Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

It can be hard to escape Mount Wellington here in Hobart, especially when you have a halfway decent zoom on your camera!

Some things on my mind of late:

1: I don't know who Lindsey Lohan is. I assume that she is famous. Perhaps she is in the movies.

2: I'm not sure what an A-Rod is, but I'm not surprised that Madonna has had one down her pants. Let's face it though, what hasn't been down that well-trod path?

3: Can we finally stop hearing about Heath Ledger?

4: I miss Richard Pryor.

5: I like hot chips.

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Here is a photograph that Jen took yesterday of the little bloke showcasing his increased sitting up skills.

Colour me impressed!

Ads that I like #79

Television ads are a very sparse feature of the Ads That I Like feature on this blog, primarily because they are always disappearing from YouTube. That risk aside, like the glorious Estonian Soviet-era ad featuring MEAT MEAT MEAT, I can't resist including this pearler from that place of supreme oddity, Japan.

What is the first thing that you think when you hear the word noodle? Why this, I'm sure!



Man those Japanese must have some pretty cool drugs...

Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

I figure if I am going to bombard you with some experimental text, you can cope with a bit of fiddling with an odd image. Try and work this one out.

Think of this as a poem, but it is rally more a list.

Henry squeezed my toe until it bruised.
Henry threw a ball at my head.
Henry bit me on the arm.
Henry hit me with a mallet.
Henry pulled my hair.
Henry rolled a high chair over my foot.
Henry pinched my ear.
Henry yelled at me.
Henry cried.
Henry shouted.
Henry wailed.
Henry told me that he loved me.

Henry versus the parnips

The Henry faction were upset that the Ezra faction were treated with a video last week. Here is the square up, with Henry doing his best Nigella Lawson impression.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

So it is Theme Thursday again, and I am wondering if you can guess the theme?

If you guessed one of 'baby', 'computer' or 'mop of hair', you guessed wrong.

Today's theme is of course TOY, and my word, don't we have a lot of toys in our house. I would go so far as to say that we have far too many toys.

In my day, you were lucky to have a bit of broken glass and a rusty nail wrapped in newspaper to play with (and that had to serve for breakfast and dinner too), so the notion of these kiddies of mine rolling around in a veritable wonderland of rattles, cubes with bells in them, pop up tents, tricycles with needlessly elongated handles, singing (English) pots and pans, plastic animals, plastic rocks, plastic trees, small fisherpeople of indeterminate genders (but definite African ancestry), Apple computers with fiddly keys and balls balls BALLS is somewhat overwhelming.

Compounding my distress, every time that I endeavour to shed unnecessary toys, more appear! Did you know that Elmo has a garbage truck? Elmo also has a jeep, plane, train and combine harvester. Why does Elmo need all of these vehicles I ask Henry, and he just shrugs his shoulders.

The amusing thing is that the best toys of all prove to be things like a wooden chopstick with a sock tied to it, or a stool with a blanket thrown over, a pile of pillows in the living room. No, I’ve made up my mind, I’m gonna chuck out some of these toys!

Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee, and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself?

So here he is, looking decidedly trimmer and more regal. Less Rolling Stone, than Mel Gibson cast as the Danish prince. I'd like to think that Henery here could strut the stage as a young Hamlet, driven mad by the intrigues of the court.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Here is a photograph of Henry's mop of hair taken last Sunday. As you can see, he looks like a Rolling Stone, or some other kind of long haired layabout. To cut a long story short, he needed a haircut. So he had a haircut.

In order to construct a good sense of anticipation, I've instructed the robot to place an embargo on publishing the photos until nineteen hundred hours (19:00, or 7 pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time). That is five (5) hours from now. If anyone can guess which celebrity hairstyle best matches his new haircut, you will win a prize.

I have linked back to previous before and after photographs for your perusal. Revisit the heady days of December '08 (before and after); August '08 here; and February '08 here.

It’s like your very own time machine.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Yeah yeah, more boats. The other morning I spotted this scene and felt compelled to take a photograph.

Here is a really short story for you.

Footsteps echo on the path outside as another drunken group erupts with laughter. You hear a car door slam and an engine refuse to start. A wailing "Christ, don't do this to me now" and a "Shut the fuck up Darren" seems to blend in together with the faint aroma of the kabab takeaway up the road and the feel of rough edged polyester sheets; so you close your eyes. You think about where you are and where you possibly could be. You're shivering and wonder why it is that you can't get warm. Pressing your face into the pillow, you can still hear the noise of the street. And your mind wanders. You think about her and you think about you. The memories keep you awake. They entice. They tease. They bother your eyes when nights are cold and you know that you'll never sleep again.

Henry = Lucy

I really do like this one a lot. For a global powerhouse beloved of children and adults, Peanuts could be as bleak as anything Ingmar Bergman could conjure up.

I never met a man so unknowledgeable, I could not learn something from him.

I like the shapes that you can get sometimes working with the angles of various buildings. There are three separate buildings here, but one day I'd love to get six in one shot.

Last week I posted a little bit of prose that I constructed in a reasonably straightforward manner. As is my wont however, I applied my own theory of surrealistic realism to the piece and rewrote the bugger with that in mind:

Leaning back he transforms himself into a chair of dirty orange plastic that smells of neglect. Shattering his hands, the room waits. The light-tube mourning as his face develops for all to see. And expedition of eighty-seven is sent to investigate the mystery of his countenance. They map from east to west, recording all they see: eyeballs dripping sadness, nose launching itself from the landscape for easier access, cavernous mouth overflowing with small, white children standing out of line. This was the last we heard of them as he inhales the room, extracting his head and placing it onto his lap, twisting enough to see within. Dressed in lush green, the organ of sight (rods and cones intact) devours the object of desire. Meeting midway he opens himself up, jeopardising his flanks, tearing down the defensive wall; he proposes a treaty and offers a gift. Things appear advantageous, it could happen. He expands, higher and wider - reaching the sun and no-one can touch him. But wait. BANG! She pulls away and attacks. Punching, piercing, laughing and malignant; she leaves him there. Broken, defeated, a ruined city. One day someone will come across these blood-stained remains and ask "whatever could have happened here?"


Interestingly, my notion of surrealistic realism was later shamelessly stolen by that thieving French philosophe and intellectuelle païens Jean Baudrillard. The dastardly frog even went so far and invented a time-machine to fraudulently claim the notion as his own! Sacrebleu!

Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.

Here's one of a very 1970s-looking Henry, and 1950s-looking Ezra that I took deep into the noughties just this weekend. Technically, it is not the greatest photograph that will ever be taken, as the light was just too bright and overwhelmed everything (not least the colour tones). The problem with photographing toddlers though, is that you just don't have enough time to adjust the settings.

That said, you CAN do a little post-production work and experiment a little if you think that there is something to the photo. I happen to like the fact that I've managed to snap both lads in one frame. I also like that both of them have their eyes open at the same time. Lastly, I just like the looks on their faces, as both of them look in the photo just like they look in my head: Henry is being a bit of a show-off and ready to bark an order, and Ez is just holding back a bit waiting for something to happen.

So first I trimmed the photo, shedding a heap of glare on the right of the image, and centring the faces a little better. Then I just drained the entire colour from it. Then it was fiddling with the exposure and contrast. But I still wasn’t sure. Henry’s hair gave me the idea to try and ‘age’ it a bit with a bit of grain and a muted sepia tone, to try and get that weathered photo look. I think that it works. What do you reckon?

Any tips for retrieving a dud photo? I’m happy to take ‘em on board...

It wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture.

Here is the vista overlooking Battery Point from the second floor of the McDougal Building. As you can see, it was a bit blue out there that day.

I though that after the success of my self portrait last week, I'd try another, this time in words.

Me

I am hope	I am old-school	I am expectation
I am got	I am mother	I am goal
I am ice	I am all business	I am can
I am everywhere	I am insignificant	I am plastic
I am practice	I am mundane	I am selflessness
I am rock	I am automatic	I am okay
I am need	I am not	I am taste
I am alphabet	I am promise	I am cat
I am interception	I am rehearsal	I am waiting
I am vacation	I am death	I am desire
I am away	I am desperation	I am joy
I am something	I am indigenous	I am child
I am wretched	I am heavy	I am key
I am repression	I am head	I am father
I am why	I am folly	I am after
I am inundation	I am illicit	I am the
I am order	I am awake	I am saviour
I am drum	I am touch	I am sabotage
I am static	I am rhythm	I am theory
I am away	I am glide	I am destination
I am sound	I am appearance	I am conversation
I am distance	I am blog	I am three
I am opinion	I am again	I am must
I am egg	I am keep	I am opportunity
I am hum	I am alone	I am religion
I am dawn	I am perchance	I am two
I am aesthetic	I am incidental	I am class
I am current	I am consume	I am necessary
I am you	I am one	I am naked
I am blame	I am anything	I am presumption
I am common	I am definite	I am unique
I am four	I am organic	I am woman
I am proper	I am amateur	I am approximate
I am tune	I am expelled	I am pain
I am yesterday	I am rude	I am artificial
I am headache	I am exotic	I am unrepentant
I am blandiloquent	I am erstwhile	I am glamour
I am perpetual	I am mistake	I am adroit
I am champagne	I am esoteric	I am expectation
I am man	I am ambition	I am conflation
I am effervescent	I am felicitous	I am mainstream
I am conformity	I am beginning	I am chatoyant
I am ephemeral	I am fragile	I am broken
I am diaphanous	I am ebullient	I am right
I am outlook	I am babies	I am sorry

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Here are some flowers getting a bit of a water in the CBD the other morning. Good to see.

I can't write much, as I have a kabuki singing Henry is a great mood simply demanding to use the computer for some kind of dodgy scam. Or maybe he just wants to have another bash (literally) at the mysterious SNM#1, which delights him to no end.