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.

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

This will hurt me...

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