Does happiness make you a bore?

Perhaps it really does. I must apologise, for in the last month I have been suffering from a severe bout of bloggers' block. It's not that I don't still have mad rushes of rant-inducing emotion - my head is still full of thoughts... I just haven't had the same aggressively nerdish fixation on stuff that, for me at least, has always bred a good blog spiel.

What has caused this temporary interference in Suze's circuitry?

...four fundamental friends were OS over Xmas and NY - in Spain, India and Taiwan. Less debate, less stimulation, less diversity in my social scene. Less love, but less maintenance too, it has to be said.

...disappearing to Tasmania over the festive season meant that I couldn't take stock of all the "that was the year that was/top 50... of 2005" round-ups in the print and electronic media; couldn't watch the boxing day test (or all manner of dreary Xmas telly for that matter); couldn't argue bitterly with my olds and get thrown out of the house during festivities like I usually do. Instead I engaged in timeless activities like camping, meeting some other olds (though not quite of the vintage of my dad), and participating in that special Tassie tradition, inculcated from infancy, of the duelling banjos - in this case updated for the 21st century by our kind sponsors (Sony Playstation) to allow the duellers to cast aside their instruments and squawk lines from modern pop classics at each other. I know who won that little contest baby, I know....

...and, recently, I have been sweetly insulated from all those Things Afoot In The Big Bad World to which I used to be inexorably drawn in disgust and outrage - draconian IR "reforms", race riots, legislative infringements on human rights - by the warmth of my affection for this darling Tasmanian native creature. I am still angry with the world, but it's talking to the hand for the moment. Inequity is never shielded from my hawk-like scrutiny for long though. Believe.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I apologise. I will be back with a vengeance in 2006. As Luke of Bendigo might say - peace out dude.