yet another camera club

Dammit and double dammit... I wrote this when I got back from Camera Club, but Blogger fell on it's head as I went to post it, and although I thought there might have been a chance that it actually got saved, it looks like I was out of luck... I'll have to try and recreate it from scratch...

I think maybe I'm a little bit over Camera Club, both in general and just at present. Yes, it's been a month since I was last there, so yes, it was nice to see my folks again, but I get kinda over it fast.

Tonight's set subject was Shadowplay/Silhouettes... and although I probably could have gone through my stuff and pulled out a couple of appropriate images, I just never bothered... instead I went through my magic bag of existing images and pulled out four... unfortunately the magic bag is looking decidedly bare these days, especially since I haven't done a shoot with a model in a really, really, really long time.

Anyway, the judge did seem to be a little all over the place with his scoring at first, but since the B Graders go first, it gave me a chance to settle down before he got to us... in the end I ended up with some scores that mostly weren't that surprising.

Craig (bottom left) scored a 9, which did actually surprise me, I knew it was pretty good, but I hadn't thought it was 9-worthy... The Boxer (top left) got an 8... Dark Denim (bottom right) managed a 7, mostly because in the full version his face is a little soft (focus-wise), and I knew that going in (but really, are you going to be looking at his face?), and I have thought about doing a harder crop to cut down the amount of out of focus face in the shot... and finally Star (top right) got a 6, which didn't surprise me in the least, since it was only there to make up the numbers to be honest.

I think part of why I was over it last night was that I came to a realisation... while Adelaide Camera Club is supposedly one of the more progressive clubs around (from what I've heard anyway), when we have competitions, the vast majority of our judges are from the other suburban clubs... which means they are then judging us by their standards and their expectations, not those of our club (if that makes sense). I do complain about the judging a lot though, so I suppose I should just be used to it and either alter my work to please the ludite judges, or else not care what they think and do what I like... guess which way I choose... which is basically the same way I've been going for a while, I just need to whinge about it from time to time.

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montage monday: city

Well, not suprisingly, this week's Monday Montage, like last week's Photo Friday, was taken during my time in the city... actually during my lunchbreaks mostly, and is the buildings in and around where I was working.

After last Monday's day off from my walk, I did manage to get my walk in for the rest of the week... but because I was setting off at 6am, it was actually still pretty much pitch black outside, so that was a little odd to say the least. By the time I was getting back it was around the same time I would normally have been setting off though, so that was okay. I did however get rained on at least twice, which was less fun, but I kept going anyway, what's a little rain really...

Last week was just generally odd though... I didn't really get in the routine groove like I have done before when I've been working. Maybe it was because I had the additional task of walking, which chewed up the available time in the mornings, but I felt like I was playing catch up all week, trying to get everything done here.

On Thursday night I looked at some new dress pants... after last week's "clown pants" I just had to, there is no way I could keep on wearing them. Unfortunately, the only decent pants with a flat rather than a pleated front (which just don't work on me, even though it's what I've been wearing) were horrible static-y fabric with weird pocket shapes (high and towards the front of the pants instead of low and on the side seams)... they were pretty much what I would call "gay dress pants"... they just had that look about them. Suffice to say, I didn't end up getting them... but hopefully I can find a similar pair in a better material before I work next... either that or it's Static City for me...

To keep all the drama in my life up to date, I messaged Marc on Friday like I said I would... he called me later in the evening when he'd finished work, it's good actually, without actually asking him to, I've gotten him to call me three times now, twice with online messages, once with a text message. Anyway he passed on my offer to come and see me on Saturday for some playtime... which, I have to admit, wasn't unexpected... I think he does want to spend some playtime with me, but it's possible that he wants to do it in a "controlled" fashion, at least the first time, so that he has an "out" if he needs one as far as time goes. I could be totally wrong about that, but I doubt it... even if he's not really aware of it himself. He mentioned coming to see me one day, possibly this week, in the morning before work, which would give us a window of 7-9am (and also mean I would need to walk before or after, or else take a second day off, shock horror), but he said he would call me either today or tomorrow, so we'll have to wait and see what happens... still...

Urgh... it's so grey and wet outside at the moment, especially since the forecast on the radio this morning said it was going to be 27°C... at the moment it doesn't look that way at all. It's been really cold and wet for all of the weekend actually... it rained pretty much non stop for most of Saturday night, and we even briefly had very small hail on Sunday morning... brrrr... winter is definitely on it's way!

Crap... it's Camera Club tomorrow and I'm so not prepared... I need to go through the few remaining photos I have and see what I'm going to enter...

Oh a positive note, J comes back to Adelaide in 11 days... yaaaaay! Then his boy, D, turns up about a week or so later and they stay until the end of June I think. I was chatting with him this morning, and I offered to pick him up from the airport if he needs me to... I'm guessing some member of his family with the capacity to drive will be taking the day off to go get him, but you never know.

It's weird how stuff happens in groups... after last week's Random Hotness starring the Naked Cowboy, I got a hot image of him with a bunch of other half naked guys in my email and was thinking about posting it... and then I found the same image on OPIEblue.

And since the final word in my Monday Musings for the past couple of weeks has been Big Brother related, I had to keep up the theme... luckily I'm not the only one interested in naked past and present Big Brother Boys... there are a ton of images over at All Aussie Beef. Enjoy!

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kisses

And some people don't even like to kiss, which I cannot comprehend. All sex is a pretext for the chance to kiss.

- Tony Kushner in Esquire

When I did the meme from TheOtherAndrew earlier this week, it included a question about my first kiss... which got me thinking about memorable kisses in my life... not necessarily the best, but the most memorable... and while I was doing my ultra early walk I started to think about the kisses that I remembered... I didn't really push my memory, I wanted the ones that were the most memorable and came to me easily... and I thought of five...

David
Yeah, this is the one I mentioned in the "firsts" post... my first time in a gay nightclub, my first kiss, my first blowjob... that night was all about firsts... it was actually memorable more because the blowjob was pretty accidental, I was looking for a wall to lean up against with David since he was a little drunk and we were getting into some heavy duty kissing action... he misunderstood where I was taking him and took over, leading me up to the top of a staircase and proceeded to blow me...

Ludo
Yes, that Ludo... we had sex once while we were living together... well, not even really sex... but we were naked and it involved kissing, and it was memorable (if not one of my greatest sexual moments), so it gets a place in the list... he wasn't actually one of the better kissers I've been with, maybe because he was used to kissing women (or because he was going the opposite way with me because I was a guy), but he pressed a bit too hard.

BlueDragon's Arrival
I haven't mentioned BlueDragon before... but there is a post somewhere in the wind about him, once I work out what to say... anyway, he's a friend from America, who came over to stay with me for a week a few years ago. My boss at the time let me have a little bit of time off the day he arrived to go pick him up from the airport and settle him in at my place, before I had to be back. We did all that, and before I left to go back to work I kissed him for the first time. He was tired and jetlagged, but it was still a really good kiss... and I walked back to work about a foot off the ground and with some definite swelling in my pants.

BlueDragon in the Country
The other memorable kiss with BlueDragon was when Ludo, Lownee, BD and I went out to visit Ludo's grandma and auntie in the country... mostly so he could see a little more of South Australia than just the city. Anyway, Ludo wanted us (BD and I) to be on our best behaviour, so we were... until I got up to either go to the kitchen or the bathroom while we were sitting outside, and as I reached the hallway on my way back, BD was just inside the door waiting for me. We snuck a little kiss, and promptly got busted, either by Ludo or Lownee... I don't remember who anymore.

Josh's Boyfriend
I remember the guy I was kissing, I'm just not sure about his name anymore (it was like 11 years ago, gimme a break)... I know his boyfriend's name was Josh, but I can't remember his name... Anyway, Josh was this cute but hyper and ADHD (literally) young dude who used to go to the same gay drop-in center as I did, he was about 16 or so I think, and a tiny thing. Then he got this amazingly cute boyfriend, who was a year or so older. One night after the drop-in, we were all at the pub and for whatever reason Josh was being paranoid that I was going to steal his boyfriend (it was a running joke, we both knew he wasn't serious, and he knew I had no intention of even trying to steal his boy, but it was fun to play with his mind sometimes), and because he was being especially obnoxious, one of us, his boyfriend maybe, said that we should kiss just to annoy him. And we did... and boy could he kiss... it was amazing... it was one of those kisses where the rest of the room just fades away, and all you're aware of is the other guy's lips on yours, and wherever else you happen to be touching him (I think I had my hands on his face). Josh was bouncing around us all hyper and annoyed, but didn't actually try to pull us apart. I think we kissed longer because Josh was being so hyper about it.

Sadly, there really haven't been any really outstandingly memorable kisses for the last few years...

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tedious

I love Zits at the best of times, and I always get a chuckle when blogging gets mentioned, but given all the slightly pedestrian things I've been blogging about of late... all the drama-rama around Marc and this week of work gossip, Mrs D's comment in the second panel is kind of how I kind of feel about my own recent blogging efforts...

I had to remove the colour from the original strip, because between Mrs D's godawful lip colour and the progressively darkening kahki background it was a little offputting...

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photo friday: my week

My week was spent in this big beige building...

Boy I'm glad it's over...

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oh for the love of benji... reprise

Bodhi asked about Benji...

What's your source, inspiration so to speak, for your often quoted "oh for the love of Benji"? I mean its adorable, tis, but I am just curious. Who is this Benji? And why do you so love him?

Well... I think I might have mentioned this is a comment on someone else's blog, but the line comes directly from Futurama... Season Three, Episode 18, Anthology of Interest Part II to be exact (although it aired as part of Season 4)...

And Leela has a line in the third part of the episode which is "Oh, for the love of Benji"... expressing exhasperation with one of the other characters... and poking him squarely in both eyes (see, there's a picture and everything).

As for Benji... I can only assume that Benji is, well, Benji...

I've used various variations of a similar line for a long while... I used to say "Oh, for the love of little brown babies", which is, I think, a bastardisation of a line from Murder on the Orient Express.

The short answer is... I'm odd...

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too sneaky for my own good...

Yep... after spending all of last night being increasingly frustated at having to spend a second week banging my head on the keyboard doing "grunt publishing" (or "bitch publishing as I referred to it at one point today)... and having spent my whole walk trying not to think about it at all, inbetween wishing I could get out of it, I came upon a plan...

Actually a fairly simple plan... I'd told them I wasn't available the week after next (Ma is off work that week, and I'm having my car serviced, so technically I'm busy one day out of the week, but they didn't need to know that)... so what if I'd "made a mistake" and confused my weeks...

I knew I would have to roll the plan into effect first thing... like right after I walked in... "Oh, by the way, mixed my weeks up"... something like that... in the mean time I had too much time on my hands to a) stress about whether I was going to actually do it or not and b) what I was going to try and do to placate them a little... in the end I decided that it was a) yes and b) try and get them another temp, because there is another... (sorry, bad Star Wars moment there)...

When I got into work the woman I report to was in a meeting, so I had to wait for her to get out, but when she was I put the master plan into effect... told her I mixed up my weeks, but I would talk to Online Services about getting them this other temp...

I even went up to Online Services to chat with them about getting the other temp in...

And then the woman that I was mostly cursing about yesterday came in, and we had a conversation about the stuff that I was bitching about yesterday, and suddenly everything seemed to make a lot more sense...

I pretty much got the first half of it finished today... I'll be spending all of tomorrow copying and pasting it over to the secondary location it needs to be in (which will mean a long and boring day)...

After all that plotting and scheming...

Although it has gotten me out of doing a third project of entirely "bitch publishing", which I really wasn't looking forward to, and the instructions for which made even less sense than the ones that got my panties in a bunch in the first place...

The scary thing is I can lie really convincingly through my teeth and be completely believable... I don't even bat an eyelid...

Isn't that one of the signs of being a sociopath?

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random cowboy hotness

Today's very early Random Hotness is brought to you by the very hot, very buff and not entirely naked Naked Cowboy! Hopefull I will make it to New York before this guy gets too old to be standing on street corners in his tighty whiteys....

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oh for the love of benji...

RAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHHH!

Now I remember why I didn't really want to go back to working in that building again... I have far too much freakin history with their web publishing, not to mention the fact that I hate to see things looking like crap from a design or structural standpoint... all of which adds up to mean that I just can't do a totally halfassed job... even if all they've asked me to do is said halfassed job... I can't do it... I just can't...

Add to that the fact that as a general rule, the reason they have people like me come in to do their web publishing is mostly because they're too clueless to do it themselves... which means for the most part that not only are they clueless about what they need to provide me with to make my life and my time with them easier, but they also have no idea about how to structure their information.

Unfortunately, I didn't think this was going to be the case given what I was doing on Monday and Tuesday... those two days were pretty much a walk in the park... clear instructions, fairly good existing structure, some "garbage code" but that was all easily fixed, and I have no problem with fixing that kind of stuff it it all has a purpose.

Today however was so very much an exercise in frustration... I really wanted to bang my head on the desk more than once, and ended up leaving half an hour early to keep from throwing a screaming hissy fit and storming out...

And the really fucked up thing is that I've agreed to do a second week there... to get everything done that they want me to get done, I probably will have to... although if I can't work out a way to either simplify what I have to do or get them to give me better instructions, I don't know if I really want to come back and do the second week.

Part of the problem is I'm really not a huge fan of doing publishing grunt work... yes, I know this is why they employed me, but when the stuff is either so messed up like the stuff I'm dealing with at the moment is, then I lose interest in it REAL fast...

Urgh...

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firsts

TheOtherAndrew asked if anyone was up for this meme, and since I have no Camera Club tonight, and there are no decent movies on, which means I'm staying home and have nothing to blog about, I figured I'd give it a shot...

First town you ever lived in: Elizabeth Vale, South Australia... which is basically were I lived until I moved to North Adelaide when I was 21...

First album owned: I don't know that I owned any "albums" per say... definitely nothing vinyl worth mentioning... I know the first CD I ever bought was Michael Jackson's Dangerous...

First pub gig seen: Framing Watson... although I don't remember where any more... it might have been the Adelaide Uni Bar... Ludo and I were Framing Groupies for a while, so we saw them a LOT, in a lot of different places...

First Celebrity crush: Hmmm... I think that would have been Michael J Fox...

First film you remember seeing: I belive it was Popeye... I know I saw it, and I kind of remember it... I would have been about six at the time...

First time you drank alcohol: I don't drink much, so you would think I would remember this... I remember the first time I got drunk... but not my first drink... it was probably something lame like Kaluha and Milk though...

First paying job: Word Processing Officer for a business college when I was 20...

First kiss: So long as we're talking french kiss... my first ever kiss would have been Natalie... leaning against the frame at the end of her bed... I still couldn't tell you why though, I knew I was gay, she knew I was gay... I kissed her anyway... but the first time kissing a boy.... that was David, on the dancefloor of Mars Bar... and that's a story all on it's own actually... my first kiss and my first blowjob all on the same night...

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