There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

A particularly good win in Bananagrams. Home, Geilston Bay. November 2012.

Sunday stealing Who Are you? Part 7 – It is Over!

Part 7: Self Image

84. Describe the routine of a normal day for you:

Wake up. Check my RSS feeds. Read up on what's happened overnight. Get up. Have a shower. Get dressed. Have breakfast. Feed children. Catch the bus. Walk to work. Work. Walk to bus. Catch bus home. Converse with family I. Cook/ eat dinner. Converse with family II. Wash children. Read stories. Put children to bed. Go to bed. Surf the net. Seduce wife. Sleep.

85. What is your greatest strength as a person?

I have a certain firmness of resolve...

86. What is your greatest weakness?

I have a certain firmness of resolve...

87. Are you going to run for President in 2016?

President of the Board? It's unlikely...

88. Are you generally self-contained?

Absolutely. I am an Iland, intire of it selfe...

89. Are you generally organized or messy?

It depends on my mood. I am capable of both.

90. Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at:

Good: i) cooking; ii) broad general knowledge; iii) standing my ground.
Not-so-good: i) crying; ii) caring about something that I don't care for; iii) knitting.

91. Do you like your neighbours? Do they like you?

They're okay. I think that they probably do.

92. Are you different in public then you act among friends?

If you're among friends aren't you often "in public"? I'm generally much of a muchness.

93. What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime?

To make it out alive!

94. Where do you see yourself in 4 years?

Somewhere else!

95. If you could choose, how would you want to leave this world?

In a giant silver rocket with blue stripes.

96. If you had only one week to live, what three things would be bumped up on the bucket list?

I don't have one of those.

97. What is one thing about you that really stands out?

My keen sense of history.

98. What three words best describe your personality?

Enigmatic. Studious. Pragmatic.

99. What three words would others probably use to describe you?

Pedant. Haughty. Idiosyncratic.

100. What advice do you have to give?

Don't shit where you eat.

Comments

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...

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. ...

This will hurt me...

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