I bought a copy of Kate Fox’s Watching The English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour a few weeks back. I’ve not really had time to read it of course. So far I’ve managed three chapters: “The Weather” (which, appropriately, opens the book), “Linguistic Class Codes”, and “Rules of Sex”. It’s pretty accurate so far—so […]
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08Feb05 — 0
Still Alive
As if everything else wasn’t enough my Net connection has been down for the past twenty-four hours. I’ll be back and in effect tomorrow, I promise. Read this short story. Watch this movie. Buy this badge.
Read More11Jan05 — 2
She’s A Celebrity—Keep Her In There!
My not-very-exciting anecdote about Germaine Greer is completely true. While I was working there, I started and was Secretary of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) Reading Group. It was embarrassingly successful—not because of me, but because the words “Institute of Cancer Research” have magical powers. Upon hearing them, black cab drivers will not only […]
Read More09Jan05 — 1
How’s About It, Then?
Amazon’s UK book best-seller list brings you the five most effective chat-up lines in the country: The Personal Trainer: “I Can Make You Thin.” The European Porn Star: “I haff come to turn you on, and I haff a vehr big drill.” The Latin Lover: “Bonjour, mademoiselle.“ The Cheeky “Cockney” Lad: “Awight, darlin’?“ The Prince: […]
Read More27Dec04 — 1
Shrinking Tulips
December 2004, is turning out to be the sixth consecutive month of falling house prices in the UK. The hysteria has flipped. John Plender in the Financial Times has a word or two to say to those who believe that markets are rational. [Read the article before it becomes subscription only.]
Read More27Dec04 — 0
The Countryside Alliance Goes In Hard
Chris The Stoat linked to The Brick Testament yesterday, showing the image of the Lego shepherds gathering. He didn’t link to the next frame of Luke, showing them drawing a bead on a messenger of the Lord with a ground-to-air missile launcher. As the angel is joined by reinforcements, the militants run for cover.
Read More26Dec04 — 12
Good, Bad, And Mixed
I used to have reservations about Ute Lemper as a singer, but on Radio 3 this afternoon, performing with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, she was stunning. I’m sad that I missed the Hebrew and Arabic songs she began her show with. Apart from an abortive attempt to read Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone—I gave […]
Read More18Dec04 — 0
And So Farewell, David
From “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 More16Dec04 — 1
Magically Correct
Recently I expressed some concern at the look of the new film adaptations of the Earthsea novels by Ursula Le Guin. She’s not a happy bunny either, as she explains at Slate, under the title “Whitewashed: Earthsea How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books“.
Read More16Dec04 — 1
Obscene Publications
Have you got any hardcore? Y’know: Naomi Does Najaf? No, sir. Maybe some stuff with, er, children? Like the Pilger one in the paediatrics wards or that Moore one with the kids flying kites? I’m afraid not. I bet you like a bit of amateur, though, dontcha? You must have “The Best of After Hours […]
Read More14Dec04 — 0
The Joys Of Blogging
Sorry 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 More10Dec04 — 1
Thank You
It’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 More09Dec04 — 7
Novel Lists
On Tuesday, Harry Hutton of “Chase Me Ladies“‘s Killer Fact was that “P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler had the same English teacher.” I suspect my dad might have had the at least two ring leaders of future military coups in different West African states study under him, but it’d take some doing to compete with […]
Read More08Dec04 — 2
Sting, Pitt, Kravitz, McGregor, Banderas, Geek
I 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 More01Dec04 — 0
Self-Oppression
Gosh! 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 More30Nov04 — 4
Movie Round-Up
It’s been said before that big studios often release the same story two or three times within a couple of years: Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, Armageddon and Deep Impact, The Others and The Sixth Sense. Over at Apple’s trailers site, the latest Hollywood obsession seems to be women dealing with the disappearance or reappearance […]
Read More08Nov04 — 3
Farewell, Ivor; Hello, Kylie
Over 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 More07Nov04 — 5
Bleargh
I’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 More15Oct04 — 7
Friday Feeling
It’s Friday! I invite haiku on the subject of Britney Spears—or is it “Britney Federline“?
Read More15Oct04 — 0
Local Minimum
I’m not very good at parking. I have written here before about my driving my friend Auriol‘s car through a Genome Campus fence. Today I discovered why everyone avoids the cornermost parking space of the Campus’s underground car park when, moving into it, I managed to shuffle back and forth enough times to wedge my […]
Read More10Oct04 — 1
Mucho Macho
I saw Collateral some time ago, but haven’t got round to writing about it, have nothing original to say, and feel slightly let down by Michael Mann (who is a god). It’s not that it’s a bad film; it is, in many ways, superb, but, like others who’ve seen it, I think that Mann or […]
Read More24Sep04 — 7
It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Hollywood nymphets cower in the jungle, vainly trying to hide their voluptuousness from James Brown as he looms in the background, poised for another brush with the law. Is this the best pulp book cover ever? (via the comments of Harry’s Place) UPDATE: Damn! As Dave points out, we’ve been rumbled and they’re blocking our […]
Read More22Sep04 — 2
Friend Of PooterGeek Raves About Book By French Philosopher. France Surrenders.
Claire recommended this book to Judith and me today. From the review she pointed us at it sounds fascinating and, as Judith pointed out, one of its themes is one of my long-time obsessions, namely that the the pursuit of happiness is not a right.
Read More21Sep04 — 0
Google Bible
I’ve reviewed this book about Google for the UK UNIX Users’ Group. I can’t link to the review because they don’t release the stuff from their magazine until months after it appears in print. In summary, it’s good enough that I would have paid for it if they hadn’t given me a free copy.
Read More09Sep04 — 2
Autumn Fever
Backword Dave has been writing about P G Wodehouse and Jonathan Derbyshire is doing so too.
Read More06Sep04 — 1
Count Yourselves Lucky
I wrote a violent movie spoof last week that I didn’t post because of what happened in Russia. Yes, PooterGeek had a rare attack of taste and decency. Rest assured that it will appear once everyone in the media has forgotten the latest “9/11”. Next week, probably. Now, however, might be a good time to […]
Read More06Sep04 — 0
A Genuinely Funny Man
I was just going to pop this one in an email to Judith, fan of all things Wodehouse (and an American Jew in Israel, so yah boo sucks), but it’s too good for that: Stephen Fry on Robert McCrum on the other PG. (Why can’t Fry write like that all the time?)
Read More30Aug04 — 9
Cults
There were two other things I enjoyed reading in the edition of The Independent‘s “Review” that I mention below: Andy Gill’s record reviews, of course—he has this anachronistic tendency to write about the music itself and listen to black artists (without making excuses for them)—and a review of yet another book by a middle-class mother […]
Read More29Aug04 — 1
Fahrenheit 2000
Inevitably I’m late to this, but here [via Slashdot] is the list of books Americans most often want to ban from their libraries. Nice to see Huck Finn still hanging in there in the nineties.
Read More27Aug04 — 1
Two For The Price Of One
Today’s book from Libra Aries is Gregory Szanto’s Astrotherapy: Astrology and the Realisation of the Self. It promises to combine “the ancient art of astrology” with the “the modern science of psychotherapy”.
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