Towel news

It’s taken 45 years, but I have achieved this: I own two bathrooms, and they are adorned with matching hand towels. I consider this a base camp from which I may ascend to even greater heights of manchester co-ordination.

Beating the system

I am a fond wearer of shorts. There are people (whose opinion I usually respect) who would feel this puts me in the category of Schlub. They are welcome to their opinons. All I can say is I have big legs that do not ever feel all that comfortable in jeans, and I am just not ready to adopt voluminous harem pants. Yet.

My shorts always wear out in the same spot - where the creases form across the top of the thigh. I should say that these are always "cargo" style shorts. I am just comfortable in that length of short - the over-pockettage I just ignore.

Due to my complete lack of hips I need my shorts to have a drawstring. And it's been getting harder and harder to find them. They are all elastic-waist or have belt loops - as if I am going to wear a belt with shorts. What do they think I am - an axe murderer?

So I have been wearing my old scraggy torn-through-the-creases shorts while walking the streets of this town (which is actually oversupplied with pants shops) searching for a new pair. Is there anything sadder than a scraggy-shorts-wearing middle-aged man, on a Tuesday morning, wandering through Glasser and Parker running his hand around the waistline of pair after pair after pair of shorts? No.

So I gave in, and bought a pair with an elasticise... no I can't even type it. And for the last month I have hitched them up every 25 minutes - that’s about 1700 times.

Last night I finally beat the system. I took the drawstring out of an old pair (I keep the torn ones for 6 - 8 years as you do) and surgically inserted it into the waist of the new ones. And I do not say "surgically" without cause. I started the night before at about 10.30pm - tired, poor light, cranky. I had a paperclip and a scalpel blade, one of those curved ones - to use as a quik-unpik and to slice through obstructing layers of short. I was holding it in my hand because my scalpel was .. uh .. so tired. You know?

I could have used better tools if I had been bothered to go find them, but I wasn’t. This session ended with the paperclip hopelessly lost in Quadrant 5 of the waistband, and blood on the floor. And on the shorts. The new shorts.

Last night I decided to return to the fray. I had Michael’s head-torch, a proper craft knife, pliers to get the paperclip into an efficient shape, and steely determination. It took a little while but it was SO much easier and I didn’t even once consider calling an ambulance.

I am now proudly wearing my improved shorts, and I will be able to get out of the car without hitching up my pants like a Maurie Fields.

Boast

Why not funnel your spare cash in my direction??

I have been throwing everything into the t-shirt designs of late. Proper work has been thin on the ground, and  I have found over time that the best way to keep myself up and switched on is to make up a work project.

So far I have three themes (that might be familiar to you from the blog) - footy, imaginary cars and popes. I have been a bit ambitious - I decided to draw the 23 popes named John. Then this new bloke Francis popped up so I had to draw him too. For the footy shirts I am drawing one player each from the golden era of the 12-team VFL - and I'm about halfway through.

I ordered one myself so I could be reassured about the quality - it arrived yesterday and it looks fantastic!

These guys took me a while but I'm pretty happy with how they came out.

I must apologise for turning the blog into a long-running ad for my shirts. But having sunk a lot of effort in the designing, I now need to Move Units. It's a little like joining Amway - I am starting to see all my friends and family and blog-readers as Potential Customers.

Rest assured I still love you all, even if you don't buy any of my beautiful shirts,cards, posters etc.

And now I will blog about something else for a change.

Correct Heading, No link Provided

Correct Heading, No link Provided

Bones revisited

I have gone literally gone back to the drawing board. What thinkest? If you like it, go to my little t-shirt sales site and comment, make it a favourite, buy a card or postcard, of it or even a shirt.

Ribbons aplenty

Yesterday was the school athletics carnival - the biggest day in any house captain's year. Marcus got off to a great start with the pre-carnival events, that they run around the school during the week prior. He won both the Grade 6 1500m and 800m. 

Michael has carved out a niche as the novelty event specialist. people still talk with awe of his win in the Grade 2 Monkey Race. Yesterday he cleaned up the Grade 4 Sack Race and looked a certainty for the Egg & Spoon before mislaying the ovum in the last 5 metres.

Marcus made a clean sweep of the 100m, 200m and 400m, all pretty comfortably. I was there for his 200m and he ran like he was going for a record, (even though they don't bother timing anything). He was perhaps 40m ahead of the next finisher, and giving it everything plus the kitchen sink. It was great to watch him captaining. The kids seem to respect him and he stays fairly calm and get done what he needs to get done. 

I said to him yesterday how pleased I was that he had stood for the house captaincy. If he hadn't tried for it, and then had come out and won every race, he would look a little like he had dodged it. I am terribly proud of him and of Michael too, for throwing himself into the carnival even though its not quite his thing.

Elevenses

The birthday season wears me out so much that I can sometimes be premature in celebrating its end. I was ahead of the game this year, forgetting that my first-born child would have his birthday on the last day of February.

And so it came to pass. He's eleven! He had a quite mature party, with just two guests and the three of us, upstairs at the a local cafe. This place is the home of the monster fluffy pancake served with ice cream and a large bowl of berry sauce - effectively runny jam. To see four of those being wolfed down is a bit unsettling. They just disappeared.

We bought Marcus a Nintendo 3DS. He had an second-hand one a few years ago and lost it - actually dropped it in a swamp on Bruny Island. He was very remorseful and has never asked for a new one, even though we know he missed the old one very much.

Now we are back to the once-familiar sight of Marcus walking around glued to this tiny thing, talking to it (some of the games are sound-sensitive) and hearing it boink, bong and bark like a dog in response.

Bones on the phone

This starts with a great Aussie photographer, Rennie Ellis. I have seen his books before, full of observational street photography documenting Australia in the 70s and 80s. I became aware of an online gallery of his work last year, and saw this image of a Richmond cult hero, Robbie "Bones" McGhie. This is Grand Final Day 1974, I assume before the match. Bones calms the nerves with a quick durrie.  There is a corresponding post-match pic of Bones downing a can of Vic Bitter. He was quite the lad. I remember his footy card very well as being one of only maybe 2 or 3 that showed tattoos. Kevin Murray is the other one who leaps to mind.

So I thought  - what a great image, maybe it would make a good t-shirt?

Before I did anything with it I want to get approval from the photographer's estate and the subject. I am still waiting to hear from Rennie's people (he died in his sixties in 2003). I found an email for Bones, and sent the design to him for comment yesterday.

He rang me this morning! He's 61 now, still smoking. In fact he started a business manufacturing and distributing those waist-high ashtray bollards. He was affable, said he thought the design was OK and to do whatever I liked. I was a bit blown away, and said I thought it was a great photo. He said yes, he thought so too. And I imagined he was busy with his bollards and his sports-strapping-tape business so I let him go.

But - I have to call him back. He's a dual premiership Tiger! I've got to pester him with some questions about the big games he played in, and being coached by Tom Hafey (one of my all-round heroes in life). Leyton Hewitt's dad once played for Richmond and allegedly left after an altercation with Bones in the carpark. True?

Anyway, I now have BONES McGHIE in my mobile address book. Do you think he would mind if I started texting him during Richmond games like I do every other Tiger supporter I know?

Captains courageous

On Friday Marcus came home from school and announced that he was standing for house captain. He's in grade 6 this year, top of the school, and these kind of things will come up through the year. His good buddies Xavier and Ned were also standing. Ned got into minor strife for handing out lollies to the little kids.

We helped Marcus write a speech for today. Our neighbour Adrian is in Grade 6 at another school, and he was elected house captain last week. He had a cracking speech written down, which he gave us for inspiration. As Marcus's opponents were his good friends we suggested he say something like "All of these guys would make great house captains but I hope you'll vote for me".

The staff thought his speech was great - I think the magnanimosity went down very well. The students must have thought so too - he was elected! Lana from next door (the other side) was elected as Marcus's co-captain, so we have three captains in a row here. That is a lot of leadership crammed into one paddling pool.

Lana may regret some of her campaign promises. She undertook to pick up anyone who is struggling in the cross country run on her magic carpet.

Lincoln - some errors

I mentioned Lincoln the other day and got one big thing wrong. Tommy Lee Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, not Steven A. Douglas. Please, calm your seething - it could have happened to anybody who has an inflated idea of their command of American history, as I do.

However - something serious that the filmmakers got wrong is that they show Connecticut voting against the Emancipation Proclamation. Connecticut have apparently demanded this be fixed before the DVD is released.

I think it would be nice if this could be done by having famous Connecticutian and rapper, 50 Cent, do a pimp roll onto the set in a really poor attempt at 1850s costume. When the speaker says "Connecticut?" 50 Cent says "You know it, Wiggy".

Symphony under the stars and a few gatecrashing planets

Most people know that some of the brightest stars are, in fact, planets. This is something I am always forgetting. About a week ago I was marvelling at a bright star that was snuggled right up to the dark side of the moon. I later found out that was Jupiter.

Last night we took the boys to Symphony Under the Stars, and again, as the first "stars" came out I was completely oblivious that they were Venus, Mars and the Big J. It was at lovely Tolosa Park where we have been to various daytime events. People bring picnics and rugs etc. Many bought folding chairs, but unless you are early enough to score a patch on the terraces, I don't think they work that well on a steep slope. We went for simple couch cushions.

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra were in good form on some popular chunes. They played Jupiter from Holst's Planets, which was followed by some discussion of the planets visible, the chief of which was in fact the Jupester.

We haven't been to this gig before so I don't know if there is always a featured vocalist, but we thought the music was most enjoyable when she was out the back changing her frock. The boys were mugging about with cushions over their ears when she sang, and there was certainly a touch of the Madame Castafiore* about her. You could imagine glasses exploding.
*Tintin reference.

One of the less-immediately-lovable bloke-in-a-suit characters is RACT Cube Man. He came out to wave a bit. Christopher Lawrence who was MC-ing asked Cube Man a few questions but he is a very private cube and not much was forthcoming.

We enjoyed it despite the chanteuse, and our distance from the action. Next year get there early, and take the binoculars and the star map.

Break point, out by the biohazard bins

Cam and I had a game of tennis yesterday morning - my first in a few years. We went down to the uni where we last played, but they are only admitting members on the courts now. Pretty crummy. Even if you are prepared to buy a membership you have to do a 20 minute orientation tour, and then still pay by the hour for the court.

We left in a huff, and tried our luck at the old court behind St Johns Hospital in South Hobart. I've seen people playing there - I've always assumed they must be staff. But we went in to reception and asked.Well, actually the ladies were too busy to ask, so we just stood there in our sports gear with our racquets and assumed they would twig what we were after. When the phone stopped ringing for a few seconds someone found us a key - and asked for $3! Surely it costs the hospital more than that just to have their reception staff interrupted.

With a bit of exaggeration I can see a comedy bit in this. Pompous over-serious tennis player jogging on the spot while he waits for someone to notice him, stretching and then eventually opening a can and practising his ball-toss. Meanwhile medical emergencies of ever-increasing seriousness play out behind him.

The hospital is pretty old, and it has grown in fits and starts, so it's a rabbit warren. It was founded as a homeopathic hospital in 1899. Out the back behind the coach-house (which now contains specialists rooms) are some sheds, the biohazard bins, piles of rusting rubbish and a neglected tennis court.We enquired in one of the worksheds and borrowed a spade and broom, and dealt with the tufts of grass growing down the tramlines.

Eventually we were up and running. Cam is a much better player than I - I hardly made a first serve all day. Yet he made more errors than me and ended up losing his usual steely focus. I won the first set and was up 3-1 in the second when we abandoned the match. It was just too hot and we had to play indoor soccer later in the day so we were saving our legs. (We lost soccer 5-4 so we should have quit tennis sooner).

Qwerty!

Again, I am writing merely to announce that I have a new laptop. How thrilling, I hear you exclaim.In fact, it is (again) a borrowed laptop with a teeny tiny keyboard. And its not a Mac. So, expect quite a few blog posts with a vaguely peeved undertone.

Ha ha.only kidding.Although my mouse button seems to have two distinct personalities and that will take a little bit of getting used to.

AFL 2103 - scrying the entrails

Premiers: West Coast
Runners Up: Collingwood
Rest of the top 8: Sydney, Adelaide, Hawthorn, Geelong, Fremantle, Richmond
Wooden Spoon: Melbourne
Brownlow Medal: Scott Pendlebury, Collingwood
Coleman Medal: Jack Darling, West Coast (67)
Richmond Outlook: In the mix with Freo, Essendon, North and Carlton for unwinnable 7th and 8th spots. To just see them in a final would be amazing for Marcus who was born after their great finals run of 2001.

Reality-challenged hatters

Well - what’s the euphemism for mad nowadays? Socially-excluded troubled-behaviours hatters?

It matters not. We had a theme, we had some kids, we had some parents, we had a lot of food (including 3 or 4 pints of not-quite right icing) and we partied-down. To celebrate Michael's 9th birthday of some 3 weeks ago. 

Elf organised everything and made the sensational cake. Sally made a rainbow cake for Arthur a few months back, and I connected the dots thinking Elf copied that. In fact she didn’t even see that cake, this was simply great cake minds thinking alike. 

The shindig went well! Thanks to Imp for the lend of the chocolate fountain and to the weather for being stonking. Childers repaired to the pool to shout and douse each other, adults hung around the shady deck and stretched the party into a practically all-day event, and in so doing mopped up the excess food. 

We are tired but happy, as another year’s party season honks to a close.

Thinning on top

Got my standard haircut today - Nº2 back and sides, Nº3 across the scone. After that, the hairdresser asked, in all seriousness, “Do want me to thin it out on top?”

I did 2 or 3 doubletakes, and ended up saying “Er, if you think it needs it?” She did.

Hands up how many people;

1. remember Gerald Ford as US President and
2. have the hairdresser thinning them out on top?

Anyone? No. Just me. So thanks to my dad's side of the family for the tenacious hair genes. Good one, Reeses and Stubbingses!

Dogs and cats agree

Everyone loves the little blue pool.

Zero Dark Thirty

Tuesday was the first day of the school year, and also my dear wife returned to work. So, as a person who works from home, you would imagine I just revelled in the peace and quiet and/or called a No Pants Day. In fact I decided that I, - free of the need to include, involve, listen to or supervise others - would walk to North Hobart, see a very long movie, then walk home again. And that would be my day.

So, I had a very nice walk. I get anxious about being late for things, and that has spoiled my enjoyment of many a walk - the thought that if I don’t speed up I’m going to miss something. I walked to school with Elf and the kids thinking after that I would walk home, and then at some stage head off to the cinema for the 10.45 showing. At some point I abandoned that plan, and after seeing the kids to their new classrooms, I just kept on walking, and gave myself a very, very leisurely stroll.

Now to the movie. I had seen that it had very positive reviews, and the chap in the local paper said that it dealt with the very violent real events (torture, terrorist attacks and the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden) in a restrained way - which convinced me to see it, as I am not interested in gore & splatter.

The first two minutes are sound only - over a black screen you hear very affecting audio from September 11. At the start of the film we meet Maya, the young, slim, redhead CIA officer who becomes obsessed with finding Bin Laden. This is all supposedly based on the facts, but I don’t know if this is a montage of more than one person or a completely invented character.

She is newly arrived in-country at one of the CIA’s secret bases. I forget if this was in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Her new boss Dan is waterboarding a prisoner, and we get to see plenty of that. It’s monstrous. Some such as Waleed Aly have called this a pro-torture film. Maya goes from being very uncomfortable witnessing waterboardings, to ordering them to be carried out. As she is the “hero” of the film and is ultimately successful in getting intelligence that leads them to OBL, it leaves itself open to this accusation.

But I disagree. The film does not show any prisoner giving up intelligence while being waterboarded or immediately after. Maya’s stroke of genius was  POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT  to convince a disoriented and sleep-deprived man that he had already told them what they wanted to know. From there, he let his guard down. Yes - waterboarding, 24-hour death metal music and other abuses of human rights got him to that point.

I am an Amnesty member and anti-torture. The reality is that there is a wide grey area between what is illegal and what I am comfortable with. Do I have the right to urge the banning of things that are a) effective and b) not illegal? 

One of the planks of Amnesty’s anti-torture platform is actually expressed by a sceptical character in the film, and it’s not about human rights at all. It is that “intelligence gained through torture is low quality intelligence - in these circumstances people just say anything”. This is an amoral argument against torture, but a good one, which is why Amnesty uses it.

I think what the film does show is that the treatment the US defines as being short of torture is (as depicted) torture. The US military says that waterboarding is OK as it is not “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Dan says repeatedly to the prisoner - “You lie to me, I hurt you” and then does. Whether it’s severe - well, Maya didn’t want to watch when she was first confronted with it.

I got caught up in the spy thriller aspect, but a bit confused by some of the helicopters-over-Abbotabad stuff.  PSA  One chopper is damaged on landing and can’t take off. Some of the SEALs on the ground blow it up, as it is a top-secret weapon, but we see that from within the other chopper that has taken off. So guys were left behind? No - it looks like everyone makes it back OK. Odd.

It was a very good film, but one that filled me with dread and paranoia. If I was backpacking near the Pakistan border now (rather than 15 years ago) this is NOT a film I would like see. It is not going to win any friends in the Pakistan Tourism Board, that’s for sure. 

Washday

Sure, I made them co-operate. But still - they’re cooperating.