This will hurt me...

Over the fence (and out). The [former] Chickenfeed carpark, Sandy Bay. March 2013. Everywhere you look there are tyrants. I'm tempted to say that this is a new thing, but am reasonably certain that they've always been around... Epitaph on a Tyrant , W. H. Auden Perfection of a kind was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

I can't decide. Who has the silliest face here?

Through a fence (mildly). Just off Sandy Bay Road. December 2011. Just the one book this week, and not one in the holiday spirit. Time's Arrow is a rather controversial novel by Martin Amis from 1991. Essentially, the story recounts the life of a German Holocaust doctor in reverse chronology. That is, the narrator - some kind of disembodied secondary consciousness - together with the reader, experiences time passing in reverse, with the central protagonist becoming younger and younger during the course of the novel. The narrator is not exactly the protagonist himself but somehow living within him, feeling his feelings but with no access to his thoughts no control over events and somehow experiencing everything in reverse. Confused? Obviously the point is to unsettle the reader as we confront the now familiar tale of the Holocaust (although familiarity does not itself entail understanding). Amis messes about with reverse dialogue, reverse narrative, and reverse explanation which a...

A view towards the Tasman Bridge. Hobart Cycle Path, River Derwent. October 2011. Today we reach the end of the road for the Questions Galore Meme, as we complete Part 3 ... 41. What is a quote that you love? "If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong." - Kinky Friedman 42. Do you think of pure hate as something humanity created? I'm not convinced that there is such a concept as "pure hate". 43. When was the last time you wanted to scream? On Friday, and it involved an overload of poo jokes. 44. Do you ever at times see the world in black and white? Often, then I slap myself and snap out of it. 45. Have you ever thought that cell phones are too obtrusive? Pretty much most of the time. 46. In your life, where do you thank the rainbow will end? Rainbows are an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear i...

A caged bird never wins grand finals. ANZAC Park, Lindisfarne. October 2011. Some days it is hard. Some days it is less hard. Some days, even, it is easy. Some days it is so so. I think that today is a ‘less hard’ kind of day, with a possibility of an upgrade to ‘hard’.