You look glassy-eyed!

Oh, some good news.

--

First of all, Ingrid Betancourt, the French lady and former Colombian presidential candidate, who had been kidnapped by FARC rebels and was held hostage for years in the Colombian jungle, is free!

Along with her, three American paramilitary contractors and ex-marines were rescued. These adventurous freelance exterminators held a press conference to let us know that the FARC rebels are Terrorists. Thanks for sharing this, fellas.

Well, that's it? No details, no juice, no insight? Where is the story?

These excerpts from the diary of a Dutch woman, who joined the FARC rebels to serve a good cause (oh the Age of Ignorance...), are precious.

Also precious is the silly movie chronicling the adventures of Woody Allen as he joins the ranks of a similar group, decades ago, for a good cause of his own – namely, to impress a girl. What movie? Bananas, of course!

--

More good news!

Sven has his own blog! Thanks to Bimmy, Frog the Dog, and Co! Are you ready for his frogtastic adSventures?

--

And more great news! We've been awarded an award! Thank you, Soccer Mom! This is the related post. We'll post the award and pass it on in a couple of days. For the moment, you will excuse us. So much to do, so much to read, so much to write... As we were telling Bimmy the other day... We really gotta run. Luckily we don't have to literally run. Do not read and run.

The Green's Functions Blues

The sun finally poked through the clouds on Sunday and we went for a long walk in nature. We saw colorful flowers and blooming trees, we saw ducks and other birds. We saw funny insects and even horses. And humans.

Yes, now and then we encountered another wandering couple and they said hallo and we said hallo back. Later, downtown, we saw many more people, but we didn't exchange any hallos with them.

It was cloudy and dark when we were back in the city. It started raining and we opened an umbrella. It felt even darker under the umbrella.

So here's our Brilliant Idea of the Week. Or of the Day, as we've been rather prolific lately. You know those birthday cards that start singing when you open them? How about umbrellas with spokes that light up when you open them! They would make a dark, rainy day so much more bearable. Patent No RTGML20080414a.

--

It's been a while since we last treated you to some of our household jokes! Let's see what we've got for you...

We watched “Paris, je t'aime” this weekend. It's a movie consisting of 18 short movies, mostly love stories, set in Paris. Quite predictably, Gérard Depardieu the Ubiquitous was co-directing and appearing in one of them.
RTG said: 'Somebody should make a movie called “Gérard, je t'aime”: eighteen short movies starring Gérard Depardieu.'

Here we were just BS-ing and improvising:
...
RTG: I've put all my money in stockings.
ML: You mean stocks.
RTG: No, stockings.
...
ML: Stocks are dropping.
RTG: I wish stockings were dropping.


We are allowed to outsource now and then, so this last one comes from poor Marina the Nut. Another attempt to bake a decent cake had failed or something, inducing her to lament her geeky self thus:
“All I can do properly in this life is calculate Green's functions. Green's functions is all I am good at. It does bring bread to the table... I don't even like bread.”

That's close to Woody Allen's “The food here is so bad... And such small portions!” or another Marina: “Gortz shoes are so ugly – and they're always way too big for me!”

Listen to the wind b*$#

Tuesday morning. Back to Black, the song, was on the radio and Mimi was putting her black mascara on, and wondering, what retard would censor such a brilliant line as “You love blow and I love puff”? Somebody felt the word “blow” was not decent enough for their respectable listeners and erased it from the radio version. Puff and blow reminded Mimi of smoking, actually. She now craved for a cigarette, although she's never put one in her mouth. She never has, because if she did it once, she could never stop, she can feel that. How can such a control freak be an oral person? Is “oral” a decent word?

Such scattered thoughts were going through her mind, when Roufa's cute head appeared at the door, to announce that there were breaking news on TV:

RTG: Fidel Castro!
ML: What, he died?
RTG: No, he resigned!
ML: OK, that's better than dying.
RTG: I guess so.
ML: It's probably good that he resigned before he died.
RTG: It would be difficult to resign after he'd died.
ML: He would never resign then. They would have to overthrow him.

So our genius poster of “Banana: The Movie”, published last Wednesday, proved prophetic, in a lose sense. We are very proud! Now we shouldn't care if we win the contest or not! We are obviously the best!

--

We would love to write more, but we are running out of time. We have to buy presents. And then we have to pack. For soon we are flying south! We are going to visit our chattery relatives, the ones we hung on the wall the other day. We are going to see our little niece, who must have doubled in size and decuplied in vocabulary since our last visit. Time for her to learn “uncle” and “aunt” in three different languages. If she can't, nobody can!

This qualifies as our (not too long) Leave of Absence #3.

But you don't have to miss us: You can rent “Bananas”, the real movie of Woody Allen, and have almost as much fun as here. We also recommend “Aaltra”, another Belgian movie, French-speaking this time. Featuring our new Silly Hero, Bouli Lanners. If you haven't seen his performance of “Sonny” (from the movie), based on Bobby Hebb's “Sunny”, you don't know what silliness is. If you are above 18, you can also enjoy the adult version and have a look at Bouli's version of the the lyrics.

--

We'll try to drop by before we leave, but if we don't, see you sometime next week, dear readers! Movies or not, have fun! And don't forget to eat your fruit and drink plenty of water: The secret to a shiny fur and a lustrous coat, whatever species you belong to.

Back Row Giggling

Dear Readers, we'd like to report that we are still rather busy. Besides our regular work, we've had some practical matters to attend to. Not necessarily boring: We framed and hung some family members on the wall, for example. Their pictures, that is. We cleaned Fritz the Fridge. We booked a short trip. We watered Sven and gave him his vitamins. He's been very easy lately, because he now has a new friend who keeps him and RockFrog busy – but more about that some other time.

The “homework” is still available, see previous post! See how East-Europe savvy you really are! We'll post the correct answers on Friday, most likely in the form of a comment to the original post.

Why are we writing, then? Well, we may be busy, but that doesn't mean that we don't visit other people's blogs! It can be very relaxing. We want to thank you all for that! We hope you have as great a time as we do! Most of all, we'd like to give our special thanks to quirky Ms Quarks, aka Monica, for reminding us what it was like to be university students and sit in the back row stifling giggles generated by silly jokes, born of boredom or desperation. The quintessence of University Education! A pity the two of us, Roufa and Mimi, never got to do that together. Be students together. Sneak out of class together, defy sleep together, solve the world in smoky pubs together (it was before the prohibition), party all night together, then go straight to class together. But hey! We've had our fun in our separate times and places, we can't complain! And what else is this bblogg, but making up for lost time and fun?

Let the Silliness go on! Hurrah!

--

True to the cause, we have prepared a poster to illustrate "Banana: The Movie", i.e., our bblogg as a movie, in the context of Digital Sickbag's competition. Here it is (click to enlarge a little):





We would like to thank Woody Allen and Don DeLillo for their invaluable contributions to the Artwork.