This will hurt me...

Destiny calls!

Tasman Bridge, Eastern Shore side. Hobart. October 2012. A Burnt-Out Case , Graham Greene: Faith, belief and unbelief. And lepers. A bleak and miserable cast of characters in deepest, darkest Africa ponder the existence of God. B . The Sixties , Lesley Jackson: A nice big book that concentrates on the design and architecture of the 1960s, this book traces the transition from the 1950s "Contemporary" design to the geometry of "the look" and styles that proliferated throughout the 60s to the proto-high tech developments of the 1970s. It covers all aspects - architecture, ceramics, glass, textiles and furniture - and is well worth a look if you're into that kind of thing. B . The Bird Room , Chris Killen: Dirty grubby people not doing much other than being dirty and grubby. Oh, and it's unclear who is who or even if there are more than two actual characters, neither of whom is in the remotest likeable. Not pleasant. F .

Petroleum tanks. Selfs Point, Cornelian Bay. October 2012. More questions sourced from all over the World! I always welcome more though! Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever? No. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I do understand the concept of having established a ‘connection’ with someone even if you have not conversed though. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job? Absolutely. What is it like to wake up every morning and pretend that you aren’t dying? I don’t know, what is it like? I understand that every day spent living is also a day spent dying. Do you believe in the death penalty? What if someone murdered your mother in cold blood? No. For a few reasons. 1) I think that capital punishment is rooted in a fundamentally illogical premise (at least that for murder). The notion of placing murder on a special footing of ‘wrongness’ only to punish with the very same ‘...

I know boats. Errol Flynn Park, Sandy Bay. September 2012. 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... Are Neanderthals Human? Some great photos of life in North Korea. Has the UK seen the end of the stiff upper lip? Yet more REALLY great photos in the National Geographic Photo Contest 2012 . Some interesting thoughts in this BBC piece on child obesity: Why do parents let their kids get fat?

Sometimes I feel/ like my only friend. Tasman Bridge, looking south. September 2012. Here are the Top Five Reasons This Sunday That This Sunday Top Five Is Essentially A List Of Why This Sunday Top Five Is Why I Have Not Done A Sunday Top Five! An artistic expression of the principle of least action . Or at least a Sunday Top Five-related variation on the theme The Anna Karenina principle . Or at least a Sunday Top Five-related variation on the theme. The Euthyphro dilemma . Or at least a Sunday Top Five-related variation on the theme. Issues related to the identity of indiscernibles . Or at least a Sunday Top Five-related variation on the theme. An intense fear of conforming to the mediocrity principle . [Ahem.] Or at least a Sunday Top Five-related variation on the theme. Thank you. You can move along now.

Looking south. The Derwent Estuary, as seen from Tasman Bridge. September 2012. That Schopenhauer fellow must have been a miserable bugger. He believed that woman, by her very nature is meant to obey, which goes to some way why he seems so irritable in retrospect... To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage, Robert Lowell "It is the future generation that presses into being by means of these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours." —Schopenhauer The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open. Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen. My hopped up husband drops his home disputes, and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes, free-lancing out along the razor's edge. This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge. Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . . It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust— whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five. My only thought is how to keep alive. What makes him tick? Each night now I ...

Peek through the rails. From the Tasman Bridge, looking south. September 2012. So it is Tuesday, which usually means stealing from Sunday. This week: The 88 Meme, Part Three ! 46. What are your LEGAL initials? K.J.M. 47. Who's the first B in your contacts? Ben is. 48. When was the last time you laughed really hard? After a thoroughly unkind impression that I did of someone else. My laughter was in response of someone else’s response, for the record, not my own performance. 49. Your number 1 top friend walks out of your life, do you go after them? Absolutely. 50. Explain your last awkward moment? Failing to explain a relatively straightforward concept to someone after three of four good tries. It was only awkward in the sense that someone’s stupidity was very clearly exposed to a roomful of people (who all immediately grasped the point). 51. Are you afraid of the dark? No. Sometimes I have found myself afraid of the things that might be lurking in the dark ...

Racing boats. The Derwent Estuary, as viewed from Alexandra Battery, Sandy Bay. April 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as a lot of pop up ads.) 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.. Here are some very dangerous things to avoid doing, spectacularly captured in super slow motion highlights … This is cool: the World of 100 . Some nice graphic representation of the composition of the world if we were just a village of 100 people… A hundred years ago, the British Empire looked enviously at the efficient carrier pigeon networks established by its European rivals. Yet – after constant training and investment – Allied birds outperformed their rivals during the First World War. Here is the story of how the closed the pigeon gap ! We should strike some medals for these two sisters in the UK who have forced...

WATCH OUT! Underneath the Tasman Bridge, as seen from the western shore on the north side. November 2011. Watery Wednesday , and I very nearly captured a tragedy here. I can neither confirm or deny whether or not this intrepid crew of marine security services foiled a plot devised by a ruthless cabal of shags - on the rock broken pylon in the centre of the picture - to blow up the Tasman Bridge and sever connection between Hobart's eastern and western shores.

Green means...? Constitution Dock, Elizabeth Street Pier, July 2011. When my children are awake there is always noise. Such noise. Such very much noise. And the noise is never limited to one direction or angle. It moves. It rebounds. It echoes. It peaks and it troughs (and it peaks again). It's bickering and arguing like drunks at 3 am outside your window. It's broooom -ing and wiiirrrr -ing like a pair of fourth-rate Michael Winslow impersonators gurning through Police Academy 16. It's the screech of a banshee and the moan of a million zombies seeking out brains. Then they sleep.

Birds on a pontoon, Tranmere in the background. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. June 2011. Two very different books this week. First, Love and Death on Long Island by Gilbert Adair centres on the development of an obsession that in many respects greatly resembles Death in Venice (which I only read for the first time earlier this year ). There’s no doubt that the allusions to Thomas Mann’s classic text are quite deliberate. Like Death in Venice , the story concerns an aging, widowed and renowned ‘high art’ British novelist/academic with classical tastes who is somewhat out of step with the modern world. By a chance of fate, he encounters the figure of a C-Grade teen Hollywood heartthrob. Instantly enraptured by the ‘innocent’ beauty of the lad, and quickly becomes obsessed with the young actor. The concepts that have driven our narrator's life - logic and reason - are ultimately set against a concept that he has up to this point only ever really known in a philosophical sense: passion. Th...

Well well well, it's the Aurora Australis! As seen from the Derwent, Hobart, May 2011. After last week's free-for-all, this week has seen the ratio drop considerably; with a combination of no bus trips, no lunch breaks and both children and PSP close to hand has seen me finish just one (and slowly make my way through another). The Beacon is an odd little novel that explores concepts like family, ambition, truth (all that jazz). Riffing off the question of what happens to those implicated by the rise of 'misery memoirs' ('grief porn'?). At the centre of the book is the strangely stilted May Prime, sister of Frank, who has written a bestseller called about his cruel childhood at a remote North Country farm through the 1950s. In it he accuses his late father of terrible cruelty and his family of collusion. Although Frank's memoir portrays himself as a victim, the actual novel [ The Beacon ] revolves around his siblings, who must live with what he has written. ...

Lost at sea. The Derwent River. Somewhere near Lindisfarne, April 2011. Need. Want. Ought . Ought. Want. Need. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Need. Know. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Want. Know. Need. Want. Want. Want.

Thar be a cruel wind blowin’, Bellerive boardwalk, January 2011. Ten Things that I have never done: Jumped from a plane. Been on a sailboard. Swam with a shark (that I’ve been aware of). Been to Africa. Posted anonymously online. Shot at (that I’ve been aware of). Been skiing. Made a formal complaint about something. Visit Disneyland/world/Paris, or wanted to visit Disneyland/world/Paris. "Met anyone for coffee". I expect that rules me out of the next Sex in the City movie. Hey there’s another things I’ve never done! A jetty, with Sandy Bay and Taroona in the background. Bellerive Boardwalk, January 2011.

Tasman Bridge as seen from the Lindisfarne foreshore. December 2010. So I hear that Michael Clarke is going to be Australian captain. That's a coincidence, because today's Sunday Top Five is Five Words That I Think Of When Someone Mentions Michael Clarke! Anencephalous Codswallop Flibbertigibbet Hobbledehoy Panjandrum

Hobart rests under Mount Wellington, as seen from Bellerive. September 2010. I'm going to get myself a kayak and paddle to work every day. You just watch me... Friday Book Club ! If you're a ready, log on to GoodReads and let me know what you're reading and what you're thinking about what your reading... This week! Just finished Stephen Fry's début novel Liar , from 1991. I'm a Fry fan, but I'll be honest and admit that I found this one a little uneven. The most enjoyable parts for mine centred on the filthy-mined 'public school boy buggery years'. It then goes off the rails as it morphs into turgid Philology lecture through to spy thriller. It should be of little surprise that the most enjoyable section are those painfully intense "boy loves boy" sections that are obviously rooted in Fry's own experience of boarding. Indeed, much of this was to re-emerge in Fry's enormously entertaining extent autobiographical Moab is My Washpot .

Ripples on the Derwent. April, 2010. Saturday mornings are a great time to ruminate on a little e.e. ... your little voice... (I) , E. E. Cummings your little voice Over the wires came leaping and i felt suddenly dizzy With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers wee skipping high-heeled flames courtesied before my eyes or twinkling over to my side Looked up with impertinently exquisite faces floating hands were laid upon me I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing up Up with the pale important stars and the Humorous moon dear girl How i was crazy how i cried when i heard over time and tide and death leaping Sweetly your voice

Kayak on the Derwent. May, 2010. One day – I promise – I will kayak to work. What’s the point of living next to a river estuary if one does not kayak to work? We are the time. We are the famous , Jorge Luis Borges We are the time. We are the famous metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure. We are the water, not the hard diamond, the one that is lost, not the one that stands still. We are the river and we are that greek that looks himself into the river. His reflection changes into the waters of the changing mirror, into the crystal that changes like the fire. We are the vain predetermined river, in his travel to his sea. The shadows have surrounded him. Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away. Memory does not stamp his own coin. However, there is something that stays however, there is something that bemoans.

Rowing on the Derwent on a cold Winter's morn. Derwent River (with Bellerive in the background). June, 2010. Theme Thursday and it appears that everybody has GONE FISHING. “GONE FISHING?”, you say. GONE FISHING. I myself have rarely GONE FISHING. I’ve gone snorkelling; gone kayaking; gone running; gone swimming; gone off; gone on; and gone apeshit, but I believe that I have GONE FISHING two, perhaps three, times in my life. It’s the guts I don’t like. I can handle the killing no problem, but the ritual disembowelment in such exhibitionist fashion seems to me profoundly disrespectful for the dear fish’s family and friends. Give the poor creature some dignity! I’ve long queried the extended airtime given to the multitude of television programs dedicated to the men who have GONE FISHING. While I have no ideological, intellectual, ethical or indeed stylistic opposition to such programs, I wonder why it is seemingly okay to broadcast reel after reel of some pitiable pilchard in its d...

Late afternoon looking over Geilston Bay to New Town. July 2010. Last one! 91. DO YOU LIKE SUSHI? Very much. With extra wasabi and pickled ginger. 92. LAST THING YOU WATCHED? Ezra laughing. 93. FAVOURITE DAY OF THE YEAR? Tomorrow. 94. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT? Too scared. Jen would not approve. 95. SUMMER OR WINTER? It is currently winter. In winter, I miss summer. In summer, I miss winter. I’m complex. 96. KISSES OR HUGS? Kisses AND hugs. I’m greedy like that. 97. RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE-NIGHT STANDS? Marriages. 98. WHO IS THE MOST LIKELY TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS? Those short of blogging ideas. 99. WHO IS THE LEAST LIKELY TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS? Automatons. 100. CREATE YOUR OWN QUESTION! What next?