There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.

I'm betting on the angry little guy.

Then tell me, darling little ones, / What's dood, suppose Bog is?

A beautiful heritage building. Regent Street, Sandy Bay. November 2011.

I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing when I first heard the news that Bog was dood...

Our Bog is Dood, Stevie Smith

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?

We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.

Then tell me, darling little ones,
What's dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.

But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each one upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.

Oh sweet it was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me.

Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.

Have you ever tried to explain the phenomenon of "tides" to a five year old?

I used to think that the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth was a relatively straightforward concept, now I'm not so certain...

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

Pointing south. Bellerive boardwalk. October 2011.

Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes was written in 1958 and details the emergence of the ‘mod’ and explores uneasy race relations in inner-city London in the lead up to the swinging sixties.

I initially found it a frustrating read, as the (unnamed) teenage narrator speaks with a litany of (now-) clichéd slang and puns, but once I reminded myself that in many respects MacInnes is recording this language in print for the first time I decided to roll with it.

As such, it is an interesting snapshot of a very specific time and place, and the story rollicks along at a cracking pace to a decent conclusion. Recommended.

I will be frank and admit that I did not find the same thing with Women As Lovers by Elfriede Jelinek. In the novel, Jelinek – an Austrian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 (a seemingly controversial choice) – employs an ‘interesting’ style. She avoids capitalisation entirely (including proper nouns). Each sentence is given a paragraph break, regardless of length. Sentences are, for the most part, short.

Complementing (compounding?) the experimental nature of the novel is the fact that the courses of the lives of two women are told against each other. One chapter we are with Bbrigette who hates Hheinz but loves the idea of marrying him because he represents her best chance at material wealth and ‘the good life’; and the next chapter we are with Ppaula, who follows her heart and dreams rather than conforming to society’s conception of that very same ‘good life’.

As an exercise in creatively eviscerating the place of ‘woman’ in society through a Marxist/ feminist lens, it is a great success. Class and gender are effectively explored and critiqued through the narrative. As an exercise of skilful writing and storytelling, I’m less convinced. While I’d not go so far as denounce Jelinek as a fraud or of completely lacking in talent, I didn’t enjoy the act of reading as I usually do. It felt like a chore, and that’s rarely a recommendation.

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

Yeah... that one there. That one is a Great White...

No, it's a Grey Nurse.

No. Look at the nose. It's a Great White.

The things we discuss in Tasmania...

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

Sitting on the dock of the bay. Geilston Bay, October 2011.

Theme Thursday already?

TREASURE is - in my opinion - much like 'beauty': very much in the eye of the beholder. I have railed before [and before and before and before] against the conflation of stuff with worth.

A case in point: while a small allotrope of carbon in which the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of a face-centered cubic crystal structure may well have a market value of X dollars/ rand/ euros/ baht/ bolívars/ dồngs/ kepings etc etc etc, it does not particularly appeal to me!

[Well, the market value appeals in a fiscal sense; but that is more about the potential TREASUREs that might be secured through liquefying the asset. In and of itself, the tightly-packed allotrope of carbon atoms is neither here nor there.]

Silence is TREASURE. An intense blue sky on a crisp Spring morning is TREASURE. A kiss and a cuddle when one gets home is TREASURE. The new Grand Theft Auto is TREASURE. Sitting at the end of a pier with feet dangling in the water, an icy pole in hand as the sun sinks into the ocean and the colours slowly bleed into each other is a supreme form of TREASURE.

You see, TREASURE is solely about the worth that we attach to something. The market values one thing, I’d like to think that my valuations is a little more personal, a little more exclusive.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

Sans scooter, one is generally stuck behind the crowd...

It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.

Jen and Hen take an evening stroll. Geilston Bay High School, Geilston Bay. November 2011.

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It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

He's only happy when he drinks.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

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?
I was 28. That's not a bad age if you're going to do these kin of things.

9. Does the number of people a person’s slept with affect your view of them?
It depends on the particulars I guess. Numbers alone don't mean much.

10. Have you ever made a mistake?
Never! Once or twice... On occasion. ALL THE TIME. Are you happy now?

11. Are you a good tipper?
I am a reluctant tipper. I have no issue rewarding good service, but resent it as an expectation; even moreso if it acts as a means of keeping actual salary down.

12. What’s the most you have spent for a haircut?
I think that I spent forty dollars once. I'm notoriously frugal though...

13. Have you ever had a crush on a teacher?
Probably. None very memorable though.

14. Have you ever peed in public?
I guess so. Never deliberately for an audience.

15. What song do you want played at your funeral?
I have answered this one before. If I were to have one (which I'd rather not), I'd like The Angels' Am I Ever Gonna See Your face Again.

16. Would you tell your parents if you were gay?
If it came up. I certainly wouldn't hide it.

17. What would your last meal be before getting executed?
I'm quite sure that I wouldn't have much of an appetite, to be honest.

18. Beatles or Stones?
Chocolate and cheese. Two very different acts that are difficult to compare. The Beatles have the greater range, the Stones the harder sound. I like both. If I had to pick just one album from the lot... Exile on Main Street.

19. If you had to pick one person on earth to die, who would it be?
Just one...? There are a whole bunch of people whose death would not bother me in the slightest, but I'm not going to get into the business of picking and choosing.

20. Beer, wine or hard liquor?
Cider.

21. Do you have any phobias?
Cacophobia.

22. What are your plans for the future?
Getting a good night's sleep. I try to keep these things realistic.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

Ice cream headache, also known by its given scientific name sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is a form of brief cranial pain or headache commonly associated with the quick consumption of ice cream and is caused by having something cold touch the palate, and is believed to result from a nerve response causing rapid constriction and swelling of blood vessels or a "referring" of pain from the roof of the mouth to the head.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows wha

Just one way? Princes Street, Sandy Bay. October 2011.

The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and ladies with zebras). The following are some things that I've had a look at in the last few week. I call this: a Compendium of Click-throughs for Monday Morning...

The history of turning tyrants from figures of fear into figures of fun...

How extreme wealth and absolute poverty have returned to disfigure the West...

The trick to creating healthy boys is not that tricky...

Bit of trouble? Feeling a bit down? The strange and curious history of lobotomy...

Did you know that the Easter Island “heads” have bodies?

Shocking news: social protections like income security and access to essential social services are essential for third world development...

A surprisingly poignant video of video game deaths over the years. On a personal note, it was great to see to see the grisly decapitation from Barbarian II make the cut...

On why there should be more than simple guilt over the calorie count over your chocolate fixation...

Frankie Fukuyama stays true to Hegel...

Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.

The boys and I mounted a splendid reconstruction of the Battle of Chancellorsville in the fields of Geilston Bay High School the other day, and I managed (between volleys of fire) to take a few snaps.

Above, you can see Ezra re-enacting the mortal wounding of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. Henry was magnificent in the role of Gen. Robert E. Lee, mixing both poignant stoicism and despondent pessimism not seen since the fabulous Stallone performance in Rocky III at the death of ‘diamond in the rough’ trainer Mickey.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Raindrops on the road. East Derwent Highway, Geilston Bay. November 2011.

Today's Sunday Top Five is an appropriately themed one: My Top Five Songs That Feature The Word "Sunday" In The Title!

Sunday Morning Coming Down, Kris Kristofferson

Sunday, Bloody Sunday, U2

Every Day Is Like Sunday, Morrissey

Lazy Sunday, The Small Faces

Sunday, David Bowie

Just missing the cut (but quality choons nonetheless): Sunday, Sonic Youth; One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning, The Flaming Lips; Sunday Night, The Go-Betweens; and Gloomy Sunday, Billie Holiday