Category: General

Ruminations on Japan.

Japan has taken the 5th largest earthquake ever recorded in the 20th &21st Centuries.

What is truly amazing is that the vast majority of the buildings survived the earthquake pretty well intact.  It was the tsunami that did for them subsequently.  When you compare the whole event with the debacle of Haiti and Indonesia and the relevant death tolls of both of those events  one has to have nothing but admiration for their civil engineering, stoicism and self control.  Had Christchurch received the ‘benefit’ of an 8.9, theirs was only 6.2, I doubt a brick would have been left standing in the city.  Seemingly the only other country that appears to have anywhere near the survival rate of structures is Chile.

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Any relation, OZ?

A guy is driving around the back woods of Melbourne and he sees a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house: ‘Talking Dog For Sale ‘ He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.

The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.

‘You talk?’ he asks.

‘Yep,’ the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says ‘So, what’s your story?’
The Lab looks up and says, ‘Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the ASIO.. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.’
‘I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals.’ ‘I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.’

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

‘Ten dollars,’ the guy says.

‘Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?’

‘Because he’s a liar. He never did any of that shit.

Fifth Photo Comp Result

Just now catching up – in all the excitement of the last few weeks, I somehow got the idea that the closing date was the 15th. Been busy all day writing invoices and expense statements for the last, hectic few weeks. And it’s not over yet; Cairo tomorrow – sparrow’s start at 04.30, then Romania for a week, then back to Cairo for at least three weeks. When I started this new contract, I envisaged a few weeks loafing in Cyprus, followed by a few days’ work, then another loaf…

Anyway, to the results.

You all produced some great shots, as always, and now I know how difficult it was for the judges in the previous competitions to come up with a winner. I have been fretting for an hour or so over who will get the award. I liked all of the shots and finally settled on Pseu’s sunflower head – I particularly like the way the pattern leaches away into the bleached background.

I was going to give a couple of honourable mentions, but i really liked the other shots so much that it would be invidious to single out others for particular praise, so let’s hear it for Pseu, and over to you for the next competition.

Billy Bennett

This months ‘poetry’ competition theme is parody and while searching for answers to Boa’s ‘Who are they?’ competition I came across the music hall comedian Billy Bennett. I recall that many extracts from his monologues were catch phrases, some of which still are – ‘It’s the same the whole world over – it’s the poor what gets the blame!’

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