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)