A good conscience is a continual Christmas

A grey old morning. (Just off) the corner of Macquarie and Elizabeth Streets, Hobart. December 2010.

Christmas comes but once a year…? Thank Christ for that.

There are a few things about Christmas that I don’t mind: giving presents, a few days off, some quality time in the kitchen, a cauldron of chocolate mousse.

Regrettably, these are vastly outweighed by the things I loathe: tinsel, phony goodwill, the remorseless desire for material goods, the prevalence of fat guys in red suits with Rangifer tarandus sprinkled with snow despite the unmistakable fact that we here at the arse end of the world are in the middle of summer and you have as much likelihood of spotting a Thylacinus cynocephalus making love with a Raphus cucullatus to the tune of Mental as Anything’s Berserk Warriors than that hackneyed old scene.

It’s about time that us here in the Antipodes start seizing the initiative and make up our own ~~bunch of nonsense~~ set of traditions to ~~ram down the throats of everyone until the spend spend SPEND until they can’t spend no more~~ celebrate the… um… [ahem]… celebrate the…

What was that again?

Comments

Carola said…

Hey Kris, this is awesome. You found the right words.

We have loads of snow.
See here: http://areyouhere-areyouthere.blogspot.com/

But I don't like the Brimborium, when it all is about consum, and everyone pretands to be religious.

Looking forward to some more family time. School will be closed from 24th until 9th January.

20 December 2010 at 09:19

Kris McCracken said…

People don’t even pretend to be religious around these parts. They do cite “Christmas Spirit” etc etc, but that seems to be more about forcing yourself to be abnormally cheerful rather than any notion of benevolence or concern for those less fortunate.

20 December 2010 at 11:35

Roddy said…

I dunno. You lost me when you started on Thylacinus.

20 December 2010 at 13:00

Gemma Wiseman aka Pamela Adams said…

Gorgeous mumbo jumbo that rings with raw truth! I couldn't agree more!

21 December 2010 at 11:33

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, well...

GT, I'm not the only one!

22 December 2010 at 11:10

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...

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