The life of a revolutionary would be quite impossible without a certain amount of "fatalism."

Now, I have spoken at length previously on my distaste for extremists, so I shall not reopen that wound for all to see (and bore you in the process).

That said, I could pass over the image of the menacing black and yellow Sea Shepherd anarchist AKTION patrol boat parked just across the road from work this morning.

Now – and apologies in advance to all the Sea Shepherds reading out there – every member of that distinguished organisation that I have happened across has turned out to be of a frame of mind that I described in that earlier post.

This tendency to drift into preposterous polarities, mutually exclusive ideas, deterministic dialectics (always hidden, excluding the individual doing the ranting, of course), all of which operate not just separate from, but in opposition to, each other.

This is great fun when you happen to be in the public policy game and are looking to get a little harmony happening on an issue.

They remind me of yet another presentation that I saw the other week, during which I noted the (false) choices that this individual seemed to offer the audience.

Inclusion OR exclusion?
Remembering OR forgetting?
Leading OR following?
Open OR closed?
All OR none?
Want OR need?
Faith OR reason?
Problems OR solution?
Widening OR deepening?
Structure OR agency?
Progress OR tradition?
Success OR Failure?

The saddest thing was that here was a highly educated person (over-educated?), standing there telling everybody that these were mutually exclusive choices. For this person, choosing one meant forgoing the other.

Just what you want to hear at a public policy gabfest!

[Note: and I have to add, calling it the Steve Irwin, nice bit of mainstreaming there! There's hope yet!]

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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