A wonderful treasure trove of old grocery items from an Estate Auction (via Speckled Paint). Like all such auctions, there is a bit of associated sadness within the accumlated heritage dispersing, but the eyes of ephemera enthusiasts glaze over at such visions as these. Boyntons's father once went to a similar auction at the site which was to become universally known as the Sullivan's general store. He brought home a trailer load of groceries - some archaic even then, packaging, and signs. Alas, at that unsophisticated age boynton was more interested in the confectionary items, like Metro Gums (the source of all humour), and Polly Waffles than the beautiful exhibits of ephemera, but somehow managed to gain possession of several packets of Dolly Dyes which happily form part of her own small packaging display.

J walk blog recently featured two signage related sites: Build your own Safety sign (in PDF) appeals to Boynton, who may one day import the results of her configuration, while these weird signs contain many gems. There are times when this sign pretty well sums up life as we know it, while this sign has a peculiar cultural resonance. Interesting to note that Noel Neill before playing Lois was an outstanding beach volleyball player even though she was less than five feet tall

The Jean-Luc Godard Drinking game (should be played with wine and ennui) (via Scrubbles)
Must try this after a stiff round of the Who's Afraid Of Virgina Woolf variation.

Before that diversionary exercise, boynton had been considering the whole blogging-writing thing (with a full set of vowels). Meredith recently linked to Jill's post which presents two different takes on the effects of blogging, while This Public Address has a great post about digital Style.

We've taken the Meredith E-challenge. (Very timely: we needed someone generating ideas!)
Ever since Easter we’ve been wondering whether every entry here deserves readership. Ever since the latest computer meltdown. We survived, however these events cause pause. Break the pattern. Perhaps the time’s arrived. Does ‘serious’ creative enterprise need space – other spaces? Even non-serious creative enterprise? Are these very non-private electrical spaces stealing time, stealing formative ideas, stealing the writerly process? We’ve been wondering whether everyone feels the same lately – the blogosphere itself seems less lively, even sleepy. Perhaps we’re merely projecting here, subjectively enduring the predictable periodic latency . Perhaps we merely need some breathing space? When these creative exercises take over the mind-set, they cause strange writerly voice changes, the voice often becomes exceptionally pretentious. Well definitely over E’d . We’d better revert dear readers. On-line chatter style resumes presently

Boynton was following an excellent link (among so many) at Eclogues to the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre and chanced upon this letter written by John Cawte Beaglehole to his mother in 1926.
I also (& return to Melbourne) tracked down [ unclear: Maie ] Ross successfully in the ghastly crockery department of a vast concern known as Myer's Emporium Limited, which covers about four blocks & is still building. The girl seemed very pleased to see me, in which you will agree she showed excellent taste,& invited me out to their joint for the evening meal & some music. They have a gramaphone with a few good records [ unclear: Melba ] etc; & a piano of the patent iron-foundry type; however I played my piece & she sang a bit & I moved off, in mortal fear of being stoushed on the head with a beer-bottle by one of the celebrated Melbourne pushers...

and later comes his excellent verdict:
Melbourne seems cleaner than Sydney; the trams are certainly more up to date; And it is a lot slower. They are having a citrous fruits week just now; so I must buy some
lemons to help on the good cause...

Further to the discussion of random and cut up writing techniques is a pictorial equivalent, (perhaps a visual psychoflubber - thanks Gianna)... Web collage - exterminate all rational thought (via J walk) which collects random web images and creates a shifting collage with the claim: This is what the Internet looks like...After 2 days of near cold turkey away from her station, or quarry ( in JR Terrier parlance) Boynton with a tad of detachment thinks that the whole blogosphere can be read as collage, flubber, bits of random text generated by links back and forth and wherever. Rather than exterminating the rational perhaps we seek to find the missing link that makes the random gatherings synthesise somehow. Three lemons.

After Boynton wrote that late last night she chanced upon this read at Whiskey River

Machine is back thanks to mr. computer restorer extraordinaire. Normal blogging shall commence shortly after the backlog of blog reading is attended to. In the eye of the computer crash storm, boynton was arrested by the sight of her calendar. It still said December 2002 with its generic calendar jack russell terrier.(Of course the two events may not have been related.) There was no calendar to take its place. She'd been holding out for the half price sales of February but had forgotton when February rolled around (unheralded by jack). Now it's almost May, maybe they're giving them away. The best calendar she had was 2001 featuring rockets for small spaces by Jimmy Descant. Boynton reads that there was no 2002, but perhpas she'll put in an order for 2004.

"My house is a dump," A local resident was telling boynton last night,"but I can eat anywhere in the world in 15 minutes" This is the dilemma of moving eastwards. Boynton can walk into the CBD in 30 mins (via the magnificent elms in the Fitzroy Gardens), walk anywhere, walk to a boathouse cafe via a farm and a waterfall and high vistas of basalt cliffs, walk to an Internet Cafe in 5, walk everywhere. "Hi boynton, welcome to another day in Paradise" said a neighbour out walking his dog as we met under a stand of River Gums that stretch along the river and back before white settlement. Boynton had been counting them back into consciousness, back from familiarity. There are six in this spot opposite the Breweries with the afternoon spell of Hops wafting across the river. Then up to the empty Oval, encircled by distant chimneys, city skyscrapers and the steeples of the convent. Earlier boynton had noticed a figure up on the boulevard above her brandishing a golf club, as if aiming at her or the River, like some Kramer character. She instinctively protected her temples from a possible eccentric assault. She later saw him engaged in a dispute with a pedestrian crossing the bridge, and noticed that the potential missile was not a golf ball afterall, but only a soft green tennis ball. She walked home via the gallery of "found furniture" of the generous op-shop, that updates its exhibits daily, (3 retro bar stools for $15 each today) and as she turned into her street overheard one of those fleeting conversations between strangers who happened to be talking dog: "She died in her sleep overnight. Broken heart", before passing 3 people shooting up behind a car metres from her doorstep.

No PC yet - so blogging where we can and not comprehensively. Just satellite dispatches from a substation that doesn't link, or even blink across the blogosphere. Blogging (the writing part) from a cyber cafe has indeed proved to be impossible. Yesterday boynton was sandwiched between hotmailers and game players - the latter yelling to each other across the consoles: @#%& Kill him...or @#%& I just got killed!...But it has more to do with the room-of-one's-own requirement boynton has (alas) for writing and even browsing. Surfing shoulder to shoulder or even with the sense of someone hovering over the shoulder is just not the same. It seems too purposeful, self-conscious, time-efficient. The sense of wandering about aimlessly with the grander plan of serendipity just can't happen.

Jack Russell Terriers (and look alikes) from the Antique Postcards of Dogs site (via Speckled Paint)
I'm fairly obsessed with Jacks altough I have never owned one. These photos are from my postcard collection. Most of the images date from the turn of the century through the 1920s.
As a look –alike this a pretty good likeness of bronte (on the right) although this is more representative of her life-philosophy. The later pages here featuring jacks and people are wonderful.
One of boynton’s sisters has dreamed of owning a jack lookalike – the wired fox terrier. She is inspired in part by Asta the famous star of the Screwball, and also because such a dog complements her Art Deco furnishings. Sadly at the moment she has to content herself with the ornamental variety. They don’t shed. (more terriers and more at Deco Dogs)

You know when you're a blogging addict when...your PC dies and the fisrt thing you think of is Where can I blog?....Boynton's other back-up - blogging over at Nora's is also an impossibilty as in a wave of regional harware failuire, Nora's notbook also clunked away to a horrible death overnight apparently. So here she is sitting in a Vietnamese Internet cafe, with a Vietnamese techno soundtrack playing and special short-cut characters built into the keyboard (just accidentally discovered) and kids playing strange games next to boynton on a drizzly Sunday afternoon. Boynton's trusted PC doctor listened to the symptoms over the phone and said it sounds as if we're up for a new hard drive. That was an hour ago. So blogging and blog-reading will be fairly thin for the next few days. ( If nothing appears to change then it will have got to the stage where boynton is really far gone and is paying $5 an hour for this strange public experience) My name is Boynton and I'm a blogaholic