It’s been too long since my last update. I ended up going out into town the saturday following my hair-epidemic, and I got the responses I was looking for. I think I went around to Hayley’s house and this was the first time that anyone (other than while I was at work) had seen me without my beard and hair. It was brilliant, Hayley and Jess had looks of “oh god what the christ happened here.” For the whole day though, I was just running my hand over my head, it felt so very, very creepy. We sat around at the Deckbar for a while and met up with Martin and Hayden who sat around and chatted for a bit. Eventually, the Deckbar got boring, and we left off to Discovery and spent some of the night there. Again, much like Discovery is normally, it wasn’t long before it got incredibly boring fast, and after seeing some people there who hadn’t seen me without my beard, it was decided that the Casino was the place to be. I don’t know why, but we ended up going to the Casino eating a plate of wedges. In all, it was an enjoyable night, something to do at least.

The next week or so was slightly boring, I think. Everyone was talking about Bass In The Grass and shit like that, but I wasn’t completely sold on going. I hadn’t been last year, and I couldn’t really justify spending $60 for something that have bands playing that I don’t really like or listen to. Me being a prude, most probably. Me deciding to buy a flash in the middle of the week before it is actually on? Yes. I’ll get to that in a bit. But I officially hate the new store manager. Seriously. I remember saying that I was going to give this guy at least a month before I lay my final decision on whether or not I want to shove a hot metal rod through his eye socket, and well what happened the other week was slightly getting there. To preface, Ted Carter sucks ass. There was one night where Troy-bags and I were talking (between aisles) about Troy leaving Kmart for working at Perkins and I was telling him he should, it went something along the lines of:

Troy-bags: “Yeah, I got a job offering at Perkins.”
Me: “Yeah man, fuck Kmart. Leave this shit hole to better pay”
TB: “I should, I just need my forklift license”
Me: “Well, leech the license off Kmart, and then leave to Perkins!”

Meanwhile, I knew Ted was puttering around in camping doing something, but I wasn’t doing anything I wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t. Next thing I know he comes walking behind me and asks how I was going or something like that, and I just gave a generic response. Everything went fine that night, but it wasn’t until the next night that I had apparently done wrong. Johnny had told me that he overhead Ted speaking to Kelly, talking about myself and Troy. Well, apparently he didn’t like any of us talking at all, and that he wanted Nightfill to work in complete silence (ha, good luck.) That didn’t bother me too much, what did piss me off though, was that when he went up to me and asked me to stop talking I responded with something like “what’s wrong with me talking?” What an absolute faggot. Fuck you, you dirty cunt. For one, why is he putting words in my mouth? Seriously, if I were to say something like that, I’d tell everyone moments after I said it, and chances are I’d have it planned before he come up and said anything. Everyone at work knows if something happens to me, I’d tell them moments after. And, I’m not stupid enough to do something like that to a brand new store manager. I doubt I’d be able to do even if I knew him a year later, because he can still fire me even if he doesn’t get my humour. Want more proof this bastard is out to get me? The following saturday he was on, I was asked to do menial jobs (you know, sweep for the majority of the day while there was stock there that could have been processed.) Well, I ended up doing some of the things he asked, but completely avoided sweeping in favour of processing some other stock. The weekend went by and when I come into work monday, he had a cry to me about not sweeping at all (because I dunno, I was busy either doing some other pallet, or serving customers.) Ok, I palmed it off to being anal about it all. Well, again, it was Johnny who told me a few days later. Apparently, he doesn’t like what I do on saturdays. I’ve got no idea what I’m doing saturdays, and that I’m useless (that’s just me putting one and one together to get three.) He wants to replace my saturdays with someone else. Brilliant, he’s worked one saturday with me, and I’m suddenly incredibly useless. The next inevitable step, was that apparently it is either Troy or myself to be fired next (to convey a point towards nightfill?) I have a feeling I’m going to be looking for a new job some time soon, but I’d like to see how they go about firing me.

That happened over the course of two weeks, I’ll go back to a couple of days before Bass In The Grass. I had decided it was time for me to buy a better flash. I wandered into the Kodak shop in town with the intention of buying the flash in there, and I ended up leaving with it, but not before I made a new friend there. Before I went to shoot the Hair Models on Mother’s Day, I wandered in there looking for a lens, I mentioned it to the guy there and he gave me some tips. When I went in there the other day, and started talking to him, he mentioned the models again and asked if I was going to get them printed. Short story long, I found out that I went to get them processed at this shop, they were going to charge me photographers rates (which are heaps cheaper than regular customers.) Brilliant. A4 shots of my models done for at least half of the regular price. I walked out of the shop with my new flash in hand, and the intention of coming back the next day to buy a battery grip. Best purchase ever though, it’s an awesome flash. I’m having way too much fun with something like this, it’s great. The next day, before I went in to town again, I decided it was time to get rid of things I didn’t need anymore. More specifically the 2 17″ CRT monitors that had been clogging up space in my room, and the old amp I got that wasn’t working well enough for me. I wandered down to Cash Converters and traded them all in for a total of $80 or something thereabouts. Who cares, I got money out of things that I’ve had for way too long. I proceeded go to straight from Cash Converters, into the Kodak shop and bought a battery grip for my camera. Why am I doing this? Why not. I’m having way too much fun taking photos, but I’m just not having any luck finding people to photograph. I’ll find them someday.

Thursday night after work would have been the best night I’ve had in a long time. Seriously. Taryn was up! She had flown in that morning and was staying at Nat’s house. Well, Daryl and I headed around there and sat around talking for a few hours. After a while it was decided that everyone was incredibly hungry, and that we needed to go and find something to eat (at 1:30am.) We did what most people did at that time of the morning and went to Uncle Sam’s for a feed. Well, slightly. Instead, we managed to wander down along Mitchell Street taking photos. Many, many photos. At one point, we were all standing on a small table in this little park type of thing on the corner of Mitchell Street and some other street. There were drunken people stumbling everywhere. At at the time, I didn’t notice until just after we had finished, but there was some bum laying down on some chairs behind us. I couldn’t imagine what this guy was thinking seeing this random flash of light every now and them. Who cares! After walking down through the mall and back around again, we eventually got to Uncle Sam’s and sat down for a feed there. After driving through town, Daryl decided it was time for him to go home, so we dropped him off and went down to Nightcliff Jetty and sat around there for a while taking more photos of random shit while we dribbled enough quantitative shit for 6 people. It was brilliant. Eventually most of us got tired and we home, all with the intent of going to Litchfield on sunday for a day of drunken festivities.

Before I get to sunday though, saturday was Bass In The Grass. At this point of the week I wasn’t really wanting to go, considering I had to work all day saturday, I was going to miss out on most of the festivities there. I ended up not doing that and just standing out the front of the entrance with my camera in tow, just taking pictures and getting used to low-light situations. It was rather funny, because just as I get there, these two police people come up and stand almost next to me. Meanwhile, I’m just taking photos and I happen to notice them.

Me: “Hi! You don’t mind me doing this do you?”
Police Lady: “Nah! You’re right. Are you with the paper?”
Me: “Ha, nah, I’m not. Just doing this for myself.”
PL: “Oh, which magazine?”
Me: “Ha, oh god no. Nah, just a really expensive hobby”
PL: “Oh! Fair enough!”

For the rest of the time they were standing behind me. I’m not sure whether I was being watched incase I did something wrong, or whether they were standing behind me incase I got mugged or some decriptiong. I prefer the latter because that doesn’t make me look like a pedophile. Meanwhile, I’m having a ball just catching people’s reaction as they walk out into the light and try to stumble around trying to find their right home. I managed to get a whole bunch of photos, but unfortunately some of them turned out pretty crapily (I was avoiding using my flash) but I think I got a few choice ones.

Sunday come around and it was time to go to Litchfield! we probably spent about an hour to begin with before we even left looking for an open bottle-o because I thought that someone needed to buy alcohol before we went. Well, the moment we find an open bottle-o, none of us needed to buy any alcohol at all. While driving down there, Nat decided he wanted to drop past the magnetic termite mounds and get some photos there. Oh, before I start that, while we were driving there this ute behind us! As I was driving along, I happen to notice this ute behind us would randomly swerve left and right. At first I thought they were just avoiding something on the road, until I noticed they did it more and more each time. At one stage they swerved right into the other lane and back. I’m not sure whether it was incredibly obvious that everyone in my car was looking at them, but suddenly I see this guy’s arm stick out the window and wave! Haha, so I did the only sane thing and wound my window down and waved frantically back. Not 5 minutes after I did that, I did the same thing (as everyone both behind and in front of us were doing it) just to show that we knew what was going on. Anyway, back to where I was. Um.. oh yes, the magnetic termite mounds. We get there and suddenly we’re in front of this giant huge tourist tour thing. While standing there taking photos, we managed to get the tour guide pissed off at us to literally feel the death she wanted to inflict upon us all, it was fantastic. We get down there and spend some time laying about in the rocks at Buley Rockhole. At one point I was taking photos of these kids jumping out of a tree into a rockpool. It was quite fun, I just wish I had an emptier memory card to fill up. After Buley, we headed off to Florence falls where we all proceeded to try and swim and stay underneath the waterfall there for about 20 minutes. It was rather enjoyable. Eventually we got bored swimming around and I noticed that these kids were jumping off one of the slightly larger cliff faces there, and I decided I was going to get some action shots of them. The whole time I was there, I was getting shots of these other people jumping off, but I really wanted to see this girl jump. Meanwhile, people are going straight past her and jumping off because she just wouldn’t jump. Eventually I got sick of standing there waiting for this stupid girl to jump and go to pack my shit up. Just as I turn around and head back to my bag, I was apparently pointed at as I was walking away, and just as I did that, she started to go out and jump off again. Fuck you, you scared bitch. I don’t need no stinkin’ action shot!

The following week was slightly boring, nothing too exciting happened then I don’t think. Oh! Well, it was Mum’s 50th birthday on the 30th of May, so we went out to dinner that night. I had bought a few things the night before though, considering I had just been paid, it was time for me to upgrade my bag. For the next few months, I’ve already spent my money, unfortunately. Remember that lens I was lent while shooting the hair models a while ago? Well, I’ve decided I want that lens and another so I can see if I can make some money off spending this much money on a camera and the such. Instead, I bought a bigger and more comfortable bag for myself and my future upgrades. I give you, my 7 Million Dollar Home. That colour too. It seriously, is the best thing ever. I’ve got enough room in there for the two lenses I want plus a few other things, and I was quite shocked at how quickly it come too. I ordered it around midnight on tuesday night, and I got it on friday morning, I was so shocked it had come so quickly. I now had a place to keep my camera while my Mum had her little party on saturday. What sucked ass about saturday night, was that I had Mum’s 50th party, Taryn wanted me to go to town (early), and Daniel had his birthday thing on at Dolly’s, all on. The. Same. Day. Fuck. There was no way I was going to leave Mum’s party early because she’d hate me for the rest of my life, and there wasn’t any real way I was going to be able to get out of going to Daniel’s. I didn’t end up leaving my house until a little after midnight, making my way into town and finding out that I couldn’t get any money at all because the god damned ATM wasn’t working. Cunts. Eventually I end up seeing Dan saying happy birthday to him, chatting with Boyd, and wandering into Discovery with Taryn and all that. I haven’t been into Discovery and gotten drunk let alone walked into Discovery drunk for a while, so this was fairly interesting. Spent most of the night dancing away near the second bar seeing how many people we could piss off. At one point, I remember standing there and decided that I was going to make someone feel incredibly comfortable by giving them my rape eyes. Taryn and I picked some girl stool-dancing and proceeded to make her feel incredibly uncomfortable. Eventually it worked, but I got bored too quickly before that really happened. We managed to make our way down to the dancefloor where I was honestly expecting to get into a fight. I had decided it was time to mimic anyone dancing like an incredible drunken fool, and I did. It just happened to be always the big guys who were dancing like fools and more likely to punch me in the face, but I didn’t care.

I don’t think I did anything interesting on sunday. Oh, well, we had a BBQ for Johnny’s last slightly real day in Darwin before he flew off to Greece. Monday night come by and it was Taryn’s last night in Darwin. God damnit. 2 weeks up already? I went around to Nat’s house where I found myself modelling in a wedding dress (I don’t know, I was given some material and told to try it on. I only do as I’ve been told.) After that, we headed up to the airport, where Nat decided he was going to lay down on the ground and sleep for a bit (we were all sitting on the ground because there weren’t any empty seats) while I told my epic of a story to Taryn. It was sad to see her go, I had so much fun while she was up here. I did return to the airport a couple of days later to see my aunts off, but it was a less emotional time.

I don’t think I’ve missed out on anything. I have uploaded most of my pictures from while I was standing out the front of Bass In The Grass, and our trip to Litchfield, even our night visit to town. I must admit, I haven’t gotten any kind of offers to photograph things anymore, so everyone reading this is rude!