bluejoh has placed a treasure trove of links within a Ray Bradbury poem. Night Call, Collect.
It seems wrong to unthread such a dazzling post, but just one great site cited is this international tonguetwister collection. Here’s a French example:
Ta Kathy t'a quitté (bis)/ T'es cocu qu'attends-tu?/ T'as plus qu'à te cuiter,/ Et quitter ton quartier.
(Your Cathy has left you. You have been deceived, what are you waiting for? You have but to get drunk. and leave your appartment.)
And the German: Was blickst Du so stier Bube,/ warst Du in der Bierstube?
(Why are you looking so stubborn boy, were you in the beer bar?) -
or perhaps: Unter einer Fichtenwurzel hörte ich einen Wichtel furzen - ( Under a spruce root I heard a gnome farting)
From Sweden: Sju sjuka sjuksköterskor tvättade sina skitiga stjärtar i rosa champagne.
(Seven sick nurses washed their dirty behinds in pink champagne.)
And from Calabria: Avera ma vaju ma viu s'avera ma vaju ma jocu u pallone.
(I should go to see if I have to go to play soccer.)

May as well make it four consecutive posts about dogs. Blog LCD apparently. This one’s about Abby. Boynton was having her nightly bout of gloom in despair room, when she was sought out by this geriatric lab, who can barely walk 10 feet without falling, whose old hind legs give way as she sways and twitches, and pants breathlessly around, half blind, doing her ward round in the dark, like some neverland nanna. The original Pets as Therapy dog, all she has ever wanted is to place her head in a human hand, and be there. A presence. Now between lapses of senility and fragility, she’s working off the memory, of routine and learned domestic geography. All paths lead back to the mark of the pack, her kind, a hand in the dark. As I pat her hard white head I shake mine and say: fifteen Abby, you’re almost fifteen.

Of course, as boynton's mother has always said: there is never just one mouse ...
So Bronte has her hunting mind fully occupied. On the matter of humane extermination, see the electronic repeller (... which to boynton, resembles a vintage radio of the type that she is always hunting down in vain)
It delivers a tremendous blast of ultrasound -- inaudible to you and your pets -- that disrupts the nervous systems of those pests. They will in most cases leave your home within a few weeks.
While the RatZapper clearly worked for this woman, who closes her rapturous testimony with the appeal: Let me know if you are interested, and what we could do together...Boynton will stick with the old crazy canine snapper.

Trust your terrier... After 48 hours of "engaging her quarry", Bronte finally "bolted her quarry" and dispatched the mouse. It was quick and clean - so we suspect it's reasonably humane. Now Boynton just has to dispose of the body and re set the sculpture that rests in the fireplace. Five bowling pins and a bowling ball that the terrier toppled one by one the other night, with that sweet nostalgic bowling sound byte. It was the spare before the strike.

Dog Boy has "a tiny black Labrador heart pumping blood through his veins" (via gmtplus9)...boynton's always had a bit of a weak heart

No comment

retro redux. Don't go past the e-cards on the 50's TV Guides link. Boynton just spent a happy hour among old friends... Long lost loves of her sisters like Dr Kildare and the boys from "Here Come The Brides"... (the three older sisters each staked out their own J brother) ... Sebastion Cabot (who was somehow scary to young boynton) and kindly Brian Keith. She thought her life would resemble "Please Don't eat the Daisies" - but so far she's only scored the canine whirlwind. She's tempted to link to Get Smart, and though she's been accused of writing a la Waltons, she'll finish with her all time favourite show, featuring one of the matching bookends.

Plath in Portuguese (via Enigmatic Mermaid )

Retro delight: US TV guides from 50’s...(via Quiddity)
and Taschen’s All-American Ads of the 60s... (via Boing Boing)... (Boynton was going to buy this book for boynton for Christmas. Maybe she’ll buy it for February.)

And fff-inally – Boynton has a friend (or two) for whom this guide to “cuss control” could come in handy. (via memepool)

Freida Hughes has written a poem attacking a BBC-backed film of her mother's life and death. (via Moby Lives)
Critical of both the producers and “their monster/ "Their Sylvia Suicide Doll” and the consumers: “the "peanut eaters, entertained at my mother's death" - one defence offered is that 'Sylvia Plath invaded her own privacy first…' In the BBC link, there is a kind of found poem in the photo of Ted Hughes with the words:
Ted Hughes: Did not want his life
to be dramatised
But of course, it is, currently in production. In his essay The Case against Biography Michael Holyroyd quotes Oscar Wilde 'Every man has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.” And in regard to the literary/artistic genre he notes the criticism that biographers “are continually trying to explain how the rabbit got into the hat before the novelist or poet produces her magic”
On a slight tangent, this is an interesting conversation with A.S.Byatt, re her book A Biographers’ Tale.
Boynton took heart from this observation: “a writer has a right to learn from what they intensely enjoy as well as what makes them think and understand” This morning Boynton had spent some enjoyable lowbrow downtime listening to an old tape she had once compiled of some corny uncool favourites from a decade ago. Unhip (quite a few feature on the pub Karaoke playlist) but they harbour all that standard nostalgic power that gets the mind (and heart) ticking over.

It’s beginning to slip from the headlines here, but earlier Boynton heard the inevitable call for perspective on the Columbia disaster with Jon Faine questioning the nine page local tabloid splash in the “mediafrenzy”...
See LivingRoom for more ( via bene diction)
These debates seem to ignore the global and symbolic meaning, the way the death of astronauts (like princesses) can hit a symbolic nerve that transcends (that given) our base equality. And for Boynton too it was some sort of universal connection to the bright moving star orbiting over the back yard. This is (apparently) an email from Laurel Clark on Friday:
This was definitely one to beat all. I hope you could feel the positive energy that beamed to the whole planet as we glided over our shared planet...

For the past five hours Bronte has been totally transfixed eyeballing a mouse. Likewise Boynton - monitor and mouse - when she should have been cleaning the house, defrosting the fridge, matching up socks.(via b3ta)

Last week in the stifling heat, we watched it slowly cross the southern sky. At first we thought it was a shooting star, and made a wish. Next morning I heard an astronomer explain that the light slowly crossing from east to west was the space shuttle. Today we wake up to the news: Columbia disappeared from radar screens at 9am (0100 AEDT Sunday), 16 minutes from landing, " After a brief crackling noise, contact was lost". A witness in Palestine Texas, sees...trails of smoke zig-zagging, going across the sky... And NASA spokeswoman Catherine Watson told NPR: "All of the flight controllers are just looking at all the data trying to figure out what happened." Watson broke down in tears when asked whether it was possible that the crew had survived.

(And see Quiddity for the poem High Flight)

Boynton awoke to no power today. She had forgotton to pay attention to the third citypower pamphlet that advised her of the pending interruption. So she quickly trekked the 4k over to Nora’s for toast and coffee and surfin.
The above image is from a fabulous exhibition called What was Home Economics (via Plep) a history of the school at Cornell.
What was school Home economics for Boynton? Fighting for flour rations to produce only adequate scones and blanc-mange in bad aprons handed down in turn by four older sisters. The menus like the aprons and caps never changed. Only the badly sewn initials on the pocket changed. Except Boynton actually never sewed her own initials in but quietly wore the two red letters of her outgoing sister. No one noticed.
Perhaps if it had been called Human Ecology she may have learned to balance the budget. Or to think outside the square (meals) of chow mein and stewed apples . Actually dandelions may have been a good nutritional supplement for Wallis Simpson, who reportedly 'served nouvelle cuisine before the term was invented. But she ate little of it herself, and in her later years consumed little apart from vodka and lettuce'

Boynton was too late at the op-shop today, for the curved 50's retro chic couch had already been baggsed. Hold said the sticker. Not a directive. More a metaphor. And anyway lack of space et al means Boynton would have only thought about it for five before moving onto the dollar rack and the bulky space killers. (Enid Blyton's Dog Stories (the yellow edition) for $2 today). On the vintage note, this example from the ugly bridesmaid dress collection, sounds a warning that not all retro is neccesarily fetching. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

As January draws to its sober conclusion, Boynton can now countenance the practice of intemperance again. She may break out and have a glass of fizz tonight, or she may get her card restamped.

EYD - Part Three – CMCTMHS – creative memories are close to my heart, sister.
If Boynton came across a tad too cynical, she’d like to endorse the various memory-crafts showcased recently. Although she practiced an early childhood form of scrapbooking (pasting) she has a deeply–rooted fear of handicraft, but admires those who can. Alas, she is simply NNE - not neat enough. And NHB - never has been.
The wider therapeutic and creative effects of memory projects journaling and story-telling are well known , and the new order of Creative Memory Consultants often work with issues of memory loss and Retrieval. I was here.
If the internet is actually some dynamic universal memory machine, it's appropriate to see some of the global nodes literally recording the local. This is an example of one of the many community projects, and this is a kind of hybrid home page/cultural history.
Still, sometimes it’s the old technology of words that can out capture, as seen in this extract from a suburban memoir(via the digital) and this paper on the phenomenology of memory... Thus endeth the scrapping.

EYD Part two. TSC – The scrappers connection.
Nora was telling Boynton of some friends who are heavily into scrapping – a craft craze that Boynton had never heard of. After extensive research she concluded “It’s just decorating your photo album isn’t it?”
Why should you scrapbook?
Life is a series of moments and stories, which can be captured in a scrapbook that can be handed down through generations. Let us spare our children the yellow faded colour photos of their childhood that many of us own now
As a craft cult scrapping can become all consuming, and has all the usual trappings: superstores, style-gurus, conventions, community where people chat with customised acronyms : CIS – Crop in style and SSS Secret Sister swap but converse mainly about vellum and glue and AF (acid free) stuff.
Of course it has its antecedents – Victorian ladies used to spend their leisure compiling scraps into beautifully embossed albums. But then Boynton always thought that inclination was part of the peculiar mortality mindset of middle class Victorians.
To catch life when you still could. Is this new incarnation also a sign of sublimated nihilism? The desire to preserve the transient? To create a parallel universe of memory, where reality is either miniaturised or replicated? Memories are literally created, cropped and embellished. This is an interesting variation of the commissioned portrait. For the age of the universal private (folk) museum.

EYD – express your dreams. Part one. NSBR – not scrapbook related
TMWIAFC - The mini world is a foreign country
Since discovering that 50’s moderne mini house, Boynton has been roving round the curious world of miniature enthusiasts. It began with a gallery of projects. There are many more like this where builders document their construction, and mini empires. Some enthusiasts start small and end up planning a town.
According to another, this may be why the scale keeps falling:
Many miniaturists are drawn to the challenge of smaller and smaller scales as their homes fill up with larger dollhouses
Our goal (except for the fantasy contingent) is to represent reality in miniature… claims one member... I am not limited to what others have discovered, downsized, and deemed worthy of drafting. The world is much larger than that.
But the world is also much much smaller : a barbecue... a kennel... a fish tank... a ping-pong table.
And the world is complex - a pet bowl stand with food
“I had never made a driving school before.” Says Yuki Yoneda
This electrified mini box depicts a gentleman’s corner. You can almost smell the missing specimen.
A variation is the reconstruction of a childhood home as seen in Hilde Lippet’s beautiful Eichwalde house. The past in 3D. This opens up a fascinating area of ways of memorialising/containing/compressing the past - in analog form - from shadow boxes, urns, to the craze of scrapbooking, and the digital comparisons... Stand by

If Boynton was dismayed at reading her Sunday stars: 'No sensible astrologer would tell you that your life is a pyjama party right now ' at least there was a sensible solution offered to the extreme planetary lows... 'Cocoa, breathing exercises or Harry Potter will work'. Boynton can be seen here trying out each remedy... ah well, c'est la PJ vie

bought by drought ... So after the furnace of Saturday's 44 degrees, it took a while to accept yesterday's cool change - that it was safe to step outside again. As Boynton walked her two stir-crazy canines up to the golf course, there was a beautiful soft light. Classic evening pastoral after the full assault of summer. No one about, birds reassembling on the bare oval, the soft greens of gums with pale pink trunks - the dry yellow ground. The height of drought. Interesting to read that the golden summers of the Heildelberg painters were drought landscapes.

'The brightest gem in Albion's crown
While the prolific bosom pours Earth's richest gifts in lavish showers' Charles Tompson

Boynton awoke to the birdsong of radio sports jocks saying Happy Birthday Australia

"This is the joy-inspiring day
That gave these blessings to our lot
Then let us share the social rites
Join hands, all malice be forgot!
This little star, once marked by none
Now shines a bright - a BLAZING SUN! " ... (C.T. 1824)

Because this is what the weather is like in Victoria today, we wait in the heat.
"We're looking down the barrel of another horror weekend with extreme weather conditions applying the blowtorch to bush that's dangerously dry…”
In the city anyway.To be hot in the city is a luxury, as the bush burns, or waits
Boynton is holed up in her Victorian cottage which is dark and cool for the time being. Best place to be - outside of a cinema maybe. Although she suspects any air conditioned diversion or suspension of disbelief would have its limits when there's a state of emergency unfolding around us.

She'll just have to be like a Victorian Lady and sit about planning a pink tea.

Boynton just found her dream house. Unfortunately it's only 1/4 " scale (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)
The original mini house can be seen here and one miniaturist explains the attraction. Perhaps though this is one way - the only way? - of realizing the home-ownership dream...Suddenly there seemed some logic to the plastic mini Scottie Boynton had somehow bought and kept for years only to have it chewed by small dog the other night...of course in her new mini moderne house, Boynton will substitute a more chic terrier for the unhip JRT. Not to mention the man about the mini house. Boynton browsed the catalogues (see Heidi Ott/Adult mini dolls)...and thought Basil man servant or Andrew man in white jacket sounded promising. After further investigation, she remains not entirley convinced of the exact gender however. Marco looks ok but after a while the unicycle in a small room would surely drive you crazy . Guess it'll just have to be James.

Update . These are some mini things Boynton really does covet. And Nora - isn't that your ideal man in the ski jumper?!

off screen. Douglas had a bad couple of days. Boynton last paid homage to her dog 16/12 , and while she has his tacit P to P on all aspects of his life, she doesn’t think she’ll go there, when that happens. No blogs, no poetry. She won’t be quite like Enid Blyton, whom she vaguely recalls (ie can’t find a link to back up theory) kept writing a public journal featuring her dog long after he died. Doug is recovering from what was probably a minor ailment, an OD of what they call an unpalatable behavioural problem. But because he is getting on somewhat – (this is what he looks like) – his bad guts hits him very bad. Boynton has to keep resisting the urge to web diagnose –what a can of worms that is for the potential munchausen-by-proxy pet custodian

The bush fires are still breathing down on Canberra ... and indeed Victoria, as the weekend extreme-fire danger forecast looms.
In just a few hours, a third of Australia's world-class astronomy programme was wiped out as Mt Stromlo Observatory went up in flames

Last night travelling home Boynton saw two men leap from a tram, each wearing shorts and sandals. The first bloke was early 90’s homeboy and strode off as purposefully as he could in his vintage attire. The second man was central casting school principal in the costume of shorts, walking socks and sandals, with – it was observed – a pronounced limp. Just a casual moment of kerbside costume ballet.

"Somewhere in general" The country move has always been a bit of a contingency plan for Boynton. If all else fails. Is it time for contingencies? Has the Fall from a Different Level actually happened? Some days she can see herself living like this –( or should that be with this k9 Mr Right even if he is a Weimeraner) – the idyllic painterly lifestyle in the country. It’s not about downshifting for Boynton – alas that would imply a former material status to downsize. But perhaps it is about the dreaded escapist, sea-change thing that is converting hardware shops into cafes all along the coastlines of Victoria. However, reading so called geoblogs with the visible connection to place refuels the dream. Is it the old longing for an island somewhere? Is this crunch time? ...Maybe Plan C is to find the same connection in the urban bush , the suburban tracks, the places uncelebrated by TV. (Actually plan D - she really just needs a bit of space to pitch an easel).

This would have been a good godot link... (via Lindsay Marshall)

But can my dog still go to the bathroom in his lycra body suit?...(via anil's links)

The smoke woke Boynton this morning. She had to close windows and doors, and heard that the thick blanket enveloping Melbourne was only related smoke. From the bushfires in the north-east. Last night she viewed the harrowing stories of the Canberra firestorm, and then watched Waiting for Godot.
Was I sleeping while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now?
Related smoke is one of those “handful of dust” things. A proxy or a portent. Notes from a burnt butterfly.
Will the tennis ( tennis of all sorts) be affected?

Late last night when Boynton got home she noticed a Ferris Wheel at the end of her street. Oh yes. It was the eve of the Vietnamese Lunar festival. Another perfect summer's day, she strolled down the road alone. Clusters of balloons soared away skywards. By daylight the Giant wheel spun too quickly – the big slide too big (but then all sideshows seem too extreme for Boynton – mini golf was the only temptation today – but a lone adult walking those fake greens would have seemed too eccentric even for a certifiable specimen) All the kids jumped in joyously. There was a great festival spirit about, as we followed the idle tram tracks past spring rolls, bubble tea, and endless tents of soft toys. Each tent tempted punters with a slightly different hand-eye skill; shooting, fishing for mackerel, throwing -in tub, in clown's mouths, at target, and fishing at pods of mini-winnies slowly floating round. Big soft tigers hung by their tails , while further up the street a real headless pig rotated away in the sun. When she reached Church street a singer and synthesiser performed a wonderful Quando Quando Quando, as a stand of firecrackers was ominously prepared within a witches-hat safety zone. She beat a retreat. The man on the ghost stall looked less animate than his brethren. Prominent councillors took photos of their tent, a child barked as he spun round on a helicopter, and Boynton refused a man handing out a smiley sticker. Back inside she can hear the karaoke and crackers, as another green balloon heads off into the blue. She may venture out again to catch a glimpse of the twilight Vietnamese opera. Or she might just open the window.

Charlotte Salomon... Life? or Theatre?. "...During World War II, while living in exile in France, the young German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) created Life? or Theatre?: A Play With Music, comprising almost eight hundred small gouache (opaque watercolor) paintings... Although the artist died in Auschwitz ... Life? or Theatre? survived and stands as a testament to Salomon's life and singular artistic vision." (via gmtPlus9)... A friend of Boynton's once wrote a play based on her remarkable life/work.

Theatre or Trivia?...This remarkable portal of theatrical props is also a wonderful resource for cultural history...(and trivia fiends)...(via incoming signals)

somehow I would like these images- to be emblematic for the year says Paul Ford.
We're already seventeen days into 03, and climatically antipodean, but they resonate - and not only because the be-hatted groundhog resembles a photo of Douglas in Boynton's tam-o-shanter...Seeking St Francis, she found this site...

They are rather grave , but these drawings of (fatal) workplace accidents are of the exact genre that Boynton and Nora used to exchange during Maths classes. (Drawing over-turned tractors and birko cord mishaps was naturally a way of confronting schoolgirl fears) (via Pop Culture Junk Mail - who alerts us to the Pythonesque # 65)

If as this legend goes, the Christmas tree tradition is all down to a vision of Martin Luther's:
Walking toward his home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles.
Boynton wonders what he'd make of the urban postscript? (via Boing Boing)
Because the Tannenbaum imperative is enshrined in both tradition:
In many parts of Australia a common tradition still is for people to go into local pine plantations and remove there own Christmas tree ... and the idea of tradition... Few native trees have the natural shape and density of foliage that is expected of a Christmas tree... it would seem that the seasonal lament of discarded pinus radiatia will endure.

Boynton found this post on quoits last night. (not kwait but koit but don’t quote her on this) Another surge of nostalgia. Visits to her grandfather in the country where along with cribbage these were the chief domestic recreational pastimes. Now consigned to the sort of “Bingo, Cards, Rummy,Jig Saw Puzzles; Discussion Group Callisthenics.; Radio clubs” class, Boynton was not surprised to learn something of its former stature, particularly among mining communities, or those with Welsh roots, or that in the
La Trobe Valley
quoits were the rage, and there were very strong quoit competitions running here in the town as well as with neighbouring places like Moe. When it started in 1914, the Great War caused the quoits to fold up too, and when the war was over, the competitions were not revived.
More local still- some early developments in Fern Tree Gully
Due to the evident support accorded to this event, Mr. T.S. Grimwood decided to form a quoit club within the local district. Interested local gentlemen held a meeting in March 1886 and the club was established...(The Ladies were in training for the Hopping Race) ...On the 19th June 1886, the Ferntree Gully Quoit Club felt confident enough to travel with their quoits and paid Collingwood a visit.

And then Boytnon found this on a Found site.

Bulky space killers A friend was prompted by Boynton’s book-triffid post to pass on an article that appeared in The Sunday Age 12/1/03 (no link) on bibliophile John Baxter by Michelle Griffin. His despair “of writers’ cavalier attitude to their books” would seem more to do with the “relative values” of book as text v book as objet (d’art, d’amour, d’collectormania) , 'the collectors in his book come across as the kind of people more likely to scrutinise the dust jacket and the imprint number on a book than to read it cover to cover' Alas, there are very few collectibles amongst Boynton’s eclectic bricks. Perhaps it’s the collector gene that prompts her to hoard.
Professional de-clutterer Christy Best would surely chide her.
People (myself included) love to save books even after they’ve read them. After spending time with a book, you become emotionally attached to it. Besides, they look pretty sitting on our bookshelves. But they’re bulky space killers.
On this site, a true believer weighs in with tales of hoarding in-laws. They have a "junk" shop in which they sell stuff, but they get little business--I feel it's just a front for their hoarding habit., and confesses feeling 'sick to my stomach... like I'm hyperventilating every time I drive up their lane'.
So after all this Tyranny of the tidy, it was good to read an article in praise of clutter. (via aldaily)
Finally, if writers display a cavalier attitude to books, actors take the cake. Boynton has seen some truly gut-wrenching aerial book-as-prop displays in workshops past. She quickly learnt to substitute the second-strand rehearsal copy.

Bronte - the Jack Russell - added a new twist to the last post...'she's out for the evening, better destroy a small plastic figurine of a Scottish terrier that Boynton had forgotton she had ever acquired'...It used to look like this. Now it's legless.

Boynton is currently suffering iron defficiency. She blames Douglas. He always gets so nervous when she takes out the ironing board - (as a puppy he learnt the sign: 'she's out for the evening, better destroy some furniture'), that she in turn learnt to avoid it.

There is a Woman in the Moon but many people have never seen her...(via Plep)
All very lunar Rorschach methinks, but delivers the classic line: In 1969, Apollo 11 landed just in front of the lady's ear....Was it something inherently mysterious in the theme that sent Boynton on a mothergoogle chase?...In any case she likes this take, even if the german expressionist rocket ship looks pretty much like a small household electrical appliance.

Still around 30, fires burning in the state, a smell of smoke in the suburbs, to the north a rose sky. 3 panting dogs circle restlessly round the dry garden, ants storm one of many half chewed apples, Boynton wilts.

Just when Boynton was on the brink of mastering the principles in making "a useful Afternoon Tea Wagon"... (or autotray as we Victorians prefer to say)...to go with being "on the wagon"...or should that be "on the water cart"...she reads that just thinking about it might make the simple tea wagon legless. (via nonharmful).
Must weigh up the placebos and the nocebos over next cuppa.

Boynton could have bought up big at the op-shop today, with a whole shelf full of theatre titles. But as books close in on her, literally, collecting in corners, sprouting in dim corners of the carpet, suspended in poses of extreme-stacking, almost eaves-dropping ...she exercised restraint and was content to shelf-shop...(She lies. She bought the weighty tome The English Dog at Home)...This theatrical take must have been big last year, since it won a b3ta award, but it's new to Boynton

she passes through thousand insidie, but all she ends well. Boynton just passed up the sunshine to watch old fave The 39 steps.The best review she found is Club39 “Il Club dei 39” by Alberto Navy, translated from the Italian by Google...
" the club of the trentanove " is probably the better film of the English period of Hitchcock. She tells the history of a Canadian young person that escapes from London in order to go in Scozia, where wants to find again the taracce of the spies who pugnalato one woman in its apartment Suspected of homicide from the police, braccato from the spies, she passes through thousand insidie, but all she ends well..."
Based on the novel of John Buchan, the master of
" understatement ", English word that does not have a correspondent in Italian. He could himself be translate like "subvalutazione", "subestimazione". In practical, draft of ding-dramatize telling in ironico way and episodes loaded with tension:
For example the famous scene featuring Peggy Ashcroft and John Laurie:
Donat, the factor and the moglie are to table… E' a great scene of dumb cinema, which will be necessary for the novellistic development. In fact, the woman gives to Donat a coat in whose pocket finds the Bible of the bigoted factor. In the Bible it will remain conficcata a destined bullet to Donat, that she will have the life saves thanks to the sacred text. Curiosity: the same idea of projects them of blocked handgun from a book is found nell '
Later as the film moves to its 'Crazy Month' (at the London Palladium) climax
An idea came it from an artist known to music hall, the Mr. Datas,…. Mister Memory, in the film, dies, in pathetic and, al time same, colorful way. Music hall the Robert Donat it asks it to say all what he knows on the Club of the Trentanove and he, in order not to betray its professionality, answers: "E' an organization of spies, etc.". And naturally, the head of the band, than found itself on the theater box, kills it. Mr. Memory, like many hitchcockiani personages, remains victim of its characterization capacity until the extreme consequences
In conclusion
"Great merit of the film is the extreme speed of the rhythm. Example. Donay goes spontaneously to the police station in order to expose its version of the facts, but it does not come believed and, indeed, it comes handcuffed...E' just this way to tell that it appeals to to the public so much and it irritateed the critics us, than incolpavano Hitch not to be rispettoso of the verosimiglianza. Recovered the film and you will notice of its "density", wealth of irony and sweeping rhythm.

Last links please... Joan Crawford in blackface (via Quiddity)

Boynton loves the style of The Guardian's Net notes - the story in links, and was pleased to see Orang-utans featured recently.
Another good/harrowing article is Hangin' with ' tans in Borneo by Jennifer Hile
...do we really want to turn Borneo's colossal rain forests into pool cues? Is our need for futons so urgent we have to tear down centuries-old trees to manufacture them?
See also the Orangutan foundation International and the Australian Orangutan Project

After compling several googlepoems, Boynton checked out the mind behind it, Leevi Lehto, a Finnish poet and programmer. See the wonderful When a Car Gets into an Accident This represents, I think, a somewhat new, open-ended way to use “found” material as the basis of experimental poetry.

Google query ctd...Boynton was recently hunting down Beatles facts for the team, when she stumbled upon this odd piece of trivia: Shirley (Temple) had visited the Beatles in their dressing room backstage at a San Francisco concert in 1964. It is said when the Beatles requested her permission to use her image on the cover of (Sgt Peppers), she was the only celebrity who insisted upon hearing the disc before granting permission
Trying to substantiate this piece of web flotsam proved difficult. In the end she had more success composing a google search poem (via Free Space Comix)

Edited lines from Shirley Temple The Beatles
Star Shirley Temple. At - 22.'Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)'
THE BEATLES ?? ??? - - Empujada por su ambiciosa madre,
(Costume Wig). Bargain Spitcurl (Costume
Description. SaleCost. 506, Curly Blond (Shirley Temple).
Based on the title of which Beatles track?
Shirley Temple Shirley Temple 2 TV - - von Shirley Temple
US 1 Sheet. Shoe Shine - Hidden Hollywood - Treasures
Characters, war cards, space, TV, Beatles, Elvis, etc
Besuch der offiziellen Seite der Beatles Nr 56
Cousin Shirley would inherit the silver


And lines from Please Don't Call me Boynton
Free to let me know. t know what the company
Don't all speak English: Integrating the ESL student this
-Some people call themselves poets because they've written
Me someone out there has an obligation to keep But, please don't

Boynton read the NYTimes article about Google via The Age and was struck by the image of the Live Query board which scrolls endlessly in Google's HQ.
Stare at Live Query long enough and it's like watching the collective consciousness of the world stream by. Each line represents a thought from someone, somewhere with an internet connection...However not knowing the why limits interpretation. ...it does not capture social phenomena per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the internet.
Boynton recalled some old threads of web metaphors, and found some pictures. See especially the wired article for the visions of Teilhard de Chardin who ...imagined a stage of evolution characterized by a complex membrane of information enveloping the globe and fueled by human consciousness which...would ultimately coalesce .

On a lighter note: Bette Davis quotes (via Lindsay Marshall) I will never be below the title.

Although Boynton comes from a long line of gardeners, she dipped out on the genetic green thumb. It's gone gangrene. But as she dumbly declared to one gifted gardener in her “open garden” she likes the aesthetics…Perhaps it’s also nostalgia. Her father has spent most of his leisure time building up gardens, which derive in turn from an earlier generation. Boynton’s grandfather was a contemporary of Edna Walling, and in those large “garden city” blocks Boynton grew up with the legacy of perennials and herbaceous borders, stonework, crazy paving and crazy planting. Is this a lost world, given the carve up of the suburbs, and the preferred pastimes of the so-called time-poor?... The nurserymen concede :"You scarcely need to be a student of new century lifestyles to determine that block sizes are getting smaller while the houses on them are getting larger. The net result of this trend is little or no space for trees and shrubs in open garden situations". And lament the "immeasurable damage from the sterile, minimalistic, non-plant landscape fad currently running rampant" Boynton recently bought a mid century Australian book – The practical Man’s Book of things to Make and Do. As well as running up the odd Afternoon Tea Wagon and Nest of Dwarf Tables, a certain level of desire and competence in tackling the various rustic garden projects is assumed…Is this all officially ‘heritage’ gardening now?

cloud gazing update... Nora sent a link to the page Boynton had searched for in vain for googlehours. But then again Boynton was never going to think of searching for Big Bad Wolf in Google images.

Aunterly...Boynton doesn't usually surface so early on a Sunday morning to blog, but she's soon off all day to a wedding. Her nephew is getting married on what should be a perfect Summer's day. Given that she was crying over Crying on a Big O doco last night, there's a fair chance that she will shed some of those funny wedding special tears. I know it dates Boynton somewhat to confess that she has a marriageable nephew, but she was a young Aunt - and people shouldn't get married under the age of 10 anyway.
In the meantime she hopes you enjoy watching the cricket.
(via excitement machine via anil's links)

another one bites the dust...Nora reports that her rented house is to be demolished, sometime in the near future. The old timber house, circa 1880, has always had good vibes to use that strange expression. The relatively generous back yard has been an oasis for hemmed in Boynton and hounds, who like nothing better than sitting idly in the sun near the apple trees, and soaking up the classic suburban stillness. Best thing about Boynton's outer suburban childhood? The big blocks of land, that baby boomer gangs colonised with games of cricket and cubbies and chasey...Now all the blocks have been carved up, the gardens terraced with chic tiles, for the kids to pace about cleanly in postage stamp physical activitiy. Nora's house will be replaced by something like this. Boynton is seriously thinking about moving to the country...

Apparently it’s possible to celebrate the new year perpetually (via Presurfer)
but Boynton's thoughts have turned increasingly to Tea.
And John Curtin. He was fond of the beverage wasn’t he?
Searching for proof she found some splendid sites about JC
and his times... His briefcase... His Hills Hoist. And Elsie.
But the closest she got to the Tea thing was the memory of Mrs Frances Shea:

I only speak as I find. All the time, I'd be nearly seventeen when I went to the Worker, so the two years, or two-and-half-years that I was there and he was editor, Miss Prickett always made the tea. She would look at the time and we'd have a cup of tea and she'd take one into ... Always took him in a cup of tea, always
RS And you never saw him drinking alcohol?
SHEA Never saw him, no, no, and he never drank at my brother's wedding. I never saw him drink. Even in that booklet on him where they said he was at Buckingham Palace - I forget the name (it's in the book) offered him a drink, and he said, "No." Princess Elizabeth asked him was there anything he'd like and he said he would like a cup of tea She sent a silver service and silver teapot and cup and saucer and he had a cup of tea. So he didn't even drink then. As far as I'm concerned if he had a drinking problem, which I hear so much about, I just speak as I find. I never saw him drink at any time. All the time I was working at the Worker he had a cup of tea. We took it into his office. He always, no matter how busy he was, Flo used to knock on the door, "Oh thank you, thank you Miss Prickett " He always enjoyed that cup of tea. ...

Hey Mac, don't mess with the brand. As a Beatlenut of old, Boynton is peturbed by Macca's latest revisionist gesture, and agrees with Geoff Boucher the name switch he proposes is "jarring to the ear, like some semantic pothole on memory lane" After reading today of a project where you can talk to an "artificial intelligence" John Lennon, Boynton thought she'd ask the horse...
Boynton: Does McCartney-Lennon grate with you?
JL: Probably
Which sounds better?
Czechoslovakia
Can I pin you down on this?
If I can change it to a peace event.
Who wrote Yesterday?
The Peatles.
Who wrote In My Life?
Mary Shelley.
Is alphabetical order important to you?
Is alphabetical order important to I? Boynton, what are you doing in my kitchen…I hope you’re not disappointed
Are you disappointed?
Like George is always quoting Ghandi: ”Make and preserve the image of your choice” We’re just wriggling about.
How do you stop Paul from messing with the brand?
I don’t know
Why not
Boynton, sometimes life’s no bowl of leeches.

Boynton wishes she had sat down to tea with the Adelaide friends of Temperance at the May 1841 soiree.
"Mr Charles Bonnar next amused the meeting with a detail of the circumstances which had led him to abandon the drinking usages of society and adopt the cold water regime as infinitely preferable. His watch had gone better since he was a Total Abstainer – his pockets had fewer drains upon them – and his sight had been wonderfully improved. In describing those who were fond of their glass, the people fixed upon some very appropriate titles. For instance such a person was said to be a “mop” – and they all knew to what very degrading purposes “mops” were applied. Roars of laughter attended the whole of Mr Bonnar’s extraordinary address"
(as reported in The South Australian Temperance Advocate 1841)

In 2003 Boynton will heed this and drink her cocoa.

A friend recently sent this link which documents Andreas Petzoldt's personal flying suit project. My friend says he understands the techie stuff that alas flies over my head, but the inherent passion of the project fascinates. What fuels the obsession? Is it the childhood space memory of super heroes like Commando Cody, as Jeffrey Shaffer noted He went airborne using a rocket-powered backpack, and flew horizontally with his hands extended like Superman. I wanted it all - the flight suit, the goofy helmet, everything
The childhood ...space ...memory of super heroes
Boynton remembers John Robinson flying round Lost in Space in his version, but was never tempted to DIY, or even build the Robot Had she been a trekkie, she could probably just about handle the origami...
My friend also sent this Arthur C Clarke brainy quote... Perhaps it's the power of memory, the thermodynamic force, that advances the magic.

Just getting over boxing boxing day - and now it's New Year's eve eve. This is heralded by the appearance of discarded baby pine trees on suburban nature strips, optimistically placed next to the "green bin". Christmas decorations are already on the turn, but Davezilla posted an important collection.
The horrible weather is about to break with that distinct "risk of a thunderstorm" feeling. This augurs well for New year's eve. As usual Boynton is belatedly planning, and took heart from this headline in The Age "Not too late for fun on the Cheap" At the other end of the spectrum, there's the Yarrawonga Bachelor and Spinster Ball at the Weygoods Truck Depot, in Yarrawonga.
Maybe a fresh northerly journey is just the ticket.

Fresh gusty northerly wind...Last night was so hot we broke out the boule before a long barbecue that lasted way past midnight until we realised the weather just wasn't going to break. The inaugural petanque went well, despite the Jack Russell immediately seizing the Jack and running with it under the shed, returning later alone. Boynton had to soberly forage in the dust and detect the missing element, then fish it out before play could resume...When it was a.m. and still warm outside our party all fell off their chairs onto the green and watched the cloud formations. Boynton soon realised that cloud games could be a bit like a Rorschach test, so largely kept her images to herself...(as Hamlet said to Polonius)
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Methinks it is like a weasel.
It is backed like a weasel.
Or like a whale?
Very like a whale.
This morning in the hot gusty northerly, Nora said that she heard a scampering across the lawn. Wild pigs? asked Boynton. After the barbecue fat?
"No it was the plastic garden furniture, scuttling round the garden...
Next time we can play petanque by tossing the plastic chairs in teams suggested Boynton, before Nora reported that as she spoke on the phone, the umbrella was also upset by the strong gusty northerly and was flying off...
This afternoon in the horrible thick white heat Boynton escaped into a cinema to watch some overrated Magic Realism... Still hot.

everyone has gone to the beach.
Boynton recently bought Boswell's London Journal at the op shop.
"He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised. He said it would be a very good exercise, and would yield me infinite satisfaction when the ideas were faded from my rememberance...I told Mr Johnson that I put down all sorts of little incidents in it. "Sir," said he,"there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible" 16 July 1763
Famous Diarists as proto-bloggers has been explored (by blog - where else) - but Interconnected points to a new project that puts Pepys on line as blog.

Another light Summer link is this Guardian quiz. (via Plep)
This is the level of Trivia Boynton would like to see happening at the local tournament... There's a darker tale of pub trivia at bluejoh

Through the gap...bit under the weather today. It's that Boxing-Boxing Day feeling. Boynton has long believed that Boxing Day runs well into three days. Longer than the average Australia-England Test match. Such a beautiful day in Melbourne, she's half tempted to stroll down the road to catch the cricket gratis, through the gap. According to the Age , yesterday
By early afternoon, about 50 people had gathered on the footbridge between the MCG and Melbourne Park to watch the game through a gap in the ground where a stand once stood, complete with binoculars and transistor radios.
"It's the best seat in the house," said Darren Bond, of East St Kilda. "You can see absolutely clearly, and you get the video replay and the scoreboard as well."
This is not the first time cricketers and patrons will experience a large gap in the stadium's structure More gap info for patrons here

All the small pine trees next to the trailors and gas cylinders for hire had gone, but waiting in the car by the bowsers at the caltex on Christmas night, Boynton spotted santa. Behind the counter. Jolly. Smiling to himself between transactions. At ten pm after a long day, this generous-girthed geniality made weary punters smile and do a double take. Maybe he was like this bloke whose life turned around when he let his beard grow out white and wavy. In fact, after he started looking like Santa Claus, John said, his whole personality began to change. He became friendlier, more outgoing. Life became full of small, amusing incidents...Or maybe it was just the nearness of the coke machine

Like trotting out last year's xmas decorations, here is some perennial advice from 2001 about a natural treatment for Christmas depression. Of course, Organs.
Before Boynton moves into serious antidote mode, she should remember:
"Listeners experienced significant reductions in tension, depression, anger and fatigue," Professor Marley says. "However, we didn't find any significant changes in listeners' levels of vigour, or confusion."
Looks like pretty good therapy to me.

Decorating for Christmas 1950's style (via PopCulture Junk Mail via Quiddity) Also featuring on David Claudon's site is the excellent Decorating 40's style, "a visual source-book of ideas...". Quiddity links to 1950's childrens' records, one in the Christmas genre, and one general -some records of which Boynton recognised from the storehouses of memory or imagination.

Boynton went to the Boulevard Christmas lights last night – this is a (grand) street in Ivanhoe that was the original themed street in what has now become a rather overheated market. Even Boynton’s own flat street has houses with hose lights and the odd reindeer. But the big old Ivanhoe houses on the hill are better suited to the sport. The road is generous in its contours and dimensions and socio-eco profile, and can handle the throng of the thousand strong pilgrimage even if the nature-strips are worn bare by soles and strollers. On the low side you get the city skyline framed by lemon-scented gums, on the high side you get the sweeping vistas of grand old decorated Deco houses. Last night was a perfect warm evening, with a big yellow moon that looked exactly like the classic art nouveau sheet-music variety.
To best view the lights, you should really borrow a child. Boynton volunteered, and her inner child gasped and whooped and jumped up and down excitedly, and stood awe-struck at some mystery in the electricity invisible to adults. Not as good as one little girl who went into joyous overdrive at the sight of a plastic elf. Children were adorned with pink and green “glow lights’ that were being hocked by scouts on corners, the most desirable being the round collars, that glowed on in the back seat of dark wagons driving slowly past. One hapless toddler put in a request. His mother snapped. “We can’t always get what we want…If I were you I’d be very worried because Santa can hear everything you’re saying, and he’d be disgusted. And he’d be going into his workshop and taking all the toys out of your sack and putting them into some other child’s sack!…”.
There was the usual mixed iconography of Jesus and Santa, desert and snow. One house had the trinity of Santas, next door had the snowman under a palm tree. There were asbseiling santas, creepy miniature-doll santas, a nativity group in a gazebo moving at tai-chi speed, and a Joseph who looked like more like Josephine, in his mock Tudor style frock. On the low side of the street, Boynton was interested in the shadow play of hapless owners caught inside their homes, moving around like un-lit figures in the annual Christmas fish bowl.
No link found to Ivanhoe, but here is a South Australian page. And a thread from a US forum indicates some of the pressures involved.

How to be cool. Get out of the inner-city... Boynton's street has emptied, shifted to the coast I guess, leaving us non-holiday resort decampers walking down hot asphalt echo chambers of the idle-factory "neighbourhood" ( actually the big factory at the back has just been sold off - presumably for warehouse apartments). Both neighbours have gone, so Boynton can break out and warble soulful ballads into the wee hours. Meanwhile Nora found cool relief inside a church this morning, rehearsing with trumpet for the annual carol service. "Yes I'm the rhythm section in The Virgin Mary again" she reports, a tad wearily.
Which links quite nicely to this Sir Cliff game (via b3ta)

A 1959 pamphlet on how to decorate a " tree made mostly of non-tarnishing long-lasting aluminium foil" Proper decoration will make your aluminium tree more beautiful (via Anil's daily links)

"I just love what (the aluminum tree) represents, the hope and naiveté of the era," (says one collector). "It was the beginning of the atomic age..."

"The reality of my daily life is that I'm juggling lots of balls in the air" says a defensive Santa (via Plep)

Some Karaoke out-takes . A new machine that not only adjusts the pitch and tempo to suit the punter's voice, but will also "grade" the performance.The grading karaoke machine currently available only compares singers' performance against standardised tunes of the selected songs. But this new machine would recognise the singer's use of vibrato, tremolos and other techniques for grading singers."
And yesterday's Odd Spot reported that China's gridlocked drivers will be able to sing their blues away next year after the country's only privately owned car maker rolls out a car equipped with a karaoke machine.

The fact that kitsch kulture has become status quo is also a reason that karaoke is gaining younger, hipper, and even famous followers, but karaoke existed before the current retro wave and will certainly outlive the fickle fancies of ironic young people
Discussing Karaoke last night with a younger, hipper writer, Boynton let it slip that she too has secretly indulged in this vice.
And where else but a karaoke bar will you hear someone utter, "I'd like to do a Bread song someday, but I don't think I'm emotionally ready."
That strolling guitarist at a certain Kobe snack bar has a lot to answer for. Here is another fan who confesses: I sometimes get distracted by trying to make the words of the song last exactly as long as they take to change color on the video screen, and that means I'm not giving full voice..
More (serious 'scene') singing tips "Mastering fast songs" here.
and the more basic:"Enhancing Audience Appeal" Avoid sitting down while you sing, unless it really matches the song. But this is the tip that best resonates with Boynton:
If there’s a monitor in front of you, don’t hide behind it. Stand far back behind it (where you can still read it), or to the side

On the theme of random dog poetry, the Magnetic poetry on-line game - see "Dog Lover"

Of course, within the random scattering of the apples as described below, there may be deeper meaning. Some recent projects along these lines employ sheep...cows...and an earlier local grazing dairy herd. Also recommended is random sheep poetry

Balmy evenings. In the backyard over at Peel street , the Summer twilight pet-anque or elderly labrador crazy bowls pennant is about to begin again. The green shall be a rectangle, providing a level surface not injurious to bowls
On the edge of the green are two old apple trees, the windfall fruit of which shall be the bowls. Play begins as Douglas forages beneath the trees until he finds a bowl that he fancies. He then excitedly runs back to the mat, but will shortly spit out the invariably under-ripe specimen, thus delivering it to the green. It is now live. Abby (who is even more senile than Doug) will then slowly wander haphazardly across, swoop on the bowl, walk with it for a few metres before she in turn discards it. Tart. Doug then returns to trees, to find a second bowl and the process is repeated, until the green is filled with a free-form pattern of apples that are moved from time time during the evening. Bronte (Jack Russell) has neither the greed nor the neccessary degree of dementia to play, but she may inspect the bowls from time to time but not move them. She prefers skinks.

It's a worry The internet is bad for your hypochondriasis (via Rebecca Blood). As a mild sufferer of "transient hypochondriacal concerns", Boynton is always mindful that medical students (and doubtless, doctors) are not immune to the condition. Boynton read with interest "the phenomenon of hypochondriasis in trainee doctors may receive more attention from tutors and student doctors than the same phenomenon in, say, a history student." As a recovering history student, she often suffered from too close an identification with her subject matter here as well (After reading accounts of early life in the bush she agreed it was certainly No Place for a Nervous Lady.) Oh well, to determine whether we really have the condition or not (to prove it - as the transient hyperchondriac would no doubt say) there's an on line self-diagnosis quiz here.

Black Dog - a temporary return to the first person
Today Douglas is 13 and six months. He was born on a cold Bloomsday. He should have been called Leopold. I saw him when he was 3 days old, bald, one of those strange squeaking little forms that blindly bleat for the teat, and paddle in the muddle of the litter. Time is catching up. I find myself staring at his beautiful thick black otter tail, that will still wag at the slightest cue, as other faculties decline, so finely tuned, will still wag at the barest hint of a smile. And on days like this, wags on in pure hope, as the only trick left, to cheer me up, a benevolent nag, when all seems lost. And of course his faith pays off, and I return to the land of the living, because you simply can't refuse a Labrador or his consolation.

Update Monday monday Can't trust that day Blogger won't let me post...Please stand by...
POSTED BY BOYNTON 2:23 PM


But I do...I have two dogs (via The Presurfer) And they are both closing in on Boynton now as she writes, waiting for things to get activated.

digital trauma meets digital art bluejoh's post about crushed fingers pointed Boynton (somehow) to a page on Gamekeeper's thumb and from there to a wonderful rendition of White Christmas by The Three Tendons (via The Mr Handman site)
Other manualism (the art of manualism involves producing music by squeezing one's hands together) goodies there include personal favourites such as Green Acres... The Girl from Ipenama ...Danny Boy ... and The Good The Bad and The Ugly

Xmany days... A picture of Boynton's family Christmas from yesteryear ...
- from a yule-cool site Old Christmas Lights (via The Presurfer). This benign looking ad induces a mild electrical anxiety with memories of bad circuitry. Perhaps it's the ominously ambiguous last cartoon: sockets practically unbreakable...even when accidentally stepped on....
Part of the culture of Melbourne's Christmas is a visit to the Myer's Christmas windows . (Although Boynton lives 2 k away we may only get to glimpse them on-line - instead of in the line) This is a brief corporate chronicle that begins with Santa at the Olympics in 1956. I wonder if it was still Sputnik that spawned the "Santa in Space" window of 1962 . This is a darker space themed Santa take...And finally here is a smoking doctor - off to deliver a Christmas baby (by camel?). Is that only snow on his coat - or have some of the side-effects started to show up?

A good read on writing at this Public Address. There's a faulty link to an article that's worth perusing on the decline of reading , featuring confessions of non-readers like Eric a young publishing exec. who ... regrets he hasn't read the Bible, because it would help him with the crosswords he devours (via wood's lot)

A poignant animation featuring a chair (via b3ta)

Blind eyes. Last week Rebecca Blood linked
(we blinked) to An Animals Place outlining the issues and linking to humane (US) farming sites
The more I learn about them, the more strongly I feel that the factory farming practices widely practiced today are unconscionable- in fact I would go so far as to call them immoral.
The issue is vexed, the stories gruesome. Is humane farming an oxymoron? But going down the “lesser of two evils” path there are indeed options for (local) carnivores that would certainly appear more moral than the factory farm- Free range. Most organic farms include animal welfare/stewardship in their general principles, and consumer demand is slowly growing - Coles calling it a trend not a fad. Here are some sample local (Victorian) suppliers – Chicken and chooks, pigs and Pork, beef and clothing. If this is indeed a transition stage in a slow cultural shift, then Temple Grandin’s work on minimising stress at the slaughterhouse is part of the evolution.
But when you read the bare facts, sometimes glimpsed within the official codes of practice, or stories from the front, the vegetarian/vegan option seems more pressing.
How do I know that it is wrong to be cruel? No one has set the rules. I just know that it's wrong - that's all. Hell is the absence of god. As I looked out across that huge industrial landscape of the factory farm I knew that I was entering Hell. (Coral Hull)
Boynton once stayed in a house where cattle grazed within metres of the lounge-room. Time to observe the herd behaviour close-up, to look into their eyes, to look away as they were loaded into the truck…. This is a poetic tale about one herd that survived

Melbourne did its thing in that missing hour - sudden change in weather. Luckily we all caught the tail end of the sun. The present fickleness is confusing Doug's coat - he was full on into the summer shedding when the weekend cold snap forced a bit of a re-think. A symbolic portrait of the dreaded process can be seen here with a labrador substitute. (via a before and after museum at sharpeworld)

To change tone completely, but with a slight thematic connection, here's an article on unseasonable changes in London - a sense of pre-war dread. (via Interconnected)

Our team has finally tasted victory. As a consequence this is where Boynton has been for most of the day. She has nontheless been attending to her duties and ignoring canines. Time to face the sunlight.

If Castlemaine is the new Fitzroy (we thought Fitzroy was the new Fitzroy), Boynton's now looking for the new (old) Cassel-maine. She knows a few remote unpretentious uncool spots that might qualify but will keep them under her hat

The "path of totality", the moment the glow of the completely covered sun radiates from behind the moon While Boynton missed the eclipse last Wednesday, today we see an Australian photo in The Guardian via a South African blog. Shirley there's a metaphor there...

They were either named for her or noted that they were not. With her shirley connections, Boynton might try and crash the luncheon.

Since the Googie post, and via a bit of Art Brut, we've been remembering the roadside culture of childhood. There is a wealth of US sites, but Boynton has been trying to find the local without much success. Even though in the Australian post-war sprawl the signage may have gone global, and the American pages offer a familiarity, it is the host of associations that attach themselves to the landscape that are missing. (Oddly though sometimes it's the non-corporate, one-off localised sign that triggers memory)The recent decision to remove the old silos from Punt road is disturbing, even though the famous Nylex sign will remain, de-contextualised. We look forward to the digital archiving of our roadside remnants and the stories they yield.This page has a folksy history of one Melbourne motel, while Mimmo Cozzolino's site promotes the book version of his "commercial archeology".

Boynton spent the morning surfing but will hold back on the links until they set. She recently found a wonderful blog Fragments - from Floyd "Country life written in words and images from Floyd County, Virginia". A bonus is the presence of a black labrador, Buster. From the archives here is a beautifully written tale featuring another great great lab.

problem blogging... mcb keeps the essential question going which she often explores graphically with the questioning ant (why blog) and links to this post. Indeed, the curse of blogtime is something that Boynton is learning to deal with. If one goes down this track: " a committed infovore, I need to eat roughly six times my weight in information every day or my brain starts to starve and atrophy"...the monster of blogtime starts to consume not only book time but other recreational pursuits.
(Of course sites like boing boing raise the bar enough to motivate infovores anon.) Procrastinations observes the time gap involved in all this global reading . Meanwhile we might wonder who has time to follow all the links on the hundreds of sites in an ever-expanding blogrolling... blogosphere . One has to be increasingly discerning or perhaps totally random to cope.

More verse...The Presurfer posted a great poetry site. Boynton had a ramble around the links and found this site . Among many good things there are a couple of wonderful flash poems The Braille of Rain and Jellyfish Child. When it's done this well, poetry and the web seem made for each other: a screenful of substance that preserves (enhances?) the one-on-one relationship of reader and text. This is often lacking in formal readings according to this New York Times article (via aldaily) which claims that the poet's own rendering can interfere with what you hear in your head, that infinitely nuanced thing Wallace Stevens called ''the poem of the mind,'' audible only in ''the delicatest ear of the mind.'' .
and lo, a whole antholgy of random poem generator machinery is embedded into a poem at bluejoh

Writerly... Some how to articles of the practical/earnest variety(via Microcontent) for journos but applicable to other forms. On loneliness, narrative thinking, and good tips (carry 2 notebooks).
Boynton has often baulked at the "how to's" but she endorses this
and for a good automated poem go here and click on the "o" in "work". (of course everything else there is worth looking at too)

Boynton got $lugged bad for data overkill during November which may cause a slight rethink. Rethinking the linking anyway – and the costs of sourcing. Just when she stumbled upon an inspiring example of a kind of found hypertext. (There was an earlier example of this imaginative form at bluejoh)

When we saw this (via The Presurfer) Boynton thought of a scene in the novel Hide and Seek by Dennis Potter:
Aged seven, he had examined the bottle of Camp Coffee on the kitchen table, mentally trying to hold a label against a label, his small white face trying too hard to understand etermity…
Words almost out of control, the boy was delving down into the scarcely discernible third and indecipherable fourth layer before his mother picked up the remaining cup and saucer and clanked them together in the washing-up bowl...

The scene builds until “Trapped in halls of mirror, tunnels of word he started to scream. His screaming continued until she hit him in panic" And we remembered the famous Droste effect

‘It goes on and on,’ Daniel raised his voice trying to call her back.’It goes on and on for ever and ever and ever’
“It’s only a bloody picture!’

More on Droste and Escher here

When Mnemonics fail... Boynton received an email from one of the trivia conquering theatrebods who claimed his only contribution had been
"to recite the school chemistry mnemonic "Hey Hello Little Bertie Brown Counting Nuts On Friday" in an attempt at determining the tenth element of the Periodic Table. Needless to say the mnemonic was deficient by one. My position as science consultant was ruined!"
While we don't believe this for a second, Boynton has been there, stumbling over fragments of Lear-like couplets, racing to recall these displaced sub-sub literary scraps. Perhaps the trouble was that our "mnemonic enhancers become too complex or unwieldy - maybe after using three or four enhancers together you find that the system breaks down"... A google trawl revealed a few good general sites, the student specialist (ribald) type, an intriguing nautical page and famous mnemonists. This medical emergency page is rather scary: especially the one for Osmolar Gaps "Me Die" - or suicide risk factors "Sad persons". The need for medical mnemonics seems to be particularly pressing, but now you can download them into a (sweaty) Palm pilot. Which is another take on the whole memory machine. When we put "anti-mnemonics" into Google (as you do) we got this interesting tangent, with Coleridge's obeservations on the distractions of periodicals, and the implications of the digital data overload out there

Don't go there Avril Boynton has to fess up to absent friend (is that ex friend) that she weakened and watched the last 2 minutes of 24 (thanks to Max). So definitely don't go here (the best plot summary of this strange show)...or here (a related interview with 'Bride')...Boynton shares a few concerns aired in forums about the anti-woman-ness of it all now, but how seriously can you take a show that lapses into temporary amnesia etc anyway?... And Avril - the big "last 2 minutes" party is still going to happen. We have the tape.

" if you have animals, a carpeted room is basically a Petri dish" says Dave Trowbridge talking about how to cope with the great divide of home beautiful and shedding perpetual (or with moulting labs anyway). Boynton has worn black for 13 years now to disguise Doug's coat floating about clothes and cars and couches. Luckily it's the Melbourne thing. And at least he's black and not a "yellow" fellow. White hair is a nightmare...
Anyway Boynton has always subscribed to that recently endorsed theory that too much hygeine can stuff you up, and that a dog's affectionate slobber is a tonic.
On matters canine Textism had a nice post, only one of Boynton's charges is guilty of this behaviour, (and it's not the noble lab but the shameless Jack Russell)