boynton followed the link to the google "biggest in Southern Hemisphere" and got to page 30. This is a selection:
(Update: for non-Australians, this seems to be a popular national unit of comparison/compensation. A hemispherical cringe.)

The Biggest Field Day and Hamfest in the Southern Hemisphere
the biggest Telescope, biggest dairy show and sale, richest rodeo
Leading public works show, the biggest data centre
second biggest processing works
the biggest biotechnology business conference in the Southern Hemisphere
the biggest sailing regatta, the largest supercomputing facility
this stretch of sand is the biggest in the southern hemisphere
one of the biggest producers of table cherries in the Southern Hemisphere
the biggest Metal event, the biggest Horse Fair
the most impressive man I met in the Southern Hemisphere
the Biggest Amateur Country Music Talent Quest in the Southern Hemisphere.
the biggest indoor sports complex
the southern hemisphere’s biggest pilot training organization
biggest space frame structure, the largest container port
the largest dry storage in the Southern Hemisphere
the biggest bloodstock sale. the biggest photovoltaic cell solar farm
the biggest club, the biggest aerodrome
some of the largest clear span venues, some of the best fishing spots
we believe its the biggest map shop in the southern hemisphere
biggest motor-home showroom, Microsoft's biggest customer,
one of the biggest property developments the biggest Christmas pageant
the largest international airport lounge in the southern hemisphere
the biggest carpark, narrowest pub, largest equestrian parade, the biggest blueberry producer
one of the biggest, largely self-insured catastrophes that has occurred in the Southern Hemisphere
the biggest crowd to attend a trotting meeting
one of the most prominent advertising signs
the biggest parachute dryer
biggest egg-shaped sludge digester
biggest flourmill, biggest morning tea, biggest picnic race meeting,
longest pipeline
the biggest family owned locksmith company
the biggest financial entity, one of the biggest Nephrology departments
the biggest British gathering
the first crossbelt sorter in the Southern Hemisphere
the largest public collection of mature conifers
The biggest folk festival, the biggest dog show, biggest domed roof
The biggest fundraising day
the biggest annual mobile computing user conference,
it was the biggest dam, it’s the biggest ram,
biggest marlin, the biggest gathering of Tiger Moths
biggest concrete silo
biggest ever meet of antique Ferguson tractors
the biggest theme park, biggest Children’s party
the tallest flagpole in the Southern Hemisphere

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just when you think your Jack Russell Terrier is brainy, bronte goes and rushes at two small concrete ugly garden ornaments, dog and duck, obviously inanimate, not even to scale. She jumped onto the wobbly table to sniff them out. “Are you embarrassed? You should be.” boynton remarked.

Went to a supermarket for diversion last night. Of course it may be the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. This is part of the dreaded Victoria Gardens complex with its apartments cinemas and Swedish furniture store. For most of last century the site was occupied by the massive Vickers Ruwolt factory. Travelling into the city from the east as you crossed the river and the cutting you drove through a vast industrial tunnel of manufacturing heritage, the neon signs of The Skipping Girl and Coppertone flashing away mutely on the opposite side. (Alas: no links, no photos to this old “landmark”) Then for years it was a bomb site, with the promises from developers inflating like the giant branded balloons that now point you to Coles or Kmart along the rooftop.
So last night Nora and boynton decided to run down the street and get some milk, (it being located almost midway between our two houses) and drove up into to the empty concrete colossus of carpark. There was an immediate feel of Jacques Tati’s Playtime, (one of boynton’s favourite films) with its prematurely opened restaurant sequence. All a bit Not Quite Ready, unsteady. The carpark was all scattered witches hats and orange netting, stairs with gaps, empty lift shafts. There was a pyramid of loose signs that said “shops” with an arrow, presumably to be installed, (or maybe it was an installation). Inside was much the same – did we miss the grand opening? Workers were busy adding the preliminary touches. Nora saw a caulking gun at work along the surfaces of the already functioning fish shop. There was a kind of brand new litter floating about the non-place of mall as we walked through to the supermarket (discover an amazing array of smallgoods), and bought a light globe and milk respectively. As we found our way back to the yellow carpark, boynton noted that the roof would be a good place to view the New Year’s fireworks over the city skyline, if it has not yet been marked off for some corporate fest, on top of the ghost of Melbourne manufacturing past.

boynton was delighted to learn that her recent Google Poem has been included in the (ongoing) anthology. Leevi Lehto's Google Poem engine is such a wonderful, metaphoric thing.

the way small country towns of 200 people could field a brass band, or stage a cricket match almost from scratch.
In the photographs of reclining gents you can substitute bats for trumpets, cornets for stumps
Nineteenth century lower case community.

cricket and poetry at cordite (via Invisible Shoebox - comments)

Smoke in the air from a controlled burn gone wrong. Boynton saw the fire last night as she travelled home from Castlemaine. It was the last day of the biennial Festival and she did a few exhibitions, unlike previous years when she was able to see more shows over the ten days. One of the highlights was seeing Julie Millowick's A Year in Our Lives - a narrative in photograms. (This can now be seen at Span in Melbourne). Boynton loves the way text and (personal) narrative are woven into the imagery.
Anil Dash recently linked to a new application for annotating photos - personal home image mapping?
A great Found Photo Collection here (via Speckled Paint)
(and this is why the found appeals.)
And an idle search for Castlemaine turned up this great site of photos of Australian Brass Bands. (Boynton could almost put together an "image map" herself of favourite Victorian places depicted by their old brass bands.)

Yesterday’s Blue Skies midi file was found on this excellent children’s site by the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Boynton immediately went to the”favourites” menu and found this old fave song. But as is often the way on the web, she “can't take her eyes off” the hyperlink, and it seems that one of the purposes of the web site is to embed health information in the content. This is a novel idea, and Boynton has attempted her own medical hyperlinking for the second verse:

Pardon the way that I stare,
There's nothing else to compare,
The sight of you leaves me weak;
There are no words left to speak.
But if you feel like I feel,
Please let me know that it's real.
You're just too good to be true,
Can't take my eyes off of you.

When Melbourne turns on a beautiful Saturday like this, it's no time for bloggin. This cloud bursting game (via b3ta) reflects the spirit of the blue skies bounty. So Boynton was out walking with a friend, soaking up the sunshine, before Doug - that's Derg - bounded down into the river and couldn't climb out. So Boynton managed eventually to haul him out and roll him back up the cliff, muddying clothes and mood temporarily. She would now gratuitously link to the song "My Brown Yarra" were such a link to be found.

a little bit of seabiscuit searching/dunking resulted in finding this Shirley Temple Concentration. Boynton confesses she found it difficult - perhaps it was her recent scrambled state of mind. Which is why she didn't even go near the Scramble or Solve Puzzle. The disintegration of the happy picture was just too resonant with something to handle, or even attempt to restore

Boynton has been gratified by the support shown in regard to the strange mirror/clone/class clown/blogger bug incident of April 1st. Thank you.
(She's thinking of adding a new damsel-in-distress line to the range, with the one word plaintive appeal to the blogosphere). Next step would appear to be to email Blogger - although that has a touch of the email-the-big-chief-in-the-sky-and-expect-a-reply about it. Another disturbing incident: a recent visitor from Greece came to boynton via the google search: tiger lillies download Over you...As if the blog is generating her fate!...Of course a French aol search for Cat woman also directs vistors here first... Mais oui, bien sur - we can run with that!

HaloScan and Sitemeter both being down (and lost) and slowing us up impossibly, a bit of non-linkage canine tale is possibly our best bet today anyway.
Yesterday, on the impulse, over at Nora’s, boynton decided to walk down to the small sleepy shopping strip and do the hair deed there in the semi-cool salon that sits on the corner. So having the procedure formerly known as “trim” and now spoken of as a “clean it up” and with no one in the salon or indeed the streets outside, boynton endowed hairdresser as confessor. But instead of recent tribulations, we talked dog. Such salon small talk is boynton’s ideal. He told of how his red heeler has only now, after x many years, accepted his wife without undue jealousy. Boytnon replied that luckily she had never had this problem with her gentleman callers (or perhaps this is unluckily) There were however, certain men he was “funny” with. “They always know” he said. Possible new method, Doug as heart divining-dog or “canary”… He also told me a wonderful thing. Not long ago while walking dogs, boynton had seen two stray dogs, but heading towards main roads she had to yell at them to stay (she acted aggressive). They appealed desperately, pathetically but there was nothing to do...Turns out the hairdresser found them, put them in the pound, found a bottle of wine on his doorstep the next day from the overjoyed owner who lived a fair way (and high way) away. That’s the sort of man you want to “clean up” your hair.
After this took Doug to vet for his annual booster. Approaching 14 everything now is assessed as practical or not in terms of mortality. Is it worth getting his booster, his new registration etc. The vet gave him a “clean bill of health” (let clean = $84)
I’d be expecting at least another year out of him. Boynton laughs casually and puts on this pragmatic detached hat as the only possible one to wear in the circumstances.
This was followed by a late emergency run to another vet last night. Delicacy etc prevents her from going into details here, suffice to say a tablet was put into his eye to induce vomiting. It seems to have half worked, and we’re standing by. (possibly literally over the next few days!) Of course on top of the refuse pile was his freshly administered expensive worm tablet from earlier vet visit… The vet was English and called him “Derg” and recommended “courgettes" for another disgusting habit of his.
“Oh Derg, Derg” she said as she stroked him “You’re a silly lump” “Yes he is” boynton replied, “A stupid stupid lump”… (which is why of course she lervs him)

(American) Races on the radio (via The Writing Life - with links and personal context)
Fascinating to hear the cultural differences in race-calling., although perhaps this has as much to do with the vintage as the nationality.
Boynton tried to find a local equivalent, and while this site seems to have audio files, it may be for connections faster than boynton’s. (The one to hear is Bill Collins’ call of the 1986 Cox Plate.)
Of course, you say Seabiscuit we say Phar Lap.
The greatest-horse-ever race stakes discussed here and here
Shirely Temple in The story of Seabiscuit 1949. (" Pretty average film, but Temple is good...(and) has a mysteriously inconsistent brogue)

Help! What do you do when someone pinches your blog? And your blogroll? And your comments? Not an april one joke we fear.

Top April fool's Day hoaxes (via J Walk)

The wonderful Kodak girl site - photos, ads, posters ephemera. (via Quiddity 29/3)
Boynton particularly loves the extensive snapshot collection, leading through to the “annotated snapshots” group…In a few cases, someone has jotted down a tantalizing tidbit on the back, piquing our imagination Not wishing to jump the frame here and link directly, this is an example of one such caption: I think this one looks just like you

Boynton has often seen the British film The Way We Live screening in the wee ABC hours, and was delighted to find this illustrated summary amongst many wonders on Steve Johnson’s cyber-heritage site. (via Speckled Paint). One of the stills is boynton’s own favourite, that she once planned to employ on a web site ( her own futuristic plan). It is from the film’s triumphal march of the banner-carrying Plymouth youth. Less Monotony Please. Good motto for a blog.

obs on snobs. Gummo Trotsky's first Snob of the Week, and a review of Snobbery the American Version at A Sunny Place For Shady People.

Readers of this blog and others that use Haloscan may have noticed the wipe out yesterday. The white screen of Mute. Boynton's head sort of matched so it didn't worry her excessively. A blogging sabbath was enforced. The word from Haloscan is High Traffic because of a couple war and politics-related weblogs that use our commenting system that have skyrocketed in traffic because of the war. This is slightly less unsettling than the previous explanation of last month: we started getting massive packet loss suddenly. (If we don't buy it, guess it's because we don't buy it)
For those of us who have yet to assimilate that techno speak into ordinary jargon, a sudden massive packet loss sounds intriguing. (If it has taken minutes for this page to load, boynton suggests you visit the following links prudently) Technically, packet loss may be indeed be this, but boynton still expects to read about a maritime disaster. And as for Ping - this is only reading of Ping that is imprinted on boynton's brain. And finally this graph is supposed to illustrate human perception of packet loss, but this response seems much more realistic.

neither a wit nor a flat Boynton went looking for her source of that archaic slang mentioned casually in a recent post, where to be a “flat” means the opposite of “wit”. She finally tracked it down in one of her most precious books, Physiognomical Chart by J.D. Simms, 1872. This is in the style of the great pseudo texts of the era, like this wonderful digital version. Comparisons to animal faces are commonly used to substantiate the theory that physicality reflects character. In Boynton’s book there is a scale of 1 to 10 of the disposition, and each has been scored by the reader, with further tables at the back, marked by the author, on October 11th 1882. Much like a web quiz, we get a profile of this Melbourne resident, who seems to have safely aimed for the middle on each “faculty”. Boynton’s father bought this book for her when she was a child, because of the pictures. (As a child, she drew compulsively) but now she loves it just as much for the words, the fabulous words that Word doesn’t recognise . For instance :
aquasorbitiveness – appreciation and love of water drinking…bathing etc
sonidiffusitiveness- the capacity of producing or making a sound or musical tone with the mouth
solicitusreputatutiveness – an innate wish for the favourable opinions of others
pyshiodelectatiousness – the disposition and inclination for sensual delights
factimemoriativeness- the factulty of retaining previously attained knowledge
characteriospicity – the power of penetrating and understanding the character of others
philomonotopicalness- the affection for one place, or, habit of becoming attached to one situation or locality
etc etc. The flat/wit reference comes under the category of salitiveness – "the power of seizing on thoughts and occurrences, and presenting them in a laughable manner" because if your score 6 on the scale you're informed:
" you can discern the difference between witticism and Atticism, and can enjoy the quick-witted whom you meet; yet you are neither a wit nor a flat."
If in 1882 you’d marked number 2 : You cannot make a pun, and of course, are very slow to comprehend one from another and even at number 5 you’d still be warned: "you had better avoid any attempt to pun, or play upon words, as your failures will excite more laughter than your hits.
For each extreme there is advice on how to be middling. Even though she doesn’t resemble the drawing of salitiveness large (Mark Twain) or even Merriness large (Sam Slick)Boynton will hereafter heed: "To restrain the talent and Appreciation of Mirth:- Cease from that perpetual giggling and laughing at every trifle, especially as it lowers you in the estimation of more grave characters; read metaphysical works and especially those of earnest reasoners, and enter fully into their spirit; choose sober, staid and dignified companions"
Better scout about the blogosphere to find more of the grave, the staid and the sober metaphysical company.

Boynton was half thinking of a haircut when she read this Elegy from Ovid: To his mistress, who, contrary to his counsel, dyed her hair with noxious compositions, and has nearly become bald. From The Love Books of Ovid (via Plep)
This man is pleased his wife chose the flip, so he didn't flip out, in the classic Caroline No hair-cut response.
The very long haired seven Sutherland sisters adopted this solution

Friday ususally sees boynton off to the op-shop thrifting, but today she has been arrested by a common cold. More than ordinary heartbreak, general sorrow or average despair, a common cold blocks the humour reflex. Nothing seems funny today. But were she to hop down to the op-shop, she'd keep an eye out for some thrift store art like those displayed at this seminal collection. (via Speckled Paint)
The site's collector/curator has "the "packrat" gene... that causes one to search for, acquire, collect, and accumulate the meaningless objects cast off by society" but space consraints forced him to specialise "I mean, really; how many kitschy 50's dish sets, "Incredibly Strange" albums, Pee Wee Herman dolls, old bowling trophies, or pulp-fiction paperbacks does one person need?" (Boynton has lost count of the number of old bowling, tennis and netball trophies she has "let go" - almost collected over the years) This is another site to return to in in April, when the download limits go. In the meantime she'll just sneak a look here and there.
(Boynton's cold head is so unsharp, blunt or "flat" as they used to describe those way down the nineteenth century wit-less scale, that it took her about 20 edits just to get this post looking reasonably normal. Light blogging ahead)

The muse has returned. As Boynton was cycling up to CERES to meet some long lost friends, along the Merri creek, the new play was running through her head. (Is there some link between cycling and writing?) Ideas brewing.
At the café there was an apple on a plate, like a novel table decoration Very CERES observed x. (or Very Serious, as boynton heard it. Both work)
The last time boynton visited ceres was in the dead of winter, the coldest day of the year. So cold, that boynton and friend, after shivering over tea, had to hot foot it back to our bikes, to work up some warmth. Let’s get the hell out of here! he said.
Today was all autumnal splendour, or Autumn Joy, the flower we admired in the nursery.Riding back, climbing up to Clifton Hill, seeing the hazy city, it was all autumn joy, the beginning of a new cycle.

Today all the houses in Boynton's inner-city neighbourhood received an unsolicited red bound book with 143 pages of real estate. (Green it sure aint) Boynton knows this
sub-literary genre is fast gaining ground in publishing and the print media, and there is possibly a space for such a cultural tome on her overcrowded shelves. She'll gaze at the pictures of suburban villas like she gazes carless at the outer pages of the street directory, planning imaginary journeys. One thing she has already noted in both this booklet and others like it is the introduction of the black labrador as accessory in various locations. At first she thought the third such appearance was a noted interior object from the 1970's, and while these were about, it was definitely another labrador. Seems to be taking its place with the potted palm, pebbles, jarrah outdoor settings and tiger lillies as valuable selling feature this season. As she peruses these pages it occurs to boynton that, like a snail without her shell, all she has in this domain game is the ageing accessory.

There's something rather sinister about this dental site ( via J-walk) Clicking on a Tooth will remove it and clicking on a space will add a Tooth. Removing tooth by tooth is a bit too much stuff of nightmares territory. Not that boynton herself suffers from that particular recurring dream(just as well given Freud's take on it, we've always preferred the Jungian tack there anyway). But then because this not a blog of the confessional genre, boynton's not about to disclose her own running dream imagery.

A little upbeat music might be just the ticket. From Show and Tell - thrift store music and album cover art. (via B3ta). This fitness regime looks promising.

Car-less boynton took the Highway negative excitation syndrome (road rage) test (via the Presurfer) and got a spineless rating.
You are a softy
You are either really wet, or the personification of self control. You won’t complain in a restaurant when you (sic) food turns up 30 mins late. If someone cuts you up you can rise above it and continue on your way. This means you are in the safe category and unlikely to experience road rage, but maybe you do need to get a bit more of a backbone. Stand up for yourself, don’t let people push in front of you in the queue, Don’t let kids throw things at you, and don’t let people under cut you. No one likes a doormat. If you have no dents in your car when you return home, go out and get some, your car is an extension of your inner soul. Be Wreckless!
(The line that really leaps out there of course is the old "no one likes a doormat". Gee thanks. Like that's what your average doormat really wants to hear). Boynton's close to ordering her new personalized doormat with the text: anonymous.

Bluejoh links to the MOA foodfights/cheap jibes
boynton is a Sausage-Eating Peace Monkey with a Battle Rating of 3.2. Food-Eating Battle Monkeys! Battle!

Boynton was re-reading The Seagull when she observed her own attire.
MEDVEDENKO:Why do you always wear black?
MASHA:I am in mourning for life. I am unhappy
BOYNTON: I am in mourning for life. I am unhappy. I am from Melbourne. I have a black Labrador.
But is a glorious Autumn day here and gloom is impossible to sustain in such sparkling weather. Likewise, Dorothy Parker snaps you out of it. (links via the Writing Life)
Quotations, and poems (like Comment and Fighting Words)
And finally if any more glorious whimsy is needed to boot up boynton, she just found a wonderful gallery of the post SurRealism work of Julian Hill. Here are but two examples from the fake tate:
I am perfectly balanced now...and... Don’t leave me this way.(ascension)
This exhibition space was found via the fabulous portal Visual Escapes, the imaginative visual art collection. And this was yet another mighty link from Speckled Paint. Sadly, because of download limits, boynton has only been able to explore two exhibits from one artist from one room so far. Roll on April, when the new (unlimited) deal begins.

Think we can safely say it’s Autumn now. Even though last week saw days of total fire ban followed by warnings of possible snowfalls, that certain buoyant crispness is about. If the change of season is not so comprehensively announced by foliage here as in another hemisphere, perhaps we can consult this site on local signs The seasons are changing and nature is responding... (via Plep)
So March is the time of "flying fox karma sutra", upside down sex. Lately boynton has seen the maginficent bats flying north east on balmy outdoor trivia nights, flying like obvious but elusive clues, over the head.
Recently the Age reported on the latest round of anti-bat tactics from the Botanic Gardens, while this site documents the sad history of the fruitless campaign. The same bat story – disappearing habitat, and anthropocentric retaliatory response. Go bat.

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)

Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974. (via bluejoh). Boynton has a good friend who is a third generation congregational member of the WW denomination, and thought she might like to see some early choral notes.
This link sent boynton on a happy hour of surfing the vintage link chain. Cate's garage sale finds is a find, "the sad truth is that I'm more drawn to the tacky and weird stuff",and this page on teenage grooming from the 50’s includes some wonderful spectacles.
More spectacle (shaded) writing here – curatorial notes on poplular culture. See for example cat woman, annie hall shades , rose coloured glasses and leopard heel shoes.
Op-shopping and web surfing share certain qualities. The thrill of the chase, the serendipitous, the odd found objet out of its original context now a cultural fragment full of other meanings. Perhaps the shopping trolleys are always clamouring round the edges of the web, the content sandwiched between the spam and the pop-ups, but the op-shop or flea philosophy can always deter or even subvert the corporate raiders. And like idle fossicking, there is always a sense that a lucky find is on offer. This morning following the trail, boynton found this fascinating essay on thrift or flea-philosophy from Vintage Voice.
Part one - However accidental or passionately desired, any made thing bears traces of intention, narrative, and desire. The worth of made things, from the Flea perspective, is in the amount and quality of such information they contain, whether that information takes the form of cultural history or craft or philosophy or pure aesthetics. Part two - how to - although to confess, boynton may well have "a high groove quotient", only she doesn't let on. Part three -Between the Flea expert and a mere hoarder, there is a universe of difference... (It's 'editorial ability', apparently)... In its pathological form (and there really is one), sufferers can lose sight of every inch of floor space, not to mention most of the bed, the kitchen sink and even, sometimes, the refrigerator.
Indeed - especially if the refrigerator itself is retro, and inevitably dying a slow retro (summer) death.

The serendipity files ctd. After yet another anthropomorphic canine post, boynton stumbled upon a blog through a path from (embarrassingly, idly) Blogger's “most recently published", The Talking Dog. Thought at first someone had gazumped bluejoh already, but see that it’s the blog’s canine conceit. A bonus is an extensive, detailed directory of the blogroll (the dog run), each with a designated dog breed. (Lileks like a labrador? we'll let it sit ) If boynton makes the blogger most recent board now, the recursive process may begin anew.

Blogs are the new novelist's commonplace book. Cory Doctorow on writers and blogging, at Boing Boing

Can Dogs Be Trained To Detect Epileptic Seizures (via Interconnected)
While some dogs evidently pick up on cues, or more likely the 'scent of a seizure’, training is problematic. “Every dog can [alert], but not every dog cares to," he said. Even if they have an alert disposition, "not all respond appropriately". In his youth, Doug may have the desirable “middle of the road cool temperament”, but I fear this would be his most likely response now. And as for Bronte, her over-alertness often leads her to a particular kind of inappropriate behaviour. A complication is that Douglas himself suffers from the odd idiopathic seizure, and his custodian, although overalert and closely bonded, is obviously not MOR cool enough to scent out the seizure threshold. Perhaps like this research on epilepsy in children would suggest, she should just continue his fatty food diet and chill.
The Cassius Coolidge dog prints were found via Speckled Paint. Boynton grew with these, they adorned the walls of her father’s workplace, and now reside in her parent’s kitchen

Some excerpts from the work of ecologist Aldo Leopold.(via Plep)

Also from Plep recently - an essay from a collection of Nature Writing by Robert Winkler. Requiem For A Farm desribes the loss of a remnant wild place, a portal to the disappearing world of nature, 'developed' for an athletics field

Must get smarter and get up earlier. Missed this interview by Red Symons with Barbara Feldon this morning, talking about Living Alone - and loving it.

And a photo from the world's most liveable, risible village.

Still on the canoe theme, we simply had to link to this tippy typewriterly photo, from a collection featured at Portage.

(Update - and a recording of In My Tippy Canoe at The Virtual Gramophone)

One of the less dumb things that boynton used to collect was anonymous snapshots.(One of the dumber things was a brief flirtation with sexist ashtrays from the 50's - although ironically that's just the sort of quirky oddity gallery fodder that the web and the blogosphere seem to inhale). Like many more serious collectors, boynton loves the narrative mystery of the found photo, enhanced sometimes by the quirks of composition, the absence of clues, when guesses (and dresses) are literally cropped. Yesterday she found a whole digital repository at the Lake Macquarie Library. Such cultural treasures here. How could she possibly go past a photo with the caption:
Louise Boon in a canoe called Frolic
Here are a few... more of her many favourites.

Teaching Pillikin to Bowl (stumps)
Mason strode across to him.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘you’re a bit conspicuous, young Nye. We don’t wear ties on the field, you know, and we all have white trousers. You’ll slip up in those rubber shoes, I’m afraid, too. And – and I should get a white scarf or something to keep your bags up.’
‘I would rather be as I am,’ said Nye.
‘Eh?’
‘What does it matter? I shall not be seen again in the team.’
‘But you can borrow a pair of whites, man, and some cricket boots.’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Nye.
‘But dash it all –‘ began Mason, then stopped.

Regular readers - yes you two - may have noticed a shift in house style since the Harley Eleven circus came to town. Blame Pillikin. A pattern of pillikin-n-linking has set in like compulsive crochet. We may defer to the third umpire. Or we may have to retire Pillikin tomorrow, as is indeed proper after 5 lively days. Maybe like many reluctant retirees, he will make the odd appearance after that, forestalling sporting mortality.

The future we were promised- an exhibition of the rediscovered works of illustrator and imagineer A.C.Radebaugh (via lindsay marshall) The promises are also in the advertising text: When and if flying saucers are real... when frozen plant foods are put on wheels (which is reminiscent of Leevi Lehto's When a car gets into an accident )
Also from lost highways – images from the exhibition The Family Car On Mars: American Station Wagon Design 1956-1962
This is one car print boynton could conceivably covet.
But Could a Holden look sexy? From a Powerhouse exhibition Cars and Culture
More Holdens here – slow to load, but worth the nostalgic weight in golden holdens

Teaching Pillikin to Bowl ctd
Eight minutes later, Winter, who to his friends seemed to have aged considerably during his stay at the wicket, succumbed, and returned to the pavilion babbling strangely of a ball which had broken thirteen times, dodging about the pitch as if following a crochet pattern, and finally, curling round his legs, had come back and shot it under his bat.

A font based on George Harrison's handwriting (via J walk) . (Wonder if the font irons out the ambiguity of the scrawl -apparently Eric Clapton once misread a scrawled title by George: and Bridge became Badge) And while it is possible to convert one's own handwriting into a font, it's not an offer boytnon is likely to take up. A small sample of whose handwriting can be seen here.
More of the handwritten here - a fascinating collection of found notes like this literary fragment . (via The Presurfer)

Teaching Pillikin to Bowl ctd
Mason looked at him to Winter, who stood waiting at the batting end, with the comfortable stance of a batsman thoroughly at home. Such a stance one sees in sketches of people like Hobbs. The bowler, who had been approaching in a curious zigzag manner, and at a pace which attained neither the dignity of a dead march nor the quaint jubilance of a jog-trot, came in due course to the wicket, whirled his arm fantastically from behind his back, and despatched the ball. Winter flung out his left leg confidently, lifted his bat, then hesitated, made as if to play back, and finally attempting a late cut, missed the ball altogether

Anil Dash on the Raging Cow blog row.
Ethical weblogging part one (via empty bottle)
Google and blogger as a memory extension exceeding Vannevar Bush’s legendary vision? This idea of personalized link collections, augmented by software, is straight from the pages of "As We May Think"(via plastic bag)

Today is a Rest Day for Pillikin and the Harley First XI.
(But boynton has found a note on one of Hylton Cleaver's contemporaries, the prolific Percy F. Westerman, who wrote (among hundreds)The War Of The Wireless Waves, and this title. )

The romance of short waves and televsion. (It means golf)
From Television History - the first 75 years (via Speckled Paint)
A collection of Vintage Cameras
(You can almost smell them. Not being a photographer, boynton would only ever buy cameras that don’t work -for the packaging)
The museum of online museums (via new things and Plep)

Long weekend. Even though she lives a few k away from the track (as the bat flies)– boynton is hearing the annual mosquito-like drone of formula one cars and tourettes-inducing roulettes flyovers. Wish some of the sounds of the Folk Festival could drift up from Port Fairy instead. She’d take the beat of a distant bodhran any day.

From Teaching Pillikin to Bowl ctd
‘…We must have someone who can go in, and show ‘em that this googlie stuff is all my eye.’
‘I begin to see light,’ said Rick
‘I’ve thought it over. This kid impressed me. He doesn’t bound on to my lap and plead for a trial. He just states quite casually that he’s played the man’s stuff all his life, and that, to him, it’s tosh.’
‘Ah!’ said Rick

Wonderful history of the dude ranch (via quiddity 3/3)
The western romance of the ranch naturally spread to Australia. Boynton’s grandmother had a friend who dressed in the style of a dude rancher in post-war inner suburban Sydney. It should be a subject close to Boynton’s heart of course. (The real boynton that is – the character in Our Little Girl. Our namesake.) For it is the "handsome riding instructor" dude who is luring Molly’s mother away on riding excursions, and who is eventually consolation prize dude for Miss B

From Teaching Pillikin to Bowl ctd.
Murmurings in the pavilion reached his ears soon after that first defeated batsman had come in. Rick, the gentleman in point, was explaining away his fall, basing his defence, so it seemed, chiefly upon the scandal that the man bowled googlies.

‘Eh?’ Said Mason.
Weldon nodded his head in the direction of the wicket.
'The googlie man,’ he observed
He was just picking up the ball, as Mason’s wandering gaze lighted upon him – a small boy with wild, untrained hair,and shirt sleeves that hung unbuttoned round his wrists; whose trousers, cut on the seafaring pattern, flapped in the breeze as he stepped jauntily away from the wicket.

The American Sign Museum (via Dublog)
The emergence of advertising in America 1850-1920 (via Incoming signals)
The vast Robert Opie Collection of British advertising memorabilia (via J walk)
(features some interesting retro domestic narrative imagery, just how we like it).

Boynton is fond of both cricket and nostalgia. Indeed she has often confused the two.
We have been enjoying the after grog blog’s world cup updates – even though Test cricket is her preferred form of the game. (There has to be sufficient space for boredom proper to set in just before the late batting collapse redeems the afternoon) So from a missplaced hankering for a cricket unbesmirched by mammon, and with a yearning for the archaic literary flourish found in old sporting texts, we present, pepys like, serialised snippets from The Harley First X1 by Hylton Cleaver. Information about the author is thin, though it would appear that he was quite prolific around the schoolboy traps in the 1920’s and 30’s.

From Teaching Pillikin to Bowl
"Shortly , another wicket fell, and Mason stood up, bracing himself gladiatorially. He stepped casually out of the pavilion, striding defiantly towards the battlefield. As he passed West at the non-batting end, the momentous words, ‘Stick it, Jammy Face,’ then, coming to his crease he realised happily that he was not facing the googlie man…Also Mason was fond of fast bowlers."

Turning once more he shot out his hand and grabbed Rick as he passed.
‘I say,’ said he. “Just come here a sec. I want to tell you –‘
“Half a jiffy,’ said Rick. “Just off to get a hat. Wait a mo."

People create internalized and evolving life stories that serve to reconstruct the past and anticipate the future.
The Foley Centre examines this Life-narrative data (via lindsay marshall). (Boynton’s going to have to watch her Redemption and Contamination quotient as well as her conflict and denouement now.)

Rocks shaped like shoes? (via reenhead)
(among the pizza slices, boots and bike seats, number 20 is definitely more labrador head than shoe).

Adventure Gear for your pet. (Boynton swears she doesn’t go looking for these. This link was on a page about a jazz duo)
Protect your dog from being scraped by heavy brush...(do they have protective indoor gear for being tapped with light brush by temporarily unhinged custodian who almost lost it? Or hit by falling kitchen broom in the mad rush outdoors on the scent of a kibble?)
The portable dog ramp would have legs in the suburb over the river. (It has been boynton’s observation in the lab-heavy and 4wd-cluttered precinct of boroondara that all muddy exhausted over 30 pound dogs need to walk unassisted into their SUV)

Cool and Strange Music Magazine's thrift shop compilation! "31 of what we feel are some of the most wacked-out obscure recordings we've ever heard!" (via Portage).

(Belatedly visiting Cool and Strange Magazine boynton also enjoyed the link to Searching for Mrs Miller "Charm often comes of imperfection".)

boynton has never felt the urge to decorate her dogs. Even the odd Christmas hat or ribbon is worn by Douglas with a degree of noble endurance that makes boynton feel guilty about insulting his essential dignity. So in answer to the Presurfer who posted these pet costumes, we would say it’s definitely animal cruelty.

Late night strolling round the side alleys of links, boynton found this review of a 3d slide show of LA architecture. A perfect communal event for retro fiends, who don the glasses and gasp in delight and horror at the vision and fate of California's googie heritage. Wish someone would do a local show. Then by chance boynton found this gallery of 20th century Melbourne architecture. Among the thumbnails are this aeroplane perspective and such icons as Myers… the NGV…and a grandstand. (Boynton used to walk past this twice a week without ever fully appreciating its deco curves. It was usually full of footballers and their brown and gold fans.)
And another chance find was this description of London at Interconnected The present encodes the past. London as a city of reused parts, of pieces accidentally left. But that bits of it are old isn't what defines it.
Boynton was thinking along similar lines walking round a small pocket of Richmond on Saturday night, somewhere between struggletown and tigerland, trying to clear the head of the heritage of old description.

It's boynton's favourite time of the year. Autumn. Apparently. Because oz goes for the bureaucratic designation of the first of the month instead of the equinox-calculated change of season, there is always this kind of meteorological unease. Like a whisper or a wink under the weather: it's not really autumn yet. Maybe we should call the three missing weeks "the preliminary season" or faux.
Despite believing that the web and google can locate any piece of trivia, boynton had to abandon her quest to find info on when Australia went for the first-of-the-month system. Her hunch is that it was discussed an an intercolonial conference at Corowa, and after the repeated failure of Sydney and Melbourne to agree on a common date, a compromise was suggested by this delegate (second from the left).

Pope up..."we started getting massive packet loss suddenly..." say Haloscan "This has been a pretty hectic month for us as one problem after another has poped up"

But is it thrift? On her way down to the park, boynton saw the new guy carefully assembling a window display in the salvo’s. On her return she noted the interesting tableau involving 2 black clad mannequins, much lace and a dog leash. Nice to know art’s getting a guernsey in the immediate neighbourhood.

From early feb jessamyn (abada abada) has an interesting post on William Gibson and the topic always at the back of boynton’s mind: the effect of blogging on other writing, whether the diversion of the “writing urge” is useful – or perhaps sometimes slightly profligate.

Boynton loves this Vintage TV site, ( via The Presurfer) but also feels that old surge of collector-regret. Last year she saw a perfect model on the nature strip of a well heeled suburb over the river, in the hard rubbish collection. She consulted with friends who nay-sayed the idea of taking it home. That old chestnut, storage. ( and realistically – how many conversation pieces do you need?) But when Boynton sees these TVs with the complimentary accessories (which she could immediately furnish herself) she puts it down as one of those dumb lost chances. Especially as she saw a similar one for sale for a hefty price in the local op-shop. She’ll just have to add it to her expanding collection of things not bought, the regretted non-purchases of markets past and lost opportunity-shop finds.

Paul McGeough's The last of the Marsh Arabs in today's Age describes the destruction of the 5000 year old civilization, and the so-called the "environmental crime of the century" (tough call - given the competiton?). The once idyllic water culture the size of Wales... has become a windswept desert, to be glimpsed only on the dusty postcard racks in the desolate hotels and souvenir shops of the region.
In an earlier article the Marsh lands are described as having “an aura of infinity”. Even such an aura was transient it seems.
The vanishing can be seen in the stark satellite images in this BBC summary
Boynton read about this destruction in a grim, ( what is an adequate adjective for despair) footnote in Douglas Botting’s biography of Gavin Maxwell. Maxwell had written about his travels in the area in A Reed Shaken By The Wind. Here he found Mijbil, the first of the famous otters that feature in The Ring Of Bright Water books. For those of us who weep for Mij – how do we respond to the extinction of his species, the annihilation of the ecosystem, the destruction of a people, the loss of an ancient civilisation?

Nora was recently given part of her grandmother’s linen collection, which included an impressive display of souvenir tea-towels. Like the tea-towels etc described in this collection, they are stiffly pristine, preserving the gaudiness of fauna, the parrots and pineapples. Boynton was taken with the snowy mountain skiers, the saturated queensland, and the bold red palette of the penguin parade. Of course they work as art for boynton – who has always seen things in ephemera, and has urged Nora to put then up on the walls of her (condemned) house. A farewell exhibition.
They kind of look like this... I wish... Elsewhere another is described as an easy domestic form for keeping a memory. In this case, the popular nostalgia of the tea-towel also serviced private memory

In her search for vintage linen info Boynton found this page and has fashioned an original poem from the quick tips.

16 ways with vintage fabrics
Press vintage guests into service
With a remnant of ticking
Monogram collectible guests.
Before they do a runner
Make mismatched guests in
Worn out men’s shirts feel at home
Drape over tables, lined with a stack
In your garden for a summer party
Replace dreary with cheery with dreary
Before napkins in a wicker basket
sunfaded

The loss of commenting shouldn’t make boynton feel this is only half a blog, but it does. Dialogue disabled. Even if it’s just the possibility of dialogue. A switch must have occurred somewhere in the blogging mindset that was once happy enough to do monologues. Perhaps its something about validating the public voice, a bow to the audience. When “commenting is temporarily offline” audience functionality is switched off, the dynamic is dead, the theatre dark.

All day there has been a man on the neighbour's roof replacing the spouting. All the windows face south, the roof is about six feet away (as the sparrow flies). Boynton rigged up her old vintage curtain depicting cafe scenes from fifties Paris, Copenhagen, London, Verona. That means her view of the man has been mainly this and this as he walks along with his ladder. You get used to disjointed living in these terraces, or Fitzroy caravans as they are sometimes called.

"Alfred found much pleasure in reading"
from An Island Story - A history of England For Boys and Girls by H.E. Marshall (via Plep)

Boynton has found much pleasure in Kevan's Kenning Game Engine ever since bluejoh alerted her to its diversionary/literary appeal.

The humidity files. A Jack Russell Terrier evidently has a shorter fuse than a Labrador.
Bronte spent an hour mousing the other night, alternating between squeaking and wagging her tail. Then suddenly she snapped, barked impatiently and gave up. Obviously just too muggy to mouse…. So a benign-like-mine labrador would be a better inclusion in Jim’s early humidity warning system. Boynton has spent a languorous time following up her reply to Jim, about the Rawson Solution. Her source for this homily was once hearing a 3LO talk-back caller say that she had investigated the best place to live nationally for someone with (medical) low humidity tolerance and found it to be this small town that was built to service the Thomson Dam project. She sounded authoritative, but Boynton can find no web data to substantiate the claim. Just some pictures. A bonus is mini-golf on your doortstep. And a small maxi course ('15 years and never been parred") Would boynton’s vision of the caravan-canasta playing lifestyle finally be her place in the world, or a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Of course boynton could only be happy in a van that looked something like this. A repro retro model would look the part, but could never quite recapture the vintage baggage. Like all nostalgic constructs, it’s the outer shell only of memory. Boynton and a friend were once fortunate to hire a genuinely old style o’night van that had the requisite spring-loaded huntsman waiting in the venetians, an old half-hearted toaster and worn vinyl coverings. It was your quintessential non-descript experience. And this van predated the models that boynton’s family once hired, that cluttered up the princes highways of childhood, so there was little attendant folk memory happening while consciously eating rise-a-reeso off plastic plates. Nevertheless she has somehow developed an interest in old caravans. Until quite recently they could be seen quite commonly in country paddocks, but numbers would seem to be declining. She will never be quite so driven as this man who rescues them from field-rot in England. But she could just about consider building her own teardrop.

Pulp fiction... "We have a new look" announced the Age yesterday. Uh oh. We know such improvements in formatting can often be a masking agent for dumbness creep. In the etxra there was a big spread on how to slice a mango. After filleting, you score small sections without cutting through the skin... Hmm, there's got to be an analogy there thought boynton as she navigated through all the sections of superficial liftouts.

It rained.
Yesterday walking the dogs up to the oval there was a buzz about, in the light drizzle, in the tolerance for wet shoes and slow traffic. In the joy.
Today Boynton heard a senior forecaster warn radio listeners of the perils of over exercising in the humidity. It’s unusual, almost tropical. Tempers fray in Safeway, toddlers testing the patience of adjacent trolleys, their underground carpark becomes a whispering gallery for indiscreet kids , voices amplify in the suburbs, domestics are broadcast across the street, houses and gardens are high, a girl pulls her small black lab puppy slowly across the pavement, a man sweats through his tee shirt on a short round trip up the road for milk.
In the servo Boynton could not add up and apologized poorly to the cashier.
“It’s the humidity’
“Don’t worry it took me a while to work it out”
“People are getting agro out there” with a nod to the vast hazy bellicose basin of greater Melbourne .
“Yeah. I’ve noticed” he said, watching the TV.

More musing on what it was about that cover that caught her...The colours, the mythology, the horse, the aerial dream?
A couple of interviews with the illustrator, Pauline Baynes.
A collection of her covers
The social history of children’s book illustration
The human yearning to fly in mythology
Some great aviation quotes “The magic and wonder of flight”

boynton had a "blog dream" last night. Except the blog was actually an "installation". On the verandah there were six piles of 3 books apparently in categories. One was called "grief". Perhaps that is link-blogging. Assembling a few eclectic sources and letting them sit.

A writerly friend emailed this link with the disclaimer: “check out these pictures"
This is Jim’s excellent definition of fractals: "They are mathematical constructions …(objects with frational dimension possessing two key properites: self-similarity - same form on any scale - and infinite complexity - same density of detail on any scale)"
Q: But is it art?
A temporary 404 message got Boynton searching for another fractal page, and she found this “retro” gallery . (A: Anything retro is art enough for Boynton)

To return the compliment, Boynton had just been browsing a wonderful vinyl record cover collection via J-walk blog. Here is one for Jim and the mathematicians.
Though this is more your (boyntonesque) cup of char cha-cha.
And it was interesting to read on the about page that good old Sergio gets the most views.
Record covers were another one of those things Boynton used to collect. Unless she goes for the storage solution adopted by some ephemera fiends, she just has to draw the line somewhere, alas. (She did buy four more bulky space killers today at the op shop however – and not a canine tome among them!)

A heap of junk for code links to some great green reading at In a Dark Time. Boynton especially liked “the tonic of wilderness”.
And for more of the tonic see Fragments Stars, Invisible by Day.
Don't we all need some of this elixir at the moment.

Urban Alice's - uber alles - put Boynton in mind of Charles Blackman. But perhaps the sense was less Alice's foot than Blue dream

Boynton just went Into The Wardrobe - a web site devoted to C.S Lewis. (via Plep). Naturally she headed straight to the pictures, (Multimedia/Picture Album). And remembered The Magician’s Nephew.
This is the cover from the edition my brother was reading one summer. Boynton used to gaze into it. There was something transcendent in the iconography or the classic green (euro) paradise palette. That alchemy of illustration -as if it’s coded for children who can see things under the surface. For Boynton it conjures the associative cluster of Christmas holidays at the beach, a house full of family, eating chocolate on chenille bedspreads while deeply reading light adventure stories, talking to my brother who was resting up after engineering dams on the sand in the morning, the cupboard full of games, the day full of possibilities.

Claire Thompson, author David Foster Wallace's girlfriend of two years, stopped reading his 67-page breakup letter at page 20, she admitted Monday. ( via the null device)

Last night boynton was leap-blogging, following a link about...links and link-blogging, the merits of lists v "content"...when she found herself here.
What I don't like about most automated link lists is that they are like road signs in Wonderland, indicators that appear and disappear, providing no context, leaving no trace.
Roadmaps of the Ever-NOW.
(The trace of this trail was plastic bag via paranoid fish via anil's daily links)
As I've said in the past, I feel weblogs are in some way the oral history of DataSpace.
Song-lines that can be followed to unknown and wonderful places

Casting that writerly glance over the shoulder, Boynton has worried lately about the desirable linkage rate for blogs, the strong suspicion that readers do not have the time to follow the leads. But on the (server) writer side, links are the traces, the data storage, the roadmap. Perhaps she needs to sus out a cyber caterpillar for advice on style.
The wonderland reference was that serendipitous thing again, that always motivates this reader to follow links wherever, the mysterious lure. Boynton had been meaning to post this old Tv Ad about the need for a guide in the info wilderness, that seemed to describe the lost in-space data fest of the web. And then she had her own Alice story to post.

Last Friday Boynton walked into the city. Her path took her through the manicured Fitzroy gardens with their exotics and drought-defying greenness into the bright and relatively empty city streets. Hitting the grid, one’s stroll suddenly changes into that binary rhythm of light cycles. Around Exhibition street Boynton noticed a latter day Alice. She had long golden tresses, a short A line skirt that swayed as she hurried and circa 72 sort of shoes, with black clicky heels. In her wake – the turning male heads.As well as her costume, it was her anxious demeanour, a strange mix of distraction and purpose, the way she looked to be following something in the distance, worried about the time, tapping her foot at the lights. Every second window she passed was festooned with roses and hearts and white soft toys .Then suddenly she ducked into an arcade, her mysterious destination. It was a Business school.
And alas, aint that the Alice (or the white rabbit) of our times.

Today (or is that yesterday already?) on the excellent today in literature site (via Portage) is a feature on A.B. Paterson and that officially unofficial aussie iconic (ironic?) song Waltzing Matilda. Midi files of the song, origins, and variants can be heard at mudcat which also features a thread on the great auf der walz quest – the possible germanic origins of the song ( erzähle mir keine Märchen! "Give me none of your cock and bull")
More on the etymology here
Or Waltzing Matilda in Esperanto? (from Roger Clarke's excellent site)
There are some good audio files on the National Library site “There are more sound recordings of 'Waltzing Matilda' than any other Australian song. The discographer Peter Burgis claims ‘Waltzing Matilda’ has been recorded by over 500 artists”…(and don’t we know it) ...Boynton's favourite here is the George Travare's Jazz Group 1945 recording but the gum leaf version is also worth sampling.
Finally a spaceage swaggie , (from the Waltzing Matilda Suite at Art Gallery Gauvin) "Symbol of our past, a Swagman holds onto the values of our heritage, while he beckons us to the challenges of our future"

Google buys Blogger. See Boing Boing for more. Hope they can get the archives et al sorted.

The latest group to have their history unhidden is dogs apparently. (Boynton may at last consider doing her masters.)
Dogs, like women before them, have been confined, illiterate and voiceless, to the domestic sphere, and so dog history, like women's history, must be found in private places. Many canine properties are discussed in this review (via Arts and letters daily) including communication: the slow tail wag, with tail at half-mast ("I want to know what you mean, but I just can't quite figure it out"), the essential dolittle debate:' If dogs could talk, what would they say? They might be dull' , and the argurment that “sometimes an owner may be better off with a dog that is not the sharpest knife in the drawer” ... Which is good news for Doug who has always been pleasantly middling in matters grey. Bronte has a bit more up top, but doesn’t apply herself. She should do a few quizzes like this. (via Moby Lives)
Along the same theme, see Speckled Paint for a wonderful canine post.