unconscious mutterings 357

Today had a touch of awkward about it... not as much as I thought it might, but it was still a little weird.

My main problem though was staying awake... seriously, I found myself continually nodding off all day... bad....

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. MacGyver :: Making a thermonuclear device out of a plastic bottle and a couple of paper clips
2. Garter :: Belt
3. Wedge :: Heels
4. Inches :: The only way to measure a penis
5. Code :: Red
6. Water :: Torture
7. Running :: Man
8. Curly :: Larry and Moe
9. Turkey :: Christmas
10. Stupor :: Drinking yourself into a

Current Mood:

doin the christmas tree thing

It's that time of year again... time for trimming the tree and officially making with wrapping presents and general Christmas plans...

And oddly enough it was a pretty easy day, albeit with one small hitch (more on that later).

After I got ready I headed down to the 24 bakery to pick up some stuff for breakfast and lunch and general nibbles, which turned out quite well even if the girl in the bakery looked at me like I was slightly nuts (what with ordering pies and pasties at 8am... but given it's a 24 hour bakery, I'm sure I'm not the craziest person they've had in there).

Once I got down to Ma's and we'd gotten organised it was time to unpack the tree and read through all the little notes I add to every year... I really do need to photograph them again... there's some funny stuff in there, or at least it seems funny when we're putting the tree up. I did end up wearing my mini Sharpie lanyard for a bunch of the day too... came in handy, especially later on when I hung a pen from it while we were wrapping presents.

Which brings me around to the hitch... getting the lights on the tree. Since we bought the two sets of 100 lights a few years back I don't believe that we've been able to get them into place properly. And today was no exception... three attempts, and I'm not completely sure that the way we finally went with is the best idea... but it kinda worked.

I'm also not sure if I spread the branches out more than usual or what, but it seemed to be harder to get the baubles in place than previously...

But it's always the same... you think it's not going according to plan or as easily as it has in previous years and in the end it comes out looking pretty good and about the same as always (which is not really news, since I think I said about the same thing last year).

We managed to get everything done tree-wise reasonably quickly and with a minimum of mess and fuss overall... but as I mentioned to Ma later in the day, it's not really the tree stuff that messes the place up, it's the present wrapping that follows.

Before we got to that though we tidied up the tree stuff, had some lunch and went to the shops... which, to be honest we really didn't need to do... we didn't need anything that couldn't have waited and all we really did was waste an hour.

When we got back we wrapped La Cousina's framed Chinese outfits (which I just realised that I never got a picture of... must remember to do that on Christmas Day after she opens them) and a few other bits and pieces before we called it a day.

Obviously at some point after we got back from the shops it must have rained, very quickly and kinda hard, because when I came out to start packing up the car with my toy solider collection and sundry other Christmas decorations I discovered that because I'd left the windows open the inside of my car got a little on the damp side. It must have been a very brief rainstorm though because the concrete under the car wasn't even wet, except where it had dripped off the car. Weird.

On the drive home there was a bit of an odd occurrence too... I saw a guy standing on the side of the road (in a slightly odd place too) in a white muscle top (but really not the muscle top type, kinda more Mafia then muscle) smoking... which wouldn't have been weird at all, except for the fact that the very same guy had been standing in the very same spot when I drove past this morning. Whether he'd been standing there for the whole 11 hours between the two trips or not I don't know... but it was definitely both sketchy and weird.

Then I got back home to discover that the annual Christmas party was going on on the grass verge outside my place... which I knew was happening, because it usually falls on the same day that we put up the tree, but I'd totally forgotten about it until I got home. Fortunately because the weather wasn't overly pleasant the party didn't go on for too long and broke up just after dark.

It's odd though that a day where you get a ton of stuff done from an objective standpoint can feel like you haven't done a damn thing at all... and as though the time has just slipped through your fingers with nothing to show for it... whereas a day where you sit around and do nothing can seem to last forever. Of course, that's partly because with the exception of a couple of boxes and a big tin toy soldier, my lounge room doesn't look any different, unlike Ma's place.

Well, not yet anyway... I'm going to unpack everything later in the week, after I've had a chance to work out what I'm going to pack away.

But now the weekend's done and it's off to work again tomorrow... which I'll admit, after Friday, is not something I'm overly looking forward to.

Current Mood:

wild and wooly saturday

Far out, talk about your contrasts...

It's been warm and muggy for most of the week, and then today there's been torrential rain... and I mean that... there was big, scary rain a couple of times. And it's still blowing a gale out there and keeps raining big scary rain on and off.

Bloody stupid weather... oh well, at least it won't be hot and stinky for Christmas Tree Construction tomorrow.

It was a pretty "light on" Supermarket Safari week this week... I still have a bunch of stuff left over from last week since I went out and specifically bought stuff during the week to make things. This week's offerings did all look a little pitiful when I brought it home and spread it out on the kitchen counter though.

Other than that, there wasn't much to the first part of the morning... unless you count the fact that Ma was being somewhat more vague than usual.

Our main destination for today was the Goodwood Christmas Market which we found by accident in March when they were doing the Autumn version (although I did see the Christmas one last year as I was driving past).

So I think you can do the math... open air/sidewalk market + torrential rain = not good. For the most part we didn't get too wet, we'd brought along the big rainbow umbrella that lives in Ma's car, but the wind would have turned it inside out in about two minutes flat, so instead we just made friends with a lot of the stallholders and sheltered in various spots until we could venture onwards.

We picked up a couple of the Puddling Lane Christmas Puddings... we had one last year and it was very yummy, so we went for a different flavour this year. I also grabbed a bottle of really nice olive oil, and we found some cute bits and pieces for presents. Plus I found a secondhand Little Golden Book version of The Velveteen Rabbit... I didn't even know there was a Golden Book version... it'll be seriously truncated, but I couldn't leave it there, I'm just a touch obsessed with TVR currently.

Then we spent ages with the nice lady at the Feminique stall where Ma tried on a bunch of pendants with interchangeable stones before finally deciding on one... and then she had to pick the glass tiles and learn how to slide them in and out... but she was happy with it, and it does have a vague seahorse vibe about it (I think it's just that the design she picked is somewhat S shaped). Technically it could go away for her birthday, but I totally don't have the patience to keep it hanging around for that long. It was pretty good value though... although it wasn't cheap, it came with five tiles and we bought an extra one for $2, so that's essentially six different necklaces at around $10 a pop.

Oddly enough I was looking at pendants for Ma yesterday and Thursday, but didn't buy anything. Obviously I was picking up on a vibe because I just wasn't sure about the ones I was looking at... so I must have been supposed to wait.

Fortunately that side of the road was nicely sheltered, because it started to really bucket down with rain after we left the Feminque stall... so we just stood around for a bit and as soon as the rain died down we darted across the road and wandered quickly past the couple of remaining stalls before calling it quits.

After an unsuccessful trip to Big W to try and spot some printing paper we ended up going to Officeworks were I found some Kodak paper (I kinda wanted Canon, since that's what the printer is, but they didn't have anything glossy) and a Lapramp laptop stand... so Beast is currently sitting up at an angle, which is pretty good for typing I have to say, and hopefully it stops him getting quite so hot.

When we got back here I did a quick sort through my wardrobe and ditched a bunch of stuff that I just don't wear anymore... there's nothing wrong with any of it (well, there were a couple of shirts that were a size too small), but mostly I just don't wear the stuff. But it made some room in my wardrobe, which was getting very, very squeezy. I don't quite know if I got rid of one thing for every new thing I've bought recently, but everything seems to fit in there better.

Now I just have to decide if I can be bothered trying to hook my printer up to Beast this afternoon...

Current Mood:

photo friday: star turn

I had a little tantrum at work today. Actually, it wasn't really that little since I ended up leaving at lunch time and taking a "Mental Health Afternoon".

I don't really know where it all came from either... I mean I've been tired all week long, but I've been similarly tired for a while now and still manage to function... but I've been tired and irritable and flat all week long, and today just took the cake.

So I was already slightly pissed off when I got to work (although, like I said, I couldn't tell you why)... then Lucrezia turned up early for once and proceeded to have an incredibly annoying and repetitive conversation with the annoying Mr Beige for about 25 minutes... except it was only about 5 minutes worth of conversation, they just had it five times because she's a control freak and he's a moron.

Short version is, it was doing my head in.

So by the time Sugarmonkey came in I was deep in headphone mode... double headphone mode actually, which I never do. This did improve somewhat when Sugarmonkey told us that Mrs Sugarmonkey is expecting a Little Sugarmonkey.... awww bless.

Later in the morning I went over to speak to one of the others in the team and Lucrezia and I got into an argument... and I could just feel the red mist come down over my brain... I was monumentally livid, and even just recalling it to write about it now my heart rate has increased and I can feel the rage bubbling up.

Shortly after that we were supposed to be having a staff meeting... but I was still incredibly angry, so I just took myself out of the equation... I didn't go to the meeting and just sat with my earphones in trying to concentrate on what I was doing. But of course I couldn't...

So while everybody was away I decided that I'd just call it a day and leave at lunchtime... I had kinda hoped to leave before they all got back from the meeting, but it didn't quite work out that way. Instead of making a big production about it I sent an email to La Ninj, said a brief farewell to Sugarmonkey and walked out the door.

As I headed towards the Mall I just slowed my walking and slowed my breathing (kinda like I'm trying to do right now in fact) and felt myself start to calm down.

I then proceeded to wander around the Mall for a couple of hours. I didn't really buy anything, although I did go and get two gift vouchers for H-San's birthday next week. I'm not sure my Present Radar was working at 100% efficiency, I split the money between two places and hopefully I picked the right place for the second one.

And even though it was kinda hot and muggy and there were people getting in my way and whatnot, it was still a million miles better than sitting at work stewing.

I also stopped off at the World AIDS Day stall in the middle of the mall and bought a couple of rubber bracelets and got a couple of free calico bags. I like free things, especially when I'd assumed I'd have to pay for them and was more than willing to do so.

So yeah... a very cranky day...

There was a walking cliché on the bus this morning... well dressed business woman in her mid twenties reading Twilight. Reading it while standing up on the bus mind you. But it was when she saw somebody she knew across the aisle and had to share the fact that she's been to "facility management training" the night before and just wanted to "sit in the corner and read" that I wanted to smack her upside the head. I know I've read the book, but it was average at best.

I also managed to solve an ongoing problem this afternoon too. On Wednesday ABC2 lost it's sound on my box... in the space between me watching a program and then flicking to another station and back again. Very annoying! So this afternoon I made the system do an auto search (once I worked out what the hell the password protecting the option was... thank the gods for 0000 passwords), and hey presto, all fixed.

Now all I need is to get enough sleep this weekend.

Current Mood:

random slammer hotness

Sometimes a Random Hotness post will just appear out of thin air at the 11th hour...

Checking Google Reader, I came across this post on East Village Boys about photographer Luke Smalley, and while I recognised his Gymnasium work I wasn't aware he passed away in May this year... but the EVB site goes into much more detail about his life and work.

These shots are from his Sunday Drive series.

Current Mood:

street art that watches you back

You know what I worked out this morning...

It's a month until Christmas.

And I don't feel in any way particularly organised or ready... not that I generally need to do that much to get ready (and Ma is sorted presentwise, barring any late "must have" additional knick knacks and the traditional bar of nougat), but by this point last year I'd already had Ma's calendar printed and bound... and done much more Christmas shopping and was generally more in the appropriate seasonal mood. But I feel a little disconnected from it all this year... Christmas just seem to have almost appeared out of nowhere.

With any luck this weekend's bout of ritual self flagellation that is Putting Up The Christmas Tree will help to get me into the appropriate spirit.

On an unrelated thought... is it weird that even when H-San and Sugarmonkey make me completely and totally crazy I can't imagine being anywhere else... which is both tragic and somewhat bad for me, because eventually this will come to an end.

Speaking of unrelated things...

I made chicken Muzburgers for dinner tonight... and then served them with a nice bean and tomato salad (it was supposed to have baby bocconcini in it, but I forgot).

It's an interesting recipe... maybe a little on the dry side, but that was probably my fault because I added more breadcrumbs than I was supposed to. And because they're coated in breadcrumbs and then cooked on the George, well, they take freakin ages to brown up and had a pretty solid shell once they were done. Maybe doing them in oil in a frypan would be slightly better, if not as healthy.

Tasty though, what with the chilli and the pepper and the extra basil I added... definitely one to tweak and try again. And maybe come up with some tasty sauce to go with them...

Current Mood:

blindsided tuesday

You know those days that come out of nowhere and blindside you? Yeah, today was one of those.

I've been trying to avoid having anything to do with the training that we do (hence the trained seals on the right)... but there are some days when you just have to suck it up and roll up your sleeves.

Fortunately I only had to be there for a couple of hours, since I was essentially backup for Sugarmonkey... and now he owes me one (although I haven't tried that one out on him yet... I'm sure he'll disagree).

The training stuff itself was fine... I just had to wander around at the back of the room and keep an eye on what everybody was doing, and make sure they didn't seem to be confused or doing the wrong thing or whatever. There was one guy that just wasn't getting it, but once I got him caught up with everybody else he seemed okay (at least until he screwed it up again).

Slightly more problematic were the two taxi drivers I had... the one on the way there was overly talkative (the weather, road, political sex scandals) and although it wasn't completely his fault because of the roadworks, he seemed to be taking forever. The guy on the way back was even worse... he seemed confused about where we were going (although he did get there without much problem or prompting) and wouldn't shut up about the roadworks.

My own fault... I didn't sit in the back seat and completely ignore them.

So I left work around 10:30 and didn't get back into the office until 1pm. And as you can imagine, it meant that the rest of my day was pretty much a write-off. I ended up editing a document for H-San and a couple of other bits and pieces, but it was all a little bit vague...

Then I came home and made Chicken with Tomato and Mango Relish, the first time for the season... damn that stuff is yummy!

The major downside for my day was the discovery that Nestlé is discontinuing the Polly Waffle chocolate bar... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

"Younger people admit to only a vague knowledge of the Polly Waffle and most are unaware it is uniquely Australian and not available anywhere else in the world."

Stoopid younger people... I love me some Polly Waffle action! They can't discontinue it... maybe if they actually advertised it every once in a while people might buy them!

I can see that there may very well be a Peanut Butter KitKat type excursion this weekend... must buy an obscene amount of the Polly Waffle...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 356

I'm not sure what's worse... having somebody comment that you've lost weight when you know the opposite is true... or having lost weight and nobody noticing.

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Marathon :: Ancient Greece
2. Debt :: National
3. Turn :: The other cheek
4. Image :: HTML
5. Sofa :: Little Red Sofa
6. Envelope :: Letter
7. Cart :: Before the horse
8. Process :: Policy
9. Question :: Answer
10. Rumor :: Bruce's kid

Current Mood:

busy sunday with brunch and calendar

Oy... what a day! Not bad, just busy for a Sunday.

I spent most of the morning tidying up around my apartment... while I hadn't let it go the entire time it's been hot, it was looking the worse for wear after the last few days, so I put some things away, sorted out some papers, made a V flavoured jelly (which could be a symphony of wrong), put the fan and the cooler away for the time being (in fact today was the first day in a good long while that I haven't had both of them running all day and night) and generally sorted out my living space.

Then after I'd had a shower and was about to sit down and fiddle around with Beast, I got a call from Ash. We'd arrange to meet for brunch while he was here, and he was in North Adelaide... actually he was at the end of my street. So I went down the road and we had some bunch in the cafe on the corner.

It was good to catch up with him, even if, as I mentioned to him, he seemed shorter than I remembered (which was mostly because I think this is the first time that I've ever seen him in such low shoes)... I think quite possibly I talked too much, but conversation was never difficult as it can sometimes be when you catch up with somebody you haven't seen in years and years and year.

Once we were done I wandered off to get a paper and some mid afternoon snackage (as well as rescuing a poster for Bison from the wall as I went past), then spent most of the afternoon working on Ma's 2010 calendar....

A very different format this year... new font, new orientation, the whole deal. Actually switching over to having images arranged horizontally was a bit of a bugger, because I'd taken a bunch of shots in Melbourne that were specifically portrait orientation to use for the calendar... but since Ma doesn't actually use the dates spaces as actual dates I figured this looked pretty good.

It also means that I finally have to hook my multifunction printer/scanner/copier up to Beast so I can print it out.

But now it's suddenly 6pm and have no idea where the hell the day went too...

Current Mood:

"so it begins again" saturday

Well, the stores all seem to have their Christmas decorations up and we officially started doing Christmas Shopping today, so Christmas will be upon us before we know it...

After waking up confused about what day it was (I was in the midst of moving stuff around and making the bed at 5am when I realised it was actually the weekend so I gave up and went back to bed), and only having four hours sleep on top of that, it's been something of a tiring day.

And a grey day with occasional showers too... woohoo!

Anyway... Supermarket Safari... it's always easier to have a vague plan for what you might want to eat during the week when it's not going to be 8000 degrees... and at some point this week I'd like to try Muz's After Gym chicken rissoles...

I also bought a little basil plant at the supermarket, because I'm tending to use quite a bit of the stuff at the moment and rather than buying it at a couple of dollars a pop, I thought I might attempt to grow some of my own. How well that ends up working is anybody's guess.

Once we were done trawling the supermarkets and had picked up a couple of seriously marked down Clothes Airers (I have to try and put mine together later), we came back here, did the unpacking thing then headed into the city to begin The Shopping of Christmas.

Oddly, Ma doesn't have an awful lot of things to get on her list, which is good, because the only things we ended up getting in town were things for us... well, things for Ma really...

Namely a Nintendo DS with accessories pack and game... one of the attractive yet tattooed freaks in JB HiFi was very helpful and Ma had something of a brainwave that we could automatically trade in the free game that came with the DS and use the refund to buy Dr Kawashima's Brain Training game... of course now I want to be really evil and get her some completely fluffy game as well... but that will have to wait until later.

We also went looking for the Snow Bunny Harajuku Girls perfume, and because we didn't just cave in at the first store that had it for 15% off, we also managed to get free gifts out the whazoo... well, a set of pencils and case as well as a set of little vials of fragrance. But Ma bought that for herself since I already got her the solid perfume Harajuku faces.

She's going to have more of that fucking perfume than she knows what to do with I swear! But the fragrance woman in Myer did suggest the idea of layering the different fragrances... which could be interesting.

Once we'd finished wandering around town (or at least run of out things to wander about looking for), we decided to go down to West Lakes for no real reason... but there was more wandering around when we got there, once we'd had lunch anyway. Ma did pick up a couple of bits and pieces for people, and we looked at a bunch of stuff, but all in all the only thing I really got from West Lakes was sore feet.

On the way home we called into Bunnings to get a plant pot and soil so I could repot the basil plant... which I did when we got back here... so now it's all red and shiny (the pot, not the plant, because that would be unhealthy and wrong).

So a tiring but somewhat productive day...

Current Mood:

photo friday: wet and dry

This shot pretty much sums up the last couple of days... or it would if you could see the raindrops on the dried up roses more clearly...

It's been dry... and now it's wet...

Things that brightened my day:

• The fact that it's Friday
• Cargo Shorts Guy at the traffic lights wearing one baby blue and one hot pink ankle sock
• Epaulette Shirt Guy on the bus who was listening to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack (homo much?)
  
• Bare calves (the leg kind, not the bovine kind), long torsos, dreadlocks and boys in fedoras
• The four guys gambolling in and out of sprinklers like puppies first thing this morning... two of them were shirtless and one had his pants hanging down below his ass
• Work Bear Guy... even if he does essentially wear the same outfit every day (see my earlier point about calves and fedoras)
• Summer rain... big fat warm raindrops
• H-San and Sugarmonkey picking on me (weird but true)
• Blonde Hipster Guy at the supermarket in a red teeshirt and lowslung tight jeans with rips in interesting places
• Finding #2-5 of the Buffy Season 8 graphic novels on the doorstep when I got home
  
• A random early evening hookup who's on his way over as we speak
  

Things that did not brighten my day:

• An email at work from a woman with way too much time on her hands who we assume had been fired from her job and now wants to make "trouble"
• Coming home to a stuffy house
• People who can't put correct links into webpages
• Getting caught out in the big fat summer rain, and the humidity that followed
• People being all in my way and stuff either because it's raining or because we've passed the Christmas Pagent and entered the stupid season
• CSS
• Who the hell leaves a parcel on somebody's doorstep the whole day... especially a day when rain was forecast... but really, anybody could have come along and walked off with it, and there goes $95...
  

Current Mood:

feast: bison

Last year Focus Theatre came to town for Feast with Lachlan Philpott's Blowing Whistles... this year they return with another one of his plays, Bison...

It's a very different play from the last one... there's no linear story, in fact the whole thing kind of feels like this free association chorus... particularly the very beginning of the play (which doesn't really make any sense until the very end of the play).

Just don't ask me what the hell the title is about... bison are mentioned a couple of times but it's all a little vague.

The promotional blurb says that Bison "follows four guys as they search for that illusive special something in the gay hunting grounds of Sydney and beyond"... which is both true and misleading. Like I said... it's non linear... there's something of a story thoughline for each character, but they're drawn broadly enough to be architypes... the freshly gay boy, the guy who can't get over the ex, the sexpig and the old guy.

Since there are only four actors on stage, they take turns to fill out any other characters that are needed which definitely adds to the feeling of architypes.

While the writing is very funny in parts, and particular dead-on as far as the gay scene is concerned in others (or sometimes both), the play didn't affect me anywhere near as much as Blowing Whistles, mostly because of the lack of a story I think.

The four actors are exceptionally good... Quinn Gibbes as "Tom" (running from his ex), John Turnbull as "IT Dick" (the old guy), Christopher Tomkinson as "Simon Size-King" (the sexpig) and Vincent Hooper as "Just-Out Jason" (the transformation scene from "closeted and suburban" to "uber princess" is scarily accurate)... they're each very different from a physical standpoint but each guy inhabits their role well... particularly Turnbull (the bar scene between him and Hooper is quite sweet)... although my particular favourites were Tomkinson and Hooper... both very engaging and funny as well as being, in their own very different ways, cute as proverbial buttons. Which is not to say that Gibbes wasn't good as Tom, but I just never really connected with the character.

Sidebar: Vincent Hooper was also one of the stars of The Twink & The Showgirl which I didn't get a chance to see at the Cabaret Festival... is it incredibly juvenile and shallow that I'm pleased that when I finally did get to see him in something, I got to see him naked?

Although, granted the nudity is right at the end of the play and if I'm being honest, beyond the "ooooh peen... big peen and uncut peen and little peen and old peen" moment it actually wasn't overly sexual.

Oddly the whole play was a little bit like that... sexual, but not really. To borrow from the televisions ratings people, I think it was more "adult situations" than "sex scenes" if that makes any sense. Even the sexpig story with the video camera and dropped trou was more troubling than erotic.

Still worth seeing though... its a well acted, well written if sparcely produced and non linear bit of theatre.

Current Mood:

random cooling hotness

Mother Nature has saved the best for last and the final day of hot weather before the cool change is peaking at 43°C (pretty much as we speak)... so I decided that I needed a Random Coolness instead of a Random Hotness...

Enter angelic faced, long haired blonde model, Justin Zabinski all wet and drippylike...

Current Mood:

two thousand

Drum roll please... today's post marks yaniblog's 2000th post... all in the space of 4 years, 4 months and 1 day (that's an average of about 9 posts a week).

And as always these milestone posts cause me to reflect somewhat on the blog in general... in between trying to work out if a post about posting is actually a valid thing to post about... since I think I said most of what was on my mind regarding this blog back in July.

I did some calculations earlier, lumped some blogging labels in together and got a little carried away...

Nutritional Information
Servings Per Pack: 1 Serving Size: 2000 posts	Avg qty per serve	% RDI* per serve
Featured Photos, Photo Friday & Street Art (inc 2% Benzo)	658	33%
Excursions (inc Sydney & Melbourne), Shopping & Special Day	457	23%
Memes, Quizzes & Unconscious Mutterings	442	22%
Pop Culture, Books, Movies & DVDs	332	17%
About Me, Exposing Myself, Hair Adventures & Work	319	16%
General Randomness (inc random randomness)	307	15%
Observations, Thoughts On & Montage Musings	235	12%
Random Hotness	220	11%
Men, Gay & Saunatime	138	7%
Blog Stuff, Templates and Beast	98	5%
* Based on an average adult diet. Your daily intake make be higher or lower depending on your energy levels.

I worked out some interesting but not overly surprising things... firstly that there's a hell of a lot of image action going on here at yaniblog, and I only talk specifically about men, sex and "gay stuff" about 7% of the time.

It also made me think about other blogs around the place... people that have completely gone (Larry, Andrew) and people who are gone in all but name (Tom, Monty, Tony).

It's hard work, this blogging thing... not that I don't enjoy it, but I do spend a goodly amount of time writing things up... time that I'm sure I probably just used to waste watching teevee or diddling around on other websites, but still.

Some of the "highlights" of the past 2000 posts (caution: list may not contain actual highlights):

• October 2006: Blogging Thoughts
• September 2007: Unexpected Sauna Adventures
  
• December 2007: Benzo (not the best Benzo post, but it's when I discovered his name)
  
• August 2006: Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (the new template comes online)
  
• March 2008: Yani On Tour (Sydney)
  
• May 2008: Body Mind & Psychic Expo 2008
  
• September 2006: Exposing My Apartment
  
• February 2007: Better Than Fiction (the first movie ever to get 10 out of 10)
• June 2009: Thoughts On My Old Mattres

So now I have to start the next thousand posts...

Current Mood:

movies: a christmas carol

It's slightly odd that although there's a movie theatre within walking distance of my house, it's not the one that Ma and I choose to go to regularly... in fact, the last time we went there was to see Revolutionary Road.

It's also a theatre that we went to quite a bit when I was a kid... there are a number of significant movie moments in my life that have happened in that particular theatre. So standing around in the upstairs deco foyer did bring on the movie memories...

Sadly, I don't think that Disney's version of A Christmas Carol is going to be one of the lasting movie memories.

We did end up seeing it in 3D though... we didn't originally intent to, but I'd misread the movie times on their website and thought that they had a normalD session just before the 3D session... turns out that that was for Thursday... so we ended up with yet another pair of the slightly silly looking 3D glasses (which we recycled after the session, although what exactly they do with the glasses to "recycle" them I don't know).

I'm not exactly sure how many different versions of the Christmas Carol story I've actually seen... at least two or three "faithful" adaptations, a musical version, plus the Bill Murray version, and possibly part of the Muppet version... plus I've read the book a couple of times (although not recently), so I'm pretty familiar with the story, and from a pure story/dialogue perspective, the movie is fairly dead on...

However the movie hovers along that divided line... while the dialogue is faithful, there's a number of seemingly improvised "flying, falling and rollercoasting" sequences that I could have done without. Especially the ones around the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come... what with the demonic horses and shrinking and icicles and suchlike.

In some ways, the opening scene of the movie sets you up for all the flying around that's going to happen during the next 100 minutes... there's a long sweeping camera shot over 19th Century London (or the Disney animated version of it anyway) that flies between chimneys and peeks in windows before finding Scrooge. It might have been nice if they got rid of some of the flying and concentrated more on making the story have more depth.

Of course if they did away with the flying, then there really isn't any reason that the movie needed to be in 3D.

It also really does suffer from what I've head referred to as "The Uncanny Valley"... while I didn't find the digital renderings of people disturbing, they were definitely in that "not right" classification. Particularly problematic were the renderings of both Gary Oldman as Bob Cratchit and Colin Firth as Fred (the nephew)... the reasoning behind making these particular characters look like the actors playing them baffles me a little... particularly Firth's character... while Cratchit had an element of cartoon or characture about him, Fred seemed to be an attempt to just do a straight version of Firth... which came off looking decidedly wrong.

There was also an element of "Shrek-ism" to the scene involving Mr and Mrs Fezziwig dancing... moves that no human being could ever even attempt, let alone pull off.

Personally I'm not sure why they want to go the totally "photorealistic" route... I mean the Scrooge character is very much exaggerated, I just wish they would have pushed it a little further still and taken him more over into the toon relm... and doubly so for all the other characters.

I did like the way that they dealt with The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come however... the aforementioned demon horses and hearse notwithstanding... although part of me does wish that they could have pulled off the entire sequence without needing to cheat the concept.

So in the end it really wasn't quite one thing or the other... enjoyable, yes... but also fairly forgettable.

yani's rating: 2 chained spirits out of 5

unconscious mutterings 355

Let's see... I skipped my walk this morning so I could open up the house and cool it down, which marginally worked. Then I got to work to discover that not only was the building incredibly stuffy after being shut up with no airconditioning all weekend, but the airconditioning wasn't working properly either. In fact the last point at which I was very comfortably cool was on the bus on the way into town this morning. And on top of everything I've had a headache for a large chunk of the day. Colour me highly unimpressed...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Grace :: Will &
2. Shower :: Cold
3. Alice :: In Wonderland
4. Purple :: The Color
5. Apartment :: Highrise
6. 3 :: Mobile phones
7. Car :: Garage
8. Pregnant :: A disturbing number of women at work
9. Counsellor :: Guidance
10. Discretion :: Is the better part of valour

Current Mood:

overheated and over it

It's too hot... the change is coming in overnight... which means the house will still be stinky hot in the morning, and quite possibly will still be stinky when I get home tomorrow.

In fact, the coolest it's been in the last 24 hours was 6am this morning... and while I managed to cool the house down, it didn't last.

I frickin hate Summer... especially when it's only Spring. There is talk of rain on the weekend and temperatures in the low 20's... can't wait!

Alternatively I could just move to Tasmania... but I'm not sure I'm quite that desperate...

Current Mood:

overheated splurging saturday

Would you believe that photo is half of the most expensive photo ever? $3.3 million for a photo taking inside a 99 cent store... jeeze...

Anyway, guess what... it's freakin hot!

Thankfully there is respite in sight (a change tomorrow evening, then a couple of days of cool, a couple of days of heat again then very cool with the chance of rain on Friday)... but obviously, everything today was about trying to stay as cool as possible for as long as possible. The Universe didn't always cooperate, but still.

We took my car to the stupidmarket this morning (mmmm aircon... I love my car's aircon), actually picked up much more stuff than I've done in the past few weeks... including several packets of jelly crystals, one of which is a "Create-A-Jelly" flavour, just add your favourite drink... somehow they make it seem all new and exciting, but all it really is is a packet of unflavoured gelatine. We'll see how my White Grape and Passionfruit jelly works out though.

After the supermarket part, we also took a turn around Red Circle Boutique, only to find that their airconditioning wasn't working for some unknown reason... so they'd resorted to rented portable cooling units which had giant ducts leading up into the ceiling but were blowing out wonderfully cold air... I very much wanted to unplug one of them and roll it out the front door, but I think that could have been a little obvious.

There was a quick detour to the Honey Man on the way home (and you know it's hot when honey pours in seconds rather than minutes), then the Ritual Unpacking, followed by a trip to the bank with my incredibly heavy $650.

Actually there was a degree of effort that went into getting the money to the bank... most of it went into my big purple sports bag, but the rest went into Ma's little backpack, then into the car, at which point the suspension dipped significantly under the combined weight, off to the North Adelaide Village, then we stuck the bags in a trolley and wheeled them off to the bank. You know that feeling when you're trying to go around a corner but the trolley doesn't want to... I had that at least twice, and the trolley really wanted to keep going off in a straight line which must have looked very odd to anybody watching, because it didn't look like there should have been any weight to the trolley.

The women behind the slightly pointless counter at the bank seemed bemused as I wheeled the trolley in there (not that they seemed like they had anything better to do), and then I announced that I had brought along a "vast amount of coinage" which I think added to the amusement value. Then there was much extracting money from carrying cases, piling it up on the counter, weighing it and adding it all up.

Turns out that somehow I was out by a single 50c piece... I have no idea how the hell that happened, but I was, which would have meant that I was only depositing $649.50, and that's slightly less impressive somehow... unfortunately I didn't have a handy 50c piece on me (and Ma's purse was still in the car)... when I mentioned that the woman disappeared off to one side for a moment (I wasn't paying attention, I was still sorting out bags of coins) and came back bearing a 50c piece... woohoo... free money from the bank!

So once everything was all added up and totalled and deposited, I was happy, they were happy (and I'm sure they'll be able to call head office now and cancel any order they had for more coins... at least for this week). I do need to work out a better system though... something where I end up with exactly the $10 I need to fill the bags of each type of coins. Maybe I need to chat to J about it...

The Nice Money Counting Lady did make a suggestion though... opening a Christmas Club account and putting all my coinage money into that throughout the year... which seems like a reasonable idea... at least if and when I'm working (because otherwise I need as much coinage as I can get). We used to do Christmas Clubs when I was a kid... or at least Ma did... I think I had one at least once. But it's something to consider.

Anyway, once that was all done we headed off for the cool of Marion.

When we were trolling though the underground car park looking for a space (and avoiding all the people who's brains seem to have melted in the heat) I thought I crossed vehicular paths with local B-Grade celeb and breakfast radio host Fitzy... turns out it wasn't him though...

As you would expect though on a day like today after a week like we've had weather wise, the whole place was packed... and like I mentioned with the carpark situation, people were just insane... I ended up having to give this very tall guy a shoulder to the ribs because he was just heading towards me and taking up all the available space while talking on his mobile. I didn't go out of my way to do it, but when I saw he wasn't going to move I just set my shoulder and didn't try to get out of the way. Grrr...

I don't know if it was because I'd just deposited a big chunk of change or not, but it did become something of a splurging day... not on random crap, but mostly on clothes (well, teeshirts and polo shirts to be honest). I did have a bit of a "Willow (The Body, Act Three) moment" about the teeshirts... one is a cool Japanese language Batman thing and the other is Cookie Monster... so not only do a lot of my shirts have "stupid things on them" (to quote Willow), but most of them are actually very dark, if not black... which seems stupid in Australia during the warmer months. Of course all the polo shirts are pretty damn standard so they can be worn to work when it's hot, or Friday, or both.

We also had a bit of a casual look at the Nintendo DS Lites... Ma commented a little while ago that she'd been thinking about getting one, with the whole "Brain Training" game thing... so I kinda suggested that it might be an idea for Christmas (and paid for by our old friend, my coin collection). Of course that would mean that I wouldn't be going nuts with the sheer number of presents as last year... not counting the things that already taking up space in my wardobe, as well something new from the Harajuku Lovers fragrance line.

I also finally found a card for H-San's birthday... I've been looking on and off for the last couple of weeks but hadn't found anything I really liked (even though his birthday isn't for another couple of weeks)... but this I liked... and oddly enough it was in the very first place I thought to look for cards today, and it was one of the first cards I picked up... and that's very rare.

All in all, a good day for the shopping...

We also tried this new tex-mex place in the food court (and just suddenly remembering I didn't pick up a menu on the way past... thank the stars for the interwebz, even if the site is really odd)... definitely have to go back there when the weather sorts itself out though. The food court was kinda overheated... I don't know if it's just from all the food cooking, or if the aircon just couldn't cope or what... but it was a mite stuffy...

And that was about it really...

Current Mood:

photo friday: 5000 gallery

It's amazing what you find when you're on your way from Point A to Point B on a Friday afternoon...

Well, my feet are killing me, all the higher registers in my voice are gone and I'm adrift somewhere in the vast wasteland of dehydrated, drunk and hungover... So obviously tonight was the Semi Annual Past and Present Nut House Staff Drinkies.

While I do so enjoy them because there's such a long time between them (and, you know, all the drinking and talking and general carousing), they do tend to take their toll... as does the fact that I decided to walk home in my little red Converse... we're talking massive blisters on both of my little toes...

Truth be told, I didn't really drink THAT much... but as we all know, I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, so I was already skating the edge of tiddly before I'd even finished my second drink. I'm presently hitting the water bottle to make sure I don't wake up with a hangover.

There was large amounts of oversharing... not always from me, and I do like to talk at the best of times there wasn't anything I said that I wouldn't have said when I was sober...

Oddly enough, because Adelaide is so small, one of the guys who used to work with us now works with one of J's ex's... so there was a whole semi awkward greeting as they were going out of the door. Obviously I'm not memorable though, or else he's blocked that whole incident out of his mind, but you would think that you'd remember the guests at a social occasion that signalled the end of your relationship. Obviously not.

Now if only it wasn't so damn hot...

Current Mood:

random fanged hotness

We're dipping into the world of True Blood for this week's Random Hotness...

And there really is no shortage of hotness in that show... there's Jason Stackhouse (beautiful, but dumber than a box of hair), Eric Northman (I can't decide whether I liked him better with the long hair from Season 1), Hoyt Fortenberry (who really comes into his own in Season 2 and is just so damn adorable, he makes me smile every time he's on screen) and Lafayette Reynolds (who can wear a turban and a pair of cargo shorts like nobody else).

But when we saw the first flashback of Eric's maker, Godric (played brilliantly by Allen Hyde), my heart did a little flutter... wild and tattooed, bloody-thirsty yet sweet, and rocking the Lost Boy (in the Peter Pan, not the 80's movie sense) vibe, he definitely ticks all the right boxes.

Of course, the modern, cleaned up, version of Godric is pretty damn adorable too...

Current Mood:

it's time to talk about the heat

Okay, I've officially reached the point where it's just too hot to even bother having a coherent thought process...

I'm just very grateful that I'm working at present, so at least it means I get to spend the day in the cool.

I'm also grateful for Beast, firstly because he doesn't wheeze in the heat like my old computer and partly because I can happily sit in the lounge room where it's at least a few degrees cooler. Of course, the fact that there is this heat emanating from the front of the case where I'd usually put my hands isn't ideal...

And of course, because the Weather Bureau just occasionally guesses about stuff, the cool change isn't coming in until Sunday instead of Saturday as they were previously forecasting.

The fact that it's going to be 39°C on Friday when we're having drinks after work is a little in the good column and a little in the bad column... drinks are good... walking to the pub after work could be less so (I'm assuming the pub has air-conditioning... and if anybody tries to make a case for sitting outside in the beer garden they will be told to roll it up and insert it).

Now, if you'll excuse me I think I need to go and soak my head and then sit somewhere other than in my little red bucket chair since it seems to be conspiring with my ass to become some sort of geothermal heat production facility...

Current Mood:

from st kilda

Although they look fairly different, these are actually a matched pair of shots from the foreshore at St Kilda. I don't know that I would have necessarily noticed them had there not been another photographer taking shots in the same spot... so on the way back I stopped and tried to see what he'd been seeing. And there's something oddly intriguing about the repeating bike wheels...

You know when you listen to the little voice in your head against your better judgement... I did that instead of opening the house up earlier once the wind had picked up and everything had cooled down a little bit... so now I'm desperately trying to get as much cool air into the house as I can before going to bed.

It's too hot to have any other thought processes...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 354

Urgh... heat headache...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Alarm :: Bells
2. Guest :: Bedroom
3. Worm :: Tequila
4. Puppies :: Awwwwwww
5. Honor :: Amongst thieves
6. No! :: Way!
7. Stomach :: Bloated
8. Counter :: Meal
9. Waffles :: Maple Syrup
10. Plates :: Dinner

Current Mood:

that fine sexual line

You know something... there's a very fine line between asking for what you want and begging for sex.

I, sadly, don't believe I have that particular knack for the majority of the time, however Slick Willy has it in spades.

I was also going to rant about guys who don't contact you when they say they're going to, or who disappear when you're chatting with them, or who just flat out don't return messages even when they approached you first. But then I realised that I'm actually guilty of all of those things myself... but in my mind, when I do it, it's somehow acceptable.

I'd just prefer it if guys just went "nah, not going to happen", rather than leaving me hanging.

Current Mood: