PooterGeek

Offensive Language

Harry Windsor is a “thug” for referring to another soldier by the nickname “Paki”, according to Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, quoted by the BBC. The BBC page links to the Website of that organisation, where Shafiq also claims that the government of Israel is like that of the Nazis. The organization’s Chairman and […]

Read More

Family Resemblance

One thing I forgot to say when I posted those old photos: if you look at my father in the second one you can see why my sister and I reacted the same way to seeing Willem Dafoe in Mississippi Burning1 : “That’s dad in the 60s!” Until then, he’d been a Graham Greene character, working […]

Read More

Happy (western, heliocentric) New Year!

I hope that, wherever you are, you enjoyed the extra second imposed upon you by the imperialist forces of the dominant scientific-capitalist worldview and that you have a prosperous 2009. As for my year so far, I jogged wearily to the gym this morning, dreading the crowds of resolutioners (though it hasn’t been too bad […]

Read More

Top Chef

Tim Newman is a blogging engineer, currently terraforming the far eastern Russian island of Sakhalin, a place Wikipedia describes as “less cold than inland Siberia”, with a view to it being fit for human habitation some time in the 22nd century. His account of his ten days spent on a Russian icebreaker is entertaining.

Read More

In Search Of The Perfect Pitch

Clive Davis is a champion of singer/musician Curtis Stigers, who had a couple of enormous mainstream hit singles and then made the journey from pop to jazz years ago. Sadly, it seemed at first that only seven people noticed his migration, including Clive—or as, as wardy observed, seven and two ragged tigers. This year, on the […]

Read More

Time Travel

There aren’t many photos of me and my sister as children so I was especially touched when my (British) cousin, Teresa, sent me a couple she had found when scanning her father’s collection. The first one I’ve posted here is of Teresa and me visiting our grandmother in Walton in Lancashire. Uncle Bernard has always […]

Read More

On The Thrown

[J]ust how effective is it to insult someone in an alien cultural idiom? Bush, naturally enough, looked bewildered, but he ducked speedily and seemed none the worse for wear afterwards. Gordon Brown, I suspect, would have stolidly absorbed the blows; Obama would probably have caught one shoe in each hand before throwing them across the […]

Read More

“It’s not the despair; I can cope with the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”

Cornershop Man watches every single cricket international he can on his satellite TV under the counter—and, unlike me, he fails the Tebbit test. At the start of the week, I asked him: “Suppose you’re looking forward to whupping England’s backsides?” “Hmm,” he inhaled, “I don’t know. You’ve got some good bowlers with you. You could […]

Read More

Jumpers For Goalposts

[UPDATE: For the hordes arriving here after searching for the comedy catchphrase “Jumpers for goalposts”, you’d probably be better off reading this.] Yesterday afternoon, I interrupted some desk-bound consulting work that, even if I weren’t prevented by an NDA from doing so, would put you to sleep instantly if I told you about it, to […]

Read More

Always To The Swift

This is a neat little article that sketches out why your skin colour doesn’t determine your chance of growing up to become an elite sprinter; but your genetic make-up might: There are no sprinters of note from Asia, even with more than 50 percent of the world’s population, a Confucian and Tao tradition of discipline, […]

Read More

How To Look Polished

Anna “little red boat” Pickard, who is female and blessed with a fine head of hair, has identified an exciting new product for those, like me, who are neither: Shiny head! Originally uploaded by anna pickard.

Read More

Great Moments In Music Pedagogy, No. 2 980

The guitarist in the band I’m in has a diploma in (popular) music performance and his music theory is pretty good—certainly better than mine—but he was never taught any music history and he’s only just turned twenty-one. So when, during a discussion about the scores the sax player had written1 for himself and the trumpet […]

Read More

An Apology

I’d like to express my profound regret to everyone reading this post for any offence I might have caused by thinking of writing this post while listening to Radio 2 in the shower at the same time as rubbing my naked body with shower gel. In mitigation, my Webcam was switched off at the time—and in […]

Read More

Directors’ Cuts

I went to see Quantum of Solace1 yesterday evening. The plot revolves around a secret global club of financiers that’s infiltrated the highest levels of governments and their intelligence agencies. Every one of the movies—The International, Valkyrie, and Angels and Demons—depicted in first three trailers shown beforehand also centres on a conspiracy. Obviously this is a clever double-bluff […]

Read More

Clash Of The Titans

From a letter to the Halifax and Calderdale Evening Courier by Jason Smith, the Bradford Chairman of the UK Independence Party: GREEN’S ARREST SHOWS WE ARE BECOMING DICTATORSHIP As unaccustomed as I am to defending Tory MPs, I feel I must speak out about the arrest of Damian Green, who was apparently held for nine […]

Read More

Tall People Got No Reason

If you’re over six feet in height, squeezing yourself into an economy seat on a plane can be torture, but if you’re seriously overweight and on a domestic flight in Canada, you get another seat: The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a regulatory ruling requiring the country’s airlines to provide an extra seat — […]

Read More

Super Brontë Sisters

As Dickens himself once wrote, this is both the baddest and the bestest thing ever: eighteen quid buys you one hundred classic works of literature for your DS. Devoting a nearly quarter of the content to Shakespeare’s plays is a bit of a cheat, though. That’s like padding out a collection of scores from great […]

Read More

Karma Police On Patrol

Led by The Fat One, Take That are top of the singles charts and will soon be top of the album charts. Robbie Williams is not. I feel about this state-of-affairs the same way I feel about Histon beating Leeds in the FA Cup.

Read More

Are They Slacking Or Am I?

Here’s a thing: it’s been almost two months since I last had a racist email or comment at PooterGeek. I’m proud to say that I normally receive a near-even balance of stuff about niggers and stuff about kikes, but, having just checked, I see that the last one was an email accusing me of being […]

Read More

How Difficult Can It Be, People?

Millions of Britons are refreshing PooterGeek every other minute in the hope of reading my views on the issue of the moment. I am pleased to bring your wait to an end: it’s “Damian” with an ‘A’, not “Damien” with an ‘E’. Get it right.

Read More

Mini-Me

A lot of people spend their youth experimenting. As my mother often tells people who really don’t want to know, I spent my youth experimenting: with chemicals, electricity, and the flora and fauna of Birmingham’s green belt. Just like my peers who took part in drug parties, random sexual coupling, and street violence—I suppose I […]

Read More

Skinning The Dude

Jeff Bridges really did have all of his hair shaved off to appear in Iron Man. You can see photos of the process in this album on his Website [slow-downloading images; no thumbnails]. Imagine being responsible for removing Jeff Bridges’ hair. That’s iconic hair. It’s up there with Phil Spector’s, Jennifer Anniston‘s, Ruud Gullit’s, Amy […]

Read More

Let’s Saint George!

While I’m on a Radio 4 kick, I heard Mark Lawson interviewing the soon-to-be-stepping-down Andrew Motion and Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on Front Row yesterday evening about the appointment of the next Poet Laureate. Apparently, although they were quick to say it wouldn’t be a TV talent contest, there’s going […]

Read More

Jurassic Car Park

There’s a US marine biologist on BBC Radio 4 talking about the leatherback turtles that she and her team have been tagging. Apparently an adult leatherback grows to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Wikipedia concurs—and also points out that this makes the leatherback only the fourth largest reptile, after some crocodilians. I’m scared now.

Read More

Shug/Shag/Cad

I’ve been very busy this weekend, but here are three things that I enjoyed reading in between upgrades and back-ups: Minette Marrin on Jacqui Smith and UK prostitution1, Shuggy on Barack Obama and the US constitution, and an obituary of William Donaldson: [Donaldson] first came to prominence in 1961 as the London producer of Beyond […]

Read More
Newer Posts
Older Posts