You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play.

The prettiest building in Battery Point? Coleville Street, Battery Point. January 2012.

Tuesday Q and A and I continue to steal questions from Sunday Stealing. This week I am stealing The Never Ending Meme, Part Three.

36. Have you watched American Horror Story?
I’ve never even heard of American Horror Story?

37. Baseball hat or toque?
I had to look up the word ‘toque’ (clue: it’s what The Edge from U2 has worn for the past twenty years). I wear neither. If I’m going to wear a hat, I need some protection from the sun, like a slouch hat.

38. Do you shampoo or soap up first in the shower?
Shampoo. Usually.

39. Wet the toothbrush or brush dry with the toothpaste?
Wet. Every time.

40. Pen or pencil?
Pencil. I’m still using a pen without a license.

41. Have you ever gambled at a casino?
Not even once. It’s a mug’s game.

42. Have you thrown up on a plane?
No.

43. Have you thrown up in a car?
Not that I can recall. This does not mean it has never happened though...

44. Have you thrown up at work?
I have (in the dunny though).

45. Do you scream on roller coasters?
No. I go deathly silent.

46. How many shoes do you have?
Individual shoes or pairs of shoes? Closed toe? Do boots count? If the question refers to ‘closed toe pairs of shoes and/ or boots’, I have four.

47. Who was your first roommate?
Roommate? As in “sharing a room” or “sharing a house/ flat”? I shared a room with my brother for a while (and a flat later on too). If you’re talking housemate, it was a stranger from Sale in Victoria.

48. What alcoholic beverage did you drink when you got drunk for the first time?
I cannot honestly recall. It would have likely been beer or some form of white wine.

49. What was your first job?
Newspaper delivery.

50. What was your first car?
I’ve never had a car.

51. When did you go to your first funeral?
Probably my grandmother’s. In 1993. I’ve not been to many funerals.

52. How old were you when you first moved away from your hometown?
18.

53. Who was your first grade teacher?
Her name was Ms Viney. She was not very nice. It was a rude shock after a laissez faire kindergarten experience.

54. Where did you go on your first airplane ride?
Cripes, I can’t remember! It would have involved a Fokker Friendship from Melbourne to Burnie Airport (which is in Wynyard), or vice versa. It was a long time ago.

55. When you snuck out of your house for the first time, who was it with?
I can’t say I’ve ever been a sneaker.

56. Who was your first best friend and are you still friends with them?
Pass. The whole categorising of friendship has been something that passed me by. Suffice to say I’m not in correspondence with any of my friends from childhood.

57. Where did you live the first time you moved out of your parents’ house?
43 Cromwell Street, Battery Point.

58. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?
I don’t call anybody if I’ve had a bad day. I stew.

59. Whose wedding were you in the first time you were a bridesmaid or a groomsmen?
Not applicable. I’ve been to as many weddings as I have funerals. Dire things.

60. What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Pass water. Then I get online and see what’s happened in the World.

61. What was the first concert you attended?
There are photos of me at concerts as a baby, but I don’t remember them. I think that the first one I went to was Boom Crash Opera, but I could be wrong on that.

62. First tattoo or piercing?
I’ve not had either. Seems a bloody stupid option to me.

63. First celebrity crush?
I remember being taken by a very young Mel Gibson in the first Mad Max film. The bit when he is very angry and driving very fast was extremely alluring. The very young Elle McPherson was also very [ahem] striking to me as a young fellow.

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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