Saturday night in. Or is that a movie Boynton once made with Bing called Saturday night Inn?. Nothing for it but to pour a G&T, listen to Jobin/Getz/Gilberto, (via Anil) , and read this (via Rebecca Blood)

If all that Latin starts to pale, cynics may like to switch tempo

Boynton is indulging Bronte here. Guaranteed to turn any Jack Russell into a karaoke fiend in five seconds.

Them's Wagon Words Boynton is house-sitting and space-drunk as Claire Bloom might say. Half way through the latest Neighbourhood watch bulletin this piece of contemporary prose by Toby Hogan from yesterday's paper caught her eye, a layered text dense with imagery.
"While wagon sales are not a large part of total Commodore volume, Holden believes the wagon plays an important part in the Commodore product mix," says a Holden spokesman"
Is it naval drama, urban despair, or classic western, she wonders

Grumpy girl in her new habitat has posted an impressive list of Reasons to blog.
Boynton ticked numbers 1, 4 and 14. The habit thing is interesting. Boynton's never been known for her strict writerly discipline, but – this curious posting imperative keeps her on her toes. While colleagues praised the famous “artist’s way” stuff – Boynton always thought it sounded too much like "boot camp" or at least too dawn-centric. We don't do mornings. ... comments [57]

There's another good list (of annoying words # 844.7) here

Boynton will soon be away from her computer. She'll be parked in front of someone' else's notebook somewhere without her unlimited hours. So the linkage may suffer. Here are a couple of the diversionary kind to keep her going. Big 50's fad makes a comeback? Virtual virtual painting and Internet Simulator

Last word on Lelord? Hetty just checked in to see how lelorded Boynton was. Yes she did read it again, and some of it stands up ok (as it were) as a common sense sort of horizontal folk dancing manual from the 50's, albeit with the "Lover knows best" tone. Or is that "Lelord Nose Best" - given the weird olfactory prejudices of the guy. Too much sniffing of Glen20 I'd say, made Lelord only able to desire ladies who would work hard to resemble a plastic doll. We think the book should have been called "Lady - be gloved!" And so endeth Lelord. Boynton has consigned him back to the anonymous stacks of her crazy lounge library.

Boynton has a good friend who wishes to remain cheese-less. Hope it doesn't mean he misses out on the poetry (more bad odes here )

Taking up the strand, Mark asks whether the clue to finding an authentic voice lies in developing an enhanced "version" of self or super voice. "Also, is there something about writing for the web, that makes us develop a character?... Is it something about the feeling of those eyes upon us in our private place..." the direct relationship with the text, and the direct response? Does this blur the public/private?
Perhaps as they say all writers carry about an imaginary audience in their head, or is it the imaginary ideal audience ...member... Posting to the web formalises that creative pact, even though the idea of the electronic audience is comparatively nebulous. Well, without the customary web-counter anyway. It is odd that the mere illusion of an audience may be enough to kick start and then sustain a dormant persona. Perhaps it's all to do with the wonders of electricity - it can spawn monsters. The instantaneous certainty of posting, or of publishing words is definitely refreshing and liberating to Boynton who in another medium has be known to wait around for 5 years before her text is realised That produces a distance from the text of amnesiac proportion!

LELORD Kordell update. Hetty has returned the infamous tome to Boynton with strict instructions to dispose of it thoughtfully. With book held in out-stretched hands, Boyton skimmed through the blurry words hoping to find a quote. This'll do: ..."a visit to any cocktail lounge, tavern or social gathering will disclose pregnant women, chiefly the younger ones, with highball glass in one hand and burning cigarette in the other"...We think maybe Lelord was wearing his highball glasses in the tavern at the time. There are lots of self-proclaimed "inexplicable facts" laced throughout the book. Shaken not stirred.

More observations on the whole can o' worms that is Voice from grumpygirl.
This started off a train of thought (that Boynton caught) on writing selves, pseudonyms and neutrality. Trouble is, today Boynton took a ricketty old branch line that diverted to places like accent, synthesised computer voices and that old chestnut the Australian language. And so to the nostalgic concept of regionalisms. Boynton knows her autotrays from her traymobiles and is dismayed to think of certain indigenous stands of language gradually fading away. I wonder if we are heading towards a kind of robotic global neutrality? Interesting that in the synthesised voice study the volunteers had trouble differentiating the happy voice from the neutral voice.Oh well, at least it appears that the Australian accent (if it actually still exists ) comes down to general, broad, or cultivated . This is ok: Boynton has always considered herself to be a cultivated broad in general.

Walking by thrift store, Boynton found a small yellow "B". She often sees the debris of the discarded: odd jigsaw pieces, decapitated Barbies, page 110 of Jane Eyre etc. But this jumped out at her so she kept it. Maybe she'll make up a found alphabet someday. Bronte (jack russell) found herself an " O " - being a pink golf-ball. We added it to the 75 already collected.

Alas Boynton only lasted an hour into film, but was impressed by early 60's black and white ... Bath. The film opens with a sweeping view of New year's eve festivities and then cuts to smaller party of medicos tuxed and twisting. "The moment of truth: I married a square" observes Claire Bloom's character, to which he replies: "Even squares have their moments" Could be Boynton's own motto. Before the plague proper of the film hits, in that "phoney war" stage of one or two smallpox cases coming in, there's a nice kind of old hospital feel, with leisurely conversations between colleagues, the sound of heels along empty corridors and the imposing life forms of decontamination units. Telephones, typewriters and buzzers punctuate the silence like a hospital birdsong. Another good line from Claire Bloom: "My back aches and I'm fume drunk from surgical spirit" Boynton concurs with Rhabyn Epstein: there is much cigarette-acting here. Not sure if smoking either causes or disguises the pervasive coy angst of film, but they are certainly conversational props in the best golden years tradition. Boynton will have to hire film to see if the authorities locate the unidentified coffee bar in time.

Going to be a long night for Boynton as she settles in to watch "80,000 suspects" from 1963 (or is that "800 cigarettes" as Rhabyn Epstein observes here). Hope it is as odd as Boynton remembers.

In deference to the log objective, here are two contrasting links. Robert Brustein was in town recently. Alas Boynton could not make it.
Besieged by every ideological camp, increasingly deprived of the funds with which to underwrite professional pursuits, it is a wonder that the serious artist has continued to survive at all in such a hostile climate.
Even the most serious artist needs a laugh. Bad baby names

The tree linked to last night was a Catalpa, or Indian Broad Bean tree. There are a couple within these regional Gardens where Boynton walks. She has often rested on the wooden bench underneath and gazed up into the magnificent exotic canopy. When Boynton’s parents moved there 20 years ago, the gardens had not yet been befriended. There was the cultivated end and the wild weedy section wooded with giants and bad play equipment and random botanic specimens. Now there’s an aesthetic consistency to the acreage, a heritage hegemony that kind of sits well I guess with the restored Victorian aura of the area. The dreaded Friends no doubt have been responsible for much that is botanically and ecologically sound, but it often seems that such friendship always brings a bit of baggage. Fences and regulations. Visions and fashions. Sometimes such a friend is merely one more imperialist wanting to pee on their lately adopted tree. Or maybe it's just when Friendship has to be so declared, Boynton is wary.