This will hurt me...

As you know, the Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and RSS feeds.) The following are some things that I've had a look at in the last week. I call this: a Compendium of Click-throughs for Monday Morning... Vintage Ads for Libraries and Reading . 10 Things Garry Winogrand Can Teach You About Street Photography. Top 10 foods nutritionists won't feed their kids . Should We Tax People for Being Annoying? Tony Abbott: a confused, conservative sexist, but not a misogynist .

The last of the cruise ships in Hobart, April, 2010. Here is part two of the meme... 11. What's the best bargain you've ever found at a garage sale or junk shop? I'm not sure that I ever have. I've enough junk of my own, let alone picking up others'... 12. Where were you on September 11, 2001? I was in bed with my future wife. We spent a large part of that year in bed, come to think of it. I'm not sure I was all that aware of events until the next day. 13. What's your favourite tree? I am quite partial to the good old Araucaria heterophylla . 14. What's the most interesting biography you've read? If This is a Man and also The Truce by Primo Levi is an excellent two part auto biographical tale. 15. What do you order when you eat Chinese food? It's been a while. I like a nice special fried rice. If I can switch to Korean I love the Kimchi Fried Rice. 16. What's the best costume you've ever worn? Costume? I seem to draw attention every tim...

We're getting the last of the Cruise Ships before Winter hits. I'm kind of surprised that they're still coming, to be honest. There were a lot of Canadians on this one. Canadians remind me of a New Zealander cross bred with an American. In a puffy red jacket. Aye.

I know that I've shown the Diamond Princess before, but I do like the clouds in this one. Anyway, the tourist season is drawing to a close, so I don't expect to be showing cruise ships any time soon. There was a woman on the bus this morning who appeared to be browbeating her husband on the phone, she looked like the archetype of a horror wife: stern hair, sour eyes and a mouth like a crack in a pie. Anyway, she chastising 'Phil' to "stop feeling miserable about it, get of yer arse and get a bleedin' job". She then did the best approximation of 'slamming' the handset down with a firm poke of her (chubby) finger. When did people lose their sense of shame?

Two for the price of one today, and we're again looking at tourists. Of course, today being today, I'm also scrambling to link up Theme Thursday . Tenuous or not, in the Tasmania of 2010, tourists mean GREEN. Now I'm not talking GREEN in the sense of tree huggin', airy fairy, lardy dardy, goody goody, namby pamby, hoity toity, wishy washy, not in my backyard, doing nothin' do gooders! No, we're talking GREEEEN , as in bread , and by bread I mean dough . Tourists equal GREEN, bread, dough, cash, dosh, bucks and all that entails. In Australia, our bank notes come in all sizes, colours and weight. These ships, and these tourists, mean GREEN. The green note, as I'm sure that you all know, are hundreds . Fives are purple, tens blue, twenties orange, fifties bronze and the gold ol' hundreds GREEN. How very apt. Thus, I find myself in the aisle of the fruit market, armed with little more than two Gravenstein apples and the ninety cents needed to purchase the...

Almost one year on from a previous post , the Diamond Princess is back, and some blokes are fiddling about below! It's the main problem with these big tourist vessels: wealthy passengers are so haphazard with their diamond tiaras and lobster claws, always dropping them over the side and scratching the Duco. Some poor mug (or two) always ends up each morning down with a can of paint and a roller, touching up the marks. Tut tut . That's the problem with the inconceivably wealthy, no respect!

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.

Here is a photograph taken on my way to work this very morning. Yes it's another couple of ships, but you'll need to forgive me that one. It's hard not to take pictures on the waterfront when it remains the dominant feature every day. Feelings seem to be very flat here in Australia at the moment, due to the bushfires. I'm not sure that I can remember anything like it before. Mind you, with so many stories like this one dominating the news, it is kind of hard to avoid being a bit down about it.

Here you can see what must have been a big one in ye olden dayes , with a semi-big one today. Sort of. The perspective is a little off, but you can kind of get the idea of the size difference here. It must have been a great journey out here at the beginning of the nineteenth century, particularly when the majority that came down here did so against their will. That said, better than being strung up on a yardarm somewhere!

Here I am looking right down its bow. I like the magnitude of this one, and think that the clouds set it off nicely. I'll leave the boats for now.

The Diamond Princess is back in Hobart. No, not uber -moron Paris Hilton, the ruddy great ship! Registered in Bermuda, primarily cruising in Alaska and the Mexican Riviera during the northern summer, like Paris, she does spread her charms around. Also like Paris (maybe), she entertains 2,674 passengers and 1,238 crew at a time! [Ahem.] You can't miss this one on the journey into work, as the ship itself tends to tower over most of Hobart's buildings. It's a biggun. A quick look at their website tells me that this Ship has more to do than most Tasmanian towns and cities. Just some of the stuff includes FOUR swimming pools, a spa and fitness centre, a theatre for Princess' original Broadway and Las Vegas-style productions, a cinema, a Casino, FOUTREEN bars, an atrium with shops, two bars, art gallery, library and writing room, a wedding chapel, Internet cafes, a hair salon and a nine-hole golf putting course and two computerized golf simulators. Why bother leaving the b...