unconscious mutterings 418

It's so ridonkulously hot that even using the trackpad on my laptop is a problem because it's warm to the touch...

Urgh... I loathe Summer...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Agency :: Advertising
2. Ministrations :: Sick
3. Charlie :: Hunnam
4. Bricks :: Lego
5. Contingencies :: Cash
6. Dad :: Unknown
7. Zoned :: Residentially
8. Direct :: Marketing
9. Team :: Rocket
10. Cave :: Man

Current Mood:

hunting mr sloppy

Following on from Friday's post, this is the results of me hunting down Mr Sloppy in and around Rundle Street yesterday.

I'm sure there are others... and if the weather wasn't so hideous this weekend I probably would have gone out in search of them again today...

But be warned Mr Sloppy... I'm on your trail!

Current Mood:

shopping with street art

The very convenient thing about doing that big long post about my Saturday shopping routine last week is that I can pretty much just say "refer to previous post"...

And today was pretty damn routine... other than the fact that Ma was running late which meant we got to the supermarket later and they were doing the stupid stock count thing where half the aisles are full of teenage boys who manage to make black pants and a blue button up shirt look untidy...

So, you know, other than that... completely average...

Anyway, I unpacked everything while we half watched the beginning of Where The Boys Are (cheesy, but the 50's was a very stylish decade, even if this technically came out in 1960).

Our main problems today were that a) it was a hot day and b) we didn't really know where we wanted to go... and Problem A contributed to Problem B, and vice versa... added to the fact that we went to Marion last week and we didn't really need anything from anywhere.

So, in the end we just went into the city to wander around...

And since I knew there were some Mr Sloppys around town and other random street art in the Rundle Street area, I took along my camera... which turned out to be a Very Good Idea (as proven by the Stormtrooper helmet on one of the "alarmed" side doors of the library).

We wandered down the Mall, stopped off in a couple of places (Tree of Life, Smiggle, Diva) and bought random stuff... then wandered down Rundle Street, took a bunch of photos of street art, stopped off at Cocolat for a drink (mmmm Ferrero Rocher thickshake), came back up the other side of Rundle Street, photographed even more street art, then wandered back up the Mall.

Which doesn't sound like much, but it took a couple of hours all up.

Once we were done with that we headed back to the car and called it a day.

So not terribly exciting, although I always enjoy looking for/finding street art...

Current Mood:

photo friday: mr sloppy returns

Mr Sloppy never really left us... some of the images of the Street Dreams mascot are still around if you know where to look, but this year Mr Sloppy has had a bit of a makeover (which is being polite, I think he's actually gained some weight...) and is starting to show up again...

So I went for a little walk at lunchtime today with the mission to find this version. It's a little like hide and seek really... or some sort of treasure hunt... you know there are new Mr Sloppys around, but you have to hunt them down.

And obviously the return of Mr Sloppy also means that the program for Street Dreams is out...

You know, every time I see a video with footage from last year, I keep looking for myself in the background... fortunately I don't seem to be in any of the footage!

Anyway, the program... I'm very excited about the Dumpster Biennale (although, really, if it's not happening every other year, is it really a Biennale) again... must resist the urge to buy another one though (only because I don't have the space).

I'm slightly less excited about the artist they have coming in to redo the wall outside the Format Gallery... if only because she's described as a "visual artist" rather than a street artist... but she may do something amazing, so I'll wait and see.

In other news...

Looky... I got an award!

Well, it's really more of a meme with delusions of grandeur, but whatever.

The very lovely (Large)Tony from West of Mayberry passed it on to me because according to him I've "got some great photography and an eye for style". Awww bless... He's such a sweetheart!

So the rules go something like this...

Thank the person who gave you the award (check), post seven things about yourself and nominate/contact five other bloggers to pass the award on to.

Although, really, if everybody passes it on to 5 people, by the time the tenth person passes it on 1,953,125 will be stylish...

Anyway...

Seven Things About Me (The "Shit That Happened This Week") Edition

1. My To Do List at work isn't getting any shorter... it's also not getting any longer, it just sits there, staring at me while I get distracted by other things which is something that I'm exceptionally good at.
2. I make really good quiche.
3. I always seem to be the one who does all the work when it comes to getting naked with a dude... whether it's his place or my place, I do most of the heavy lifting... what the hell is up with that?
4. I now have crushes on four different YouTube vloggers... well five, but one is a woman.
5. My elephant-like memory came to good use yesterday when I created a Google map of all the locations of street art I could remember in Adelaide.
   
6. I have a project at work where I'm going to have to stand up in front of a bunch of people and talk for about 45 minutes, and it terrifies me. Fortunately it's not until March. Unfortunately I really haven't started working on it yet (see also #1).
   
7. I went through my blogroll earlier this week and have hardly anybody left so the next step is going to be really difficult.
   

If you want to know some actual stuff about me, try my fourth and seventh ever posts...

Sadly, most of the people I can think of who I would have said deserved a Stylish Award are no longer blogging... or at least not regularly enough for it to be worthwhile...

So unless there's a great outcry in the comments for me to award Stylish Awards, we'll just leave it at that...

Now it's time for leftover quiche...

Current Mood:

random mystery hotness

Today's Random Hotness is a bit of a mystery...

I know that he's wearing Ksubi in the left hand picture and Adidas/Jeremy Scott in the right hand picture... but other than that, I have no idea who he is or where I got the images from.

Which is a shame, because he's as cute as a button!

Current Mood:

almost monochrome

Melbourne and Adelaide in photos that look like they're monochrome, but actually aren't...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 417

We had the meeting (the one that I did the work for on Sunday morning) all morning today... and I'm so glad I actually did all that prep, even if it turns out that the project is probably going to be just less rewarding than previously indicated. At least I knew exactly what I was talking about.

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Girlfriend :: Magazine
2. Crushed :: Broccoli (actually that's Smashed, but I'm hungry)
3. Source :: The Matrix
4. Corner :: Shop
5. Gossip :: Gay
6. Encounter :: Farpoint (STTNG reference)
7. Make an offer :: Can't refuse
8. Stylish :: Sleek
9. Profit :: and Loss statement
10. Waste :: Not, Want Not

Current Mood:

pondering a new tattoo

I've always said that I'm not getting another tattoo until I know exactly what I want, especially since I had to cover my first tattoo with my second tattoo.

But I also know that the next tattoo is going to be fish related. More specifically I want something with Piscean overtones.

And I've always been of the opinion that it's no use having a tattoo that you personally can't see... so I've been gravitating towards having something around my left ankle.

That is, until today.

I saw a photo of a guy with tattoos all over his back which just got my brain ticking over... first to the thought of a line of little goldfish/koi running up my back with some stylised water... then after I googled variations of fish, koi, tattoo and back, I found two images I quite liked... twiddled around in Photoshop with the Fairy Fish design...

Through the wonders of Photoshop I also tried all the designs I liked on a photo of my back... although I just realised that I have my arms up in the photo, so I may need to take a new one where I have my arms down.

Although the longer I stare at the Fairy Fish, the more it's starting to look distinctly phallic... or is that just me?

I'm also wondering how much a tattoo that runs essentially along your spine is going to hurt...

It's not like I'm rushing into anything... it's still just a concept...

Current Mood:

movies: love and other drugs

Let's get a couple of things out of the way about Love and Other Drugs before we start...

Yes, there are a whole bunch of sex scenes, but they just make the movie seem truer, there isn't this artificial modest making sure everything is always covered, although shadows to hide a multitude sometimes...

Yes, we see Anne Hathaway's breasts, but we saw them in Brokeback Mountain, and while I'm not an expert on breasts, they appear to be very nice ones...

Yes, we get to see a LOT of Jake Gyllenhaal's bare ass, almost his bare everything to be honest, and I'm something of an expert on male asses, and his is fucking amazing.

And yes, it's an updated take on the romantic comedy of yesteryear, but without the need to delay the sex... and it's also more of a romantic dramedy.

Having said all of that, it's actually a really strong movie.

Hathaway is really amazing... she's powerful and frail and vulnerable and feisty and very much a woman in command of her own sexual identity and who knows what she wants and what she doesn't want.

Gyllenhaal is equally good... even though his character spends the first half of the movie essentially being a self described "shit head"... a charming, lying flirty shit head. And that smile... from the full on charm assaulting version to the wry little half smile... man, oh man...

The supporting cast also hold their own... although I have to say that the one who was completely superfluous to the story and the most annoying was also the one who had the most screen time.

Yes, Josh Gad, I'm looking at you. Your character was completely pointless and a total waste of time, and you were incredibly annoying and on screen for far too long.

And while I know that it's based on a book which takes place around the birth of Viagra and that's part of the plot, it did feel like it was a movie that didn't really need to be locked into a particular time or even need the whole Viagra angle... because at heart, once you strip all the extraneous material away, it's a simple story about a guy and a girl and what people will do when they're in love.

It's definitely in the must-see column though.

yani's rating: 4 little blue pills out of 5

the saturday routine

Today has been a mixture of useful and useless shopping, followed by a trip to the movies...

I know that most of the time I mention various bits of what we do on a Saturday, but I don't think I've ever gone through the whole morning ritual.

The routine is pretty solid by now... I get up on Saturday morning and I do all the tidying up I should have done all the way through the week and sort the apartment out... and when necessary (like this morning) I have the fan in the doorway sucking in cool air.

Then I take a shower (usually with the door left open when it's open already... I'm so gangsta... of course you can't see into the bathroom from the front door, so not really that gangsta) and get dressed then kill some time with something until Ma gets here. Of course, that whole routine kinda goes out the window if I happen to oversleep...

Once she gets here and we've gone "blah blah blah" a bit, we head off to the supermarket.

First stop is Baker's Delight for breakfast, then we head off to Supermarket Arena (okay, so it's really Foodland... that just sounds more exciting). We start at fruit and veg and wend our way down pretty much every aisle (usually with the exception the first one which is all pet food and cleaning products), ending up in frozen foods and dairy.

The downside to shopping really early like we do is that there often aren't that many registers open, which I understand, but at the same time it's annoying when a bunch of people all finish their shopping at the same time and there ends up being a bigass queue.

And it's equally difficult sometimes to get someone who actually knows how to pack a bag. When Ma retires I think we need to set her up in a consulting firm for all the major supermarket chains to instruct new staff on how to actually pack one of those big green shopping bags. It's rare that she doesn't end up fiddling and rearranging stuff, which sometimes I have to stop her doing when the checkout chick actually seems to know what she (or sometimes he) is doing.

Today's checkout chick was having a bit of an issue with packing... I don't think she was really awake yet, but we got there in the end.

Then, if Foodland didn't have Iced Coffee on special, we dump the first lot of groceries in the car and go across the road to either Coles or Woolworths (or if there's something we want we couldn't get at Foodland)... then a lot of the time we come back across the road, dump whatever else we got in the car and wander around Target.

And yes... today's trip to Target was part of the useless shopping portion of the day... well not so much useless as totally unnecessary...

And yes, the photo pretty much gives it all away... I bought a Barbie... yes, I know, shut up...

Not just any Barbie though... the Sydney Opera House Barbie from the Landmarks Collection.

Yes, it appears that I am, in fact, exactly that gay!

What can I say... me and the Opera House, there's a little bit of a thing there... and it is quite pretty...

Okay, shut up now...

Moving on... after Target we hit the car and head off home, and Ma sits on the couch while I unpack everything and randomly fling the bits of shopping that are hers in her general direction (not completely true, usually I unpack all my crap from the bags and then give them to her and she does whatever she wants with them... but sometimes there's flinging... usually with light stuff... but she also flings empty paper bags from Baker's Delight at me, so I figure we're even... kinda), then put everything away in the fridge that needs to be refrigerated and stack everything else on the back counter of my kitchen to put away later (which occasionally doesn't get put away until the following Saturday morning... oops).

Once that's done, I stand at the counter with my Iced Coffee and disassemble the paper (fuck off Real Estate and Racing and Employment... hello to the main part of the paper and the Magazine) before having a quick leaf through it (mostly this is because Ma then takes the paper home with her to read later... we could get two papers, but there doesn't ever seem to be much of a point).

And there endeth the routine... whatever happens next usually has a routine of it's own (going into the city, going down to Marion, etc) but it varies depending on what the hell we're doing, what we need and what we feel like.

We were undecided about today, but Big W was having a sale on Nintendo DS games (specifically the Lego Harry Potter one which Ma was kinda interested in), so that limited our choices to either Arndale (mostly boring and never takes us much longer than about an hour and change) or Marion (more choices, but also further away).

But this week is Movie Night... except nothing we really wanted to see was going to be playing at Arndale on Tuesday, and what I was thinking would be a good plan was only showing at Marion... plus when we went to Tron, the girl at the box office mentioned we both had a ton of points on our respective cards but because Ma's card is a Seniors Club thing we could just rock up at the counter with it, we didn't need to book online like you do with my card (which I think is kinda dumb).

Is everybody following me so far?

We decided to go down to Marion, do what we needed to do then go and see "Love and Other Drugs" with Ma's free tickets.

Which we did...

Of course we also went looking at Big W (and hello Hot Ponytailed Ranga Door Greeter!) for DS games (Ma may very well be rocking out Lego Harry Potter as we speak), I was supposed to find a new pair of track pants for walking, but didn't... although I got a pair of Bonds shorts instead which aren't bad (I'm wearing them as we speak... a little on the short side, but comfy). Ma also made use of the Perfume Connection gift voucher she got at Christmas to buy another one of the new Harajuku Lovers perfumes and I tried a bunch of the new D&G fragrances which were all a bit m'eh.

Oh and I bought a pair of those headphones that go over your ear... they're kinda cheap, but I just wanted to see if I like them.

I also had to buy some painkillers because after we left Big W I realised that what I thought was the weird vision thing caused by me staring into the bright lights in one of the cabinets for too long was actually one of those rotating whirling "moving around making a circle" things that usually signifies I'm about to get a headache. I'd say it was a migraine type thing, but the headaches are never like I hear people describe migraines, so I don't know what the hell is going on. Luckily though I've learned that as soon as I see the weird vision thing, if I take a couple of painkillers because the circle completes itself, then I never actually get the headache.

After we'd finished wandering around we went up and bought the movie tickets (or rather got the tickets, since we didn't actually "pay" for them) then went and had some lunch before grabbing some Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and some water and heading back to the cinema (and hello Hot Monochromatically Dressed Ranga Ticket Ripper!).

As a brief sidebar, while the emotion I most often feel when dealing with or viewing people in the world is frustration, there's also an element of fascination. The seats were all allocated, as Marion does (which I still think is stupid for anything other than evening sessions on weekends, but that's just me) and one couple decided not to sit in their allocated seat because, frankly, the woman was a bit nuts and was all "I can't sit on this side of you because that's my bad ear, so instead of swapping seats with you I'm going to move to the other side of you and take an unallocated seat"... What the hell her ear had to do with anything, it's a movie and she shouldn't be talking to her fucking husband during the movie anyway! But because they'd deviated from the plan I think it threw about four other couples into disarray...

I mean, I'm all for throwing off the expectations of assigned seating, but because it was a small cinema (I told her to put us "in the middle" and we were two rows from the back) it created a domino effect... Couple A were in the wrong seats, so Couple B moved down to the next row, then Couple C came in and they were supposed to be were Couple B were, so they made them move down and sat next to them but then Couple B moved completely... you get the idea...

As always, the movie will get it's own post shortly...

Afterwards, we headed back down to the car and tootled off down the road back to my place while I resisted the urge to swerve violently into every group of lycra clad posing wankers I drove past. Stupid fucking Tour de Cardboard...

So, yeah... possibly one of the most "Random Shit About My Life That Nobody Needs To Know Or Gives A Damn About" posts I've ever written (which is saying something)... but now you know. And I apologise for what I'm guessing are a whole bunch of run on sentences...

Also, I now own a Barbie.

Current Mood:

photo friday: adelaide green

I don't normally do multiple images for Photo Friday (the horse sequence notwithstanding), but these two shots just seemed to belong together... the street art is from Wyatt St (found by accident on the hunt for some other street art that wasn't there any more) and the riverside plant (I have no idea what it is... some sort of grass maybe) was, unsurprisingly, taken on the banks of the Torrens...

Today was one of those days where you start out doing something that should be simple and relatively quick and through one thing and another ends up being the focus of your entire day. The task itself wasn't... but then it turned into a wider question, and other random stuff cropped up and before I knew it, it was the end of the day.

I realised today why it was that I've been cranky of late... I'm not especially pleased about it and at this junction there's nothing I can really do about it. If I'm really honest with myself I think I knew what it was on Wednesday, I was just hoping that it was some underlying issue that was showing up as this particular irritation... I don't know that it is.

And yes, I realise how cryptic that all sounds.

I also brought some reading home from work for probably the first time ever... We have a meeting early on Monday, so I might try to put some ideas together on Sunday, go in armed with a concept, or at least the early draft of one.

Started working my way through the rest of the first season of Walking Dead last night... I say "working through" because I'm pretty sure that I won't be seeing the second season... I realised part of the way through the second episode that there isn't a single likeable character in the show and they just keep introducing more and more total asshats as the episodes went on. Plus the blood effects bug me... bright red against the slightly desaturated look everything else... looks fake.

Oh, and very tanned skin with light, almost glowing, blonde hair (I'm thinking specifically of arms here, but it works for legs, butts, chests) makes me go all tingly (in the good way)...

Other than that, my head is kind of running around in circles... so I'm going to wrap this up and go and make some dinner...

Current Mood:

random misfits hotness

We're taking a trip to the land of TV for today's Random Hotness... one of the bonuses about having access to a whole teevee season is that you can go a little nuts and watch one episode after another... which is exactly what I did with the second season of Misfits...

And I'll happily hold my hand up to crushes on both the very nerdy Simon Bellamy (played by Iwan Rheon) and the "gobby little shite" Nathan Young (played by Robert Sheehan). It's also fairly obvious from some of the behind the scenes footage that these two have a serious bromance going on (which kinda carries over to the characters in the second season)...

Which explains these photos...

Current Mood:

beach shots and dot points

Dipping into the photo archives for some beach related shots... which pretty much suit the weather, if not my mood.

• I'm cranky for no apparent reason... I'd be happier if I knew why, then I'd at least have something specific to direct my crankiness at.
• Considering doing something of this nature to my Billy bookcases when I finally get them.
• I'm banning myself from eBay for a while. I've now bought seven different toy soldiers from there (the last one showed up yesterday)... it's time to stop until closer to next Christmas.
• This week I've been enjoying the Jay and Silent Bob Get Old podcasts... some fucked up shit, but entertaining nevertheless.
• It's now less than a month until I go to my first Fringe show for the year.
  
• Dinner tonight is chicken, green beans and baby potatoes... just in case anyone cares.

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 416

A very sleepy kind of day... I've had little micronaps a few times today, including one just then before I started typing...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Bootie :: Baby
2. User :: Error
3. Child :: Seen and not heard
4. Scribe :: Calligraphy
5. Manager :: Account
6. Upsetting :: Disaster
7. Puddles :: I can jump
8. Hopeful :: Realist
9. Procrastination :: Master of
10. Statistics :: Lies, damn lies and...

Current Mood:

efficient saturday shopping

Today was a very efficient shopping experience...

Ma had a haircut book, so I was flying solo... but for some reason I was incredibly well organised this morning and ended up leaving the house not that long after 7:30, which meant that I was actually sitting around outside waiting for the supermarket to open at 8am.

So because of that, and because I was shopping on my own, even though it turned into a bumper shop (I think more because I bought a bunch of stuff I normally wouldn't have), I was done and out of there by 8:30...

And Ma didn't turn up until nearly 9:30, so by that time I'd managed to put everything away and read the paper and scream at the TV when the moronic cooking woman put coconut and dried cherries in her Rocky Road recipe... I mean she started well, with Turkish Delight, and she used pistachios... but... *counting backwards from 100... 99, 98, 97...*

Anyway... where was I... oh yeah...

Once Ma rocked up we headed pretty much straight into town. And despite the fact that it wasn't quite 10am, the Mall felt pretty deserted. There were some people around, just not that many.

Our first stop was JB Hifi, since they're having a 20% off sale, and I picked up a couple of DVDs that were already on sale for even less money. I ummed and ahhhed about buying the Lost box... even with 20% off it's still a big fat whack of cash, and I'm not really in any hurry...

I also bought a new Wild CD, the Summer 2011 mix... which may be a little crap since I only recognise about four artists names, but I need some new dance music, I'm a little bored with what I've got.

From there we ended up in Myer and their 90% off Christmas decorations. Most of them I can understand why they're 90% off, but there were a few bargains... unfortunately there also weren't any staff anywhere near the Christmas department to actually serve us... eventually one of the cool chicks from somewhere downstairs wandered past and we hijacked her.

Borders were also selling stuff off at stupid prices, so we ransacked their bargain bins for a while. We ended up with a very large bag of stuff... in addition to the very large bag of stuff from Myer, and in total it came to about $30 which is impressive, at least to me.

Our final stop was David Jones... and just as a general message to the management of David Jones: If you don't want that much shit taking up space in your post Christmas Christmas department, here's a fucking top tip for you... discount it by more than 40% ya tossers!

Obviously we weren't that impressed by DJ's... I do think I need to go down to their Food Hall sometime soon to buy some lunch... they had impressive and tasty looking salads...

Since our car park was due to run out just after 12:30 and we'd pretty much done everything we wanted to do, we called it quits and came back here before heading down the road to Caffe Paesano for lunch and then we toddled back here and Ma headed off...

So all in all, a very efficient day!

Current Mood:

photo friday: leafy sea dragon

It's been a funny old week...

First it was hot, then it was raining, then it was average... H-San was in a mood today which always makes us quieter and more productive... I spent a buttload of money on Fringe tickets... I wasn't able to walk for most of the week in order to let my toe heal up from blister related issues... and I may have put too many prawns on my pizza tonight, especially since this is the first time I've ever put prawns on a homemade pizza.

Also, why do prawns go pink when you cook them? Usually things go from pink to other colours...

Anyway...

The other thing that happened this week was the Queensland floods... I was thinking about it today waiting for my prosciutto at the deli counter... while it's not unusual for country areas to flood, I certainly don't remember hearing about an urban area (much less the CBD of a capital city) of Australia flooding to this degree in my lifetime.

A couple of people in our extended team decided to start up a collection, so I added both some money from my own pocket, but I also dumped the remainder of the swear jar into it... not sure how much was left, but I figured my swearing should be good for something.

I actually felt more "connected" (that's not the right word, but I can't think of a better one) to this whole disaster because I actually know someone who had to evacuate... fellow blogger Eddy... everything is fine now, he's back in his apartment and they have power again, but I did wonder for a while earlier in the week if everything was okay.

It's also strange that one of the places Ma and I plan to go this year is Brisbane! The whole flooding thing doesn't make me want to go any less, if anything I'm happy to go and spend my tourist dollars "on the ground" as it were once everything has dried out enough (we weren't planning on going until about the middle of the year anyway).

On a much lighter note, I'm currently in the middle of the second season of Misfits... a kind of English version of Heroes... the first season was great, although not extraordinary... but this second season is shaping up to be amazing!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and enjoy my very prawny pizza...

Current Mood:

random wadle hotness

Today's Random Hotness comes from the baby-faced, beautiful eyes, hoodie wearing, plump lip, white underwear school of modelling... all of which tick one of my boxes (feel free to make your own double entendre).

And the model in question is Evan Wadle...

Current Mood:

my adelaide fringe picks 2011

Last year I spent $150 on Fringe tickets and thought that I'd gone a bit nuts...

Of course last year I did it all completely spontaneously and there was no real planning or forethought that went into it... I just decided on tickets and bought tickets.

This year however, as I've been saying to a number of people, large countries have been invaded with less planning than I've put into choosing my Fringe tickets.

And I spent $565... okay, technically it's more like $365 because Ma is coming to a bunch of the shows with me, and she's buying her own tickets... but even $365 is a lot of money.

Yes it is... but for that I'm going to 15 different shows... including two I saw last year, one I wanted to see last year... three that are related to Shakespeare... three that are all about acrobatics... and the fabulous Adam Richard, the outrageous Scott Brennan and the available Wes Snelling in Talking Poofy, which I wouldn't miss for quids!

There's also an art exhibition I've very excited about... so the opening night of that has gone down in my diary...

But, chronologically, I'm seeing...

• Talking Poofy: A shambolic show featuring a dangerously drunken panel of poofs talking dirty.


• Macbeth: Six players create Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' with a flurry of swords, physical characterisations, blood, mud, bare feet and live music.


• 100Bucks&Runnin'4: This large scale collaborative project showcases original artworks by established and emerging artists/ designers.


• @shakespeare.com: Explores the impact of contemporary modes of communication such as facebook, twitter, email, texting and sexting on relationships and uses some of Shakespeare's most famous characters, themes and plots to do so.


• Shakespeare's Mothers: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: Mothers whose rampant protectiveness, lusty appetites and vaunting ambition set them against powerful enemies and drove them to treachery, adultery, war, murder and madness.


• Barry Morgan's World of Organs: Mr Barry Morgan, the ultimate organ salesman will delight and entertain you as he performs his original organ favourites, whilst demonstrating the many fascinating features of the 1981 Hammond Aurora Classic and his very own one finger method.


• Le Gateau Chocolat: Having packed his oversized suitcases full of lyrca, this outrageous operatic diva is set to deliver a delectable confection of mesmerising renditions, in his exquisite baritone voice.


• Club Briefs: An all male cabaret of ballsy-burlesque, savage gender offenders and highflying circus bandits.


• Philip Escoffey: Six More Impossible Things Before Dinner: The maverick Brit is back in Adelaide in his hotly anticipated follow-up show, challenging your most fundamental beliefs.


• Nice Work If You Can Get It: A darkly satirical look at the machinations and manipulations of two office workers who will risk everything to climb the corporate ladder.


• Pirate Rhapsody, Mermaid Requiem: Down and dirty award-winning cabaret artist Tommy Bradson retells Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Little Mermaid'.


• The Boy with Tape on His Face, More Tape: What does he do? The less you know, the more you will enjoy!


• World War Wonderful: World War Wonderful tells the story of three singers who make a killing performing to soldiers in America's unending stream of wars. But what happens when the president threatens peace for the first time in living memory?


• Mothlight: Two acrobatic bodies. Fleeting realities. Dangerous intimacy. Obscured winged creatures. A visually intense and electric look at our primal dreams, desires and destructive tendencies.


• Freefall: The artists combine traditional circus disciplines with contemporary movement and physical theatre to develop a dynamic and innovative performance style.


• Swamp Juice: Bickering toads, overbearing fairies and a rather gentle swamp monster. Using shadow puppetry, acclaimed Canadian performer Jeff Achtem debuts an inventive new show about life in a swamp.

It may turn out that I should have been a little more discerning in my choices... but I'm very excited about it... even though it seems like forever and forever until the Fringe starts!

But given the number of shows, I think I'm going to need a very large nap at the end of it all...

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movies: the king's speech

It surprised me when I first heard about The King's Speech that while I knew bits of information about the people around King George VI (or "Bertie")... like Winston Churchill, King Edward VIII & Wallace Simpson... but I don't know that I knew anything at all about George, especially about any kind of speech impediment.

And as it turns out, finding out about it made for a very enjoyable movie experience.

The three leads are incredibly good... not just Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush who spark off each other beautifully but also Helena Bonham Carter who is incredibly sweet as the Queen.

In fact Nina Gold, the casting director, has to be applauded along with the whole makeup and hair team for firstly picking excellent actors that bore a resemblance to the real people, but then to make them up so expertly.

While I'm too young to remember the Queen Mother when she was actually the queen, but looking at Helena I could see the woman her character would become.

And the same with the casting of Guy Pearce as Edward... judging from photos I've seen, there's definitely a likeness there.

But like I said, not only do they look the part, but they're all excellent actors, even down to the boys playing Geoffrey's sons.

While I know that it's based on a true story, it also felt very real... there's no real miraculous transformation, no ugly duckling becoming a swan... it's a transition that feels very real and very honest.

Those two words sum it up quite well... real and honest.

And it's funny... not that often, but when it is, it nails the humour beautifully.

Having said that, I did feel that possibly because of the subjects of the movie (the Royal Family essentially) and because it does feel so real, I did feel a little emotionally detached from what was going on.

But overall that's a fairly small criticism of an otherwise smart, funny, well written and beautifully presented movie.

yani's rating: 4 elocution lessons out of 5

unconscious mutterings 415

Ever had a meeting where you spend all your time going over and over and over a single sentence and quibbling over semantics... welcome to my afternoon.

Although on the up side I did start planning out my Fringe calendar this morning...

And I really need new boots...

Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Speech :: Therapist
2. Meredith :: Baxter
3. Consensus :: Try and get
4. Attack :: Alien
5. Sue :: A Boy Named
6. Voted :: Popular
7. Epic :: Fail
8. Checking in :: Go Miso
9. Dishwasher :: I wish
10. Underneath :: Radar

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