This will hurt me...

Bike racks have come a long way of late. We are certainly of the opinion that any bike rack must ideally double (triple?) as both 'public art' as well as 'children's play equipment'.

Pretty in pink. York Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011. I've been following the progress of the Detroit Tigers baseball team of late, and have to say that I really do like the MLB.com interface for live coverage. Go Tigers! Quite what that has to do with a pink flower and a poem by Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub, I shall leave t you to figure out! Brief reflection on accuracy , Miroslav Holub Fish always accurately know where to move and when, and likewise birds have an accurate built-in time sense and orientation. Humanity, however, lacking such instincts resorts to scientific research. Its nature is illustrated by the following occurrence. A certain soldier had to fire a cannon at six o’clock sharp every evening. Being a soldier he did so. When his accuracy was investigated he explained: I go by the absolutely accurate chronometer in the window of the clockmaker down in the city. Every day at seventeen forty-five I ...

Spring-loaded box traps. A fool-proof way of dealing with troublesome children! Everything that I learned about parenting I learned from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The things that you see when sitting on the toilet. The toilet, Mayfair Plaza, Sandy Bay. October 2011. I always seem to be finishing books on the Friday and consequently posting the review the following week, so forgive me if I’m a little vague on Herta Müller’s The Appointment . I shall confess that I was not familiar with Müller’s work until she was awarded the awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Müller is a Romanian-born German novelist and poet most noted for her exploration of the effects of violence, cruelty and terror; usually in the setting of Communist Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu. It is this stifling atmosphere of repression that pervades throughout The Apartment . The unnamed narrator – a young, female factory worker – has been summoned for questioning by the secret police for a relatively benign crime. From this point, her life has become subject to the whims of Major Albu, who summons her for random interrogation sessions with seemingly little purpose other tha...

Spring has sprung which means that [beach] swimming will not be too far away. Ezra can barely contain his enthusiasm.

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’.

Ez takes his man marking very seriously, and moments after this photograph was taken Henry collapsed in a crumpled heap with bruises up and down his legs...