a tourist pamphlet.
I was really bored today so I ended up taking a bunch of photos on my way to supermarket. Yet more proof I desperately need a job. I wish I was a better photographer. I have really shaky hands, only I never noticed til like last year. 90% of my photos come out so blurry. I could use the flash I guess but I've yet to master the flash on this camera, so whenever I use it it is too bright and everything looks disgusting. Shuuji looks especially bad under a flash, it makes his fur look like a seal's. I think I'd prefer everything to be blurry.
Actually I took these when I got home from mysquishy's at like 5 o'clock this morning. Whenever I get home at bizarre hours like that the cats go mental like I'm coming home for a party. Minutes before these photos were taken Shuuji practically flew onto my shoulder and scared the shit out of me.
Akira always reminds me of this prissy little princess. A little while after I got her I started wishing I had called her Colbert, after Stephen Colbert. I can't really remember why except that sometimes she really reminds me of him. Probably if I'd got the cats a few weeks later, after my Nobuta obsession had waned slightly, they'd have ended up being called Bakanishi and Colbert. I should probably be grateful I got them when I did.
The ceiling of the basement carpark in my apartment building. altricial and thewhiteprophet find my basement really creepy, like somewhere serial killers keep their victims in Criminal Minds. I always liked it though. For one thing it is almost disgustingly massive. You could probably have fitted another four or five apartments into it. Instead we get two parking spaces. Score, I guess, though I don't drive.
Someone left this surly note above the building's recycling bins. I always wonder who it was. If one of my neighbours secretly despises us all. I don't really know any of my neighbours all the well though, you never see any body. A couple down the hall raises Possums. They're pretty awesome.
Graffiti from the bridge I walk under to get to the train station. I walked up the rocks to take a closer picture and this old lady stopped to warn me to be careful of the "derros" (derelicts. Australians shorten everything) who sleep/hang out under the bridge, right up the top in the dark. "You never know what they get up to," she said, with a sort of D face. "Judging from the smell!"
I used to sometimes realise this guy was sitting under the bridge when I was walking home at night and it would freak me out for a second the way things always do when you don't notice them right away. He never does anything though, he just sits there and drinks and sleeps.
Oh the Railway Hotel. I think it is under new management but the last time I went there with a friend everybody stopped and stared as we walked through the doors and out back to the pool table, like we were in an old Western movie. It's because all their clientele were middle aged men who seemed like alcoholics and liked sports.
Apparently Chopper Read used to drink there. And Romper Stomper was filmed there. This pub is more or less across the road from my house. My local, lol. A colourful history.
Posters on the fence outside the train station. I always really paranoid political posters, except when some started appearing around my area for some kind of white power-ish group last year not long after the Cronulla Riots. They were scary and weird. I usually only ever see socialist propaganda everywhere.
The back subway exit out of Flinders Station up into Degraves is so old and skanky, I kind of love it. The station bit itself is really dirty and falling apart but once you get beyond the ticket barriers there's this series of emo-knitterish little clothes and record shops. And a barber. I like the pink tiles on the shop section.
The first thing you see when you leave the station is a waffle cart, and then all this graffiti. Even though I really like all the graffiti and stuff in this area I never hang out around here because almost everyone who does is a complete and utter wanker. I like to walk through on nice days though, it's a better shortcut than walking along the gross Flinders end of Swanston St, which is just fast food chain after fast food chain.
I can never figure out if all of this is encompassed in the City Lights project or just parts of it, but it's pretty cool anyway. There were so many people taking photos when I was there this afternoon; these clean young Chinese couples posing in front of dumpsters in an alley.
When you leave Degraves you cross Collins St, suddenly going from all this dingy street art to what is more or less the rich part of the city.
The Block Arcade has these beautiful mosaic floors and high, windowed ceilings and I've been inside dozens of times and never bought anything but chocolate. There is this tie store there that I'm sort of obsessed with because they have this big square display in the window with ties rolled up in aesthetically pleasing colour combinations. I wanted a photo of that but there was a big sign in the way. Uncool.
Once my mother more or less passed out on the floor of the Block Arcade. She'd just given blood and had to lie down right where she was standing. One of the waiters from a cafe came out and was really nice though. In a movie they probably would have called her a bum and called security.
I think those guys are ugly yet hilarious. On the other end of the arcade is this sort of god like figure with a harp or trumpet or something and a loin cloth. So incredibly ugly. I had a photo but I forgot to put a border on it, so it will remain forever a mystery.
This was so time consuming and probably reads like a glorified tourist brochure. I was seriously so bored today. I would have more photos except the battery on my camera died just as I tried to take pics of the Bronze men on Swanston Street. So incredibly bored.