Friday, May 16, 2003
Thought Nora and other music teachers and or Latin jazz fans might enjoy this hep cat keyboard. It's got Bronte in, and number 8 is a fairly good rendition of doug's lounge voice (via the Presurfer)
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Elsewhere indirectly boynton has been honoured with the slur: tree hugger. While she has never actually committed this arboreal act in public, she embraces the concept. Indeed she has often come close to hugging one of the many beautiful specimens of gums that line the river or reside in other people’s gardens. It's a fondness firmly rooted in the family tree – thick with gardeners, landscapers, nurserymen, (and axe-men). Her lovely nurseryman uncle loved (and lived) that well-known quotation And it was he with boynton’s father who one afternoon knocked up a small tree house in a Cyprus for boynton in her childhood. Best house boynton’s ever known. Living under the spell of The Magic Faraway Tree, Grandfather Gumtree, in Frank Dalby Davidson’s Children Of The Dark People or that wonderful Gum Tree house in The Magic Pudding.Maybe it's merely the Arcadian dream, or the folk memory of a primate, but she can understand that primal call of tree watching, tree climbing, and tree-top living. (via J walk)
When she was hunting down images of trees in the State Library of Victoria Pictures catalogue, she found this sobering list of titles, another kind of poem-generator
Tree feller’s feet in stirrups of safety harness
Timber! Tree falling after felling
Two men preparing to fell a tree
Man in harness preparing to fell a tree
Man up tree preparing to fell it
Four koalas on a tree branch
Koala and young in a tree
Three koalas on a tree branch
Man on horse watching axe-man felling tree
Axe making bottom mark on tree
When she was hunting down images of trees in the State Library of Victoria Pictures catalogue, she found this sobering list of titles, another kind of poem-generator
Tree feller’s feet in stirrups of safety harness
Timber! Tree falling after felling
Two men preparing to fell a tree
Man in harness preparing to fell a tree
Man up tree preparing to fell it
Four koalas on a tree branch
Koala and young in a tree
Three koalas on a tree branch
Man on horse watching axe-man felling tree
Axe making bottom mark on tree
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
A photo of Women playing hockey 1890 (that's ice to us in oz) (via Portage)
boynton saw that shot shortly after rediscovering this wonderful (ripping yarn) history of an English Croquet Championess Lily Gower. who sometimes was observed to make a meaningless shot into a corner of the ground. In point of fact, she was busy learning the game...we like the description of Lily's husband and fellow player Reginald Beaton (Was she then always Beaton?)
D.M.C. Prichard describes him as follows:- "Of slight build with a black Mephistophelian beard, bowing a little from the shoulders with an oddly loping walk, Beaton was not an exciting player, but he had a machinelike accuracy..." In September 1905, when he was asking for the hand of Lily in marriage, he wrote "I don't know that I have much to recommend me - beyond playing croquet and music, I am not much good."
The photographs are good too. ("Miss Insole" is a perfect- rather pinchable- name.)
Lately croquet's trollin' the blog like Pillikin, but as long as boynton stumbles across a link like this, she'll keep an anthropological eye out.
boynton saw that shot shortly after rediscovering this wonderful (ripping yarn) history of an English Croquet Championess Lily Gower. who sometimes was observed to make a meaningless shot into a corner of the ground. In point of fact, she was busy learning the game...we like the description of Lily's husband and fellow player Reginald Beaton (Was she then always Beaton?)
D.M.C. Prichard describes him as follows:- "Of slight build with a black Mephistophelian beard, bowing a little from the shoulders with an oddly loping walk, Beaton was not an exciting player, but he had a machinelike accuracy..." In September 1905, when he was asking for the hand of Lily in marriage, he wrote "I don't know that I have much to recommend me - beyond playing croquet and music, I am not much good."
The photographs are good too. ("Miss Insole" is a perfect- rather pinchable- name.)
Lately croquet's trollin' the blog like Pillikin, but as long as boynton stumbles across a link like this, she'll keep an anthropological eye out.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Also thanks to the marvellous Solpsistic Gazette, another great found photo site Time Tales to browse slowly at leisure. What started as a webpage of novelties became a collection of lost lives . And while it may be that a picture needs memories to be an image boynton thinks they also need time. So she’s only briefly glimpsed the Fifties so far, but what treasures are there, reminiscent of one of mon favourite films, mon oncle.
Curiouser and curiouser as someone might say, re the secret life of croquet. Or perhaps boynton is now reading double and triple entendres into innocuous Xbourgeoisie lawn games. (thanks in part to a recent commenter) For when she saw Mallet Mischief over at The Solipsistic Gazette - alas she wasn't thinking Percussion . Is there something she never knew here? Of course she had read about the legendary "sextuple experience" ...
The funny thing was that the person sitting next to me trying to cheer me up and willing me to get a turn at least while I was being the victim of a Bamford Sextuple was Lionel Tibble, the victim of my own Sextuple some three months later
and heard the songs serenading the virtues of the nocturnal variety, but it's probably just as well boynton has an acute allergy to anything sold as Xtreme.
The funny thing was that the person sitting next to me trying to cheer me up and willing me to get a turn at least while I was being the victim of a Bamford Sextuple was Lionel Tibble, the victim of my own Sextuple some three months later
and heard the songs serenading the virtues of the nocturnal variety, but it's probably just as well boynton has an acute allergy to anything sold as Xtreme.
Monday, May 12, 2003
"For the loneliness and strangeness of your ways. Be greeted!" Boynton found this passage at Whiskey River affirming.
Another shot of the poem generator spawned this:
boynton has fallen in The op
shops held out
over the metaphysics of
the therapeutic
goal of storage
which is almost entering that hocus-pocus horoscope territory, that strange effectiveness in divination. Boynton has been out scouting op-shops in this subdued suburb: it is the way to get your boynton bearings. Alas, St Vincents was jam-packed . It was recommended by a lovely neighbour who has lived here for 37 years and talked to boynton tete a tete over the fence, like that standard routine of early TV, that primal puppet show.As she fled the madding crowd empty handed, she heard “Monday!” muttered like a curse by the otherwise chirpy sales team. Ideally you seek a bit of solace in an op shop, communing with old goods and the “flubber” of bric a brac. She found this in the smaller one up the street and could gaze at the ramekins and Strauss Waltzes until a telephone appeared, and she bought it "untested". As she walked back along the sleepy street she wondered if the overly shorn nature-strips would ever shame her into subscribing.
Later returning from a run in the park, Flo jumping over the low cream brick fences like a toddler.
Yesterday up in the country, boynton's sister took her out to view the block of land where she plans to build. As they discussed family and envisaged living rooms in the dusk, they were watched closely by a kangaroo.
boynton has fallen in The op
shops held out
over the metaphysics of
the therapeutic
goal of storage
which is almost entering that hocus-pocus horoscope territory, that strange effectiveness in divination. Boynton has been out scouting op-shops in this subdued suburb: it is the way to get your boynton bearings. Alas, St Vincents was jam-packed . It was recommended by a lovely neighbour who has lived here for 37 years and talked to boynton tete a tete over the fence, like that standard routine of early TV, that primal puppet show.As she fled the madding crowd empty handed, she heard “Monday!” muttered like a curse by the otherwise chirpy sales team. Ideally you seek a bit of solace in an op shop, communing with old goods and the “flubber” of bric a brac. She found this in the smaller one up the street and could gaze at the ramekins and Strauss Waltzes until a telephone appeared, and she bought it "untested". As she walked back along the sleepy street she wondered if the overly shorn nature-strips would ever shame her into subscribing.
Later returning from a run in the park, Flo jumping over the low cream brick fences like a toddler.
Yesterday up in the country, boynton's sister took her out to view the block of land where she plans to build. As they discussed family and envisaged living rooms in the dusk, they were watched closely by a kangaroo.
Saturday, May 10, 2003
boynton has been helping Nora unpack and arrange furniture - testing boynton's bad spatial concepts. The new house is very generous with a surfeit of storage (there is no such thing), but boynton comes to the task after years of cupboard deprivation, so is still overly cautious with breaking out the crockery and spreading the condiments and cannisters far and wide. Nora wanted to place a speaker against a small cupboard, but boynton could not allow such a spatial transgression. "I can never say no to a cupboard" she observed soberly "I will never ever reject a cupboard again". A symbolic portrait of the scene could be seen here, (boynton is not quite this old) with this detail capturing symbolically poor old Abby's senile gnashing of teeth when the arthritis strikes or the blue heeler interloper nips her heels or things jump off the shelf onto her. Last defence against life's little indignities.
The pictures above were found hunting down (on a tangent) Old Mother Hubbard. This is a wonderful early (1819) illustration of the verse which makes more and more sense in ethological terms as boynton turns hubbard. Flo the blue heeler interloper - who still looks to boynton (used to the dome head and pendulant ears of a labrador) like a dog wearing a super hero mask, has already drawn first verse.
from old boynton hubbard
She picked up The Age
to give her a scare
And when she made eye contact
Flo was laughing with that c’mon hit me hit me bravado because her active brain would rather latch onto any game even one wrapped up with a baddog reprimand than quietly contemplate her existance
She went to the park
to give them a run
and when she got there
Flo rushed a walking group of elderly citizens who fortunately found her amusing I think because it was such a sparkling morning full of philanthropy.
She went to the car
To take them all home
And when she looked up
Doug was fast wandering off up the middle of the road ga ga and deaf and cringed dreadfully when boynton hauled him back by his collar at a mad trotting pace.
boynton will keep working on the metre.
The pictures above were found hunting down (on a tangent) Old Mother Hubbard. This is a wonderful early (1819) illustration of the verse which makes more and more sense in ethological terms as boynton turns hubbard. Flo the blue heeler interloper - who still looks to boynton (used to the dome head and pendulant ears of a labrador) like a dog wearing a super hero mask, has already drawn first verse.
from old boynton hubbard
She picked up The Age
to give her a scare
And when she made eye contact
Flo was laughing with that c’mon hit me hit me bravado because her active brain would rather latch onto any game even one wrapped up with a baddog reprimand than quietly contemplate her existance
She went to the park
to give them a run
and when she got there
Flo rushed a walking group of elderly citizens who fortunately found her amusing I think because it was such a sparkling morning full of philanthropy.
She went to the car
To take them all home
And when she looked up
Doug was fast wandering off up the middle of the road ga ga and deaf and cringed dreadfully when boynton hauled him back by his collar at a mad trotting pace.
boynton will keep working on the metre.
Friday, May 09, 2003
An archive of found themed photos by Joachim Schmid (via Brad Zellar) Planes and girls and prams.
Some info of his ongoing project Pictures from the Street here
the more photographs l've been finding the more my way of perception changed: now I don't find photographs any more, I look for them - just like a truffle pig
Perhaps this mirrors boynton's own experience of browsing:blogging has made it more purposeful, though there's always so much to be found. It's a Pound of found...Looking for some bio info on Joachim Schmid, boynton's first link was that flubbery pidgin of the Google translation page. Joachim Schmid é a thief and mentireiro...and different escolmas dun fluxo incessant from photos produced globally is seguen to conform to base two fascinating proxectos of Schmid.
Some info of his ongoing project Pictures from the Street here
the more photographs l've been finding the more my way of perception changed: now I don't find photographs any more, I look for them - just like a truffle pig
Perhaps this mirrors boynton's own experience of browsing:blogging has made it more purposeful, though there's always so much to be found. It's a Pound of found...Looking for some bio info on Joachim Schmid, boynton's first link was that flubbery pidgin of the Google translation page. Joachim Schmid é a thief and mentireiro...and different escolmas dun fluxo incessant from photos produced globally is seguen to conform to base two fascinating proxectos of Schmid.
From the latest Carnival of the Vanities ( via The Talking Dog) Electric Venom on Blogging thoughts and philosophies Written in response to some delinking wars - the politics of blogging - Venomous Kate analyses the "metaphysics" of various styles of linkers and thinkers and whingers . Of course the snark tone makes boynton nervous, perhaps to link here is already a terrible faux pas, who knows. We merely blunder along with little aspiration, and an abiding fondness for the solace of the cul de sac when the noise of the highway with its traffic-chasing rush gets too much
Thursday, May 08, 2003
In a wonderful Duoblog post Fred at Fragments from Floyd and Lisa Thompson write on the downside of Cultural tourism continuing the theme of our increasing disconnection from the natural world.
Cultural Tourism in the Southern Mountains: What's For Sale?
I am generally resistant to the idea of being 'marketed'. Call me a 'reluctant tourist'. And I'm especially vigilant when it comes to buying into advertising that sells the places where things make their homes -- people, plants and animals. In much of the marketing of mere mountain aesthetics, things portrayed are not as they seem...
Cultural Tourism in the Southern Mountains: What's For Sale?
I am generally resistant to the idea of being 'marketed'. Call me a 'reluctant tourist'. And I'm especially vigilant when it comes to buying into advertising that sells the places where things make their homes -- people, plants and animals. In much of the marketing of mere mountain aesthetics, things portrayed are not as they seem...
Like the Melbourne sky this inauspicious bright blogosphere morn turned grey. It may be a kind of Stop the Clocks cut off the telephone sort of day. We're staying tuned.
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Researchers propose a mathematical model of marriage (via Rebecca's Pocket)
In The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models (MIT Press), which he wrote in collaboration with four mathematicians, Mr. Gottman uses the tools of calculus to describe the interactions of couples with the therapeutic goal of breaking the downward cycle of difficult conversations.
Innumerate boynton wonders whether she could read dramatic scenes between distressed characters mathematically, watching out for the influence functions, the homeostatic emotional set point, the thresholds and the sudden twist of the tipping point. In terms of writing by numbers, we are of course familiar with the famous Syd Field paradigm, where you have to get the turning point in by page 27 etc, but reading a play in this way could be quite diverting. After that she could then try applying mathematics to home decorating.
When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and confidently it must first set its affairs in order at home.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940. (source)
Update The attraction equation. (via Algebra Comics via J walk)
In The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models (MIT Press), which he wrote in collaboration with four mathematicians, Mr. Gottman uses the tools of calculus to describe the interactions of couples with the therapeutic goal of breaking the downward cycle of difficult conversations.
Innumerate boynton wonders whether she could read dramatic scenes between distressed characters mathematically, watching out for the influence functions, the homeostatic emotional set point, the thresholds and the sudden twist of the tipping point. In terms of writing by numbers, we are of course familiar with the famous Syd Field paradigm, where you have to get the turning point in by page 27 etc, but reading a play in this way could be quite diverting. After that she could then try applying mathematics to home decorating.
When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and confidently it must first set its affairs in order at home.
Mathematics and the Imagination, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940. (source)
Update The attraction equation. (via Algebra Comics via J walk)
boynton has never really associated croquet and beer before (via Quiddity) which is just as well really, given the mallet-wielding tendencies of her siblings. Not even a shandy would have been advisable, otherwise a spectator adopting the perilous "silly point" position seen in the illustration may have lost his head or parts thereof.
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Even when treated to this series of glorious Autumn days, guess there's always a bit of the Birmingham lurking somewhere in Melbourne. (via b3ta)
A recent comment by Richard Kahn of the excellent Vegan Blog – the (eco)logical weblog pointed to more research on Arctic Drilling .
Shallow wildlife documentaries and sentimental nature writing reflect a growing malaise, writes Richard Mabey. Unless we radically transform our attitude to other species, we face a dismal future. The technical wizardry, standard sensationalist motifs and distorted camera speeds are servicing a latter day Barnum Peep show
Zoology is two-dimensional nonsense if it is divorced from ecology.It is through feelings and imagination that we experience kinship and connectedness, the pain of separation and extinction, the renewal of spring and birth, not through the detachment of scientific accounts. And it is through myth, story-telling, art, metaphor and play that we make overall sense of our place in the world
This link via Fragments from Floyd - whose wonderful close observations of place are definitely biophilic. ...(just as boynton was writing of biophilia she had a decidedly biophobic moment when the house mouse ran past her foot. A natural scream .)
Mabey's call for feelings and imagination to balance scientic objectivity reminded boynton of the work of Jane Goodall, a profile of whom recently featured in The Age.
Goodall is very big on positivity, and unrelenting on the theme of "hope", but the truth, as she knows, is that the future for the chimps at Gombe is perilous...
Gombe's chimpanzee community now numbers only 150 or so individuals, leaving the long-term genetic sustainability of the group in doubt. Across Africa, the chimp population has fallen in a century from 2million to 150,000.
Shallow wildlife documentaries and sentimental nature writing reflect a growing malaise, writes Richard Mabey. Unless we radically transform our attitude to other species, we face a dismal future. The technical wizardry, standard sensationalist motifs and distorted camera speeds are servicing a latter day Barnum Peep show
Zoology is two-dimensional nonsense if it is divorced from ecology.It is through feelings and imagination that we experience kinship and connectedness, the pain of separation and extinction, the renewal of spring and birth, not through the detachment of scientific accounts. And it is through myth, story-telling, art, metaphor and play that we make overall sense of our place in the world
This link via Fragments from Floyd - whose wonderful close observations of place are definitely biophilic. ...(just as boynton was writing of biophilia she had a decidedly biophobic moment when the house mouse ran past her foot. A natural scream .)
Mabey's call for feelings and imagination to balance scientic objectivity reminded boynton of the work of Jane Goodall, a profile of whom recently featured in The Age.
Goodall is very big on positivity, and unrelenting on the theme of "hope", but the truth, as she knows, is that the future for the chimps at Gombe is perilous...
Gombe's chimpanzee community now numbers only 150 or so individuals, leaving the long-term genetic sustainability of the group in doubt. Across Africa, the chimp population has fallen in a century from 2million to 150,000.
boynton originally messed with words
here are these weird signs
Some lines courtesy of Rob's Amazing Poem generator, which makes poems based on the content of your url (Via Speckled Paint and bluejoh). Seems to have summed up boynton pretty well:
...a heap
of those fleeting conversations between hotmailers
and even creative enterprise need some
music. They cause pause. Break the
discussion of old
tobacco
tins . And wherever
here are these weird signs
Some lines courtesy of Rob's Amazing Poem generator, which makes poems based on the content of your url (Via Speckled Paint and bluejoh). Seems to have summed up boynton pretty well:
...a heap
of those fleeting conversations between hotmailers
and even creative enterprise need some
music. They cause pause. Break the
discussion of old
tobacco
tins . And wherever
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