random gt hotness

A little bit of celebrity nudity (or partial, artful, carefully arranged semi-nudity that doesn't actually show anything we might like to see) for today's Random Hotness.

These four covers for the Naked Issue of Gay Times feature three members of the British Olympic team (diver Christ Mears, judoka Ashley McKenzie and my personal favourite, bantamweight boxer Luke Campbell) and two actors (Kieron Richardson and PJ Brennan from English soap Hollyoaks) and were shot by photographer Dylan Rosser.

The entire issue is packed full of "naked" guys (18 shoots with 37 men over 102 pages) and raises money and awareness for the Terrence Higgins Trust.

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the saga of the busted toilet

I didn't realise when Lego included a plumber in their Series 9 minifigures that it was a portent to a plumbing related disaster in my future...

Maybe the Fortune Teller should have been an additional clue... especially with her "Tower" card that often symbolises such things as chaos, hard times, sudden change and an uncomfortable experience.

And the fact that this weekend was a public holiday... if anything ever goes wrong with my plumbing, it always happens either over a weekend or right before a public holiday.

This time the issue was a blocked toilet. Which sounds pretty gross, and to be honest, wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't perhaps as horrible as it could have been. Sure there are few things in life that are quite as revolting as seeing your toilet slowly fill with murky brown water, other than perhaps when that water then overflows, but at least it was only water.

It all started on Sunday night when I discovered that the water level in the toilet was rising, then falling, then rising again. It was like magic... horrible, horrible magic. I spoke to my next door neighbour and my upstairs neighbours just to find out if anything they were doing was causing it, and discovered that the next door neighbours were having the same problem.

So I called the emergency number for my land agent. But because they are completely useless in all things, the number went to a voicemail that clearly nobody was checking.

Over the following 24 hours I left at least seven messages. Which they never returned... I called them at 9am on Tuesday.

Had it not been a public holiday it wouldn't have been quite so bad, they would have sent the regular plumber around and it would all have been finished 24 hours earlier. But because I couldn't get hold of them I decided to call out a plumber from Ken Hall Plumbing, who I have to say was fantastic.

But he couldn't get to any access point to clear the blockage, so after much effort and plunging with a gigantic plunger and digging up part of the side yard to try and find the outflow pipe, he conceded defeat. The two options were either to break my toilet to get to the blockage, hence causing the water that was in the toilet to go all over my bathroom floor, or wait until Tuesday and get hold of the plans to find the pipe.

Since I thought I was going to have to pay for it myself until I could recoup the money from the land agent (which didn't end up happening, the plumber spoke directly with the land agent and sent the account straight to them, which was brilliant, and yet another reason I would highly recommend Ken Hall Plumbing), I chose to leave the issue until Tuesday morning when I could get hold of the land agent.

And I had to do all of this while relaying the same information multiple times to my next door neighbours.

When I managed to get hold of the land agent there was no explanation about why the emergency number wasn't being monitored and no apology for that, which I fully expected since they've been ongoingly useless for some time now.

I also needed to make about half a dozen phone calls to them to find out what was going on. Is it so hard for them to pick up the phone and say "the plumber says he'll be there around 11:30" or "we just called the plumber and he's still working on the problem, but he'll give you a call once he's finished" or "the plumber is on site, here's his number if you need to contact him"?

But no, what I got instead was a bunch of unclear responses (I spoke to three different people there, only one of whom was potentially helpful, but he didn't really know what was going on), and even when I asked them to call me once they knew something, I still had to call them again just before I left work.

Fortunately they gave me the plumber's number, so that's now saved in my phone just in case there is a situation like this in future, I'll just call the guy directly.

On the up side, because they did end up having to smash the toilet (an event I'm glad I wasn't here for), I now have a shiny new toilet... the downside was because they only installed it late yesterday afternoon I couldn't use it for 24 hours... so when I got home last night it was mostly installed, but the seat wasn't on and one of the pipes wasn't installed, partially, I think to stop me from using it before I was supposed to. But they came back this morning and finished it all off, so that's good. I think it's also smaller then the old one (or at least the lid is smaller, but I think the whole thing is).

What was slightly less fun was coming home last night and spending about 45 minutes cleaning the bathroom... while the plumbers had cleaned up as best they could, I pretty much pulled everything out of the bathroom and scrubbed the floors (and parts of the walls).

Whenever anything like that happens though, it always stresses me out a whole lot. Partly because I know having to deal with my land agent and plumber is always an exercise in aggravation. But more so this time because I couldn't get hold of the land agent and the issue was also affecting my neighbour so I had to interpret information for them and the fact that it wasn't like having no hot water or a problem that could easily be worked around... you need a functioning toilet, it's just a given.

I don't think my stress levels were helped by the fact that I didn't eat on Monday beyond breakfast... for obvious reasons.

But it was a vicious cycle... I was stressed, so I didn't want to eat, but not eating made me feel a little sick, which also added to my stress levels. And I didn't sleep terribly well either on Sunday night, which didn't help. So come Tuesday morning I was feeling pretty rubbish. Then because I knew I didn't have a working toilet for another 24 hours, I skipped dinner last night too. Not that skipping a couple of meals would kill me... but I feel like it's thrown my system out of whack a little.

I'm just thankful that I live in North Adelaide which is full of shops and restaurants and a service station and a cinema, all of which have bathrooms I could utilise if I absolutely needed to. If I lived out in suburbia, I don't know what the hell I would have done.

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straylia day shopping with brighton sculptures

Well, I did something I never expected that I would ever do on Australia Day... went to the beach. More specifically two different beaches, Brighton and Glenelg.

And honestly, the difference between the two couldn't have been more marked. Also, being at Glenelg on Australia Day reminded me of exactly why I don't go anywhere near Glenelg on Australia Day.

Part of the problem is that in my head it's not really Australia Day until Monday (actually, to be honest, it's never actually Australia Day in my head) which is when the public holiday is.

The day started out pretty normally... except for the fact that I thought that I'd just drop in to see my nice Mechanic Boys and get them to re-stick my rear vision mirror on. So Ma and I drove down to the supermarket separately, only to find that the place was shut as tight as a drum.

Which was my own fault for not actually booking the car in. But it's not like I have to do a ton of driving... so it will keep until next weekend.

I was also a little disappointed that the Bakers Delight we go to on Saturday didn't have any of the free mini Cheesymite Scrolls. Although I can't really complain too much, since we made out like bandits with free stuff today... we dropped into two other Bakers Delight stores and picked up two lots of Cheesymites, and two sets of random wandering product girlies gave us a pack of apple slices at Brighton and Roadies crackers at Glenelg, plus we got free aoli at lunch and the usual sample chocolate at Haighs.

So I'm not complaining too much.

We made a quick stop at the bank to drop off my $1100 in coins...

You would think that bank staff would be used to seeing people rock up with a large amount of coins... but clearly not, because they always look surprised when I rock up with a bag whose weight is clearly disproportionate to it's contents.

And even more so once I start unloading the forty or more baggies full of coins.

After they'd counted out the money (actually, they just weigh it, then count the bags) and Ma asked for a yellow plastic pig money box (cute, although I don't know why they have a pig) and we headed down to Brighton to check out the Brighton Jetty Classic Sculptures.

And we arrived right at the tail end of the some sort of surf carnival thing...

Which perhaps wasn't as exciting as it sounds since the ages of the competitors fell into one of two camps... "too old to be interesting" (also known as "please stop tanning and wearing Speedos in public") and "kids".

Although there was some eye candy around.

But, er... yeah... sculptures... the reason we were there...

I think I've said previously that it feels a little bit "Sculpture By The Sea Lite"... although this year the weather was better (sunnier) than when we went back in 2011.

Which is both good and bad... good because it made the sculptures more attractive to photograph, but bad because due to it being kinda cloudy when we left my place, I didn't bother taking a hat and didn't bother changing into my shorts.

Both of these things would have made my day better. Especially the hat thing... since I think the top of my head is already sunburned from walking home, so my scalp is currently saturated with aloe vera After Sun Spray.

After realising that people were just going to get right up close to the sculptures and not necessarily allow me to get in their easily to take photos, I decided to switch over to my wonderful, stalkerific telephoto lens.

It sounds completely counter-intuitive, but with the telephoto lens I can stand way, way, way back from the sculptures and photograph around the people standing in the way much more easily than I can with a regular lens. And it has an awesomely shallow depth of field when I extend it out, so that always works well with sculptures.

Plus it helps with stalking the beachside hotnesses...

I don't know whether I wasn't directly comparing it to Sculpture By The Sea like I did last time (probably more so since that was the first time I'd been to both SBTS and BJCS), or if there were more entries, or better entries, or even if it was just because it was sunnier and there was eye candy around the place, but I really did enjoy myself this time.

I still think that some of the placement of sculptures isn't quite right, and from a photography standpoint I wish they wouldn't even bother putting them around the surf club, since they're generally much harder to photograph.

We also managed to pick exactly the wrong time to check out the sculptures inside the surf club itself, since not only were there a bunch of other people doing the same thing at the time, but they were also presenting the prizes from the surf carnival.

After we'd seen everything there was to see, some of it more than once due to the changing light conditions, we headed back to the car in search of an appropriate Australia Day lunch.

I've been wanting to try the burgers from Relish'd (seriously guys, you need to make that URL on your window actually point to a website) since late last year... and since we were just down the road, it seemed like a good idea.

It turned out to be a pretty good plan before we even got our food because even though it was 12:30 or so when we got there, there was only one other person in the place.

When we did get our burgers and a serve of chips to share, it was doubly, triply worth it!

Although it was as messy as hell too eat, and the burger did fall apart a little bit (I'm actually taking that as a good thing because it means that the patty isn't compacted to all hell or bound together with any extra ingredients), the whole thing was incredibly tasty. The bun is incredibly light and you don't feel like you're biting through a mattress to get to the burger.

And the chips... big fat, crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, chips... mmmmm!

Even Ma said that they were the best chips she's had in a good long while, and she grew up in a fish and chip shop. So she knows good chips.

We will definitely be going back!

After lunch we decided to take a wander down to the beach, then back along Jetty Road to "aid the digestion" and generally do that time honoured Saturday activity... "Looking At Things".

I don't know whether it says more about me or about Australia or about Australia Day specifically or about our relationship with the flag, but pretty much any time I see anybody wearing the flag, mostly as a cape, but any item of clothing really, I automatically assume that they're pretty much a bogan or else a little bit racist.

The same kind of goes for people who fly Australia flags on their car on Australia Day... the record today I think was four flags (one on each window).

I'm not sure that there is another country that so easily converts it's flag into a fashion accessory, and then uses that flag as a means of saying "I'm Australian and you are not", whether they say it aloud or not.

Like I said though, that could just be me and the fact that I generally don't go anywhere that there is going to be a large number of people celebrating on Australia Day... and certainly not to somewhere as full on as Glenelg.

In fact, the last time I even mentioned what I did on Australia Day was in 2010, so I'm pretty sure I've just holed up in my apartment watching videos for the last couple of years.

I can't say that I've ever seen that many people on Glenelg beach (I'm totally not a Summer beach person... I don't tan, I don't enjoy laying around doing nothing and I don't like the heat).

And it seemed like every other person was carrying/laying on/in possession of a giant inflatable thong, which was complete weird and random until we worked out that it was for the Havaianas Thong Challenge.

Although as it turns out Glenelg only had 448 of them (whereas Cottesloe in Perth had 2093, which would have been a hell of a thing to see).

Walking up Jetty Road occasionally felt like being a salmon swimming against the current of flag wearing, beach bound people... so it was something of a relief to make it back to the car and head home.

On the way we went past the McDonalds on Anzac Highway which had it's big sign changed to "Macca's", and I actually kinda like it... I know they're not permanently going to change the name on everything, but I love to see those big signs stay as "Macca's" all year round.

So that was my Australia Day... completely atypical, but enjoyable all the same.

Current Mood:

photo friday: lacking in ruth and balls

The downside with all the Lego sports people is that none of them have any balls... you know, soccer balls or baseballs.

I had to go through and count out a lot of my coins this week... I went to put some new coins away and realised that I no longer had room in three of the four containers. So I spent a good chunk of the evening counting coins, putting them into piles and sticking them all in little bags.

I ended up with $1100... mostly in $1 and $2 coins. And I probably could have kept going but I ran out of little bags.

So that's pretty much the money to pay for the Sydney trip in April. We just need to actually book something now.

Or alternatively it covers a number of previous art purchases, including the two new pieces I bought at Espionage's second anniversary exhibition. Yes, I know... I have no room, blah blah blah... I'm kind of getting to that point where I want to go through everything I own and seriously downsize a lot of the pointless crap I own.

Part of the problem is something I've only really noticed lately, and that's that once I put something down somewhere it generally stays in that spot unless it has a permanent home somewhere else, in which case it will eventually find it's way back there. But otherwise it just stays.

That's why my old teevee stand has turned into a coffee table and why the tubs of Lego bricks Ma brought down probably a year ago and still sitting between the kitchen door and the fridge and why I still have the painted milk crate that the second dumpster I bought came in.

I need to be ruthless.

Now does anyone know how one gets rid of "ruth" because clearly I have too much of it presently.

I wandered into Myer at some point this week only to find that they've moved everything (particularly the toy department) off the top floor due to "refurbishments"... and once I found said toy department the same guy was there who has been there scoping out the Lego the previous two times I've been there.

It's officially weird now. Neither of is actually stalking the other, but it's starting to look like we are.

But as I wandered out through the book department I noticed they had the updated version of The Lego Book which I've been thinking about getting for a while now... and all books were 35% off. So now I have the book.

Yes, I know... I need much less ruth.

I also spoke to Gary at the Espionage exhibition about commissioning him to to a custom Kidrobot Foomi that Ma has had sitting in the box at her place since our Melbourne trip last year. So that'll be interesting. I haven't actually commissioned anything before.

And I heard some interesting news on the social media grapevine this evening... Burger Theory is opening another restaurant in the new building just off Rundle Street on Union Street. Which, if it's where I think it's going to be, will be perfect symmetry since that location is the place where they used to park their van.

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random bonds hotness

Uncharacteristically for me, I've been feeling somewhat patriotically inclined when it comes to Random Hotness of late. Granted, I haven't always acted on it, but given that this Saturday is Australia Day, I figured this week was the perfect week to go a little Oz Hotness Crazy.

And what could be more "Straylian" than the loins of local Aussie guys clad in that most uniquely Down Under undergarment, Bonds.

Right alongside Vegemite, the Sydney Opera House, backyard BBQ's and shortening every word we can, seeing that Bonds name appear over the top of a guy's belt is one of those quintessentially Australian things.

Sure, the company was founded by an American, and in 2010 their parent company pulled the remaining manufacturing out of Australia and moved everything to China... but they still feel Aussie, and I think that most Australian guys have had a pair of Bonds jocks covering their tackle at some point in their lives.

The majority of today's extra large bumper post come straight from Tumblr... and I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, of them are amateur shots taken from social media.

So whether you're warming up for the Australia Day holiday or not, enjoy this bevy of beautiful Bonds bulges...

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