Entries tagged with tasmania

Entry tags:

books,
tasmania

May Green

I had a stern talk with myself yesterday after counting the books I have cluttering up the place. No more new books until I read the ones I currently have, I vowed. All hundred odd of them. So it will be 2013 at least before I buy another book. No, I can't see that lasting either.

I'm off to a good start, though, picking up that Chocolate Wars book I started earlier in the year. A good thing I decided to finish it, too, otherwise I would never have known that the Snickers bar was named after the Mars family's horse. Share that at dinner this evening and enthrall your loved ones.

(This otherwise excellent and informative book is marred by this sentence: Cadbury now had factories in Tasmania, Canada and New Zealand. Gah. I don't even care about Tasmania. It's just one of those things that once I've seen it, I can't stop seeing it.)

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Mineral Green

Curse the National Council of Churches in Australia! They tricked me. In today's mail was a letter with a plain envelope and nothing but a PO Box as the return address, looking exactly like the letters I get from my superannuation fund. Only it wasn't from them. It was from Act for Peace, the charity of the aforementioned council of churches, an organisation I've never heard of before, let alone given money to. In the envelope was: a letter from the CEO, saying how vital my support would be; three Christmas cards I could send to people, spreading good cheer and the news that I support Act for Peace; a sheet of gift tags; a little cardboard booklet with a case study in it; and a donation form and reply paid envelope. Think of the good deeds they could have done with all that. They're not getting anything from me if that's what they do with their money.

I went to the library yesterday and found the Information is Beautiful book. This information is indeed beautiful. (Although incorrect on at least one page, in that it colours in Australia to show that it's one of the countries with free universal healthcare*, but doesn't colour in Tasmania. Grrrrr.) There's one spread that's a map, showing what many countries are number one in the world for. Australia is number one in the world for car thefts. I feel so proud. Do feel free to ask if you want to know what any other country is best at.

I've got a mysterious brown spot in the middle of my left index fingernail. It's obviously finger cancer and my finger will drop off and then I'll die. So that's something to look forward to.

* Also not entirely true, but true enough for the purposes of the graph.

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Heather

Today my boss declared this 'the greatest song in the history of songs'. Possibly an overstatement.

I've just been reading an interview with US-based Australian author Geraldine Brooks. This interview, in fact. In it, the interviewer says to her that Tasmania is a separate country and she doesn't correct him, and then a bit later he suggests again that Tasmania is a country and she still doesn't correct him. So now not only does he believe, incorrectly, that Tasmania is a country, but so will all his readers. That reminds me of a book I picked up in the library a few weeks ago, about a couple of American writers who visited Tasmania. I put the book down again because both the blurb on the back and the text of the first few pages also suggested that the authors thought that Tasmania was a separate country, even after having been there. Which it isn't, any more than Hawaii is a separate country. It's a state (as in a province rather than a nation) that also happens to be an island. That's not a difficult concept to grasp, is it? Anyway, that incensed me so much I didn't really take in the rest of the interview. Hmph.

Driving home the other day, I passed an accident that had won the emergency services trifecta: there was a police car, an ambulance and a firetruck in attendance. A policeman and an ambo were standing by the side of the road, having a good laugh at something, and there were two firemen just sort of looking at a patch on the road, so I gathered that whatever caused them all to be there wasn't serious.