Serious sport .... is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard for all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence.

An Olympic (kind of) themed post today. I took this photograph just a couple of hours ago. Behind the play group building that Henry and I frequent, there sits a few of the illustrious Geilston Bay Tennis Club's outer courts. We can often see the future Rod Lavers, John Newcombes and Richard Frombergs honing their skills pop pop popping away back and forth in the blazing Tasmanian sun.

Given the magnificent physical specimens that the boys are, Henry, Ezra, Jennifer and I have discussed whether or not we should invest in racquets and balls as an investment to pumping out our very own version of the Williams sisters. The lads' maternal grandfather is a keen grass court ace, who (if fortunes went another way), could have been a contender to Laver's crown. Unfortunately, fate would see him choose mechanics over the world tour and Wimbledon would have to wait. Tennis is a hard slog, and although the rewards are great, the attrition rate is greater.

Broadly, I am not so sure as to where to invest in the promising duo. My heart says that they would complement each other well in a strong Essendon Football Cluboutfit (Henry at CHB and Ezra CHF), but earning capacities are low, career span brief and the draft putting them at risk of going to Collingwood.

The example of Tiger Woods shows the benefit of putting clubs in the hands of infants, but golf is a costly sport, and well, the spectator is in for a long, grueling and tedious day on the links. Earning potentials are high, but is it worth having to watch golf for years on end? Is anything worth that?

You can earn big bucks in the world of soccer, but both of them are far too robust and masculine for the world of synchronised diving and head and/or knee clutching. It would break my heart to see such a natural enthusiasm and aggression wasted on the [ahem] 'world game'.

I personally like the idea of an Australian version of the Klitschko brothers. Combining PhDs and punching power, Henry and Ezra are natural heavyweights, and I could see them dominating the sweet science in a way not seen since a young Mike Tyson, that said, their mother is not keen and there are too many sharks circling that pond.

All of which leaves me in a quandary. Unfortunately I feel that I will have to leave it up to the boys themselves. But by then we will be past the point of intense hothousing. Oh well, there is always Ultimate Fighting...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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