The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

Sometimes there is nothing more a lad needs than to chew on his mother’s finger for a while. Lately, Ezra has taken it upon himself to chew on whatever he can manage get into his mouth. I am not one to judge, whatever gets him through the night is fine by me.

Sometime I wish that all it took was a quick nibble on a finger to make all of my worries melt away, but alas, it is never that simple. With Christmas on the horizon – and my loathing of all things holiday cheer as solid as ever – I have been thinking about something that I can’t quite make a decision on.

The issue concerns two grossly obese blokes that can be found in the bus mall at 7:45 every morning. These fellows, without fail, can be spotted eating a gigantic helping of fish and chips each. I can’t quite decide if I admire their enthusiasm, zeal and casual disregard for the judgment of the mob, or whether they disgust me.

As always, the very sight of two grossly overweight fellows stuffing their greasy faces full of artery-hardening fat triggers me to ponder the very essence of freedom. We’re not talking the kind of freedom that signifies the mastery over one's inner condition.

Are these guys masters or slaves, is what I am wondering. Some would argue that their inability to act in accordance with the dictates of reason renders them slaves to their desire. Yet perhaps Fatty A and Fatty B are merely expressing their ability to act in accordance with their own true self regardless of the slavish decrees of modern medicine vis-à-vis diet and exercise.

But no, I tell myself, does Kant not have a point, is not freedom choosing “what ought to be done”, not “what I want to do”? Is the ability to act in accordance with universal values not true freedom?

For a bald French bore, Sartre proposes an interesting view on freedom with his notion that humans are condemned to be free. In this sense, Fatty A and Fatty B carry not just the weight of their bulging guts, but the weight of the whole world on their hulking frames. In this way, they are responsible for the world and for themselves as a way of being!

Cor blimey!

For Sartre, even if one does not want to be responsible, one cannot be anything but responsible for their actions. For Sartre, the Fatty brothers – in the daily expressions of their essential gluttony – are expressing their essential freedom. Even if they are slaves!

Philosophy, don’t you just love it?

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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