This will hurt me...

Hobart in the Spring. King Street, Sandy Bay. September 2012. This Sunday, my Top Five celebrates the fact that we have shifted our clocks! Yes, it is My Top Five Things That I Like Best About The Shift To Daylight Saving Time! It makes the walk home from work far more pleasant. It means that my usual wake up time of 4:30 am is now the [slightly] more acceptable 5:30 am! It saves on lightbulbs! It broadens the scope of my photography (especially when you're stuck at work for the bulk of the day. It supports my thesis that Western Australians and Queenslanders are simpleminded and needlessly antithetical.

Quite. The corner of King and Princes Streets, Sandy Bay. April 2012. Wordless Wednesday.

A little flower peeps out from behind the fence. King Street, Sandy Bay. January 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as a liberal dose of ladies in various states of undress.) 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... I very much enjoyed this piece from the BBC that looks at five ways the digital camera have changed us A short video that makes a reasonable fist of explaining the US Primary electoral system Considering the legacy of Margaret Thatcher (Milk Snatcher) The Economist looks at how and why some governments regulate the naming of babies Breaking news! Skyscrapers 'linked with impending financial crashes' Fantastic evisceration of the claim that penalty rates are killing the hospitality industry Interesting thoughts on the assertion that Vaclav Havel was Orwell’s true successor

All I want for Christmas is a... new door? King Street, Sandy Bay. December 2011. As Theme Thursday rolls around again, we are sucked into the exploitative cycle of GIFT-giving, GIFT-receiving, GIFT-rejecting and GIFT-resenting otherwise known as Christmas. It is certainly beyond my comprehension quite why we so will-fully allow this bloated Satan Claws character to waltz so freely into our houses and dump rubbish about the place with a careless disregard for our wheelie bins. I put this Claws fellow on notice: any GIFT that appears in our house on Sunday morning that meets any of the following criteria will be removed to a discrete offshore facility for immediate destruction. The exclusions list is brief and bars any GIFT that: Sings any kind of song. Requires more than a single battery to perform a function. Demands some form of repetitive hammering. Involves food that contain some form of immunoglobulin E or other anaphylatoxins, which thus provoke a release of histamine a...

Mindless violence. King Street, Sandy Bay. November 2011. Just the two books this week, but what books they were! The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark ventures into a genre that I am more familiar with in film than print: the Western. A brief plot synopsis might lead you to think that this novel is little more than a cliché: two drifters are drawn into a lynch mob to find and the rustlers presumed to be the killers of a local man. It is in fact much more than that. Written in 1940, the novel is a somber, unsympathetic examination of the ease with which men slip into violence and resist the urge to ‘justice’. It explores starkly ‘masculinity’ and the tendency of the fear of exposure in terms of physical cowardice to trump moral courage when it comes to groups of men. It is a fantastic collection of set pieces that affords Van Tilburg Clark the opportunity to explore these themes and remain able to keep the pace cracking along and tense narrative to the (inevitable) ugly conc...

Could use a lick of paint. King Street, Sandy Bay. November 2011. Another Tuesday, another Q and A stolen from Sunday Stealing. This time: The Madness Meme, Part 1 1. Have you ever licked the back of a CD to try to get it to work? I can't say that I have. 2. What’s the largest age difference between yourself and someone you’ve dated? It depends on one's definition of 'dated'. Running by mine, that would be three-and-a-bit months. 3. Ever been in a car wreck? I was in a car that went through a fence into a field once. The car wasn't wrecked though. 4. Were you popular in high school? You'd have to ask someone else. I'd suggest that I was somewhere about the middle. 5. Have you ever been on a blind date? I'm not certain I've ever been on a date . 6. Are looks important? Of course they are! Should they be? That is a different question... 7. Do you have any friends that you’ve known for 10 years or more? A few. 8. By what age would you like to be married...

Cold. Queen Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011. Two decent reads this week. First up, Saturday by Ian McEwan is a novel set across a single Saturday (and night) in inner-city London in early-2003 as the city geared itself for large demonstration against the invasion of Iraq. The central character is a 48-year-old neurosurgeon that goes about his day as normal (albeit pondering the meaning of the protest and the geopolitical realities that inspired it). As might be expected, something else happens as well as a violent and troubled stranger penetrates his usually-tranquil world. This book seemed to divide the critics, and I guess that I can see why. The protagonist lives a blissful, upper middle class existence that appears to chaff with many reviewers. Nonetheless, and despite my decidedly anti-bourgeois tendencies, it didn’t worry me. Utilising a neurosurgeon as the centrepiece of the story affords McEwan the opportunity to explore core human concepts – happiness, ideology, rationality...

Thirty? King Street, Sandy Bay. October 2011. Another Sunday, another top five. Today, Five Things That You May Not Know About The Number 30 ! 30 is the sum of the first four squares, which makes it a square pyramidal number ! 30 is the total number of major and minor keys in Western tonal music, including enharmonic equivalents! French existentialist bore Albert Camus argued in The Myth Of Sisyphus that the age of thirty represents a critical period in life , for at that age humans gain a fresh awareness of the meaning of time! The atomic number of zinc is 30 ! The Thirty Years' War - fought between 1618 and 1648 - lasted for [you guessed it) THIRTY years!

Guerilla knitting, turn that shit up. King Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011. The murkey world of yarn-inspired terrorism is troubling to me. Like a lot of forms of 'new terror', it's the incoherent political message and ideological goal that worries me. With no rational purpose, how might we ever conclude peaceful terms with these brigands? The Lamentations Of An Icarus , Charles Baudelaire The lovers of prostitutes are Happy, cheerful, well-fed; As for me, my arms are broken Through having hugged the clouds. It is thanks to the incomparable stars, Blazing in the depths of the sky, That my devoured eyes see only The memories of suns. In vain I wished to find The centre and the end of space; I know not under what fiery eye I feel my wings breaking; And burnt up by love of beauty, I shall not have the splendid honour Of giving my name to the abyss Which will serve as my grave.

One way, or another... The junction of Princes and King Street, Sandy Bay, September 2011. Another stolen set of questions ! 1) Who is the last person you high-fived? Henry. 2) If you were drafted into a war, would you survive. I would, as long as I didn’t sneeze. It is a dangerous business hiding under beds! 3) Do you sleep with the TV on? No. We rarely have the TV on after 7 pm these days. 4) Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton? Many years ago I did. 5) Have you ever won a spelling bee? Not to my knowledge. 6) Have you ever been stung by a bee? I stood on a bee once. Does that count? 7) How fast can you type? Reasonably fast. With speed comes errors though… 8) Are you afraid of the dark? It depends where I am. Generally I am not. 9) Eye colour? Brown. A beautiful brown like that found on Jersey cows. 10) Have you ever made out at a drive-in? No. In my defence, the last time I was six (Rocky III). 11) When was the last time you chose a bath over a shower? When the chil...

Little house on the bay. King Street, Sandy Bay. August 2011. If all goes well weather-wise, we might decide to go off on an adventure today. Until then, please consider this poem: A Comparison Between Logs and Dogs , John Hegley Both are very popular at Christmas, But it is not generally considered cruel to abandon a log, And dogs are rarely used as fuel.

Wheelie bin lids in a row. Queen Street, Sandy Bay. August 2011. Oh rubbish bin. Oh trash can. Oh wheelie bin, recycle bin, waste disposal container and common skip! How we love thee! Why They Turned Back/Why They Went On , Constance Urdang Because a black bird flew across the road; Because the attendant at the pump turned surly; Because the uncertain weather Made Mother nervous, And, back home, the telephone kept ringing In an empty house; Because a white bird flew across the road. How far had they come? How far did they go? Seeing, along river after river, Between shores of brush and willow, Only the bend ahead and the bend behind Under a sky featureless and hard As a shallow bowl; through tautologies Of a landscape unendingly repeated Mile after mile; down Main Street After Main Street, replications Of the same petty civic scenery; Hearing the ghosts of trains Crossing between cornfields, Clattering over the points, moaning Above creosote and ci...

Frost on the windscreen. King Street, Sandy Bay. July 2011. Today we’re stealing... The Honesty Meme ! Right now I'm feeling... tired . When I'm alone I feel... tranquil . When I'm surrounded by people I feel... irritated . One thing I hate is... wilful stupidity . One thing I really like about myself is... integrity . ...and now a word from our sponsor... Closer. King Street, Sandy Bay. July 2011. When I'm feeling sad I... [ silence ]. When I daydream it's usually about... swimming . I'm afraid of... fear . I'm happiest when... asleep . One thing that really worries me is... helplessness . If I could change one thing about myself it would be... irritability . If I could be with anyone right now I would be with... children . The family member I am closest to is... Jennifer . If I was really honest with my father I would tell him... shush . One thing I regret about my life is... drift . If I on...

I suspect that no gardener lives here. King Street, Sandy Bay. July 2011. James Wright is one of my favourite poets. I can't comment on whorehouses in Wheeling, West Virginia... In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned , by James Wright I will grieve alone, As I strolled alone, years ago, down along The Ohio shore. I hid in the hobo jungle weeds Upstream from the sewer main, Pondering, gazing. I saw, down river, At Twenty-third and Water Streets By the vinegar works, The doors open in early evening. Swinging their purses, the women Poured down the long street to the river And into the river. I do not know how it was They could drown every evening. What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore, Drying their wings? For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia, Has only two shores: The one in hell, the other In Bridgeport, Ohio. And nobody would commit suicide, only To find beyond death Bridgeport, Ohio.