Is it just me or is flickr completely screwed today? I have been trying to upload images to it all morning and the persistent “temporary error” message I’ve been getting is becoming increasingly inaccurate.
19Oct06 — 2
18Oct06 — 22
Ungentlemanly English
A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t. Gentlemanly English is when you can read Martin Amis without resorting to a dictionary, but people are unaware of this fact when they read your own writing. Gentlemanly English is when you have a knighthood and a seat in the Lords, but you sign your correspondence “Bob”.
Recently Pash has been collecting grammatical hates. I’m a pedant too, but I don’t mind slip-ups much when the slipper-up is not a native speaker or was crippled in childhood by being forced to attend a school where shuffling tabloid clichés creative writing was prized over correct writing. It’s when people make mistakes because they are showing off that I lose my temper.
Right now, the mistake that has me kicking my splashproof radio out of the bathroom is freakin’ reflexive pronoun abuse. It embodies its own awfulness. The reflexive takes a short word that refers to you personally—“I” or “me”—and turns it into a long word. It’s bigging yourself up with letters. It’s like adding “MA (Oxon)” to your name. It says something about you, but probably not what you hoped.
Check out this random collection of perpetrators [please take the sics as read]:
Neither myself nor the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State attended the Brit awards.
Myself, the Cuban Ambassador and Pedro Ross met briefly a few moments ago…
People behaved, including myself, in ways that were probably not in the best and most advised ways.
George Galloway:
It is to the credit of Labour that it took nearly a hundred years for its body and soul to be captured so that it could start to expel radicals such as myself…
[If you think there’s any chance I’m going to link to Galloway’s Website and the page this comes from then you’ve really not being paying attention.]
18Oct06 — 1
Proprietary
I’ve met and had a couple of interesting conversations with the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute so I’m sure he’s sharp enough to appreciate the irony of his compiling a list of Internet research centres, along with links to them, and then posting this collection to his blog as a Word document. Perhaps the reason he hasn’t replied to my email to him is that he’s not been able to open it with Microsoft Office 😉
17Oct06 — 1
Another Career Change
Do you think it’s too late for me to hang out in an African children’s home in the hope of being adopted by a superstar?
Despite his best efforts Derek was unable to get all of Damian’s hair in frame.
For some reason I am reminded to tell you that Our House gallery in Brighton is currently showing the work of Jerry Schatzberg.
Headaches caused by loud amplified guitars? Try new Zimmudol.
17Oct06 — 7
The Beige Shall Inherit The Earth
I was going to dismiss this article as cobblers until I read this bit:
Within a thousand years, humans will evolve into coffee-coloured giants between six and seven feet tall, [Oliver Curry] predicts. Improved nutrition and medical science will see people growing taller and fitter, while life-spans are extended to 120 years.
Women … will develop lighter skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, even features and smooth hairless skin.
Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.
“Tall mocha with pert breasts for the man on his own in the corner with a Palm Pilot!”
16Oct06 — 5
A Combination of Biblical Awfulness
I do like it when I find an interesting discarded section of a newspaper that I haven’t read: the Friday film and music supplement or the Saturday review from the Guardian for example. I didn’t notice it at the time, but last Saturday The Guardian printed a review by Douglas Hurd of a book about Margaret Thatcher written by Simon Jenkins. I suppose it could have been a review by George Galloway of a book about Tony Benn written by Madeleine Bunting.
To my dismay I found myself agreeing with some of the claims made by Hurd and/or Jenkins in the first quarter of the article. Then their patrician drawl of unsupportable assertion began to fill my mind’s ear and my breathing resumed.
(The same section of the paper also carried an ad for the latest Ruth Rendell:
A TRAGIC DEATH HIDES A WEB OF FAMILY DECEIT IN THE WATER’S LOVELY
Ruth Rendell writes about “a tragic death” revealing “a web of family deceit”? Whodathunkit?)
15Oct06 — 2
Hollywood Boobs
During our Keira-frenzy, I forgot to draw attention to the photoshoppery that accompanied one of her earlier “historical” movie romps. Check out her amazing inflating chest [safe for work].
Also on Defamer you can watch Mel Gibson’s TV confession. What he did was wrong and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. It’s toe-curling stuff, but you can’t take your eyes off it.
13Oct06 — 4
Armbiguity
I suspect someone working forThe Argus reads PooterGeek and has just won a bet (s)he made with an officemate yesterday.
13Oct06 — 1
Homophonic Assault
One place where YouTube’s success isn’t being celebrated is in the offices of Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp. near Toledo, Ohio.
The company, which sells used machinery for making tubes to clients worldwide, has seen its site utube.com knocked off line by millions of online searchers looking for video site.
“It’s killing us,” said Ralph Girkins, president and owner of the 22-year-old business. “All my worldwide reps use our Web site. Customers all over the world use it to bring up photos of the machinery, descriptions and specifications there.”
Girkins says his site, which has been online since 1994, got 68 million hits in August.
One of the most damaging aspects is that the company advertises to customers worldwide under the name utube.com, Girkins says.
When clients try to look them up, they get a streaming video site. “It’s lost credibility as well,” he says.
13Oct06 — 12
Waffly Good
Regulars will know that I am not a lover of art house cinema. (I have been meaning to slag off the execrable Volver here since I saw endured it a few weeks back.) But yesterday evening I watched a grim, documentary-style Belgian film and enjoyed it. Hilariously, the plot, such as it is, centres almost entirely on waffles and beer. If you’ve seen Rosetta you’ll know that I am not exaggerating for comic effect. It’s almost as if the Pythons had been asked to write a parody of worthy Belgian cinema—though they might have been tempted to give every member of the cast a comedy Poirot ‘tache.
There’s not much to it, but it’s beautifully performed, affecting, and unpretentious. (If you watch the additional material on the DVD you’ll discover that the brothers who directed the movie and won the Palme D’Or at Cannes for it are pretentious.) The lead actress female actor also picked up the acting award and she deserved it for coping with the Dardennes’ claustrophobically tight framing of her every move. It takes talent to express raw emotion unselfconsciously while a socialist realist with Art Garfunkel hair holds a cine lens inches from your face.
Yes, I laughed at things that weren’t meant to be funny, but it’s a Belgian film full of waffles. The cast always seemed to be stuffing their faces with waffles. There’s waffle fraud. There’s even an illicit waffle iron. By the end of it, not only had I learned for the first time the French for “waffle”, but I really rather fancied eating some waffles, with syrup perhaps, and a bottle of Belgian beer—regular, not extra-strength. I had chocolate instead.
12Oct06 — 0
wongaBlog
My mention of Stratford-upon-Avon reminds me of wongaBlog, which I meant to add to the blogroll weeks back. It’s there now and is currently featuring pictures of the Mop Fair.
12Oct06 — 3
Another Argus Classic
11Oct06 — 1
Surfing The Wave
Jackie‘ll like this. And, just as rocket science and brain surgery are not necessarily the most intellectually demanding specialisms of physics and medicine respectively, Tim also points out that organising a piss-up in a brewery is a non-trivial exercise.
11Oct06 — 1
Confident Against The World In Arms
After all those heterosexual pairings, here’s a homosexual one. I live in the gay capital of the UK and photograph weddings, yet I had to drive to Stratford-upon-Avon to shoot my first civil partnership. Ivan used to design clothes, some of which my sister used to model, and now he is Costume Co-ordinator at the RSC, which conjures up images of him telling Patrick Stewart that his doublet doesn’t go with his hose.
Ivan got hitched to Fraser in August and I’ve only recently posted online my attempts to record the event because I took advantage of there already being an official photographer present to experiment with everything from a new flash diffuser to a different mix of film. The end result was that I had to send the results to two labs and adjust half of the images digitally to fix the contrast. It’s not my best work, but you can check out the gallery here. Despite my less than perfect photography, you can see from the pics that the gathering was the sort of rainbow of humanity that chartered diversity facilitators can only dream about.
But everything went as well as possible with the do itself, though Ivan’s mum had to deal with the trauma of Ivan somewhat insensitively using the occasion to come out as Scottish.
Ivan and Fraser
On the plus side, given that Ivan’s surname is “Douglas”, this at least provided further evidence for the hypothesis there is a strong genetic element in Scottishness; on the minus side it was a disappointment for me, as neither he nor Fraser wore trousers.
10Oct06 — 8
Top Ten Scariest Invented Celebrity Couples
Mr Vincent Price and Mrs Katie Price
Mr Phil Collins and Mrs Joan Collins
Mr Don King and Mrs Billie-Jean King
Mr Genghis Kahn and Mrs Jemima Khan
Mr Ben Thatcher and Mrs Margaret Thatcher
Mr Steve Tyler and Mrs Bonnie Tyler
Mr George W Bush and Mrs Kate Bush
Mr Patrick Moore and Mrs Demi Moore
Mr Christopher Lee and Mrs Rustie Lee
Mr Neil Hamilton and Mrs Christine Hamilton
[thanks to Ms Victoria Regan]
10Oct06 — 6
Commenter Envy
Right now I have to concede that Rob’s loons are better than my loons.
10Oct06 — 2
…Talking Of Cellphone Accessories…
This lovely image began in a Samsung D600.
10Oct06 — 2
Tilting At Bots
I suspect that quite a few people have, like me, recently had someone going by the name of “cell-phone-accessory” drop by and leave a comment on their blogs. The comment is a rambling rant about terrorism. Its content is similar to that of an Independent opinion piece, though the spelling and grammar are poorer. Gloria Salt has been visited. She’s also had another commenter call round and engage bravely with c-p-a.
08Oct06 — 8
So Nerr
I was having an argument in the pub today with a blogger who’ll remain nameless, but only if he now sends me a grovelling email. He said we should be grateful that Britain doesn’t have a written constitution because if it did the lawyers would be in control. I pointed out that they already are: the Cabinet’s full of them. He said I was exaggerating and that there are only a two or three. By the power of Google I say he’s wrong: 8 out of 23 strikes me as a lawyer-heavy way to run a country.
08Oct06 — 2
Go See This
I mentioned to a friend after I saw it that I would blog the amazing photo exhibition I experienced on Friday. It’s Lisa Creagh’s collaborative show with the residents of Tidy Street in Brighton. It’s on the “fringe” of the Brighton Photo Biennial. Rather than spoil it though, I would prefer everyone who lives near enough to enjoy it as I did and to arrive with no idea of what to expect. It’s magical. It almost restored my faith in contemporary British art. Don’t read anything about the event. Just look up Tidy Street on a map of the city and wander down there one evening soon. Go after sunset. You’ll find the venue no problem. After it’s been running for a while I’ll tell everyone else about it.
06Oct06 — 4
Separateness
06Oct06 — 1
No Original
Flickr is amazing. I got an email overnight from a US political magazine asking to use one of those Darfur demo photos.
A couple of days ago Norm sent me a link to an article about the death of the photographic original. You’re bored already by my “real film” fanaticism, but even in the days when there always was a negative or slide people didn’t trust photographic images; now when you look at a print you can’t even be sure if what you see ever had a real existence.
Yesterday when I was at the photo lab I picked up a high-resolution scan of a slide photo I took three years ago. It’s one of two of my favourite photos of fathers and sons together.
Now you see it…
[click image to enlarge]
I love it because it’s a beautiful moment, a pleasing composition, and because it’s one of those occasions where I’ve got the exposure right with slide film. (I don’t use it any more because, when you have no control over the light, even the automatic exposure sensors get it wrong a lot of the time.)
The thing is, the composition would be that much “better” without the second plastic cup.
…Now you don’t.
[click image to enlarge]
Do you think I might be able to get a job with Reuters now?
05Oct06 — 4
Photos Of “Day For Darfur”, London
One of the drawbacks of taking photos for a living is that the family / personal /pro bono jobs you do tend to slide down your to-do list. Today I’ve been squinting at scans and negs on-and-off since about 10am. I bundled up a bunch of print orders just before the lab closed at 6pm, but since then I have been dealing with freebies. These include a few rolls I shot at the Day for Darfur march a couple of weeks back.
Insofar as you can have a nice day listening to survivors of the Holocaust, the massacres in Rwanda, and the slaughter in Sudan, and then protesting about the World’s timidity before a humanitarian disaster, we had a nice day. Some of the photos are excellent too, but if you couldn’t get good shots in that light you deserved to have your camera seized by the police. The full gallery is here.
04Oct06 — 0
Two More Apologies
In response to the previous PooterGeek post I received an email from a reader in Dulwich who wishes to make it clear that, despite buying property there, the Thatchers never actually took up residence in her neighbourhood. I’m sorry for suggesting otherwise.
I’ve also toned down the language I used about Susan Greenfield back here because I read the original back today while sober and saw that I had made a crude generalization. It’s not true that she “can’t reason”; it is true that she signed her name to something that was demonstrable nonsense (and has in the past made claims about “consciousness” that could be demolished by a well-read sixth-former—or even a philosopher of mind).
03Oct06 — 1
WebThatch
[Through a tiny RealPlayer window it is difficult to make out the gloomy interior of a top-of-the-range Executive Home in Dulwich. The scene brightens as a fluorescently-lit life-support pod opens and we catch a glimpse of a giant electromechanical hand lowering a pulsating mass of hair onto MARGARET THATCHER’s scalp. One lower petal of the pod opens and she trundles down its ramp, conveyed within a wheeled buggy, studded with black hemispherical nodules.]
THATCHER: “People of Earth, I am speaking to you from my kitchen, the centre of any well run household. I learnt at the knee of my father, Albert, the importance of a warm stove—warm with the charred bones of Communists, Wets, and Federasts—and today it is with that same warmth that I commend to you my successor: Daniel Cameroon.”
[VOICE OFF]: “David Cameron!”
THATCHER: “David Camera, a young man who will, I am sure, do great things for this nation…
[Something dark flickers behind THATCHER’s eyes.]
THATCHER: “…once he has sloughed off his soft human flesh and exposed his shining metal torso to the light of a new Conservative dawn!”
[VOICE OFF]: “Cut! Er, I don’t think those are quite the words written in the script, ma’am. Could we take that from the top again please, Lady Thatcher? And this time would it be possible for you to make that gesture with your real hand?”
02Oct06 — 4
Advice Of Counsell
I don’t know if anyone from Sky’s legal department is reading this, but I thought I ought to warn you that my darling little sister is preparing proceedings against you because of the problems she’s been having with your domestic phone service.
Please, for your own good, send someone round in a van to fix her installation ASAP. You really, really don’t want to fight her. She’s never lost a case and the losers always wish they’d settled sooner. Worse, she’ll probably invite some of her students along to witness your humiliation.
30Sep06 — 1
The Not-Very-Surprising-At-All Sulk
—Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho on scraping a one-all draw at home to Villa today
—PooterGeek on the same final score
29Sep06 — 2
Tipulidae Attack!
28Sep06 — 6
Apologies And Hugs
Yesterday PooterGeek was down (and I couldn’t read my email) for quite a while beause someone “compromised” the server it’s hosted on. Sorry about that. It wasn’t my fault.
I’ve been very busy lately so there’s not been much to read here anyway.
This is sweet—if you don’t mind the grungey soundtrack. I am also currently offering warm embraces at a massive discount.
26Sep06 — 2
Trenchcoat Warfare
This description of comics conventions is over five years old, but it’s still funny.
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