Monday, February 20, 2006

Something else to worry about

You'd think that at my age I had enough to worry about. Now I learn that I've suddenly crossed an age threshold at which ant stings become toxic. Bugger

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

'A change 'or 'Me sombrero nuevo'

Its not every day you make the decision to part with something personal that has been with you for ... well for your entire adult life and then some.
My old Akubra was truly an old friend. For 20 years it has kept the rain and sun off my head. Through just about every adventurous pursuit you can manage in the Blue Mountains. Camping and snow treks in several continents including walking the length of Zion National Park in Utah, and climbing in the Denali area of Alaska I wore it every day for years as a geologist in various parts of Western Australia and think I set a trend with it at Uni. In some outback pub some place I got Ted Egan to sign the inside. At the time he noted that about 20 years ago a boy had asked him to do the same in Alice Springs. I told him I was that boy, that the signature had long since faded but that he was singing the same songs. In it I have sat by campfires and rivers and dirty café tables in dusty foreign lands. I had some damn good days in that hat.
After all those years it is getting on, it has perhaps too much character. With its floppy dirty brim, missing band, burns, stains and crushed in top it may not be as iconic as the bush tucker man’s but I was recognisable in it.
The in the sales during the sad closure of Gowings I took the opportunity to purchase a new hat. Its fits my slightly bigger, or should that be fatter head. Shades me better and looks, well, it looks new. I’ll post an update in another 20 years but somehow I don’t think they will be quite so adventure packed as the last decades.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Some prick nicked my stuff

Unfortunatly a similar thing happened to me as happened to The Other Guy. Namely, some prick nicked my stuff.
Broke into our garage by pealing and bending back a metal door, wrecking it so we can’t park in it. Apart from a junk computer worth zilch they nicked my bike. A red GT Palomar about 6 years old slick tires and new cassette style rear cluster. The thing is the back cluster on most bikes is now 9 speed and the cassette style is new, like a year or two old. You have to love your bike to bother looking for a 7 speed cassette with an extra high ratio at that, 9 on the smallest gear. I bet it’s the only GT with a new chain and that cassette style cluster in NSW. You park it at the Uni, at the local school, at the local shops, at the station – I see it - I’m watching for you prick. Replacement value was just about equal to the excess so it’s not worth the insurance.
It was my car tho’, it’s how I get to work. So a quick trip to the bike store over the weekend netted a nice new aluminium GT with disk breaks. Its MEGA. Does everything, even turns !!

The new bike



The damage

Friday, February 03, 2006

Cool Pic


Reading club troppo the other day and came across this amazing photo from NASA - Astronomy Picture of the Day. It's the Aroura over an erupting volcano in Iceland.

The Judgment of Paris

I'm probably falling fowl (more on water birds later) of copyright but they put a new picture up on my wall yesterday. A surrealist impression by James Gleason; “The Judgment of Paris”.

Reminds me of Geiger
Basically a bitch of a goddess, Eris tricks three other narcissistic goddesses into squabbling over whom is the fairest. Girls never change. Not nearly brave or stupid enough to get involved Zeus appoints the mortal, Paris (think Orlando Bloom) to make the call. In a mythological version of a wet t-shirt completion all three chicks strip so Paris can have a perve and in the best tradition of the Australian Wheat Board, each attempts to bribe him. Now whilst the others bribed him with power wealth and kingships, Aphrodite offered the love of Helen – the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris was up for this, and in a shameless Disney rip off gives the fairest of them all an apple. Snow White would have been proud. This of course, as we all know eventually led to the long and tragic Trojan War where Brad Pit kills Eric Bana. Now why he thought Helen was the cutest is beyond me. In what is probably one of the first cases of bestiality her mother had sex with a swan and laid an egg from which hatched Helen. The woman whose beauty launched a thousand ships probably had duck feet and feathers.
The whole story is here

No classic painter could pass up the opportunity to paint three naked chicks, some though it so good they did it more than once.
Renoir did it (twice)

Rubens did it (twice)

And Lucas Cranach who is a complete unknown with no sense of depth, did it (4 times)


I have to say, Gleasons is showing the girls in their true form.

Images from Here, Here and Here