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Helloes. I am sitting in an apartment in Rome punching this out on a borrowed but very beautiful Power Book having been out and about all afternoon looking at, you know, Rome and stuff. What an extraordinary place. Still. I'm not going to go into great depths at this stage. This is essentially a 'what has Tom been up to' post in pictures for those who can't be bothered reading. So last Thursday morning Snooze, Mother Snooze and I arrived here at 5am local time. Snooze and Mother Snooze immediately got in a hire car and drove away, leaving me to fend for myself. I did ok. This thing is truly enormous. See. I also saw a bit of this action. And a sampling of this sort of thing. On Saturday, I then bravely stepped onto a plane all on my own (quite a big thing for me) and went all Continental on my own ass, ending up in Rome. Rome's old. They have little cars and cool walls / gateways. Their houses are pretty. And they build monuments to hideous torture - this is San...

Last night I saw this . It was one of the greatest pieces of theatre I've seen. Truly brilliant. Geoffrey Rush was extraordinary, the supporting cast magnificent, the design beautiful, the sound stunning, the lighting amazing. If you haven't already got tickets I suspect you'll miss out as it closes this week, but wow. I'm not 'in' to absurdist theatre. That this production not only won me over but was at once funny, deeply moving, strange yet frighteningly familiar is testament to the strengths and depth of the talent on display. I don't want to write an in-depth review. While it was overwhelmingly good, there were a few quibbles I had with it, but it wouldn't be theatre if it were quibble-free. Suffice to say that combined with a number of other shows I've seen of late, my faith has been restored in the state of theatre in Melbourne and Australia. Blogging has been sporadic of late because I'm all distracted with a trip over the seas. ...

This is one of the most extraordinary photographs I've seen in a long time. Apparently there are over 150 of these things sitting just off the NSW coast waiting to be loaded with coal . There are about 25 visible in this photo. Photo from The Australian online (no direct link available).

Over the last few weeks, traffic to this blog has increased fivefold. I thought at first that my witty textual stylings were bringing in the fanz, but I suspect it might be something else. Recently the most commonly visited post has been this one . I suspect someone on the interwebs with a bigger fan base than me has linked to it or somesuch. Well it's a good thing, because according to a reliable anonymous commenter, I didn't actually create that image after all (and here I was thinking I had): LOL loser you didnt make that, trust me i know who did. hes from facepunch I guess I just imagined I'd done it. Thanks for clearing that up fuckface.

Given I am now the proud owner of a kick arse piece of camera-ry, I figure I should do a little more of the photo blogging. I'm going to aim to post a new photo every other day or so.

If someone were to ask me, I would have to say that I am, basically, more a pessimist than an optimist. Not that I never see things with a rosy complexion, just that I err on the side of not getting my hopes up. Pessimism is a refuge. If I refuse to believe that good things will happen, I get to be surprised and delighted when they do, or if they (predictably) don't, my pre-prepared defence mechanisms are in place to soften the blow. It's not so hard to take if you kind of expected it all along. Is that defeatist? Not particularly. It doesn't mean I'm not thrilled and overjoyed when something good does occur, just that I don't get crushed when something bad happens instead. Take the football for example. For me it's Aussie Rules, for others it might be the soccer, rugby (!?), baseball, whatever. I was brought up on it, it's in my blood, I can't help it. When the Hawks lose, it hurts. Not in a feelingy-pathetic-woosbag sort of way, it actually ...

Well blow me down with a self-righteous feather. Who'd have thought that those smelly, unwashed, baby-eating, dreadlocked, hippy, so-called 'animal rights activists' who demanded Knut be clubbed to death with a sock full of rusty nails (!!!) actually did no such thing . I await Andrew Bolt's correction ... *settles in with a good book (perhaps War and Peace?)*