This will hurt me...

I'm thinking that this one would be good on the inside slip of Ezra's debut LP. It's such a shame vinyl has been technological superseded, as its sheer size offered a host of possibilities for artistic expression .

BEFORE Haircut number three for Henry today, and oh what joy that was! I have been otherwise occupied [code for 'at work'] for the last two, although the first did rate a post way back in February . I think that maybe next time, a small sherry might be offered beforehand to settle his nerves. That said, we managed to escape with a little less hair, and all ears/eyes/noses intact. I thought that today I would offer up a list. Things that I have learned today : Pre-haircut Henry would not be out of place in the Byrds in 1969. His attitude is more Stones '71 though... Post-haircut Henry looks like a very young George Clooney, or at least that's what some of the ladies think. Toddlers + haircuts = a challenging equation. A fruit box is a welcome distraction while getting a toddler’s haircut, but it alone will not be enough. If you have a toddler on your lap who is getting his haircut, hold on tight. Toddlers struggle with the notion of a ‘before and after’ photo shoot. Tha...

Today's image features (yet again) the new man in my life, dear little Ezra. To my eye, he evokes Caligula at his indulgent, spoiled best, draped across his mothers’ forearm. All that I can really say to this image is, “I wish I could do that”. That said, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that Ezra resembled Caligula in other ways, of course, unlike another certain mini-Mussolini that I can think of. Ezra is the most laid-back dude that I think I’ve ever met. As Blackie (of The Ruth Spoon ) noted in an earlier comments thread, the second biennial Tasmanian Living Writers' Week is coming up (from August 15 to 24). Canny readers will note that the week will last ten days, but remember, it is a writers week, not mathematicians week. I would speculate that they might be emulating the decades of the French Republican Calendar , but c’mon, we’re talking Tasmanian writers here! Anyway, I figured that it wasn't fair to keep putting up other people's poems without offering so...

This photograph could be one of a number of things. It could be something boringly predictable, like a public art installation that ruminates on the impact of climate change on Antarctica. (Both Tasmanian artists and visiting international artists have a rather dreary tendency to focus a little too much on environmental themes in public art displays. At any given time, you can find DOZENS of gallery showings musing on man's - yes, usually that reductive - negative impact on mother Earth.) It could be discarded snow cones piled high in the wake of the Winter Festival. (Tasmanians love eating snow cones whenever you can see snow on Mount Wellington. MILLIONS and MILLIONS of snow cones are eaten in the winter months, the most popular flavours being penguin , fur seal , southern right whale , and good old fashioned lard . It could be a bunch of firecrackers set up in readiness to celebrate the one hundred and thirtieth anniversary of the Treaty of Berlin , which famously recognised ...

I have expended quite a few words on Robert Mugabe over the past few months, but really, I think that five words is all that you need: What an odious, obnoxious prick. His comment this time? Prior to his dodgy runoff election he comes out with : "Anyone who tries to undermine our land reform we will challenge. We are prepared to fight for our country or to go to war if we lose it - as happened to our forefathers." This is exactly the rhetoric that one could see in Spain prior to the Spanish General Election of 1936 (albeit from both sides in that case). We know what happened there .

I have blogged on Kate Beaton's comics previously . Kate has uploaded a bunch of new comics and I couldn't look past this one featuring a meeting of the minds that we have all been waiting for. Yes, Garfield (the cat) and James A. Garfield (twentieth President of the United States, most famous for being assasinated). I really like her work, so if you are into this sort of thing check it out. [Note, I do like very much how she has continued envisioning Pope John Paul II as a 'boyz in the hood' kind of guy.]

This picture was taken last week, but I have decided to use it today. You see these guys down on the waterfront every Wednesday, and they always seem to have plenty of takers for their cruises. It would no doubt be very pleasant, as the Derwent is reasonably flat right all the way down south (until you get out into the ocean, that is. Then it gets hairy!) Contrast this with the number of attempts to set up a catamaran service that could cope with the Bass Strait crossing, from George Town to Melbourne. These Tasmanian-made vessels do very well in around the globe (in the Mediterranean, Baltic, Caribbean, the eastern seaboard of North America, Japan, the Middle East, they even supply the US Navy). While the ‘Devil Cat’ was an extraordinarily cool-looking vessel without doubt, it unfortunately did not seem to cope well with Bass Strait’s unique tendency to big swells, especially in winter. My father worked on this run for a short while, and tells wonderful stories of seamen endlessly...

... everyone will be 20 years younger and 20 pounds thinner . [With a nod to both Clusterflock and Kottke !]

I have been dismayed to read much of the comment around the Commonwealth’s plan to raise taxation on ‘alcopops’ in an effort to curb the risks associated with binge drinking. While there should be no surprise that the opposition have rubbished it and alcohol industry groups are unhappy , the general critiques that I've seen are very poor. As ever, of the commentaries, the Herald Sun leads the way in outrage . One that really got me riled up (enough to post about it here), was a piece in Crikey titled ‘ Voodoo tax policy on alcopops ’. In it, Bernard Keane speaks of ‘handwringers’ and ‘wowsers’ with a set against kids having fun. He claims that “we’ve still yet to see any evidence that binge drinking is now any worse than in the past”, and makes particular note that the tax ‘attacks’ young women unequally. In not sure where he has been looking, but a quick note of the stats around alcohol-related hospital admissions, alcohol-related family incidents (mostly domestic violence), al...

I thought that today would be little more than a mundane companion piece to yesterday’s photograph . Walking through Parliament Lawns as I usually do of a weekday morning, I noted the two council workers clearing off all of the leaves that I posted yesterday. Naively, I had assumed that this would be achieved with huge rakes and good old-fashioned muscle. Alas, I was wrong. I should have known that bulky (and extremely noisy) leaf blowers are all the rage these days. They were corralling the poor frightened leaves into the centre of the park, where a truck was waiting to haul them off to oblivion. That was that (I thought), 'a slice of Hobartian life for the world to peruse at their leisure'. As noted, I thought that this was the end of the story, I would post the photo and be done, but in the act of resizing it to make it more user-friendly, I noted something odd in the background. Like David Hemmings in the classic film Blowup , there was a strange character lurking in the ba...

There is a fellow whose work I have been following for a little while now, and I thought that I would point people in the direction of three great experiments he has conducted. The general thesis is to 'untoon' a cartoon; that is, convert the cartoon image into a more realistic image. What I like most is how he demonstrates the exaggerated features of cartoons when translated into 'real life'. This guy does this in his own time and for no (monetary) reward, so I thought that I'd post the links on his website rather than just put up the pictures myself. So, if you are at all interested, please click on through and have a look for yourself. The three that he has done so far are: Mario (from Super Mario Bros ); Homer Simpson (you know him); and Jessica Rabbit (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit ). He has indicated that Stewie Griffin from Family Guy is next on the list, and I for one can wait to see that one.

Today’s topic, boys and girls, is a deadly serious one. There is no easy or polite way to introduce it, aside from offering a caution for the faint hearted. So here is your warning: if you are easily offended or already aware of the dangers of indulging in a little self-love, please look away now, normal service will resume after the post. Now that the prudes have all left the room, here is an extract (allegedly) from the French text Le livre sans titre (‘The book with no title’), published in 1844.The title of the panel of pictures is “The Fatal Consequences of Masturbation”, and will no doubt send shudders of fear rippling through people (young and old) the world over. Teenage boys in particular should take note of the cautionary tale. Now, a bit of research has left me uncertain as to the veracity of the extract. Those in the know seem to think that the language (French) does seem genuine to the time, but whether or not the images and text have not been doctored, I’m uncertain. It...

I was looking at this photo essay from Foreign Policy magazine this morning, and one photo struck me in particular. It essentially was someone packing a briefcase full of cash. As I mentioned yesterday , with inflation running at over 100,000 percent, Zimbabwe's rate of inflation is currently the highest in the world. Now, like most I suspect, I'm struggling to get my head around what that means, and its broader implications for people. Using a couple of different online currency convertors, ZWD$1 million fetches roughly: AUS $37 or US $34 or Euro €21. Now this is achieved using flat currency transaction on market rate. In the real world, Zimbabweans would have to take whatever the black marketers are offering. The scantest of research reveals that the best that they might hope for out of that same ZWD $1 million is somewhere between US $3 to US $5. To be totally honest with you, I still can't get my head around it. Surely wages cannot keep up with that sort of inflation....

You may have heard that there has been an election going on in Zimbabwe. In what will be a test for democracy in southern Africa, the results may well decide the fate of liberal democracy in much of the under-developed world. The BBC has an interesting pictorial essay on the election, and it fits nicely with their streaming of 'on the ground' contributions and observations that have been solicited from all over the country. This is an excellent insight for those of us lucky enough to live in stable countries, and should remind us to be very thankful for our comparatively 'dull' electoral systems. The Times over the weekend featured an excellent article that spoke of the " the electricity of hope " that can be felt in the electoral processes of developing countries. In a result that has – to be frank – stunned me, independent monitoring groups have said that returns posted at about two-thirds of polling stations have given Tsvangirai 55% of the vote to Mugab...

Here is a koala. Koalas are an Australian marsupial, but are not found in the wild in Tasmania (or Western Australia). This koala lives at ZooDoo , which is just outside Hobart in the town of Richmond . I managed to get right next to this little lady and snap off a picture. If you’ve got littlies, or just like animals, I’d heartily recommend a visit to ZooDoo. You can get in close to most of their animals, and the kids can touch and have their picture taken with pretty much anything there (although I don’t think they let you for a play with their new pair of Bengal Tigers! The Koala is sort of like a Wombat that lives in a tree. Wombats are their closest living relatives, but koalas have a thicker coat, much larger ears and longer limbs. They also have large, sharp claws to assist with climbing tree trunks. We have plenty of wombats in the wild down here in Tassie. But, please, don't get worried. I’ve never heard of wombats OR koalas acting out in the strange manner that one New Z...

This comic is for Vince: I have been enjoying throughout the day these little cartoons by Canadian Kate Beaton (in my sanity breaks), who draws from all sorts of things, particularly interesting little titbits from history. As an aside, the spellchecker says 'titbits'. Funny, I've always said 'tidbits', but it is TITbits. Filthy. Well there you go! Anyway, if you liked this, here is her website , and some other links to some of her work.

I am sure by now that you have all come across the tale of the evil gnome that is terrorising the Argentinian province of Salta. If not, The Sun (UK) has more , although I am not sure if the video of the creepy little person gives me the willies as much as the appalling grammar in their coverage! If The Sun doesn't rock your boat, KUTV in Utah has even more . Now Jennifer has assured me that she saw no evil gnomes during her year in Tucuman, and certainly not on her trip to Salta. She did see a few llamas (or maybe alpacas, she can't tell them apart), but alas, no terror gnomes. But back to the story, at the end of the video clip on the Sun Website, one of the boys unleashes a rather girlish scream. Another teenager, or perhaps the same one, was apparently so scared he had to go to the hospital. No wonder they lost the Falklands War so quickly, no backbone! IT'S A MIDGET IN A DUNCE'S CAP!!!! Oh, and now he has his own website: Terrorgnome.com . Although the answer may b...

I have always had a keen interest in the history of the Soviet Union. My recent experience teaching politics to first year university students has taught me how is difficult to convey to anyone with little or no memory of the world pre-1990 the shadow cast by the Soviet presence. Now, there happened to have been the odd communist in my family, so I guess that the household I grew up in the shadow was felt in a little more sympathetic way than some. But despite the ready access to numerous books, pamphlets and propaganda pieces, the whole notion of the Soviet Union (or Eastern Europe more generally) was an utter mystery to me.   So of course, given my interest in history, the former-USSR still maintains a presence. Yet, unlike much modern history, the history of the Soviet Union has a beginning, middle and an end. Amplifying this, its end does not seem that long ago, even if we are nearing twenty years! To anyone with an eye for history, even its beginning was relatively recent.   What...

I was thinking about posting on the hysterical reaction of both the mainstream press , as well as the blogging world , to the proposed cut to the one off bonuses to pensioners and carers awarded by the previous government. Aside from the logical incongruity of a 'cut' to a 'one-off bonus', I am sick of hearing about the 'proposed scrapping of the carers pension', which is something altogether different and in no way part of the announcement. If ‘journalists’ or news editors cannot get basic stuff like that correct, then public discussion around important areas of public concern has no hope. Now, I happen to think that the Howard response represented the most cynical type of politics, and is very poor public policy. Addressing some of the previous government's public policy failures – as well as some poor economic management – can only be a good thing. It's not like the present government are not targeting many areas, my day to day job has revealed to m...

Team Benry made a quick trip to the market this morning (encouraged by a pregnant, grumpy and hungry Jennifer, and an equally grumpy, always hungry, not at all pregnant Henry), and managed to bag myself a big jug of authentic scrumpy. I’d seen it there before but balked at the idea of lugging around the huge flagon and looking like a severely misplaced wurzel, but today we were on our way to the car and I thought now is the time to strike! Now, I love my cider, all kinds of cider. I love the really fizzy stuff that makes you warm and stupid, and I like the fizzy stuffy that just tastes nice on a hot day. So Mercury Cider , very nice! Cascade ‘Sparkling Apple Juice’ , yummy. But do you know what, I love my scrumpy, only it’s always been a bit of a struggle to get. I know that “scrumpy" can be used in many senses and means different things to different people, but to me, ‘Scrumpy’ means real cider. By that, I mean that it has to be made more or less entirely from apples, it has to ...