manifesto n (pl manifestos, manifestoes) a public written declaration of the intentions, opinions or motives of a leader, party, or body or of a sovereign. The Chambers Dictionary [Norm knows I wrote parts of the following essay a while back and didn’t post them, but it has turned into a kind of companion piece to […]
Read MoreOn the subject of christenings, someone at the Motley Fool has noticed that the name of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s new child, “Shiloh Pitt”, is a world-class spoonerism waiting to happen.
Read More…when I heard this evening’s BBC Radio 4 news describe the September 11 attacks on New York as a “terrorist outrage”. Did anyone else catch that or were the vapours rising from my Matey causing me to hallucinate?
Read MoreI thought this piece was an April Fool’s joke, but it’s dated the third: hyperbole, cliché, metaphors so mixed you can’t tell where the crescendos end and the whirlpools begin. But Stephen Pollard has a point. I couldn’t get into the Tesco carpark today for the customers panic-buying in the wake of the chaotic chaos […]
Read MoreMy favourite quotes from this evening’s Front Row on BBC Radio 4: War artist John Keane asked if he might be romanticising the terrorists responsible for the Beslan school massacre: “I’m interested ultimately in what motivates people to kill people for political ends, for better or worse. And really the reason is: Everyone is a […]
Read MoreTwo of the many dangers waiting for me on the road to the local supermarket are second-hand shops with tables full of old books outside them. I know that, if I am not strong, I will not only forget what I set out to buy, but will wind up wasting time, space, and money. There […]
Read MoreSorry, PooterGeekers. I do have a lot of ideas for things to write here, but I don’t have any time to write them this week. I don’t even have time to cut-and-paste a joke here as I usually do before I take a few days off from ‘Blogging. Amongst other little chores I’ve been doing, […]
Read MoreOn the way to Hot Wheels‘ most excellent party yesterday I met an Englishwoman with a bass who plays in a New Cross bluegrass band. She was wearing an “I’m Up For A Chat On The Tube” badge that turned out to be a product of a conceptual art project to bring random people together. […]
Read MoreTo celebrate my (late) discovery earlier in the week of the Dr Who theme remix site I offer you a chance to participate in PooterGeek’s toughest end-of-the-week challenge yet: The Instrumental Transliteration Tournament. Inspired by the Whovian musicians’ model I give you three examples: Dr Who EEEEEeeeeeeaouuuuw WHOO-eee-OOO [bumbly-bum, bumbly-bum, bumbly-bum] WHOO-eee-OOO [bumbly-bum, bumbly-bum, bumbly-bum] […]
Read MoreVia Tim comes this fun piece by Jeremy Clarkson: Wog. Spastic. Queer. Nigger. Dwarf. Cripple. Fatty. Gimp. Paki. Mick. Mong. Poof. Coon. Gyppo. You can’t really use these words any more and yet, strangely, it is perfectly acceptable for those in the travel and hotel industries to pepper their conversation with the word “beverage”. There […]
Read MoreI may have given the impression during the existence of this ‘Blog that I am something of a nerd, but I’m telling you, people: you haven’t lived until you’ve pulled up outside the best hotel in town in a written-off car with the front bumper howling as it scrapes on one of the tyres; handed […]
Read MoreA while back, when I installed a spellchecker module for PooterGeek’s comments system, Old Peculiar picked at my use of the word “homonyms” in the accompanying warning. I was (of coarse) write to use it, if a little relaxed, as you will sea from a copy editor’s nice explanation of the relationship between homonyms, homophones, […]
Read MoreAs a Labour Party member I received my New Year’s email from comrade Tone this morning. Its title is “Britain in strong position for 2006”.
Read MoreTruckers Pluck A Sculpture as Self Preservation Society executes audacious robbery. Two vehicles gained access to the courtyard of the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, on Thursday evening. Three men then loaded the huge statue of “a reclining figure” onto the back of a Mercedes lorry using a crane. Officers […]
Read MoreSince GrammarPuss has been at it lately, and I have just got off the train after a pleasantly alcoholic dinner and an unpleasant wade through the shoddy prose of Harold Pinter’s Nobel speech* I’d like to share with you my language gripes of the moment. You should only use “the latter” when you are referring […]
Read MoreThis story appeared on the BBC News Website yesterday: “Pakistan’s government is to remove a poem from a school textbook after it emerged the first letters of each line spelt out “President George W Bush”. “The anonymous poem, called The Leader, appeared in a recent English-language course book for 16 year-olds. “ The Pakistani authorities […]
Read MoreBlimey. I switch my phone off and stay away from the Net for one day (and a Sunday at that) and everything goes to hell. Apologies to Auriol and Leasey (and anyone else who was trying to get in touch). I heard your messages and will get back to you. PooterGeek was crawling with comment […]
Read MoreGuten Morgen, meine Damen und Herren, Herr Prime Minister, Frau Blair, Herr Straw, Brenda, und so weiter. Vielen Dank fur den Freiheit, ihre grossen Europaischen subsidiese zum Integraztion wir lumpen Ossis, und den neuen Robbie Williams Album—mit his dimplich Grin, er ist viel sexyer als David Hasselhof. Wir, die Britischen and die Deutschen, sind sinze […]
Read MoreNo time to ‘Blog properly today. [Insert your own joke about the current quality of PooterGeek here.] So I’ll just make one observation about the Guardian, because it’s a quick and easy way of filling space. There’s a piece (in G2?) today about how the Women’s Institute is shedding its mumsy, Home Counties, jam-making image […]
Read MoreThere’s a title to set your pants ablaze. Thanks firstly to Hot Wheels for correcting my spectacular error with the twenty-four-hour clock in my IKEA post. Thanks secondly to Tomodachi at Susurration for drawing his readers’ attention to the ‘Blogrollicity of two of us on his list simultaneously losing it in the aforementioned shop. Despite […]
Read MoreHot Wheels emailed me yesterday, asking if I had been getting enough sleep lately because she had seen a couple of typos in recent PooterGeek posts. It is true that I’ve been sleeping erratically—bloody Autumn—but it’s also true that Hot Wheels has been critically reading The Boy’s thesis for weeks. She is probably at the […]
Read MoreI am always raving about The Economist on PooterGeek, partly by default. Although most people think of it as a magazine or a journal, it’s one of the very few newspapers in Britain that lives up to the name. Because, for example, more millionaires read The Economist than any other international publication there’s no need […]
Read MoreRemember when they used to do stories about falling sales at Marks and Spencer, when they still didn’t take credit cards? Today it’s a story about falling profits at French Connection, whose Website won’t allow you to look at anything at all unless you have Flash installed. Once you have Flash installed then you can […]
Read MoreGaze greenly upon my grammatical geekiness, Pashmina! PooterGeek can now check your comments for spelling mistakes, even as you type. If you want the Dictionary Police to patrol your prose just click on whichever spell-checking option you prefer as it now appears above the Comment box. Be patient. They take a little while to process […]
Read MoreI am told by PooterGeekers, including the currently-one-armed Hot Wheels Helena, that they come here by typing “poo” into their Web browsers and letting auto-complete do the rest. Be careful that the rest of the URL is filled in before you hit “Return” or, like Hot Wheels, you are likely to find yourself at the […]
Read MoreFile this one under “Amazing If True”: “Cornell University and Tel Aviv University researchers have developed a method for enabling a computer program to scan text in any of a number of languages, including English and Chinese, and autonomously and without previous information infer the underlying rules of grammar. The rules can then be used […]
Read Morecasualsavant sent me this amusing example of shonky pirate DVD translation, which you might have already seen. The same ‘Blog also reproduces this sign from a Mexican restaurant in China, which you might not have: “Zapata’s Mexican Cantina does not sponsor prostitutes at our establishment. If you are a prostitute please refrain from entering our […]
Read MoreAs Claire put it when emailing me this link, “Has The Onion started writing everyone’s headlines?”: “Sudan situation ‘totally bad’“
Read MoreBBC Radio 1’s news—normally pitched at the educationally subnormal—referred to Osama bin Laden as a “terrorist” this morning.
Read MoreI noticed this story a little while back and it made me smile. It’s like John Major sacking one of his cabinet members for screwing around (or the Independent having a go at the Guardian for printing the views of an extremist): Oasis fire Pete Doherty for lack of work ethic. Those “working class” Gallagher […]
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