It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.

Ezra takes over the world! Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Hobart. February 2012.

Those of you logging in today this merry Theme Thursday expecting me to wax lyrical about the distribution of a characteristic of a physical system or phenomenon, or a graphic or photographic representation of such a distribution or indeed list a broad sequence or range of related qualities, ideas, or activities will be sorely dissatisfied!

When I here the word SPECTRUM I think about a computer system that I have never seen in person, let alone used or owned. Yes, the Sinclair ZX SPECTRUM! To explain, we must travel back to the heady days of 1986...

NASA needed another seven astronauts; we were all let down by Halley's Comet; and we all suddenly discovered an obscure little place called the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Unlike the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, we had a Commodore 64 home computer. At the time, the terminally slow cassette drive did not worry us (although we coveted floppy disks in secret). In retrospect the fifteen minute load time to have another three-second crack at dying in Dragon's Lair just does not seem worth it.

But you see, it could have been worse… It could have been a SPECTRUM. The SPECTRUM gave me perspective. The SPECTRUM gave me hope.

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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