Blogwatch

Congratulations...

JonnyB, whose LTLP has given birth to almost certainly the most anticipated baby in the history of the blogosphere - cue the nappy posts...

Meanwhile...

As recommended by Mike, Joe. My. God. writes a tremendously powerful post about the failure to recognise an old friend (the epilogue can be found here).

Elsewhere...

Mike, Anna and Zoe make up part of the team of contributors for new collaborative blog Agonising. So, if you've got a problem, if no-one else can solve it...

Jonathan returns after an extended Christmas holiday with a typically superb post about Italian films and Twiglets - "Judging from the depressingly small amounts of Harvey's Irish Cream (well OK, Tescos Irish Cream), Martini and sherry over there, I would say our once-yearly flirtation with the middle-class idea of having a drinks cabinet, or at least a drinks area of the kitchen work surface just beside the kettle, is all but over, and it must be at least January 15th, and possibly even later. So it really is about time to get back into the swing of things".

Dave investigates the possibility of owning his own pub - "Pringle jumpers and cigars and cheese chunks on cocktail sticks and muddy knees on Sunday footballers and darts team buffets and lock-ins and pork scratchings. These are a few of my favourite things".

Jonathan overcomes his own initial prejudices and does his best to convince us we should give The Arctic Monkeys a chance - "The first thing of note is the guitars; nice loud crunchy guitars which are at times more reminiscent of the full throttle Mudhoney than the tinny, ramshackle Libertines - it's nice to hear a production job which doesn't follow the brittle post-punk blueprint and instead goes for volume and effect. Alex Turner's vocals, meanwhile, unlike Doherty's, are more than strong enough to punch through the sound, as he does to such great effect on 'I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor', which is great apart from the horrible backing vocals".

And finally...

Silent Words Speak Loudest is honoured to have been officially designated a friend of Conditional Reality - and so I point you in that direction, if you haven't already visited. Mario might be on a temporary hiatus, but there's a fantastic back catalogue of daily 100 word prose poems for you to browse through. Example: "The old ones returned and told us about their lives since their funerals. It’s not too bad, they said. We are very comfortable. Everyone is super nice. Lots of food and amazing levels of politeness. There are benefits to being dead, no doubt about it. We listened carefully and asked them why they came back if the afterlife was so much to their liking. Well, they said, we didn’t know we could take some things with us, so we came back for our anger, sarcasm, snobbery, greed, vanity, condescension, and rudeness. See, the only thing missing over there is fun".