You can always tell you're in trouble when the good option involves a prosthetic leg.

Ezra woke everybody up and three am this morning, and I couldn't get myself back to sleep. Fair dinkum, I needed a crane to lift me out of bed to get ready for work. Above is a photo of the CSIRO crane down here in the Salamanca district of Hobart. I cannot confirm or deny that this crane is used to lift up whales to measure and weigh their farts (thus helping solve the global warming/cooling conundrum).

My wife wasn't allowed to watch much commercial television when she was a child, so her knowledge of pop culture references is limited, to say the least. I, on the other hand, had no such limitations. Thus my head is filled with all sorts of ~~useless~~ interesting and informative bibs and bobs of ephemera. This affords me many opportunities to scoff and shake my head at Jen's inability to identify my subtle reworking of J.J. from Good Times DY-NO-MITE! catchphrase or humorous "someone should blow those nuns up" that evokes the very best of Ted Bullpit.

Of course, I do try to fill in the gaps of knowledge as they emerge, but I am certain that it can all get rather confusing. Last night was an interesting case in point. Riffing on a familiar theme (a useless local politician that those in the know loathe and those don't admire), I was mediating on a shared acquaintance who had both Jen and I's respect, who worked for the [un-named] pollie.

I could not see how such an intelligent person could stand working for such a dill (a theme familiar to us all, no doubt), and my wife - who I love very much - opined that perhaps it was a case of "Mr Humphries" at work.

Hmmmm.

Mr Humphries?

"I'm free!" Mr Humphries?

Did she really liken the talented bureaucratic puppet master to the flamboyant senior menswear assistant of the Gentleman's Department?

It didn't take long to see that she was thinking of Sir Humphrey Appleby, GCB, KBE, MVO, MA (Oxon).

It appears that I have some work to do.

Comments

Roddy said…

It seems I too was thinking of Sir Humphries.

17 November 2009 at 12:56

Kris McCracken said…

BAH!

20 November 2009 at 18:31

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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