Blogwatch

Congratulations...

Girl and Zoe, whose blogs Girl With A One-Track Mind and My Boyfriend Is A Twat were named as Best British / Irish Weblog and Best European Weblog respectively in the 2006 Bloggies.

(The overall winner was PostSecret. It hardly qualifies as a blog, but it's a brilliant site you really ought to take a look at if you haven't done so already.)

Commiserations...

Anna, Diamond Geezer and Joe. My. God., who narrowly missed out.

Welcome...

Go Fug Yourself, which scooped the Bloggie awards for Best Entertainment Weblog and Best Writing On A Weblog. There you can get yourself a pretty-much-daily dose of hilariously catty and cutting analysis of the ill-judged fashion and style decisions made by celebrities in public.

Meanwhile...

Jonathan finds fame in the pages of listings mag Mix Manchester and maps out his anticipated accelerated rise to and fall from grace over the next two weeks - "Fri 24 - Mon 27: Pressure of fame taking its toll. Series of ill-advised liasions with nubile cast members of 'Emmerdale Farm'. Charged with affray following drunken brawl in antelope enclosure of Chester Zoo".

Elsewhere...

Betty offers her thoughts on a couple of TV programmes and in the process puts her finger on what's so wrong with modern politicians - "In a strange way, I felt a curious nostalgia for old fashioned politicians. Okay, the 1980s government was full of bullies and self-made men who hated anyone who wasn't a workaholic, money obsessed lunatic, but at least you could hate them in a straightforward way. Modern policitians seem to have been assembled at a factory and programmed with huge dictionaries full of business speak soundbites. If you ever see Hazel Blears or Ruth Kelly interviewed on TV you wonder if someone is pulling the cord in their back and expect that at some point it will all go horribly wrong and one of them will say 'Mummy, I need feeding' or 'My nappy needs changing'".

Swiss Toni takes issue with the NME and its version of rock history.

Alan reviews "Australian western" 'The Proposition' - "There is a great deal to admire about this movie. But not very much to like about it. That isn’t a criticism. It’s simply a comment on the fact that rarely has a movie been made which featured such a cast of grotesque characters that it is difficult to find one redeeming feature between the whole lot of them. But then, when you go to see a movie that was scripted by Nick Cave, that’s kind of what you would expect".

Gordon is appalled that the design of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels has changed - "Imagine my disgust when, upon opening that clever Amazon packaging, I find a book that is a completely different size to, and has a completely different cover design from, all the other Rebus books I own. My disgust was so palpable that I vented forth with a few choice expletives causing some enquiring glances from my work colleagues, glances which turned rather more quizzical when I explained the orderly way I keep my bookshelves. Never before have I arched so many eyebrows, I think they always suspected I was a bit odd but here, finally, was clarification".

On a similarly "literary" tip (well, of sorts), Wan makes it to the end of Dan Brown's 'Deception Point' - "Harold Bloom says that you should read deeply, like you are overhearing. If I applied this to 'Deception Point' I'm sure I would have suffered severe brain trauma. It would have been like the first ten minutes of scanners. The book is Michael Ironside. I am the guy with the exploding head. Once you're in his grips, you can't escape".

Phill, Kenny and Delete As Appropriate report on gigs from White Rose Movement, The Like and Guillemots respectively.

Pete rues the fact he won't be able to give gravedigging a try.

And finally...

Mike recalls an embarrassing incident of mistranslation.