I’m plugging wires in. Come back tomorrow.
Read More30Nov05 — 0
November 2005
29Nov05 — 12
Top Ten Discontinued Dulux Paint Colours
Burnt Hummer Institutional Magnolia Sambo Warm Placenta Haliborange Coldplay Yellow Kilroy Autumn Phlegm Coelacanth Brown Conrad Black [Despite / because of my being born into a country in the midst of the Biafran War, a conflict in which one weapon was starvation, it was normal in the house I grew up in for us to […]
Read More28Nov05 — 15
You Turn Your Head For Five Minutes…
Blimey. 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 More26Nov05 — 8
That Angela Merkel Speech In Voll
Guten 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 More25Nov05 — 18
Separated At Death
It wasn’t until Patrick Anson (aka “Patrick Lichfield”, “5th Earl of Lichfield“) died recently that I realised that he and Anthony Armstrong-Jones (aka “Lord Snowdon”, “First Earl of Snowdon“) were two distinct people, taking photographs and doing very nicely out of their royal connections. Today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, PooterGeekers, is to […]
Read More24Nov05 — 4
Cross Over The Road, My Friend
You Don’t Want To Do That, a new BBC reality radio show, will follow a group of potential recruits to the Samaritans as they attempt to become full-time counsellors to the suicidal, the depressed, and the lonely. In this preview recording of the first episode, the hopefuls are thrown right into the deep end. They […]
Read More23Nov05 — 7
Well Known Unknown Old Etonians
There’s a boring article about Eton College, Britain’s most famous independent (that is fee-charging—or perhaps that should be fee-fixing) school, in today’s Guardian. Like most of the recent boring articles in the press about Eton, it begins with the question of whether or not, since the inverted snobbery of the Thatcher era washed through the […]
Read More22Nov05 — 6
Women, Eh?
Sunday Saturday. I am in the TV room at the gym with three other men, watching the tense final minutes of the England-New Zealand Rugby Union thriller. We are hunched forward in our comfy chairs. One bloke has been shouting elaborate instructions throughout. Now we are all shouting. A woman walks in behind us, fresh […]
Read More21Nov05 — 5
Roy Of The Rovers
[Brassy 50s light music plays. We see archive black-and-white shots of men in flat caps and striped scarves spinning rattles round and cheering on footballers dressed in long baggy shorts, moving jerkily as they kick a sodden leather ball about a rain-soaked ground. Behind the “Roy Of The Rovers” credits, a man with bad teeth […]
Read More19Nov05 — 9
In The Times; Off The Ball
Tim Worstall [thank you, Tim!] recommended PooterGeek in his article about ‘Blogging today in the Times. This would be wonderful news except for my continuing lack of Internet access at home, the absence of any kind of post on PooterGeek today, and my having allowed my “Best Of” section to become months out of date. […]
Read More18Nov05 — 3
Out For The Lads
Do you think couturiers these days carefully measure up the rich and/or famous and then offer them a choice between a garment that, when first worn, will fit perfectly and one that will fall off in a precisely calibrated way in public? [Thank you to my beautiful assistant, Leasey, for this one.]
Read More17Nov05 — 3
This Doesn’t Mean You’re Mozart, Matey Boy
Like Frank Sinatra entering a karaoke contest, my friend and co-conspirator Richard Brincklow recently decided to follow up being paid by people to compose music by going to university part-time to study for a degree in music composition. It turns out this week that the jammy bastard has been awarded a First. I suppose I […]
Read More17Nov05 — 3
End Of The Peer
Top Ten acts you might be curious enough to watch as long you didn’t have to hand over any of your money: ELVISH Bringing a new meaning to “The Return Of The King”, Elvish is possibly the leading fantasy role-playing Presley impersonator working today and the undisputed hit of 1998’s Nevada TolkienCon. Bob Dylan’s 60s […]
Read More16Nov05 — 8
The True Story Of A Breach Of The Geneva Conventions
[Location: Fallujah, I-raq. Dateline: November 2004; well past your bedtime. US Rangers and special forces operatives advance on a complex of residential buildings believed to be crawling with the enemy. Watching one entrance through night vision goggles, Sergeant Steve “The Rock” Jenovich leads a half-dozen of his best men into what they believe will be […]
Read More16Nov05 — 1
Cooking
If you are on their snailmail spam list then the latest Viking office stationery catalogue probably dropped through your letterbox this morning. Further to my mention of microwave ovens, on the cover of the brochure is the following offer: “FREE! Get this Microwave FREE with every 4 or more packs of Large Core Sellotape you […]
Read More15Nov05 — 4
If Only The Comprehensive System Had Died Instead
Today’s Guardian devotes three pages to a tribute to the recently deceased educationalist Ted Wragg, who, like most educationalists, wouldn’t have known a controlled experiment if it was being performed on one of his own children with a bonesaw. A lot of the space is taken up with the “best of” his quotable declarations on […]
Read More15Nov05 — 6
Gayer Than The Proverbial Trousers Of That Ilk
I realise a gym in Brighton is probably not the kind of place where you would expect to find, say, The Playboy Channel showing on the TV screens, but yesterday while I was working out the video to the latest Will Young single was on. It’s a Top Gun pastiche that opens with a great […]
Read More14Nov05 — 7
Soft Southern Pulses
Yesterday I treated myself to a lunch of cod and chips from an eat-in/takeaway fish and chip shop in Brighton. I ate in. Having taken my order, the guy serving asked me if I wanted anything else. Nervously I requested mushy peas—a delicacy that only those living north of the Irony Curtain* truly understand. Amazingly, […]
Read More13Nov05 — 3
Gutted
Living in my disconnected bubble as I am at the moment, I managed somehow to become convinced that the England-Argentina “friendly” was today. So I stayed in yesterday evening and continued to sort through three years of photographic, prints, negatives, and scans. Par-tee! Even if I didn’t see it, it’s nice to know that one […]
Read More12Nov05 — 6
A Very Silly Woman Indeed
Also amusing in the Graun are the wonderfully unselfconscious words of Susan Rice, Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland. She’s so terribly, terribly important that she has to put in a 15-hour working day. “Home for me is Aberdeen, my head office is Edinburgh and I’m in London a couple of days a week because […]
Read More12Nov05 — 0
Easy, Tiger
One of the extracts from novelist John Fowles’ diaries in the Guardian today neatly sums up the attitude of a certain kind of educated observer to the War On Terror: Rushdie fuss. Eliz in a paranoiac state, that I might support him. This is a clear moral choice. From what I have heard of him, […]
Read More12Nov05 — 9
“Hello, Am I Through To Customer Services?”
Last night a Master’s student (whom I have never taught) phoned me to vent her justified frustration with one of her lecturers’ chronic incompetence. This keen and bright individual had done everything she could and should about the situation and complained through the correct channels. As usual in these situations she wasn’t the only member […]
Read More11Nov05 — 7
Niggaz In Da Hood
Yesterday, the guy who runs the Internet caff where I have become a regular introduced me to Jay, The Only Black Man In Hove. The proprietor thought that I should meet him because Jay makes his living writing and remixing pop. Coming from Hove though, “Jay” turns out to be short for “Justin St Clair […]
Read More10Nov05 — 6
At Least I Didn’t End Up Supporting Crystal Palace
I was thinking of ‘Blogging Marcel Berlins’ explanation of why he supports Aston Villa Football Club before Norm tagged me about it. It contains possibly the ultimate middle-class football fan anecdote. 10 years old and fresh off the boat from France in South Africa, the lawyer-to-be chose to support Aston Villa because: “I knew what […]
Read More09Nov05 — 18
Sorry, We Don’t Do Business With Negroes
Soon it’ll be time to renew my car insurance. When I investigated, I was disappointed to discover that I don’t qualify for cover from Whitey’s Wheels, the new company that only insures Anglo-Saxon drivers. For some time now, actuaries have recognized that white people make fewer and smaller claims on their car insurance than black […]
Read More08Nov05 — 13
The Man In The Unfurnished Flat
I’ve put all my bedroom furniture together now, and my bedtime reading over the past few days has been Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle. [Typically, Penguin publishes the book inside two different tarted-up covers, but with the same nasty old typesetting inside.] As “what if the Axis won the War?” novels […]
Read More07Nov05 — 9
At Last, An Animal Joke
A man goes to the zoo. When he arrives there is just a dog sat in a cage. It was a Shitzu.
Read More07Nov05 — 8
Root Causes
I think the riots in France are a protest by disenfranchised Muslim youth against that country’s involvement in the disastrous imperialist adventure in Iraq.
Read More06Nov05 — 8
Yet Another Reason Not To Boycott M&S
I think I may be in lust with the non-blonde two of Marks & Spencer’s new womenswear models: Erin O’Connor and Noemie Lenoir. (You’ve got to wonder, though, about about a woman (Erin) who was dumped by Jamie Theakston, rather than dumping him herself.)
Read More05Nov05 — 3
One Use For A Dead Cat
Your meagre anecdotes insult Bast, Perfumed Protector, Cat Goddess. The one you call “Little Mo” has paid the ultimate price for your failure to show sufficient respect. Until all households of the Infidel West are part of the Catiphate our martyrdom operations will continue. Until the sacred lands of the desert again flow with milk […]
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