same old, same old…

July 28, 2010

Today appears to be completely bland and lacking in controversy, if this screen from reddit is anything to go by:

No links found under today-most controversial on Reddit


I probably should be glad that everything’s going so calmly, but, quite frankly, I’m a little disappointed.


see saw

July 26, 2010

Another BBC website headline that interests me:

Saw 'most successful horror film'


 
 
 
 
There’s nothing actually wrong with it, of course. It heads a story that starts:
Serial killer franchise Saw has been named the most successful horror movie series by the Guinness World Records.

But the phrasing demonstrates the problems of trying to write headlines that fit into a measured space on a web page (or printed page, for that matter.)
Read the rest of this entry »


rocking the boat

July 24, 2010

From the BBC website, this headline catches my eye:

BBC headline: all-female group the first to row round Britain

The story begins:
Four women have set a new record by becoming the first women to row non-stop around Britain, organisers say.

Read the rest of this entry »


…and counting

July 22, 2010

It’s hard to build a readership for a personal blog, particularly one which has no single connecting theme. After all, “first person poetry, prose and opinion” is pretty much what everybody else is doing with their own blogs.

Which makes it all the more gratifying to find that Dont Confuse the Narrator has had as many visits this year as it had in the whole of 2009.

So: Thank you to regular visitors and Welcome to new visitors. If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see here, please use the contact page to let me know.


the wayside flower (green and pleasant)

July 22, 2010

It’s a cliché, but England really is green, and I was amazed at the exuberance of the plants and wild flowers growing on untended verges. There’s a tiny blue cornflower tucked in the among the yellow and red here, and I couldn’t believe how truly blue it was. Here in Spain, they seem to come in a shade of over-washed lilac.

wayside flowers, UK, July


Still, it was a Spanish wayside that inspired this vignette:

Poppy-petal butterflies ride
at anchor on a charlock sea,
while in the depths below
ox-eyed monsters lurk.