06Dec05 — 8

Final Revisions

Yesterday’s serious press carried near-full-page advertisements for Channel 4’s new substation “More4“‘s screening of Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s acclaimed cinematic imagining of the last moments of former German head of state Adolf Hitler. These advertisements read:

“It’s a happy ending. He dies.”

But just how happy an ending was it for the once-proud nation that was Germany, for Europe as a whole, and for all of us living on this fragile planet? Channel 4 News tonight broadcasts a special investigation into the truth about Churchill’s war, how, from the moment international observers were excluded from the site of Hitler’s convenient demise, the stability of an entire continent—indeed of the World—was undermined by the intransigence of the British; how a sovereign state was carved in two by the actions of a massive American invasion force, the first wave of a military occupation that was to continue long after the much-hyped official “end” of the war.

Even today, over sixty years after the conflict, Channel 4 News will reveal how a British historian has been imprisoned by the authorities in Herr Hitler’s own country of birth for speaking out against the establishment account of the war, a war fought on the pretext of bringing freedom to mainland Europe, but in reality driven by the agenda of a shadowy ruling caste whose representatives held the highest positions in the British and American governments and whose identity can only now be revealed. We speak to surviving German and Japanese internees, who were held in camps on Allied soil, without trial, without appeal, and without real milk in their tea.

Jon Snow presents “Churchill and Roosevelt: The First Neoconservatives And Their Legacy Of Death”, this evening on Channel 4 News.

06Dec05 — 3

Gordon Speaks

…and the lowest unemployment since the Roman invasion of AD 54.

[Cries of “Hear hear!” from Labour benches.]

In the last fourteen quarters, under this Labour government, the seasonally adjusted Hall-Oates coefficient has remained within a fifth of a percent of its optimum range and this year the Ciccone measure is at its highest level (0.876) since the brief and ultimately disastrous Lawson boom years.

[Audible snores throughout the chamber.]

Dazzling though this record is, Mr Speaker, we intend to continue to improve on it. I will begin with our plans for the simplification of the tax credit system for the low paid. The targeted supplements aimed at all those christened “Darren” born between 1975 and 1980 and working in branches of Morrisons supermarket chain will now be merged with those for hairdressers called “Julie” and living beneath the main flightpath out of London Heathrow…

[Everyone is now asleep.]

[Ten minutes later:]

…There will also be a one-off oil windfall tax on George Galloway…

Anyone still awake?

[Silence.]

Excellent. I now come to my growth forecast. This was, frankly, miles out. One hundred bloody percent out. So far off I might it might as well have been the product of astrology, not economics. It was the sort of estimate even the Lancet would have been embarrassed to publish.

Not that anyone else has ever managed to get their own estimates of the British economy’s performance right since I collected this consolation prize of a job. Every year I out-guess those bastards at the IMF, the naysayers in the press, those limp-wristed garlic-breathing know-nothings at the ECB. Every year, motherfuckers! Who’s the daddy?! I say again, Mr Speaker, who’s the daddy?!

[There are stirrings of consciousness on the Labour front bench.]

Ahem. And our policy of allowing small businesses to offset fully the purchase price of 3G mobile phones against their aggregate National Insurance bill will be extended to those located in regional development zones beginning with the letter ‘H’.

Moving on to the Liv-Tyler index, I draw your attention, Mr Speaker, to the year-on-year change in its Humperdinck gradient…

05Dec05 — 7

Rugged Defiance

[HARRISON FORD is dressed in an expensive suit. It is crumpled from his being forced to sit on the floor, tied to a pipe in a stainless steel room full of hi-tech equipment. POOTERGEEK enters. He is wearing a collarless grey jacket and matching trousers and carrying a fluffy white CAT. He is not sure why. He does not like CATS.]

POOTERGEEK: Ah, Mr Ford. I hope my associates were not too rough with you.

FORD: Screw the smalltalk, baldy. What the hell is going on here?!

POOTERGEEK: Goodness. Someone got out of the wrong side of his Winnebago this morning.

FORD: And who are you?

POOTERGEEK: My name is of no consequence, Mr Ford. I am a thirtysomething Englishman—just like Sean Bean and Gary Oldman before me.

[FORD frowns]

POOTERGEEK: Ah, I see that their names are familiar, Mr Ford. [to IGOR, his deformed assistant] Start the projector!

IGOR: Yesssch, Maahschter.

[The trailer for Ford’s latest movie, Firewall begins to roll.]

POOTERGEEK: And now it seems Paul Bettany is to join the list of your victims.

FORD: So you’re just some kind of crazy stalker. You’ve kidnapped me because of a bunch of movies?

POOTERGEEK: Not “movies”, Mr Ford, but “movie”. Surely I am not the only person in the world who has noticed that you have been making the same film over and over again? Patriot Games: your family is placed in mortal danger, and through your rugged defiance you rescue them all and defeat a younger English actor. Air Force One: your family is placed in mortal danger, and through your rugged defiance you rescue them all and defeat a younger English actor. And now Firewall. Let me see: you play a bank employee told by a gang of thieves that you must help them to break through your bank’s security systems or else they will kill your imprisoned family. And who is the leader of this gang? Paul Bettany, a young English actor. What, I wonder, will his fate be before the final credits roll, Mr You-Can-Type-This-Stuff-But-You-Can’t-Say-It?

FORD: C’mon. A man’s got to make living. I was in Bladerunner.

POOTERGEEK: Dare I mention Frantic: “They’ve taken his wife, now he’s taking action”?

FORD: So I’ve got a franchise going. It’s entertainment. Everyone leaves the theatre happy. What’s it to you?

POOTERGEEK: I do not leave the “theater” happy, Mr I-Have-Had-Enough-Of-You. The time has come to strike a blow for the pride of England, to put a stop to the perennial sacrifice of our finest to your American cowboy arrogance. The time has come for you to lose, Mr Solo Handjob. That is why I have taken you from your cosseted world of superstardom and brought you here where you can learn who should really be running the World.

FORD: And where exactly is “here”?

POOTERGEEK: My secret base of course, far beyond the reach of your bodyguards or the all-seeing CIA.

[POOTERGEEK presses a button on a remote control and a steel blast shield draws back from an enormous curved viewing window.]

POOTERGEEK: [gesturing out of the window] A sub-tropical Pacific paradise, nestling in the convenient radar shelter of an extinct volcano.

FORD: That’s just a big green wall.

POOTERGEEK: Ah. Well. They’ll put the mountain and the rainforest in later with CGI. But rest assured that you cannot possibly hope to escape…

[He pauses and raises a curved little finger to his lips.]

POOTERGEEK: …ALIVE, that is.

Muhaha. Muhaha-ha-ha-ha. Muhaha-ha-ha-ha-ha Hah-ha-ha-ha!

Igor! The time has come to reveal our other celebrity guest and open the tank!

[A tarpaulin falls from above to expose CALISTA FLOCKHART chained to a metal pillar. She is bound and gagged and standing on a platform suspended above the centre of the room. A huge circular trapdoor slides aside to reveal a tank full of sharks. As the tarpaulin falls into the water it is shredded by the frenzied tearing of the sharks’ jaws.]

FORD: Cally!

POOTERGEEK: Yes, your nibbled Twiglet of a girlfriend, Mr Ford, suspended over a pool of hungry sharks with head-mounted lasers.

FORD: Let her go, you bastard. You’re insane!

[At that point NIGELLA LAWSON enters, carried shoulder-high on a litter by THE PUSSYCAT DOLLS. They are dressed in bikinis and have harpoon guns strapped to their backs.]

FORD: What the fuck?!

POOTERGEEK: Quiet, carpentry boy. What did you expect? I write the scripts around here.

NIGELLA: Pooter, darling, when will you be finished? The girls and I are getting impatient.

POOTERGEEK: I’ll be through in a moment, dear. And I doubt our guest Mr Ford will be joining us. Heh heh heh.

[THE PUSSYCAT DOLLS sashay out with their burden. One of them winks back over her shoulder as she passes out through the doorway.]

POOTERGEEK: That’s right, Mr Ford: first, Calista will be turning into a shark snack—and even your rugged defiance can’t save her. Never again will her emaciated form grace the cover of the infinitely hateful Heat magazine as some paparazzo snaps her pushing a trolley out of her local supermarket, looking for all the world like a slaveworker emerging from a Siberian saltmine.

FORD: [struggling to get up from the floor.] You’re talking about the woman I love!

POOTERGEEK: And that is usually the sort of line that would precede your finding a handy sharp edge on the pipe you are handcuffed to and beginning to use it to scratch through your rope bindings. But not this time, Mr Ford. Every piece of plumbing in this entire complex meets European health and safety standards. Our ventilation shafts are barely wide enough for a greased ferret to crawl through. My guards are paid far above the Amalgamated Union Of Evil Henchmen’s standard hourly rate. Anyone who even so much as glances down from his CCTV monitors to play a sneaky game of Su Dooku whilst the likes of you are scuttling around the confusingly similar looking corridors is summarily shot. I run a tight ship.

Face it, fly-boy, your missus is fish food. And I’m not pausing for a big speech either. Igor! Lower the skinny chick into the pool!

[IGOR does as he is instructed and CALISTA slowly disappears into a froth of thrashing fins.]

FORD: Cally! Nooo!

POOTERGEEK: Muhaha-ha-ha-ha-ha Hah-ha-ha-ha!

[Eventually the thrashing dies down. FORD sits with his head bowed, sobbing.]

POOTERGEEK: Raise the platform, Igor!

[The winch moves upwards. CALISTA is still tethered and miraculously untouched.]

POOTERGEEK: Wha?

IGOR: Maschter, schee hassh no meat on her bonesch for the ssscharksss to eat!

POOTERGEEK: Oh, sod this for a game of soldiers.

[He tosses FORD a penknife and walks out.]

POOTERGEEK: When I die, right, I’m not going to be wrestled over the edge of a suspended walkway into the still-hot bubbling heart of the volcano. Shooting will do just fine, okay?

Nigella!

04Dec05 — 17

Read And Then Write

I’ve a good mind to drive round to that Andrew Bloggers4Labour and take a sledgehammer to his server. Since he started aggregating comments as well as posts it feels like PooterGeek has been under siege. Now, as regulars know, when someone’s got me bang to rights (see below), I own up, but please, people, can you read the posts before you comment? For the record (and repeating myself):

Much as crazed libertarians holed up in aluminium-coated geodesic domes on Dartmoor with bowie knives between their teeth would like it to be otherwise, my ID card post says nothing about compulsion to register or to offer papers on demand. I oppose both of these, neither of them are part of current legislation anyway, and neither of them stand an eclair at a health farm’s chance of getting past The Great British Public. I just think it would be convenient to have a reliable, all-purpose, and legally weighty form of identification to hand and, in itself, if the state makes such ID cards available I feel no threat to my rights.

My George Best post says clearly that I have no objection to people celebrating his footballing achievements, but have very strong objections to the way in which, even now, (male) members of the press not only indulge(d) his behaviour off the field because of his performance on it, but wax nostalgic about the days when men were men and women were “birds” and heroes shagged and drank and smoked too much and put their girlfriends in casualty. It’s disgusting and even Best himself became disgusted with it too.

My Margaret Thatcher post wasn’t intended to argue that she was stupid, but to point out that her intelligence was overestimated by many people—to her advantage and to their disadvantage—just as Ronald Reagan’s intelligence was underestimated. In itself her level of intelligence has no bearing on my assessment of the goodness or badness of her or her actions, but other people’s assessment of her intelligence had serious political consequences. Then, many people in the Labour Party failed to prevent her from doing serious damage because they were both handicapped by their own ideological clumsiness and fooled into thinking they faced in her a fiendishly clever and intellectually coherent enemy. Now, the failure of those both on the Left and Right to see through the myths built around her interferes with the serious business of assessing her place in history.

I have argued in the past that high intelligence can be a handicap to good leadership. In Thatcher’s case, however, it was her shocking lack not just of smarts, but of cunning, that led to her defeat as a leader. If her enemies had identified these weaknesses earlier they might have removed her sooner. Perhaps it was her coming to believe the myths about herself that took the time.

These are all unsupported personal observations and I hope they are independent of my intense dislike of the woman and, in turn, independent of my very mixed feelings about her policies. Peter might be surprised to read that I believe that some of the worst consequences of Thatcherism flowed from what I consider to be her lack of ideological conviction, but I’m damned if I’m going to do the necessary research to write an essay to back up my feelings about this and then mud-wrestle half the ‘Blogosphere about it in the comments afterwards.

Now go away, all of you; I’m trying to build some bookshelves.

04Dec05 — 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 can safely say her performance wasn’t the result of her spending her evenings indulging in rock’n’roll debauchery or paralysed by feelings of self-doubt. Ronald Reagan was probably cleverer—and that isn’t meant as a backhanded insult, just a sober, at-a-distance estimate. Reagan was no fool; Thatcher’s foolishness was her undoing.

UPDATE: It’s been correctly pointed out in the comments that Thatcher couldn’t have collected a 2:ii because that degree classification wasn’t used when Thatcher was examined. I do distinctly remember reading Dorothy Hodgkin (Thatcher’s part two supervisor) damning Thatch with faint praise when asked to assess her former student’s intellectual abilities—and they liked each other. Since my own tutors’ assessment of me as an undergraduate varied from mostly “Let’s just send him down now and save ourselves the trouble later” to one (foolishly) betting on my getting a First, this probably isn’t very helpful either.

02Dec05 — 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 me twice.”

These words capture two of the most depressing things about domestic violence: that perpetrators get away with it and that victims (and others) let them get away with it. Campbell unfortunately then goes on to argue that kids have no interest in imitating the behaviour of their heroes beyond their respective fields of achievement, which shows that, like too many people, Campbell has no real memory of his schooldays. If Campbell is right then a lot of advertisers have been wasting vast sums of money in sponsorship. They haven’t.

I’ve no problem with people celebrating Best’s brief period of footballing mastery, but the sports page bores can shove their winking “He was a lad, wasn’t he?” nonsense. By his own admission, Best was a shit who brought misery to people close to him; some nifty stuff on the pitch doesn’t excuse his being a bully.

Gendergeek says it.

Campbell ends with his own bit of nonsense about how those who “obsess about bad role models” are “judgmental” (God forbid!) and “harbour a desperate need to feel mightily superior”. Personally, I’m all for people being proud of doing the right thing and ashamed of doing the wrong thing. Exercising our judgment about what it and isn’t right and communicating our approval or disapproval of the actions of others are central to our existence as moral beings.

I used to be in a band with a guitarist who hit his wife (and hid his “extra-curricular activity” behind invented rehearsal sessions). One evening, after a reasonably well-paid gig, he got drunk and attacked her in public at the venue we had played. After the incident I told the rest of the band it was him or me*. All lads together, they chose him. I left. It’s one of the few walkouts in my life that I don’t regret. I hope she had the strength and good sense to do the same eventually, but I doubt it. Too many women think love is a noun and it’s something you’re in when you’re with someone who’s bad for you. It’s not. Love is a verb and it’s something you do by being good to someone who’s good to you.

[*I should confess that this decision was made easier by the guitarist in question not being very good. He was, in fact, living proof that there are black people with no natural sense of rhythm.]

01Dec05 — 17

Not To Be Provocative Or Anything…

…but, having read three different people write recently that British ‘Bloggers are united in their opposition to ID cards, I’d just say that I think they will be rather handy actually. I’d like my medical data stored on mine too, if that’s okay with everyone.

Not only can I see no sound principled case against them, but, having applied for a new passport online this morning, I’ve changed my mind about the likely cock-ups and suspect that, after a couple of years of bugs and “DAVID BLUNKETT’S DOG STOLE MY IDENTITY” stories in the tabloids, they’ll work shockingly well. It’ll be a bit like London congestion charging, but not so slick. And, of course, they’ll cost an absolute bloody fortune, but only in a Keynesian, men-digging-up-and-filling-in-holes kind of way. I’d knock up a “Yes2ID” button for people to put on their sites, but it’d be pointless—unless Tony Blair starts a ‘Blog.

I’m not making a case here (except against groupthink); I’m just putting my opinion on the record because it’s going to be my biggest “I told you so” for quite some time. It’s worth noting that the ‘Blogosphere’s undisputed king of banging on at tedious length about how the advent of ID cards will immediately cause the Earth to plunge into the Sun, destroying all human life but for a tiny community of Cambridge scientists sharing a deus-ex-machinon powered starship with Stephen Hawking, has turned out to be spectacularly wrong about chip-and-pin cards already. Coincidentally, one of Chris’s ancestors, Vivian Sid Barrett Lightfoot, was the man who calculated that human beings would suffocate if they travelled in trains at speeds over 40 mph.

29Nov05 — 12

Top Ten Discontinued Dulux Paint Colours

  1. Burnt Hummer
  2. Institutional Magnolia
  3. Sambo
  4. Warm Placenta
  5. Haliborange
  6. Coldplay Yellow
  7. Kilroy
  8. Autumn Phlegm
  9. Coelacanth Brown
  10. 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 respond to uneaten food on a plate at tea time (“dinner time” to soft Southerners) with the Counsell family catchphrase “And what about the Little Black Babies?” We still use it, in fact.

Now that my sister has called her new baby “Samuel” I’m embarrassingly excited by the thought that he might grow up to have the same complexion as his sister. If he combines this with a similarly huge afro then I will enjoy referring to him as “Little Black Sambo“—until he is old enough to punch me.

You have to make your own entertainment when you don’t have a television.

Thanks to Auriol for the original idea for this post.]

28Nov05 — 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 spam this morning and I’ve been relegated to a “Flappy Bird” in the Truth Laid Bear ‘Blogging Ecosystem—this despite being linked to by a piece of Crooked Timber well-poisoning. (The Poisoning Of The Well is followed instantly by a Straw Man. Crooked Timber remains unrivalled as a resource for those in the academic community charged with the teaching of elementary logical fallacies.)

Satan on a moped, what a start to a Monday.

Thing is: I was lost in music, caught in a trap, no turning back, lost in music. More specifically I was trying to grok a drum machine called Guru so that I could build a hip-hop beat around a lovely piece of Richard Brincklow piano playing. To really understand most new computer music programs these days you need to devote long periods of unbroken concentration to figuring out their quirks. Calling Guru a drum machine is pretty insulting—I actually bought it for its powerful ability to dissect streams of rhythmic sound—but it might as well be “just a drum machine” for my grasp of it to date. It looks beautiful and is very clever, but has an interface as intuitive as the cockpit of a 747.

As revenge for having to listen to his new catchphrase—“a 2:i is a perfectly good degree, Damian“—I hand-edited Richard’s keyboard performance and have begun to loop it into manipulable chunks. It is now the basis for an “anti-Spiritual”. You are welcome to listen to a verse of Bow Down Below. As you can hear, it isn’t finished, but it’s still copyright and playright Brincklow and Counsell 2005. I’d love to play you some of our SciArt stuff, but Rich is in the process of the more heavy-duty, needs-a-degree-in-music orchestration on our current favourite Break Bones.

On the subject of my last post, the fake Merkel speech wasn’t really German, people. It was geeky pseudo-German, like the famous “Blinkenlights” warning poster. Those of you who didn’t get it could read it again in the right spirit (and perhaps with a window to Babelfish open on your desktop for any real German words) and you’ll get the drift of it. Here’s a nice New York Times piece about “Denglish”, and here are the ultimate Blinkenlights.

I did like BiB’s comment very much.

26Nov05 — 8

That Angela Merkel Speech In Voll

Guten Morgen, meine Damen und Herren, Herr Prime Minister, Frau Blair, Herr Straw, Brenda, und so weiter. Vielen Dank fur den Freiheit, ihre grossen Europaischen subsidiese zum Integraztion wir lumpen Ossis, und den neuen Robbie Williams Album—mit his dimplich Grin, er ist viel sexyer als David Hasselhof.

Wir, die Britischen and die Deutschen, sind sinze der langsten Zeit die beste von Freunde. Doch, mein Grossvater liebt Aston Villa besser als Bayern Munchen, die diven Bastarden.

Aber Die Franzosen sind ein andere Dinge entirelich. Und, endlich, Die Zeit ist jetzt hier wann Die Deutschen und Britischen mussen acknowlizieren, dass die Froggen will immer Kaese-essen Kapitzulationsminkies sein. Ihre Agrikulturusindustrie ist sinze den Weltkrieg Zwei bei uns beide aufgepropped. Ihre Philosophiere sind ganz scheissevoll. Ihren feinen Weinen sind nicht was sie waren.

In der Namen des Neoliberalismus and fur diese und andere Reasons, Herr Blair und ich haben einer historischer Agreement gemacht. Nachste Montag, Wetter permitten, wir invaden der Frankreich.

Darafter die linke Seite von den Land wird “Britische Franzosich” sein und die rechte Seite wird “Deutschen Franzosich” heissen. Die Britischen werden das Eiffel Tower getten; Wir werden Sophie Marceau klaimen. Ich werde Thierry Henry repatrionizieren und installieren er in meinem Holiday Home in der Sueden von Frankreich als meiner Sex-Slave.

Alles klar? Ausgezeichnet. Uber zu du, Tony, mit den Map von Europe mit den Airfix Tanken und Harrier Jumpjetten, und einem PowerPoint Prezentation fur die feiner Detailer…

25Nov05 — 18

Separated At Death

It wasn’t until Patrick Anson (aka “Patrick Lichfield”, “5th Earl of Lichfield“) died recently that I realised that he and Anthony Armstrong-Jones (aka “Lord Snowdon”, “First Earl of Snowdon“) were two distinct people, taking photographs and doing very nicely out of their royal connections.

Today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, PooterGeekers, is to share with the rest of us the names of two prominent public figures who remained merged in your mind as one for an embarrassingly long time. (I still can’t remember which of the Gallagher brothers can’t sing and which one can’t write songs—they’re just one single lump, fused at the monobrow to me.)

24Nov05 — 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 have to answer a call from an actress playing a young woman so unhappy at being dumped by her boyfriend that she wants to end it all.

VO: The first to go is David, until recently a prominent politician and, as a blind man, the only disabled candidate for the job.

DAVID: Hello. Samaritans. How can I help?

SALLY: Hello. My name’s Sally. [sob]

DAVID: Hello, Sally. Whenever you’re ready, luv.

SALLY: [Sob] My boyfriend’s gone and, and… I JUST WANT TO DIE.

DAVID: That’s terrible Sally. You have a good cry.

SALLY: [Moans] I don’t know what to do.

DAVID: You don’t have to do anything, Sally. It’s okay. I’m listening.

INTERVIEWER: Excellent, David.

SALLY: He was EVERYTHING.

DAVID: Was he good with his hands, Sally?

SALLY: Sorry?

DAVID: Was he good with his hands?

SALLY: How do you mean?

DAVID: Some men, unsighted men for example, are very adept, er, sexually with their hands…

INTERVIEWER: Okay, thanks David. That’ll be enough for now.

VO: Next up is former professional footballer Roy.

ROY: Hello. Samaritans. How can I help?

SALLY: Hello. My name’s Sally.

ROY: Hello, Sally.

SALLY: [Sob] My boyfriend’s gone and I JUST WANT TO DIE.

ROY: F***. That’s a f***er.

SALLY: [Moans] I don’t know what to do.

ROY: That’s alright, Sal. I’ll f***in’ fix that f*** for good. You just tell me where the little c*** lives.

INTERVIEWER: Next!

ROY: Are you f***in’ sendin’ me off without even a f***in’ yellow card, yer f***er?

INTERVIEWER: Security!

[The sounds of swearing and scuffling disappear into a hurried edit.]

VO: And now Dilpazier, who used to write for a Left-leaning national newspaper, one particularly well known for its coverage of the caring professions.

DILPAZIER: Hello. Samaritans. I’m listening.

SALLY: Hello. My name’s Sally. [sob]

DILPAZIER: Hello, Sally.

SALLY: [Sob] My boyfriend’s gone and I JUST WANT TO DIE.

DILPAZIER: Careful with his money was he?

SALLY: Well, we used to argue about money a bit, I suppose.

DILPAZIER: Hooked nose? Friends in high places? Probably supported the Iraq war, I’ll bet. You’re better off without him. Dirty Zionist.

INTERVIEWER: Okay Dilpazier, thank you.

DILPAZIER: It’s because I is Muslim, innit?!

INTERVIEWER: Security!

DILPAZIER: [Fading out through doorway] It’s a police state! I’ve got a rucksack, you know, and I’m not afraid to use it!

INTERVIEWER: [Increasingly desperate now] Okay, I’m going to throw this one out to the remaining applicants. Ariel, you’ve had to deal with some pretty tricky negotiations, how would you handle Sally?

ARIEL: I’d tell her not to think that he was leaving her, but that she was leaving him.

INTERVIEWER: Riiight…

ARIEL: And tell her to make her own boyfriend instead.

INTERVIEWER: Er. Yes. And you, Harry, you used to run a ‘Blog. What if Sally logged onto the Samaritans Website looking for help?

[HARRY continues to tap at his laptop.]

INTERVIEWER: Harry?

HARRY: No, no, carry on, I’m listening.

INTERVIEWER: You’re ‘Blogging this aren’t you?

HARRY: Well I wouldn’t call it ‘Blogging as such…

INTERVIEWER: Harry, have you thought about getting professional help?

23Nov05 — 7

Well Known Unknown Old Etonians

There’s a boring article about Eton College, Britain’s most famous independent (that is fee-charging—or perhaps that should be fee-fixing) school, in today’s Guardian. Like most of the recent boring articles in the press about Eton, it begins with the question of whether or not, since the inverted snobbery of the Thatcher era washed through the Conservative Party, it is possible for someone educated at Eton to become (a Tory) Prime Minister.

One of the interesting things in the piece is the reference to Old Etonians having to decide as adults whether or not to “come out” as having attended what is considered to be one of the most privileged educational institutions in the World. This is especially important now that its former students find themselves more and more frequently working far outside the establishment in careers formerly considered by those of a certain class to be disreputable—journalism for example.

During my Finals year at college I shared a house with former Eton scholar Sam Hood and phoned him up for you this morning to ask him if he knew of any prominent closet Old Etonians whose histories were yet to be revealed to the public. He kindly provided me with this shocking list.

Snoop Doggy Dogg

While at Eton, the then Stephen Libredor’s successful and discreet arrangements with certain of the more enterprising girls of the almost-as-famous independent school Roedean made him a hit with his peers. At the same time he won the prize for unseen Latin translation two years running. After he graduated, his desire to become an international rap superstar was so strong that he committed a slice of his family inheritance to elocution lessons and plastic surgery in order to sustain the image necessary to win artistic credibility with other members of the hip-hop community. His obviously-white children, Persephone and Lionel, live with their mother in hiding in Guildford under assumed identities.

Osama Bin Laden

Before the Seventh of July attacks on London public transport, well-known Eton graduate, magazine editor, and Conservative MP Boris Johnson wrote a novel, Seventy-Two Virgins, in which British-born terrorists perpetrate an attack on the city. Coincidence? No, for it was after an incident in one of the Eton’s lavishly equipped chemistry labs that the young Bin Laden (of the Bin Ladin construction dynasty) was expelled from Eton. One of his fellow students misrepresented the events leading up to the fateful explosion (hidden from the press, but well known amongst those attending the school) and cast Bin Laden as the ringleader, alienating him from his class. It was not a snub by the CIA but by a cousin of future British Prime Minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair that caused Bin Laden to swear revenge upon those, like Blair (and George W Bush), whom he felt had unfairly benefited from an exclusive education. Today, Bin Laden bears no ill-will to the school itself, however, and, via an international network of traditional cash transfer agents, is a major contributor to Eton’s endowment.

Beyoncé Knowles

With the assistance of her ambitious mother and thanks to body binding and the unfamiliarity of her fellows with the African-American physique, Miss Knowles remained undetected as Eton’s only black female student for several years. By the age of 15, however, her bootyliciousness had become too conspicious and, after her bandages slipped in the changing room before a crucial rugby match with Harrow and a steeplechase of priapic adolescent erections rendered the Second XV incapable of competitive play she was forced to transfer to St Paul’s Girls, where she became head of her house and collected three ‘A’s at ‘A’-Level—in English Literature, History, and Melisma.

22Nov05 — 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 from some form of aerobic activity.

“Ooh,” she says, “have they done their new haka yet?”

“Yes, a long time ago,” explains Mr Wannabe-Coach.

“Oh bummer,” she says, and leaves.

Anyway. The point of this post is to tell Hak Mao, new Kiwi immigrant to the UK, that the All Blacks are spawney cheating gits and to begin the call for the banning of Klingons from Earth rugby internationals.

21Nov05 — 5

Roy Of The Rovers

[Brassy 50s light music plays. We see archive black-and-white shots of men in flat caps and striped scarves spinning rattles round and cheering on footballers dressed in long baggy shorts, moving jerkily as they kick a sodden leather ball about a rain-soaked ground. Behind the “Roy Of The Rovers” credits, a man with bad teeth scruffs his whippet’s head and makes a thumbs up at the camera. We hear a bright, sing-song, received pronunciation voiceover.]

VO: At the troubled Premiership club’s secret training camp, Melchester Rovers’ talented and pathologically committed midfielder Roy “Chopper” Overkeen expresses his disappointment with lavishly remunerated and unfortunately-coiffed defender Rio Franzferdinand.

ROY: Yer f***in’ lazy f***in’ chuffbreather. What kind of f***in’ tackle was that? You’re a useless f***in’ bag’o’s****. Where’s your f***in’ commitment, yer f***in ladyboy?

[RIO makes a face like a dreadlocked ferret emerging from a rabbit hole without a square meal. Whether this is in reaction to ROY’s criticism or just a background state is another question.]

VO: But widely respected Melchester coach and horse-lover Sir Alfred Furlong thinks Roy has gone too far this time.

ALFRED: Yoos nae heargh nae snear whurgh snoo ynear shnea!

SUBTITLES: That’s quite enough of that kind of language, young man!

ROY: Who the f*** do yer think yer are, yer f***in red-faced c***in’ baboon. Yer f***in’ swan around here like yer f***in run the place yer jumped up f***er.

ALFRED: I doos rern the plaisch, yer cheeky shnurghn fernshn yrnr! Grn f**k rf baik ter Bogland, Paddy!

SUBTITLES: I do run the place, you insolent pup. Your contract is terminated forthwith.

ROY: Oh f***.

19Nov05 — 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. I didn’t even know about my new-found fame until a couple of hours ago [thank you, Eric!], because my email account has been playing up today. Gah!

Welcome to any late-coming newcomers brought here by the MSM. Excuse the recent profusion of in-jokes and absence of topical Web-references on PooterGeek, but, as I explained above, I’m a bit out-of-it at the moment, having just moved from Cambridge to Brighton and not yet re-acquired broadband access—or even a telephone. Even as you read this I am updating the PooterGeek compilation album in a dingy Internet caff. Make yourselves at home.

17Nov05 — 3

This Doesn’t Mean You’re Mozart, Matey Boy

Like Frank Sinatra entering a karaoke contest, my friend and co-conspirator Richard Brincklow recently decided to follow up being paid by people to compose music by going to university part-time to study for a degree in music composition. It turns out this week that the jammy bastard has been awarded a First. I suppose I should congratulate him. Nice one, Richard; I’ll be wanting that crib sheet back now. Bloody contemporary musicians: bunch of weirdos hitting rusty washing machine parts with tyre levers over the din of treated pianos playing backwards—and all at the tax-payer’s expense I don’t doubt.

17Nov05 — 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 Pop Quiz

Join in the fun of trying to identify the song in the fewest bars as the once-popular folk star returns. Bob is backed by the cream of America’s session musicians, who cast each other weary sidelong glances and think about their fees/CVs, while vainly attempting to keep up with the old joker as he lurches from key to key and song to song, without the benefit of intelligible between-number introductions—or lyrics. Or tunes.

Dilpazier Aslam’s Struggle

All profits go to Islamic children’s charity Hizb ut-Tharir, as Dilpazier speaks live and answers questions about how a global Zionist conspiracy not only destroyed his flourishing career as a newspaper columnist, but continues to thwart his burgeoning artistic efforts as a painter of fine watercolours.

The Spice Ladies

Britain’s only transvestite tribute to the 90s Girl Power stars will bowl you over with their big ‘n’ bouncy take on the girls’ greatest hits. Jugga, jugg-ah!

The Great Blairo

Britain’s leading escapologist has only a couple of years to wriggle out of both an underpaid job in an office where everyone hates him and an insufficiently well-specified commitment to the residents of a large country in the Middle East. Slap yourself repeatedly about the face in an effort to stay awake while reporters from all over the World try to persuade you that he’s really really going to have to go soon now. (Supported by Ugly Rumours.)

PooterGeek LIVE: The 2006 “I Went To Oxford, You Know” Tour

Watch book deals, successful grant applications, permanent employment, relationships with the opposite sex, and small but high-value electronic devices turn into ashes in the hands of this gifted disillusionist. “I didn’t think it was possible for talent and opportunity to go to waste like this without some form of chemical dependency being involved.”–Dr Raj Persaud. “So depressing I had to leave before the big finish, where he sets fire to his pay-off cheque.”–Johnny Vegas.

Ab-Work

This po-faced human-machine tribute act renders the continent-straddling Euro-pop of ABBA in the style of Teutonic electro pioneers Kraftwerk. You can only claim a superficial familiarity with Dancing Queen until you’ve heard it in the original German.

An Evening With David Blunkett

Ladies, bring your own condoms, but, to avoid embarrassing misunderstandings during foreplay, please leave the studded ones at home.

Deirdre Boldwyn

Cardiff’s legendary pet psychic. Listen in awe as, through the medium of Deidre, Rover reaches back a ghostly paw from the Great Kennel In The Sky.

Porridge With Crutons

Nobel-prizewinner Harold Pinter reads the Galloway Prison Diaries.

16Nov05 — 8

The True Story Of A Breach Of The Geneva Conventions

[Location: Fallujah, I-raq. Dateline: November 2004; well past your bedtime. US Rangers and special forces operatives advance on a complex of residential buildings believed to be crawling with the enemy. Watching one entrance through night vision goggles, Sergeant Steve “The Rock” Jenovich leads a half-dozen of his best men into what they believe will be a fierce but small firefight. Although in daylight he bears a passing to his WWE nicknamesake, Jenovich lacks the permanent grimace and the over-large man-breasts.]

[After a few minutes of observation he silently signals that his crack team should advance. Before they can progress, it is as if the gates of Hell have opened and its tormented former denizens have erupted from the earth. The Americans have been betrayed. From all sides screaming jihadis stampede, shouting for death in the name of Allah. Two of his men are down within an instant as they are overwhelmed. Spraying his attackers with automatic fire, Jenovich has the sense to use his headpiece radio to call in the Ultimate Weapon.]

JENOVICH: Viking leader to base! It’s a trap! Requesting “CODE A” support. Repeat: Requesting “CODE A” support!

[At Mission Command, Colonel Benson knows this is the moment he has been dreading. One of his most valued teams is in mortal danger and is asking for him to break every rule of civilised warfare to save them.]

RADIO OPERATOR: They’re outnumbered ten-to-one, Colonel. They’re dying out there! We gotta help them.

BENSON: Goddamit, soldier! I don’t have any choice. Hit the red button. May God have mercy on our souls.

[High over the city, a stealth helicopter swings round to the site of combat. Within seconds it is releasing its load above the desperate gunfight. Three upright canisters about the size of a tall filing cupboards fall earthward on chutes into the darkness. As they land in the street, bolts blow. One of the containers unfolds like a Mars probe.]

[Inside is a huge electric fan, framed by spotlights and mounted on its own enormous military grade battery pack. The metre-long blades begin to rotate, driving a stream of air towards the other two as-yet-unopened pods. The lights begin to burn halogen-bright, illuminating the large doors in their respective sides.]

[The doors open simultaneously. From one canister a man emerges. He pauses at the entrance to preen the golden tresses of his hair in the airstream, reaches over his shoulder and pulls his Gibson guitar into playing position. He stretches his right arm up and plucks a titanium plectrum as if from the nothingness. It, and his teeth, glint for a moment in the light. He begins to play.]

[As the last note of a sky-shaking riff decays into the gunfire, a sound system bellows out a loping dance-rock rhythm and another figure appears in the entrance of the other canister. It is enclosed in a kevlar corset and wearing giant sunglasses at night. A keening cry rings fills the blackness. Realising that a WF (White Funk) attack has begun, the American soldiers desperately scramble to don their protective headwear. The unearthly sound grows in intensity and crashes against the walls on all sides. Even the most battle-hardened holy warrior is forced to drop his Kalashinov and bring his hands up to his ears.]

ANASTACIA: I-I-I-I-I-Y-AM A SHOUTY SHOUT-A-Y WOMA-YN!

16Nov05 — 1

Cooking

If you are on their snailmail spam list then the latest Viking office stationery catalogue probably dropped through your letterbox this morning. Further to my mention of microwave ovens, on the cover of the brochure is the following offer:

“FREE!
Get this Microwave FREE with every 4 or more packs of Large Core Sellotape you buy
FREE!”

Large Core Sellotape is £6.19 per six-roll pack.

15Nov05 — 4

If Only The Comprehensive System Had Died Instead

Today’s Guardian devotes three pages to a tribute to the recently deceased educationalist Ted Wragg, who, like most educationalists, wouldn’t have known a controlled experiment if it was being performed on one of his own children with a bonesaw. A lot of the space is taken up with the “best of” his quotable declarations on the subject of teaching: mostly smug, evidence-free piffle studded with linguistic clichés. But there are also admiring quotes from others, including Shirley Williams:

He had a synoptic vision of education but he didn’t get bogged down in the little details, he saw the thing as a whole. He visited a lot of schools. He believed in the concept of comprehensive education, but he was perfectly open to tackling the difficulties.

Bright, poor, ethnic, keen? Uppity nigger! The educationalists will see to it that that your ambitions are kicked* out of you by your less motivated peers at a sink comprehensive they’ve engineered specially for you, all in the name of a ramshackle ideology of levelling down so stupid even the Soviet Union rejected it. Funny how, before the state administers them, it’s more thorough in researching drugs whose worst side effects turn out to be headaches and nausea than it is in testing changes to schools whose side effects include the destruction of young lives.

*Actually, stabbing is growing in popularity these days.

15Nov05 — 6

Gayer Than The Proverbial Trousers Of That Ilk

I realise a gym in Brighton is probably not the kind of place where you would expect to find, say, The Playboy Channel showing on the TV screens, but yesterday while I was working out the video to the latest Will Young single was on. It’s a Top Gun pastiche that opens with a great big silhouette of a fighter-plane nose cone and the legend “HOT GUN”. Later the pretty boys get their navy pilot shirts off and start slapping each other. Will’s co-pilot has the kind of ‘tache I haven’t seen on a live human being since the 70s. The whole thing makes the video to YMCA look like an edition of Topless Darts. When it had finished I felt the need to belch loudly and leer at women in leotards. In a development that was as appropriate as it was disappointing Madonna’s video followed shortly afterwards.

(On a bitchy note, if he wants to hang out with that kind of company in future then Will needs to work on his upper body development.)

14Nov05 — 7

Soft Southern Pulses

Yesterday I treated myself to a lunch of cod and chips from an eat-in/takeaway fish and chip shop in Brighton. I ate in. Having taken my order, the guy serving asked me if I wanted anything else. Nervously I requested mushy peas—a delicacy that only those living north of the Irony Curtain* truly understand. Amazingly, when they arrived they weren’t bad, though they were spoiled somewhat by being served in a separate little white bowl with a spoon.

*The Irony Curtain was first identified (I think) by Jonathan Meades or someone like that in the course of a BBC documentary about the architecture of the Midlands. It is a line bisecting Birmingham horizontally. The English living north of this dividing line say what they mean and mean what they say. Also, they know what mooshy peas are.

13Nov05 — 3

Gutted

Living in my disconnected bubble as I am at the moment, I managed somehow to become convinced that the England-Argentina “friendly” was today. So I stayed in yesterday evening and continued to sort through three years of photographic, prints, negatives, and scans. Par-tee! Even if I didn’t see it, it’s nice to know that one of the best football teams in the World gave a satisfying kicking (or, in this case, nutting) to the fat-bloke-in-a-pub consensus. I wonder when the “the Argies weren’t really trying” bollocks will start.

The football-war connection is not intentional, but at least I remembered what day it was today and shed a silent tear onto my ironing at 11:00. I’m just the kind of Real Man who would have sent the Nazis packing.

12Nov05 — 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 Lloyds TSB group HQ is there. So often I start my day very early to catch the first plane out of Scotland.”

“Whether I’m travelling by car or plane, I work the whole time. Because the job is very demanding, I use my time very efficiently. If I’m not flying, I get into my office very early because it gives me a chance to sort things out for the day. Meetings can start as early as 7am. From then on they’re usually back-to-back until the end of the day. Even 15-minute telephone calls need to be booked into my diary.”

Later she admits that

“You can’t work the way I do without being tremendously dependent on a number of people.”

yet she still hasn’t learned how to delegate or teleconference. Here’s the perfectly pooterish climax of her account:

“There are no slack days. The pace is frenetic the whole week. But it never gets to me. People say: ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ But I derive a great deal of energy from my work. So even if I have a work commitment on a Friday evening, I’m usually up for it.

“We have three children, including a daughter who is 15 and still at school, but because we live in Aberdeen – my husband is vice-chancellor of the university there – I’m not home most evenings. We try to guard our weekend time and spend one day hill walking, but often I have paperwork to do.”

“…And my husband’s a vice-chancellor, actually.” I suppose you could argue that if this is the kind of timetable a woman must follow to become the CEO of a large company in the UK then it’s simply idiot presenteeism that is the cause of the so-called glass ceiling: most British women aren’t stupid enough to work so inefficiently. Here’s a chart of Lloyds TSB’s share performance over the last five years. Not that it’ll make much difference to the daft bat’s gigantic pay-off when she retires—no doubt to meddle full-time in other people’s businesses through her membership of a diverse range of quangos.

12Nov05 — 0

Easy, Tiger

One of the extracts from novelist John Fowles’ diaries in the Guardian today neatly sums up the attitude of a certain kind of educated observer to the War On Terror:

Rushdie fuss. Eliz in a paranoiac state, that I might support him. This is a clear moral choice. From what I have heard of him, I do not like him. I haven’t read the book that has so upset Islam. But I must be on his side against the mad mullahs of Iran. Everyone falls over themselves to avoid the truth: that most Muslims are very primitive people and can’t be treated as sophisticated ones. If you endlessly prod a tiger, of course its claws will flash out.

And all this forces us, on behalf of the principle, to volunteer to be martyrs. Absurd.

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