As a child I would watch my dad make a fire in the morning, kneeling down in his vest, putting paper from old copies of The Guardian underneath the coal (and then quite likely lighting his first cigarette of the day with the flame—he’s been smokeless now for years). Susurration has stolen a lead all […]
Read More[Click image for details—via Stupid Evil Bastard]
Read MoreAs I predicted, the pull of Blade: Trinity was too strong and Leasey and I went along to see it last Saturday. It turned out to be both very entertaining and utter rubbish. The plot is thinner than a 15-year-old on a catwalk; Parker Posey couldn’t act her way out of a parking ticket; and […]
Read MoreAs you probably know if you are a regular, I live off the Mill Road, Cambridge’s ethnic strip. I do so not out of solidarity with the city’s immigrant population nor as some kind of fashion statement. I would much rather be in one of the areas where the rich white people live, but I […]
Read MoreFrom “The Tragedy of David Blunkett” in today’s Economist: “the British have lost their primness about sex, but they still hate a queue-jumper” Whatever you think of his policies, you have to feel something for the poor man. If you were choosing how your career was to end would you prefer it being: supported to […]
Read MoreIt takes a professional philosopher to choose, of all the arguments for the existence of some kind of god, the most exquisitely wrong: “A philosophy professor who has been a leading proponent of atheism for more than 50 years has decided that God may exist after all. “Antony Flew, 81, now believes scientific evidence supports […]
Read MoreI am pulling out of the Genome Campus when I notice the car in front of me has a registration which is just a couple of characters away from spelling out “deontic”. First I think, “A near miss like that’s a bit of a shame.” Then I think, “Yeah, but what is the size of […]
Read MoreSorry for the thin posting here lately. I have a lot of music-making and Christmas socializing going on. As if to shame me, a PooterGeeker I’ve never met before read my Amazon wishlist [over there ->], noticed that one of the books on it was no longer available to buy new, and sent me an […]
Read MoreIt’s a shame that casualsavant didn’t send me The Metrosexual Guide sooner. The chapter on sex in particular has been a revelation. I understand now, for example, where I went wrong with that Canadian girl who told me she was “really into” Ralph Fiennes: “Uniforms and situations involving authority figures can be fun, though it’s […]
Read MoreI discovered this week that a man for whom I have immense professional admiration possesses a comb-over of apocalyptic awfulness. It is not so much a hairstyle as a standing test of his subordinates’ loyalty; an oxbow lake of glossy, hypnotising vanity skirting the rear of his polished head as if in mocking apposition to […]
Read MoreYvette Cooper—who used to live next door to me at Balliol—was responsible for a government campaign to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies. According to the statistics collected, its effect seemed to be to make things ever-so-slightly worse and then ever-so-slightly better. These days there’s a whiff of desperation about the issue. Today I discover […]
Read MoreI had dinner this evening with a nice Filipina post-doc yeast geneticist who, like all of her countrywomen when newly arrived in a location beyond their islands, was carrying something on behalf of another Filipina, in this case a gift from casualsavant for me. Now that I have a copy of The Metrosexual Guide To […]
Read MoreI have a nice handbuilt touring bike. When I bought it nearly ten years ago with a tax rebate, I paid more for it (even in absolute cash terms) than the car I now drive. Unlike my car, it has probably paid for itself, mainly by getting me around London for several years, when I […]
Read MoreLike Herr Blunkett, I have had access to one of Her Britannic Majesty’s rail warrant thingies—in my case for going about the country on Medical Research Council business. If I’d known I could use it to send my girlfriend first class, I’d, er, have got myself a girlfriend. I would so. I could have one […]
Read MoreGosh! Wow! According to the Beeb, women eighty years ago were writing diaries similar to Bridget’s! It’s like they were ahead of their time! Or, or…
Read MoreFrom Friday’s Telegraph: “The head teacher of a girls’ secondary school has suspended 40 pupils after what she described as an ‘absolutely frightening’ case of bullying. “Pamela Orchard took the action after viewing CCTV footage of the incident of ‘mass intimidation’ in which the large group of girls formed a circle around one 15-year-old pupil […]
Read MoreWhen my friend Leasey took me out clubbing in Cambridge with her friends recently, they made a point of avoiding “Ballare”. I now know why. Like many other passengers on the sinking ship that was the Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre, a lovely Swedish girl is leaving it next week. I am with her, […]
Read MoreI’m not ill, dead or cut off from the Internet, people; I’m just ‘blogged out. Yesterday afternoon I found myself writing a piece so monumentally grumpy that I couldn’t bear to publish it. I might put something milder up tomorrow evening, but I think PooterGeek will be taking a few days off after that. You’re […]
Read MorePooterGeek has long had a jokey button labelled “nice arse” over on the right hand side of its front page. It links to a picture of me running in an annual Cambridge charity relay race called “Chariots of Fire” last year. One of the other members of our particular Genome Campus team was a guy […]
Read MoreSomeone who knows me from the real world emailed yesterday. She’s just acquired broadband access and stumbled upon PooterGeek while surfing around. She wrote nice things about it and then compared my online presence to my actual presence, unironically demanding to know what had happened to “the ranting”. Tell me, people, am I losing my […]
Read More[Before I start, I’m just going to say something about my editorial policy. A tiresome Leftie elsewhere in the ‘Blogosphere was taking Norm to task the other day for writing about cricket while Fallujah burned or something like that. This has been a week of Important Events in the World, but a week of froth […]
Read MoreBridget Jones II is so bad on so many levels that it will be difficult for me to keep this post deservingly short. If you’re in a hurry, read my title. [But first, in answer to Eric’s thoughtful enquiry, I have not been following anything like my usual routine lately. That, my being ill over […]
Read MoreOver the weekend, Judith told me that a feature-length adaptation of Brideshead Revisited is being planned. For this version, the Catholicism will be toned down. This is the sort of thing Evelyn Waugh might have written into a satire of Hollywood. [“Waugh’s a man? Is he some kind of faggot?!”] Maybe we can petition to […]
Read MoreI’ve been in bed for the past couple of days with a nasty little dose of food poisoning. On reflection, it was probably the Stilton, bacon, and red onion baguette that did for me. It tasted wonderful at the time. Because of my illness I’ve been listening to lots of radio. On Friday, as the […]
Read MoreI meant to say thank you to Nicholas and Hind for dinner yesterday. In fact it was my discovering that Adam, the latest addition to their family, looks exactly like Nicholas, but smaller and a bit more Arab, that made me post about the Karzai photo. Thanks for the “Death to the Zionist Infidels” shopping […]
Read MoreWhy do people take hallucinogenic drugs, when sleep deprivation is so effective and cheap? I actually jumped back from the counter in the spotlessly clean local fish-and-chip shop this evening because I thought I saw a rat crawl near my feet. Sitting up all night to get strange kicks would deprive the posh user of […]
Read MoreSorry if any of the previous entries are glitchy. I am knackered. Do you know what time it is?
Read MoreThoughtful James Hamilton might come by to say something about this one. The Economist this week has a fascinating piece [subscription only] about the decline in suicide rates in the UK. No one has a sure explanation for why the numbers of men and women killing themselves in Britain have declined by tens of percent […]
Read MoreMy friend Leasey told me today that she and her girlfriends are going to take me out “on the pull” to a place where repetitive beats are played and alcoholic drinks are served. She has ordered me not to wear my “gay trousers” lest the straight women think I am not interested in them. Apparently […]
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