Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

Henry and I coming in from a snorkel. Opossum Bay, February 2013.

1: Do you notice a person’s eye colour?
I have to find the person vaguely interesting, but if I do, I’ll always clock it.

2: White, milk, or dark chocolate mocha?
The darker, the better.

3: If you could get a tattoo free, would you do it? What would it be?
An invisible one. Different strokes for different folks and people can do what they like, but I’m not much of a fan of the old body art.

4: Did you grow up in a small or big town? Did you like it?
It depends on what one compares it with. I grew up in Burnie, Tasmania which to someone from London would seem like a teeny tiny town but to someone from Fruitland, Idaho it probably seems pretty big. Did I like it?

5: Your favourite adult as a child? (and not your parents, if they were your favourite)
Cripes, I don’t know. Someone distant and alluring. I really liked Viv Richards as a kid. He seemed the epitome of cool.

6: What kind of smoothie sounds really good right now?
Banana, raspberry and strawberry malt. With yoghurt.

7: Most embarrassing moment from your elementary school years?
Is that primary school? [Googles US school years] Okay. Christ, I don’t know. It’s all a bit of a blur really. Nothing stands out.

8: Most embarrassing moment from your middle school years?
Middle? By golly Americans do things differently. I remember my ‘middle school years’ as generally one prolonged embarrassing moment…

9: Most embarrassing moment from your high school years?
More? I don’t know. I was not much of a (social) risk taker at that age, so didn’t really have anything too much to dwell on.

10: Have you ever fired anyone?
I’ve never fired anyone, but did oversee a redundancy and declined to extend somebody else’s contract. If you follow the rules, put everything in writing and be as transparent as possible it isn’t difficult to do.

11: Have you ever climbed a tree more than twenty feet off the ground?
Not for a very long time.

12: Did you like swinging as a child? Do you still get excited when you see a swing set?
How dare you! Why, such filth... Oh, like in swings and playgrounds? Oh, yeah, it had its moments. Nowadays? I have a six year old and a four year old, so I've spent far too many incredibly boring hours pushing and not pushing kids on swings.

13: If you could have any pet in the world, illegal or not, what would you get?
A Great White Shark.

14: What's your favourite place to relax?
It would have to be a beach of some description.

15: What's your most favourite part of your personality?
My interest in all sorts of things.

16: Madonna or Lady Gaga? Neither? Both? Who cares?
A touch of who cares, to be honest.

17: Have you ever watched the Superbowl all the way through?
Yeah, but you have to go back to Super Bowl XXVI, over twenty years now.

18: Have you ever watched any major sporting event live?
A few Test cricket matches, the Australian tennis open, the odd game of Aussie Rules.

19: What's the most delicious food you've ever eaten in your life?
An interesting question. It probably wouldn't be anything too fancy, and more about my frame of mind at the time. It do doubt involved being incredibly parched and a really decent piece of fruit.

20: Margarine or butter? Which did you grow up with?
I was bought up with margarine, but would have much preferred butter!

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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