TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

J ames Cameron's Avatar movies are one of the few I'll pay to watch in a cinema without knowing anything about the story. Largely because I know they'll at least be visually interesting and worthy of seeing on a big screen.  That was the case for the third installment,  Avatar: Fire and Ash . I may have seen a trailer at some point in the lead up to its release but I'm not sure? All I could definitely tell you is, in the second movie we were introduced to water tribes, and in this movie we were going to be introduced to fire tribes. Which is really all you need to know in hindsight. The movie does get you up to speed with the key throughlines from Avatar: The Way of Water pretty quickly (well quickly for a three hour Avatar movie). You may even be able to watch this without seeing the first two because it's not entirely necessary to know the history of the characters for this installment. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family are still being pursued by Colon...

President Maduro in US Custody. O n the same day the US Administration decided to kidnap Venezuela's President and his wife, I happened to catch a 20 minute video overview on the history of Venezuela from about the time President Maduro came into power to days before his 'capture'. The 20 minute video by Australian ABC News called, What's Going on in Venezuela? , may sway your thought process on Maduro's kidnapping - if you're highly opposed to that action - because it give the impression President Trump might actually be the lessor of two rogue idiots when it comes to running a country. I highly recommend you give it a watch if the link still works, and you want to get up to speed fast on events in Venezuela. President Maduro has run Venezuela so far into the ground it can't afford the supplies it needs to export its major income stream, oil  (though his predecessor, President Chávez, should get much of the credit). So bad that their currency is devalued t...

The Bruce Railway Station. Now a private residence. V isiting the almost forgotten town of Bruce reminds me of visiting Silverton back in 2007, except Silverton has been revived into a kind of arts town with a very famous pub. Bruce, on the other hand seems a little too spread out, and a bit too out of the way to make a similar 'arts' kind of revival. Bruce's Pub appears to be an art studio with signs of restoration work in progress. The main part of town appears to be the Bruce railway station (now a private residence) and a pub, also privately owned and possibly was, or still is, and artist studio. Other buildings and homesteads are set fairly wide apart, and are mostly privately owned homes. You don't get much sense of being in a town as such. I'm told there are approximately 14 local residents/families? Once earmarked to be a commercial centre, Bruce fell by the wayside after successive floods and drought in its early years. Obviously the railway line is no lo...

While this is an AI image of me, I can assure you I write all of this blog myself with no help from AI at all. I 'm afraid this may be an uninteresting article, three days before Christmas, for the sole purpose of not missing my weekly post to this blog. I'm drawing a blank on what to write about so... I settled on doing a review of posts for the year. Read on at your own discretion. Starting 2025 I introduced my new Resident Dragon Daily Cartoon series that grew out of a daily drawing habit I had started six months earlier. As I write this I've sketched about 335 cartoons, and digitally inked just over 50 of them. Initially I was writing about the new US President   but I stopped covering US politics back in March of this year, because I was tired of giving the current US president any attention at all. So I won't. Let me know when you elect a proper leader. Since 2025 was an Australian Federal Election year I took a deep dive on looking into our political landscape...

The footbridge from which the gunmen primarily conducted their attack (pictured in 2019) By Philip Mallis from Melbourne - Pedestrian bridge across carpark, Bondi , CC BY-SA 2.0 , Link A s I write this, it is the day after the 2025  Bondi Beach Shooting . Sixteen people were killed, including one of the two gunmen, and 42 others injured. I feel for anyone who had to live through this, and particularly anyone who was injured, or died from a criminal act by cowards. I'm not going to speculate, or even give air to the gunmen's motives, nor am I going to contextualize their targets. While neither are irrelevant, people will use one or the other to pick a side. Use it to justify their spin on the day's events. Use it to create division. Whatever you may think about globalization there is one truth that should be global, without question. The human right to life. In my opinion, the moment you are causing people to lose lives with purposeful violence or attack, is the moment your...

My home made 'curb' board slider. S eason 02, Episode 01 of my ten part, Second Sunday Skate Sessions Series is here. I'm still working to master the tricks of Braille Skateboarding's Skateboarding Made Simple Volume One, however, this season will be more focused on my 'curb' Board Slider, that I built, and seeing what tricks I can learn on that. If you're actually interested in following my full progress of relearning to skateboard, the first season can be viewed in these posts: Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions - Doing Less to Skateboard More Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 3, 4, and 5 - Definitely Seeing Progress Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 6, 7, and 8 - Shuv-its On Lock (Pretty Much) Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 9, and 10 - Shuv-it Revelation and Did I Improve? In this episode I do a quick run through of Skateboarding made simple tricks just to sh...