This will hurt me...

Here is the little bloke threatening to crawl.

Jennifer has a very narrow definition of crawling, and reckons that he can't.

I am a more positive and creative chap, and am firmly of the opinion that Ezra has more than met the criteria of a crawl. Of a fashion.

Note: I have had word from the chief steward, and Ezra has weighed in this morning at a solid 10.12 kilograms. That's a fair chunk of beefcake!

So yesterday it was snowing up on Mount Wellington. I took a few snaps in the morning, but didn't have the necessary equipment to transfer the images across from the camera on hand.

Above is a bit of a zoom in on the Organ Pipes, and below is a broader view from the fire escape at work.

These were taken at around 8 am, I've not been able to get any more because the damn thing has been shrouded in cloud ever since!

Here we are on Hunter Street, outside the University of Tasmania's Art School looking towards what remains of the working port. It's an interesting nexus of ideas at work here, and is replicated in Launceston, where their Art School is located with an old railyard. Deliberate? Who knows!

Here's a romantic poem today.

Woman

Her hair...
shimmered.

Her eyes...
sparkled.

Her smile...
glimmered.

Her neck...
glistened.

Her pancreas...
excreted.

With Ezra's foray into The Sorrows of Young Werther, Henry was feeling a little put out so has started to explore Daddy's extensive library on the works of one G.W.F. Hegel.

So Saturday afternoon, when Jen was out knitting, he starts on about Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and was asking me what defines the actualisation of freedom. I said that I doubted that history had an actualisation point and wanted to leave it at that, but then he started on about what it was to lead a 'moral life', so I asked him what it was to lead an 'ethical life', and then Ez got started on the unity of being and nothing which Henry confused with the master-slave dialectic and things were just getting out of hand, and I was rapidly getting a headache.

We did however, find some common ground regarding the owl of Minerva, that is, its big eyes made it appear quite cute.

I like photographs involving water.

I like photographs involving reflections.

I like photographs involving the autumn light.

I like photographs involving the morning sun.

Here we have all four taken just last Thursday down in Sullivan's Cove!

I am currently enjoying Timothy Gaton Ash's excellent History of the Present. If you don't know his work, he's an academic/historian/author/journalist with a way with words. I will probably expand on my thoughts when I've finished it, but one brief comment struck me as I read it on the bus this morning.

It concerns a point early on in the siege of Sarajevo. There was a bombed-out post office with a common piece of graffiti/political comment, "This is Serbia!" Apparently someone had scrawled underneath the retort, "No, you idiot, it's a post office".

I like that. It pretty much captures the sort of inanity that drives people to war, ethnic cleansing and all of the kinds of atrocities within.

It's a post office. It collates and distributes letters. Get on with your life.

Here you can see Ez and myself looking suitably tired this very morning. Henry and Jen had a mother and son morning, while Ezra and I stayed home to do some autumn cleaning and grumble about the declining fortunes of the Latvian industrial economy.

To cheer ourselves up, we later went out and purchased one gross of rusks, a terrabyte of hard drive, a sausage and a bloody great pencil.

Seriously, the pencil is a foot long.

Looking up to where the crow's nest should be, I see no pirates, parrots or Great White Sharks. I see ropes, levers and wispy clouds, but not a brigand, buccaneer nor buggering bastard in sight!

It was such a disappointment.

Christ I am tired.

Neighbours who come home after a night on the piss, put on their heartfelt torch songs on far too loud while they have a smoke and reflect on their lack of romantic success should be shot.

In respect to my feminist friends out there scattered over the globe, I thought I'd post of pair of lady-friendly comics today.

The lady above - courtesy of the Married to the Sea - reminds me of both Henry and Ezra, who despite lacking the requisite criteria for womanhood, are both fine young ladies. Yes, we've embraced renowned crackpotfeminist academic Judith Butler's notion of Gender Trouble in this house.

I particularly like Lucy's justification at the end of the strip below. There should be more of it.

As I've said before, I consider Lucy something of a personal role model. Indeed, I consider myself a great example of a strong woman.

Autumn morning sunshine can't be beaten for colour. Here is the sun coming up over the river, as seen from Franklin Square.

Yesterday I erred in judgement and taught Henry the Queen song We Are The Champions. Now I can't stop him from yelling it at me (well, his version goes "Me Are The Champions"). This brings back a number of horrifying memories of my older brother besting me in some kind of sporting endeavour, to then pummel me and sit atop my chest sing the above song.

Do you have a song that evokes similarly terrible memories? I'm not counting anything by The Osmands, as they just don't count.

Here is Henry looking cranky while I try to photograph him colouring stuff in. I had the day off today, so spent the morning colouring in these blob things with Henry, and dare I say it, my efforts to keep inside the lines surpassed Henry's. That said, he's rapidly catching me.

Later on, we found ourselves out meeting with some visiting theatrical-types. Of course, the dirt magnets got bored and eventually dragged me off to find something more interesting to do.

We ended up charming some tourists from upstate New York, who were so impressed by the Henry and Ezra double act that they showered them with gifts all the way from the good ol' USA!

These two could turn out to be effective little money spinners if I just come up with the right idea...

Here is a rebel gang of seagulls who routinely hang out on Elizabeth Street, just outside of Town Hall. I call the the Town Hall Mafia.

Here's a poem:

Humdrum
You
have had

nature

explained to
You

and

You
are bored

with it.

Man, if there is one thing that I CANNOT stand, it is war rudeness poverty theft man's inhumanity to man wanton environmental destruction wives who neglect their stockings.

C'mon girls, as the ad says, husbands admire wives who keep their stockings perfect.

Conversely, husbands detest and abhor slovenly oafs who crash about like drunken moose with ladders from here to eternity. Fair dinkum ladies, check out that look of disgust the dude above is giving his wife while she's there knitting away, completely unaware. She'll only have herself to blame if he starts fooling around with a more careful dame.

This message was brought to you in the interests of marital bliss and harmony between the sexes.

Although it's not a wet and eager Bo Derek slowly emerging from the surf in a one piece and simply dripping with charm, I firmly believe that the above glamour shot of Ezra is very much worthy of a 10.

You see, it's already Theme Thursday again, and this week's challenge was the word TEN.

In the spirit of the motion picture about a horny middle-aged man from 1979, Ezra and I decided to do a photo shoot in a style that I like to call "late-70s Playboy". Customarily, this would involve an interior shoot on carpet, with broken sunlight swathed across a curvaceous brunette wearing little more than a smile and a strategically placed prop. Whether or not you have Brian Ferry records gently crooning off in the corner is entirely up to you.

In the interest of good taste though, coupled with the fact that I am certain that Jennifer would refuse (and probably storm off), I decided stick on some Roxy Music and go with a [somewhat] dressed and slightly less curvilinear – but no less attractive – baby.

This I present to you my very own perfect TEN, Ezra.

To continue the Henry double feature today, here is the little wrinkled prune at two and a half years!

He's eating cheese!

I thought that I'd give all the Henry fans out there a treat today and post a photo that Jen took of a four day old humongous monsterlittle bloke.

He looks somewhat different now.

I spotted this lovely sky on Sunday evening when I put the rubbish bins out. Here you're looking across the Derwent River over onto Cornelian Bay.

Overheard on the bus this morning:

"Some speed freaks came in smashed up some chairs and wrecked our bong, but they left when they realised that no-one would fight them."

They didn't say whether they were bikies or not...