Blogwatch

Welcome...

Conditional Reality, a fantastic blog by a poet called Mario who tries to write posts of exactly 100 words every day. Sample: "The speech balloons began to appear above our heads whenever we said anything. They fell out of the air when we stopped talking. Piles of them started collecting everywhere. At first we gathered them up and tossed them out, but that got to be so time consuming that soon we all just ignored them, letting them pile up everywhere. We consulted cartoonists about storage. They were no help. All over the world people talked much less, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with the speech balloons. Deception became a much rarer event. A lot of us enjoyed the quiet".

(Thanks to Pete for the link.)

Meanwhile...

Jonathan receives a mysterious gift in the post, a Parka coat, containing an even more mysterious anonymous note - "Like my name and address on the package it was hand-written. Neat, young person's handwriting, in pencil. Nothing threatening about it - but still I was quivering a bit as I read: 'Jonathan- welcome to the club!'. And underneath, an email address - 'Parka-club at something-or-other dot com'". Don't know about you, but I'm desperate to hear whether Jonathan can get to the bottom of it all.

Elsewhere...

By The Sea Shore plays New York I Spy - "Inadvertently picking up American phrases ('I guess', 'Can I get the check please?', 'I did not have sex with that woman'.): 5 points".

Kenny reviews David Cronenberg's new film 'A History Of Violence'.

Willie enjoys Martin Scorsese's two part film about Bob Dylan (which I'm gutted I missed) - "At one concert Pete Seeger had to be restrained from taking an axe to one of Dylan's electric cables. Somewhere I have an old Pete Seeger 'EP' that I bought in 1965. If I ever find it, I shall stamp on it".

Swiss Toni opts to give the Dylan film a miss and plumps for a trip to see Editors instead - "Much the same as the album really: they have one or two really cracking songs ('Blood', 'Munich') and a few other decent ones, but they just seem to be missing a little something. Originality certainly".

And finally...

Phill presents for the benefit of Brum-based readers used to encountering Polish bus drivers the "Danger! High Postage Guide To Conversational Polish To Use On The Bus" - "Were you upset when Joy Division changed their name from Warsaw? Byly wy przewracaliscie kiedy Rozdzielanie Radosci zmienial ich imie from Warszawy?".