This will hurt me...

Right now Henry, you've got him where you want him. Next, and easy now... easy... Prime your left leg and hop on over his back. Lock him in the sleeper hold and then I'll get him into the sack.

Blokes in boats. The Derwent Estuary, as seen from A.J. White Park, Battery Point. May 2012. I can never really decide if this Stevie Smith poem is one of the most depressing that I know, or one of the most amusing. I think that it seems to depend on my mood. Not Waving But Drowning , Stevie Smith Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

This bloke is so tough he eats raw cactuses for breakfast. He doesn't even have milk!

Achtung! Ampelmännchen sagt halt! The point just after Davey Street turns into Sandy Bay Road. June 2012. Just the one book finished this week, and a trip back in time with Mussolini And The Rise Of Fascism by the academic/ historian Donald Sassoon. Sassoon is the author of what is to my mind the definitive work (and weighty tome coming in well over 1,000 pages long) on continental European socialism, One Hundred Years of Socialism , so I was looking forward to his analysis of the development of fascism in Italy. You might already be familiar with the tale: in 1919 the former socialist newspaper editor-cum small time political player Benito Mussolini had assembled a ragtag group of followers in Milan and launched the movement that was to result three years later in a dictatorship. This itself would last 23 years, and draw Italy into an escalating number of foreign interventions, ending ultimately with a disastrous war that was to leave large parts of her in ruins. Oddly enough...

"OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" ... "As soon as I finish this ham and cheese sandwich." In other news, still no sign of Veronica... [Too obscure?]

Hobart’s winter sky. The view over the Derwent Estuary, from Battery Point. June 2012. Theme Thursday and I am very very late. My apologies. I’m caught up you see. Caught up in something FULL CIRCLE. Another way that we might at this is via Latin, the revolutio – “a turnaround” – (our modern revolution ). Of course, revolutions can come FULL CIRCLE or they can top at the 180 degrees (or any other point of the loop). See, what In need is a revolution. As noted earlier in the week, Lenin – and he knew a thing about ‘em – used to say that the fundamental law of revolution is that for a revolution to take place, it is simply not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to recognise the unfeasibility of living in the old way, and thus demand change. However, for a revolution to actually happen, it is essential that the exploiters recognise and understand that they will not be able to live and rule in the old ways. Revolutions are not just about politics. Some of us need r...

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