This will hurt me...

Once you move beyond the morning, the excitement and the immediacy of giving and getting presents… Christmas is all a bit meh really.

Scooter proves a winner. Home, Geilston Bay. December 25, 2010. Thank God that Christmas is nearly over again. I mean, really, they put the bloody decorations up in town in mid-November! We've done the presents, pancakes done, cauldron of chocolate mousse is made, the veggies are good to go, the turkey is primed and ready. All I need is better behaved kids. Calm before the storm. Home, Geilston Bay. December 25, 2010. Anyway, the terrible twosome got themselves a wee Wii. The Nintendo one, not the urine one. Time will tell how that turns out. What is it? Home, Geilston Bay. December 25, 2010. Quote of the day? Child #1 finished opening the last of [literally] dozens of presents: No more? OH!!! [Slams fist] I NEVER GET ANYTHING !!! Merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas? I'm thinking of cancelling Christmas.

Clouds of DOOM appear in the east. New Town, December 2010. I’ve read a couple in the past week. The first, A Rumour of War is an autobiography/war memoir by Philip Caputo about his experience in the United States Marine Corps in the early years of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Caputo does an excellent job rendering the gravity, tragedy and absurdist nature of warfare. This is one of the better of the type that I have read. Caputo’s greatest success is the ease with which he constructs a narrative that really does elucidate the confluence of rigorous training, demanding circumstances and external pressure that leads the reader to contemplate how they might act in similar conditions. In this way, the comfortable self-assurance of one’s own moral safety net is not quite so secure. This is not so much a polemic as it is a plea. Very much worth the effort, although it’s intensity is rather draining. The second is Screwtop Thompson , a collection of short stories by one of my f...

…She never carries me around like that. Life just isn’t fair!

A pair of Streptopelia chinensis larking about at St Johns Park, New Town. December 2010. Streptopelia chinensis – the Spotted Turtle Dove to its friends – is a pigeon which is a resident breeding bird in tropical southern Asia from Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka east to south China and Southeast Asia. Obviously, you can add New Town to that list! In fact, my spies (as well as my moles, emissaries, stoolies and informants) tell me that these buggers are spreading at a rate of knots, often to the detriment of our very own native doves. Like the European Wasps and Argentinean Ants, immigrant animals are overrunning us! Something must be done. We don’t need words, we need ACTION . Now, I’ve looked into the matter and realise that our detention centres are all full. Offshore confinement won’t work, as the bustards bastards can fly. Well, I decided to take matters into my own hands and wring these two buggers’ necks. They put up a hell of a fight! That is our Christmas dinner sorted, at th...

Yep. Still looking...

Bellerive Oval, home of the Sheffield Shield powerhouse Tasmanian Tigers. Bellerive, December 2010. I have had a number of Hi-5 songs stuck in my head for the past two weeks. At this point, I would even take Christmas carols as replacements. If anyone has a foolproof earworm , please let me know!

Sometimes you do not really know what you are looking for until well after you have found it. Therefore, I expect that the lads will be able to brief me more fully on what exactly it was that they were looking for in approximately three (3) months time.

This seaweed appears to be waving hello. Bellerive Beach, December 2010. Why? Why not. Why not indeed! Because. Because why? Just because. Just because I said so. Why? Because! Why not? Because. Because why? Why because? ? ? ? ! ! !

There are times where it is perfectly okay for your mother to give you a good hard push . This is one of those times…

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...

Note: this is Nutgrove Beach in Sandy Bay, not Abu Dhabi...

The phallus is everywhere. Mount Wellington as viewed from St Johns Park. December 2010. The curse of phallogocentrism strikes yet again. It is incredibly hard to be a radical feminist in Hobart, as everywhere you care to look you will find colossal concrete erections lording proudly over you. It must be the high natural levels of testosterone in the air… Sunday Top Five? My Top Five Wishes For This Christmas! A benign sense of self-satisfaction. Tranquillity. No arguments. A firmer understanding of the rudiments of theoretical physics. A new bag. ...and not a phallus in sight!