Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible. Thus he is master of his enemy's fate.

Here is my sweet little baboo.

He's very happy here.

As a special treat, please note Henry's feet in the background...

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

There were some very interesting clouds behind our house this morning, as Henry and I conducted our regular reconnaissance looking for the moon. he sky was pink out the front, and deep orange in the backyard. This photo doesn't quite do it justice.

After a slight misconception the other day, I was give to ponder which was more embarrassing: to be a man mistaken for a woman, or a woman mistaken for a man?

“I’m selling these fine leather jackets.”

Run Henry, RUN!

Here you can see Henry escaping from a cursed goblet belonging to the villainous zombie pirate LeChuck.

Or maybe it's a statue dedicated to Tasmanian blue gums. I can't remember now.

Где ти много обећавају, малу торбу понеси

From a few weeks back, when it snowed. I think this one is very "1970s Yugoslavia".

Here's a poem pilfered from an overheard 'conversation' in the bus mall.

Oh, the humanity!

Thirteen years old.
Grossly obese.
"I fucken chundered
EVERYWHERE"

A moment,
she reflected.
"It was
fucken
AWESOME."

An evolutionary
milestone.

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

It's Ezra, it's up close, and by christ I have a rotten headache. Camomile hasn't dented it, nor has paracetamol. This is going to take trading in the toddler for a goldfish.

The ox is slow but the earth is patient

Mein Gott, it is Theme Thursday already! Is it just me, or are Thursdays rolling around far more quickly ever since I signed up to this thing?

As with every week, I have before me a challenge to locate an image that I have taken and pen some words around a theme completely independent of my choosing. As always, I’m struggling.

This week? EARTH.

So I have a photo that I like to think is pretty representative of the Earth. You have your trees there. Some clouds. The ocean. Some sand and rocks. You’ve got seagulls and molluscs. Grass there in the background too.

That’s the kind of Earth that I like.

But I got to thinking, which always spells trouble.

If I am from this planet called Earth, and I’m happy enough here, am I able to identify as an Earthling?

Let’s face it, I struggle enough with identity most of the time. I think of myself as being from Burnie, and I have no shame in telling people that. I also identify (proudly) as a North West Coaster. Of course, I’m a Tasmanian before I am an Australian. Yet if I’m introduced to a Belizean I’ll tell them I’m Australian. Not only that, I’m an Australian of Scot/Italian/Irish stock, that is, I’m a European-Australian.

Have I got space in my life to be an Earthling as well?

Does being an Earthling afford me a set of assumed natural rights? Being a human kind of does.

Chickens are Earthlings, and I eat them.

Ants, flowers, trees, fleas, algal blooms and viruses are Earthlings too.

But what about rocks?

Mountains?

Rivers?

Hmmm...

Maybe we’re ALL Earthlings now.

[A nod to the good people over at Obscene Deserts, who spark some of my long mulled thinking along this track with a post on 'Europe'.]

Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.

Here are my three favourite people in a familiar situation to anyone with a toddler. Grouped together is mother, father (behind the lens) and baby, with toddler straying well behind to inspect various bits of gravel, rocks, grasshoppers, chip packets, empty cans, cigarette butts, bloodied syringes and broken glass.

Eventually he catches up, but only after a multitude of threats and at least one [slow] count to five. Toddlerism is a kind of dementia, as is the state that one lapses into while being a parent to a toddler. We love him nonetheless.

Happy anniversary baby, got you on my mind

No it is not a webcam, but this photograph was taken a mere forty-five ago on my way in to work. Here you can see a good old fashioned Hobart autumn morning, with the rain pelting down and me getting drenched. This one was taken on the corner of Macquarie and Elizabeth, while I was waiting for the lights to change. Come on Ampelmännchen!

Today is my wedding anniversary, an apparently I need to be showering Jen with leather-related goodies. Va-va-vaVOOM!

To you Jennifer, here is a poem I wrote this very morning.

Anniversary

I love you
i love you
iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou
I LOVE you
I love YOU
iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou

I

LOVE

YOU

iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou

Happy anniversary

I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real, how can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?

Here are my two little grumblers in the Japanese Garden on Good Friday. The blanket that you can see them sitting on is a little project completed by my lovely wife for Ezra. It's a counterpart to one that has made numerous appearances already that was made for Henry (here is a good one that Ezra has modelled). I should also mention that Ez's jumper is also the handiwork of the talented Jen. I chose the buttons, which in many respects is the most difficult part.

Continuing our endeavour to ensure that Henry and I managed to traverse the world of cuisine before he hits five, this evening we made our very first kugel. For the uninitiated, the kugel is a traditional baked Jewish side dish that comes in all manner of flavours, sweet and savoury. We turned to the humble kugel in an attempt to broaden Henry's mind to vegetables. Our attempt featured sweet potato, carrot, potato and apple. It goes all right. Well worth a crack if they refuse the veggies.

If anyone has any similar tips to make vegetables more appetising for the bairns, or has an idea for our next culinary journey, leave them in the comments!

Der Menscheit Würde ist in Eure Hand gegeben, bewahret Sie!

Some kind soul has left this message on down in Salamanca.

If I were the vandal-type, I'd be penning some of Schiller's exhortations left right and centre. The dude sure could fire people up!

Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis.

Here is the cranky terror of the deep State of Tasmania himself. I think that we must have more teeth on the way given his mood all weekend. I did manage to snap this one of him in an executive mood. Consider yourself lucky that you're seeing a smile and not hearing a wail...

Now, you listen here: 'e's not the Messiah, 'e's a very naughty boy! Now, go away!

I asked Jen to pick the image for today, and she opted for the "stone wall". Of course, this is no stone wall viewed from below, it's the water in Sullivan's Cove viewed from above! I took this one just next to the tilt bridge near the fish punts. That must read very oddly to a non-English speaker, one would imagine.

Easter Monday, and I have still managed to avoid chocolate eggs. It will be quite an accomplishment if I make it right way through unscathed.

I noted in the comments thread about a work colleague of a reader who was offended by my bemusement at the whole Easter tale. Now, I respect everybody's right to be offended at whatever they like, but like that Jesus fellow apparently said himself, do unto others and all that jazz. You see, I can happily endorse that Byrds track Jesus Is Just Alright, because Jesus sounded like a nice fellow. I can't say that there is too much different about our respective approaches to life.

So, in the spirit of Jesus, I'm happy for others to ridicule my beliefs too, particularly if they involve ramming down one interpretation of a way of living (and dying) that is very much about power relationships, the game of Chinese whispers that is oral history regarding events of more than two thousand years ago, a distinct whiff of sleight of hand all that mean I can't visit a supermarket on Friday as I normally would.

I feel this even more strongly when people (usually men, as most doctrinal religions have some way to go with regards to gender equity) trot out nonsense like Leviticus to justify treating person A differently than person B because of some old folk tale. Don't like blokes getting jiggy with other blokes? Don't get jiggy with other blokes then! Don't want to lay with your missus "in her uncleanliness"? Don't like shellfish? Pork? Hey, wait a sec, we don't worry so much about that these days. So much for the sacred word of God!

I'll be honest with you, God in the Old Testament is a real arsehole. If doesn't like the look of you, BAM, there's a pox on your house, locusts in your field and your lovely wife can be stored in a decorative salt shaker.

How's that for divine right?

I'm a child of the Enlightenment. I can't help it. It's German Idealists all the way for me baby and God may well damn me if I'm wrong, I'll wear it. Humans you see, difficult buggers, they create God/s because they need it/him/them, they kill them when they don't.

Faith?

As much as you can, I have it in people. Not much else one can do.

Fame! I'm gonna live forever! I'm gonna learn to fly!

On Good Friday we all ventured off to the Botanical Gardens to inspect the Japanese Garden and the shrine that Henry insists was built for him.

I'm not sure that I believe him, but after I have sat here watching him dancing to a melody of hits from the 1980s and 1990s (his jig to Nena's 99 Luftballoons is worthy of Leroy from Fame), I am quite sure that someone somewhere someday will erect a statue of some form or another.

I used to like bobbing around in the sea, put it that way, when we were younger but I don't go now.

Here is a seagull sitting onby the dock on the bayestuary. This one was leering ever so seedily at some Swedish backpackers who were eating chips on the dock. One might assume that the chips were being eyed off, but did you know that studies have shown that 10 to 15 percent of female western gulls in some populations in the wild are lesbians?

Sometimes the things that I hear on the bus can be easily turned into poems of great profundity.

Boyfriend
my bloody computer
doesn't work

shitloads of software
doesn't work

heaps of memory
doesn't work

a thousand bucks
doesn't work

he made me breakfast this morning
but
he doesn't work