Friday, February 29, 2008

A Horst Is A Horst



Of course, of course.


Le sigh. I hope one day to be able to take photos as half as well as Horst P. Horst did. The world needs glamour.

Meet & Greet

Last night was the GLBTI Blogger meet at the Courthouse Hotel. I had booked a table under cover, but still outside, and as it turned out the weather didn't really smile upon us. It was fairly chilly and wet, and even though we stayed dry (for the most part) it could have been more pleasant.

The warmth of the company went a long way to making it fun though. There were quite a few people I already knew, Riayn and Marcellous who I had both met once before at Sydney Blogger Meet, James (of course) who I have known for a few years, Grant who I have known for more than 20 years, Therin who I have known for almost the same length of time, my fellow knitting buddy Mary-Helen, and Panther who's house I once went to a party at but hadn't seen for about 20 years! Small world indeed. Ninglun and Mike I hadn't met before, and their blogs were completely new to me.

Here's a mousketeers' roll call of the attendees, and check out these blogs because there are some great reads:

James has written a really good recap of the evening, with his thoughts. I had a really great time, and it was fantastic to see such a diverse group of people. We talked about our blogs, about plagiarism on The Interweb, knitting (yay, Mike is a knitter too!), travel, tv, all sorts of things.

The conversation flowed easily, which has been my experience with meeting other bloggers in the past. I guess blogging really is an extension of our desire to communicate after all, and as such bloggers are generally pretty good communicators. Even though some of us are a little more shy in person than on our blogs, I guess because our own blogs give as a safe space to write our thoughts in (interweb trolls aside).

James, Riayn and I hung at the pub out until about 9pm, by which time it was raining fairly heavily and the cold had driven us inside. I made the short walk home in the rain, having had a fun night and looking forward to all the new blogs I now have to read!

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Thunderbolt And Lightning. Very, Very Frightening Me.

Dear Queen,
(the band, not the person... or persons),
As entertaining as "Bohemian Rhapsody" is, I think you'll find that it's actually lightning bolts and thunder claps. I mean, "thunderbolt"? Oh, and maybe "very, very frightening TO me" would be a sentence worth your consideration.
Cordially, TOA.


It has been raining on and off for most of the day here today, with storms forecast. A short while ago, completely without warning, there was a lightning flash and simultaneous humungous crash of thunder. Louder than I have ever heard before, and closely followed by flickering electricity, and various building and car alarms. Yup, I think the building scored a direct hit.

It was enough to make me exclaim Fuck! at the top of my lungs, let me tell you.

I wonder what the good Christians here at The Big Christian Charity that I work for have to make of that? I think we just got smited*. I don't care what they say, I am NOT taking the blame for this. Not this time.

* Smote? Smitten?

Colour Inspiration

Oh man, I have a new obsession! Ever since I saw this on Apartment Therapy earlier today I've been looking through all the entries on Kris's Color Stripes blog.







Kris is an artist and fashion designer in Italy who takes favourite photos and deconstructs them into colour palettes. Because most of the photos are of nature, what you end up with are quite harmonious palettes.







So fantastic! I just mentally redecorated my house about 10 times over!

[All photos and palettes from Kris's Color Stripes blog.]

Self Inflicted

Another Thursday, another (slight) hangover. Ay dios mio, I need to ease up on those midweek beers with my homies. Homos... Whatever...

And tonight more beers! Um, yay. The GLBTI Blogger Meet is on tonight. My only concern right now though is the weather, storms are forecast for today and we are going to be outside in a beer garden. Under cover, but still outside. Oops. I'm sure it'll be fine, right! ::crosses fingers::



I'm really looking forward to it. I have already met about half of the people intending to come along, but there's going to be some new faces in there. I've been to a few blogger meets of various kinds, and with the exception of a few freaky "I'm going to blog to make a fortune, because people will pay to read anything" types (I kid you not), everyone I've met so far has been pretty cool and interesting.

Oh crap, that means the pressure is on for me to try and be cool and interesting...

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Ummm, If You Say So!



Dirty.

[Via Vintage Ads]

Urban Archeology In Newtown

Over the past few weeks I've been taking my camera with me almost everywhere I go, and I snapped these pics while wandering the back streets and lanes of my suburb Newtown. It's amazing how much you can find within 5 minutes of home, if you look hard enough. I particularly love the layers of this place. Paint over paint, signs of new occupation over old, of people making their marks.




There's no stopping puffy.




Or bust?




Slightly crazed in Newtown. I know how it feels!



[I'm having some firewall issues with Flickr on my work computer at the moment, so I haven't posted these to Flickr. But as alway, you can click these pics to see the full sized version.]

Absolute Alliteration!







More vintage pulp fun courtesy of BookScans.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Still Getting My Ass Kicked

By work. Ay dios mio! I'm so used to doing the bare minimum working at my own pace that to have to sort out this complicated mess I mentioned yesterday, whilst working to a deadline, is well and truly kicking my ass. Boring, right? I know.

On the upside one of my team mates here at work just left on a bakery run. Mmmmmmm, fat.

So what else do I have to tell you? Let me see...

Still obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance: Australia, even though I stopped blogging about it. (Until now, I guess.) All I can say, the judges got it wrong last night. Rhiannon and JD should have gone home.

I watched the Oscars last night. I thought the telecast was a little flat. Jon Stewart was very funny, but the audio was a little weird in parts. You couldn't hear the announcements of who was presenting each award, for instance. But one word for Katherine Heigl:



The word is GORGEOUS.

I made risotto for dinner last night, and I made enough for two meals. Then of course it was so good I ended up scarfing down most of it. I'm a pig. A pig who's also a good cook, that is.

My boss has the radio playing in his office, and right now it's playing Celine Friggin' Dion. [hate]

I wish she'd hurry with those pastries.

All The Fishes In The Sea, Couldn't Be Happier Than You And Me

Curious fact of the day: there is an International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest.



True.

[Link via things magazine.]

Trend Watch







Clowns.


Somehow even the pretty ones are a bit scary.

Monday, February 25, 2008

However

...so that I don't appear dour after my little rant earlier, can I just say that a night that involves a) the So You Think You Can Dance: Australia results show, and b) The Oscars makes for such a fagalicious night of tv that I want to squeeeee! and inadvertantly moisten my knickers just a little. Seriously.

Does Not Compute

Oh my dears. I was feeling reasonably upbeat this morning when I sat at my desk and turned on my computron. Ugh, was.

(I say reasonably upbeat because I'd had a bit of a weird weekend. I had a really nice time at a function on Saturday afternoon, got rather drunk and spent the rest of Saturday night sobering up. In fact I promised my friend Graeme I'd write a blog post about Saturday but I'm not in the right headspace at the moment.

Then I went to my regular knitting group on Sunday and nobody showed up, so I got kind of shitty and frustrated and ended up feeling like I'd wasted an entire afternoon. In fairness the knitting group is one of those drop-in things that people come and go at, so I didn't have a real right to be ticked off, but the reality is that sitting alone at a table for 6 for 45 minutes in a crowded beer garden, while everybody else who is looking for a table gives you the stink eye, is officially no fun.)

Anyhoo, back to today. So after posting my previous post early this morning about the GLBTI Blogger Meet I started a task here at work that is so mind numbingly tedious and frustrating that if I actually told you in detail, well all your synapses would simulatneously explode in misguided attempt at self-preservation.



The short description is to do with Income & Expenditure reports, with us carefully informing our head office of where each item we bank needs to be allocated, and with them apparently shredding everything we send them and then randomly reassembling them into something that uses the same source material, but bears no relation to the spirit (or meaning) of the original. My task is kind of like looking at the original and looking at the end result and trying to reconcile the two. Fun!

I think my own synapses started committing hari-kiri some hours ago...

GLBTI Blogger Meet

Recently James and I were chatting about having a GLBTI (gay, lesbian, bi, trans, intersex) Blogger Meet-up to coincide with the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney this weekend.



If you happen to be in Sydney this Thursday, are any colour of the glbti rainbow, and either have a blog or are thinking of starting one, then please come along! We made it an early start so that people can come straight from work if they wish, and stay or go on to dinner etc.

James has created a page with more information, and as James suggests it might be nice to leave a comment if you plan on coming, so that we can get a rough idea of numbers. Hope to see you there!

Friday, February 22, 2008

Quiet Times

Is it just me, or has the blogsphere (for want of a better term) seemed a bit quiet this week?



I have no empirical data. None. I haven't measured the depth and breadth of anything, checked the click through rates of anything else, the frequency of this, the rarity of that, looked under the hood or taken a pulse. I am without data. But it kind of seems like some of my favourite blogs have been a bit quite of late.

Oh sure, it was a public holiday in the US at the start of the week. I get that. The international date line, times zones and such magical things also means that traffic here is usually pretty quiet on a Monday, as much of the Northern Hemisphere is still enjoying their Sunday.

Anyhoo, it's just a feeling. Posting on some of my favourite blogs has been a bit quiet this week, and some blogs don't seem to have had a lot of comments this week. Am I right, or is my judgement questionable?

[Cartoon by Dave Walker at We Blog Cartoons.]

Do The Happy Dance



For yea verily today art Friday, and tomorrow art Saturday. Rejoice!

Actually I have a bunch of things to be gratefull for today. Pear and pecan loaf, and a good black coffee, just for starters. Warm weather. A string of better night's sleep this week (and if I've just jinxed myself I will have to give myself a stern talking to). Handsome men to look at on the train ride to work this morning. A fantastic crisp apple.

You know, good stuff.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Whorls

I took my camera for a little spin at lunch time and got shots of some of the roses growing down the street from my office. I cranked the lens aperture open as far as it would go (in this case F1.8) to get as shallow a depth of field as possible, to give the soft dreamy quality.

If all you heard was blah blah, don't worry about the technical stuff. Just enjoy the pretties!

Whorls

Unfolding

I'm really pleased with the results. I hope you like them!

Smorgasbord!


Danish athletes performing in Washington, DC. October 2, 1923.


Tasty.

[Via Shorpy]

Working


  • Number of coffees drunk: 2
  • Number of glasses of water drunk: 4
  • Number of caesar salads eaten: 1
  • Number of emails read: 5
  • Number of websites visited: innumerable
  • Number of times complained of headache: 8?, 10?
  • Number of times told unsympathetic co-worker that she wasn't a very nice person: 1
  • Number of chocolate biscuits eaten: 1 (very good one)
  • Number of bits of work done: handfull


[Cartoon by Dave Walker from We Blog Cartoons]

Now For My Next Trick!

Along with being able to fold space, raise the dead, and make fashion work, we of The Gays persuasion have a new trick. You're welcome! Oh, and tremble before us.

Please Tiptoe

Mamma's got a bijou hangover this morning.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Pink Can Be For Boys Too. Sometimes. Just Like Blue Can Be For Girls.

I find these pictures that I found on designboom fascinating but kind of oddly depressing. The story behind the pics, to quote designboom:

Korean artist Jeongmee Yoon's 'pink and blue project' was inspired by her daughter. She would only wear pink and buy pink toys. She found this to be a common theme in Korea, the US and around the world. When photographing girl's [sic] in their world of pink, she realized that boys shared the same phenomenon except in a different hue: blue. The objects are arranged in the child's room and photographed in a square format. Jeongmee Yoon was born in Seoul and lives in New York.







Wow, first off these kids have a lot of stuff. I find the pink is for girls and blue is for boys thing a bit dispiriting and sad. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, I know all kids like to try and discover gender and sexuality issues by modelling based on stereotypes. But wow, this is like beyond a simple preference for a colour don't you think? It just seems so... rigid. So deeply enmeshed in a societal gender role.

It kind of makes me want to go in and take a few things from the girl's room and a few thing's from the boy's room and play switcheroo. Maybe show that there's fun to be had in accessorising that Superman outfit with a pink tiara and some clip on earrings. Or that Barbie would have lots more fun if she occasionally broke out and wrapped herself up in a superhero cape.

Charming Indeed

I'm going to tackle a little D.I.Y. job for home tonight. I think I mentioned this before, but a few weeks back I scored a couple of free cork pinup boards from work as part of a big clean out. Last week when I was on holidays I finally got a chance to visit the super cute studio store of Prints Charming, and I bought a couple of co-ordinating fabrics to cover the boards in.




Neatly packaged.


I really wanted to hide the ugly brown corkiness of the boards, and I thought that once I'd covered them in something nice I'd put one of these in my bedroom and one in the kitchen. Over the years I've amassed quite a few postcards and bits of ephemera, and I also wanted somewhere to stick up design ideas and stuff.





So I bought 2 fabrics in a light, fresh green colourway that should go nicely in my house and add a bit of punch. (I'm a bit more in love with the retro star design than the hibiscus inspired one I've decided, but I still like both of them.) I started the satisfying task of staple gunning the fabric over the boards, and tonight I'll finish that off and stick some hanging hardware on the back of them.

Do you have any idea how satisfying weilding a staple gun is? Seriously. Give me a staple gun, and a hot glue gun, and it's like there is nothing I can't achieve.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

A Fine Line

I've been thinking a lot about drawing lately. I used to draw all the time when I was younger, and it's like many skills in this life, you get better the more you do it and it is possible to get rusty if you don't do it for a while. You don't really forget how to do it, but because it uses such fine motor skills to get the message from the brain to the finger tips 'muscle memory' will only take you so far. It's not quite like riding a bicycle (or masturbation, for that matter) in that regard, if you haven't done those for a while you soon remember how.

I really admire people who can draw well. There's a very fine difference between something that really sings on the page, and a line that just doesn't look quite right.



The more I look at illustration the more I want to pick up a pencil again and get to it. What I need to do though is to get over that period of frustration at not being able to it as well as I used to. If you're a bit of a perfectionist like I am, then it's harder to get through that without packing it in.



So I need to give myself permission to suck at it for a while. Which is an extremely hard thing to do!

Chinoiserie

A couple of weekends ago I went to the cocktail lounge atop the Eastern Hotel in Bondi Junction for Evan's birthday celebration. We had a fabulous long and lazy afternoon sipping beverage items and eating gourmet pizzas. The cocktail bar has been done in a sort of pan-Asian style decor, with lots of deep leather sofas, billowing curtains and vintage chinoiserie. Quite fab.




Lanterns


It was surprisingly quiet the Saturday afternoon that we were there, but it did mean that we had the place almost to ourselves. It was a great afternoon, with lots of laughter and conversation. I had to snap some pics of some of the details of the decor because it was really quite lovely.



Raise The Red Lantern

Monday, February 18, 2008

New Word For The Day

Ever since I heard a white clad drag queen describe herself as looking this at Fair Day yesterday, I've had a new favourite word:

Virginous.

Fair Day

Sunday was Fair Day, one of the first events that kicks off the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras festival. I love Fair Day! It's always a great opportunity to see the broad variety of gay & lesbian groups and businesses around Sydney, get sunburned, pet pooches, run into old friends and ex boyfriends (four, I counted), drink in the sun, watch drag shows, boy watch, and generally have a grand old time. Perhaps a gay old time would be more appropos?



Mardi Gras Fair Day Elegance
Elegance.

Mardi Gras Fair Day
Colour and movement!

Essentials At Mardi Gras Fair Day
Fair Day essentials.

Awwwww
Awwwww, sweet. [jealous!]

A Grande Dame At Mardi Gras Fair Day
A grand dame.

Another Grande Dame At Mardi Gras Fair Day
Another grand dame!

Dinner With Gomez & Morticia

I alternately find the Gothick style "Memento Mori" (rough translation "Remember that you are mortal") collection by designer Douglas Little either fabulous or silly. It's one of those things that can go either way, you know? Some of the items in the range, some of the skull items in particular, are a bit naff I think. But other stuff, like the plates and candle votives below I kind of like. It's expensive gear, US$180 for 4 plates in a box set. Not that I would probably buy it anyway, I mean I'm guessing it's kind of hard to make this stuff work with IKEA furniture...

These are only a few of the items in the large range, which you can see over at unica home.




Memento Mori set of 4 plates. Just the thing next time you sit down to a dish of braaaaaaaains!


Black pepper scented Altar Candle.


Jasmine scented Altar Candle.


Hemlock scented candle in a frosted glass votive. DO NOT EAT would be my recommendation.


The 'L' plate from the L-O-V-E Birds 4 plate set.


[Updated: Ok, scratch what I said about dinner at Gomez & Morticia's. Because I think Diamanda Galas must have the whole Douglas Little collection! To whit:



I'm right, don't you think?]

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Holiday. Celebrate. It Would Be So Nice.

(Madge, you really need to work on your sentence structure. If I'm going to quote you, I need to make people understand that I get the whole make a sentence/syntax/adverbs/prepositions deal with the English language.)

My little week long holiday is almost at an end. I kind of have that nagging 'it's Sunday night and back to school tomorrow' feeling in the pit of my stomach. And it's only Saturday! It's ok though, I've enjoyed my little break. I didn't achieve as much as I set out to in a material sense, but then I feel relaxed and more me right now than I did at the start of the week. That's a big something in my book.

Tomorrow is Fair Day, one of the events that kicks of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. So tomorrow's themes will be 'drinking', 'photos', 'cute boys' and possibly even 'photos of cute boys drinking'. I kid! (Mostly.) Another theme will probably be 'sunburn'.

Fair Day is one of my favourite events and it has a great community spirit about it. It's also nice opportunity to catch up with friends, and tomorrow I'll be doing just that. It should be a fun way to round out the end of my holiday.

(Speaking of the having of fun. I hope you checked out my little guest spot on Fabulon earlier today! If not, scooch on over and look for the posts with "Posted by The Other Andrew" on them!)

Friday, February 15, 2008

Guest Blogging

Hey y'all, tomorrow morning I'll be flexing my pop cultural muscles and pushing my very own Gay Agenda as guest blogger over on Fabulon.

Come on over, it's Open Bar!

Does Angel Know About This?



Sensory Overload

In IKEA.

I decided to have a wander around IKEA yesterday, making use of being on holidays and having the rare opportunity to go in the middle of the day and avoid the weekend crowds. It was primarily a fact finding mission this time around, there was some stuff in the catalogue that I was thinking of getting, and I wanted to go in and see it in the flesh, you know look under the hood and kick the tires, before committing to it. The only thing I was going to get this time was some fabric, which of course they didn't have. But I did buy some more storage boxes in the (vain?) hope of getting more 'organised'.

The IKEA here is so BIG and with so much stuff in it, that I always feel a little overloaded by the time I've done the place. You know? After a while all the beech veneer and 50c glassware starts to meld into one. A sort of Swedish fugue state. It was a lot quieter though, which was nice. And the demographic was more single mothers and youngsters, and less full families and The Gays.

I was in there for over three hours! By the time I left I felt tired and dehydrated. Who knew IKEA could be such a marathon?

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Lupercalia By Any Other Name?

Happy Valentine's Day!

I tried kick off this post with a bit of history about the origins of Valentine's Day, but every version seems to be slightly different. One thing that seems to crop up frequently though, and even the Catholics acknowledge is the likely association with the Roman erotic and fertility festival of Lupercalia. Erotic festival has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Yeah there's stuff about poor Valentine, once saint but now suspended from duty without pay, but I have decided (in the interest of historical accuracy only, of course) that Lupercalia it is. I'm not so keen on the animal sacrifice, the flogging with strips of sacrifical hide etc, but the bits about young men in loincloths I do support. Huzzah for young men in loincloths!




Heart by Erté


Anyhoo, love and eroticism. So hard to seperate anyway, and sometimes so easy to confuse for each other. So I hope you all get a fair sized helping of both on this day. Or maybe tonight. Or even later in the week. Just get some, ok?




Heart by Erté


This is also a little love letter to all of you who stop by here. Thanks so much for reading! Really. I never expected this blog to become something that I would enjoy doing almost every day, but it is. Big love and erotic Lupercalian thoughts especially for those of you who comment, to those of you who link back to this little blog of mine, and for those of you who provide me with thought provoking and amusing times on your own blogs.

Big kisses and a squeeze for all! Mwah!