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.