This will hurt me...

Be very careful Henry, I have it on very good authority that there is a grumpy old troll™ living in this here shed…

Ezra, there’s a mighty big sand dune behind you. Calverts Beach, March 2011.

First of all, I have no need or desire to see snuff photographs or videos of Mr Bin Laden. However, I will confess to being bemused by the White House’s comment of “We don't trot out this stuff as trophies”, given the pep rally-like glee that this particular extrajudicial killing has generated. It strikes me that the passionate response to this week’s events very much resembles a trophy hunt. As it has been for ten years now…

What confuses me is the American leadership’s sudden coyness when it comes to the precise details of the killing. While assassinations are always a messy business, they’d not exactly hidden that such an outcome was welcome for this particular odious fellow. Welcome to the world of asymmetric warfare!

The legal interpretations will continue for some time, and as with all things that involve the law, will never be resolved. What struck me though was the fact that the initial reports clearly intended to paint this operation as anything but a targeted assassination. The fact that they’ve backtracked already makes the whole thing seem even more sordid than it already worse (from a purely ethical point of view).

How very timid! How many drone strikes have we seen under this very President? Drone strikes are nothing more than a mechanism to kill someone thousands of miles away. The use of drones by their very nature precludes any chance of surrender, so why sudden get all shy about the bloody detail. I guess that killing someone who is in the same room is just a little more complicated.


Up on Top, by Olav H. Hauge

After stumbling a long time over impossible trails
you are up on top.
Hardship didn't crush you, you trod it
down, climbed higher.

That's how you see it. After life has tossed you
away, and you ended up on top
like a one-legged wooden horse on a dump.
Life is merciful, it blinds and provides illusions,
and destiny takes on our burden:
foolishness and arrogance become mountains and marshy places,
hate and resentment become wounds from enemy arrows,
and the doubt always with us becomes cold dry
rocky valleys.

You go in the door.
The pot lies upside down in the hearth,
it sprawls with hostile black feet.

By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite.

Escaping convicts? Coming up to the dog line, Eaglehawk Neck, Tasman Peninsula, January 2011.

Just the two finished in what has been a hectic week for me, but what a two!

Seize the Day is the first Saul Bellow novel that I’d ever read. It will not be the last. An intense little book, it centres on a day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm, a frustrated fellow who is suffering from what we now might call a ‘mid-life crisis’. Written in 1957, it is a rather prescient observation of the emergent egocentric neurosis that seemed to overtake many in the industrialised world in the following decades.

It’s a great study of character and crisis, with one of the more beautifully-constructed endings that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. There’s no real sympathetic character in this book, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. We get our moment of catharsis.

Very highly recommended.

Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower has been called her masterpiece by some critics (others have been less kind), but was a book I’d only know by reputation before picking it up. Of course, if I had have known that it was set in and around Jena during the turbulent events at the end of the eighteenth century, and featured glimpses of Goethe, Fichte, Schiller et. al., I would have read it far earlier! As long term readers should know by now, if there are German idealist philosophers around, I’m always game…

Inspired by the life and love of poet and philosopher Novalis – a.k.a. Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (‘Fitz’) von Hardenberg, Fitzgerald enters a world of great tumult, with France under a revolutionary dictatorship and the beginning of German philosophical deviations into Romanticism and the nature of being.

The book really is a wonderful evocation of period of great interest to me, with the kind of political turmoil, intellectual voracity, and moral ambiguity that should feed a great yarn. Ostensibly an exploration of genius, The Blue Flower really excels as a fascinating and wry look at domestic life. I’m not sure the extent that it was deliberate, but the author manages to weave a lovely – and utterly unforced – mediation on gender within the broader historical context.

I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but its structure of 55 brief vignettes keeps it lighter than you would imagine possible. Really worth the effort. Extremely highly recommended.

They've just been informed that - contrary to popular films and picture books - polar bears and penguins do not frollick in the ice flows together.

Lost at sea. The Derwent River. Somewhere near Lindisfarne, April 2011.

Need. Want. Ought.

Ought. Want. Need.

Want. Want. Want.

Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want.

Want. Want. Want. Need. Know. Want. Want. Want.
Want. Want. Want. Know. Need. Want. Want. Want.

Yes.

Penguin rampage! Melbourne Aquarium, April 2011.

If it's not flocks of sharks terrorising innocent civilians, it's hordes of penguins!

I see that the US government is claiming that a group of Navy Seals killed nullified Mr Bin Ladin. I'm not so sure.

I have a theory that it was a crack group of rogue Navy Penguins...


Pingüino alboroto! Melbourne Aquarium, April 2011.

Pine cones versus rocks.

Henry wins.

Echidna on the prowl. Melbourne Zoo, April 2011.

No not an enchilada. Nor an anteater. Not a hedgehog. And no, it isn't a porcupine. It is not a practical joke, pincushion or extradimensional being who only can reach Earth's reality through a schism in time and space.

It is a monotreme. It lays eggs, but feeds its baby milk. It feeds its baby milk but it doesn't have nipples. It is an echidna. They live in Tasmania, but don't make very good pets.

A bird?

A plane?

A helicopter?

Diomedea exulans?

The Rapture?

Most likely another ball…

SHARK! Melbourne Aquarium. April 2011.

Despite the fact that it was the stingrays chewing on the diver's head, Henry remained as terrified as ever of the cute 'n cuddly grey nurse shark. It seems that once you've got yourself a reputation (earned or otherwise), some people have you pegged for life!

Figuring out how these "icy poles" work is a very tricky business...

Right. Got it.

A silver sheen in the morning. Eaglehawk Neck, January 2011.

Sunday Top Five again and this week is an easy top five.

Five Things That I Will Do Before F%$&*#G Jetstar Ever Get Another Cent Out Of Me!

• Attend Mass.



• Gender realignment surgery.



• Door to door sales.



• Try out for the Dallas Cowgirls.



• Praise Jetstar.