yaniblog

photo friday: melbourne street funk

2012-01-27T21:45:00.000+10:30

I'm... in a funk. I think. Actually I don't really know.

It's all the things I've mentioned before... it's the weather, it's work being incredibly dull (today was really, really dull given that almost everyone seemed to be taking the post Australia Day Friday off), it's the feeling that I'm completely unprepared for the trip to Melbourne next Friday (which I'm not at all unprepared for really... although I do have a bunch of things to check and do before we leave... so I don't know what that's about), it's just... I dunno.

But it kind of results in me not really being able to concentrate on anything properly.

So I think I'll just leave you with this Melbourne street art and wander off...

Current Mood:

random oz hotness

2012-01-26T16:32:00.001+10:30

Today's Random Hotness happens to coincide with our national day, Australia Day.

I have no idea where these particular naked beer drinking, barbequing, surfing, cycling gentlemen are from, but it's exactly the kind of party I wouldn't mind attending!

So long as someone offers me a beer and a sausage...

Happy Australia Day everyone!

Current Mood:

pre australia day musing

2012-01-25T21:49:00.000+10:30

On the eve of Australia Day... here's a collection of the places I've been around the country in the last twelve months. Which I actually find really, really amazing given that distinct lack of travelling for the first 30 years of my life.

I'm also slightly freaking out that this time next week I'll be packing my bag for Melbourne. And then less than two weeks after we get back, the Fringe starts! February is going to be massive!

This bout of hot weather seems to be eating away at both my brain and my patience like acetone dissolving styrofoam. Normally I would suggest I wasn't sleeping well because of the heat, but it's not like I have trouble getting to sleep and I'm not waking up during the night. I just think that maybe the quality of the sleep I am having isn't so great.

Or maybe it's just that the world is full of petty annoyances...

Like the fact that my employment agency is making me fill out every single bit of paperwork again as though I was starting with them for the first time. So I spent about 45 minutes this morning filling my name in about a dozen times on various bits of paper. On a number of them I really just wanted to write "see the previous forms because nothing has actually changed".

And the fact that when it's hot like this I just don't want to be bothered tidying the house up, so it all feels a little blah.

Although the world is also full of things that are good...

Like the fact that the sixth series of the Lego Minifigs is finally available in Australia! I knew this because Ma brought me two figures yesterday, so today I figured I'd head over the Myer just to see if they had them in yet. Turns out they did and there was a woman standing at the counter with one of the staff going through and essentially feeling the packs looking for certain ones.

I could have hovered around waiting for her to go but instead I walked up said "can I join in?"... because I'm as tragic as hell. Fortunately there was a second box so I spent about 20 minutes of my lunch break going through and feeling up EVERY! SINGLE! PACK! in both of the boxes to try and find the ones I wanted from this series. And I think ever single staff member from the toy department wandered past while I was doing it and asked if I needed any assistance... and I was all "no, I'm good, just feeling up the merchandise".

It turned out to be a good plan because not only was Myer having a "buy 2 get 1 free" sale on everything in the toy department, but out of the six I bought, three of them were the ones that I specifically wanted (one was okay, the other two were duplicates). Of course, because I was nice and handed over a couple of the ones that the other woman was looking for (for her daughter... so she was after the girl/female figures), I still need to stand around and feel some more packs to try and find the others.

And even though the cool change doesn't come in until Saturday afternoon, I'm still going to enjoy having the day off tomorrow for Australia Day. Not that I really care about the actual day, but hopefully I can get the house a little cooler.

Current Mood:

tinker tailor soldier spy

2012-01-24T23:33:00.000+10:30

If you're looking for something layered, occasionally complex, but beautifully performed, then Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is your kind of movie.

It very much feels like they've taken the bag of excellent male British actors, turned it upside down and out has fallen a sublime cast...

Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy... they're all amazingly good.

Oldman really does steal the show as the protaganist, George Smiley, though. He loses himself in his roles at the best of times, but I don't think I've really seen him in anything quite like this before.

But he has always been one of those actors that while you always recognise that he's Gary Oldman, he's never just playing himself. There is always so much character there. And Smiley is no different. There's no hint of Jim Gordon or Sirius Black or Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in his performance.... it's definitely somebody new. And it's beautiful to watch.

I was also impressed by Cumberbatch... although in a lot of ways his character feels a little bit more like it's designed to be the audience's entry point into this work... but the role is a world away from his performance as TV's latest Sherlock Holmes.

But essentially everyone who appears on screen is brilliant.

The plot is more than a little convoluted at times... and there are flashbacks and flashsideways switching of time and place that are occasionally jarring or at least confusing. And I did work out who "done it" as it were quite early in the movie... but that was more about a hunch based on actors that turned out to be correct rather than the plot being transparent.

And while I understand that everyone who goes to a movie goes with their own particular set of baggage and essentially everyone sees a slightly different movie because of that...

But there really was a whole bunch of very British, very repressed, very upper class, very "public school" homoerotic sexual tension going on throughout this movie! Of course it didn't help that I was getting the main character slightly mixed up with Guy Burgess who was the inspiration for the movie Another Country (who also happens to feature Colin Firth, oddly enough).

Even so, there's a thread of the queer that seems to run through the base of the movie. Or that could just be me.

It also looks amazing! Somebody said to me recently that a movie they'd been watching perfectly nailed a certain time period... and this does too... everything feels very grubby and dark and real but also perfectly of the era (the 1970's). But it's not in your face about it... it's just beautifully authentic (or at the very least it feels that way, since I wasn't actually running around London in the 70's).

To pare it back to it's essence, it's a wonderfully written (slight plot confusion notwithstanding), beautifully acted and wonderfully detailed movie.

yani's rating: 9 chess pieces out of 10

unconscious mutterings 469

2012-01-23T17:55:00.000+10:30

I shaved off the proto-beard yesterday... it lasted for either 23 or 26 days (I can't actually remember when/if I shaved during the week after Christmas). It was straggley, half-assed and only looked good from certain angles.

Can somebody point me in the general direction of this post if I ever say I'm growing another full beard?

Also, I fucking hate Summer/hot weather more than I can possibly articulate...

Unconscious Mutterings...

Rivals :: Affection
Automatically :: Upgraded
Bathroom :: Shower
Jerk :: Off
Preference :: Sexual
Parenting :: Half-assed
Helmet :: Viking
Wave :: Dancer
Judo :: Chop
Flat tire :: RAA

Current Mood:

midsummer shopping mundanity

2012-01-21T17:49:00.000+10:30

Shopping between the middle of January and the beginning of March is always a bit of a painful exercise.

The weather is usually too hot... everything that we wanted we either bought at Christmas or in the sales straight after.

So we end up not really having much of a plan about what we're doing or where we want to go.

And yet somehow we tend to fill the day up anyway.

Today was mostly typical but only partially productive.

We started with the usual supermarkettry... and the usual unpackinginess... and the current annoyance about the lack of specific products in certain stores...

Add to that the discovery that for reasons that I really can't fathom in the slightest, my teevee had lost Channel 10 and GEM, tuned in a second set of SBS channels including the ones with nothing on, plus the radio versions, and the remaining Channel 10 stations that I had (Eleven and One) weren't picking up anything.

I don't know what the hell is up with that, but I've retuned them all know and it appears to be fine.

Anyway... because I appear to be either having a second childhood or some sort of midlife crisis and am currently obsessed with Lego for the second time in my life, we headed to Arndale to check out the Lego stationery sets (c'mon... Lego marker pens... with little Lego men heads on the caps!) and wander about mostly in an aimless fashion.

Then we headed into the city to see if one of the camera stores could point us in the general direction of somewhere that bought or at least valued old/secondhand SLR cameras. Let's just say that they were less than helpful.

We also ran into Princess T in the Mall on her break from her retail job.

And that was kind of it. We got a drink in the food court underneath David Jones... poked around in their Food Hall, then poked around in their leftover Christmas stuff (again) before deciding that since we only had a little bit of time to spare before the parking space ticked over from 0-1 hours to 1-2 hours that we'd head back to the car.

Turned out we quite literally made it with a minute to spare. Ticket going in stamped at 11:54, ticket stamped as paid at 12:53.

So, yeah...

Current Mood:

photo friday: storm, calm, sydney

2012-01-20T18:57:00.001+10:30

Some Sydney tones for Friday.

I feel as though I'm residing in the calm before the storm... or possibly the eye of the hurricane, I'm not completely sure which.

Parts of this week have been mind numbingly dull. Parts of this week have been teeth grindingly frustrating. And there's the potential for the rest of the year to go completely batshit crazy.

I know that February and March are already going to be crazed, what with trips and Fringe stuff and my birthday and whatnot... but there are "discussions" underway at work that would potential make the rest of the year completely insane.

The only solace is that the same "discussions" have been going on for a number of years with no forward momentum... so nothing may happen again this time. Or it could just be like a snowball rolling downhill in a cartoon, picking up speed and mass as it goes from all the other little projects laying around in its way.

Or I've just completely screwed the analogy/cliché pony.

Of course that's all dependent on all the particular stars aligning and me still being there past the end of May.

Thankfully I've just renewed my gym membership, so that's out of the way even if work does dry up. And it came with a lower price tag, two free movie tickets and a "sports pack". I have no idea what's in the pack, I couldn't be bothered trying to carry it around the supermarket along with everything else, so I'm picking it up on Monday morning. I would assume it's just general branded tat (in the British sense of the word) that they had left over from some other promotion... but we'll see.

I swear I don't just get hiccups any more... I get ear splitting sonic belching eruptions of death. Urgh.

Now lets see if really, really good barbeque sauce makes an effective meat marinade...

Current Mood:

random bearded hotness

2012-01-19T22:05:00.000+10:30

I've been attempting to grow a beard since Christmas. One thing has become patently clear... as much as I enjoy not really having to shave as much, I am not genetically predisposed to growing a full, actual, grown-up beard like today's hirsute Random Hotness.

Missouri born model and musician Carson Kelley, photographed by Scott Teitler for Fantasticsmag, grows a fine, Nordic style beard.

I'm very jealous...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 468

2012-01-16T18:01:00.000+10:30

I swear the alarm on my iPhone is on the fritz...

Unconscious Mutterings...

Red tape :: Suffocating
Crush :: Man
Magical :: Hogwarts
Sticky :: Tape
Tile :: Scrabble
Doubt :: Constant
Inconsistent :: Story
Kiss :: Deep, long, tender, wet, French
Inspiration :: Perspiration
Thanks :: No worries

Current Mood:

domestic organisational saturday

2012-01-14T18:07:00.000+10:30

We really, really, really did nothing today...

Well, not nothing nothing...

Ma was dropping her car in for a service this morning, so I met her at the supermarket in my car and we did the usual supermarkettery.

And it's nearly the middle of January and the new Lego minifigures still aren't out in Target... grrr...

Afterwards we came back here and I cleared out my freezer. I really need to stop putting anything in my freezer that doesn't come out again within about a week... there was so much stuff either completely ruined by the freezer or else completely unidentifiable.

But at least it's tidy now.

While I was doing that Ma was loading some of my CDs onto her iTunes account, then we ended up both fiddlefaddling about with laptops and iPhones and Angry Birds since the mechanic called to say that he had to fix some extra thing on Ma's car and it wouldn't be ready until about noon. And since neither of us really needed to go anywhere or do anything... we didn't.

He called pretty much bang on noon, so we headed out to pick up Ma's car and headed straight back here.

I've been intending to go through my wardrobe since I went looking for something I bought in Brisbane and couldn't find it. I did find a box that I didn't even know I'd kept, and didn't need.

So since I got back here before Ma, I started in on the wardrobe.

First thing to go was my old printer and scanner... Ma's going to give them to somebody at work. And then there was the big garbage bag full of stuffed toy elephants that I used to not so much collect, but accumulate.

I pulled them all out of the bag and looked at them, and didn't have an emotional connection to almost anything in the bag. There were also some tigers and bears that I did have a connection with...

Most of the elephants are now on their way to one of the op shops.

By the time I got to the stage where everything was out of the wardrobe and spread all over my bed, bedroom floor and living room floor. And then I couldn't be bothered finishing. Mostly because I really needed some storage boxes to do it correctly.

But Ma suggested that we head down to Arndale and find some boxes. Which seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to me.

Unfortunately it's never quite as simple as "I want a box that's pretty much X by Y by Z... they only come in certain sizes and a lot of those sizes were either a couple of centimetres too wide or way, way, way too small. Annoying.

I did eventually find some that were perhaps a little shallow, but fit across the top section of the wardrobe very nicely. One for my scarves (I have way too many scarves), one of the stuffed toys I was keeping, one for my blankets and one for all the other random fabric I had in the wardrobe (old photo backdrops, painting dropclothes, etc).

So everything went back nicely... even though the whole top section of the wardrobe is completely full again... but I did get to put my neon Christmas tree and the perspex reindeer up there so Ma didn't have to store them at her place.

And there is more room in the bottom of the wardrobe, so that's good.

But that's really about it. We then loaded up Ma's car so she could take away everything that needed taking away... which was a lot... and off she went.

Not really a short day with one thing and another, but a more productive one than just wandering around the shops in a random fashion.

Current Mood:

photo friday: melbournian street art

2012-01-13T18:42:00.000+10:30

You know those characters in cartoons that are so rageful that either steam is coming out of their ears or they have that uncontrollable twitching eye thing going on.

Yeah... That's this guy at present.

But we'll move on...

So... we're all booked in for Melbourne. Flight booked, hotel booked... although not the hotel we've stayed in before (the crappy location of the rooms we got last time kinda put me off a bit) and not the really, really central hotel that was over Degraves Street (but I have it bookmarked, and we're DEFINITELY staying there next time we go to Melbourne. Oh, and the car too and from the airport... I booked that yesterday with Lygon Limousines.

Although I haven't heard back from them yet... so I might have to email them directly instead of going through the form on the website.

This could well be our only trip this year. Two trips last year (plus random spending) put a big dent in my finances... so the trip to New Zealand that we were half considering is out... I'm still half tempted to go to Sydney in April on my own for a weekend to see the Bell Shakespeare company do Macbeth (the obsession continues) at the Opera House... but that will depend on how much the tickets are.

I've also discovered that it's sometimes bloody difficult to give away free things. Although perhaps it's just that the free things in question didn't appeal to the audience I was trying to give them too. Even so... it's a little frustrating.

I also discovered a new book that I may have to give to people with babies and/or people leaving school and/or any other occasion that I can think of... all thanks to this video:

The book in question is "Oh, The Places You'll Go" by Dr Suess. The video got me a little bit misty eyed (it's a beautiful piece of writing).

Yesterday I had my first Burger Theory burger of the year. It's not like I'm surprised by how good they taste each time I have one, but I think I forget exactly how good they taste (or exactly how they taste) until I'm eating one. And the chips that they've started making are SO GOOD! So crisp on the outside but so fluffy on the inside and not at all greasy.

I'm pretty sure I know the reason why, but attractive young men working in shops who make direct eye contact with me and/or are especially friendly make me... well actually it's kinda hard to describe. It's like butterflies, but more of a lurch. Anyway, they make me all lurchy. Mostly it's the direct eye contact.

I finished the first season of Game of Thrones last night. It really is very good. Although because it's based on a series of books there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens where you just know it's going to pay off in Book/Season 4 or something. I'll definitely be watching the next season later in the year.

Current Mood:

random assumed hotness

2012-01-12T19:22:00.001+10:30

This week's Random Hotness is something of a nostalgic one for me... back in what now feels like the early Jurassic period when I was photographing guys, I didn't have studio space, so I would either photograph them here in my apartment, or in theirs.

So I can relate to The Apartment Project from photographer MStyles.

Read more about the project at Favorite Hunks & Other Things, and see more of MStyles photos on his An Assume Alias blog or his Tumblr.

Current Mood:

unsettling changes to blogger

2012-01-11T22:07:00.001+10:30

Normally I wouldn't get into the areas of censorship, politics or corporations, but this bothered me, and I'm not sure how many people are actually aware of it yet. It doesn't seem to have been reported anywhere that I've seen... and it seems to me like A Very Bad Thing.

This all came about when I was checking one of our blogs at work. We couldn't access the front end of one and eventually I worked out that it was because Blogger has started placing redirections on blogs so that you see the local "country-code top level domain" or "ccTLD".

Not the ccTLD for the place that the person running the blog is from, but the place that you are.

The following text was taken from Google:

For example, if you're in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location.

Of course, that caused the filtering system at work to throw a fit, because while it was okay with the blogspot.com addresses, the fact that it was being redirected automatically made the system think all blogspot.com blogs were suddenly "malicious" and blocked them.

And have you ever tried to work out what's happening with Blogger blogs without being able to access Blogger blogs... it's tough.

Eventually I found at Google support page that had been published the day before that detailed the issue:

http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2402711

But the explanation was more worrying than the fact that it was happening in the first place.

As above, this was taken from the Google page (bolding is mine):

Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law.

When a post or blog in a country is affected by a content removal, the canonical URL will be set to that country’s ccTLD instead of the .com version.

Does it sound to anybody else as though the claim that it's for "free expression and responsible publishing" is mutually exclusive with "compying with valid removal requests" and forcing URLs to default to the ccTLD address so that content won't be seen in that area.

To me that sounds like a whole bunch of censorship. Like China blocking any reference to the massacre in Tiananmen Square or... well, pretty much everything else China does on the internet. Or suddenly blocking access to posts from Middle Eastern bloggers within the Middle East.

And normally, if they were going to change something this big about Blogger, it would show up in the "Blogger Buzz" content that appears at the bottom of every single blog account. However, the last post on there is from four weeks ago concerning connecting to Google+. And there are no less than five different posts about Blogger's "fresh new look/Dynamic views", but nothing about this.

Whether this has anything to do with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and/or Protect IP Act (PIPA) legislation... some sort of "pre-emptive strike" as it were, I don’t know.

It does seem like a worrying development though.

Although there is a way around it, at least temporarily (but whether that will always work or not I don't know).

Blog readers may request a specific country version of the blogspot content by entering a specially formatted “NCR” URL.

For example: http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr

Having said all that, the direct didn't seem to be in place this morning at work and it hadn't affected my blog (at least not as of writing).

Current Mood:

sherlock holmes and the game of shadows

2012-01-10T22:59:00.000+10:30

I don't specifically remember what my thoughts were on the first Sherlock Holmes movie (I'll go back and read my review later), other than the fact that I enjoyed it.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows continues in the same vein.

Although I have a feeling there is a hell of a lot more of things blowing up in this one.

And Robert Downey Jr seems to play a much more manic version of Holmes at times.

Given that the plot doesn't constrain them to London but allows them to wander through Europe it also allows Jude Law to loosen the tight lacing on Watson somewhat.

Essentially it's Law and Downey Jr's chemistry that makes the movie what it is... breathing life into their very flawed relationship (which feels a lot like the relationship between House and Wilson on House... and just as a brief sidenote, I don't think that it was any kind of accident that House and Holmes and Watson and Wilson are quite similar names).

I do feel like it may have been worth seeing the original before I attempted this one... there are some details at the beginning that bafffled me a bit because I've only seen the previous movie once... and that was two years ago. But you could still probably enjoy this one without having seen the previous one.

I was a little disappointed in Jared Harris as Moriarty. He just seems a bit... generic... and the big reveal of the character's face in the first part of the movie is very much a "Yes, and?" kind of moment. Maybe it's just that he suffers by comparison next to both Downey Jr and Law, but also because the ever lovely Stephen Fry is playing Sherlock's brother Mycroft... so poor Harris can't seem to summon up very much screen presence/charisma next to the three of them. It's not really his fault, but it's one of those times when I think the role could probably have done with a "name".

Noomi Rapace is capable enough in what feels a little like a version of the Rachel McAdams role from the previous movie (not that McAdams doesn't appear briefly at the beginning of the movie)... but the character really doesn't get to DO a hell of a lot.

Essentially a lot of the movie really is just there to service the relationship between Holmes and Watson and the chemistry between Downey Jr and Law. Which isn't really a bad thing.

Once again they play fast and loose with the speed of the film, and the frame rate... speeding up, slowing down, making things seem much less smooth than they otherwise would (actually there's a whole sequence where they're running through a forest that reminded me of a very similar scene in the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). From time to time it gets distracting, but I think perhaps it's supposed to give the audience a taste of living in Sherlock's head. Rapace's character asks him at one point what he sees... his answer is "everything". And with the rather chaotic visuals that accompany the statement makes me think that perhaps the visual style is supposed to reflect how Holmes sees things.

It did cause me to miss a couple of "major" plot points, but I also know that with this particular kind of movie, everything is eventually explained as part of the big "oh aren't I a clever sausage" reveal at the end, so I didn't miss out on anything completely.

Speaking of the reveal... without giving too much away, I did really like the way that they presented a large chunk of the final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty... the ultimate chess game that just keeps being ratcheted up until it's not even about chess any more and takes place in a look.

But my favourite sequence is probably the train...

Ultimately the second Sherlock movie comes down to two things... a lot of explosions but also a smarter movie than you might otherwise have thought.

yani's rating: 8 honeymoons in Brighton out of 10

unconscious mutterings 467

2012-01-09T21:33:00.000+10:30

I chewed my way through seven hours worth of Game of Thrones yesterday... and I still have no idea what some of the characters are called.

It's bloody good though.

Unconscious Mutterings...

Compute :: Does not
Irresistible :: Attraction
Unacceptable :: Supernanny
Joy :: To the world
Noisy :: Neighbours
Paid in full :: Debt
Desire :: Unbridled
One word :: Complicated
Huge :: Trouble
Motorcycle :: Speed

Current Mood:

headachey saturday shopping

2012-01-07T17:51:00.000+10:30

On the up side, my cold seems to be on the way out... on the down side I've had a headache or just general head pain for most of the day. Not big, painful, throbbing head pain... but irritating, dull head pain. Normally I'd scoff at the idea that it was caused by the weather... but today has been a filthy day... hot, humid, windy... but with the promise of a change on the way.

I don't know... I just know that it's not right.

Actually the whole of today has mostly been "not right". I woke up in the midst of a horrible dream about Ma. Thinking about it after I woke up it seemed very much like one of those "everything and the kitchen sink" dreams, and the series of events that happened were completely nonsensical , but the last bit was horrible and made me ring Ma a little later just to hear her voice.

And my proto-beard has been giving me the shits all day... not so much the beard bit, but the moustache bit. Hopefully when I shake this headache and the weather improves, it might stop annoying me, otherwise I don't see it lasting past Monday morning.

Fortunately the shopping part of the day went off without a hitch more or less (other than the aforementioned annoyances)... oh and the fact that the new series of Lego minifigures hasn't been released yet... I know we're only a week into January... but c'mon.

Ahem...

Once we'd finished with the groceries we headed out to Arndale, mostly so I could get another storage box for the toy soldiers under my bed. Almost all of it is away... but there's bits left over and multiple boxes. I'm pretty sure the one I ended up getting is the exact same size as the one I originally got for them... so it should fit a shitload of stuff.

After that we headed into the city... mostly because I couldn't face going all the way out to Marion again... although we really didn't have much of a plan beyond looking in Myer and David Jones for cheap (but still decent) Christmas leftovers.

And we found some... not much, since a lot of the leftovers are always crap no matter how much they originally cost... but some nice bits and pieces.

We also went into Toys R Us... man, going into any store that's in the process of closing down is always depressing, but when they've moved everything down to one area and about half of that is missing as well, it just looks sad.

Then we stopped for some sushi and juice before heading back here.

And now I'm watching the rain pelt the courtyard and trying to pump the cool outside air inside using just about every trick in the book.

Current Mood:

photo friday: long neck and walker

2012-01-06T18:54:00.000+10:30

At present I have a "Summer cold"... sniffly nose, stuffed up head, frog in my throat, dry lips... a little ulcer under my tongue that I keep catching... and one of the topics of conversation at work today concerned the fact that I'd be the first on the chopping block in event we needed to turn to cannibalism due to being trapped in the building due to a zombie apocalypse.

Welcome to my week.

Actually other than the cold and the tongue thing it hasn't been a bad week... the weather behaved itself, work was mostly low impact. And I managed to put all of my Christmas minutia/toy soldiers away.

I've also had mixed reactions to my proto-beard... which is really annoying me at the moment but mostly because I'm not feeling well... Rockchick seems to like it, Sugarmonkey surprisingly has no opinion and H-San keeps giving me a hard time. Not that I care... I'll keep it until I don't want to keep it anymore and then it'll go.

I'm also not sure why it takes so much effort to give away FREE THINGS!

Current Mood:

random canuck hotness

2012-01-05T21:23:00.000+10:30

Let's start 2012 with the right kind of Random Hotness for any year ending in a 2... twins!

Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but c'mon... blonde twins! And shirtless too!

More specifically, blonde shirtless Canadian twins Jordan and Travis Smit... Jordan is the one with shorter hair... photographed by Greg Vaughan.

Current Mood:

gaymoviefest 2011

2012-01-05T18:34:00.000+10:30

As I mentioned yesterday with the general movie review post, I saw a lot of movies last year... and while less of them were gay-themed movies than perhaps the year before, I did have my fair share of queer cinema mixed in there.

In some ways I feel like these gay movie reviews should be subtitled something like "watching really crap movies with gay content so you don't have to"... there really are an awful lot of frogs you have to kiss before you find one that's even human, let alone a prince.

Sugar

I actually saw Sugar a while ago, so my memory of some of the finer details is a little hazy.

I do remember that it's notable for a couple of reasons... the first being the death of the lead actor, Andre Noble, shortly after the film's debut due to eating monkshood... the second is the only real sex scene between the two main characters (as seen shirtless on the DVD cover on the right) is essentially rape.

It's not a movie that I'm really remembering a lot of positives about actually.

The precocious, wise-beyond-her-years, younger sister character is horrible, and once again the whole movie revolves around a gay boy falling in love with a prostitute/hustler who is essentially only gay for pay.

It's kind of a tired queer cinema cliché, and it isn't given any new interpretations in this movie.

Would I recommend it: Not really, no... it's been done before (and since), and better than this.

Strapped

I'm not sure if it influenced how I felt about the movie, but I realised about 20 minutes in that the lead actor, Ben Bonenfant, was the spitting image of my former flatmate, Ludo. Right down to the facial hair and crinkly eyed, lopsided smile. Granted he looks in 2010 the way Ludo looked in 1996.

I will say that I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie.

Like Sugar, it also features a prostitute/hustler, but this one isn't a drug addict and it doesn't end in pain and misery.

It is a little bit fantastical... not overly so, but you have to suspend disbelief that Bonenfant's character can't find his way out of an apartment building seemingly populated entirely by homosexuals (as one of the characters says, "this is the gayest building on the gayest street in town"... so that about covers it I guess).

Essentially he spends the entire movie wandering around the building, meeting new people and having sex with them (well, he is a hustler after all).

The movie plays with a lot of the archetypal gay characters... not only the hustler, but the guy who only ever had a gay experience with a friend in his teens, the aging queen who tries to hang on to the way things were with drugs, the married guy... but doesn't make them feel cliché.

And Bonenfant has some beautifully understated acting throughout. It's interesting to watch the way he changes with each interaction... how both the actor and the character alters himself to match the person he's with.

Would I recommend it: Wholeheartedly... it's a well crafted ride down the proverbial rabbit hole.

O Fantasma (Phantom)

This movie seems to start out as one thing and finishes as something quite different.

Most of the movie is about obsession and chasing that sexual rush, which I have to say I can relate to... although not to the extremes to which the main character, played by Ricardo Meneses, takes it.

His whole existence seems to be dedicated to the next sexual thrill, the next anonymous encounter... but he becomes obsessed with one particular guy which leads him down a particularly strange path.

I don't want to give away too much but the last part of the movie plays more like some kind of post apocalyptic movie, where he appears to have suffered a kind of psychotic break and has essentially "gone feral".

It's also a particularly European movie (more specifically Portugal) given the depiction of not only nudity and the sex in general, but also an actual on screen blow-job.

Would I recommend it: Potentially, if you want something from the fetish side of the fence I'd recommend watching up to about the 77 minute mark (1 hour 17 minutes) and then making up your own ending... or you could watch the whole thing, just don't expect the ending to make a lick of sense.

The Art of Being Straight

I'd like to start this review out with a plea for any and all indi film makers... you may have written the story, you may be directing the story, the story may be based almost totally on your actual life... but for the love of all that's holy, please don't fucking star in the movie!

Also, please be aware that something actually needs to happen in your movie, otherwise it's just celluloid masturbation.

And please stop making movies about guys in their mid 20's who haven't come out yet. They're fucking boring.

Can you tell that The Art of Being Straight pretty much ticks all of those boxes?

It's also a movie that is filled with a lot of really unlikeable characters... actually, they're not even unlikeable... I was just completely ambivalent about every single person in this movie. They're all incredibly narcissistic and monumentally self involved. And none of their actions have any consequences.

None more so than the writer/director/lead actor, Jesse Rosen...

Maybe it was supposed to be "naturalistic"... like a moment in time of their lives. Well, if so, can I just remind everyone involved that life generally isn't that interesting. There's missed potential there too... the lead character's back story, the consequences of screwing your boss, telling your roommates...

And the movie is only 67 minutes long... which is possibly the only blessing.

Would I recommend it: Unless you have a particular fondness for closet cases banging guys twice their age, then I'd say go right ahead. If you actually like story in your movie, then stay far, far away.

Wrecked

I've seen some turkeys since I started keeping reviews of the gay themed movies I've watched, but this piece of crap has to take the total cake.

The actors can't act, the dialogue wouldn't sound any better if they could (if there actually was any written dialogue and they're not just making it up as they go along), there may or may not have been a bunch of time jumps (I think there were a couple, but there maybe have been more) that make no sense. Plus, if you're going to use the same actor over and over and over for different parts, have him take out his giant face piercing, otherwise it's just weird.

The movie tries to be "edgy" by showing the three twinks from the bottom half of the poster naked, erect and jerking each other off. They may be having actual sex, but it's not explicitly shown. This would be titillating if the twinks had the emotional/acting range of a teaspoon, and I actually gave a crap about the characters by that point.

If anything, the nudity of one of the characters makes him even less attractive... and given that the character is a total tool, that's not really that hard.

This doesn't feel like a real film, this feels like the pervy film school movie of some guy who couldn't get twinks to sleep with him, so instead he makes a movie where they behave badly, have pseudo sex and jerk off in front of him.

It's not edgy, it's not interesting and it's certainly not erotic.

Would I recommend it: Oh fuck no. But if you happen to see it on DVD anywhere, please buy it and then melt the disc so nobody else ever has to see it either.

L.I.E.

There are a lot of tropes that gay film makers seem to cling to, partly because they make have happened to the writer at some stage, but also because there's often some element of truth to them that gives audiences (and writers) a shorthand to understand what's going on.

One is the young gay man as a prostitute, which may also include the young gay man as the "victim" or "prey" of an older, somewhat predatory, gay man. And another is the young gay man as victim in general... bad things happen, not because he may be confused about his sexuality, but just because he's the protagonist and an easy way to move the story along is to let bad thing after bad thing happen to your protagonist.

And sometimes, you throw all of those things into one movie, shake it all up and see what happens.

L.I.E. (or Long Island Expressway) is a movie that does that, and it's also a movie I have mixed feelings about.

I have to admit that I was very uncomfortable watching the young protagonist being "groomed" by the "chickenhawk". He's vulnerable, he's reaching out for some kind of positive attention, he's unsure about his sexuality, he has issues with his father... it's all fairly text book, but it's just... creepy.

I think partly because the predator is played with incredible skill by Brian Cox, and Paul Dano (who was 17 when it was made, but looks 14) plays the boy with such longing and vulnerability.

It is a disconcerting movie though because parts of it attempt to be quite erotic, or have that sexual charge that pretty much everything does when you're 15, but then you realise that the characters are 15 and it just starts to make you feel uncomfortable.

The movie did fall back on the cliché of the smarter and more well educated than his years/peers teen though... with the protagonist displaying a talent for writing/poetry as well as a knowledge of art and poetry that seems completely at odds with his behaviour throughout the movie.

It also makes the viewer feel complicit in the grooming/seduction that's going on, as though his apparent intelligence somehow is justification.

Alternatively, I've just revealed something questionable and slightly unpleasant about myself.

Would I recommend it: I'm as conflicted about the recommendation as I am about the rest of this movie. Based solely on the performances, I would have to say yes, because it's incredibly well acted. But it's not a movie I would necessarily say that I "enjoyed" or that would be something I would immediately want to tell other people to watch. So make of that what you will.

Grande École

Everything in sexier in French... it's just a fact.

Even when the characters in a movie are all completely mental... it's slightly less bothersome because it's in French.

Having said that, there's a limit to how far you can push that kind of thing. The lead character's girlfriend in Grand Ecole (or Great School) is a complete nutjob... the entire premise for the movie (that both she and her boyfriend try to see who can sleep with her roommate first) comes absolutely out of the blue. Well, either that or it's just something very French that doesn't translate. I choose to believe it's bad storytelling.

I know it's always chalked up to "but he/she is totally in love with her/him" when crazy people do crazy things to moderately less crazy people, but he really should have kicked her to the curb way before everything got out of hand.

It's also one of those movies where the lead character has a perfectly awesome thing going, but is still lusting after someone so completely unattainable... which makes me want to shake said lead character and scream at him to see what he has. They often don't though, and proceed to completely balls up the very good thing trying to attain the unattainable. It never ends well.

But issues with character motivations aside, it's not a completely horrible take on the "boy in college realises he likes boys" motif. Although Gregori Baquet and Salim Kechiouche do feel quite awkward during the majority of their love scenes (in a way that Baquet doesn't feel during love scenes with his female co-star).

And the male/male sex scenes are handled a little oddly... the first one feels like it's taking place on a theatre stage... the lighting is heightened, the staging is unnatural, and it feels like a performance. The second is actually gorgeous and erotic but seems to take place (semi-spoiler alert) inside a kaleidoscope or hall of mirrors or something... and while it makes for a couple of amazing visuals, it makes the whole thing feel removed from reality. Which would be fine other than the fact the aforementioned male/female sex scenes aren't treated that way.

In a lot of ways, Kechiouche makes the movie. He's a much more real character than the other three male characters, who seem to spend to much time being too clever for their own good.

I don't quite no why, but it doesn't seem like very many gay filmmakers, or possibly just gay screenwriters (or screenwriters who write gay screenplays) know how to end them. A lot of my reviews seem to end with "this movie was really good except for the last 15-20 minutes". And this is another one. There's this entire sequence that feels like it was lifted out of an overly academic and intellectual play and just doesn't seem to make a lick of sense (again, could be a French thing).

Would I recommend it: Hmmmm... I'm divided about this one too. It's very sexy and French and has full frontal male nudity and hot men kissing and a whole naked water polo team showering... but parts of it either seem somewhat trite and cliché or else are made to feel completely heightened and almost not part of the rest of the movie. But there's sexy French boys... speaking French...

Other movies

Okay, there is another movie that should have been on that list... The Big Gay Musical... but I couldn't get more than ten minutes into it.

Quite literally, at the ten minute mark (which is pretty much two minutes or less after actual dialogue starts due to the initial musical number), I groaned at the movie after it introduced the tired old plot device of the gay man in his 30's who hasn't come out to his parents... and now they're coming to see him in his first off, off, off Broadway show, which is, (in no way a) surprise... gay! I mean the musical number was bad enough... normally I like that.... but it's a musical about a musical and we're actually seeing one of the numbers being performed on stage... and...

And I just could not do it. I just didn't care. So it got filed, to remain unwatched pretty much forever.

There were also some other gay themed movies that I watched early in the year and forgot to write reviews for...

Boys Briefs 5: It just didn't feel particularly gay... or somehow I got a copy missing some parts. I saw the very first one of these in Melbourne years and years ago, and it was good... now it appears to be any old crap.
Kaboom: The dude from the Terminator TV series playing another gay role... started fairly well but just got weirder and weirder and weirder.
Caravaggio: Story of the painter... Derek Jarman makes strange anachronistic movies. Not as good as the Edward II one.
BearCity: Actually really good. Nice to see a different group of gay men featured in a gay movie, although for the most part still the "pretty" version of it, and hitting a large number of the standard rom-com buttons.
The Ritz: Incredibly campy 70's movie set in a gay bathhouse full of farce and mistaken identity... but actually really funny.
The Graffiti Artist: I think this movie runs for about 20-30 minutes before the main character speaks a single word (or before anybody speaks from memory). A little "artsy" and predictable at times, but an interesting mix of gay culture and street art culture.
Nowhere: By the same guy who did Kaboom... again, starts well, ends up fucking bizarre.
Beginners: See my review here.

Just as something of a side note... I was already planning to post this today, but it became weirdly apt as my Medium Boss (not H-San who's the Acting Small Boss, or the Big Boss... but the Boss between those two... Medium Boss) tried to get us all to watch a movie called The Dying Gaul. Which is essentially a gay themed movie.

I still don't quite understand WHY she wanted us all to watch this particular movie, or whether she just wanted to include everyone in The Extended Nut House so nobody felt excluded... but none of us (apart from Rockchick, who is enthusiastic about almost everything) were particularly enthusiastic, so we said we'd watch the first 20 minutes or so... see how it went.

I'm not exactly sure how long I lasted, but I was the first one to leave (followed fairly closely behind by Sugarmonkey). I couldn't stand any of the three major cast members, and the writing was so cheesy. And having looked up the rest of the plot online, I'm very glad that I didn't bother with it.

But it did give us something to discuss for the rest of the afternoon.

Current Mood:

my 2011 at the movies

2012-01-04T17:28:00.000+10:30

I saw 194 movies in 2011. 146 of those were movies I hadn't ever seen before, but only 21 of those were new releases that I saw at the movies.

Of the new releases, only #1 got a 10 out of 10. Looking at the list, it also appears to have been a very animation/drama heavy year last year.

1. Kung Fu Panda 2

The other thing that's really great about the Kung Fu Panda movies is that they don't hit you over the head with the message... it's definitely in there, but it's subtly woven into the whole story and hidden between the laughs and some rollicking action sequences.

2. Arthur Christmas

But it's told with so much heart and an equal amount of wit that it ends up being a very moving story. Not entirely unpredictable, but I can forgive it it's obviousness because I really cared about the characters.

3. Beginners

All the performance are masterful... simple, emotional and masterful. Plummer captures the pathos of an older gay man who is making the best of an imperfect relationship with a much younger man without resorting to a stereotype.

4. Love and Other Drugs

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.

5. The King's Speech

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.

6. The Three Musketeers

It's campy, it's historically irresponsible, it's full of explosions and modern action movie staples, it's so very over the top... but I had a thoroughly good time with it... quite probably because I was expecting it to be completely over the top.

7. One Day

And it does an amazing job capturing each time period, both with the fashions of the day, as well as the use of particular "tent pole" songs that give an instant nostalgia hit.

8. Cars 2

It is a gorgeous movie though... and they've taken the idea from the original movie about landscape and architecture inspired by the shapes of cars and car parts and given Japan, France, Italy and England a car themed makeover. It's definitely one of those movies that you'd have to watch more than once just to get all of the little details.

9. Source Code

I was somewhere disengaged (not because it was bad, just because the movie seemed to be set up that way) from this movie for a lot of the 93 minute running time, but the final loop through the train journey and the end of the movie pretty much won me over.

10. Albert Nobbs

I don't know that I can really describe how great Glenn Close's performance is... it's subtle, completely believable, full of undercurrents and a full and vivid life going on behind the character's eyes which we only get to see in very tiny slices.

Honourable mentions: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Thor.

Dishonourable mentions: Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Sucker Punch for squandering their potential. And Rango for not knowing what the hell it was or who it was for.

Other great movies that were only new to me: Like I said at the start of this post, I saw a hell of a lot of movies that were new to me during 2011 (god bless the internet). While there are too many to do a full review on or rank them, but the following list were amongst the best movies I saw.

The Thin Man (1934): In fact, I loved the whole Thin Man series (six in all between 1934 and 1947), even if they got a little repetitive after the third one. But they have amazing writing and great chemistry between Powell and Loy.
Youth In Revolt (2009): Michael Cera only seems to be able to play one kind of character, and until Scott Pilgrim I wasn't sure it was the kind of character I would enjoy, but this proved me spectacularly wrong.
Winchester '73 (1950): This is one of the few movies I think could be awesome as a remake... it's a cowboy movie, but it's actually more about the titular rifle. Although it would be very hard to replace Jimmy Stewart as the lead.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004): It's so tongue in cheek and over the top that it almost feels like animation, but that's exactly what makes it so damn good.
Attack The Block (2011): Any movie that can make you completely reverse your opinion of the main characters by the end is definitely doing something right. Plus it's a great take on the alien motivations.
Memento (2000): I know, I must be the last person in the Western world to actually see this, but it's really, really good and really disorientating all at the same time.

Current Mood:

first day back at work

2012-01-03T22:03:00.000+10:30

Returning back to the daily routine... it's a bit of a wrench.

After ten days of leave, it felt very strange to be getting up to an alarm, going to the gym and heading into work.

In fact, the ten days felt like at least twice that long... like I'd been on leave for ages and ages. Or it did until I got to my desk at work... then it felt like I'd never been away.

I was incredibly thankful for the air-conditioning at the gym, on the bus and at work (although the air-con at work always struggles a bit when it's humid) after the last few days of struggling with the heat.

First order of business was packing up my Christmas tree and sorting through all my emails (fortunately most of them were just things I needed to file in appropriate folders). Then there was all the catching up that goes with coming back after the Christmas/New Year break... so that takes up a goodly chunk of the day.

What was amusing was that I checked our "Big Board Of Stuff" first thing in the morning to work out who was in and who wasn't... so I was surprised when Rockchick walked in the door at about 9:30... because she had a flexi listed on the board. She forgot. Both Sugarmonkey and I told her to turn around and go home again, but she didn't.

I was also amused by a phone call I got this morning... someone asking for advice on something, and whether it was the fact that I was just back from leave or what, but I very much enjoyed telling them exactly what I thought (nicely enough though).

And I actually got less shit for my somewhat lackluster proto-beard that I thought I might. I'm not sure how long it's going to last... it might disappear by the weekend, but I hadn't shaved for the majority of the holidays, and I'd kinda liked the look when I'd checked it out in the mirror a couple of times, so I decided to keep it. Actually people seem to think it's just a goatee... the sides are still a little m'eh still, plus I think the goatee section is a little darker.

So I'm not exactly sure it's good to be back at work, but it kinda beats the alternative of no work at all.

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 465 + 466

2012-01-02T09:42:00.000+10:30

So... damn... hot... urgh!

Due to Holiday Apathy I never got around to posting last weeks UM... so a double edition today...

Unconscious Mutterings...

Last week...

Elves :: Lothlórien or Wolfrider
Holiday :: Greed, gluttony and sloth
Candles :: Citronella
Family :: Small and broken, but still good
Insight :: It is what you make it
Sleigh :: One horse, open, w jingling bells
Party :: Like it's 1999
Weather :: For Christmas, pleasant... currently, horrible
Presents :: Sparse but worthwhile
Misfit :: I need to get around to watching Season 3

This week...

Resolution :: Broken
Adorable :: Miss Adora Belle
Fractions :: Seventh eighths
Intensify :: Flavour
Commute :: Not in a car, but in a bus
Job :: At present I'll be glad to get back to it for the air-conditioning
Advance :: Australia Faire... that's later in the month
Audit :: They sit across the walkway from us... don't talk to us, bit snobby
Highlight :: of 2011... in a word, theatre
Disallow :: Mission Impossible

Current Mood:

happy 2012

2012-01-01T12:06:00.001+10:30

I have to say that last night didn't really feel properly like New Years Eve... and today really didn't feel like the beginning of a new year when I woke up this morning, although it's starting to feel a little more like that now.

I can only assume that it's because of doing the Saturday shopping thing yesterday... it kinda threw off my NYE mojo.

After I finished up the last post of 2011 I made some dinner (Bush tomato sausage salad... slightly less interesting than it sounds) and after trying to wrangle Siri on my iPhone 4S to add things up for me and then to convert the number of minutes into hours, I settled in to watch a few new Futurama audio commentaries before filling up my big metal pot full of cold water to soak my feet in (mmmm cooling... stupid really, really hot New Years) and starting the NYE Moviefest.

That's possibly the other reason NYE didn't completely feel like NYE, I started watching movies later than usual and I only watched two instead of the usual three.

I was very happy with my movie choices though... it was a bit of a Dreamworks Animation Fest, with Kung Fu Panda 2 followed by How To Train Your Dragon... both of which make me tear up, and which were... blogging spoiler alert... my #1 movies of 2011 and 2010 respectively).

When I was finished with both of those it was about 11:30 and I couldn't be bothered starting another movie so I alternated between watching Special Features and another Futurama commentary.

And that's pretty much what I was doing when the clock rolled over to 2012.

Every New Years, I can hear the fireworks down at the Torrens but because my apartment block faces away from the river (as is at the other end of North Adelaide) I really can't see anything... but this year I wandered around into the rear car park to see if I could spot anything from there. I could, but only the really, really, really high stuff... although I could hear it all, and the light from all the fireworks was visible on the back of the apartment building... bit of a tease really.

And that was that really... I finished the Futurama episode and then went to bed. Now I'm spending the first day of 2012 in a darkened apartment watching movies trying to keep reasonably cool.

So, yeah... oh, and Happy 2012 everyone... welcome to the National Year of Reading!

Current Mood:

the last (shopping) post of 2011

2011-12-31T17:37:00.000+10:30

You know, I'm not really too fond of this "Important Holiday Eve falling on a Saturday" thing.

It's all kinda disorientating.

But today is both Saturday and New Years Eve, so it's been a different day than previous NYE's...

I woke up around 6am to discover that outside was blessedly cool so I cranked the fan up in the doorway to try and at least pump a little cooler air into the apartment before the sun came up over the house next door.

While that was chugging away, I changed my bedding (while managing to tweak a muscle in my back... a sure sign I'm getting old), rotated my mattress (seemed like a good day to do it), took out the trash and washed the dishes in the sink. All this because my grandmother essentially lives in my brain and everything has to be "just so" at midnight.

I was pretty much done with everything by about 7am, which is pretty damn good, so I played around on the laptop until Ma messaged me to tell me she was on her way down.

Now of the five Saturdays in December, we actually didn't go shopping together for three of those, so it felt a little odd and I think we both ended up buying more stuff than usual (even though my fridge is kinda full already).

Then we wandered around Target to see if they had anything decent on sale (not really... or at least nothing that I want/need)... and marvelled (no, wait, the other thing... horrified) that they already had the start of their Easter egg display out. Really? Really really?

Since today is very, very hot (36°C as we speak), we decided to head down to Marion where it would at least be cooler, there's pretty much all the shops we would want to have a look in and we could leave the car undercover. My car obviously, since it has aircon.

As always when it's hot it was a little bit of a chore finding a carpark underneath the building, but we managed it eventually. Marion actually wasn't as busy as I thought it was going to be... and lots of guys in shorts and singlets or just shorts that kept falling down... and lots of exposed tattoos (some good, some not so much). Tasty.

We did our usual big circuit (all along the bottom, then upstairs and all along the top, then back along the top and back along the bottom), lets us see everything.

There were a few bits and pieces worth getting in the sales... I picked up a new chain for my watch pendant (the other one had that "fingers on a blackboard" effect on me every time the pendant moved on the chain), Ma bought three big bottles of the Harajuku Lovers Wicked Style perfume for $57 (that's less than one bottle normally retails for... meaning she saved about $140). We also poked around the left over Christmas decorations, but there really wasn't anything even remotely interesting left.

But we covered pretty much everything, so by the time we were done we were officially done with a capital everything.

Now all that remains to be done for the year is to a) watch the back of it disappear into the sunset (literally) in the next six and a half hours and b) do my regular "Yaniblog In Review"... the first sentence of the first blog post for each month of 2011...

I did kinda start this whole "Year That Was" thing yesterday with the Last Meme post, but here's Yaniblog11:

January: And here we are on the very first day of 2011!

February: I don't know if it's exactly yarn bombing if you tie a doily to a tree, but it's very cool... I'll refrain from trying to make a reference to the other image...

March: Philip Escoffey's previous show, "Six Impossible Things Before Dinner", was one of the shows that I wanted to see last year but missed out...

April: It hasn't been a particularly good week...

May: I got my 52 Suburbs book today... it's so pretty... I'm going to need to devote some time to going through it though... there's a lot of text and a lot of images to pour through...

June: Something blue for the Winter template...

July: Behold! The rare blue Mr Sloppy! I knew there was a blue one around, and a recent photo tipped me off to where I might find it.

August: I'll say this for you Brisbane, I may not be able to orient myself on your streets yet, but you have some mighty fine looking men wandering around...

September: Unsurprisingly, the Spring template is from our trip to Brisbane.

October: Today was brief... so much so that I think it can best be summed up in dot point form...

November: If Adelaide Zoo is a regular kind of zoo, then I have no idea what the hell Taronga Zoo is... it's like an animal city or something. We saw pretty much everything there was to see except the Kid's Zoo, and it took six and a half hours.

December: Some of that "painting with light" action for today's Random Hotness...

That's it... 2011 is officially done and dusted. See you all in 2012!

Current Mood:

photo friday: birds and the last meme of 2011

2011-12-30T16:44:00.001+10:30

A mixed bag of birds for the year's last Photo Friday... from three different states.

Since I haven't really done anything much this week, I figured that I'd round out the year with a real life, honest to goodness meme... it's been one that's been floating around in my drafts for a few years, but this year seemed a good time to drag it out.

And this pretty much sums up everything I would have mentioned about the ups and downs of the last 12 months anyway...

So here it is... The Last Meme of 2011:

What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
Travelled to three different cities, two of them during the same trip. I had more money in the bank than I've ever had before in my whole life (although two interstate trips, eBay and Fringe tickets have kinda wiped a lot of that out).

I also put some of my photography up for sale in a gallery. So far nothing has sold, but it could just be the wrong gallery for my work.

Going to the gym first thing in the morning is a new one.

Oh, and taking part in crowdfunding was something I hadn't even heard of before this year... but during 2011 I've helped to fund artists, musicians, travellers, tech accessories, urban collectives and books.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Tink, Sugarmonkey, two of my cousins (not that I'm technically "close" to either of them).

Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully no.

Who was the best new person you met?
Possibly The Banger at work... I really don't meet people.

Who did you miss?
Lownee, the same as always... but a little less so every year which is both good and disheartening. In July 2012 she'll have been gone from my life for 10 years. Which is longer than she was actually IN my life. But I still look for her face from time to time in a crowd of strangers.

How many one night stands in this last year?
Approximately 15, give or take a couple. Although are they technically one night stands if you've already had sex with the person more than 12 months beforehand?

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Work permanency, regular sex (contrary to what it would seem like from the previous question), a larger bank balance, a smaller waistline... the usual.

What dates/experiences from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory?
Seeing Stephen Fry for the second time... visiting the emergency room followed by Shakespeare... Macbeth at the Fringe... the best sex of my life.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
On my actual birthday, not a lot... but before then there was stuff... and 37.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Ear infection, knee scrape, nothing serious.

What was the best thing you bought?
Either Gary Seaman's entry in the Dumpster Biennale or my Digital SLR.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I'm not sure I got "really x 3" excited about anything this year... although the Melbourne/Sydney trip, the whole of the Fringe and getting pretty much all the packages I got in the mail throughout the year made me pretty excited.

Oh, wait... Burger Theory burgers... they got me really, really excited for a good chunk of the year... partly because I never quite knew when I would be able to have another one. They probably also count as one of the best things I bought.

Compared to this time last year, are you:
- Happier or sadder?
  Potentially happier, but more angry than sad overall.
- Thinner or fatter?
  Technically thinner, but it's only by degrees, and disappointing since I've been going to the gym pretty much all year.
- Richer or poorer?

What do you wish you'd done more of?
I wish I'd eaten better. Or maybe just eaten less, I don't know.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Complain, be disagreeable, be difficult. I often realise afterwards that I'm usually the one who complains about, well, everything... I don't really mean to be, but there's so much stuff that just seems stupid or ill-thought-out to me (especially in a work context) that I find myself complaining about it. A lot. Loudly.

How will you be spending New Years?
Watching movies, the same as usual... although since I didn't get a ton of DVDs for Christmas I may have to dip into the DVDs I haven't gotten around to watching during the year.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I have some different neighbours to this time last year, but I hate all my neighbours as a collective unit, so I'm not sure that counts. And various people at the gym shit me... but people pretty much everywhere shit me, so I think that's more about me than them.

What was the best book/s you read?
I really stopped reading during this year. I mean novels anyway... in fact, I've only read three books throughout this year, and only two of them are really novels. But I read stuff all the time... Twitter, blogs, articles, work things.

What was your favourite TV program?
Underbelly Razor

What were your favourite films of this year?
I'll be blogging my Top 10 list of movies for this year next week... But I also saw a LOT of older movies I'd never seen before during the year, so they'll probably get a mention in the same post.

What did you want and get?
Top of the list though is probably the iPhone 4S. But most things really. That's part of the "problem" with me working full time (if not on a permanent basis), then if I really want something (or even if I only think I want it, but I am getting better at resisting the urge to buy that kind of stuff), I buy it.

What did you want and not get?
This time last year I really wanted to replace my bookshelves, give myself more storage potentially. That still hasn't happened. The other thing I kinda wanted was a new microwave, not because I need one, but partly because it's the only piece of electronic equipment I haven't replaced during my time in this apartment. But I'm not sure what I really want in a new one, so I haven't found it yet.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Is it trite to say "more sex"... actually it should be "more great sex". I'll also add "a new apartment" or alternatively "new neighbours" (but more the former, since I'm kinda over living in this particular apartment), and "our unit having a higher profile" at work.

What kept you sane?
Laughter wherever the hell it came from, Twitter and my blog. Also working full time, although that potentially kept me equally sane and insane but for different reasons.

Current Mood:

random boating hotness

2011-12-29T17:26:00.000+10:30

This is the last Random Hotness for the year... the 49th for 2011 and 327th since the first unofficial hotness post (and who six years later showed up on Playschool again this week as I was flicking channels).

And I decided to go very, very retro for the final 2011 Hotness. All the way back to around 1980 in fact when a very blonde and very, very beautiful Christopher Atkins was mostly naked in The Blue Lagoon, and then seemingly posing in very, very, very short shorts in a row boat for Time Magazine.

Now is it me, or is there a little something there shouldn't be on display in that top right hand picture?

Current Mood:

morning street art safari

2011-12-27T13:36:00.001+10:30

Thanks to an early morning visitor (you know the kind I mean) and having to take a drive afterwards, I was showered, dressed and felt like being out of the house quite early... which lead to a Street Art Safari in Bowden and the CBD...

It may also have given me an opportunity to release some more eyeBirds into the wild...

And discover some more of Peter Drew's Forgotten Outlaws...

Discover fantastic new works... and finally be able to put a name to the artist...

See some urban faces...

And discover a couple of well chosen words that made me smile...

Current Mood:

post christmas roundup 2011

2011-12-26T10:41:00.000+10:30

So this is Christmas... as some wise man once said. And something about another year being done.

Although, in all honesty, I could just refer you to just about any of my Christmas Day posts for the last several years and it would just about cover it. We're creatures of habit at Christmas, never more so than on the day itself. Details change, but the major items are the same.

For example...

I was awake fairly early this morning, partially because it was so fucking hot on Christmas Eve and when I woke up my apartment was still stifling, so after dozing somewhat for another half an hour I got up at about 6am, opened up the door and tried to pump some of the cooler outside air indoors given that I was going to be out for the majority of the day.

Eventually after some faffing about I had my shower and got dressed in my thematically green Christmas outfit (green polo, green Aussiebums, green "grass" thongs), I messaged Ma to find out if she was up and about. She was, so after some overly verbose texting back and forth, I "tetrised" the car (to tetris: the art of fitting as much stuff as humanly possible into the available space) and set off by about 7am.

I like the streets at 7am on Christmas morning... there's nobody really about... although I did see some of those "godless heathen types" selling fruit and vegetables outside the Gepps Cross Drive In. If I'd known they were going to be there I might have stopped... but I was in the wrong lane, etc.

When I got to Ma's place (which would have been just after 7:30 or so) she was up to her eyeballs in puff pastry, cheese and ham making the last of the Ham Hearts to take to La Cousina's place. Didn't help to make her kitchen any cooler, but I do love the hammy cheesy flaky goodness when they're fresh out of the oven.

After the last of the baking was done Ma got ready while I wrote mushy things in her card (which I intended to do since about Wednesday, but kept forgetting... so much so that I only realised I hadn't done it once I got to Ma's place... but fortunately the words just flowed out of me perfectly when I did start writing it), chucked the croissants in the oven and set the table for breakfast.

Brief Christmas related side note: Cranberry sauce makes a great spread for croissants!

Once we were done with breakfast we packed up the car and headed off to La Cousina's place. I swear I must have some recessive bogan DNA or something because otherwise I don't really get how we're related. I kinda have the feeling that Miss Oh is going to end up feeling very similarly... she just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of them (but in a good way, if that makes sense).

And I know I've said it before, but every year we (well, Ma mostly) give them a bunch of stuff, and we leave with a couple of tiny things. I know Christmas is about giving, but giving and not getting back anything even remotely in the spirit of what you gave makes you not want to give anymore. You know?

I did get a $30 movie gift card though.

Anyway, we probably spent less than the usual amount of time there, gave them all their presents and then, extended familiar obligations over for another year (at least on my part) came back to Ma's place.

And of course that meant PRESENT TIME!

Given that I've been working for such a while now, there isn't really very much I wanted or needed this year... and a bunch of my presents (everything with an asterisks next to it) are stuff that I've bought for myself but put away for Christmas (and mostly had Ma wrap up for me).

Howard Roffman/Bel Ami Paradise Found 2011 Calendar *
Corbin Fisher Pura Vida 2011 Calendar *
Lego Minifigure Display Case
Standing Small: A Celebration of 30 years of the Lego Minifigure
Minifigure Ultimate Sticker Collection (it came bundled with the other Lego book)
Viking*, elf* and geisha Lego minifigures
Collins Classics Macbeth *
Manga Shakespeare Macbeth graphic novel *
Popular Penguins Vile Bodies *
Futurama Season 5 Part I
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II
How To Train Your Dragon
Kung Fu Panda *
Tintin and Asterix coasters
Lunartik vinyl figure (The Earl) *
Joe Ledbetter Chinese Zodiak Tiger mini figure *
Nutcracker nesting dolls
Salt&Pepper Nutcracker bowl with candy cane pate knife
Toy soldier snow globe pencil
Tinkerbell Christmas snow globe
AHW Creation Raw Aesthetic pendant (from The Rocks Market in Sydney)
$20 iTunes card * (actually this was what I was intending to give Ma, but she got one as her Secret Santa present at work, and I'd already given her one when she got her iPhone, and I needed one, so I lifted it back)

Since I didn't really have that much stuff to unwrap, I was more than happy to sit back and watch Ma unwrap the seemingly neverending stream of little red bundles from her big bag of stuff. Oddly, even though I only wrapped it all on Wednesday night, I didn't remember what the hell was in some of the parcels when she took them out. So it was fun for everyone.

I have to say that I'm disappointed in the Bel Ami/Howard Roffman calendar this year... not the photos, they're as excellent as always, but the paper is much flimsier than in previous years, and it doesn't even have a thicker front or back cover...

Once the usual orgy of unwrapping was over we started on preparing lunch... which usually involves a lot of waiting around for heatbeads in the Weber to come up to the right temperature and wrapping a bunch of stuff in foil.

In between that I also set the table and took the usual present related photos. So, you know, the usual stuff.

We tried a different kind of turkey breast loaf thing this year... without the stuffing. Turned out quite well actually.

And I made a quick and dirty BBQ version of Smashed Broccoli... and we discovered that cooking the baby potatoes and chunks of sweet potato in the microwave for five minutes before oiling them up and putting them in the Weber made them pretty much perfect... although I should have turned them when I went to put the bacon on the sausage meat.

Have I ever mentioned that we consume more meat in this one meal that either of us would usually consume in a couple of days?

While we waited for everything to cook (which only took just over an hour rather than the usual five hundred hours it takes for a whole turkey) Ma watched the first half of the So You Think You Can Dance finale from Christmas Eve (since she was out) and I footled around on the netbook.

Then... lunch!

We didn't do too badly time wise... it was about 2pm by the time we started eating, which for Christmas Day is pretty reasonable... I honestly never quite know what happens between us unwrapping presents and sitting down to lunch. Hours seem to vanish, and really have no freakin idea where they go exactly.

Lunch was pretty much the same as always... variations on a theme of the stereotypical Christmas dinner. And it's usually sometime around, or directly after, lunch that I usually make some statement to Ma around the fact that that's it for another year.

And, as always, we were stuffed by the end of the meal.

Then we did what we usually do after Christmas lunch... or the current version of it anyway. I wrote this post on my netbook while Ma watched the end of SYTYCD and half of one of the Discworld mini-series.

And by the time I got to this point in the post it was around 4:30pm. I really have no idea where the hell Christmas Day goes...

The rest of the day wasn't much of anything really.

Ma watched the other half of the Discworld thing, I swapped between watching that and reading through my Lego minifigure books... I swear that I remember/have/had some of the very, very, very early version of the minifigures... no idea if they're still around though. Or even if Ma still has all my Lego. I have an idea she may have given it all away to somebody, but I'm not completely sure.

After that was done, we poked about in the fridge, had a little bit of the Chocolate Rum & Raisin Christmas Pudding with brandy custard and picked at some bits of fruit while watching half of a Spicks and Specks Christmas episode repeat before I started packing up everything for the journey home.

The part of that that takes forever is Ma sorting out food to send home with me... there's lots of rummaging in the fridge and pulling out various containers and whatever the hell she generally does that ends up with me having a bag full of left over goodies to take home.

I left slightly more than twelve and a half hours after I arrived, and got home with no dramas. And my house was still there...

And I spent the remainder of the evening playing around on the laptop and downloading updates on the netbook.

Merry Christmas indeed... see you same time next year!

Current Mood:

joyful yuletide wishes

2011-12-25T10:25:00.000+10:30

Current Mood:

photo friday: christmas friday

2011-12-23T19:19:00.001+10:30

Ahhh... the David Jones Christmas windows in Sydney... I especially love the little mice...

Taking today off was a very excellent idea. I know tomorrow is Saturday and I would have had it off anyway, but it was good to just unwind today.

I got to sleep in (bliss)... then went to the supermarket and did my grocery shopping (I figured it would be less busy this morning than tomorrow morning when everyone will be trying to get an early start).

After I was done with groceries I went into Target just to have a quick look around, not with the intention of buying anything. I spent $75 and came out with two bags full of stuff. But pretty much everything was on special, so I saved money too.

Ma is going to kill me though because I bought five rolls of wrapping paper and a box full of bags... and she always claims we don't need any more of either... however I contend that while we have a large quantity of items, the quality of a lot of them is kinda shit.

And then I drove home... and it was only 9:30... which is pretty good considering I got there at about 8:30.

I'd actually done some tidying up before I went to the supermarket, but once I got home I put the shopping away and finished tidying up while watching a bunch of Dilbert episode.

Then I had very quick "sex" with a guy with very short equipment who shot like a firehose.

And I've spent the rest of the day chilling out, watching movies, eat some of the vast amount of chocolate I've been given during this week and really that's about it.

A very great pre Christmas day off!

I just have no idea what the hell I'm going to do with tomorrow...

Current Mood:

random holiday hotness

2011-12-22T19:39:00.000+10:30

Twas the day before the day before the day before Christmas... wait, what...

A bumper Random pre-Christmas Hotness this year featuring Brazilian model Francisco Lachowski and a room full of Christmas tchotchkes.

I do love the first shot with the smirk and the ropelight bondage shot...

And as an extra bonus, because it's Christmas...

A little gay Christmas cheer from Andrew Christian Underwear...

And just in case you've missed them... here's a list of Random Christmas Hotnesses from previous years...

Current Mood:

ma's presents 2011

2011-12-21T23:44:00.000+10:30

It hasn't really been a great evening... I feel like crap, I can't find the charger for my digital camera battery... but mostly everything is just really, really difficult because I feel like crap.

So it took me longer than usual to wrap all of Ma's presents. And the before and after photos are a bit shit...

And I just found the battery charger... because I always think that's it's white when it's actually black, so even though I probably looked at it about a dozen times tonight, I didn't see it.

Anyway... Ma's presents are wrapped...

And it seems like the "one bag, many tissue paper wrapped items" has turned into a thing... which is fine, it's easier to load the car with them, and they take up less space in the house.

So here's the list... I'm going to bed...

Jewellery

Feminique Necklace
Silver Lovelinks beads x 4
Sailing ship brooch
Claire Ishino pendant and earrings

Snowmen

Sam Evans snowman post-it original
Hallmark Keepsake snowman ornament
Snowman pen
Springy snowman pen
Special Mum snowman bell
Jim Shore Heartwood Creek snowman bell

Seahorses

Seahorse table runner
Seahorse pencil
Three seahorse ornaments (glass, wire and bedazzled)
Silver hanging seahorse
Seahorse penny magnet

Jingle G Harajuku Lovers Wicked Style perfume
Mini Harajuku Lovers perfume set
Rupert card
BCE Draws Japanese shrine print
iTunes card
Musical treble clef keyring
White Anglicare Hope tree ornament
Duology 2012 Calendar
Owl bag
Joe Ledbetter Chinese Zodiac Pig
Lunartik Cup of Tea Mint
Cherry Cranberry Pistachio Nougat
Terry's Chocolate Orange Segsations

Current Mood:

albert nobbs ticket giveaway

2011-12-20T21:32:00.002+10:30

Thanks to the nice folks at Hopscotch Films, I not only got to see the new Glenn Close movie, Albert Nobbs, but just in time for Christmas I also have five complimentary in-season passes to give away.

The passes admit one person, are valid from January 12th until the end of the film's theatrical season and can be used in selective cinemas in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Perth and the ACT.

Update: All the passes are now gone.

Current Mood:

slightly early christmas haircut

2011-12-19T22:47:00.000+10:30

Ahhhhh... new haircut... Feels much better.

As I tweeted earlier today, I was starting to feel a little bit like the Before photo on a reality show makeover.

So I'm glad that it was today rather than at the end of the week... it's really needed doing for a while, but it'd been getting on my nerves a whole bunch for the last few days.

And while it's perhaps not as blonde as I think I had in my head (it's my own fault, I didn't actually say anything about more blondness... I just let Tink do her thing)... it's tidy and short and blonde.

I do enjoy these haircuts at Tink's place. Not just because she doesn't charge me as much as the salon, but it's fun just hanging out, talking crap, playing with the baby.

Baby Tink is still adorable... with big, big, big anime eyes.

And, well, yeah... hair... short... blonde... all done.

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 464

2011-12-19T21:41:00.000+10:30

And this morning, following the ritual Christmas Goodie Making, we had the ritual Getting Into Work Early To Put Goodies On Everyone's Desks...

Everybody was highly appreciative... and I think Rockchick was the first to succumb to raiding the goodies... but she wasn't the last.

Unconscious Mutterings...

Sleepy :: Sneezy, Doc, Happy, Grumpy, Bashful and Dopey
Find :: Hidden
Scrutinize :: Examine
Attempt :: Trial
Playing :: Games
Stupendous :: Amazing
Charity :: Begins at home
Frozen :: Pizza
Turn around :: Bright Eyes
Urge :: Sexual

Current Mood:

return of the christmas goodies

2011-12-18T22:48:00.000+10:30

It's been a funny old day...

Both from the perspective of the weather (although I'm reasonable sure that it was almost exactly the same as a year ago today... grey, rainy, cool and much more suited to Autumn than Summer) and partly because Ma seemed a little more forgetful than usual.

And even though she'd made lists of everything she needed, and supposedly got everything, I still ended up having to make two separate runs to two different supermarkets...

She also seemed more scattered than I remember from last year... although I think I had more stuff organised for her last year as well so all she was essentially doing was mixing wet and dry ingredients.

We also nearly screwed up one of the recipes... partly because she didn't seem to know which side of the page she was working from, and partly because I thought she was working on the opposite one from the one she actually was and dumped walnuts in the wrong bowl.

And we tried something new... a Lemon, Lime and Coconut Truffle... it never really set properly though (stupid white chocolate) in it's official form, so we just added some coconut to the mix (and really, why not... just about everything else has coconut in it) rather than rolling it in coconut, and then used rainbow sprinkles on the outside which made a nice, colourful, change.

At one point though I did kinda want to throw in the towel on even trying to make it into truffles and just spread the mixture on thick, crusty bread. It smelled and tasted really good... kind of a Lemon Butter vibe!

The other thing that we did differently this year was that we "salted" half of the Sherry Truffles... inspired by the boys from Burger Theory and their amazing salted chocolate cookies, we went with a sprinkling of salt flakes instead of Ma's usual chocolate spirals. So we'll see what the reaction to those are.

I also spent most of the day Instagramming our progress (mostly towards the end as we finished off things) which was fun.

Less fun was the fact that I washed and/or dried bowls, spoons, dishes... not to mention the food processor... all damn day.

I'm going to have to do something different as far as who gets what at work from now on though... about half of what we produce ends up being for The Nut House... and while I don't really object to doing it, it's more that there are people I wouldn't bother doing it for if I didn't "have to". It comes out to about 130 balls for everyone... and that's not even counting the Rocky Road, the Ham Hearts or the Mince Tarts.

And it was, once again, a 12 hour day from the time I got there to the time I left, so I'm more than a little knackered at present... and I'm sure I'll be stiff in all the wrong places when I wake up tomorrow.

For all of that though, I am pleased with the results...

Portrait of Christmas goodies as a three by three grid, 2011

So... much... chocolate...

Current Mood:

albert nobbs

2011-12-17T18:03:00.002+10:30

Once again I have to start out by thanking Sebastian from Hopscotch Films for putting my name on the door for the preview screening of this movie.

I'll also be giving away some passes next week to see the movie, so look out for that!

Where does one start with Albert Nobbs...

In a lot of ways the movie is very much like it's titular character... quite reserved and more than a bit sad. But at the same time not necessarily particularly sympathetic.

It is, however, a phenomenal performance by Glenn Close. I will admit that I've been more than a little bit enamoured with Ms Close since Dangerous Liaisons, which has to be one of my favourite films of all time.

And I was actually reminded of that movie while watching Albert Nobbs... a woman, compelled by circumstances and the era she lives in to hide her true face from the world and present a mask.

I don't know that I can really describe how great her performance is... it's subtle, completely believable, full of undercurrents and a full and vivid life going on behind the character's eyes which we only get to see in very tiny slices.

The supporting case is also excellent... Brendan Gleeson, Pauline Collins, the insanely attractive Aaron Johnson (shirtless, with the muscles) who manages to make himself incredibly unlikeable.

The person who steals the show however is an actress I was completely unfamiliar with, Janet McTeer. Possibly because she was unknown to me I found it really easy to buy into her character, but in a lot of ways her character's story is actually more interesting and more engaging that Albert's.

However I just flat out don't like Mia Wasikowska. I've not seen her in anything yet where the character wasn't a complete vacuous waste of time. And given that she's such a big part of the plot, I just spent a lot of time wishing Albert would see right through her and drop her like a stone.

It's one of those hard movies to review, plotwise... I don't want to give away valuable plot information, but it's hard to avoid if I don't want to essentially stop the review right here.

Whether it's because the main character holds himself away from everyone else around him, but I found it difficult to connect with him completely and a number of the other characters, most specifically Wasikowska and Johnson were thoroughly unlikeable, so by the end I just felt really sad that it had had to end the way that it did.

To be honest, the ending felt strange, not quite an afterthought, but it'd be like (dorky pop culture reference ahoy) one of the Harry Potter books switching to Ron's perspective for the last chapter... strange.

It's a beautiful looking film, beautifully shot, amazing (if not always beautiful) locations/sets, whatever hair and makeup people were in charge of Ms Close's transformation did a spectacular job.

yani's rating: 8 thrupenny bits out of 10

easy prechristmas shopping saturday

2011-12-17T16:21:00.001+10:30

See, this is what shopping should be like a week before Christmas... easy and not really involving a hell of a lot of actual shopping.

Due to tomorrow's Christmas Chocolate Apocalypse, I did my own thing today without Ma, which all turned out to be very easy and essentially without stress (and mostly all done by about 1:30pm).

Since I was flying solo, I was running a little behind this morning, but I still finished my circuit of the supermarket reasonably swiftly... and thankfully not too many of my fellow shoppers had come down with a terminal case of Christmasitis Supidicus.

I also took a quick turn around Target to see if they already had any of the new series of Lego minifigs that have just been released... *cough* addiction *cough*...

When I got back I had enough time to tidy out the fridge, unpack all the groceries, do the usual Saturday morning things before heading into the city to the preview screening of Albert Nobbs (more on that in a bit).

Turned out the screening was somewhat overbooked, and while they had reserved me a seat (I know, my name was on the door, a reserved seat), it was on the far side of the front row, so I did kinda end up with a crick in my neck.

Afterwards I stopped of at Cocolat for something to drink while I waited for the rain to stop, then headed back here.

And that's about it really...

A very uneventful day!

Current Mood:

photo friday: bondi imps

2011-12-16T19:21:00.002+10:30

Why does the week before something good happens (or in this case the week before the week that something good happens) always go SO SLOWLY?

Also it doesn't help that I don't really have any major projects on the go at work currently, so I'm kinda just doing little bits of things here and there, so time just seems to be standing still.

But I've kinda spent the whole week just wanting it to be the weekend. Firstly because that means that it's only a week until Christmas (and because I'm only working for four days next week woohoo). And because Sunday is Christmas Goodie Making Day which will be a mammoth day, but I always love the end results (actually moreso the reactions of other people than the goodies themselves... I don't really end up eating all that many of them).

I've also got a movie preview to go to on Saturday, which looks like it could be an actual, proper, not advertised to the public, your name is on the door, movie preview... which is more than a little bit freaky. But it appears that these things happen if you blog about movies... I just never expect them to happen to me.

And then, thankfully, Monday evening I'm having my pre-Christmas haircut because I'm starting to look like a yeti.

This week, or more specifically the last couple of days, has had it's moments though...

The Burger Theory truck came to Victoria Square yesterday, so I was finally able to drag people from work down to have their first Burger Theory Experience. And everybody agreed that they were pretty damn awesome.

I wore a lot of red today... red polo, red Aussiebums, red Cons, red bag... very, very red. I'm not sure there's any significance to that, but I only really realised it halfway through the morning that everything was so red.

I spent a chunk of this afternoon looking at naked girl boobies in the Suicide Girls coffee table book Rockchick bought for her girlfriend for Christmas. Then I put the ribbon on the present that Sugarmonkey bought and wrapped for Mrs Sugarmonkey (we won't talk about the wrapping)... he tried it and I was just like "give me that... I can't let that leave here looking like that"... I mean there's Family Honour to think of!

Then when work was done I wandered down to the Mall to kill some time before the Espionage Gallery Christmas Arts Market.

I picked up the replacement ticket for the Fringe show that I screwed up when I was ordering originally... and thankfully Rockchick has taken the incorrect ticket off my hands.

Then I went looking for anywhere with airconditioning to hang out until the gallery opened. That led to me buying two copies of Macbeth... one a normal (if very cheap) version, the other a manga graphic novel.

The cheap copy I bought from one of those dodgy cheap ass bookshops... but it's currently using the old Borders site... and it was weird, being in that store, surrounded by books, surrounded by a lot of the Borders fixtures and fittings (and possibly some of their old stock, although I couldn't say for sure)... but it wasn't Borders. It's like going back to look at the outside of a house you used to live in and finding the lawn is all dead and there's a car with no tires on blocks in the driveway.

The art market was about what I expected given the size of the space, but it was cool to check it out... and I did end up buying Ma a pendant and earrings which were a little pricey, but very beautiful.

And I showed gallery owner Joshua the eye bird stickers I'd had printed, and he asked if he could have one... which I'm taking as a pretty massive compliment! Fortunately I have a lot of them and three variations, so I gave him one of each.

All that, and I still managed to make it back to my drycleaner literally minutes before they closed... so a good afternoon really.

Current Mood:

random danger hotness

2011-12-15T19:00:00.000+10:30

I realised over the weekend that I had a lot of links pointing to potential Random Hotness content, but I kept forgetting that they were there, so I moved them over to Evernote and plan on going going through them all next year.

The first to feature is model Quinn Danger (with a name like that he should really be a race car driver or a secret agent), photographed by "male boudoir" photographer Marlen Boro. Marlen really does a lot of great work with this kind of subtle backlight.

And you can read more about 21 year old Minneapolis student Quinn at Favourite Hunks & Other Things.

Current Mood:

fifties boy

2011-12-14T19:07:00.000+10:30

I have no idea who's responsible for these "Fifties Boys" from the Outpost Project in Sydney, but I absolutely fell in love with all of them when we were there.

I'm pretty much at that pre-Christmas point where I just want the weekend to arrive so that we can make Christmas goodies, and then start the week leading up to Christmas. Barring any additional bits and pieces I happen to spy for Ma in the next week, I'm all finished with shopping... I bought more of the red ribbon with white stitching I've been using for Ma's presents of late (I buy some... I cut it up into appropriate lengths... then I buy more the next time just in case there are presents I don't have ribbon for... there's a lot of that ribbon at the moment).

I'm also hanging out for Monday evening so I can get my Christmas hair did... I feel all scruffy at the moment...

Current Mood:

el cato in el booto

2011-12-13T23:46:00.000+10:30

I have to say that I was a little dubious when I heard that the Puss in Boots character from the Shrek movies was getting his own movie.

It really did smack of milking the franchise a little too much.

But it turns out that it's actually not a bad movie. Not particularly original or unique in the particular story it sets out to tell... but pleasant enough in the telling.

As with every new generation of CGI movies, it was incredibly lush... textures, effects and especially human beings look amazing. I'm sure if you compared it with the original Shrek movie it would look like that was drawn in crayon by comparison.

Antonio Banderas has a great sense of comic timing as the titular feline (although how much of that is actually created after the fact in the editing room is anybody's guess) and the addition of Salma Hayek and Zach Galifianakis fills out the major voice rolls beautifully.

One thing I did notice, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, about Hayek's "Kitty" was that she looks particularly human when she's standing upright. Whether it's because they've tried to put the human female curves into a cat body, or what, I don't know... but it just looked odd a couple of times. It may also be because the movie essentially sits at cat scale rather than when we've seen Puss before in Shrek where he's tiny because the movie is all Shrek scale.

There was also some interesting uses of existing nursery rhyme characters within the story (Jack and Jill specifically) as there tends to be within the Shrek universe.

The weakest part is probably the predictability of the story... it borrows from any number of heist pictures but I'm not sure if contributes anything new (other than lightfooted kitties and a talking egg man). But it manages to be entertaining for almost all of it's fairly short run time.

yani's rating: 7 golden eggs out of 10

unconscious mutterings 463

2011-12-12T18:15:00.000+10:30

A fairly dull day today... partly because I didn't have enough sleep and kept nodding off at my desk...

I always went and picked up all of my Fringe tickets at lunch... and discovered when I got home that I'd booked the wrong time for one of the shows. That would have been fine, except for the fact that I have a show beforehand that runs for 90 minutes and there's only an hour between the two shows. And they won't do exchanges... which I understand to a certain degree, but the tickets only went on sale on Saturday, you would think they could just swap the tickets over.

Urgh...

Unconscious Mutterings...

Dedication :: Song
Dream destination :: London/LA/Venice/London
Games :: Video
Hard as :: Nails
Convict :: Australia
Submit :: Dominate
Alcohol :: Take it or leave it
Clippers :: Nail
Hormonal :: Pregnant women
Diet :: Fad

Current Mood:

ups and downs sunday with soiree

2011-12-11T20:36:00.001+10:30

These photos really have nothing to do with this post... they're from the Sydney folder... but they seemed apt somehow given that I spent the afternoon somewhere where we could very likely have seen some lizards.

Let's see.... what have I've done today...

I made panzanella for the first time
I drove up to Sugarmonkey's place for The Nut House Christmas Soiree
I stopped off at the Christmas Shop to pick something up for one of the women at work
I had a tiny little car accident

Yeah... that last one kinda threw me. And if I hadn't done item number 3 on my list... or if I'd left home five minutes earlier or later... or if I'd gone a different direction when I left the Christmas Shop... or I'd taken and extra couple of minutes to check out their toy soldiers... you know, all those things that you think you could have done differently.

But it was really, really, really minor. In fact, so minor that it's not really worth talking about. It was my fault though... I'd expected that the car in front of me was going to proceed in turning onto the main road since there was an appropriate gap in oncoming traffic, and I must have taken my foot off the brake so I was rolling forward... and I rolled right into him. His car pretty much didn't have a scratch, well, maybe a little scuff mark on the bumper... and I managed to knock the plastic surround off my license plate and bend one of the corners. So nothing drastic.

It just shook both me and the guy, who must have been about 70 if he was a day.

I don't know if it served to focus my mind though, because every other time I've gone to Sugarmonkey's place (I think this was about the third time, although I can only find one reference in the blog) I've managed to get lost or turned around in the wrong direction or just otherwise lost. Not this time. I still didn't really know where the hell I was going, but I just kept going in that direction and found my way there without having to check the directions, turn around, backtrack or anything.

As usual I was the only one there without an "other half"... which doesn't really bother me, other than the fact that Rockchick and her girlfriend are still reasonably in that "fresh love/can't not touch each other" stage... and I kinda miss that. Not that I've ever really dated anybody for long enough that that has gone away... usually the relationship has fallen apart long before the shine wears off.

If a perfect world it would be nice to just spring it on them one year at Christmas... just turn up with someone. Of course the likelihood of that is fairly slim, but still...

All in all it was a pretty cruisy afternoon... I think my panzanella went down okay... I did make a lot of it, but I think people ate more of it than the standard salad that was available. I think it's a keeper though... I just need to refine it a little... make it a little more tangy/peppery maybe.

The other amusing thing about the day was Sugarmonkey Junior... he's not quite doing that "I'm shy" thing, but he was so strange when he came out to join everyone... he just stood there, didn't smile, didn't move, didn't interact. Eventually he warmed up though. He really is just as cute as a button though.

And interestingly, other than one minor mention, we didn't talk about work at all. Actually we don't really do that that often anyway... somebody might mention it, but it's not one of those social gatherings where we can't do anything but talk about work. Just don't ask me what we did talk about though... because I honestly have no idea.

The "accident" notwithstanding, it was a really pleasant afternoon... I think I ate too much bread though (the bread in the panzanella was kind of addictive once it had soaked up all the tomato juice... but bread is totally my Kryptonite anyway)... but I had a good time.

Current Mood:

my fringe picks 2012

2011-12-11T08:57:00.000+10:30

This is the fastest we've ever picked out shows for the Fringe... the program was only released at 9am this morning... and by 6:30pm this evening I'd spent just over $780 on tickets to 20 different shows.

There are a couple of pricier shows than I've been too in past years... plus I think Ma and I are going to more shows together this year than we did last year, so that bumps up the prices. Essentially it's only about four more shows than this year.

What was it that I said back in March?

"I think possibly that 16 shows in three weeks is my limit! I mean, maybe I could try for 20, but that would be the absolute limit"

So, yeah... I've reached my limit. Possibly. Probably. We did try and do two shows on the same day where we could... so there are about five instances of that. There was a possibility of going to three shows on a night... but that seems excessive.

My choices for 2012, chronologically speaking, are ...

Kaput: Chaos, comedy and slapstick in one big acrobatic debacle for all ages!
Pratchett Three Pieces: Bite-sized quirky comedies from the short stories of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Science of Fiction - Doctor Who: A group of Doctor Who fanatics take a light hearted look at the science of fiction.
LevelLess: WAK returns with a slow-tech science-friction show to perforate your perspective!
Imperial Fizz: Coward meets Sartre meets Beckett in rapid-fire screwball absurdism.
Shakespeare's Queens: Shakespeare's seductively powerful Queens shine through this fascinating hour of intrigue and passion.
Pegging Up The Sky: Set to jazz music, without dialogue, come with Ciel on this beautiful, whimsical journey of visual layers.
Shadows of Angels: Set in the gritty slums of 1929, explore the lives and minds of the female criminal in this gripping piece of theatre.
No Such Thing As Normal: A touching, beautiful and hilarious journey that examines how uniformity and conformity bring out our individuality.
Dirk Darrow - NCSSI: Part stand up, part mentalism, part theater, all gritty 1940's nostalgia.
L.O.V: In this three man show gesture and textual rhythms combine in iteration to create a raw and ferocious depiction of love.
Carnally, Where Do We Go From Here: A surreal and visceral landscape of flesh, feathers, demons, ghosts, and Gods face-off in an explosive collision between modern life and primal being.
Eventyr - A Garden Story: Listen to the tale of a young girl who journeys her way through the garden, trying to find a way out.
The Cagebirds: The Mistress oversees six lost souls as they indulge in their chosen obsession: power, beauty, scandal, food, hypochondria or indecision.
Soap: A unique combination of world-class acrobatics, comedy and live opera performed in, on and around bathtubs.
Ellipsis: An engaging new dance work inhabiting the space between thoughts, time and light. Intricate. Gentle. Immersive.
Crowned: A new and engaging retelling of Shakespeare's trilogy of Henry 6th.
The Boy James: A dark, beautiful tale of a boy's heartrending awakening to the harsh realities of adulthood.
The Terrible Infants: Blending puppetry, live music, story-telling and physicality into a highly sensory theatrical feast and featuring narration from Judi Dench.
La Soirée: The freakishly talented folk from La Clique are back and the line-up is better than ever.

There's only one show that's kind of a repeat of last year, Shakespeare's Queens... technically it's a sequel to Shakespeare's Mothers by the same company.

Now all I have to do is wait two months...

Current Mood:

batman christmas shopping saturday

2011-12-10T21:47:00.000+10:30

Sometimes it's fun to have the opportunity to shop for someone completely different than usual... and it's even more fun when there's a list of the things they like.

It was actually a pretty cruisey day, for all that it was fairly full.

We went through the usual routine this morning... I picked up some supplies for stuff to take to Sugarmonkey's tomorrow... nothing fancy, but hopefully it'll work out okay.

By the time we got back to my place the Adelaide Fringe program had been released, so that was pretty much the first thing I did after we walked back in the door. I'm not sure I'm that big a fan of them only releasing it electronically until January... I like to leaf through the hardcopy guide, take it all in, mark things, discover things... somehow it never feels exactly the same when you do it electronically.

Not that that stopped us finding a whole bunch of stuff to see... but that's going to need it's own post.

Our first stop once we'd finished checking out the Fringe stuff was Arndale to pick up a couple of the display cases for the Lego minifigs for half the price we paid at Toys R Us.

After that we headed into the city to return the more expensive versions and find a Secret Santa present for the comic book reading, Batman loving lesbian Ma works with. That was fun actually... I don't usually get to pick out Batman things or comic books in general. I steered Ma in the direction of a Catwoman comic... Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham... the art seemed good, Catwoman had some shapely body action going on (that's not offensive or anything is it... buying the lesbian a comic book title because Catwoman had nice boobs on the cover?), and it was within the price range.

Actually there was some money left over, so we picked up a Batman badge at the counter and still had enough money to pick up something in the "blindbox" oeuvre from Myer (that was her Secret Santa request list... comics, toys or anything Batman... we did pretty good getting all three I think).

We also wandered around the Christmas Shop since nobody seems to wait until after Christmas to sell off their excess stock anymore... Ma found a couple of pretty ornaments that will function as presents since they don't really look like Christmas decorations.

Generally I'm not much of a people person, but sometimes at Christmas, when you see people wandering around who clearly have NO idea of what to buy (most always men... but, you know, it happens), I just want to go over and go "who are you buying for and how old are they?" and help them out.

Granted it's not a feeling that lasts particularly long.

Our last stop, after a brief detour to grab something to drink, was Oxfam to pick up something for people who've taken to doing the "I bought you a chicken" thing. So I convinced Ma to get them the "I bought you poo" version.

Seemed appropriate.

I also bought a set of string/cord/bead bracelets all the way from Guatamala. They're a little stiff at the moment, but hopefully they'll soften up once I've worn them for a while.

Then we called it quits, came back here and went through the Fringe program again, working out dates and times and whatnot for the shows that Ma and I are heading to together... then I worked out details for the shows I'll be seeing on my own.

It's a lot of shows...

And that may be the last time that Ma and I go shopping together on a Saturday before 2012... well, I'm not sure about New Years Eve actually...

Current Mood:

photo friday: red and green triptych

2011-12-09T19:04:00.000+10:30

I realised yesterday that I've photographed/Instagrammed (that's not really a word) a number of things that are red against my green Ikea quilt cover. Truth be told, it's my favourite of the three sets of bedding I have in exactly the same design... especially when the light hits it in the morning and reflects green onto the walls, making my bedroom feel all forest glade-like.

Wait... where was I... oh yeah... red and green. Firstly it was my choice of seasonally related bedding... then it was the bag of tomatoes I was given by someone at work... then it was my second to last eBay purchase, Sket One's Heinz inspired Dunny.

Like last year I chose not to attend the work Christmas lunch for our wider team. I just don't have a single iota of interest in attending... so I don't. Instead I stayed behind and ended up tidying up my desk and drawers. Much more productive.

It's not like I'm a total Bah Humbug... just The Nut House are having a get together at Sugarmonkey's place on Sunday and I'm going to that...

Visiting The Land of Overshare briefly... I had issues with my underwear today... well, technically it wasn't underwear, it was Aussiebum swimwear... but the main part of the problem was something I realised only fairly recently (which seems weird)...

I have no butt.

Sure, there's the spot where my legs meet my back, but it's just flat... which, to anyone who may have met me, will seem weird, because I look like I should have a butt. But I don't. So underwear that should stay in place nicely thanks to there being a butt there just doesn't. And this particular piece of swimwear is pretty much reliant on there being a butt there to keep itself in place. So it didn't. It lasted until just before lunch before it had to come off.

On a happier note, the Fringe program is revealed tomorrow morning... so that'll mean some time spent perusing the online guide.

Current Mood:

random questioning hotness

2011-12-08T20:36:00.000+10:30

Christmas is just around the corner... so for today's Random Hotness I'm asking the question... have you been naughty or nice... with the help of Fantasticmag's Greaser Or Soc photoshoot.

Naughty boys should report to my bedroom...

Current Mood:

wet sydney boys

2011-12-07T19:12:00.000+10:30

One of these things is not like the other... actually they pretty much are, and they're all thanks to my very big telephoto lens...

I finally got my new computer complete with two monitors! It's only taken them a month. Now if they'd originally said "It will take a month", I wouldn't have cared, but it was always "This week" or "In a couple of days". So I've been multitasking like a mofo all day long... dragging things between monitors, flicking between one screen and another. It's been awesome.

I also finally, finally, finally got one of the parcels I've been waiting for... and it turns out that it had been sitting in the Post Office for the last two weeks... but there was no notification in my mailbox, so it had just been sitting there. Grrrr! Thankfully it's all present and correct and didn't come to any harm.

It's driving me nuts knowing that the Adelaide Fringe program is now available for customers of one of the sponsors, but the great unwashed, myself included, don't get to see it until Saturday. I still think it's stupid that they're only releasing it online and not doing the printed programs until January... I like to sit down with the physical program and go through it all from cover to cover, every time I've tried to do that with an online version I always end up missing a bunch of stuff.

There's a high likelihood for weirdness, general sulking, departures and general upheaval at work after the last couple of days... and none of it is to do with me. I don't know 100% what's going on... although I've been putting puzzle pieces together all day and it's... odd.

I've also reverted to the original version of Blogger... I really do dislike the updated interface... I don't like the way it deals with images and the fact that I can't manipulate their location as easily as I can at the moment. I don't like that the publishing window just floats on the page with no seeming structure... I just don't like the way it feels. I know I'm going to be forced to use it eventually, but I don't want to use it before I absolutely have to.

And I spent about an hour last night cutting around all my little eyebirds... I just about broke my hand in the process... that shit is difficult, especially when you're doing it 40 times...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 462

2011-12-05T21:45:00.000+10:30

Let's see... what happened today...

Set up the work Christmas tree... although I wasn't really bothered after having put the tree up at Ma's yesterday
The big bus I got on to go home stalled in the middle of the road, so I jumped off and got on the one behind us, only to find the stalled bus had miraculously fixed itself...
I received my Stickygram magnets... darker that I was expecting, but they look great
Drove to Officeworks after work to get Ma and La Cousina's calendars bound... the sweet beardy boy at the print counter did them while I waited even though there were a bunch of people behind me

Unconscious Mutterings...

Flannel :: Shirt
Chairs :: Bentwood
Sporadic :: Occasional
Difficult :: Customers
Amusing :: Anecdote
Collapse :: Bridge
Hurtful:: Comments
Thump :: Hit
Frugal :: Cheap
Collectibles :: Toys

Current Mood:

tree trimming time

2011-12-04T22:57:00.000+10:30

So that's the first of the three Christmas visits to Ma's house... and the tree is up... and there are some presents under it.

And it only took twelve hours.

I don't quite know what happens... there's a period of time after the tree goes up but before we start wrapping presents where time just disappears. Okay, it doesn't really disappear, there's all the post tree tidying up, plus lunch.

But I'm skipping ahead...

I was up and organised pretty early, even though I got distracted a couple of times, so I made it down to Ma's place around 8am.

After a fortifying bacon and egg sandwich and some iced coffee we set about unpacking everything and finding all the little notes from previous years. I know I've mentioned it before, but it's always a surprise to find what little pearl of wisdom I've added to various boxes.

And since I started adding years to my notes it kind of feels a little like some sort of weird archaeological dig of some kind...

I also spent most of the day documenting are progress via Instagram... I do like having an iPhone with a camera that functions.

We went even more minimal with the tree this year...

Ma has complained in previous years that it's difficult to get presents under the tree as the bottom branches are quite low... so I suggested we leave the bottom branches off this year. Granted I suggested it when I was getting ready to put the last branch on the bottom row... it worked out pretty well though, or at least it will when Ma's wrapped some more presents.

The lights were really easy this year... we bought new ones last year which are just one long string... and they're so much easier to put up.

As I was putting the baubles on I half decided that we should stick to just gold, red and green baubles this year. We only have a minimal number of other colours, and with a missing row of branches it didn't look too bad.

And of course we haven't used tinsel in a while...

It's still a really dark tree in a really dark room though... Ma has been talking about getting a white tree, and while I don't necessarily love them, it could be a good idea for her lounge room.

It would be easier to photograph though... the current tree never looks as good in photos as it does in reality.

After the tree was done and we'd tidied up and I'd done my traditional "tree photoshoot" we grabbed some lunch before we started on wrapping presents.

Well, actually before that I went through and unpacked all the decorations we've bought to use on presents. A little like the notes, there's stuff in there I have no recollection of buying or seeing.

I did a little bit of arts and crafts on one of Miss Oh's gifts... with the help of some plain brown paper and a silver Sharpie... it didn't look too bad, a little homemade perhaps... but interesting.

After we'd wrapped everything that needed to be wrapped (well, with my assistance anyway), I called it a day and headed home.

It was possibly one of the easier, cruisier, less traumatic tree trimming sessions...

Current Mood:

pre-tree shopping saturday

2011-12-03T16:12:00.001+10:30

There are always two Saturdays in December that are usually a total write-off... the first is the Saturday before we put up the Christmas tree, the other is the Saturday before we make goodies.

Today is pre-tree.

So Ma probably wouldn't have come down at all today, but she has her work Christmas party at the Casino tonight, so she came down later this afternoon.

I still wasn't feeling that crash hot when I got up this morning... but it's more that "I've been sick and my nose is dry and I generally feel a bit ick still" rather than getting worse. Although I did sneeze a lot this morning.

Because I'd dragged the printer out from under the bed last night to print up Ma and La Cousina's calendars I noticed when I was making my bed with the red and green bedding I mentioned yesterday that one of the struts under the bed was broken. Either that or I broke it when I put my foot on it while I was making the bed. But it more felt like it gave way rather than feeling like I broke it right at that moment. Hopefully I can just buy a replacement at Ikea.

So between all that and putting away the last of the boxes my toy soldiers had been in, I wasn't really in any great hurry this morning, so it was just before 9am that I got down to the supermarket.

I swear that the girl at Baker's Delight is going to get a slap very shortly though. The whole place has changed hands and the girl we always used to see was the owner's daughter... her replacement obviously has her retain script in her head and just won't let it go. Seriously, don't ask me how my day has been first thing in the morning... there hasn't been enough day for anything to happen, and you're not really interested in what I'm doing for the rest of the day, so shut up and sell me bread.

The rest of the shopping expedition was fairly average, but after I left the supermarket I called into Officeworks to get some new printer cartridges and come of the Canon paper I'd already printed most of La Cousina's calendar on.

The cartridges were easy enough, but there wasn't any Canon paper anywhere... and when I asked they said that it was all showing up on their system as discontinued.

Arrggghhhh! Why is it that every time I really like something, they discontinue it? Okay, that's a massive over-exaggeration, but still.

When I got home, I checked online for the paper and Dick Smith's website said they had some in the city, but when I called they didn't... so in a moment of lateral thinking, I tried the one near Ma's place and it turned out they had one, so I got them to put it to one side and asked Ma to pick it up for me before she came down.

But it seemed as though they really had discontinued the paper everywhere... I couldn't even find any reference to paper at all on the Canon website.

I decided to head down to Arndale on the off-chance that someone down there had it, which turned out to be a good plan... I'd forgotten that there was a Dick Smith store down there, and they had three packs of the paper, so I snapped them all up.

Then I headed back here and managed to print out the cover of La Cousina's calendar and all of Ma's calendar even though the printer was saying it was out of magenta ink.

They look a bit spiffy, even if I do say so myself...

Not long after I was finished printing them up, Ma arrived, bringing the last of my Christmas decorations... the largest of my toy soldiers, my neon Christmas tree, my perspex reindeer and the tin toy soldier I'd actually totally forgotten about.

Plus my pink tinsel tree for my desk at work.

Ma wanted to go into the city to return one of the books we bought last weekend since it turned out she'd bought one from a later part of the series, even though it was labelled as number one (bloody young adult fiction).

And that was pretty much all we did in the city... it was too full of stupid people getting in the way of everything, and neither of us needed to do any extra shopping anyway.

So we just ended up back here and doodled around on our respective computers until it was time to take Ma to the casino.

Not an overly exciting day, but given that tomorrow will be all about the Christmas tree, that's not a bad thing.

Current Mood:

photo friday: march of the toy soldiers

2011-12-02T19:26:00.000+10:30

My week has looked a little like this...

Inspired a teeshirt
Set up all of my toy soldiers... a little disturbed by how many I have
Strugged with sneezing all over the place/runny nose all day today... either all the dust that got disturbed when I was doing the toy soldiers, or Sugarmonkey gave me plague when he came in for one day yesterday... bastard
Came home to a parcel waiting for me every day but yesterday
Got my new iPhone cases (which looks a little spiffy) delivered to work
Realised a small pizza is enough
Combined two sets of bedding to give my bed a red/green Christmas look
Started using the new Blogger interface (not a fan)
Wore a bright yellow Aussiebum jockstrap to work today and it's probably the most comfortable jock I've worn
Continue to have a big fat crush on a guy at work
Made appointment with Tink for my Christmas haircut
Finished off the calendars for Ma and La Cousina... still need to print them and get them bound though
Downloaded seventeen versions of Carol of the Bells to create my own Christmas album... yeah I know, but it's my favourite Christmas song
Attending a birthday afternoon tea and a divorce morning tea

Current Mood:

random alone hotness

2011-12-01T20:38:00.000+10:30

Some of that "painting with light" action for today's Random Hotness...

These shots of model, Tyler Peter (or possibly Kyler Adair, I've seen him referred to as both), are from photographer Robert James' "Home Alone" series.

I really do love this style of photography... so dark and lush...

Current Mood:

beastman template

2011-12-01T20:18:00.000+10:30

The first day of Summer brings with it a new template. Well, the beginning of every season does that really...

I had a bunch of choices for this template from the Sydney trip but in the end I just had to go with a detail from the Beastman piece on Cockatoo Island!

Plus I do love the colours and the contrast between the artwork and the rusty warehouse.

Current Mood:

merry arthur christmas

2011-11-29T22:31:00.000+10:30

Every Christmas I make an effort to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, Olive the Other Reindeer and Hogfather.

Next Christmas there will be another movie joining them in my list of Must See Christmas movies... Arthur Christmas!

It's by the folks from Aardman (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Flushed Away), so it's very English and possibly the best film they've produced so far.

I'm not going to lie, I cried towards the end... we're not talking about going a little bit misty eyed, we're talking a full on, face full of tears, crying.

It's a simple enough story, a single child is forgotten at Christmas and Santa's youngest son, the titular Arthur, sets out to make sure she has her present by Christmas morning. But it's told with so much heart and an equal amount of wit that it ends up being a very moving story. Not entirely unpredictable, but I can forgive it it's obviousness because I really cared about the characters.

And it mixes updating Santa with modern technology (a stealth spaceship, modern gadgets, satellite tracking... and may be just what modern parents need to answer all those questions about Santa) with the idea of doing what you love and loving what you do.

There's also some brilliant British voice casting... the delicious James McAvoy who makes Arthur so incredibly relate-able and more than a little dorky... everybody's favourite grumpy teevee doctor, Hugh Laurie who injects just the right amount of pomposity as Versace wearing, technology obsessed, Santa-to-be, Steve... and Jim Broadbent as possibly one of the best Santa voices I've heard in a good while.

Other standouts include Imelda Staunton as the incredibly prim and sensible (and more than a little queenly) Mrs Claus and Ashley Jensen as Briony the elf from the wrapping department who can wrap anything using only three pieces of sticky tape...

All in all, a thoroughly heartwarming, sweet little Christmas movie... although I could probably have lived without the Justin Beiber music video that screened before the movie... seriously, all his fans are in the stupid vampire movie anyway...

yani's rating: 9 presents delivered out of 10

unconscious mutterings 461

2011-11-28T23:33:00.000+10:30

Parcels are starting to arrive... which is exciting. There was a parcel on the doorstep (not ideal), a "pick up at the post office" notice and a FedEx notice. Except the fucked up folks from FedEx charge the sender an additional $15 to redeliver a parcel to another address. That's so lame, TNT did it for nothing...

I also managed to find another of the limited edition Harajuku Lovers perfumes for Ma for Christmas... I say "managed to find", I went to David Jones and there they were. So cute though.

Unconscious Mutterings...

Program :: Computer
Business :: College
Nerve :: Working my last...
Pipes :: Internet
Man :: Naked
System :: Computer
Roses :: White
Gong :: The Rank Organisation
Heartfelt :: Apology
Strolling :: Beach

Current Mood:

shopping of the christmas variety

2011-11-26T21:14:00.001+10:30

Christmas...

I'm currently in two minds about Christmas... half of me is excited about all the preparations and presents and whatnot... the other half is completely bah humbug and wondering why we bother since it's only one day.

Fortunately I was mostly the former during today's shopping... because it was all very Christmasy.

That portion of the day was helped by the fact that Ma had actual thoughts about what she wanted to buy people.

The morning portion of the day was pretty much status quo... housework, shopping, unpacking... which included a brief present related Red Circle visit.

Then there was more fiddling around with iPhones while it was pouring with rain... more specifically finding and creating wallpaper for Ma, and loading some of the ringtones I made last week. I think she's pretty set now. There's probably more music I should load on her iPhone for her, but that can wait a bit.

Once the weather had improved we headed down to the Goodwood Alive 2011 Christmas Festival... I'm not sure that it lived up to the hype that "the streets of Goodwood will come alive"...a dozen or so stalls in the library carpark doesn't really constitute "streets" or "alive"... but the nice lady from Olives2Oil was there, so I was able to get my fix of really good olive oil from her. And the guy from Pudding Lane was there too, so that's our Christmas pudding needs sorted.

There wasn't really very much else though... and it definitely wasn't as good as it was back when we first started going. And don't even get me started about incompetent people running sausage sizzles...

Anyway, because the market was a little m'eh, we didn't stay very long and then went into the city to do the Christmas shopping thing.

It's good when the next generation takes after you, and I think Miss Oh Livia is much more like Ma and me... or at least she likes some of the same things we do... even if her taste is occasionally questionable. So while I wasn't going to let Ma buy her a Twilame book, we settled on Vampire Diaries... not much better, but it's not Twilame. I really wanted to also get her one of the Buffy omnibuses... if only to teach her that vampires are bloodsucking undead demon fiends and not to be trusted, let alone romanced. Unless they happen to be David Boreanaz.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any in any of the places we looked... and I'm not sure whether they're a great idea for someone who isn't a fan of the show.

Instead I settled on The Hunger Games. Not sure if she'll like it, but it's supposed to be good, and if she doesn't like it, I'll take it off her hands... hehe.

We also got her a bunch of craft things since she's into that at the moment.

I also picked up a new limited edition Harajuku Lovers perfume (Super G) for Ma... even though I'd totally forgotten about the collection of little bottles I bought all the way back in March. Oh well... maybe the new one can go away for her birthday next year... although I kinda doubt I'll end up doing that.

Fortunately we finished off what Ma needs for a few people, and a lot of the others are just general junk she can pick up at any time.

So it's not even December yet and we're almost done with the shopping.

Current Mood:

photo friday: stencil work

2011-11-25T21:00:00.000+10:30

I met stencil artist Joshua Smith completely by accident today...

I went down to Espionage Gallery at lunch because Gary Seaman had some work showing... and I keep promising the go to Espionage but it's never quite worked out right.

And since Espionage is Joshua and Gary's gallery, I ended up spending my whole lunchbreak in there chatting with him about street art and stuff in general really.

It meant I ended up being monumentally late getting back to work, but it was totally worth it!

It's been a bit of an odd week this week...

Work has been equal parts monotonous and annoying... and I spent two days completely reworking someone else's guidelines... and being given less than helpful feedback on some design work that got dropped in my lap.

And between my new iPhone, waiting for various parcels to arrive, getting a bumper package of AussieBum underwear there's been a lot of waiting for things, being excited by the arrival of things... lots of ups and downs.

One final thing... I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance as we speak and I've noticed, more so this season than perhaps in previous ones, that there are numbers that the judges rave about or get very excited about that just make me go "m'eh". And I don't know if it's because the numbers are bad, or because I don't know enough about dance, or just because I'm very particular about what constitutes a good dance routine.

I kinda wish I could get as excited about certain numbers as the judges though, it would probably improve my enjoyment of the show sometimes.

Oh, and it's one month today until Christmas... when did that happen?

Current Mood:

random cam hotness

2011-11-24T21:50:00.000+10:30

Sixteen Random Hotness images of model Cam Schultz for the price of four this week...

For some reason that I can't really explain, my favourite picture of the lot is the top left shot on the bottom right photo where he's making the "goggles" with his fingers. But black and white, tattooed and shirtless is ranking him pretty highly anyway.

Current Mood:

aquisitions tuesday

2011-11-22T23:22:00.000+10:30

This has pretty much been my day...

And it's been kinda hard to concentrate on other things...

It all started at 9:30 this morning when the nice man from TNT delivered my Aquabumps print.

I didn't actually get it out of the packaging until I got home, but it is absolutely stunning! The photo attached to this post doesn't do it justice in the slightest. And because it's on that metallic paper, it's not as pink pink as it looks... there's a whole bunch of gold and copper tones in it...

Stunning!

At lunchtime I went down to the Optus store to get my iPhone 4S.

It may have been a better idea to wait until the end of the day because it meant that I ended up not really having a fully functional phone for the whole afternoon.

And the girl that served me was so much worse than useless... essentially when I went in there she just handed me the iPhone as though that was that. Ummm, I'm sorry, aren't you supposed to activate it and do things with the SIM card and generally be USEFUL?

Thankfully one of the other girls finished serving somebody else and came to my rescue a little bit. But they both kinda made me feel much more like I was holding up the line than has ever been my experience in an Optus store before.

I then went looking for cheap, simple cases to tide me over until I can get one that I want (more on that in a second)... but I ended up going to five different places, nobody had anything particularly inspiring or cheap enough.... so I just settled for the cheapest and simplest one I could find. Which then meant that I had to go back out at the end of the day to buy screen protectors, since there weren't any included.

Then I came home and spent the next hour and a half updating my iPhone's operating system, "restoring" my new iPhone from my old iPhone's backup, resyncing the new iPhone (even though I'm sure that everything should have come over as part of the "restore"), until finally I got a chance to use Siri, make a phone call and give my new iPhone a name (sticking with both the B's and the Transformers reference, the new iPhone is "Bonecrusher").

Siri is wonderful... true she doesn't understand me half the time and she occasionally seems a little thick (she didn't understand "five foot eleven" as being "five feet eleven inches")... but the first couple of times I used her she was actually pretty good. I think she's possibly going to be a novelty though.

The one thing I can't get over is how crisp the screen looks... there's some detailed shit going on there...

Fortunately "Bonecrusher" isn't going to be confined to the shitty, cheap case for long... after I got back to the office after picking up the iPhone, I got online and ordered two of the SwitchEasy CapsuleRebelX cases... did I really need two? No, probably not, but the idea of being able to mix and match them was appealing...

Okay, I really didn't need two and I'm kind of having buyers remorse about buying the purple and green one... but it's done now.

I really wanted the case for a couple of reasons. Mostly though, it's the same brand as Bumblebee's case, and that has been an excellent case... I've launched it across the room unintentionally a couple of times and there hasn't been the least bit of a problem. And this is the "next generation" of that case.

But also, like with Bumblebee, the name kinda came out of the case... but unlike the original case, I haven't actually seen them around anywhere, so for a while at least it'll be unique(ish).

Then, as though I didn't have enough parcels making their way to me as we speak (there are nine now... I got one today, but added two more), Aussiebum was having another one of their sales... and I was intending to buy new underwear for Christmas as soon as they did that... but I may have gotten a little carried away... but there is a large amount of underwear about to be heading my way.

And I did like it... it's very comfortable...

It's just that I'm really supposed to be not spending money at the moment so that I can let my bank balance recover after the Melbourne and Sydney trip.

Oh well, you can't take it with you...

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 460

2011-11-21T23:11:00.000+10:30

Let's see... I spent a big chuck of last night working on Ma's 2012 calendar... I hadn't intended to, but once I started I just got sucked into it. Then I started working on the one I was planning for La Cousina... and before I knew it it was 1:30am... and once I'd finished tidying up and getting ready for the week it was 2am.

And I got up at 5:30am... so three and a half hours sleep. Not ideal.

Currently I have eight parcels on the way to me (hopefully it'll be nine in the next day or so). From all over the world too... the USA, England, Hong Kong, Spain... not to mention right here in Australia. Speaking of which, I thankfully avoided any drama about getting my Aquabumps package rerouted to work... so that'll be there tomorrow.

And I got a call today that my iPhone 4S had come in and was ready to pick up. I could have picked it up at lunch, but I needed to back it up, update iTunes and my iOS and remove the porn before I get the new one. So that'll be my lunch time excursion for tomorrow.

Turns out that updating everything took about two hours once all the apps and music and whatnot reinstalled itself. And it was more than a little bit freaky watching the apps magically reappear on the phone one at a time.

Unconscious Mutterings...

Crushed :: Nuts
Thanks :: No worries
Steam :: Engine
Bulletin :: Board
Budget :: Money
Value :: Good
Aquarium :: Tank
Logo :: Updating
Information :: Kiosk
Lend :: Borrow

Current Mood:

light square precinct wandering

2011-11-20T19:51:00.001+10:30

I went on a little excursion today...

It was part last minute planning, part accident. The last minute plan was a decision to go to the "Gay Garage Sale and Art Show" at the Feast Festival Hub... and since I was going to be nearby, I took my camera so that I could snap some photos of street art I saw the other day.

The accident part came in when I tried to park the car, ended up heading down Waymouth Street... which I tend to do for some reason... and discovered that one of the spots that had previously been cleared of street art had a couple of great, huge new pieces on it (partly the golden face, partly the Benzo soldier... but it was way bigger than just those two parts).

That led to a little wandering around (not a ton, I was wearing thongs), checking out some old spots, and finding a few bits and pieces.

I'm not going to dignify the garage sale/art show with much commentary... it's enough to say that it was pitiful... and that "nuns" shouldn't be put in charge of a sausage sizzle (also, what the fuck is with trying to sell salad and fruit salad with a sausage sizzle... it's a sausage, in bread, potentially with onion... don't give me salad and don't put it on a plate, just give me bread and meat).

But fortunately the street art saved the day...

Current Mood:

technological and seasonal shopping saturday

2011-11-19T21:17:00.000+10:30

Things that I learned today...

Jacaranda flowers smell like wee
Ma having an iPhone means a lot of additional work for me
Somebody forgot to tell everyone at Marion that Christmas is in 35 days, not 5 days
I'm very, very glad that I essentially only buy presents for Ma

It was also an incredibly long day due to the fact there was much messing around with Apple products and laptops and whatnot.

When Ma got down I booted up her laptop to install iTunes (and had to download it twice because it suggested the 32 bit version when I loaded up the website, but told me I needed the 64 bit version when I went to install it... what the fuck)... only to discover that it wouldn't let me create an account without using a credit card... again, what the fuck?

H-San had the same problem with his iPhone at work, but I never had to do it when I got my iPhone... but thinking about it later it may be that when I created mine, I'd actually installed iTunes and plugged my iPhone in... so maybe that makes a difference.

Anyway, that delayed us a little in heading off to the shops.

I was very excited (probably more than is really healthy to be honest) to discover that Coles now stock the Grove Juice that we had on our last day in Brisbane... so juicy, so pulpy, so orangy... so good. And I may or may not have kissed the bottle a number of times in the store.

When we got back here there was more fiddling with iTunes... I bought Ma an iTunes card to see if using the code from that would allow me to create her ID without having to use a credit card. I was going to get her one for Christmas anyway... and Target was having a buy two $20 cards for $30 deal... so it all worked out nicely. And it turned out that that did the trick...

Technically, the first app I downloaded for her was iBooks, but that was quickly followed by Pocket Weather, Angry Birds and IMDB. You know, just the basics.

After that we headed down to Marion in my car... mostly so that I could put it away in the rear carpark when we got back since it's been sitting out the front since we got back from Sydney. Coz I'm lazy.

As I said at the start of this post, I really have no idea what the hell was going on with everyone at Marion... I mean we weren't really there THAT much later than we have been in the past... but it seemed like everybody was working under the assumption that Christmas is happening on the 25th of this month rather than in 35 days. There were people EVERYWHERE... generally taking up space and being in the way.

And it's not even like a Sydney level of busy... I mean I could be romanticising the memory a little bit, but people in Sydney didn't seem to do so very much standing around inconveniently and getting in the way. Maybe it's because people here aren't so used to there being as many people around, so they don't understand the concept of getting out of the way, looking where they're going and generally not being a dick.

But like I said, I could be romanticising The Sydney Experience.

I'm not sure how well we managed to knock off things on Ma's Christmas list... I know we knocked at least one major item off and a couple of minor ones, but we also did our usual trick of finding things for either ourselves or each other.

Eventually we'd had enough, so we called it a day.

Well, a day if you don't count the fact that we stopped off at The Christmas Shop. To be honest, I think that place has actually had it's day... on previous trips there was usually something worth considering at the very least, but the last couple of trips there's just nothing. Plus the place was full of people, which is never good considering how small and cramped that place already is.

That was where I discovered the unfortunate thing about Jacaranda flowers... the street near the shop is lined with them, and it really did just have that "stale public toilet"/"Sunday morning in the city" kind of smell. Weird, and kinda gross... I'm also not sure why I've never noticed it before.

Then it was back here after a brief stop at my supermarket.

It was about 4:30 when we got back, and then I updated the iOS on Ma's phone, loaded some CDs onto her iTunes, synced her phone and other non-specific tech related nonsense... and by the time we've loaded all the updates on her laptop and I sent her on her merry way it was well after 6...

Like I said... another very big Saturday.

Current Mood:

photo friday: feast flag

2011-11-18T23:57:00.000+10:30

There are occasions when I'm proud of my city... and the decision by both Adelaide City Council and Marion City Council to fly the rainbow/gay pride flag during Feast this year is definitely one of them. This shot is the flag flying on the Adelaide Town Hall.

Other than that, it's been something of a questionable week. And this is very likely to turn into a random stream of randomness since it's quite late and my brain is kinda all over the shop.

Somebody let off a firework right in front of my apartment block this evening... there was this flash and then a "wheeeeeee" noise, and then a terrifying BOOM. Thankfully it was just one, otherwise I would have had to go outside and enquire what the fuck the culprit thought they were doing.

It's also been one of those weeks where portions of my body seem compelled to fall apart completely. Seriously, I've done enough miles in this one, and it's essentially a clapped out wreck... can I upgrade to a newer model?

Also, my desire to hump random strangers continues unabated... which is slightly misleading, because I'm generally all about humping random strangers... but there are periods of time when I'm really not bothered about having sex (alone or with anyone else) and other times when I would happily grope passers-by in the street. But thankfully it comes and goes throughout the day or else I'd be impossible to deal with.

Usually on hookup sites, the older gentleman offers cash to have sex with the young and pretty twink... but today I had a young dude offer himself to me for cash... tempting, but I'm not big on paying for it as a general rule.

I'm pretty sure that I've "shot my bolt" as it were with Archer... the only thing I don't understand is why he would go out of his way to give me his phone number if he had no intention of hooking up again. Or he did, but something I did or said spooked him. Which is unfortunate, because I really have no idea how else to be when it comes to guys... I'm usually direct and don't play a lot of games and expect other people to be like that too, even though I know they're not for the most part. And it's not like I've never fibbed or told a guy one thing when I meant another... but I try not to drag it out and prefer to let the guy know when I'm not interested.

And tangentially related to all of that, I've been staying up later than usual of late, which isn't so great given how early I have to get up in the morning... which in turn led to me oversleeping a couple of times... which I'm sure contributes to me feeling crappier than usual.

So what does one do when in that kinda mood... well, giving eBay a bit of a thrashing looking for Dunny figures. This time last year it was toy soldiers, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of them on eBay this year...

Speaking of parcels in the mail, I appear to have gotten all the issues with the Aquabumps print sorted after they gave the delivery company the wrong address. Now I just need to wait until Monday for them to attempt to deliver it to see how easy it's going to be to either get them to deliver it to work or else redeliver it towards the end of the day so that I'm here to sign for it.

And although the wind has picked up and the temperature is well on it's way to cooling down, the last couple of days have been uncomfortably warm... I know I say this every year, but I really do loathe the summer heat... Even more so before it's officially Summer.

Dammit... and I've stayed up later than I intended to... again.

Current Mood:

random cf hotness

2011-11-17T21:44:00.001+10:30

A decidedly NSFW (no actual frontal or backal nudity, but it's close) Random Hotness this week thanks to the lovely (mostly "straight", mostly naked) boys of Corbin Fisher.

Partly because having "the best sex ever" last week woke up the base, lizard part of my brain (ie, the Id) which is now craving everything in these pictures, up and to including a new tattoo.

But this is more of a love letter to the person or persons who take the official photos for Corbin Fisher. I am absolutely in love with the style and beauty of pretty much all of the photos that come out of the Fisher studio.

Light, depth of field, poses... and that's all before you get to the men. They often feel more like "art" photos in the vein of people like Howard Roffman rather than normal porn studio photos.

So, Corbin Fisher Photographer... I salute you! Sometimes even with my hands...

Current Mood:

not your mama's musketeers

2011-11-15T23:15:00.000+10:30

Now, can somebody remind me how this goes again... you pay money and they let you sit in a dark room for a couple of hours...

It's been a while! In fact we missed the whole of October!

But, on with the movie.

The Three Musketeers!

As the title of the post suggests, this is not your mother's Three Musketeers. This isn't Charlie Sheen and Chris O'Donnell... this isn't Oliver Reed and Michael York... and this certainly isn't Gene Kelly!

This is Paul W.S. Anderson's Three Musketeers... this is Mission Impossible meets Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft.

It's not in the least little bit historically accurate, it plays fast and loose with not only the original Musketeers story but it reinvents history as it goes along.

The whole thing is as camp as camp can be, but there's great action, amazing costumes, gorgeous men, Milla Jovovich doing what Milla Jovovich does best, the core of the Three Musketeers story survives... oh, and it has airships. Yeah, you heard me... airships.

And I loved it.

It kept everything fresh, and even though they played around with character backstory and relationships, it was actually surprisingly faithful in parts, and those that weren't actually didn't feel out of place.

It's also clear that Orlando Bloom was paying close attention to Johnny Depp throughout the first three Pirates movies... there's more than a touch of Jack Sparrow's scenery chewing in Bloom's performance as Buckingham. He's wonderfully evil and camp though, and it'll be nice to see him take on more of these villainous type roles rather than the hero I think.

Speaking of the hero... Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman takes on the role of D'Artagnan... all floppy hair and youthful cockiness... but it was nice to see someone so young taking on the role... even Chris O'Donnell felt a little old at 23.

And Lerman pretty much kicks ass all up and down the movie.

It's got a great cast actually... other than Bloom and Jovovich, there's Mads Mikkelsen and Christoph Waltz making the most of the villains... Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson as the titular Musketeers... a fun comic turn by James Corden as their servant... and beautifully awkward performances by Freddie Fox and Juno Temple as the King and Queen.

It's campy, it's historically irresponsible, it's full of explosions and modern action movie staples, it's so very over the top... but I had a thoroughly good time with it... quite probably because I was expecting it to be completely over the top.

But I loved it just the same.

yani's rating: 9 rooftop swordfights out of 10

unconscious mutterings 459

2011-11-14T20:41:00.001+10:30

Okay... so that's that thing done... I kinda know how it's gunna end, but you never know.

Oh... well, that was... quicker than I expected to get a response. But it's still not a done deal til the proverbial fat lady sings... or possibly squeals.

Anyway, enough of being cryptic.

Unconscious Mutterings...

Help :: I really need some sometimes
Close :: Minded
Start over :: I often wish I could
Dirt :: Digging
Kilometer :: Metric system
Speedy :: Gonzales
Shop :: Christmas
Trumpet :: Foreskin (it's a Priscilla reference)
Dog :: Brown
Canoe :: Barbwire

Current Mood:

the seasonal shopping beast awakens

2011-11-12T23:22:00.000+10:30

Okay... so the title of the post may be a wee bit melodramatic...

But given the hugeness of today and the fact that it was also the Christmas Pageant it all just felt very epic...

And I really do feel like I can hear the gigantic Christmas Shopping Beast stir within it's tinsel and wrapping paper lined cavern and flex it's red and green claws.

Ahem... like I said, it's been a very, very, very long day.

It all started reasonably normally. I woke up, tidied the house a little better than I've done since we got back (by which I mean I actually did some tidying). That did mean that I was a little behind schedule by the time Ma got here... but I'd gotten on a roll and didn't want to stop tidying up until I reached a natural stopping point.

The rest of the usual shopping pretty much went along in the usual fashion...

Then we kinda got a little caught up watching the Christmas Pageant on teevee when we got back here (but with the sound down... the commentary has always had the ability to rot your brain within seconds)...

But before long we headed out for something of a homewares extravaganza.

We started at Freedom... they had both some Nutcracker/toy soldier related products and some seahorse related things. So I bought Ma some of the latter and she bought me some of the former... it's all very reciprocal.

Then we headed over to Ikea, mostly to check out their Christmas stuff... and poke around to see if there was anything that could be used as Christmas presents or parts thereof. Well, for Ma anyway... thankfully I never have very many presents to get.

I'm sure that somewhere, some learning institution that teaches a course on the psychology of shopping much have a whole module on Ikea stores. It's a carefully constructed maze designed to carry you around and make you pick up things you wouldn't otherwise have thought about. Other stores do it, but Ikea is particularly good at it.

Even skipping the entire top floor, we were still in there for a while.

The third part of the plan was a little more ephemeral... we'd been tossing up between the city and Marion, the former specifically to go to Optus about new phones, the latter as more of a "looking for presents" kind of idea.

We decided on town... the Pageant had been over for a while, and we figured it would probably have calmed down a little. I did have second thoughts as we were on the way in... but nothing concrete, just a random feeling that we'd make the wrong choice.

In the end it turned out to be something pretty minor, and the good outweighed the bad.

We started with Target... Ma wandered around upstairs while I went looking at clothes downstairs... I ended up with $133 worth of clothes (jeans, three tops, a belt and some thongs), but only paid $100 for it, which is good. Although on the down side, I'm going to have to take the belt back because I assumed the size I got was the right one, turns out it wasn't (but I only worked that out when I got home). Annoying.

After that we headed to the same Optus store that we've gone to for our last two phones at least, only to find that they were shut. And not even just that we missed them in the morning, the store is now shut on weekends. Bad for them and bad for us. And I think that was the thing that I was unsure about... somehow.

Anyway, we headed into the City Cross food court to get something to eat while we planned our next move.

We decided to go and kick the tyres at the Optus store near Haighs, just so that Ma could get a better idea what was available in the iPhone oeuvre.

And the nice boy in the store went through all the options and Ma decided to get the phone there and then. So she's now the proud owner of a white 8GB iPhone 4 with a somewhat sparkly cover. I swear though, the whole phone contract renewal thing just taken forever. What with all the explaining, and signing three copies of the form and blah blah blah...

Once we'd done it all once for Ma's iPhone, we had to do it all a second time for my iPhone 4S. Of course I don't actually HAVE an iPhone 4S currently... they're on "rain-check" at the moment, and it should come in within the next three weeks, give or take.

After a brief stop at the Optus store at the other end of the Mall so that they could cut Ma's sim card down to size, we had a brief wander around the tragic little market in Hindmarsh Square (I'm guessing they brought it forward from tomorrow to take advantage of the Pageant... but it was about a dozen stalls, none of them particularly interesting), then headed down Rundle Street to Cocolat.

We then bought a couple of cold drinks and sat in Cocolat for just over an hour while I showed Ma all through her new iPhone. I'm not sure how much of it stuck... but we went through a few things more than once, so hopefully she got that stuff.

Now that it's all written down, it doesn't sound like a lot, but we were in each place for quite a while, so it was 4:45 before we got back to the car.

So... a very full day... Ma has an iPhone... I'm waiting on an iPhone... I have an outfit for Christmas Day... and the Christmas shopping season begins in earnest from now.

We're we just here not that long ago?

Current Mood:

photo friday: taronga birds

2011-11-11T19:54:00.000+10:30

For reasons I don't really understand (other than the fact that Sugarmonkey hasn't seen me for like five weeks... and anything I'm passionate about seems to be grist for the mill), the Taronga Bird Show has featured very highly in my week. So it seemed apt to feature the stars of the show today.

This week has been... interesting.

But the first week back after a holiday is always weird. This has the added bonus of there being a lot of strangeness generally going around work given all the changes that are going on, or due to go on or have the potential to be going on.

Added to that however was the news that my contract has been extended for six months, so that takes me through to the middle of next year. Which I'm honestly having some conflicted feelings about... a little like the end of last year. On the one hand there's the money and mostly enjoying the people I work with (more so now than this time last year to be honest) and the work has the potential to change for the better in a meaningful way. On the flip side, the work has the potential to change in such a way that will mean huge effort and workloads on our part with no discernible change to the culture of the organisation.

Which basically means that I'm conflicted.

On the more positive front, I have hot water again. Actually, even more than just having hot water, I have a brand new, pilotless hot water heater. Which means I have better water pressure, hotter water and theoretically never again have to worry about the water heater going out. I could have kissed my plumber! Well other than the fact I'm pretty sure he's as ugly as sin, and I wasn't actually here when he installed the new system.

Also on the down side, it turns out that my Aquabumps print has been delayed due to the fact there was a mark on the print. But at least they caught it before it was sent out.

Current Mood:

random chemistry hotness

2011-11-10T19:51:00.000+10:30

Given yesterday's confession about really good sex, I thought a "duo" related Random Hotness would be timely.

These shots I found on Favorite Hunks & Other Things of Randy Blue models Diego and Chip by photographer Nicky Reyes fit the bill nicely.

Current Mood:

the best sex of my life

2011-11-09T19:54:00.000+10:30

At the risk of getting all NSFW and TMI...

I had sex on Monday night... and the more that I think about it, the more I think it's possibly the singular best sexual experience I may have ever had.

Or, at the very least, it's fairly high in the list.

I've said before at various times that I'm a bigger guy... and as a result of that I tend to hear an awful lot of "I'm not into guys your build" or "You're not my type" or just the plain old "Not interested".

All of which is fine on a case by case basis... in fact I prefer guys just coming out with that rather than being half-assed about it... but it does get a little wearing and disheartening en masse.

But on Monday night I was logged into gay hook-up site of choice, not really actively looking for anything, just putting it out there as it were... although if I'm being honest, the complete lack of sexual desire I felt while we were away was replaced when we got back by a desire to hump just about anything short of the furniture. Anyway, I was messaged by a guy who I can only describe as "out of my league"... we'll call him "Archer" for the purposes of this post... late 20's, tall, self described "swimmers build" and very well endowed.

Occasionally there's some weird scammer or other that appears on certain profile sites that tries to get you to talk to them on an IM service, or sometimes guys don't pay attention to my profile properly... so I've had some experience with guys messaging me like that who disappear in short order.

Not Archer though.

Even after we'd chatted and I'd invited him over and he said he was on his way, I didn't actually believe he was going to show up.

But he actually did. And he looked exactly like his pictures.

Now, the reason I'm rating this as one of the, if not the, best sexual experiences of my life is that possibly for the first time ever all the little stars aligned.

It wasn't even particularly WHAT we did... that wasn't really outside the realms of normality... although he was a spectacularly good kisser... it was more that in a way that I don't think has ever happened before, Archer was as into my body as I was into his.

I mean, sure, I've had sex with other guys whose bodies I found amazing... and I've probably had sex with a few guys who liked my body, but I don't think there's ever been an instance before where both of those things existed in the same sexual encounter. And it wasn't just that he liked my body... it was obviously (very obviously) turning him on in a way I've never experienced before.

It made me both aware of my body in a different way, but also allowed me to acknowledge and even celebrate my body in a way that I normally wouldn't even think about.

And like I said, I was so incredibly amazed with his body... just having something that beautiful and, to be honest, unfamiliar (in the "not usual" sense) responding to my touch was a little bit mind blowing. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that his body is perhaps in the top two or three hottest I've ever had the privilege to enjoy.

It really felt like we were rolling around on my bed for a couple of hours, but I think it was probably about half that time. It was just that the time felt elastic.

Did I mention he was an excellent kisser? And that he shot his load the full length of my torso which surprised the hell out of me. Yeah, I know... that last one was bragging a little bit.

It was also unexpected once we were finished because he suggested swapping numbers even before I had a chance to. Of course swapping numbers also involved swapping names, because there really hadn't been time beforehand... and because I'm a slut and didn't even think to ask.

Will I see him again? Well, I'd like to... and I messaged him briefly yesterday to say thanks (and to check to see if he'd actually reply) and he seemed up for a repeat. So who knows. But if there's any chance of arranging something casual on a regular basis, I'd like to do it.

But I'm also a realist, and I'll wait until after Round 2, or maybe even Round 3 before I get too excited.

On the up side, there were also some things left undone, so we have somewhere to go from here if/when we do hook up again.

It's also taking a large amount of self control not to message him again for Round 2.

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unconscious mutterings 457 + 458

2011-11-07T21:16:00.000+10:30

The first day back at work is always the worst... although today really just proved that it's pretty much a case of "same shit, different day". And while it felt weird to be back at work, it was distressingly familiar distressingly quickly.

And you know those times when you do a dumb thing, knowing it's a dumb thing based on all your past experience, but do it anyway... yeah, I may have just done one of those. Or it would be great, who knows.

Unconscious Mutterings... a double edition, since I missed out on last Monday...

Last week...

Class :: School
Shopping :: Fun
Bitchy :: Queen
Consulting :: Firm
Texts :: Phone
Sigh :: Big
Office :: Same shit, different day
Develop :: Strategy
Boardwalk :: Under the
Prime :: Suspect

This week...

Distress :: Beacon
White lie :: Harmless
Costume :: Superhero
Stampede :: Elephant
Unappealing :: Going to work this morning
Idiot :: Surrounded by
Correction :: Make changes
Resignation :: I'd need to win the lottery first
Insipid :: People often are
Celebration :: Christmas

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yani's big adventure - melbourne & sydney

2011-11-06T13:09:00.000+10:30

After a nine days of holidays, 1993 photos, a hell of a lot of words and the last 16 hours processing images to go along with all the words, I can now officially say that my holiday is over...

It was a hell of a trip. Not always the greatest, but it was a lot of fun at times and definitely an experience to be remembered.

Thank goodness for blog posts...

Day One - Melbourne & QI Live
Day Two - Transition to Sydney
Day Three - Sydney
Day Four - Bondi
Day Five - Darling Harbour
Day Six - Taronga Zoo
Day Seven - Bitsa this and that
Day Eight - Sculpture By The Sea
Day Nine - Outpost and Home

It was probably too long a holiday by about two days... but we did a lot of new stuff, and stuff outside of the city too, which is good.

Now we need to start planning the brief Melbourne trip in February...

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yani's big adventure - day nine

2011-11-04T19:22:00.002+10:30

Well, that's it... holiday's over... back to real life!

*le sigh*

I will say that I think we had one of the better final days of any of our recent trips.

I packed my suitcase last night, although I'm not sure how... it was like a really soft and squishy game of Tetris. Essentially my clothes were used as packing around my purchases. And for the first time my suitcase was a little hard to close.

It still weighs less than Ma's suitcase though.

After I got up and got ready I did the usual "wander around every room making sure I haven't forgotten anything" interpretive dance. Then loaded myself up with bags, hats, shoes, jackets (okay, hat and jacket, but still) and tromped down to Ma's room as per the Final Day Tradition.

Our plan to head down to the Opera House for breakfast came to naught given that nothing really seems to be properly open down there at 7am. I guess there's not a lot of through traffic at that time in the morning, but still...

We ended up back at Circular Quay at the café in the foyer of the AMP Building, Mirabelle (although someone needs to tell them we don't do music on websites anymore). Other than the fact that the food took a little while to arrive, it was quite nice, plus I stole about 10MB of their free WiFi (downloading an update to a malfunctioning app).

We'd been going backwards and forwards about heading over to Cockatoo Island for the Outpost Project street art installation out on the island. I also used the free WiFi to download a copy of the appropriate ferry timetable, so we figured we could ride out there, wander around for a while and be back in time to get to the airport a little early.

Turned out to be the perfect idea, and I'm so very glad that we did it.

Once we were done with breakfast we went back to the hotel, checked out of our rooms officially (by which I mean left our keys with one of the cleaners), stored our bags and headed back to Circular Quay to catch the ferry out to the island.

Instead of one of the slow (but beautiful) green and tan ferries, we got one of the fast "Fantasea" boats, which was something different... plus we've never been on a ferry in that direction before, so that was good too.

Cockatoo Island itself is awesome... it's industrial and big and full of interesting things to photograph, even before the addition of the street art. But with the street art... wow. It's the perfect blend of artistic style and location, and I got a little giddy taking photos.

The highlight was probably the Dog-Leg Tunnel (above), complete with not only works by street artists hung on boards between the pillars but also these intriguing sound installations (and an eerie video installation off in a room on the side).

It's just a shame that we were there on the opening morning (a little like Sculpture By The Sea really)... Outpost is going to be one of those exhibitions/festivals/projects that evolve between now and Decemeber... things will be added, pieces of work will change, the whole experience could transform itself.

But if you're in Sydney between now and December and you're at all interested in street art, please go! It would be so amazing if it became a yearly event.

I even saw some work from home... my blobby little buddy Mr Sloppy made an appearance amongst the paste-ups. In fact His Sloppiness also turned up in the laneways of Melbourne...

I also left my mark as part of the Chalk Walk...

I may need to refine that as a piece actually... I know I had a version in one of my notebooks... but how exactly does one go about getting things printed en mass to vinyl sticker form? Hmmm...

We caught the ferry back just before noon, which went back a different way and stopped at a few more points.

I've possibly said it before, but that really is a civilised way to travel... much more interesting and classier than a train or a bus.

And, really, that was about it... we went straight from the ferry to the hotel and from there to a taxi and from there to the airport.

*sad face*

There was a minor hiccup when we got to the airport, there wasn't a gate number against our flight... now I don't know if that happens often, but given that we've flown about twice a year for the last three years, that's never happened before. Freaked me out a tiny little bit I have to say, so after we'd grabbed a quick bite to eat and found somewhere to sit, I went and stared at the Departures board until it finally updated with our gate number.

Thank fuck!

Now I'm finishing writing this on the plane after watching the So You Think You Can Dance results show...

Then the plane will land and I'll have to go back to my regular old life.

Later...

Yep, that's pretty much what happened... the plane landed, we collected our luggage and then had to sit in the back of a very hot taxi all the way back to North Adelaide thanks to Friday afternoon traffic.

Note to self: Don't fly home at 4pm on a Friday... just don't.

When I got home again everything was pretty much as I'd left it. Okay, everything was exactly where I'd left it... otherwise that's just weird. And the apartment was mercifully cool.

I half-unpacked and then sent Ma on her way with my suitcase and associated bits and pieces before arranging all the bits and pieces I'd bought during the past nine days for their photoshoot...

No matter how many times I travel, I always have to take this photo about 10 times, there's always more things that I forgot to add to it and have to keep taking it as I remember them all.

There's a few things in there for Ma for Christmas, and a few situational things, like the 3D glasses from Sydney Tower Eye, the card for the camera strap (since I was using it), the free tissues from Kinokuniya and the receipt for the Aquabump print which should show up some time next week.

I do seem to come back with more stuff from Sydney than anywhere else though... or else we stay longer in Sydney, so I just accumulate more stuff.

Once I was done I wandered off to the supermarket to get some food because I had pretty much nothing in the fridge.

And with that, everything was about the same as it was before I left. Oh, and my hot water went out for the 500th time of late while I was away, so I'll have to try and fix that in the morning.

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yani's big adventure - day eight

2011-11-03T20:51:00.017+10:30

Today could not have been any different from our trip to Sculpture By The Sea last year...

Last year as the only hot and sunny day of our visit, I didn't have a hat and ended up with sunburn all over the place (but mostly on top of my head)... this year was all about rain. Plus I had a hat and didn't need it, and did I mention the rain?

I wasn't sure things boded well this morning when I woke up at about 4am to discover it was raining. Then when I woke up again at 5am, still raining.

Ma and I had decided that we would try and head out by 7am at the earliest, so it was about 6:20 when I wandered down to Ma's room... carrying my hat and my hoodie and my umbrella... I really wasn't sure what to take and what to leave.

In the end, we took it all, and once Ma had finished fluffing around it was almost 6:40, so we headed down to the bus stop... we actually went past the 333 lurking on the side street, and I was hoping that we would have enough time to get down to the stop... the bus driver was wandering about in the bus, then he put the indicator on, then he switched it off. It seemed likely we'd manage it...

And then he took off down the side street, went past us, stopped at the stop for about 30 seconds and then drove off. Bastard! If he'd waited another 30 seconds...

So we had to wait the 20 minutes for the next bus.

By the time we got down to Bondi the weather had cleared a little bit... well, it wasn't actively raining, and we managed to find somewhere to get a coffee at 7:30 in the morning (give or take) without having to trek all the way down Campbell Parade. Mmmmm warm coffee...

Then we traipsed on down to the sculptures.

I must say, I do like this "first thing in the morning" thing at Sculpture By The Sea... I don't know if was just the earliness of the hour, or the fact it was the first day, or the fact it was raining, but other than us and a few joggers/early morning dog walkers, the route was remarkably free of people.

In fact, by the time we got to Mark's Park, I'm pretty sure the Sculpture staff outnumbered the public about three to one.

We spent a good long while in the park (I think we did that last year too, but that was mostly from trying to photograph things around all the people), before we headed back down to the path and went along the Coast Walk.

It started spitting a bit as we made our way around Mackenzie's Bay to Tamarama Bay, so I had my lens cleaning cloth handing to wipe down my camera lens every chance I got.

When we got to Tamarama Beach, we discovered all these jellyfish washed up on the shore. A completely different kind than the ones we saw yesterday, but it was odd to see all these little blue lumps just lying there in the sand.

We got about halfway through photographing the sculptures before the rain really started to get serious... so we wandered up to Tama Café to grab something to eat and wait out the rain under one of their big sun umbrellas.

It turned out to be quite a long wait.

The rain didn't give any indication that it was letting up any time soon so we just stayed huddled under the umbrella trying to stay out of any random drops.

While we were waiting a school excursion full of teenage boys from one of the private schools also rocked up, most of them woefully underdressed in shorts or without jackets. They were not having a great excursion... well, I think they kind of were, even with the cold and the rain, but it was amusing to watch and listen as they sheltered under the other two big umbrellas nearby.

Typical teenage boys though... complaining about the rain, but also running off into it to go look at the sculptures (and occasionally hide in the sculptures).

Eventually the rain let up enough for us to finish photographing all of the artworks down near the water, but as we wandered back to Bondi, the rain came and went, so we had to resort to umbrellas eventually, but still managed to get soaked to varying degrees between the two of us.

We ended up missing a couple of the statues up in the park area, but I either photographed all of the others, or saw them and decided against taking photos.

There was also at least one missing, but I think we saw all the crates for it up in Mark's Park.

I also think there were less works this year than last year, but I'll have to check the book from last year to be sure. There were certainly less works along the Costal Walk for some reason. I also think that it's possible that the works themselves were smaller overall this time around. Again, that's just conjecture, and it could even be down to the weather, making everything look smaller than it really was.

I did have some favourites though...

Look This Way by Ken Unsworth
I have been dreaming to be a tree... II by Byeong Doo Moon
Cover the Rainbow by Hyoung Kwon Kim

The first two are almost situational favourites... I like them, but I think I like them even more because of the positions they were in. The skeleton on ladder piece by Unsworth was really in pride of place, a little like the paint tube splash from last year, and on a good day I'm sure you'll be able to see it from the beach. Moon's stag was equally well placed at the opposite end of Mark's Park, and the weather being so grey that it was hard to see sea from sky at certain points certainly added something to it (although I'm sure it would be equally sensational on a sunny cloudless day, but in my mind there's just something about stags and misty days that go together).

However Kim's multitude of little metal pixies would have been amazing anywhere. It was one of those pieces that the longer you looked at it, the longer you wanted to look at it because you kept discovering new parts to it. The only downside was that it was a little hard to see down on the ground... but if it had been a dry day with dry ground I may have been tempted to get right down on the floor with it.

And a special mention also has to go to "The Yearning" by Margarita Sampson for all those cute yet slightly unsettling little yellow "slugs".

Normally I wouldn't single out pieces that I disliked, but there was one piece that was so incredibly pointless and annoying that I would very happily have pulled the plug on it myself given half the chance.

"(Windtraces)" by Kirsty Beilharz & Aengus Martin was a set of speakers set into the side of the rock wall at Tamarama that produced this hideous, amelodic, irritating, grating, unnecessarily amped up cacophony of ear bleeding aural garbage. If it had been presented at about 25% of the volume, then maybe I could have spent a little time with it, but it bellowed out across all of the other artwork in the bay, bouncing off the far wall and just intruding on every single moment we spend on Tamarama Beach.

And if the people who work at the beach go insane in the next three weeks and rip the stupid thing down, I wouldn't blame them in the slightest.

Given the rain, we didn't bother buying a catalogue until we got back to the very start of the walk in Bondi, but we'd also intended to buy the 15th anniversary book... however it turned out that they didn't have any at the Bondi tent. Which is both understandable, and a little annoying.

But I knew that they had them at Mark's Park, so I immediately knew that I was going back to Mark's Park as soon as I got Ma settled somewhere dry.

The somewhere turned out to be Moo Burger again, since it was close. As well as leaving Ma behind, I also left my bag and my very damp jacket behind and legged it with just my umbrella.

I also ended up going the overland route instead of along the coastal path, I'm not sure it saved me any time, but it was more straightforward and there were less people.

But by the time I got back to Moo, book and bonus calico bag hugged safely to my chest, I was a wee bit shattered. And by "wee bit", I mean completely. I don't know if it was the early morning, or essentially missing breakfast apart from a coffee, or getting wet/having wet jeans, wet socks, wet shoes, or the sea air, or the extra walking back to the park, or what... but I was shattered.

I couldn't be bothered wandering any further down in order to get lunch, so we stayed at Moo (which was essentially empty anyway) and had a much more restrained Classic Cheese Burger, fries and a MOOteaser milkshake.

All this, and it was only noon.

By the time we'd finished lunch, and looked at some of our photos and whatnot it was nearly 1pm, so we started to head out to the bus stop. But Ma saw a 333 so sailing past, and it was cold out and we both had damp jackets so we were going to turn around and stay put, but decided we may as well go up to the bus stop and wait there. Just as we left the café and got across the street, a second 333 went flying past us.

We were not blessed with Bus Luck today in the slightest. Possibly because we used up all our Bus Luck on Sunday.

Eventually a bus did arrive and I half dozed my way back into the city.

By the time we got back my jeans were mostly dry apart from the cuffs at the bottom, so I threw them in the dryer in the bathroom. By the time I'd done a bit of pottering around they were well on their way to being dry, so I wandered down to Ma's room to grab her hoodie to throw into the dryer along with my own as well as to try and work out what to do next.

Neither of us could really think of anything... we were both completely out of energy/enthusiasm.

So we kinda just sat around in her room for a while umming and ahhing about what to do for the afternoon and what to do for dinner and what to do tomorrow and the like. We really didn't come up with a single plan and spent most of the afternoon just chilling out.

Once all the clothing was dry (and I was impressed with the dryer, it really didn't take very long) we ended up having our usual "apart time" for about an hour before going off for dinner.

Since it was late night shopping we ended up going back to the Westfield Sydney food court... this time to Crust for some very tasty pizza. Although it does appear that a large number of meals in the food court come with rocket salad covered in balsamic reduction.

We also stopped off at Top Juice afterwards for a chocolate covered strawberry... actually that's another thing that seems to be very hot in Sydney right now... great big tasty chocolate covered strawberries. We had one at The Rocks Market on Saturday, I saw them downstairs in the David Jones food hall, and Top Juice has them, and I think there might be another place in the Westfield food court that had them.

After a little wander around other parts of Westfield, we called it quits and headed back to the hotel. Actually, we detoured down to the harbour because I thought there might have been an opportunity for some sunset shots of the Opera House, but by the time we made it down there the last of the sun had vanished, plus the whole western side of the quay was taken up by another massive cruise ship. So instead we sat down by the water watching all the arty/urban/hipster types head off to the opening of to the opening of Outpost on Cockatoo Island.

And now all I have to do is pack my bags, work out what the hell we're doing tomorrow morning, and that's pretty much stumps, as they say.

Our longest holiday yet, on the cusp of being over. And it's going to be a little bit of a shock going from 22C here to 30C back home in Adelaide.

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