what's it worth... reprise

Back in October last year my blog was worth $3,387.24 (or about AU$4,480)... cut to just over a year later...

My blog is worth $16,371.66.
How much is your blog worth?

So it's now worth around AU$21,300.60... or $12,984.42 (AU$16,820.60) more than the blog was worth a year ago...

Go figure...

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photo friday: city art

A double Photo Friday yet again...

These are just random "art" shots I took in the city last time I was getting my hair cut... or rather, after I'd had it cut and when I was off to see my Agency Girly...

The birds were just in a side street... on the side of a cafe actually, and I was totally struck by them, since, unlike Melbourne, street art on that scale is not something you usually see here in Adelaide. I also love the fact that the birds even fly over the parking signs.

The glass word art on the other hand is the frontage for the new Sunday Mail & Advertiser building... and I have to say, I totally love it! But then I've always been fond of using typography as art. What you can't really see in that photo is that there is a second set of panels set behind the ones with the letters that reflect the letters a second time (well, I'm guessing that's what it is, rather than it being a second set of lettering) which gives you that whole depth thing.

And yes, I did frame this shot so that I got the word "photography" in it's entirety.

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no more lemming...

Everyone's favourite Lemming has called it a day... no more Larry the Love Lemming blog... he deleted it... it's all gone...

I'll miss reading about his life...

Can I get a minute's silence please?

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random slevin hotness

Another actor-based entry for today's Random Hotness... this time, Josh Hartnett from Tuesday's movie, The Wrong Man.

It was actually harder than I thought to find a decent shot of him in a towel (or at least a decent and large enough shot), and although this towel shot is a little dark in places (ie, all the good places), it does show off those biceps... yummy! I don't think the other shot has anything to do with the movie (the hair is too short for a start), but he did kind of dress like that in the movie, so I figured it made a worthy compliment to the mostly nekkid shot.

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chicken with tomato and mango relish

I know I've said this with a lot of the previous recipes, but I honestly don't know where this one came from... not even the vaguest clue...

But it is, without a shadow of a doubt, my 100% favourite Summer recipe... basically whenever mangos are in season, and particularly when they start to get cheap, it's a good time to buy up big, since the relish can be easily frozen until you need it.

That's actually what I did with the relish this time, since I bought a mango last week and I don't think it would have lasted until Tuesday (although an overripe mango isn't any kind of hinderance to this dish), I made up the relish, wacked it in the freezer and then pulled it out yesterday afternoon for dinner before the movie.

The other thing that makes this the ultimate Summer dish is that you can have it at just about any temperature combination... cold relish, warm rice and chicken... warm relish, rice and chicken... cold relish and chicken, warm rice... cold relish, rice and chicken... it's beautiful, quick, easy and tasty.

Chicken with Tomato and Mango Relish

4 chicken breasts
1 stick celery (chopped)
1 bay leaf
1 onion (chopped)

Combine celery, bay leaf and onion in large pan half filled with water. Bring to boil then add the chicken. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes or until the chicken is tender. Drain, discarding the bayleaf, and serve the chicken, celery and onion mixture with the relish on rice.

Relish

2 teaspoons oil
1 onion (chopped)
2 teaspoons lime or lemon juice
¼ cup of water
1 tomato (chopped)
1 mango (chopped)
2 teaspoons fresh mint
1 teaspoon grated lemon or lime rind

Heat the oil in small saucepan, then add onion and cook until soft. Add the lemon juice, water, tomato, mango and mint. Bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture has thickened slightly. Stir in lemon rind to finish.

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movies: the wrong man

I have to say that the first ten minutes or so of The Wrong Man (which was called Lucky Number Slevin in America, and I honestly have no idea why they bothered changing it) was so totally NOT what I'd expected from the trailers that I'd seen. Or maybe it just didn't start the way I thought it was going to...

But I was hooked completely and utterly from the opening scene all the way through the whole movie. It's a thriller, it's a good old fashioned mystery, parts of it are very Hitchcockian (which two of the characters actually acknowledge at one point), but at the same time it's just funny enough to pull you in that little bit deeper and not make itself a joke.

It also had more twists and turns and surprises than a barrel full of monkeys... I will admit that I'd worked out a couple of them right at the beginning, but didn't twig to pretty much all the rest until they were happening.

And really... ANY movie that has Josh Hartnett spending his first fifteen minutes of screen time dressed in nothing but a towel, is a good movie in my book... YUM! And on top of that, he's actually a damn good actor. I also realised that I pretty much love Lucy Lui in just about anything she's in (and any role from Angel to Sexy Assassin), and I think she's very probably right at the top of my list of "women I might consider turning for"... maybe not literally... but in theory anyway...

I have to say though, that EVERYONE in this is actually excellent... from Bruce, Morgan and Ben, right through to the supporting artists in the various "goon" rolls... I don't think there is a single one of them that isn't excellent in their part.

After about the third or fourth set appeared on screen, I was deeply, deeply in love with the whole Production Designer, Art Designers and Set Decorators... all that AMAZING wallpaper and the big bold 70's inspired look to a lot of the things... VERY cool... not to mention the Boss's chunky glass chess set... and all the glasswork in general really. François, Pierre, Colombe, Suzanne and Normand... you all ROCK! But then, given their names, I'm guessing they were all French, which might go some way to explaining why everything was so damn stylish.

Can you tell that I was totally loving this movie? This is definitely going on the "must get this on DVD" list...

yani's rating: 4 "bad dogs" out of 5

montage monday: jacaranda

While today's Monday Montage possibly isn't one of my most polished efforts, it's less random than usual in that it's in honour of Andrew. Every time I see the Jacaranda blossoms start to fall all over everything (well, since last year anyway... but then I don't know that I'd even noticed them before last year), I automatically think of him... and then he went and posted a gorgeous image of the fallen blossoms.

Plus, hello, purple... I just loves me some purple...

Of course, with the weather that way it's been the last couple of days, when I went out this morning without my camera there were fricken blossoms all over everywhere... carpets of the things... typical...

Just quickly before I go any further... Glow in the Dark Bubble Bath... who the hell comes up with this stuff? My kingdom for a bathtub...

Moving on...

Saturday's weekly shopping adventure was a big-ass exercise in frustration... firstly, because Ma had her hair cut (I realised this morning that the little gay boy that cuts it was chanelling Kylie's new short 'do in not just the cut but also the way he styled her hair... but whether it was conscious or unconscious I don't know) we didn't get to go out superduper early (ie 8am), instead it was more like 10am or so, which is actually still earlier than we used to go shopping before we started going really early (that makes sense, right?)... but ME NO LIKEE! I've obviously gotten used to shopping nice and early with only the Elderly Insomniac Brigade to keep us company, and there just seemed to be too many people... yucky ta...

I'm like this far away from turning all Howard Hughes, I swear...

I grabbed a couple of packets of the Sanitarium Vegie Delights "meat free" products... the Stir-Fry Strips and the Traditional Soy Sausages BBQ to be exact... just to try... quit making that face at me Tom. While I can cook chicken 108 different ways, and do a great line in slow cooked red meat in curries and whatnot, for whatever reason me and quick cooking of red meat... either stir frying beef, or even just cooking a steak... all goes to hell in a handbasket and ends up looking slightly grey... so I reasoned that if it's not really red meat, I should actually be able to cook it properly... we'll see... I'm pretty sure these are the same ones that I tried at the Body Mind and Psychic Expo with J and Monkey when they were here, or, if not the same brand, then at least variations on a theme, and those ones were actually really nice...

Anyway, after food shopping we headed into town to make use of another one of those Border's vouchers (yay, 40% off this time, although the book I actually wanted wasn't in stock) and to track down a packet of the paper for Stu to print the Seahorse Calendar Project on, since Ma was very pleased with the samples from Friday...

We started off going to Officeworks... which is where Stu sent us... then we tried WC Penfolds (which could have had it, but was closed), Premier Art Supplies, Ted's Cameras, Harvey Norman, Woolworths, and eventually took a side trip to Kmart... nobody had that particular Canon matt photo paper. On the way back from Kmart, I sent Stu an amusing text message full of profanity (not directed at him, just at the paper and the situation) and he called and advised us to try a Harvey Norman store other than the one in the city... which Ma did on her way home from my place... and yes, you guessed it... they had the paper in stock... Grrrr...

It's good that we finally found it, but highly annoying that we ran all over town with no success...

Oh, and to top it all off... I realised when I was poking through my cupboard for some dinner that I'd actually managed to leave at least three or four items in the bottom basket of the cute little basket trolley (or EZcarts as I just discovered they were called) that I always use around the supermarket (in fact, the supermarket that I go to is one of the few who have them)...

On a side note, I freakin LOVE the EZcart... with two baskets, it's just big enough for everything I need, I can zip in and out of really narrow spaces that you could never get a big trolley through (like when random people are blocking up most of the aisle trying to make a lifestyle choice on an item), and unlike big trolleys they never seem to have steering problems... sorry... didn't mean to turn into an infomercial there...

So yeah, I'd put some stuff in the bottom basket because the top one was overflowing, and then for whatever reason, got about three of the items out (including my Iced Coffee), and for some strange reason, I left the rest behind. Now that I think about it, it's doubly ironic, because I nabbed the cart off someone who had just finished with it, and she'd left something in the bottom basket, which I returned to her. Karma obviously hated me on Saturday for some reason.

Sunday seems to have become my scheduled painting day... I'm very, very nearly finished two out of the remaining three blogger canvases... and probably would have totally finished those two had it not been for the fact that I smudged one (only a little, and a second coat in the offending area will fix it right up) and need to touch up the sides of the other one to finally finish it off. Sadly, the fourth blogger canvas is going to have to go to canvas heaven... or wherever it is that completely ruined canvases go when you can't rescue them... I just overworked the damn thing, and because I used the gold paint quite thickly on it in a couple of spots, I can't even paint over it and start again. We also picked up some slightly better black and white paint while we were at Kmart (the same brand as the gold and silver), and it looks like that solved my problem with the Asian inspired canvas I'm working on... nice thick black coverage.

Oh, and on the subject of Blogger Beta, I have to say, I very much prefer the new spellcheck to the old one... although it did try to eat one of my images somehow yesterday... don't know what happened there...

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painting: eddy

Eddy...

I've never encountered anyone who wears their Pride on their sleeve as much as Eddy... not even when I was heavily involved in "the community"... so of course I had to use the rainbow flag colours... I was intending to use stripes, but the damn red paint wouldn't play ball properly, so I went with the whole dot painting thing...

The other reason I wanted to use the rainbow was that I remember a post Eddy did not that long ago where we was saying that "rainbow" was his new favourite colour, or something along those lines.

I might need to revisit the whole "rainbow on black" thing at a later date for something else... since I liked how this looked even before the swirlies.

The swirlies are silver (because I know he likes silver too), and while they didn't come out quite how I had originally sketched them, I liked the fact that I was able to do a lot of them with a single brush stroke (even if I had to go back and touch it up in spots afterwards).

So yeah... Blogger Canvas #1: Eddy...

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blog labels

I finally got all my previous posts labelled up with the new version of Blogger... it's weird... not the labelling itself, that's easy (although it did take me a while to work out that to completely delete a label you just need to remove all the posts from it)... but trying to fit all of my old posts into one category or another (sometimes two or three actually)... which is why I ended up with a "general randomness" label...

While most of the labels I came up with were self explanatory, I thought I would go through them all anyway, mention how many posts they all have, what's in them, that kind of thing... like Gay Banker said in his version of this post (and it's where I stole the idea), it's a bit cheap blogging about blogging... but what the hell...

I've added the labels to the sidebar, and taken out the couple of lists I had in there that linked back to my own stuff... I'm sure that when I'm brave enough to update my template again on the new system that Blogger will add the labels into the sidebar for me automatically, but I'm not quite ready for that yet... it also means, unfortunately, that I'm missing the "Older Posts" link that appears at the bottom of long lists of posts like this... so you might not get all the posts in any one category...

• About Me: 111 posts... which is the most of any of the categories... this is not only actual stuff about me, but also some of those random diary posts... but hey, the whole blog is about me really... right?
• Blog Stuff: 27 posts... this is, not surprisingly, stuff relating to the blog and blogging in general, like this post...
• Camera Club: 20 posts... my adventures with the Camera Club... and that's probably all the posts under this label that there will ever be...
• Excursions: 26 posts... this is any time I've been anywhere out of the ordinary, coffee with someone, events like Skyshow, dining out, that kind of thing...
• Exposing Myself: 5 posts... showing off something from my house/life... this takes the place of the Exposing Myself list I had in the sidebar...
• General Randomness: 34 posts... things that just didn't seem right filed under anything else...
• Hair Adventures: 7 posts... my adventures around getting my hair done... but given the number of posts it's pretty obvious that I don't get my hair cut that often.
• Meme: 26 posts... that's a lot of meme really...
• Men: 28 posts... my very unsuccessful adventures with men and my thought on the few strange men who've been part of my life thus far...
• Montage Monday Musings: 50 posts... this is a mixture of my Monday Montage and Monday Musings posts...
• Movies: 43 posts... my thoughts on the movies I've seen...
• Painting: 4 posts... my ongoing painting adventures...
• Photo Friday: 44 posts... all my random Friday photos...
• Pop Culture: 34 posts... this is stuff about teevee or books or music or whatever, but for the most part it's stuff other than movies, since that has it's own label...
• Quizzes: 86 posts... the second largest group of postings... blogthings, quizzes, trivia, that kind of stuff...
• Random Hotness: 66 posts... the few, the random, the hotness...
• Recipes: 9 posts... this one takes the place of the Yani's Cookbook list I had in the sidebar... my cooking adventures...
• Special Day: 23 posts... either holidays, or else other random days like Talk Like a Pirate Day...
• Templates: 11 posts... this is just the changes to my blog template...
• Thoughts On: 11 posts... mostly this is the posts titled "Thoughts On..." but it's also got some of my other long thoughtful rambles in it...
• Walking: 64 posts... just about any post that has anything to do with my ongoing adventures in walking got added to this one...
• Work: 6 posts... my currently infrequent adventures in the world of work...

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