movies: scott pilgrim vs the world

scott pilgrim vs the world - get the hot girl, defeat her evil exes, hit love where it hurtsSome confessions to start off with...
  1. This is the first Michael Cera movie I've ever seen.
  2. I did wonder whether this would be too "Gen Y" for me
  3. I haven't read the graphic novels... yet...
  4. Scott Pilgrim vs The World had me at the pixelated Universal logo
Seriously, this movie was very, very awesome!

The music, the video game vernacular, the on-screen text for some of the sound effects, the fight sequences, the fact that Scott Pilgrim just knows kung fu for no good reason when the first battle begins... just, everything.

And why did nobody think to tell me that Scott has a gay best friend? Kieran Culkin kicks ass (although sadly not literally) as the very snippy and slutty Wallace Wells... very cool.

I just found myself smiling through most of this movie...

Michael Cera was great... he does seem to have made a career out of playing exactly this character, skinny little nervous lovelorn dorks... but it works for the character, and there are definitely some moments where he breaks that mould.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is mysterious yet engaging as Scott's dream girl Ramona (I think I like her with blue hair best of all), I expect to see big things in the future from Ellen Wong after her turn as the uniquely named Knives Chau... and almost without exception the Seven Evil Exes are fantastic (the Japanese twins are a little underdeveloped, but oddly their battle is one of my favourites), especially an unrecognisable Brandon Routh as Vegan Todd and the scenery chewing Chris Evans as movie star caricature Lucas Lee.

It's bouncy, it's funny, it's sweet, it's hyper and it's very definitely entertaining...

yani's rating: 5 evil exes out of 5

unconscious mutterings 396

It's been a long and trying day... yet busy, so it really didn't feel that long...

Unconscious Mutterings...
  1. Bangs :: Big
  2. Diaper :: American
  3. Coffee table :: Books
  4. Cops :: Robbers
  5. Matches :: Flame
  6. 250 :: Quarter
  7. Hurricane :: Katrina
  8. Bad :: Man
  9. Confirmation :: Email
  10. Fiber :: Cereal
Current Mood:

sunday city wanderings

benzo's lightbox jamie blank rundle lantern
I really needed to get out of the house today... the sun was shining, my neighbours were making with the "crash boom bang", playing whiny tuneless ethnic music and getting on my nerves... so I took myself off to the city with only some vague ideas about where I was going.

Part of the idea was to park in the carpark near the Rundle Street Market but that was very full, so I managed to snag a park a few streets away and walked back to the market...

Although honestly, the Rundle Street Market just keeps getting lamer and lamer... I'm hoping it will pick up by Christmas, but not holding my breath.

I wandered around, not with any great speed or destination in mind, just wandering... which was nice, and headed down the Mall, then did a loop around Currie Street to Light Square, then back down Hindley Street where I discovered that the Toy Soldier boys were given control of the light boxes in Blyth Street. And one of the shots is an uber-refined and stylised version of Jamie, the piece I bought last year.

As I've mentioned a few times before, finding new Toy Soldier pieces of street art always makes me excited (not in a weird way)... so that was a nice addition to the day.

Then I had a leisurely wander back down the Mall, stopped off for a bubble tea, looked at underwear and books and headed back to Rundle Street.

After some random stops and detours for more photographs (including something for the new Spring template... woohoo), I got back to the car and since I knew that Ma had to see her doctor for some test results (on a Sunday, who knew), I sat on a wall on Flinders Street soaking up the sunlight and waiting to see if the doctor was running on time. He wasn't, so I gave up and came home again.

On the upside, the test results were all fine.

And I had a very lovely day, although I am feeling a little weird at the moment.

Current Mood:

all over the place saturday

shopper crossingSomehow, even when our Saturday Shopping Adventures seem like they should end fairly early, there comes a certain point in the day when time just seems to run away from us...

Ma had to take her car into Mr Mechanic Man again (to fix something they needed to order a part for), so for the third weekend in a row I tootled down the road in my car to meet Ma at the supermarket.

When I got up and finally took a look out of the window there was fog... and I couldn't see the end of the road in either direction... I love fog... although I've never had to drive in it. Fortunately I still haven't, since by the time I was ready to go the fog had cleared out of North Adelaide. There was still a band of fog around the supermarket but that cleared up by the time we were finished.

The mechanic said that Ma's car would only take half an hour, so she went off to pick it up while I headed back here to unpack and wait for her.

There really wasn't anything we needed or anywhere we especially wanted to go, so we ended up heading down to Marion, since we haven't been down there in a while.

And it was about the same as usual... we wandered up, we wandered down, we wandered up and we wandered down again... looked in all the usual places, stopped for a Boost and that was pretty much it...

On the way back we decided to stop off at The Christmas Shop... because, you know, it's August... and you never know what new stock they might have in. And yes, I managed to find two new little toy soldiers... and they were selling out some Christmas themed classic Winnie The Pooh plushes... so I couldn't resist Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore, since they're "my boys"...

Actually I think it might be time to reread the books again... although I'm not completely sure where they are...

Then (after some confusion over direction and where the correct road is) we ended up wandering along King William Road at Hyde Park (which, now that I think about it, is where the time disappeared), which also didn't really result in anything...

And then we called in at the 24 Hour Bakery to get some lunch...

So a bit of an all over the place day, and with no real accomplishments...

Current Mood:

photo friday: headless

headless street art paste upIt's been a very long week, although in contrast to yesterday when I was essentially the lone wolf on deck for the whole afternoon, today everybody was back, which was kinda nice.

I did spend the whole day footling around with PowerPoint again though... which would be fine, even if PowerPoint is actually the work of Satan, if it wasn't for the fact that I'd doing all this footling for a group who are scatty at best and are only giving me vague instructions.

The same group also gained another member this week who's just about as gay as gay can be... and I get the feeling it's going to get really old really fast... normally if you want to fly your freak flag, then more power to you, but I'm not a fan of big sissy princesses...

And that's about as interesting as my life has been this week...

Current Mood:

random spartacus hotness

The new series Spartacus: Blood and Sand seems like a perfect candidate for today's Random Hotness, if only because the show's mandate appears to be 50% "Shamelessly rip off the slow motion action from 300" and 50% "Show men with very hot bodies all oiled up and sweaty wearing very small and well packed loincloths"...

It's just a shame the story is pretty much crap...

But I did find myself watching it yesterday partly for the aforementioned well packed loincloths and partly for Jai Courtney who plays the gladiator Varro... although I can't decide whether he's hotter almost naked and oiled or just looking like a normal person...

spartacus - varro jai courtney

Current Mood:

unicorn street art

smoking unicorn footpath unicorn by tessThere's nothing like finding themes in street art...

These two unicorns were at the top end of Hosier Lane in Melbourne... and I didn't even realise until later that the one at the top was smoking and had "sex" written in the corner...

Current Mood:

movies: salt

salt - who is salt?If it hadn't been for Angelina Jolie, then Salt would have been a particularly by-the-numbers thriller/Bournian movie. Not that it's not all stuff we've seen before, it just feels slightly fresher with a woman in the lead roll.

But I don't know if it would have been as good with anybody other than Angelina (I definitely wouldn't have been interested if the original lead, Tom Cruise, had still been the star, but I also can't really think of another woman who could have pulled it off as well). You believe her when she's being sleek and elegant just as much as when she's kicking some guy's ass seven ways till Sunday.

Even so, there were a few stunt sequences where I definitely had a moment of thinking "seriously?"... but I'm not sure whether that was just because they were just so over the top and unbelievable, or whether it was having a woman indulge in a lot of those thriller clichés that made them seem even more cliché than usual.

And since I knew that the movie was originally written for a man and was then completely reworked when Angelina came on board I did find myself wondering if the movie had really been changed that much beyond a few pronouns, a change of brother to sister and swapping Salt's wife for a husband.

The plot is fairly engaging (one possibly substantial plot hole at the end not withstanding), I will admit to being slightly confused a few times as to where Salt's allegiances actually lay... and I was slightly surprised by part of the ending... but some of the action sequences had me very much in the moment, even if a number of them did suffer from that modern affliction, Bourne Cameraitis...

And the ending has "We want to make a sequel" written all over it!

All things considered though, not a bad addition to the genre.

yani's rating: 2 barefoot agents out of 5

unconscious muttering 395

There's something quite pleasant about being surrounded by the crotches of fit young uni students while seated on the bus...

Although it's always the one crotch that you don't want anything to do with that comes crashing towards you because it's owner refuses to hang onto anything and the driver is an idiot...

Unconscious Mutterings...
  1. Leads :: Electrical
  2. Concierge :: Michael J Fox
  3. Thousand :: Hundreds and
  4. Engines :: Tank
  5. Argument :: Pointless
  6. 2006 :: Blur
  7. Knot :: Scout
  8. Fuck :: Me
  9. Handsome :: Man
  10. Ridge :: Brook
Current Mood:

saturday with voting, schaffas and ikea

voteA couple of days ago I came up with a really witty comment about the election and voting that compared it to the Wicked Witches from The Wizard of Oz...

There was a whole thing about our fearless leaders and dropping a house on one and melting the other with a bucket of water... but I didn't write it down and now I have no idea what it was...

It was amusing though, honest...

Anyway...

I know it's democracy at work and all that, but honestly, the sausage sizzle we had after we voted was more interesting to me than the actual process of voting.

I'm sure there should be some repercussions to either result, but I can't honestly say that my life changed in any measurable way after the last Federal Election, and since neither major party can truly be said to be the lesser of two evils I can't wait until all the hoopla is over and done with and I can go back to happily ignoring politics.

Once we were done with our democratic duty we headed off for Supermarket Safari time.

There wasn't much excitement there either, unless you count the fact that I'm going to be making a big pot of soup tomorrow. No, I didn't think it was that exciting either...

After we were finished with the weekly shop, and we'd done the usual unpacking and whatnot, we decided to head into the city. Even though we've been in the city for the past two weekends we haven't really been able to have a good look around since we've had to run off to the mechanic to pick up various cars at the drop of the proverbial hat.

So today was a bit of a slow wander and a bit of an in-depth poke around. And it also proved that sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time...

We parked in our usual spot and decided to head down the Mall and part of Rundle St before swinging around and coming back. Our turnaround destination was Urban Cow Studio, which we often say we should visit but very seldom manage it.

Then we headed back up Rundle Street on the opposite side of the road so we could call into Diamonds Cameras so I could ask about my tripod when I spied the sign for the Schaffas 2 exhibition...

These were some of my favourites...

schaffas 2Schaffas 2
Po-Po by Benzo, A Shadow of Light in the Darkness of Night by Gary Seaman, Akako by Tom Herman,
Waldo by Lorell Lehman, Bipedendaffus Giganteum by Chris Edser
and Wilson's Lesser Schaffasbok by Tait Wilson

I knew the exhibition was around somewhere thanks to Twitter, but I hadn't been able to work out exactly where it was, but it turned out to be in the large open foyer between two offices... and it was doubly lucky because it was the final day of the whole thing.

I knew there were some cool pieces but I didn't know that both Benzo and Gary Seaman were part of the exhibition... so that was a nice surprise. Sadly though, all of the great ones had already been sold... but it just makes me even more determined that at some point I will own one of Gary Seaman's pieces!

Which sounds kinda filthy somehow... which makes it even more appealing...

Anyway...

That done, and a non-committal answer of "we'd need to see your tripod" (which also sounds dirty) when I asked if I could get a new head for it (more filth, I should stop now) we poked around Smiggle a bit (awww geisha cat and ninja dog designs!), Ma very nearly caught a shoplifter in the stationery store next to Smiggle and we wandered about in Borders for a bit.

After stopping off for a bit of a rest and a Boost Juice we ambled back to the car via Haighs since our car park ticket was nearly up...

Since Rockchick decided she wanted to reclaim ownership of the plant I was babysitting for her, I wanted to find a replacement Lucky Bamboo, so we headed down to Ikea for no other reason really than the fact that I knew they had the perfect single stems and the perfect containers...

I also drooled over the bookcases yet again... and crooned "Soon my pretties, soon!" to them... okay, not really, but I did think it...

I did happen to fall under that strange Ikea spell though and bought some brightly coloured plastic cutlery... and I have no idea why...

So essentially that was our Saturday... not exactly high octane, but enjoyable!

Current Mood:

photo friday: melbourne gpo

melbourne gpo on a wet sunday morningThe wet Sunday morning of our Melbourne trip... actually the weather this week has been very similar... lots of rain, lots of wind...

Some random dot points for the week...
  • The wind blows, but my hot water remains (hot)
  • I forgot how much I enjoyed having Rockchick around
  • All my iPhone calendar stuff is now in my Google Calendar so it all syncs
  • Loving this Russell T Davies book to death
  • It hasn't been an overly busy day, but I'm just tired
  • Loaning Rockchick my West Wing DVDs makes me want to watch them again
  • I really need to work out how to get my new bookcases and transport the old ones away
  • Became briefly obsessed with finding different takes on The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai earlier
  • I know there's more, but my brain is completely empty...
Current Mood:

random cameo hotness

I'm fairly sure that this week's Random Hotness was part of a magazine fashion spread... although exactly where escapes me...

I do love period clothing though... or even modern clothing dressed up and pretending to be period clothing. Beyond just loving the stylishness of it all, I think part of it is that feeling that you're going to have to put in some time and effort to undress him... and there's something to be said for the long slow reveal.

cameo man cameo man
Current Mood:

rock chick's return

rock chickSomething of an odd day... good, but odd... mostly due to The Return of Rock Chick!

She's been gone since March last year, so it was a little weird having her back... when I went to let her in, seeing her again felt like it had only been about 5 minutes since I last saw her, and at the same time it feels like it's been about 5000 years...

And completely unintentionally I ended up going through a lot of the stuff that had we were up to while she was away... which was also weird... part "new person induction", part "just like old times".

So we'll see how the dynamic comes together in days to come...

I also had to bug out of work early because the plumber was coming over to relight my hot water (for the 500th time this winter)... and hopefully he fixed the issue that was stopping me from relighting it myself, so when it goes out again during one of the upcoming windy days I'll be able to take care of it.

There is totally nothing like a hot shower when you've been deprived of one for a whole week though... I felt much more human when I was finished, as well as being toasty warm... now just cross your fingers for me and hopefully the water will stay hot...

But I don't feel so bad about having to call him out... he told me that he's out here a lot relighting the hot water heaters... of course that also means that if I'd called about it on Friday or Monday he probably could have come out then, but I'm sure the pilot light would have given up the ghost between times anyway.

Cross your fingers for me though!

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 394

Everybody was very quiet at work today... which always makes me slightly paranoid... so I had to keep reminding myself that not everything is about me...

Oh, and Rockchick is back from 18 months leave tomorrow, so that should be... interesting...

Unconscious Mutterings...
  1. Rhythm :: is a dancer
  2. Baby :: Nobody puts you in a corner
  3. Sanctimonious :: Son of a bitch
  4. I like :: Sleep and quiet and hot water
  5. Constipated :: Laxative
  6. Sleep late :: Hardly ever
  7. Over easy :: Eggs
  8. Erratic :: Driving
  9. Umbrella :: Ella, ella...
  10. You don’t :: Say
Current Mood:

wet and wooly saturday

i found this searching for 'rain'... not exactly sure what its about, but it's damn cute!It has been, and currently continues to be, a nasty old sort of day...

Some rain, lots of cold wind, predominantly grey cloud although there was a little bit of sunshine earlier... and another Saturday that was kinda all over the shop.

In what was very nearly a repeat of last week (although with the players reversed) I headed to the supermarket by myself this morning as it was Ma's turn to drop her car off.

However the mechanic had overslept and unlike last weekend I'm not sure there was anybody she could just leave her keys with... so I lurked around just inside the shopping centre willing Ma to come around the corner of the garage which I could see on the other side of the street.

Took forever...

I also didn't end up getting that much stuff at the supermarket, or at least it felt that way when I was putting it all away later...

And because there didn't seem to be much of a point going too far afield given that we'd have to go and pick Ma's car up at some point we headed back into the city for the second week running, only this time I was doing all the driving.

Turned out to be a reasonably productive trip though... one of the girls at work, Jazz, offered to knit me a scarf, so I went searching high and low for soft scarlet wool, then couldn't make my mind up between getting a ball of scarlet, a ball of lime and a ball of mustard coloured wool or getting a ball of red with these little flecks in and a ball of white with the same little flecks in. While I think the scarlet/lime/mustard one would have been wild, it would also have been much harder to accessorise with appropriately because fewer things would go with it. The red/white/flecks version is going to be cool I think. I'm going to tell her to change swap colours whenever she likes (at the end of a row obviously)... just make random stripes of random thickness... kind of a riff on the Tom Baker Doctor Who scarf (except not quite so long)...

Oh and I saw former Adelaide weatherwoman (is that a word?), movie review and all around personality, Anne Wills in Spotlight. It was weird though, firstly although she is famous for her earrings I don't think I even noticed the earrings she was wearing, and secondly, I had a brief moment where my brain recognised her, but couldn't place the context, so I thought she was somebody I knew for a second and nearly said hello to her... which I'm sure would have been fine, but potentially completely embarrassing!

We went to JB as well as I fell victim to their "Buy 2 get 1 free" sale... well, I bought one, Ma bought one and the free one was one I hear good things about but haven't seen yet. I also finally bit the bullet and asked if they had the last remaining Lonely Planet Six Degrees DVD that I need to complete my collection (Perth), and after much amusing banter with the staff it's now on order and I should hopefully have it in my grubby little hands sometime next week (fingers crossed)... woohoo!

As we left JB Ma wanted to call the mechanic to find out if the car was ready so I was endeavouring to look the number up on my iPhone when they called me (since they seem to have just added Ma's details to my address and phone number)... so that was both weird and handy.

Once we met up back at my place we didn't really know what the hell we wanted to do/where we wanted to go... but since we forgot to take a faulty DVD back to Kmart when we were at West Lakes last week we went with a return visit...

And that was essentially all we did there... wander around, return the DVD and then leave.

We decided to head down the Glenelg to get some lunch at The Orange Spot Bakery (beware, their website has crappy autostart music that can't be turned off... urgh)... and picked a spot down by the ocean to eat our goodies and watch the big grey/green waves crash.

And other than the fact that my steak, bacon and cheese pie was way too salty, it was a nice lunch.

But that was about it really...

Current Mood:

photo friday: faux frog cakes

faux frog cakes - ackland street bakeryThese are possibly the worst imitation Frog Cakes ever snapped in the window of the Ackland Street Bakery... they may also be the only imitation frog cakes ever made. But Ma and I both took one look at them and nearly fell over laughing.

So very bad...

Although if they don't taste like a mouthful of air soaked in sugar then they may actually be ahead of the game. While I love the Frog Cake in theory, every time I have one I remember why it is that I haven't had one in so long.

I decided against going to Nut House drinks tonight. Partly because the pub chosen by Lucretia was five miles away from work, and only opens at 4pm, and sounded like a big fat waste of time... partly because there were other people from work who got invited along, and while I might be fine working with them, I don't really want to have to socialise with them... and partly because I just didn't want to.

Will I get chastised on Monday? Who cares. All I wanted to do was come home, shut the door and relax.

All in all though it was a reasonably good day... even though I did get slightly shortchanged on the amount of porridge and caramelised banana I got from the organic shop, and the side door into work wasn't working so I had to go around the other side... not major disasters... and the porridge was yummy as always.

And while that wasn't necessarily the high point of my day, it's probably a good place to leave it...

Current Mood:

random suited hotness

Another selection from the "Pictures of Mysterious Origin" folder for today's Random Hotness... bare chests, bare feet, black suits and an abandoned building... *le sigh*

I'm guessing they're from some random fashion shoot, and I do know that the guy in the black and white shot is called Reuben...

the boys in black reuben

Current Mood:

thinking about my ancestors

family treeA couple of things have gotten me thinking about my ancestors recently...

During his talk, Stephen Fry mentioned that he'd participated in the UK version of "Who Do You Think You Are?" (which I already knew), but he also mentioned how crazy it was to just focus on, in particular, the male "name" line due to the numbers of people involved.

Just doing some quick math I have to agree with him... going back 20 generations (at 25 years per generation) for a person roughly my age it means that your ancestors stretch back to around the year 1475... and there are 1,048,576 of them (or, in essence, a megabyte of ancestors).

Which is interesting when you consider that it's possible that the entire population of Europe was around 350 million in 1400... if Wikipedia is to be believed... which would mean that 350 modern individuals are related to the entirety of medieval Europe...

So, yes... picking out one ancestor who happens to share the surname with one of your parents seems a little narrow minded... and you may very well be missing out on some very interesting history.

But at the same time I guess it's only natural to want to connect with people who actually share the surname you have now.

I also find it slightly interesting that both my paternal and maternal surnames exist as place names in England (and are about 160km apart)... especially since my paternal surname (which I stopped using when I was 16) is not a particularly common name. But it does make me wonder whether those branches of my family can be traced back to those particular locations.

When I was in Year 8 or Year 9 we had to do a family tree for (I'm guessing) history class... and while I know next to nothing about my father's side of the tree, I did dig up a surprisingly large amount of information about Ma's side just from conversations with my Nanna.

Sadly I don't know where all of that information ended up... I know I did create a very primitive database at some point after handing in my project, and there were both print-outs and some fairly basic hand drawn trees. I'd hope that I never threw it all away...

The other thing that regularly gets me thinking about the ancestors is watching the aforementioned "Who Do You Think You Are?"... and at one point I did sign up for Ancestry.com.au and started to construct a family tree, but there's only so much you can do on a freebie membership.

I must look into that again though!

But there is one particular leaf on the family tree that I would love to know more about.

And that is my mother's father's mother. Emily.

She's definitely an enigma.

The story goes that Emily was never married, and had my maternal grandfather out of wedlock. She then left him to be raised by (from memory) her cousins and disappeared (at least as far as I'm aware).

I always wonder what her story was, who the father was and where her branch of the family goes. And what happened to her afterwards... did she have another family, when and where did she die, that kind of thing. But also where the family tree goes beyond her... there does that branch go...

Maybe I need to track Emily down...

Current Mood:

movies: me and orson welles

me and orson welles - all's fair in love and theaterMe and Orson Welles falls into that category of movie inhabited by Shakespeare in Love, The Producers, Moulin Rouge, Stage Beauty and even to some degree (heaven forbid), the High School Musical series... it's a movie about putting on a play.

Although I don't know that in any of those other examples the play when it finally arrives has given me goosebumps.

But the category of movie isn't the only link to the HSM series... the very lovely Zac Efron also stars in this movie... and there's actually a line at the beginning where he's asked if he's done much singing or acting (I can't remember exactly), to which he replies something along the lines of "only in school". I don't know if it was actually a reference to his earlier Disney work, but it made me smile.

Zac does fairly well as the young man who falls under the spell of Orson Welles and the chaotic production of Julius Caesar... and there's no denying that he's sometimes hard to look away from when he's on screen... but that may be because he's so damn pretty. But he does work well as the ingenue (in most senses of the word in fact).

Sadly he and Claire Danes have very little romantic chemistry together (although their scenes together are fairly sweet) which does work against the latter half of the movie somewhat. However, while Claire may be the traditional love interest in the movie, I really think this movie boils down to exactly what the title says... it's about Efron's character and Christian McKay's outstanding portrayal of Welles.

In essence, that's where the love story is... Efron's character is seduced into this strange and intense world of theatre by Welles and it's that storyline that has more depth and interest to it than the supposed love story.

The movie is also filled with a range of character actors (most of whom are English, even though the movie is set in New York) who could have stepped right out of photographs of the period. In fact a number of them have been in other period films...

Ben Chaplin (from the aforementioned Stage Beauty), Zoe Kazan (Revolutionary Road), Leo Bill (the obnoxious fiancé from Alice in Wonderland) and Kelly Reilly (Mrs Henderson Presents) all serve to add that degree of realism to the cast.

I suppose my only complaint is that since I watched Ed Wood on the weekend, I knew that Welles directed Citizen Kane when he was 26, and this movie takes place when he's only 22... but while I guess that McKay could technically pass for mid twenties, I would suggest that 22 is pushing it a little and not surprisingly the character feels much more like McKay's actual age of 35.

There's actually a line something to the effect of Orson being "a young man" though, which did make me stop and go "really?". Although I'm not sure the relationship between Efron and McKay would have worked quite so well if Welles had felt that young (plus Efron was only a year younger than Welles was supposed to be when the movie was filmed).

Some of the best scenes in the movie however happen during the opening night of Julius Caesar... while there are only snippets shown, I honestly had goosebumps during parts of it.

But other than that this isn't really a movie of high highs and low lows... it's sweet, watchable and funny and looks fantastic but it's not amazing.

yani's rating: 3 quadruple spaces out of 5

unconscious mutterings 393

Today very much seemed to be the day that wouldn't end... it just kept going and going and going and going...

Unconscious Mutterings...
  1. Coma :: Patient
  2. Aristotle :: Philosophy
  3. Pink eye :: South Park
  4. Expensive :: Savings
  5. Dancer :: Ballet
  6. Lipstick :: Lesbian
  7. Buffer :: Zone
  8. Stilettos :: Heels
  9. Booming :: Voice
  10. Rap :: Music

Current Mood:

very bitsy saturday

melbourne shopping trolley street artWould you believe I found shopping trolley related street art in Melbourne...

And seriously, who goes to all the trouble of creating a shopping trolley stencil?

Anyway, it's been a very, very, very bitsy day... not unproductive I guess, just bitsy.

First off, I had my car booked in for a service, so after struggling to swap over the rego sticker first thing this morning (the old one came off fine, but it left a bunch of sticky gunk on the window), I headed down to see Mr Mechanic Man.

Turns out though that he was running late, so I left my car with the slightly dopey straight boy mechanics and went across the road to meet Ma at the stoopidmarket.

I did remarkably well for a Saturday after we've been away, I actually had a shopping list and everything, even though there wasn't that much on it.

It didn't really take that long either... we pretty much whipped around the supermarket and were on our way back to my place by about 8:30 or so.

After doing the regular unpacking stuff (and letting Ma flick through all of my Melbourne photos) we headed into the city. Miss Oh Livia just had a birthday and was given a laptop, so Ma decided to indoctrinate her into the world of Crumpler with a Reginald Transfer...

Then we went into Myer to look at luggage for us.... my only problem is that I'm somewhat torn between getting the Crumpler Mock Tudor and getting one of those hard shell cases (not necessarily Samsonite, but I do like a lot of their stuff). If I did get the Crumpler suitcase I would be a little sad that it wouldn't be red like my three other existing Crumpler products (Reginald Transfer, Thirsty Al and Barney Rustle Blanket... I love the names they have for their stuff), although the blue and orange version would definitely stand out on a luggage carousel.

I also found this really soft, really wide cotton scarf downstairs in the Dangerfield department, and, well, as I seem to have a scarf addiction this year, it's currently around my neck...

As we were leaving Myer I got a phone call from the mechanic to say my car was ready to be picked up, so once we found a card for Miss Oh we headed off to pick it up.

And still no Mr Mechanic Man... but the slightly dopey mechanic boy who served me was nice enough.

On the way back from the garage I spotted what I thought was another library book sale at the Prospect Town Hall, so after I dropped the car off Ma and I went back to take a look. Turns out the sale isn't until the end of August, but we did wander up and down part of Prospect Road which was interesting...

We also parked the car next to possibly the most interesting and weird piece of public art I've seen in a while...

showerhead gardenThat's right... recycled showerheads collected from Prospect residents, turned into a "garden"... actually overall it was very effective and quite groovy looking... weird as hell though.

After we'd done a wander we headed off to Arndale without any real aim in mind...

While we were waiting to be served in The Reject Shop there was this guy who was all kinda of teasing. He had to have known he was being a tease, I'm sure he knew he was gorgeous, but he was all low slung jeans, half an ass of white underwear on show and a tee shirt that seemed to ride up with a mind of it's own. Very distracting!

As seems to be the case when we go down to Arndale of late, we ended up heading down to West Lakes... again, with no real aim in mind... and West Lakes was probably a less focused trip since I don't think we came away with anything other than some sour dough rolls and some lunch.

It doesn't sound like much really, but it was kind of a long day...

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photo friday: mixed elements

mixed elements at federation squareThe mixing of elements at Federation Square... grass and stone and metal... and a bike...

A week ago we were sitting in the movies watching I Love You Phillip Morris... and as busy and chaotic as last Friday was, it was 100 times more fun than this Friday. In fact this whole "week" has been a little intense... even though it was only 3 days long.

Fortunately all the work stuff came together okay in the end and I got a phonecall just as I was walking out the door to say that they liked the finished product... so woohoo!

However tonight hasn't quite worked out as intended, and it may still fall in a heap yet.

*sigh*

I'm sure there's some element of post-holiday letdown in there too...

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random scallie hotness

I'm dipping into the Hoodie file for today's Random Hotness... but hoodie with a scallie vibe...

And for those of you unaware of the "scallie", it's an English term:
"Scallie or Scally, is originally short for Scallywag, but is now most-often used in the context of a slang term for a hooligan youth subculture, similar to 'chav', but with different origins. It describes mostly young, "dole class" people."
Hence the hat, the hoodies, the underwear and the spraypaint... although I'm sure that the fantasy is better than the reality...

hoodie/scallie hoodie/scallie
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unconscious mutterings 391

I'm really, really, really not ready to go back to work tomorrow... I may call in dead...

Unconscious Mutterings...
  1. Sexting :: Media hype
  2. Corrected :: Spelling
  3. Rewind :: Be Kind
  4. Heard :: But not seen
  5. Amazon :: Dot Com
  6. Running :: Track
  7. Illegal :: Immigrant
  8. Tracked :: Package
  9. Generate :: Paperwork
  10. Towel :: Bathhouse
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melbourne: finale

suburban adelaide from above the city of adelaide from above
the view from my 25th floor window my cicada pendant
I will admit to cheating the top two photos in this post... they're not from today's trip, they're from last year... in fact I didn't get my camera out very much at all today, and I didn't take any photos on the plane.

This wasn't a photo-heavy trip though... only 526 shots taken from getting on the plane on Friday to getting off it today... which sounds like a lot, but last year I took 858... okay, even so it is a lot.

The other two shots in today's post are the view from my 25th floor hotel room that I snapped this morning and the cicada pendant I bought yesterday.

Speaking of the hotel, I was being a little bit Secret Squirrel about the hotel, but we stayed in the Citadines Apart'hotels on Bourke Street. There is definitely something to be said for a hotel that has only been open for a month... everything felt very fresh and new compared with some of the places we've stayed in.

There's also something to be said for having a giant floor to ceiling window that isn't really closely overlooked by any other buildings... you know, for being a bit of an exhibitionist...

And just on general thoughts from Melbourne... if I had to sum up the cities I've been to as personalities or types, Sydney is sexy and sophisticated, Adelaide is casual but Melbourne is indie. Still sexy, but indie and stylish. But at the same time, very impatient. And also lively.

Every time we go to Melbourne we end up frequenting certain areas over and over and over due to the location of the hotel... previously it has been Spencer Street, Swanston Walk and Collins Street, but this time it was the Bourke Street Mall... not that we stopped anywhere in the Mall really, but we did keep walking along it on our way to and from places.

After I finished writing up my blog posts last night I started to pack my suitcase... now I don't really know why, because I didn't buy that much stuff that needed to go in my suitcase, but everything seemed so much harder to get into my case when I was repacking than it did when I packed it all originally. To make it even worse, I packed everything away and then realised I hadn't packed any of the clothes I was wearing... grrrr...

Sadly because we had a reasonably early flight this morning we really didn't have the time to do anything before we had to head to the airport... originally we were going to try and go to breakfast down the street, but it all seemed like it was going to be hard work so we did our own thing in our rooms and I had the cereal they gave us on the plane on Friday.

Once I'd gone over my room half a dozen times to ensure I hadn't forgotten anything I said goodbye to the 25th floor and headed down to Ma's room. I realised last night that I hadn't actually checked us in, and when I mentioned it to Ma I pulled out my iPhone and did it there and then on the spot, which turned out to be VERY handy... then once it was getting close to the time the car was going to pick us up we headed downstairs, settled my broadband bill and went outside to wait.

Now, I KNOW that I booked the car for 8:30... I wrote it down on a little sticky note while I was in one of the meeting rooms at work and everything... but the closer it got to 8:30 the more I was getting antsy... and then it passed 8:30... 8:35... 8:40. It wasn't helped by the fact that just up the street from the hotel is the entrance to a car park, and with it being Monday morning and all, cars were streaming into the car park. So every time we thought that that next car could have been for us it would turn off.

Once it hit 8:40 I called the car company and she said that according to them the driver was due at 8:45 which I know is bullcrap... but shortly after that the driver called me and I'm still not completely sure what he said to me other than "5 minutes", which I took to mean he would be there in around 5 minutes.

Five minutes passed... 10 minutes passed... 15 minutes passed. So by this point it's coming up on 9am, and the car should have been there at 8:30. Not impressed!

Thankfully he showed up at 9, but then that meant we had a half hour drive ahead of us and I was starting to panic that maybe we wouldn't make the flight, even though it wasn't until 10:10.

But he got us to the airport by about 9:25 or so which wasn't too bad, although I think he was speeding most of the way (next time I think I'm going to ask for Carlos on both trips... he's chatty, but at least he's punctual!).

And I was incredibly thankful that I checked in online because when we got there the normal line for check in was ENORMOUS! But I told the nice lady at the end of the line that I'd checked in online and she directed us to the two counters at the end... which had almost nobody at them (score!).

In fact, I think it took longer to go through security than it did to check our bags in.

We did only have to wait about 10 minutes before the flight started boarding though... and I think I made the day of the woman checking the boarding passes, she'd never had an iPhone check-in before. I didn't mention that it was my first time too!

Did they ever used to load planes in an orderly fashion? Like letting everyone who has a window seat on first, then the next seat, then the aisle seat? It seems like it would be a faster system than what happens now... same with disembarking...

It wasn't a great flight... I'm not sure if it was because I was in an "inbetween windows" seat and ended up having to pull down the shade because the sun was making me quite warm or what, but I felt decidedly green around the gills pretty much the whole flight. I know Mythbusters disproved most of the travel sickness remedies but I may have to try some of those pills out next time, just to see if it makes any difference.

Once we landed I started to feel better though and by the time we'd collected our bags and got into the long and windy taxi line I was mostly okay.

It's always a little worrying when your taxi driver's ID photo looks like a child molester's mugshot... and he fidgets a lot...

He also ended up taking us on a bit of a ride, which I'm not overly pleased about... part of the detour was fine, there were road works on one of the roads and it was easier to go around them, but then he took the less direct route via King William Street rather than Light Square... grrr... stupid taxi driver.

It was nice to be home though... I didn't particularly miss my little house, but at least I came home to hot water, so that helps.

And all that was left to do was unpack...

minimal melbourne bootyYou know, so I could find all the interesting stuff in amongst useless bits of paper and dirty clothes... although the Chewie "voice" figure is to add to the other noise making things at work and at least one of the postcards is for one of the girls at work.

Right next to the postcards is a rock I found while we were at Southbank yesterday, and I just picked it up as a reflex... and proceeded to carry it around in my pocket all day long... in fact it's in my pocket now... don't ask...

I've pretty much spent the rest of the day making a trip to the supermarket for supplies, starting a little Tim Burton film festival and dicking around on the laptop.

And there will likely be more of the same tomorrow... as well as properly going through all the photos I took...

Oh, and for the record... here are the posts for Day One, Day Two and Day Three...

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