Garfield Minus Garfield beating xkcd and Dilbert to best comic strip title

At the time of writing, I'm delighted to see Garfield Minus Garfield, the web comic created by Dubliner Dan Walsh, aka Travors, is beating other great web comics including Randall Munroe's xkcd, Scott Adams' Dilbert, Chris Muir's Day by Day and the bizarre Jesus and Mo by Mohammed Jones to the title of Best Comic Strip in the 2008 Weblog Awards.

You can cast a vote for your favourite here until 10pm on Tuesday January 13.



Garfield Minus Garfield is a frequent stop for me and it's great to see Dan getting even more recognition for his work. The New Yorker have a great interview with him here.

Update: Just as I hit publish, figures are: 2,216 votes cast with Garfield Minus Garfield at 1,008 votes, xkcd at 698 and Dilbert at 94.

Wo ist der liebe? German police stop youngsters from eloping

Everything was set. Having spent New Year's Eve together, they'd decided to elope. They couldn't wait any longer, and he, emboldened by his recent travels in Italy, assured her how easy the escape would be. "We'll get to the airport", he said. "That'll be the most difficult part." She, trusting his maturity and experience, agreed.

They knew their parents may not approve. Finish your education, they'd say. Work hard to improve your chances, they'd say. Spend more time together to see if you really want to be together. Typical German parents trying to put their kids on the right track.

They wanted none of it.

Let's go to Africa, he said. They'd watched a documentary on it the night before, and full of youthful optimism, of love and of a healthy regard for warm weather, they decided where to go. They packed the practical essentials they thought they'd need.

Who though to act as witness? They decided his sister, Anna-Lena would be the perfect choice and confided in her. She readily agreed. They didn't plan a long trip - just long enough to have the ceremony and return.

As the New Year dawned over Hanover, they made their escape. Sunglasses on and wheely suitcases in hand they walked the kilometre to the nearest tram stop and went to Hanover train station where they waited for the airport shuttle.

That's when a suspicious guard, possibly jealous of the young love, possibly spurned by a partner previously and still bitter, possibly angry about working New Year's morning or maybe just seeing it as his "duty" decided to get the police involved.

Two officers made their way to the station. They questioned the three, almost without provocation, on their plans for Africa, requesting to see money, tickets and passports. They brought them to the police headquarters where the three got a chance to have a good look around. A consolation prize perhaps.

Parents were called. "I'm still in a state of shock." said his mother, "I thought 'I'm playing a part in a bad movie.' When we realised they were missing we went looking for them." It was only when the police had called that they knew what happened.

Their luggage was searched. The pink lilo they'd dragged was put with their summer clothes, cuddly toys and provisions.

They knew their parents would have something to say. Would try to stop them. They wouldn't be happy when they arrived. But they smiled for the camera. They knew their love couldn't be stopped for long.


Photograph: /AFP/Getty Images

It's hard to be a six-old-boy and a five-year-old girl in Germany. Mika and Anna-Bell are told they'll have to wait until they're older.

"They can still put their plan into action at a later date," Holger Jureczko, a police spokesman said. One wonders how long it will be before they try again.

Of all the surprisingly stupid management decisions...

The end of Rick O' Shea's radio show? At least in its current format anyway. I read this, via @damienmulley over on On The Record

Per yesterday’s Sunday Tribune, management have decided that the station’s afternoon shows - ie Nikki Hayes and Rick O’Shea - are to be talk-free zones. Instead of the usual features and banter between the tunes, the DJs will now simply say “that was that” and “this is this”. Having spent a couple of years actually building, developing and maintaining audiences for these shows through listener interaction (something every single show on every single radio station tries to do), the 2FM grand poobahs (Michael Cahill is the lad credited in the piece as delivering this dastardly plan) have decided that the future will be a chit-chat-free one. Sure, we thought that was what digital radio was all about?

It's bizarre. In a society reliant on MP3 players, web players like Blip.fm and last.fm, iPods, iTunes, CDs, downloads and so on, do people really listen to afternoon radio for the music?

Fine, I kind of know Rick off air as well, but I listened to his show before I'd met him. It's the crossover between the show and his blog, the show and his twitter and the rapport he has with his listeners that make it interesting. This is the show that got random people to wink at each other. It brought us the story of that lady who travelled from America to find her "one-night stand" guy. It brings single people together for cinema nights out and was very on the ball with movie reviews and interviews. It was a pop culture show and, in truth, one of my only links to what was happening in that world.

Even more he was one of the only "mainstream media" DJ's who took "advantage" of the followers he had who are bloggers and twitterers and fellow geeks. He catered towards us, mentioned our blogs, invited some on to talk about their projects and gave us a boost. It's quite sad he won't get the same opportunity to do that now.

We have a surfeit of radio stations for such a small country. 98FM and FM104 are just that bit too tabloid for me, Radio 1 that bit too staid, Newstalk is good but a bit too serious. Today FM is what I'd listen to for the morning presenters which made Rick's show such a pleasure to tune into, a break away from dull and dreary afternoons. To my mind, the songs were mostly requests, old familiars with the odd new number and with that element of comfortable listening that required no major involvement. Bubblegum for the ears almost.

It's bewildering that the decision was made by a former DJ, no matter what his reasons were. This seems a complete lack of regard for the audience - an audience, which as Jim pointed out, is built and maintained - and remarkably short sighted. Will I be tuning in to hear Rick play music? Possibly. Not probably but possibly.

Jim makes a great suggestion about Mark McCabe being in a far better position to direct 2FM:

... a confident pair of hands who would be quite happy and determined to make the changes necessary for the station to survive. That's what the station needs if it stands any chance of still maintaining any kind of relevance in the next 10 years. It can’t be just more continuation of the old order on the grounds that G Ryan is such a great advertising magnet.

Why is it that 2FM management can't seem to cop on to the needs of their audience. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm too online. Maybe people do listen to afternoon shows for the music. Do you?

Rag Order. (How long will it take you?)

I have wanted to publish Damien O'Donnell's submission to the 4daymovie project practically since I first saw it last June.

Watching the audience reaction was wonderful, seeing the dawning of comprehension on people's faces as they 'got' what they were seeing. It's an intelligent and innovative way to capture a song and I doubt it will be the last time we see that method used.

Update: Once you recognise the song, how many places in Dublin can you recognise in the shots? Thanks for the suggestion Niamh!

Enjoy!

The day I met Bosco's mammy for coffee

His red hair is now quite scraggy. The wool, glued on, was never going to last major wear and tear. He's missing one eye, the missing felt one a casualty of being thrown, dragged and hugged too much. I have no idea why he's wearing a yellow jumpsuit or where his original white and green striped shirt, jeans and boots are. He was my Bosco teddy and I've had him a long time. My sister had a matching one. We called them Biddy and Miley.

Fast forward some 24 years later and I'm sitting in Coffee Republic, hot chocolate in front of me waiting for the door to open and a lady I've wanted to meet for a long time to walk in. It started with twitter; I'd written a post about children's TV shows, someone had seen it and said the magic words "My mammy's Bosco" and now I'm waiting for Paula Lambert to join me for coffee.



Before I go further, for those not in the know, Bosco was an Irish children's television programme which ran during the late 1970s and 80s. Bosco, a small puppet of indeterminate gender (or so people thought) lived in a box, or his bosca, which was decorated with the number 5, because that's how old he was. You had to knock 5 times on the lid for Bosco.

Bosco's favourite colour was green (though Niamh says yellow), he was curious about everything. He was normally joined by two adults who would sing songs, read stories and make-and-do things with him. Songs included 'This is where I live', 'I'm painting', 'The Shadow song' and 'Poor old Michael Finnegan'. This was children's television back then - half two, just before Dempsey's Den - and we loved it.



There's a lot on the Irish web about Bosco. There are loads of unofficial Bosco Bebo pages, he pops up over on Boards.ie threads a lot and Donncha O'Caoimh's 2005 post on Bring back Bosco is up to over 80 comments. When researching the interview I felt I had to find out a few things. What gender is Bosco? Was he really kidnapped? Did Zig and Zag really throw him around? Where did he come from? Did the magic door really work? Come on, boys and girls of all ages, let's find out together!


Paula and Emily arrive. Coffee ordered, the first question I ask is the most obvious. "Yes," she says "I was in the box underneath for all of them". It was something I'd always wondered, once schoolyard conversations became old enough for someone to show their hand and say "What's this? Bosco naked!" - who was the person behind/underneath Bosco?

The history:

"Well Bosco was designed first as a doll, in the very early days. It relied on having the presenters work him which wasn't very practical so he became a puppet. I based the character on Emily, who was herself a red head, and quite bold and cheeky." Paula laughs while Emily goes a bit red, but seems used to it. "I think that's what Bosco is. Just an ordinary child. What gender is Bosco? I think of him as a boy but it's up to children what they decide themselves."


(Image from here)

Paula is from a - if not the - quintessential showbusiness family. Her father Eugene and mother Mai are behind the much loved Lambert Puppet Theatre and such TV shows as Wanderly Wagon and Murphy agus a Cairde.



"Dad was always making puppets" says Paula, "He started his ventriloquism act with Frankie, a predecessor to his famous Finnegan character. Him and mam moved to Dublin in 1950, when they were both 22. Mam entered him into a talent show, he won and that was the start of it." (There's a great interview with Eugene on Fústar's blog here)

"From there were the theatres, the musical halls, the tours and Jury's Cabaret. Dad was starring in the Olympia with people like Laurel and Hardy, Maureen Potter and Jimmy O' Dea. He then started with Telefís Éireann as it was at the time with Murphy agus a Cairde and then on to Wanderly Wagon. I played the squirrels on that show. I started with Bosco in 1980, and did around 360 programmes in all."

Why do Bosco?

"Well I suppose in those days I was just really grateful to have a job. The money was terrible but I've always loved children and found I could communicate well with them. A lot of people seem to use children's TV as a stepping stone, but it was where I wanted to be. I wanted to be a children's entertainer."

Bosco's voice?

"The voice just came very naturally to me. I could always do it, and really don't remember not doing it. I did have a lot of input into who Bosco was - he was 5 because my daughter was 5. I was given free rein really, allowed to do what I wanted."

The magic door:


The magic door was Bosco outside - sometimes in a playground (Oh Mr Sun, Sun, Mr Golden Sun, please shine down on me...) and other times to a creamery or to the zoo, where, for me anyhow, it was my first look at a lot of the animals. I didn't get to visit Dublin zoo for the first time until I was about ten.

"Ah, we were treated like royalty when we went to the zoo. My children would come with me. We'd be allowed to handle the animals, to go into their cages and everything. I remember being put in with the tigers - the keeper standing with a sweeping brush saying "Ah you'll be grand". Another time, I got a big fright with a snow leopard who leapt pawing at its glass wall when a woman in a leopardskin coat walked by."

"Most embarrassingly was the time I introduced a bird in the Aviary as a fukken cockaburra, the keeper, Mr Stone, having told me that's what it was called and me not copping on. That didn't go out on air, I can tell you."



The UCD kidnapping:

"Yes, Bosco was kidnapped from UCD. I was out there having finished a show and was loading the gear into the van afterwards. There's a lot of stuff in putting the shows together. I had just put the suitcase with Bosco down and it was whipped. They took the Bosco puppet and dumped the suitcase in the lake. That stuff was unfortunately ruined. I rang the police. The kidnappers brought Bosco on holidays to San Francisco, sent a photo to the Star newspaper.

It was big news at the time. We had reporters on the doorstep and Emily, only a young girl, dealing with them all. Because Bosco was gone, I was out of work, but there was rumours that I'd set the whole thing up! Coronation Street was running the Reg Holsworth gnome storyline at the same time and I think that might have been the inspiration. Anyway, they sent Bosco, fairly unharmed back to the Star offices.

Zig and Zag:

"Yes, I've heard the rumour and no, it's not true. Any professional puppeteer takes very good care of their puppets - after all, this is your livelihood. The guys behind Zig and Zag know this and would simply have more respect. So no, Zag was not throwing the Bosco puppet around."

Gift Grub and Dustin:

"Yes, that is Bosco with Bertie on Gift Grub. Quite simply Mario Rosenstock got in touch and asked me to do it. He also has appeared with Dustin - himself and the Turkey have a fraught but funny relationship, and they seem to like working together."

Growing up with Bosco:

"We were annihilated," says Emily. "We went to school in Cabinteely and my brother and me got it all the time. Don Conroy's son was in the same school and got hassle as well. I guess it just comes with the territory. Ronan used to be called Bosco. He dyed his hair black and they started calling him Sooty. There was no escape.

But we got to do loads of cool things, to hang around RTÉ, to see the shows being made and to meet loads of people. So the good far outweighed the bad."



Bosco's return:

"Well, he never really went away, you know." Paula admonishes me, "Just off the TV screens. Bosco had a record that beat U2 in the charts in 1983, you know. The first Bosco DVD came out around 3 years ago and has gone seven times platinum. We did an AIDS benefit cabaret in the Tivoli with Lily Savage and Phil Coulter, which was great fun. We did Electric Picnic in 2005 and the crowd reaction was amazing. All they wanted were to hear the old songs and phrases and sing along. Vodafone ran a Bring Bosco Back campaign a couple of years ago. He's been part of the seasons I did in the Gaiety and comes on tour. But it's more about entertaining children these days."

Paula runs The Paula Lambert Puppet Theatre, now widely recognised as the Premier Touring Puppet Theatre Company in Ireland. She presents a choice of four productions on tour: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel and Sleeping Beauty. Bosco travels with the show too, making the odd cameo appearance.

"Children now don't know that Bosco was on the telly, they don't know about the magic door or Seamus Spud or the plonksters or any of that. But they react to him almost exactly the same. We do shows in St Marks in Tallaght, a school with 400 junior infants. You'd imagine they'd be a tough audience but they love him."



"At one birthday party I put Bosco's legs and feet over the side of the box and one child shouted "Now mummy, I told you he was real!" At a school in Killiney where we were doing a show for GOAL, the principal made all the children sit and be quiet as they waited for Bosco to come back. "Don't let me down, children," she said to them when one little boy put up his hand and said "But miss, Bosco needs us to shout." Every reaction is magical and makes it worth it."

"I have a lot of puppets," says Paula, "but Bosco is my favourite. He's been with me now for almost 30 years. He is one of the family." "He even" Emily confides, "has his own little bed with covers and a hot water bottle."



"I suppose it's in the blood", says Paula when I ask her why she keeps doing it. "You can lose your inhibitions behind the puppets, no one can see you. I enjoy it. I consider myself very lucky to have a job that I love. So many people don't. I get to hear children laughing, singing and clapping. There's nothing glamorous about it, it's hard work. There's a lot of travelling, set-up and carrying gear, but that's part and parcel of what I do. I reckon Bosco goes to bed at night a very happy little boy altogether."

I wish there was a more apt word to describe her, but Paula herself is a lovely woman - genuinely warm, funny and easy to be around. Though shyer than I expected (hence no photos), her eyes positively glow when talking about Bosco, about the children's reactions and with the memories of the show and her experiences.

She seems a bit surprised by the reaction she still gets from adults - she'd been interviewed on i105-107 that morning, but takes it all in her stride. She's fiercely protective of Bosco - won't let a bad word be said, but has a great sense of humour that kept Niamh and me in stitches over the hour or so we had with them.

Emily is of course the person behind EmilyTully.com, a new Public Relations and online communications service for smaller budgets and start ups. You can find her blog here. There's also rumour that Bosco may be getting his own offical website soon...


A huge thanks to Paula and Emily for taking the time to indulge this big child. Of course I haven't met Bosco himself yet, but that's no reason not to leave you with this. It certainly brought back some memories for me.

"Time to go, goodbye, goodbye, put everything back in its box,
See you soon, goodbye goodbye,
And remember now, you're the tops!"

This blog is being followed; hello followers.

In August I found the Show off your Followers function for Blogspot.

By enabling it, you can choose to display the people who read and follow your blog as well as follow your own favourite Blogspot blogs through the handy reading list feature on the blogger dashboard - which itself feeds into Google Reader. A very handy way of staying in touch with what people are writing about.



Being as nosy curious as I am, I wanted to find out a bit more about the people following me and spread a little bit of link love in the process. Some I was familiar with, some I visited for the first time tonight. So, in no particular order we have:



Jennifer from Paws For Thought. Jennifer is blind and writes her blog as "an online diary of training and working with my first guide dog O.J." who she got in June of 2007. By doing this, she says,

"I hope to talk to new people, hear their experiences, and help educate others about the importance of guide dogs in the lives of blind and visually impaired people."

Her blog is far from being 'just' a blind blog though. She has an exuberant passion for music, as evidenced by all the gigs she goes to, which is how she met Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from Swell Season, above. I loved reading OJ's first blog post - his experiences of helping Jennifer around. Aslo, if you have any ideas for fundraising to help raise the €38,000 it costs to fund one guide dog, let her know here.

Jennifer is a great example to me of how someone makes the most of what they have rather than worrying about what they haven't. Her blog is always an interesting read.



Hope from The Road Less Travelled. Hope is from Southern Carolina and is interested in

"People's stories. Who are you? How'd you get to be that way? Are you happy or is there something you want to change?"

Her blog is a lovely mix of memories (this recent post is fantastic), personal admissions and questions about the way things are done. I enjoy the detail in her posts - it's a real glimpse into her life.



Tony is possibly my oldest follower at 252, or so he claims. He's from Yorkshire and blogs on ßench which is a comprehensive collection of photos, videos and memories. I hadn't known what Spike Milligan's grave looked like until I saw his post on it.



I've been reading Susan's Stony River Farm blog for a while now. She's got a new look for the new year on her blog about "fiction writing, disability and rustic living and occasionally a bit of silliness". This recent post of hers called Sorry kids has been my favourite. Read on past the below:

"Suddenly, I snapped. Just snapped.

"THAT'S IT," I said, on the day before Christmas Eve. "I'm sick of it all." "I'm not cooking Christmas dinner," I said, "and I'm doing no more shopping, no more decorating, no more baking, no more ANYTHING."

They looked at me. "Don't I deserve a holiday too?" I said. "There's nothing you can say to change my mind," I said. "I'm cancelling Christmas." And I did".

I didn't know until today that she has another blog called This Irish Photograph, which an album of her family journeys and experiences. I like this photo:






Another name I've become familiar with is Stephen Spillane. He's blogging on Stephen Spillane's My Opinion which as he says is where he spouts "on about many things from Eurovision to Politics". Check out his recent blog posts on his best of 2008 - Jan to March, April to June and July to December to get a real sense of what he's about. His tips for new bloggers are also well worth a read.



Another Stephen following me is Stephen Neill, an Anglican priest in the diocese of Limerick & Killaloe. He blogs on PaddyAnglican about politics, happenings in his village of Cloughjordan and Moneygall - he's a big Obama fan - I believe he's singing on the Barack O'Bama song - and sometimes on things like the horse at the end of a rainbow. I'd bet for that horse too, Stephen!



Vladimir is a mathematician in Dublin and blogs on Etre moral, etre sincere. Hie blog is a record of the things he does and sees, what's going on in his life and some rather odd things he finds online. His tongue twister post has me talking about plucking pheasants very carefully.



Though we've never met I feel like I know MJ for ages. A frequent commenter, her blog at Shadows at Sunset is a mix of ideas that suddenly occur to her, things she's been thinking about and practical tips on approaching banks, creating a business plan and doing some market research. If you're starting a business, they're well worth a read.



Ken Armstrong is a guy I have a lot of respect for. With an enviable writing resume to his credit, his blog, Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff is a mix of random thoughts, personal musings and then posts like this one that made me pause for a long while afterwards. This one though made me laugh out loud.



Russell Anderson of Russells Random Thoughts is following me. I like his choice of URL - "random thinking of a pseudo genius". A starting blogger with 3 posts to his credit so far, his most recent - Homo/Hetero sexual.. big deal starts with :

My name is Russell and I have a boyfriend. Yes Russell is a male name and you read that right, I'm gay. How do you feel about that?

I'm looking forward to reading more from Russell this year.



Emerging Writer, as you can imagine, blogs about writing. She seems to keep her finger on the pulse of every writing competition and magazine submission procedure going and seems to have had a very productive year.

It's her other blog, Poems In the Waiting Room that grabbed my attention though. It seems this is part of a new project in Co. Kildare to provide poetry leaflets for waiting rooms all over the county.

"Initially these are doctor's surgeries, hospitals and libraries, places the public has to wait. The waiting room is the one place that at some point, everyone has to pause. It is a room full of strangers that levels us and where we have a chance to reflect."

One of my own favourite poems is Leigh Hunt's Jenny Kissed Me. You can read some of the history here or download a PDF of the poem here. Some of the other poems included are Emily Dickinson's Hope and Robert Louis Stevenson's Bed in Summer.

(Yes, this is a very long post.)



I'm a big Cloudsteph fan, and not just because she bought me drink at the Web Awards. I've been following her on Twitter for a while and she always delivers interesting links, funny videos and we share a bemused horror of the inappropriate. She's a person I'm glad to have met.



Cleo's blog at Rosin Dubh is a very honest, sometimes harsh and unforgiving look at her life and herself. I find her blog challenging to read sometimes, being at a loss of words on how to respond. Take for example her post on fertility and sperm. Or indeed her post on pubic hair.

That's not to say she's trying to be controversial. It's just honesty. Her train station story made me gasp, while her finger lengths post is a nice wee bit of research. The blog has only been live since October so I'd imagine there are other great stories that Cleo has to share.



Kate West writes reviews. In fact this LA lady has an extensive theatrical background and has been reviewing plays, musicals, one-acts, improv, comedy sketch and much more since 2003. From Tony Award winning plays straight from Broadway - Spring Awakening - to Jane Austen based plays to Newgrange Falconry, a family business based in Meath, Kate writes with an enthusiasm that is just a bit contagious. Visiting her blog guarantees a surprise every time.



Quickroute is another of those names I'm familiar with. His blog Paddy in Buenos Aires is as it sounds - the experiences, thoughts and musings of an Irish Ex-patriat now living in Argentina. The seven part odyssey he began in August - the Irish Rover - is a great way to get to know this irascible personality. Also illuminating is his about page, showing he's visited an impressive 338 cities in 51 countries. You can also read what he's been watching on Argentinian TV. Eye opening stuff.



I have to admit, when I saw the username bbbbbbbbich in the list, I assumed it was probably a spam blog. But no, Becky's blog - love moondust peace - is her little corner of the internet where she shares her thoughts on her experiences in Houston, Texas with her friends, family and more. Her last post was December 31 and I'd love to know what the acronym(?) iohasfdiohweiufh is about.



I'm hoping Shelley comes back to add more to her promising blog, New Media and the Virgin Blogger. It fed directly into the conversations and discussions for the Arts Council New Media seminar recently and what she's trying to do sounds very interesting indeed.

"I am also looking at how Arts organisations in Ireland could mazimise their potential by utilising You Tube, Flickr, Blogger.com and the many other sources of new media.. and how little Arts organisations actually take advantage of what is right at their fingertips."

I just love the header image for Inner Kook art. I just had a look at her post about drawing as a child which again makes me question how much thought we as adults tend to put into what we say to children. I've also found her Life Purpose Project blog which looks like it could be come something interesting.



"If you think you understand gammagoblin, you don't understand gammagoblin". How very true. The blogger for the 2008 Cork Jazz Festival has his own blog over on Riemann's Cut. How can I describe it? Geeky? Well the posts about the particle accelarators, the no-humans-inside boxes and his takes on iGoogle, Google Reader and Apple all suggest so.

But there's music posts in there too, along with a thermal imaging one and a well researched piece comparing Obama to the Antichrist. It's a bit of a free-for-all I guess - almost impossible to predict what will come next - and it's all the better for it.



"Tall tales of the little Elf in big Amsterdam" is how Clair describes her blog, Elf in Amsterdam. She hasn't updated in a while, but I guess her recent trip home to Dublin is reason enough for that, not to mention how active she is on Twitter. I can thank Clair for introducing me to Maeve Clancy's Flatmates the comic though, one of my regular graphic stops.



Anna Lally's name is one I've come across a couple of times and I'm delighted to find that she's the person behind the Irish Media Women blog. Anna is hoping to see the blog and network develop as "a space for shared ideas, wisdom, learning and opportunities".

She already points to some interesting links and workshops, but as with any ambitious project, could do with some help. You can find out more here. I think 2009 could see Anna connect with a lot of people out there who will be able to contribute.


And to the final two - retrobates who happen to be personal friends as well as followers.



I was asked to describe Maxi Cane's blog recently and the first word that came to mind was unapologetic. Creative, funny, shocking, obscene and DURTY all came to mind immediately afterwards but readers of this blog need to go in eyes wide open knowing they could find anything in there.

Maxi is of course the mastermind behind the group stories we've been involved in. He's also king of the bad pun. The rest of his posts are, by and large, pure filth - though not, let it be said, to intentionally disturb - it's just the way his mind works and you can quickly come to accept that. The kind you'd never write but relish reading.

The word "succulent" comes to mind. They're even funnier - if that's possible - when read on the Odeo reader he has on the site. Go on, have a go. You'll see.



And then of course there's himself. Darren should probably update it. When he does it will no doubt be with adventures, reviews, findings, thoughts and reactions to the world around him. A bit like my blog tries to be, only shorter and better. Different in a good way.

There you go. Followers all. Thanks for following people, hope you're finding something here you're interested in. If you haven't already done so, have a think about clicking below and telling us

who you are, where you blog and what you blog about.

If you are on blogger, you can find out more about following here. There are some brilliant blogs and lovely people out there waiting to be found.