After hearing the war reported like sports commentary between gardenias and kittens on the radio, Boynton retreated to an empty large park in an unfashionable suburb, where the unfashionable pines are getting removed by the reconstructed creek, and the vistas are getting landscaped – and on opposing open hills these are quite beautiful. Bare. And barely anyone there. It was partly nostalgia for the kind of remnant bush and exotic dotted ex-orchard country of her outer-suburban childhood, with the strong, wet smell of pine needles, and the brick villas always on the fringes of the frame. Nostalgia because neither landmarks nor family are to be found out there anymore, sentimental because yesterday boynton saw a low cream brick fence of the fifties and lamented a lost world. Once that was all brave-new-sputnik science labs at school, and airy cheery retirement villages housing scary presbyterians. And well funded institutions. From the general existential bleakness carried in the car, it was the sight of the first nondescript copse underneath the transmission lines that revived boynton’s spirit, just as Douglas and Bronte went mad on the scent of rabbits and foxes and the pissed history of stir crazy suburban hounds. Douglas’ lack of working faculties was disturbing to boynton, as he bounded ahead, deaf, driven round blind corners, her anxious calling the only sound in the vast acreage. On one of the man- made bridges over the man-made lake boynton ran into a fellow dog-owning loony who launched into a strange monologue about her Rottie and her Labrador, chastising me for showing fear at the sight of the former dog’s form, when it was actually her Labrador that was manic, and muttering something about ‘poor dog, baring his weapons of useless mass destruction’ – the way the war talk infiltrates everyday conversation. And how old is your dog? Almost 14. He’s a picture of health, she declares before disappearing. He isn’t, he’s a picture of overfed boof head, with declining faculties temporarily revived by the joy of suburban sanctuary. Almost vicariously, the hint, the memory of the wild.

Whoops. World Poetry Day is almost over. (via Plep) Boynton composed a few (randomly generated) couplets of Leevi Lehto's google poems and cobbled them together.

World Poetry Day closes
World Poetry Day & Dialogue
missed you One day you will

every day, but we're - Southern
take the whole long day? Return

book of poetry complete with heard
of Poetry and Music Pay credit card

by famous poets. if i were a duck
the rest of the world fades. Thick

cloaked in fog The world seems empty
on the face of the world. - by Dotty

21st at the invitation - Literature
March 21 at 7:30, Globe Bookstore

War. The world stands on the brink
by Dr. Ibrahim Elbadawi, World Bank

flourishing, this day could provide
Yahoo. March - Mystical World Wide

Vagrant over desert sands, Brooding
other stores recommend: The Breaking

farther worlds pretend you don't tear
Although this is a familiar

closes at midnight on - On the day
recommend: The Breaking of the Day

of The Read In!, the oldest students
and all the world held its

Yesterday boynton sought out some sources for bad metaphors, then pulled them anyway.
The wind, the dust, the war, the moment.
To search for diversionary links on pop culture (via scrubbles) or canines (via anil dash) seemed like unreconstructed scarlett (and yet, she did find a mini rhett mildly amusing)
Guess there are times when even to admit feeling slightly unhinged (via b3ta) can seem self-indulgent.

BBC updates on the war(via Incoming Signals 20/3)
Some general war links at traveller's diagram
A table made from a bomb. (via J walk)

Actor William McInnes writes about the his dog in The Age "Dogs teach a lot about loyalty and love and loss. They teach a lot about life" (Like boynton he shows exceptional taste in canine nomenclature)

Picturing Chicago (via Plep) "This month, signs–specifically those painted on buildings–are the featured content category" (Boynton would not be able to pass one of these places without stopping by)

Yesterday, the red topsoil blew in from Mildura blanketing Melbourne. Fear in a handful of dust?

Darkness at Noon - a dust-storm of 1944-45

Boynton was talking ephemera recently with a fellow enthusiast (in his case – a serious collector/ex dealer). At a certain point, this may be a dialect? Years ago she was talking to another man who just couldn’t get the whole concept. After boynton vainly tried to explain her enthusiasm for a Peter’s Ice Cream cone, he shook his head and said: “this conversation has taken a surreal turn”...Guess if your heart just doesn’t leap at the thought of a golden sheep, no amount of talking's going to swing it. For the Golden Fleece symbol was one of those ephemeral icons we were recently discussing over a beer post trivia. Boynton went searching for the previous examples and also found this What a thing of beauty. Almost the same rush viewing things virtually as walking in the door of a treasure-laden second hand store, or better still perhaps seeing the rare remnant creatures in situ somewhere. (The secret local location of one of these was whispered to boynton by said expert). He also spoke of a house in the middle suburbs which featured the illuminated rams in a themed garden. (Even if that's apocryphal, that myth maketh miss b misty eyed.) Another subsequent web find was an auction detailing the marvellous collection of petrol-station/shell memorabilia by the vendor Fred Wells. Fellow nostalgia tragics can view it and weep

Having once established that her neighbour is in fact a dentist, maybe the next question boynton should pose is: Are you a dentist who likes scuba diving? It is good to see that it's not an exclusive organisation, and that 'Quite often, our members bring non-dental friends on our trips.'
Wonder what the exact link there is? Boynton was happy enough with this explanation: With mouths that are constantly open it is easy to see why so many dentists are attracted to the sport of Scuba diving? All right, that was a bad joke, but it is hard to miss the thin teeth of Morays that curve back into their mouths(source)
But after viewing some vintage scuba gear there seems to be some deeper connection given the type of equipment employed in both activities?
(The wonderful Vintage scuba pages were featured recently at Quiddity)

Boynton now has to summon the courage to go and ask her neighbour: Are you a dentist? (She's heard it said) She needs a dentist apparently to witness her signature on a stat. dec. to order a new council wheelie bin. Her last one got pinched by some unauthorised persons.

A friend just sent me a link (via here) to a concept design for a new set of “wearable devices” from Motorola. “Offspring” – is an entire family of modular devices, that include the Wristable (or is that i-wris-istable or more likely e-wris-istable) the WDA (Wearable Digital Assistant) (and here was boynton only just getting her head around the technology of the humble thimble) – and boynton’s favourite family member – the goggles. You can view 800 X 600 displays while simultaneously staying in touch with the world around you. Can you? Guess it’s only time before googling in goggles becomes de riguer.
This new book Google hacks (found via a comment by Marcus on Invisible shoebox ) trots out the wealth-at-fingertips promise “You’re always looking for better ways to search”… In another link sent by my friend on mobile phones and SMS in Japan is the pull quote:
To not have a keitai is to be walking blind, disconnected from just-in-time information on where and when you are in the social networks of time and place.
A glimpse of the future? Always-on, googling in goggles, following the wired siren call of just-in-time information, but walking blind in the world around us, just out of reach of our digitally-assisted fingertips.

Sometimes this seems a perfectly rational response to the day (via Lindsay Marshall - who recommends Nola)

F*** ... In a twist of fate that boynton will no doubt come to appreciate in time, she learned today of the cause of sudden computer hardware problem that has until now disabled blogging and blog-reading...FONTS...Seems they just took off. Went AWOL. Mysteriously, out the window, as it were. My computer doctor/trauma counsellor has called them back, hauled them in from their holiday, so we've now resumed a working level of surface normality which is possibly all one can ever hope for. Boynton is now left wondering whether she jinxed it herself with this random invocation, or willed it somehow with yesterday's alphabetical ramblings.

Boynton has had a bad 24 hours. Yestserday when walkin’ the dogs back from park along a back lane Boynton noticed a rogue letter “G” in the fence-line. What did it mean? A sign? Possibly nothin’. No parkin'. How was she to know that fate would suddenly turn grizzly, grouchy. Grim times ahead. Much gnashing of teeth.And guzzling of G&T’s. Because today things got worse: sudden hard drive failure. Boynton’s gone into safe-mode, and this afternoon could do nothing more than get stuck into some overdue gardening and some premature grieving. Bloggin' may be thin until normal mode is restored. (The G has been added to the collection of found letters. B was so much more benign and benevolent)