This will hurt me...

Here is Ez doing his best matinee idol squint into the sun. He is wearing a bib, but I reckon it could pass for a bandanna, a-la Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. He is an amazing young fellow, my Ezra. Somehow he manages to straddle the line between Goethe, the outlaw Josey Wales, and James Hird.

It can't be easy.

There's nothing finer than a shag in the shallows on a public beach! Here is a fine specimen hustling up some grub looking south from Howrah beach mere days ago.

So yesterday you got LOVE, today you get HATE:

1. Most Hated Food: NUTS! Peanuts mainly. Not really a nut I know, but the list of things that can kill me is not a short one: peanuts, pine nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, macadamias, and they are just the ones I know about! Vile, detestable things!

2. Most Hated Person: I can't just pick one. I generally don't like people who think and carry themselves as if they are learned or broad-minded when in fact they are as - if not more - ignorant, narrow-minded or judgemental than those they look down upon. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of such people.

3. Most Hated Job: Any job where you find yourself getting lumped with work that should be done by those being paid twice as much as you (and they're off eating cake...)

4. Most Hated City: There are many, many things about Sydney that I don't like. To say Devonport would be too easy.

5. Most Hated Band: Any band who don't deserve their legacy. It isn't a short list, but The Clash and The Ramones are right up there.

6. Most Hated Website: Probably My Space. I don't have epilepsy, but I'm sure I would develop it if I spent any time there. Who designed that thing, people with ADD on LSD?

7. Most Hated TV Program: Something "reality". I'm sure that Big Brother has been named on this meme before...

8. Most Hated Movie: I have loathed everything of Lars von Trier after Breaking the Waves, I don't even have the words to explain how much I detest Dancer in the Dark. Honestly, that film is like an elaborate (bad) joke. [ As a bonus, I'd like to add that, I am sure that there are worse films out there, but by christ I hated Mystic River.]

9. Most Hated Artist: Step forward Mr Damien Hirst! [Please collect your stuffed shag at the door.]

10. Most Hated Book: Catcher in the Rye. Again, there are worse books, but the legacy gets me. The central character is so utterly annoying that I'm still angry he didn't get hit by a bus. Who knew they had middle-class emos in the '50s? Phony...

11. Most Hated Shop: Any place with wankers working in it. I'm sure that I don't shop there because everything is too expensive anyway.

12. Most Hated Organization: There is no shortage, I'll be honest. The Westboro Church are too ludicrous to take seriously, so I'll have to give Al Qaeda the nod. They're like peanuts, they're out to kill me and I didn't do anything to them!

13. Most Hated Historical Event: Given the outcomes, the Treaty of Versailles is probably one I'd like to see be given another run with hindsight.

14. Most Hated Sport: Golf. I feel dirty even calling it a sport. It's like darts featuring less beer and worse trousers.

15. Most Hated Piece of Tech: I have a slightly irrational hatred of the iPod shuffle. It seems so pointless.

16. Most Hated Annual Event: God I hate Australia Day. Anything with flags and patriotism generally makes me feel like vomiting.

17. Most Hated Daily Task: Going to work is never fun.

18. Most Hated Comedian: Look, there are less funny people, and no doubt more annoying people, but the fan boys (and girls) that worship at the alter of Bill Hicks have engendered a deep distaste for his work in me. It's just so obvious. And, forgive me for asking, where are the jokes?

I feel much better for that. Thanks!

Here is Henry checking out a ye olde shoppe in the ye olde towne of Richmond. It was kind of embarrassing, actually. He went in there and said something, and from what I could tell, there seemed to be a heated discussion of some sort. I went in to check it out and Henry was telling the old woman behind the counter what a nice shoppe it was, how it would be "a real shame" if there was "an accident" or something.

Then he knocked some fine china off the shelf, and she started crying and I hustled him out of the joint.

We're going to steer clear of Richmond for a little while. At least until the heat cools down a bit...

A morning stroll. Brisk winter's air. A bit of sun. Plenty of birds. What could be finer? This one was taken just the other day over the road from our place. They are a mix of sea birds here: Silver, Pacific and Kelp Gulls, for the most part.

I've noted a couple of memes doing the rounds of late, and bereft of any better ideas, thought that I'd tackle the harder one first: things I love.

Away we go!

1. Most Loved Food: Difficult opener. Right now, I am thinking "Icy Pole".

2. Most Loved Person: A three way tie. You can guess who they are.

3. Most Loved Job: I can't say that I could ever apply the term "love" to any employment I have ever held. I'm struggling to think of a "least loathed". Tutoring online University courses was okay, if a little frustrating at times. At least it could be done from home. That said, they can attract some loons, and manners are a rare commoditiy...

4. Most Loved City: I did like Nürnberg very much. Prague, Burnie and Melbourne are all in the running too.

5. Most Loved Band: I'll say Wilco, but the list is long.

6. Most Loved Website: This one.

7. Most Loved TV Program: Seinfeld. But I also miss Deadwood very, very much.

8. Most Loved Movie: It depends on my mood. I like Flying High for laughs; Three Colours: Red if I'm moody; Secrets and Lies if I'm pre-menstrual; The Thin Red Line if I'm wistful; or Das Boot if I'm itching for action.

9. Most Loved Artist: One of Paul Klee, J.M.W. Turner or Mr Monet himself.

10. Most Loved Book: That isn't fair. It's like choosing between Henry and Ezra. Catch-22. No, The Tin Drum. NO! The Unbearable Lightness of Being. No, Lolita! No, Rabbit, Run. No, Darkness at Noon. No, A Farewell to Arms. Oh, I don't know. It's a long shortlist.

11. Most Loved Shop: I like supermakets.

12. Most Loved Organization: The Lithuanian Studies Society.

13. Most Loved Historical Event: The whole tale of Finland in the twentieth Century is a fascinating one.

14. Most Loved Sport: Australian Rules Football [as long as there is no flooding]. Or Test Cricket [as long as their is no Brett Lee].

15. Most Loved Piece of Tech: The Personal Computer.

16. Most Loved Annual Event: World Sauntering Day.

17. Most Loved Daily Task: Tickling Jen.

18. Most Loved Comedian: I am partial to Louis C.K. of late.

Coming up: part one of a fourteen thousand part series: Things I Hate.

Some boats awaiting their task down at the Geilston Bay Boat Club. I like the composition of this one, if it isn't too vain to say.

I'm busy at the moment trying to finish something, hopefully it will bear fruit!

Here is another one of a smiling Ezra, I am aware of how popular that seems to be.

No time to talk, as I am busy preparing a top secret and extremely important document!

So yeah, it’s Theme Thursday again. What’s more, it’s kind of relevant to where my head has been as of late. I say kind of because it is one degree of separation removed from the today’s theme, but well within the spirit!

So tell me, dear reader, what is the first thing that comes to mind when I say “CLOCK”?

If you’re wired like me, you’ll be sagely scratching your chin, suppressing a tear and muttering to yourself “TIME”.

TIME.

There is rarely enough of it.

I took the above photo the Wednesday before last. I was sitting in the front passenger side of the car, on the Gordon’s Hill Road/East Derwent Highway intersection.

The connection that this photo engenders to me with the concept of time is somewhat ambiguous. When I look at this sky, awash as it is with colour as day bleeds into night prompts a very specific memory, albeit of a sky in a different place and separate context.

I have an incredibly vivid recollection of swimming in the ocean under a similar sky. Of course, that sky was a little more orange, a little pinker, it was summer, and it was up in the North West of Tasmania, not the South East.

The memory itself is vivid, albeit nothing particularly out of the ordinary – swimming during an electrical storm, the sound of thunder rolling when you stick your head under the water, that kind of thing – the thing is though, as I’m thinking this, it seems like yesterday.

But it wasn’t yesterday.

So in my head, I’m like “three years...?”

No.

FIFTEEN YEARS.

Fifteen years and it seems like yesterday.

Ezra will have his first birthday next month. It seems like last week!

Henry is two and a half.

I’ve been together with Jen for EIGHT years.

I’ve live in Hobart for THIRTEEN YEARS.

It’s a blink of an eye.

On this spectrum, at this rate, I’ll be dead NEXT WEEK.

Not next week in a linear, temporal sense, but next week in a sense of how time appears to me. How time come and how time goes.

I’m scared.

I want to cry.

Henry

plus stick

equels

Myra Hindley!

Of late, Henry and I have taken to reviving ourselves by taking in the invigoratingly brisk winter's air on morning strolls on the weekend. The lassitude of a sedentary, indoor life that winter often begets must be resisted, thus we proceed down to the water to observe the comings and goings and wax lyrical about a diversity of topics: man's inhumanity to man; the declining industrial output of Latvia; Lacan's Signification of the Phallus in relation to the town of Ulverstone; and whether Di, Mary or Ian Thorpe truly is the Princess of Hearts.

Most of all though, we look at the birds. Here you can see our good friend Larus pacificus (the Pacific Gull at the back), with six fine Larus novaehollandiae (the Silver Gulls in the foreground). These fellows were spotted on the Geilston Bay Jetty, and were hanging about looking for a bit of fine Tasmanian seafood.

In a companion piece to Ezra on the Swing, I ingeniusly call this Ezra on the Slide.

Stay tuned for Ezra wrestles the Crocodile!

[Ez wanted to dedicate this smile to Delhi's finest, Priyanka, for her birthday...]

Here is the view up Elizabeth Street towards the bus mall on a brisk winter's afternoon. There is something inherently melancholy about the kind of afternoon light that can be found in winter. I like it, but then again, I’ve been known to stroll along that road on occasion.

I suppose that perhaps it isn’t the light that’s melancholy though. Perhaps the problem is a little closer to home. If only there was some kind of standardised measure of melancholy to help. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale is of no use to me, and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale is a joke. That said, anything to do with Warwick Capper is a absurd as a rule. [See what I did there?] I re-took Dr George W. Crane’s Marital Rating Scale (and scored rather excellently, I might add) but that was no assistance!

In a rut? Tick.

Bored? Tick.

Listless? Tick.

Lacking enthusiasm? Tick.

Frustrated? Tick.

Cynical and contemptuous to others? Tick.

Irritable and curt to wife and children? Tick tick tick!

Dear god! My Melancholy Meter is off the scale! We’re talking Morrissey-esque levels of melancholy here!

Whatever next? Dying my hair black, whipping out the eye-liner and cutting my arms?

I've taken the first step to recovery and ceased the procession of Holocaust memoirs. I am quite sure that the shift to post-Soviet black comedies will help immeasurably!

Here is Henry with something brown and sticky. He'd spotted a tiger snake, and was keen to give it a few WHACKS, but I counselled him in the way of the dragon, which actually ended up with Henry kicking Chuck Norris from pillar to post in the Colosseum to prove that non-violence is the answer (or something).

I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure that pacifism really suits my Hank...

Ah the Irish! With their lovable exhalation of the joys of alcoholism and glorious failure! We had a lot of Irish convicts sent down here in Tasmania, by and large they were a amiable bunch of rapscallions with cheeky grins, a love of gin and a desire for little more than good craic, a sing song and a pratie for tea. They also fuelled the explosion in public drinking houses. Especially ones run by fellows named "Murphy", "O'Reilly" and "Fitzgerald".

Here are some pubs in the Salamanca district. I know that erstwhile commentator Miles speaks ever so highly of their security staff. I am not the best person to comment however, as the last time I was in a pub, Saddam Hussain was still alive, Britney was sane, John Howard was smiling and I could sleep in on weekends.