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Showing posts from November 1, 2011

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.

Even on a scooter he is too loud!

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

RECY indeed! Byron Street, Sandy Bay. October 2011. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and ladies with zebras). The following are some things that I've had a look at in the last few week. I call this: a Compendium of Click-throughs for Monday Morning ... The arms trade relies on business-speak and foggy language, writes Will Self for the BBC in Why euphemism is integral to modern warfare ... Read about the true story behind the Savoy's surface glitz and glimmer during the Second World War... Paul Keating talks! A tale of what happened when Wikipedia asked its users for money... The jury is in (again): sugar DOES NOT make kids hyper ... For map lovers the world over: a power socket map of the world ... Something else we have known for a while: universities are broken ...

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

One day Henry, this will be all yours...

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

Their legs must get tired. Little Howrah Beach. October 2011. Another Sunday means another Top Five. I have had the chance over the past month to give Chicago experimental rock combo Wilco 's latest album The Whole Love , and it is a cracker. All this has got me thinking, how might I narrow down their records thus far to a top five? Thus I have today's list, My Top Five Wilco Albums! First up I am ruling out a host of collaborations that are extremely worthy in their own regard. The two albums with Billy Bragg - Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II - working over some found Woody Guthrie lyrics are quite the achievement. I am a Bragg fan, but the Wilco efforts blow his away. Well worth tracking down. I am also excluding Down With Wilco , the collaboration with The Minus 5 and the very interesting The Sun Came Out with Neil Finn. This leaves nine. The elimination was easy, as 2005's Kicking Television was immediately ruled out, as I'm not counting live albums (h...

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

I like to call this: James Dean, with tongue .

He worked too hard to read books.

Bleak times. Jetty as seen from Errol Flynn Reserve, Sandy Bay. October 2011. James Wright is one of my favourite poets. Here is one of his poems. Youth , James Wright Strange bird, His song remains secret. He worked too hard to read books. He never heard how Sherwood Anderson Got out of it, and fled to Chicago, furious to free himself From his hatred of factories. My father toiled fifty years At Hazel-Atlas Glass, Caught among girders that smash the kneecaps Of dumb honyaks. Did he shudder with hatred in the cold shadow of grease? Maybe. But my brother and I do know He came home as quiet as the evening. He will be getting dark, soon, And loom through new snow. I know his ghost will drift home To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone, Whittling a root. He will say nothing. The waters flow past, older, younger Than he is, or I am.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Henry and Ezra re-enact the Battle of Rorke's Drift down on a dirt pile in Geilston Bay. We employed an assortment of bumblebees, grasshoppers and beetles in the role of the Zulu attackers. A wallaby played Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande. As ever, it was Victoria Crosses all round when the dust cleared!

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Under the Tasman Bridge, and not a troll in sight! Under the Tasman Bridge, western shore. October 2011. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively is in many respects a conventional sad, romantic tale you may find familiar. However, in terms of construction, craft and style; this is a decidedly original book. Lively has constructed a shifting, jagged narrative that is a thing of beauty. Shifting tenses almost every other page, the book also frequently alternates narrative voices and chronology. Although this might sound confusing, it works wonderfully well. Thus, there are many occasions within the book where we get multiple presentations of the same event from different viewpoints. Those passages in the present tense are narrated in the third person, though the central character – the elderly and dying Claudia – is always present. From here though the novel shifts backwards and forwards through time, reconstructing Claudia’s life from both her memory and standpoint, but also those of the signifi...

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Don't go in the water Ezzie... Don't go in the water Ez... Don't go in the water Ezra... Don't get any more wet Ez... Don't get any more wet Ezra... Don't get any more wet Ezzie... We don't have a spare set of undies Ez... We don't have a spare set of undies Ezzie... We don't have a spare set of undies Ezra...

Work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going 60 mph or is the train going 60 mph and you're just sitting still?

Windmill at the Spring Festival. Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. October 2011. Theme Thursday again, and this week I am in a "railing against" mood. You see, I currently hold the controversial opinion that there are too many gizmos and GADGETs these days. It used to be that the most advanced gadget you'd see at a meeting was the humble retractable pencil. Then overhead projectors got a foothold. As they died out, along came the laptop and with it the dreaded PowerPoint. Alongside this bloated behemoth you will now find your audience (that's how I view meetings, d'you wanna make something of it?) came the mobile phone, the I-Pod, the I-Pad, the touch pad maxi pad taxi pad plus-double-plus-plus. There are the coffee machines on the way in. Fax machines on the way out. The boom gate in the parking bay and the pay-as-you-go before you can go machine. There are the octopus phones and the video-conference gear that never works and the stapler that never works and the ...

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

Lego Duplo vehicles as panopticon. A great leap forward in totalitarian omnipresence Henry. Congratulations!

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

Purple flower. Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. October 2011. Today I am in Launceston. If you have not been to Launceston, you are not missing much you are missing out. Launceston was the site of the first use of anaesthetic in the Southern Hemisphere (appropriate enough), the first Australian city to have underground sewers (well needed) and the first Australian city to be lit by hydro-electricity (light is always welcome). Launceston has an incredibly ugly flag . There is not much more that I can say for Launceston, other than "must try harder".

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

You know that 'rage virus' in the film 28 Days Later ? The one where people run at you screaming and screeching with hate in their eyes? Sometimes I think Ezra has that. Then it just goes away. Also, note the t-shirt which on this day qualified as 'ironic'...

Adults are obsolete children.

A view towards the Tasman Bridge. Hobart Cycle Path, River Derwent. October 2011. Today we reach the end of the road for the Questions Galore Meme, as we complete Part 3 ... 41. What is a quote that you love? "If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong." - Kinky Friedman 42. Do you think of pure hate as something humanity created? I'm not convinced that there is such a concept as "pure hate". 43. When was the last time you wanted to scream? On Friday, and it involved an overload of poo jokes. 44. Do you ever at times see the world in black and white? Often, then I slap myself and snap out of it. 45. Have you ever thought that cell phones are too obtrusive? Pretty much most of the time. 46. In your life, where do you thank the rainbow will end? Rainbows are an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear i...