If nothing else, we simply get used to being alive.

How old are you? Next to the overpass by Lindisfarne North Primary School, Lindisfarne. August 2013.

More Qs and More As. As usual, I've pilfered them from Sunday Stealing. This week, a set of Awkwardly Intriguing Questions

1. What’s something you hide about your personality?

I'm not certain that I do. Perhaps we all suppress elements of our vulnerability or sensitivities.

2. How do you deal with criticism?

Tora tora tora!

3. What’s something sweet you’d like someone to do for you?

Scratch my back for more than three seconds.

4. Which fictional character would you most like to have lunch with and why?

Capt. John Yossarian.

5. Who would you say is your “anti” role model? Someone who serves as a warning rather than an inspiration?

I've got a few of them. Perhaps it would be wise to just touch my nose and wink.

6. What’s the most infuriating thing your parents (or caregiver) do?

Use my full name.

7. Which movie character do you most identify with and why?

~~John~~ Joseph Merrick. Please don't let me be misunderstood.

8. You’re an Action Movie Hero. What’s your weapon of choice and the line you scream when defeating your arch enemy?

A cheap plastic biro in the eye. Sign, wipe brow and mutter, "Well, they always said that the pen was mightier than the sword..."

9. What’s the oddest term of endearment you’ve ever used or that someone’s used for you?

"Meine süße kleine Currywurst."

10. What was something you used to enjoy, but was ruined for you? What’s the story behind that?

I used to enjoy football, but then the Sydney Swans, and then the mass media, ruined it for me. I'm all a bit 'meh' these days about it.

11. Which mythological creature are you most like? Why? And if you could be any mythological creature, which would you want to be? Why?

Vættir, of the Jötnar variety. A handsome one. I'm quite complex, you see. As for what I'd want to be? God. That'd be pretty good.

12. Describe your dream library.

Full!

13. If you could design an amusement park ride, what would it be like?

Very safe and very comfortable.

14. Do you have any “rules” about food?

Make sure that it is dead first. Also, no nuts!

15. What’s your opinion on age differences in relationships?

It seems a bit creepy.

16. What’s something you want to do that you’d be embarrassed to tell other people about?

If I'd be too embarrassed to tell other people why would I write it on an open blog? I'm unlikely to want to do something that I'm embarrassed about doing.

17. Describe a time/ event in your life that you’re nostalgic for.

I'm not really nostalgic for the past. There are moments when I might slip into rueful contemplation over missed opportunities, but that's something quite different.

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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