More house-hunting with Nora. Boynton loves going along for the Open For Inspection ride with friends, as it's a rare glimpse inside sleeping suburban exteriors. Unfortunately most of the houses inspected are teetering on the brink of the dive range, secretly biding time before demolition. Alas, the house behind the etched glass palms did not live up to its entrance. Despite the coiled fifties fluoro. Sometimes retro can indeed be weird or badly wired or plain grotty. An original dinette sounds enviable in principle (in books or on line) but despite boynton trying her best to get comfortable in the high hipness of it all, a meal there would be a very sad and stiffed back affair. Like an old caravan. You don't want to linger hemmed in eating at funny angles.
On the other hand, in another universe, this is the retro dream. (Jetset Modern - via City of Tomorrow, a wonderful portal site found via Speckled Paint)
This incredible home is near Chicago, built in 1955. It's owned by a couple with a great collection of 1950s interior decorative objects and furniture.
Even if the dream is demanding:
After living in the house for a few months, the owners realized that all their old furniture had to go. This house demanded something special, and original to the house the search was on for mid-century modern furniture and objects to complete the interior.
(Unfortunately a lot of the mid century objects sit level with the exact height of a wagging labrador tail).

Animal Animator (via Sublimate... indirectly via Speckled Paint)

Also on Sublimate - and furthering the pastiche theme - a Polythene Pastiche

Beatles Discography A splendid time is guaranteed for all (via Incoming Signals).
(There is of course a logical albeit oblique link here to the Pastiche material)

The Official Site of Rupert Bear (via Plep)
See the essay on the Rupert's appeal via the Nutwood Newsletter. " the joy of a fully self-consistent alternative reality"
Are Australian readers on a mass migration back to their childhood?
Why do adults like Harry Potter? (boynton hasn't read HP yet - despite having been given TPS by her young nephew who theorised: You've just got a block about it)
One of the first things boynton ever looked up on the Internet was info on Milly-Molly-Mandy. As you do. There was this site that"is not a hagiographic tribute". Some pages of the non satiric ilk here, from a site which also provides info on MMM's author Joyce Lankaster Brisley.

more found letters from litter. Today Boynton found a crushed Black Douglas can, a heart shaped stone, and a piece of packing crate with the word Corinthian. Do
Letters from the bitumen.

Yesterday a hot air balloon landed on a suburban Melbourne rooftop
House owner Catherine Rose said she heard a loud thump.
"I thought it was our washing machine spinning off, and then - boom - it wasn't the washing machine," she said.
"Like a bubble of detergent, balloons are carried by the wind"
If this balloon landed on boynton’s house, it’d be the boom of nostalgia when all the kids kicked footies indiscriminately in back yards – kick-to-roof.
There is a magical aspect of ballooning, is it the essential lightness of being, the story book associations - or the circus appeal?
As in Europe, ballooning in the United States became a regular form of entertainment at fairs and celebrations. The foremost American aeronauts were Durant, John Wise, Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, John LaMountain, and Rufus Wells. The public referred to them as "professors." Wise often dropped cats or dogs in parachutes from his balloons. Sometimes, Wise permitted his balloon to burst and serve as a parachute to lower him to the ground. He also invented the ripping panel on the balloon
The first balloon flight with passengers -a cock, a duck, and a sheep
John Wise's niece Lizzie Ihling was also an aeronaut, and a lyrical observer of the lofty appeal.
No! No! I will not down to earth --
I'd rather stay up here
Around the scenes of Joy and Mirth
They greet my eye and ear.

The non literalist Easter: Existentialist theologian Paul Tillich on the meaning of ressurection
"...The word `resurrection' has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. But resurrection means the victory of the new state of things, the New Being born out of the death of the Old. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow...Out of disintegration and death something is born of eternal significance... Resurrection happens NOW, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us...in nature and (in the) universe." (THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR BEING, Paul Tillich, pp. 169, 170) (via an easter message Rev. Don Beaudreault)
Easter faith for Spong is essentially about personal experience - the revival of hope and the overcoming of despair
A bit of the literalist - a reworking/revival of the Keith Green/Annie Herring classic "the Easter Song" (source)
Was Jesus Mexican? (via The Presurfer)

Palms and psalms. Nora has taken temporary care of a rogue dog, the definitive farm dog, a blue heeler. Boynton – who grew up in a house full of dogs and siblings - whose very pram was tended by an old border collie cross – still baulks when Flo enters the room. Something about the pointy ears or the yellow eyes causes a flight trigger. But she is actually quite benign, and waddles about anxiously with her fat egg-fed belly- possibly in a state of confusion about her exile and adoptive pack. Yesterday we took her for a run at a large free-running park and of course she ran off. She made a beeline for a bicycle in the distance, before idly falling in again with her strange captors.The park was the setting for a Passion Play, and our pack stumbled across three wooden crosses lying in wait on the ground near the Bunya Pine. The dogs inspected them religiously. On Good Friday – or Karfreitag – Boynton always likes to play “On the Willows” from Godspell– even if the theology is NQR – its mournful poignancy seems to go with the Kar
Nora has officially been given notice of impending demolition and is house-hunting. Hunting out obscure pockets of overlooked houses. Boynton hopes she will go for one with etched glass doors. Such is the power of featurism, or the poverty of diversion, that a retro etched palm tree is all it would take for boynton’s heart to gladden every time she calls in to visit. Meanwhile the old apple trees of peel street, and the resident possums are probably enjoying their last season.

Seeing this automobile furniture site (via the Presurfer) reminded boynton of a few of those car-centric plots featured on the Hatch's plot bank. They may have wheels afterall.
970 decides to rent lavish furnishings and car to impress old friend
44 tries to make expensive new car into art
816 tries to fix their own car
900 friend in danger - wrecks car on the way

A review of Lucinda Williams World Without Tears (via eclectica)
The problem is, Williams' work has always been defined by that struggle, by reaching so deeply within herself to prove her naysayers wrong, that her newfound success seemed something of a Pyrrhic victory. Artistic and material success is wonderful, but who wants to hear songs about how great things are going?

If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me
All time best of the worst country song titles (via scrubbles)
I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I'm Gonna be a Diamond Someday)

We’ve been thinking about doorbells and visitors lately since Scott of the eye alerted boynton to the possible slippery slope down to virtual hermitville. Once upon a time boynton bought an excellent electronic type, that she swiftly had to exchange. She had managed to buy one with the same frequency channel as her neighbours They were alerted to this fact instantly as a friend of boynton's, who shall remain nameless Nora, had been delighting in testing out the sonic range of the new toy, a hundred times in a minute. Ever since that poor model died, she has relied on the kindness of her labrador’s ears. But these are steadily diminishing in keenness. A simple doorbell with an appropriate chime may indeed be a good thing. Or perhaps a full on strobe effect with a menagerie of sound effects to choose from. (The ubersportingpundit crowd would no doubt go for “crickets at night”)
But what about when the doorbell rings by itself? Of course there may well be a rational answer to this. Perhaps the new Hypersonic Sound technology may provide the answer. (via Ron Bailey, but alas, the fascinating NYTimes article is now archived)
What excuse then for the hermit when a stray visitor shoots a sonic bullet into her distant head, blogging or not.

Six months up today for boynton. A mere blink in the blogosphere. Six months of writing in the third person - of minding the sneaky first person pronoun creep! Not even on MT yet - although mindful, watchful of the great to MT or not to MT debate.Biding time on Blogspot with its banner and google connections. Boynton could follow others and reflect on blogging like Fred did so well after a year, or Virulent Memes after four. But for now she'll just quote Patsy:"You can't have too many handbags, er, shoes, and, um, hats and, er, gloves".

Writerly... J walk recently featured two sites for stumped writers needing plot ideas Hatch’s plot bank features over 2000 scenarios to spark ideas. But boynton is not sure how dramatically sustainable some are for playwrighting purposes:
64 stupid cow clock with swinging tail has to go
128 ideal mate wears inappropriate clothes to mountains –(yes - there’s a treatment in that)
while readers will know that this idea is right up boynton’s alley
354 link to website promises the wrong thing
Some merely reflect boynton’s life:
257 mistakes a phrase for a sign of love
262 starts collecting stray pets
338 plays the piano quite badly
198 throws a big party - only three come (isn’t three a big party)
some seem to have more promise as a couplet:
97 finds childhood goals now within grasp
98 drives off the road for no apparent reason
or work better as an inversion:
376 college stories are too frank for spouse
boynton prefers the spin off: college stories are too spouse for frank.

As well as offering 36 + 1 dramatic situations the other link goes down the randomizer path with its oblique strategies.
There are random (form style) characters here, while the more surreal shuffle about here. This site features the cut-up technique while a poem (or prompt?) is created by stopping the random flow here
Yesterday Meredith pointed to a great site Is it a book, one of whose links is to the Surrealist game “Exquisite corpse” There are written and pictoral forms of this game, but both involve the same principle: that the players each make a contribution to the whole without having knowledge of any of the other players' contributions. A great gallery of these can be seen here.
Sometimes it seems that blogging itself is a form of this game, a variation of "consequences" - an unfolding collective collage of links, trackback and comments. Cross currents of countless cut up conversations.

boynton found she had some Twain up in the higher reaches of the stacks, (the toppling piles that is) and was reading from his Australian travels “on the rail again”
It has actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We could have saved seven by walking. However, there was no hurry.
Hunting down Horsham links the other day, boynton herself did a virtual tour of Victoria with the excellent regional galleries trail. Starting with Horsham, she got stuck in Warrnambool, and actually forgot to close down Sale. So when she hopped off line there it was, the small window of the gallery interior, spinning away like some giddy screensaver or compulsive culture vulture. Virtual Museum fatigue.

Flying Puppet's Bosch (via The Presurfer. Shockwave)

Just when boynton was getting almost weighed down by various aspects of virtuality - reading about various cyber charades, the fake flirting personae of romance, and the attendant paranoia of new communication, of reading too much into the lines, or of reading (and disclosing) too little – of a project that tries to build a portrait from the known on-line self and filling in the guesses of the unknown, she herself missed a real visitor at her door. She of course was blogging and didn’t hear the knock.
“I was in your suburb, so I came around t say hello.”
Of course her deaf old dog didn’t hear him either and her neighbours were engaged in very loud acts of renovation at the time. But it was sobering to see his handwritten note on the door.
"I know how much fun it is to get a letter on your door from a real person.”

Of course if we'd been living in the nineteenth century he may have left his CDV - carte de visite - (of course that's literally not figuratively). And some splendid tintypes here.

Still on TV – we’re up for the last episode of Ken Burns' Mark Twain tonight.
It was amusing – albeit in the usual our-place-in-the-world reality check way – that the only mention of oz- that us – in MT's Australian travels was his appearance in Horsham, a small town in the Victorian Wimmera. A fitting sidelight to a footnote?
If you have a spare 20 mins a good interview with Ken Burns here from ABC Sydney.
Mistakes in the Twain documentary
A parody of Jazz.
Official PBS site

It was rather bizarre seeing Michael Parkinson interview Michael Aspel last night on Parkinson. Two silver haired seventy year old gentleman-talk show hosts, of the "relaxed, well-groomed, and attentive to his guests' feelings" school (vintage?) chatting about chatting. At times it was a mirror image, revived after the oblivion of parody. (Boynton knows she's seen at least one sketch where the host interviews himself). There seemed to be a levelling from age, a candour of spent rivalry and ambition, admissions of limitations, an alliance of survival. Aspel confessed to blandness as an asset, because in the industry blandness can (eventually) mean versatility.
When Aspel and Co hit our screens a few years back we thought we were getting dumbed down Parky. We remembered the glory days - the classic Parkinson moments when the talk broke free of the contrived format and meandered into revelation. But the revived show seemed to suffer in comparison to the memory. More guests, less time, more spin, more cues. No room for conversation, just a skim through a standard chronology like any on-line quiz, or bad eulogy. There often seems to be a sense of disappointment from the participants who are primed for ritualistic confession, but get the on-line quiz instead. And from the audience who don't buy the alleged shorter attention span, dumbed down demographic push, but who still seek something serious in the circus. A moment or two of rough truth.

As a child boynton fell for Burt Ward big time. (It's alright apparently because Customers also bought a poster of James Dean).
So it was exciting, but disturbing to hear him sing on this amazing site (via Bluejoh)
Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out
I went into a spin…
Oh!…I didn’t know what kind of trip I was in
Orange Colored Sky.

As a follow up to the subterranean shopping centre blues post of 9/4, Mall–aise (one of several photo essays by Herman Krieger.(via Plep)

Boynton was reading Tom Milner’s latest (10/4) on Paul Fussell’s study in Class in America and saw the Baseball caps indicator:
"Or the wearing of baseball caps, especially when the plastic fastener faces front. If the cap is also "legible," the lower the class."
Yesterday on the way to the city Boynton was caught hatless, cap-less in the warm April sun. (Her dark house never gives any real indication of the climate). So she ducked into her shop – (Salvo’s – luckily they flourish in this locality) to invest some pence in head covering. Lucky day – a bargain bin in a bargain store full of the old promotional caps of single-use campaigns and events. It was a matter of sorting through which brand was the least offensive, ( she would never wear a “crazy John’s” unless of course she had just been scorned by him), or which golf tournament or wine-tasting was the most obscure to recast the label as mysterious text. But after 10 minutes of rifling through these discarded corporate caps she gave up and chose a black one that sported “Pert Angus”. (Is that a variation of “Stupid Cow”?) It set her back 50 cents and 15 minutes.


The semiotics of t-shirts
Excellent archive of a Victoria and Albert Exhibition Brand New.

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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