This will hurt me...

Look both ways. The intersection of Davey and Murray Streets, July 2012. More Q and A. More stolen from Sunday Stealing. This week, Our Players' Meme ... 1. You have been awarded the time off from work and an all-expenses paid week anywhere in the United States. The catch is that it must be somewhere you have not been before. Where do you choose to visit? Given that I have not been to the US at all, I have a whole continent to choose from. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. 2. Name three of your guilty pleasures. I generally don’t feel guilt about pleasure. However, the recent healthy-living kick has seen me attach some to the wrong types of food. I also struggle with spending money on myself. 3. The best kind of Girl Scout Cookie is: Ummm, the normal ones? I like a nice plain biscuit. 4. What do you value most in other people? Honesty, integrity and half a brain. 5. Be honest. Do you sneak some raw cookie dough when you’re baking cookies? Not unless the reci...

Next stop, Antarctica!

Well well well, it's the Aurora Australis! As seen from the Derwent, Hobart, May 2011. After last week's free-for-all, this week has seen the ratio drop considerably; with a combination of no bus trips, no lunch breaks and both children and PSP close to hand has seen me finish just one (and slowly make my way through another). The Beacon is an odd little novel that explores concepts like family, ambition, truth (all that jazz). Riffing off the question of what happens to those implicated by the rise of 'misery memoirs' ('grief porn'?). At the centre of the book is the strangely stilted May Prime, sister of Frank, who has written a bestseller called about his cruel childhood at a remote North Country farm through the 1950s. In it he accuses his late father of terrible cruelty and his family of collusion. Although Frank's memoir portrays himself as a victim, the actual novel [ The Beacon ] revolves around his siblings, who must live with what he has written. ...

Have I mentioned that the Aurora Australis is very orange? Of course, I'm talking about the ship, not the colourful southern polar lights caused by the result of the emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere, they're all different kinds of colour.

In the morning light, from this angle, you'd never know that the Aurora Australis was painted bright orange. It looks battleship grey here! They must have had a couple of bags of chips on them, you can see some seagulls hanging about on the scrounge.

She's back! In what must be the world's fastest trip to Antarctica and back, the Aurora Australis is back in town. I suspect that they never made it all the way down, and headed back to get some extra loaves of bread. Penguins, you see, can never get enough Vegemite sangers .

Sometimes, truth can be found in the margins . Here is a little seen angle on the Aurora Australis , which has now left port for the heady journey through the Southern Ocean . Good luck people. God Speed!

I won't give away the answer, but my clue is that today's photo is of a ship berthed down here in Hobart ALL winter. It doesn't have the nerve to tackle a REAL Antarctic experience and sail about with right and proper icebergs. Word on the street is that they are set to leave on a vital and top secret mission designed tohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif end the scourge of global warming ! Yes, they'll be measuring penguin farts. Time for the Sunday Top Five! Today I am tackling my Top Five Australian Birds ! 5: Galah ; 4: Emu ; 3: Kookaburra ; 2: Fairy Little Penguin ; 1: The Splendid Wren !

No, it isn't the Battleship Potemkin, it's a little navy patrol boat turning its back to the Aurora Australis in a nice golden morning sunshine. It's almost like a duel. I found myself the other evening repeating a familiar refrain I am sure is not simply one from my childhood: "how dare you sit there an not eat any of that food there it's good food nice food lovingly cooked and there are starving children in Africa who are stuck eating rocks and dirt just to have something in their tummy because they are so hungry that it hurts so much that they eat those rocks and dirt and here you are telling me that you don't want it." I want to know, what did people tell their kids in generations before? Did they riff on Africa as my parents did, referring to the poor bloated Ethiopians routinely on the nightly news at that point (occasionally chucking in the odd outdated reference to Biafrans or Bangladeshis)?

It's still winter which means that we still have our guests parked down outside my work. Yes, the Norweigan-owned (but Australian-leased) Aurora Australis and our French friends on L'Astrolabe are still hanging about waiting for that pack ice to break up before they head back down south to throw rocks at penguins conduct important Antarctic studies. Time for the Sunday Top Five ! Today, I've opted for the not at all clumsy Top Five Countries That If They Were People I'd Invite To A Party : 1) India : they can bring the food. 2) Finland : they can bring the girls. 3) Jamaica : they can bring the groove. 4) The Czech Republic : they can bring the beer. 5) Western Samoa : they can man the door and keep out the undesirables (I'm looking at you Wales...)

What cruel , inhuman , rotten scoundrel devised this week’s Theme Thursday topic? One cannot express the dismay that accompanies writing a post about SUMMER , when it has been relentlessly raining for the past three hours. Oh yes, I shall write about summer, shall I? I'll write about summer when it’s dark when I leave for work, and it’s dark when I come home from work. I'll write about summer when it’s freezing in the morning waiting at the bus stop, and it is freezing when I wait at the bus stop to get home from work. I'll write about summer when it’s been raining when I leave home for work, it’s raining when I get home from work. I'll write about summer when the fact is that I hate work. I'll write about summer when, in their infinite wisdom, Metro Tasmania have decided that WINTER would be a good time to dick around with the bus routes to Hobart’s eastern shore, which entails standing around for extended periods – exposed to the dark, cold and rainy elements –...

Despite the morning fog, you can't keep the bright orange paint of the Aurora Australias under wraps for too long! It is a wonderful sight in the mist, and a pity that it is wasted on a journey into work. Go on, have a poem. again The dissolution of an agreement, and disassociated from his very being, Desmond was disgusted. Disallowed an explanation and discouraged from discussion, this distorted his disadvantage. The discomfort upon discovering the distasteful details of dishonesty, Desmond discontinued to care.

This one is from a few weeks back and involved me on the ground, the Aurora Australis in the foreground, and the Diamond Princess in the background. The bird I didn't spot until post-production. Here is a poem. a poem an incident of indecent actions, activities and understandings can mean something or mean nothing to others. it is all about where you stand, or whether you sit.

Yet again , I have been drawn to the water and the dazzling orange hull of the Aurora Australis! I had intended to post a photograph of the visiting US Navy amphibious assault ship, the USS Tarawa . Unfortunately, none of my shots met with my strict editorial standards (I am a hard taskmaster). Thus, you get to see the Aurora again, albeit this time with a little friend on the left. Not all is lost though, with Greg at Hobart Daily successfully capturing the visitors very nicely here . I was also pleased to hear a report from notorious man-about-town (and sometime commentator on this blog), the mysterious ‘Coach’, that the pride of the US Navy were spotted in full force at the thrilling clash between the Hobart versus Clarence blockbuster at North Hobart Oval on Saturday. By all accounts the Budweiser was flowing, the Hobart merchandise was flying out the door and even the good old National Pie went down well with the sailors. Perhaps the AFL need to exploit this newfound love of th...