Where can you find pleasure? Search the world for treasure? Learn science technology? Where can you begin to make your dreams all come true?

A couple of weeks back I arrive at work, and who should I find waiting for me, patiently and orderly in rows just across the road from the front door? The Royal Australian Navy, that's who!

The HMAS Darwin is a long-range escort frigate [snigger snigger] that seems to be a jack of all trades vessel: area air defence, anti-submarine warfare, surveillance, reconnaissance and interdiction. In a potentially sexy turn of phrase, the ship is capable of countering simultaneous threats from the air, surface and sub-surface.

Quite.

The Navy refused to confirm or deny that the frigate [snigger snigger] was in town to prevent a flock of Mexican flying pigs from entering Tasmanian airspace and spreading the dreaded La temido gripe de cerdo Mexicana!

On that, actually, canny Swede Professor Hans Rosling has released a video well worth watching. Rosling has calculated the ratio of news article coverage versus actual deaths in the context of the recent La temido gripe de cerdo Mexicana outbreak.

In the 13 days up to May 6, the World Health Organisation [WHO] has confirmed that 25 countries are affected by La temido gripe de cerdo Mexicana, and 31 persons have died from La temido gripe de cerdo Mexicana. In an interesting point of comparison, WHO data also indicates that about 60,000 persons died from tuberculosis during that very same period. Rosling’s video explores that little dichotomy, and can be seen here.

Oh, and just because I made it up myself and enjoy saying it, one last time I am typing out La temido gripe de cerdo Mexicana!

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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