I have been profoundly disappointed with the level of Euston Manifesto satire to date. Things are so bad on the taking-the-piss front that I am probably going to have to do it myself. That’s what it comes to when so many of the people who disagree with you are humourless, witless, or unhinged.
For heaven’s sake, who runs in fear of being ridiculed by Daniel Davies, the thinking man’s Benji? That’s like being mauled by a dead lamb.
These two cartoons aren’t bad,
but I think I’m just flattered by getting a mention.
Perhaps it’s because it’s the work of a woman, rather than another shed-dwelling, obsessive “anti-Decent”—how empty does a working person’s life have to be for him to waste his free time stalking harmless potterers like me and Norm?—but the Pirate Manifesto, while not a direct attack, is at least funny. Well, it is if you’ve read this and this first.
“how empty does a working person’s life have to be for him to waste his free time stalking harmless potterers like me and Norm?”
The obvious answer is “pretty bloody empty”, I suppose, but to be fair to myself it wasn’t clear when I did it that you were so harmless.
You know what always used to piss me off about Jo Brand? If I were to complain that she was deeply, deeply unfunny, her fans would always say, “Ah, but that’s because you’re a man and you can’t take having the piss taken,” and I’d have to tiresomely dredge through a list of comedians who take the piss out of men and who are funny. Unless you were a woman, you could never just say that Jo Brand wasn’t funny without people thinking that what you really meant was that you were terribly thin-skinned. More recently, much the same has happened with anti-Bush comedy: I am able to laugh at those I support and at my own beliefs, but no-one’s giving me the opportunity — I actualy get annoyed with myself for rolling my eyes in boredom whenever anyone takes the piss out of Bush. I mean, the things that get a huge audience laugh on Have I Got News For You: “Oo, now where did I leave those weapons of mass destruction?” — “Hey, let’s invade a country!” — “Help, help! I’m choking on a pretzel!” I do sympathise with comedians: if this crap gets such a big laugh, why bother trying anything clever? And now it’s the anti-Euston brigade. They seem to have a very low laughter threshold.
(P.S. I was surprised to discover that Jo Brand is utterly, utterly hilarious when ad-libbing on panel shows and the like. She just writes crap stand-up script for herself.)
I don’t think I’ve ever accused you of doing so.
I don’t remember your using those phrases, but I am fascinated to read that “Pooter” was a character in Diary of a Nobody.
Then my giving this online diary the name PooterGeek was rather appropriate, wasn’t it? You learn something new every day.
He’s a wanker (doublestupid). I don’t even no why you waste time on the cunt.
k before no and w after
[…] [This, incidentally, is what led to my mistakenly treating Daniel’s most recent comment as a serious one: I assumed, too generously alas, that he wouldn’t respond to a post on my blog that mentions how unfunny his writing is by visiting the comments here to tell the same joke about me that I tell about myself every week, and tell it badly. But this pratfall is understandable given that he has “only the vaguest concept” of who I am.] […]
Well, yes. Lupin Pooter obviously, as well as Cummings and Gowings and Carrie and the res. But I had always assumed that Geek Pooter in this case was as in compooter. Please correct me if wrong.
And which manifestos did Aaronovitch sign?
The person who first came up with the name for this blog, a summer student at the Genome Campus, was indeed thinking of “Compooter Geek”, but I chose it because I thought she was making a reference to the character from the book. She only told me she hadn’t been after I’d adopted it. I don’t often write about computers here.
I don’t think I’ve ever stalked you, Pootergeek; until Matthew sent me this link I didn’t know who you were. I stalk David Aaronovitch, who not only has a really good sense of humour about it and is a pleasant email correspondent, but also has thumping good taste in the manifestoes he signs.
Just to clear up one point that might have confused; when I use the words “Pooterish”, “Pooterism” “A modern day Pooter” etc with reference to the Euston manifesto, I’m referring to the title character of George Grossmith’s “Diary of a Nobody”. As I say, I have only the vaguest concept of who you are so it’s not aimed at you, except in as much as it is if the cap fits, so to speak.
[tumbleweed]