Playboy gives up playing with Barbie-girl to play with Sindy doll. Barbie “devastated”.
Read More12Dec05 — 2
PooterGeek
12Dec05 — 0
The Stupid Party?
Further to my controversial (and originally wrong) post about Thatcher’s educational history, Chris Brooke notes that the current Conservative Shadow Cabinet has a lot of susstificates—albeit mostly ones in subjects classified as belonging to the humanities.
Read More12Dec05 — 8
Back To The 70s
On Friday Saturday evening, I went out for a noisy drink with Mr and Mrs Wardytron, their livejournal friend Jim(?) and a posse of goths. Thank you, Wardy, for inviting me. It was fun. One of the few serious topics of conversation that came up was the new Conservative Party leader. It’s not been often […]
Read More12Dec05 — 1
MTA Wanted—Emphasis On T and A
Media composer Richard subscribes to various lists that offers work for people in his business. As with much of the media world, those offering gigs are fully aware of the desperation of celebrity wannabes to get any kind of experience—so they pay accordingly: peanuts or less. To use the jargon, they take the piss. Such […]
Read More11Dec05 — 8
Working Out
One month’s free personal training with my new gym membership and the need for structure in my life have turned me into something of an obsessive. The very helpful staff have shown me how to operate those strange torture machines I once mocked. I used to use the Genome Campus gym for one purpose: to […]
Read More10Dec05 — 7
Non-Crazed England Football Editorial Shocker
After yesterday’s World Cup draw, some boring sense about England’s prospects from football365: It is worth stating something that is blindingly obvious and yet often overlooked in the hysteria surrounding the national team: England’s peaks may be depressingly even, but the troughs have been negligible for many years now. Since Sven-Goran Eriksson took over, the […]
Read More09Dec05 — 4
Hard Cell
Hi. I’m Saddam Hussein. You might remember me from my worldwide hits Massacre At Halabja, Gulf War I, and Gulf War II. I’m here to tell you about custard, Bird’s™ Custard—The Choice of Despots™. [Raises pack to camera stiffly. Walks along featureless metal corridor towards prison kitchen, but slowly because his ankles are chained together.] […]
Read More08Dec05 — 3
The Future Is Ours
In October 2005, PooterGeek features two posts and twenty-two comments celebrating sheds. In December 2005, the creator of Shedboatshed wins the Turner Prize for Art. Even Dave F’s joke is recycled by a Professor Sam Shuster on the Guardian letters page. Once again, my people, we surf ahead of the wave. On a surfboard made […]
Read More08Dec05 — 0
Channel 4: Nathan Barley Does Foreign Policy
For anyone else who has a Godwinian objection to my recent Channel 4 post, Never Trust A Hippy presents further relevant data: The trailer prior to tonight’s (UK) Channel 4 Dispatches programme ‘America’s Secret Shame’ (part of a series of programmes about the war in Iraq) featured the series’ money quote. It was spoken to […]
Read More07Dec05 — 8
Proud To Be British
I’ve been meaning to tell this heart-warming true story of national unity online for almost two weeks now and just haven’t had a chance to: I keep being troubled by the strange and topical outbursts of The Voices In My Head. I get on a Brighton bus at about eight, having had some delightful early-Friday-evening […]
Read More06Dec05 — 2
Acrostic Baffles
This 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 More06Dec05 — 8
Final Revisions
Yesterday’s serious press carried near-full-page advertisements for Channel 4’s new substation “More4“‘s screening of Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s acclaimed cinematic imagining of the last moments of former German head of state Adolf Hitler. These advertisements read: “It’s a happy ending. He dies.” But just how happy an ending was it for the once-proud nation that was […]
Read More06Dec05 — 3
Gordon Speaks
…and the lowest unemployment since the Roman invasion of AD 54. [Cries of “Hear hear!” from Labour benches.] In the last fourteen quarters, under this Labour government, the seasonally adjusted Hall-Oates coefficient has remained within a fifth of a percent of its optimum range and this year the Ciccone measure is at its highest level […]
Read More05Dec05 — 7
Rugged Defiance
[HARRISON FORD is dressed in an expensive suit. It is crumpled from his being forced to sit on the floor, tied to a pipe in a stainless steel room full of hi-tech equipment. POOTERGEEK enters. He is wearing a collarless grey jacket and matching trousers and carrying a fluffy white CAT. He is not sure […]
Read More04Dec05 — 17
Read And Then Write
I’ve a good mind to drive round to that Andrew Bloggers4Labour and take a sledgehammer to his server. Since he started aggregating comments as well as posts it feels like PooterGeek has been under siege. Now, as regulars know, when someone’s got me bang to rights (see below), I own up, but please, people, can […]
Read More04Dec05 — 28
Smile-Inducing Anecdote
Hak has a nice story about the fall of Thatch. I remember spending a day at work singing “Ding dong, the witch is dead!” I’m pleased that the Wikipedia entry about her corrects the strangely widespread myth that she achieved a Double First at Oxford. The truth is she collected a Desmond—and I think we […]
Read More03Dec05 — 0
The Next Next Big Thing
Three months from now clueless articles about “Generation @” will be appearing in British Sunday newspaper supplements. [via Slashdot]
Read More02Dec05 — 6
Men United In Sentimental Bollocks
Yesterday in the Guardian Nicky Campbell joined the minority of press commentators who have mentioned recently deceased footballer George Best’s tendency to slap women around. He did so with a telling quote from one of Best’s exes: “I adored George, and do you know what? In almost two and half years together he only hit […]
Read More01Dec05 — 17
Not To Be Provocative Or Anything…
…but, having read three different people write recently that British ‘Bloggers are united in their opposition to ID cards, I’d just say that I think they will be rather handy actually. I’d like my medical data stored on mine too, if that’s okay with everyone. Not only can I see no sound principled case against […]
Read More30Nov05 — 0
Busy Signal
I’m plugging wires in. Come back tomorrow.
Read More29Nov05 — 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 […]
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