As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

ACHTUNG! East Derwent Highway, Lindisfarne. July 2012.

I'm in Launceston today (should be getting my speech notes finished up about now), but that won't stop the Q and A. Yet again, it is filched from Sunday Stealing,the The Authentic Meme. This week, with a picture!

1. How long have you been blogging?

Over six long years.

2. Did you go to college?

I went to college and university!

3. Where have you travelled?

A lot less places than I would like to! Look up last week’s response and will get an idea...

4. Which celebrity do you get mistaken for?

I am rarely mistaken for anybody these days, but in my time I have had references to (one-time) Australian quick Brendan Julian; a young Jeff Goldblum; Scott Baio (there is a story to that one); and the bass player from Blur.

5. What are your three biggest pet peeves?

Wilful ignorance, a lack of integrity and intellectual snobbery.

6. What is your favourite movie?

I shall cheat a little bit and say Krzysztof Kieślowski's Dekalog.

7. What is your drink of choice; wine, beer, or liquor. Or Water, Soda, Tea?

Of those, water.

8. What is something you enjoy to do when you have me time?

Caress my wife. Lay in the sun. Go for a stroll. Those sorts of things.

9. What is your biggest phobia?

I don’t have any irrational fears. That doesn’t mean that I don’t fear things, but they are all exist within a ‘normal’ framework of risk assessment.

10. Share with us an embarrassing moment of your past?

Generally anything involving girls and alcohol would qualify.

11. What day would you love to relive again?

June 2, 2001.

Why?

Because it was very pleasant.

12. If your life was turned into a movie… what actor would your best friend think should play you?

You should ask them. One of Brendan Julian, a young Jeff Goldblum, Scott Baio or the bass player from Blur.

13. What are the jobs you had in high school/ college/ the early years?

They would be the 'incredibly shitty jobs'. To differentiate them from every other shitty job I've had since...

14. Show us a picture from high school or college.

There are hardly any in existence, unfortunately. Pre-digital cameras and mobile phones, it seemed incredibly easy to go years between photographs. Here's one from my second year of uni:

15. If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go?

I'd catch a train from Vienna to Vladivostok, with plenty of stops along the way.

16. Where do you see your life 6 and 1/2 years from now?

Hopefully one which is significantly less frustrating.

17. If you could choose to stay a certain age forever, what age would it be and why?

24 was a good age. No strings, sky the limit, looked good, felt good. Playstation 2. PhD scholarship. Good times.

18. What 5 songs are included on the soundtrack to your life?

Let's presume that it will be merely the first of a trilogy, the 'early years' would have to include Plastic Bertrand's Ca Plane Pour Moi, Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse Of The Heart, U2's Promenade, R.E.M.'s Half A World Away and Morrissey's Used to be a sweet boy. The film would end in 1994 and be very slow, quite dull and incredibly melancholic. Lots of long tracking shots featuring a disconsolate teen gazing across bodies of water.

19. Romney picked Paul Ryan to run as his veep. Any thoughts?

Aside from a great pity for US voters? Not really. Your system is broken.

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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