Perhaps I should post this next week...

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I am approaching the Curate's 1200th post and perhaps I should have held onto this for then but I had nothing else to post so impatience won the day.

Above is a screen shot from Wikipedia's entry on wedding anniversaries.

The three columns are "Traditional (US)", "Traditional (UK)" and "Modern (US)".

It was the oak and granite that caught my eye.

"Happy anniversary dear, I bought you a granite headstone!"

[Whack!] "Ow!"
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Maybe I'd prefer second prize...

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Be wary of lotteries out of Queensland that offer "Waterfront Lifestyle"!

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(Yeah, I know it is for a good cause, it just amuses me.)
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The smell of trellis in the morning.

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The wisteria smells the freedom of the wide open trellis and is making a rapid run for it.
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The Flood & Fruit.

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The Sunday Age had an article on the likelihood of increasing fruit and vegetable prices after the floods in Queensland.

Above is a watermelon that they used to illustrate before and after prices.

Looks like the seeds have been floating around a bit too.

That's not a Tweet. THIS is a Tweet

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Tracy McCormick,
Unites States Department of Justice.

Dear Tracy,

I see that you have filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandra Division) to learn, from Twitter, my name, my mail, residential and business addresses and my email addresses.

To save you time I have included my address at the bottom of this email. You will, with limited IT stress, be able to ascertain my email address from this email in the normal manner.

Your request for session times and durations is more puzzling as generally twitter posts seems to arrive with the minimum of time or duration. Is ‘negligible’ an acceptable response? Please advise.

The length of service and types of service request is also a puzzle. My first ever ‘tweet’ was April 14th 2010 where I shook my fist at the media for their misuse of the word ‘heroes’. My Wikileaks subscription will have been after that but it is hard to tell exactly when. Does it matter? Actually all my tweets have been poking fun (or disgust) at The Age newspaper and have been sent from my computer, not my phone. Does this make you feel any better?

My telephone numbers are at the bottom of this email. Should you assign an agent to record messages in and out I would appreciate any hint you may pick up that my wife is having an affair with the milkman. I have my suspicions, you understand, and as you will be monitoring the home phone it would be a service to me to find out if he is servicing her; if you get my drift.

Payment is a strange question as I believe Twitter is free. Well, free-ish, I do need internet connection to use it. Would the details of my Optusnet account help? Please advise.

Finally, should I be deemed a worthy case for extraordinary rendition, I travel to work down Middleborough Road (Blue Honda Civic Hybrid) and come home down Elgar Road. Should I leave the windows open? I do have some lovely stained glass in my front doors. Could I request that the agents knock rather than use the oh-so-cliched sledge-hammers. They are so 1960, so Soviet-bloc. Finally can I say that the orange of your jumpsuits is just not me. Can I request powder blue?

As custodian of the keys to the home of the brave and the land of the free, I hope and trust that you are appreciative of my efforts to make your position and actions be seen as exactly as what they are.

Yours in disbelief,

Lee Kennedy.
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US Department of Justice (?) is after me!

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(Click to enlarge.)

Above is part of the US Department of Justice's subpoena to Twitter requesting (?) all details of all people who subscribe to Wikileaks.

Yes, I do. Proudly.

What do they hope to prove? Heaven only knows.
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Headlines that never made the presses*

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* An occasional series.

Queensland Chic

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Queensland floods: Stay out of Laidley!

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(Click to enlarge)

Fair Dinkum! No Sh*t!

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There is a bit of a 'weep & gnash" campaign going at the moment with a number of our big retailers bemoaning the fact that people are buying stuff on-line rather than through their stores.

How could we be so unpatriotic?

These same retailers where the first to gallop overseas to buy cheap Chinese goods, at the expense of local jobs, and to then sell them at inflated prices.

Now that we can go straight to the cheap Chinese merchants and buy direct, they are crying 'foul'.

Tough.

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This morning I was in a local department store and saw a rack of kids t-shirts with the slogan "Fair dinkum! True Aussie" and a picture of a cartoon koala.

The label at the neck of the garments did not give a country of origin. Neither of the two tags hanging from the garment gave a country of origin. Inside the garment, hidden away, a third of the way up the side seam I found a tag.

"Made in China".

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Chin up boys, it's only a game!

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England beat Australia in the "Ashes' test series.

From the media reports you would think something important had happened.
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The advantage of home gardens...

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One of the advantages of having your own garden is that you can grow things that you wont see in the shops. Above is a Cape Gooseberry.

The lovely papery lantern holds a lovely little berry with a tangy tropical taste.
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The deck, finally in use.

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The Venerable Sage (Liqueur).

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I joked that I was given a box of worms and a bottle of vodka for Xmas.

I was.

But the vodka was to make a sage liqueur (label above).

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Resolutions. Again.

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(This is a repost of a something I posted a few years back.)

It is that time of year again, when the world is littered with the lists of good intentions…

New Year Resolutions.

But it seems to me that people are doing it all wrong. Digging in the wrong place.

Every year people sit down with basically the same list of last year's failures, rework them, resolve that THIS year things will be different.

Here's an idea for you to ponder:

What if, instead of listing all the things that have eluded you every year before, what if you made a list of the things that you already can do…

And resolve to do them better?
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