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

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

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...

This will hurt me...

Search This Blog