This will hurt me...

Dinosaurs! Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. February 2012. As far as I can tell, this poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is * NOT * about dinosaurs. As someone who regularly works without hope, I'm not certain that I agree with Mr Coleridge. Work without Hope , Samuel Taylor Coleridge All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair - The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing - And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.

He doesn't bite. Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. February 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as erotic fan fiction.) 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... How Gogol (and Chekhov and Dostoyevsky) explains the Post-Soviet World . An good in-depth piece on why Kevin Rudd challenging has done Julia Gillard a favour or two . I am firmly in the Che Guevara/ Fidel Castro open collar camp! Down with imperialist neckwear!!! Pickiness: The Secret Eating Disorder Nobody’s Talking About... A short consideration on Vaclav Havel's contested legacy . Come to Tasmania the Wonderland! An exhibition of beautiful Tasmanian tourism posters, 1920s-1950s , from LINC Tasmania collections. Catherine the Great was an impressive woman. Every World Press Photo Winner From 1955-2011 . Be warned though, it leans...

Christmas morning and Santa leaves a dinosaur ?!?! What would Jesus do?

Henry opted for a dinosaur this year. Tricky, but not impossible. I eschewed the T-Rex. Note the colourful cakes. Fossilised remains?

It appears that Henry has eaten all the flesh off of these dinosaurs. This must be some kind of crime…

Dude looks like a cabbage. Sandy Bay, April 2011. I’ve not idea what this plant is, but I think I like it. I was going to write a poem today about Tasmania, but I couldn’t find a good enough rhyme for “ deindustrialisation ”. I was also going to look into Buddhism, but all that cycling of suffering, death and rebirth gets me down. It’s been raining for four days and I am starting to get sick of it.