There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child..

Jen leads Ezra a merry dance. Opossum Bay, South Arm Peninsula. December 2012.

A very special Christmas Day Sunday Stealing: The Not So Manly Meme

1. Boxers? Briefs? Boxer briefs? Thongs? Bikinis? Commando?

I'm on holidays, which means commando!

2. What’s your fussiest personal care routine?

I can't say that I have one. Shaving is always a chore, but having a beard is worse.

3. Do you have a favourite tool? Power or manual?

A computer. It uses power.

4. Can you change your own oil? Do you?

I cook in fresh oil every time. That's what you mean, isn't it?

5. What’s the “manliest / womanliest” thing you do on a regular basis?

Manliest? I get a slightly contemptuous feeling any time shows an undue level of emotion. 'Womanliest'? Do you mean 'effeminate'? I'm very clean and I like to cook.

6. What’s something “manly” that you never learned how to do?

Drive a car. Or even be even remotely interested in cars in any way.

7. Do you ever cry? If so, what’s your trigger?

Unfortunately it's not an art I've mastered. A really good book might be able to trigger a solitary tear every couple of years.

8. Do you have a chivalrous streak? How does it manifest itself?

I have lots of old fashioned manners that reveal themselves: waiting for others to begin eating, serving everybody else first, opening doors for ladies, not bashing them. That sort of thing.

9. Do you have a chauvinistic streak? How does it manifest itself?

I don't have a patriotic bone in my body. I find the whole notion of flags and anthems embarrassing. However, I suspect that this question was angling towards male chauvinism. I don't think so. I don't believe that men are superior to women (or vice versa). I suspect that the closest is when the first part of question 5 rears its head.

10. What’s your favourite movie?

I like Kieślowski's Dekalog, but it's not really a movie. If you're asking that, one of Three Colours: Red, The Life of Brian or Das Boot. I really enjoyed The Thin Red Line, too.

11. What’s the dumbest, testosterone-inspired thing you’ve ever seen?

Anything involving a dickhead in a car.

12. What quality do you think makes a good man good? Do you have that quality?

The same quality as makes a person good: thinking of others, getting on with it, pulling one's weight etc...

13. Toilet seat up or down?

Down.

14. If your significant other is away, do you cook for yourself or eat out of cans and boxes (or rely on local drive-through and delivery)?

HA! I like to cook.

15. What societal expectation of being a man / women do you most resent?

That caring for one's children is somehow worthy of extra commendation.

16. What’s the best part - societal-wise - about being a man / women?

It seems to be slightly more acceptable to not care what anyone else thinks about you.

17. Will you stop to ask for directions?

If I need directions.

18. What’s one thing about your significant other that you just cannot understand, no matter how hard you try?

Why she seems to care so much why people she otherwise has little time for think about her.

19. What do you need to have in the shower?

Soap. Shampoo. Toothbrush and toothpaste.

20. Do you burp/fart/scratch? Do you do anything stereotypically male?

I do all of these things, but try to do so with some discretion. Forgive me for thinking that ALL people do this.

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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