This will hurt me...

Tuesday Q and A and I am back to stealing questions from Sunday Stealing . This week I am stealing The Never Ending Meme, Part One . 1. Song that always makes you sad? R.E.M.’s Try Not To Breathe . 2. Last thing you bought? A wheelbarrow. Unassembled. 3. Last person you argued with? Ezra. He’s a particularly argumentative chap. 4. Do you put butter before putting the peanut butter on? I’d shoot myself in the head before putting peanut butter on. 5. One of your stuffed animals’ names as a kid? I honestly can’t remember. This saddens me. 6. Did you ever at one time own a Barenaked Ladies CD? Barenaked Ladies? They had a song in Shrek , didn’t they? If they did, that’s about all the Barenaked Ladies facts I have. If they didn’t, I know even less about the Barenaked Ladies than I thought. If you’re talking about bare-naked ladies, I might get interested… 7. Favourite day of the week? Monday. 8. Favourite sundae topping? Fresh raspberries. 9. Did you take piano lessons? No I did not take ...

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...

A touch of blue. Gregory Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011. "Chiggety check yourself befo' yo' wreck yo'self"? What's that mean, exactly?

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...

Poo isn't recyclable? Bellerive, January 2011. There was a time when I didn't like Gerard Manley Hopkins. It was all the passionate (defrocked) priests that ruined it for me. As time brings distance between myself and passionate (defrocked) priests, I think that I've come around. 40 (Carrion Comfort) , by Gerard Manley Hopkins NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, wo...

Empty rubbish bins waiting to be taken in along the East Derwent Highway in Geilston Bay. April, 2010. For some people, putting the bins out and bringing them back in constitutes the sum total of their exertions for the day. That thought depresses me. Yesterday was something of a victory though, I only had to righten three bins on the trip from the bus stop to home. That pleasure should depress me. Do you righten other people's bins when you walk up the footpath? If not, why not?