As at least one of my Jewish friends will testify, it was during my years living in a North West London flat with a caricature of a Jewish grandmother for a resident landlady (rather than my time in the kosher house on Osney Island) that members of the Global Conspiracy stole my brain and replaced […]
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30Jan06 — 7
‘Blogger Chokes To Death On Self-Pity
“Rebound congestion”: it’s another of those bland bits of medical jargon, like “cerebral contusion”, that give no hint of the actual discomfort accompanying their referents. “Rebound congestion”—roll it around your mouth and then imagine waking up from a nightmare of smothering only to find that you really are suffocating and that your last sight on […]
Read More28Jan06 — 12
Anti-Social Behaviour: Theory And Fieldwork
Yesterday I had an excellent evening of argument. I spent it contending that, since our emergence, we human beings have been, for plausible biological reasons, fundamentally aggressive and suspicious of visibly different members of our own species. In reply it was argued that our behaviour towards others has been characterised by altruistic tendencies and trade. […]
Read More26Jan06 — 2
Out Of The Valley Of The Slackers
The number of visitors to PooterGeek is tightly coupled to the number of you sitting bored at your work computers. Christmas Day is the annual low-point for traffic here, when the score dips below 200 unique visits and 300 page views in a day. As the holiday unwinds the stats climb gradually back up to […]
Read More25Jan06 — 6
Beware!
Yesterday evening, two random girls from Lodz phoned me up up to teach me Polish. [Hello, Alice and Monika.] Yes, about three years after everyone else, I now have Skype. But the Linux client doesn’t work properly for me (surprise surprise) so you’ll have to catch me on one of those rare occasions when I’m […]
Read More24Jan06 — 4
Listening For A Calling
I’ve cited one of Paul Graham’s long essays before. Even when I disagree with them they are brilliant and deceptively simple. This one isn’t about being a nerd; it should be of interest to everyone (who is lucky enough to be well educated and living in the comfortable West). It’s about finding a job you […]
Read More23Jan06 — 13
Spastic Wog
Via Tim comes this fun piece by Jeremy Clarkson: Wog. Spastic. Queer. Nigger. Dwarf. Cripple. Fatty. Gimp. Paki. Mick. Mong. Poof. Coon. Gyppo. You can’t really use these words any more and yet, strangely, it is perfectly acceptable for those in the travel and hotel industries to pepper their conversation with the word “beverage”. There […]
Read More18Jan06 — 2
The Ubiquitous Sweaterman!
Have you ever had that experience when you’re quietly browsing a public library and you (foolishly) strike up a conversation about one of the books on display with one of the other regulars—a slightly intense-looking middle-aged man in a sweater—and you gradually realise you are engaging with someone from the other side of the reality/fantasy […]
Read More17Jan06 — 1
Gratuitous Cuteness
She’s only three years old and he’s only three months, but you can tell from one look in his eyes that a terrible realisation is already dawning on Sam: like his uncle, he will become known as the “The One Whose Sister Is A Model”. [click to enlarge]
Read More04Jan06 — 4
Killer Bug Ate My Leg
The Five Stages of Athlete’s Foot: Day One: “Ooh dear, that’s a bit itchy.” Day Two: [takes off sock] “Ewww! It looks like some alien life form is gnawing its way through the flesh between my phalanges. Must pop along to the chemist tomorrow and get something for that.” Day Three: “Hello, NHSDirect? Yes, unfortunately […]
Read More03Jan06 — 2
Penny For A Cup Of Chai?
As a fellow member of the middle-class unemployed I can also testify to the horrors radio agony aunt Anna Raeburn described so “movingly” yesterday in the Guardian. Very recently she found herself jobless, without even so much as a rich husband and a poorly-paid but glamorous career in the media to rub together, and thrown […]
Read More02Jan06 — 2
Oh Poo
I found out just before Christmas that I’ve been turned down for that SciArt grant I was applying for. This is not exactly a surprise, but I’m still not happy about it. Thankfully, my family took my hint when I told them and I didn’t have to endure a Christmas of them looking at me […]
Read More01Jan06 — 1
Here’s To A Better One
And thank you to the members of SIAW and everyone else for reading and commenting in 2005. Have a wonderful 2006. Cheers! I’m still suffering the last of my cold and I’ve just spent New Year’s Eve trying to work out how to use FL Studio 6’s new mixer. I didn’t even notice that midnight had passed […]
Read More31Dec05 — 5
Lessons In Pop Culture (Re)learned This Christmas
Clean-cut “youf” operatic quartet G4‘s cover of Radiohead’s Creep is either a crime against music or a post-modern deflation of passive-aggressive indie rock whining. I’m not sure which, but either way I am worried that my sister likes it and that I can’t think of a good reason why she shouldn’t. “Is It Just Me […]
Read More21Dec05 — 8
Beige Christmas
Further to Tim and Eric’s comments, some boring personal information. My mum is from Freetown, Sierra Leone; my dad is from Preston, Lancs. I was born in Nigeria. I left Africa when I was two and have never returned as an adult—even to visit. Since my cousins have all left, and my grandmother there is […]
Read More17Dec05 — 2
Tum Te Tum
Busy busy busy. Go read Google News, peeps.
Read More14Dec05 — 1
Strange Day
I forgot to mention that my Thursday last week started with my being trapped in my car when its cheap-and-nasty central locking system went bonkers and shut me in (I had to pass the keys out through the window to a mechanic at local garage who got a passenger-side door open) and ended with my […]
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 More19Nov05 — 9
In The Times; Off The Ball
Tim Worstall [thank you, Tim!] recommended PooterGeek in his article about ‘Blogging today in the Times. This would be wonderful news except for my continuing lack of Internet access at home, the absence of any kind of post on PooterGeek today, and my having allowed my “Best Of” section to become months out of date. […]
Read More17Nov05 — 3
End Of The Peer
Top Ten acts you might be curious enough to watch as long you didn’t have to hand over any of your money: ELVISH Bringing a new meaning to “The Return Of The King”, Elvish is possibly the leading fantasy role-playing Presley impersonator working today and the undisputed hit of 1998’s Nevada TolkienCon. Bob Dylan’s 60s […]
Read More12Nov05 — 6
A Very Silly Woman Indeed
Also amusing in the Graun are the wonderfully unselfconscious words of Susan Rice, Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland. She’s so terribly, terribly important that she has to put in a 15-hour working day. “Home for me is Aberdeen, my head office is Edinburgh and I’m in London a couple of days a week because […]
Read More11Nov05 — 7
Niggaz In Da Hood
Yesterday, the guy who runs the Internet caff where I have become a regular introduced me to Jay, The Only Black Man In Hove. The proprietor thought that I should meet him because Jay makes his living writing and remixing pop. Coming from Hove though, “Jay” turns out to be short for “Justin St Clair […]
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