Last week, I noticed a registered Brighton & Hove taxi parked outside the Muslim community centre. Prominent on the dashboard was a hardback copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. A couple of days later I saw the car (and the book) again. This time the vehicle was being attended to by two of B&H’s terrifyingly efficient traffic wardens. They were finishing up as I jogged past, and the older male warden said to his younger female colleague: “I think it’s about time for a chocolate digestive.”
As the singlest man in Britain, I was pleased to notice earlier this week that the local Co-op is selling Hovis Granary™ half-loaves. I was less pleased to notice that they are selling them Buy-One-Get-One-Free.
I have a friend from university who, having three degrees in mathematics, can be a little other-worldly. Her partner once told me that he had referred to Franz Ferdinand in her presence and she had neither heard of the unfairly popular band nor the assassinated Archduke. As an undergraduate, she invited a mixed race former schoolmate of hers to stay. When we were introduced I said to her, in my gay-trousered way, “I like your hair. How do you get it straightened?” My friend was amazed. She’d always thought that her mate’s hair was naturally that way.
I was reminded of this yesterday, during a telephone conversation with a former flatmate of mine—also PhD’d. She was discussing her gay friend’s chest hair problem with me.
POOTERGEEK: That’s one advantage of not being white, I suppose: a rug-free upper body.
FRIEND: Huh?
POOTERGEEK: When was the last time you saw a black man with a hairy chest?
FRIEND: Well, er. I always thought that was from waxing.
Huge, untapped African market ahoy! Buy Immac!
“Religion, Shopping, Food, Life, Friends, Race, Africa, Fashion, Gay Trousers” That sounds like a most bizarre filing system.
You don’t need to pick up the other half loaf.
I used to live in Africa and I can assure you that many black men there have rugs!
Is this knowledge that you should be owning up to on the public record, bbm?
You’re right though. On average there’s bigger genetic variation between any two randomly chosen Africans than between any two randomly chosen Europeans. Most African-Europeans(?) and African-Americans are descended from a smaller, mainly West African, population that, on average, is probably less hairy than the surrounding European one. But an explanation like this would have made an even crappier PooterGeek punchline than the usual.
And there’s even a Wikipedia article about it. Apparently Native Americans are the least hairy of all.
Were they perhaps being sold as self-assembly loaves?
Not know about the band, I can live with. After all they endorsed the green party, the crypto-fascist pillocks.
But the archduke? That’s an indication not of otherworldliness, but of poor education.
My friend the applied mathematician has a grasp of certain subtle, timeless, and beautiful universal physical truths that only a tiny fraction of the planet’s population can even dream about acquiring, but it’s true, she probably wouldn’t win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. I’ll pray for her.