boynton's been having just your average psycho arvo with the old cryptic coding mysteries. The oblique will be straightened out anon. The pieces put together
(Hitchcock mosaics via the amazing Fiendish is the word)

It was probably only ever me who considered Richmond Hill Cellars the key to Richmond's soul. Interesting angle on inner-city gentrification in today's Age.
(Although a long term resident of nearly Richmond, boynton wouldn't know which class of regular she falls into here: We stocked cheap sherry for the daytime lushes and diabetic beer for the sick. Bargain wine drew local intellectuals, failed novelists, alcoholics, students, people tottering home from a long afternoon at the TAB, workers off to cook dinner. )
While one can possibly audit the soul of a suburb by the drunks and tipplers, these relics and regulars, it is sobering to note "we would regularly lose folk to cirrhosis" Boynton remembers reading Janet McCalman's Struggletown - an oral history of a working class Melbourne suburb. The effect of alcohol was looked at historically, first hand, without sentiment, and the dreaded temperance movement was seen as progressive for some in breaking the poverty cycle and vastly improving the quality of life for born and bred old time Richmond residents. But boynton generally concurs with the observations of the suburb's transformation. In her own street, which borders struggletown, only one or two old timers are left now. (Maybe boynton herself is regarded as an old timer by proxy) Most have either died or moved out to the suburbs, but like the residents of this house in Sydney, they often used to stand in their front gardens, watching the street, ready to engage in passing conversation. This is one of the cultural differences boynton has noted in the temporary move up the road to fenced, quiet detached houses.( And to confess, boynton is still enjoying the novel sense of privacy and anonymity to be had behind a big wooden fence)

boynton was feeling unusually lighthearted today as she stepped out with her pack, who chorus their crazy excitement half way down the echo chamber of this sedate street. In the close ethological observation of domestic dog school, boynton endorses the theory of emotion travelling down the leash. The leash is the link between you and your dog. Dogs can feel the vibrations you send through the leash. They did seem to pick up on the joy of boynton, adding an extra gleam in their running eye, an extra lilt in their team-building song. Good Vibrations.

boynton loves this description of a themed treasure hunt, both for the content and the form - hypertext complements the spatial event. When she first started playing pub trivia, she suspected there could some theatrical hybrid of the genre waiting in the wings. Perhaps this sort of promenade puzzling is a clue to other forms. Both for travellin' trivia and narrative/themed hyperdrama?

somewhere deep within boroondara last night boynton ran into an old theatre friend. She asked after boynton's writing, but alas. Boynton could not take herself seriously in this regard as she was still wearing her parka. Even though she was trying to recover this inner state, she was really only projecting this.And instead of wearing these sort of shoes, she was caught wearing these. Somewhere along the line, dog walking style seems to have merged with house style. So she launched into a strange monologue about boroondara and blogging. As you do in a parka.

Poetry and the Politics of Self-Expression (via The Writing Life)
With the advent of the Internet and inexpensive publishing programs, writing poetry has been thoroughly democratized…In short, anyone who wants to be published can. Still, many fail to muster the minimal effort this requires. One should, I suppose, never underestimate the power of indolence.

"Can literature change the world? Or should it be above the concerns of society? Philip Pullman argues that while writers have wider duties, they must be faithful servants of their stories" (via Interconnected)
How to Become A Writer (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

A gallery of parkas

If this sink the bachelor game seems too bittery twistery, you can always play this old game. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

Because this word game is very close to this game, boynton wonders if this what the blogosphere looks like?

From an amazing collection of word game images via Incoming Signals.

As an update to the last- that is impossible to post within... All this talk of ponds may have cursed us, or lent a tragic-comedic twist to things. Boynton is stationed away from her domestic keyboard and is captive to the Big Pond word limit restrictions. All these glaring errors and minor improvements to be dealt with last night, but there they were floating unhappily on the network problems pool, out of reach. Given the predictable crimes and misdemeanours of the usual suspects, this almost tipped boynton over the edge.

don't what the edge is of course. Or where it be.

Ambling around Wood's lot, Boynton notes that it is indeed the birthday of Thomas Hardy. Less than 3 hours left. Can boynton assemble something suitable in the time? All things being equal, timing inevitably comes into play. But now this is compounded by the intervention of our old friend with the oddly divine sounding name, Mr HaloScan, who has again acted capriciously and cruelly taken us out, rendered us mute. Ironically (or not) it is the very day when Mr H announces he is once again taking new orders. A fatalist by nature and circumstance, boynton has almost capitulated in grave sorrow and given up the blog. But something more closely wessex in her ancestry, rises to the somerset here and prevails for the time being. Time to contemplate the wideneing social divide between the blogspotter-furze cutters and the MT hegemony.

A broken appointment
The Dorset Ooser The grotesque horned mask of a folklore figure known as the "Ooser" or "Oozer" Thanks to Thomas Hardy, the word ‘ooser’ has had a huge audience over the past century. The number of homes that contain a book that contains that word is incalculable. And very few readers know what it means
Thomas hardy - a photographic tour
A map of the story of Return of The Native Wessex maps
Follow the green path along the edge of the woodland and through some overgrown rhododendrons to meet a minor road. This leads to Puddletown and is called Rhododendron Drive...With instructions like these, boynton wishes she could take the Return of the NativeWalk
Turn right along the green path opposite bearing a little right (public right of way). Where five tracks meet, take second left.
In fact the instructions were so full of such green hedge stile that boynton ran the page through the old supernatural poem generator:

Egdon Heath, a thread of
wild heaths in these sounds
Follow path
until the heath became symbolic
of silver and
deep wide hollow to descend
into a road are intended
to practise
taking her As chance might rule; or engaged
themselves in
noisy flirtations under the great
deal of the Puddle

Follow this pond on
your feet

Profile of Ronald So protective is McDonald's of the character's mystique that men who play Ronald are never to admit that they do. Ronalds in costume aren't to say who they are in civilian life... (via Arts and Letters Daily)
To preserve the illusion that there is only one Ronald, the chain forbids two Ronalds from ever appearing together except at a secret biennial convention McDonald's holds -- but won't talk about -- in which Ronalds brush up on their skills....
In the beginning, Ronald was so tightly controlled that McDonald's wouldn't even let him take the costume home with him. He had to change clothes at an advertising agency...
boynton wonders what Maccas would think if they 'd seen what she saw one day last year driving round the Boulevard in Kew. Suddenly around a corner she caught a glimpse of one substandard ronald loafing on top of a car roof. "There's Ronald!" she announced, so they hung a u-ey for the benefit of her four-year-old nephew, who was rather unimpressed. He certainly looked rather ordinary. Probably tired and emotional after a booroondara birthday bash.

One man's "convoluted trek from Burger Guru to aspiring bhakti yogi"
Ronald McDonald as asource of childhood trauma