Watch the red weed of PooterGeekers spread across the whole planet. Thanks to these guys I’ve been a beta-tester for the Clustrmap hit-tracking system for the last couple of days. I have ten invites that I can send to anyone else on the Web who would like to know where their visitors live. One is already spoken for, but if you email me I might send one of the others to you.
Late this morning: I’m out for a run when I overtake Leasey and companion as they stroll past one of the haunts of Cambridge’s surreal inner-city cow population. I pause long enough in my exertions for Leasey to give me a hug and tell me that she needs to take me shopping for some new running gear. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
She points at my shorts and black-and-purple sleeveless running top and asks in her tactful way, “How gay do you look?!”
Look, kid, it worked for White Goodman—and he’s a hunk of red-blooded male.
Perhaps I need a medallion.
He’s a slippery git, but Judy has her eye on him.
There are debates going on at Eric The Unread’s and at Harry’s Place about which of three of Eric’s teenage badges he should be most embarrassed about: Marillion, Lenin, or Greenpeace. This is indeed a question worthy of discussion. Amusingly, of the three corresponding Wikipedia entries I link to, only the Marillion one is undisputed.
My teenage years were slightly different. I have always been fashionable like Jeremy Clarkson is fashionable. As an undergraduate I remember coming back on the coach from a rag trip to London and answering the mass Morrissey/Marr singalong with my solo rendition of Don Henley’s inspired Motown pastiche Not Enough Love In The World. About a quarter of the students at my college were in possession of a Smiths album and at least one piece of Soviet Communist iconography. In the past I have believed in a bearded man in the sky who could forgive me all my sins, but I am not and never have even any kind of Communist. Studying alongside these sophs removed any remaining temptation. I arrived at university sporting a (by then seriously out-of-date) afro and a bow-tie.
At the same time, on my lapel, I wore a Robertson’s Jam Gollywog brooch.
This was the beginning of a long, lonely, and pointless career of messing with the minds of posh, white, idiot Lefties—and baiting the sort of people who think Orange Juice played funk.
If you want to comment on this post you must provide the name of one person you fancy but wish you didn’t and one person who other people fancy, but you can’t understand why.
My pair (in translucent tops and in that order) are Trinny Woodall:
and Colin Firth:
Any pertinent bitching is also welcome.
Sorry about the thin posting at PooterGeek lately. The crossed keyboards and trousers rampant are flying again over PooterGeek Towers because I am now back in residence, having spent a few days scouting around Brighton for a new place to live, meeting up with collaborators on my next big thing, music making, and generally socialising with my lovely (married) friends Richard and Kate.
Whilst lodging with them in their new home in the pretty little town of Lewes (alternative therapy and white witch capital of the south coast) I discussed with them my plan to invent a wife, one who, like “Maris” (fictional spouse of Niles Crane in Frasier) is never seen. As well as being a source of much lazy, Sunday supplement-style “isn’t family life hilarious?” ‘Blogging material she would bring several advantages:
Anyway, talking of Frasier, this is interesting:
“I have just watched Frasier for the first time on this 100hz set. It looked dreadful. It lost the smooth feel American television has (because most televisions in the US are about 15 years behind European and Asian TVs in technical terms) and looked like a dreadfully cheap pilot. It looked like raw DV, from a modern camcorder. Dolly and pan movements are clear – you can see every jerk and jog on the way across the dolly track and every shake of the human hand – something I have never spotted on Frasier. It’s very strange.
“How can an improvement in technology ruin the way technology works in an emotive sense?”
This lunchtime, Borders bookshop/café/newsagents: having picked up a couple of special offer items, I’m on my way out into the street when I notice the two Georges—“Gorgeous” Galloway and “Moonbat” Monbiot that is—at 20 percent off. As always I have my long-suffering Minolta with me, so I get it out of my rucksack and uncap the lens in front of the ranks of discounted paperbacks, ready to freeze this pleasing vista for you, my loyal reader. Instantly a scrawny media studies graduate type with a glued-on-doghair beard and a headset is upon me. “I’m afraid you can’t take photographs in the store, sir.”
“What the fuck is a ‘store’, nosewipe? Do you know who I am? I am PooterGeek, freewheeling Internet superstar, and you are a mere wageslave, a pre-programmed ‘bot, scuttling along your short and narrow channel in the great global grid of capitalism, parroting the line fed to you by the masters of your faceless franchise,” I say, slapping his furry cheek with a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: How To Achieve Stress-Free Productivity.
No. I just put my camera away and walk out. But I give him a scowl he won’t forget in a long time.
How long before Borders serve me with a writ for describing a display in one of their shops?
The only way to make the Doors listenable: combine them with the Muppets and The Macarena. And a mash-up can even redeem Craig David as well.
I think I might become a Pastafarian, oo-arr! Here be an explanation, me hearties!
If you’ve got the bandwidth, this sharp computer-animated film from Taiwan is worth the download.
[Dull bell tolls. Ominous music plays. A young man dressed in black, carrying a rucksack and wearing a baseball cap approaches the entrance of a charming extended split-level end-of-terrace in Crouch End. He knocks heavily at the door.]
CHARLIE: [answering the door]: Yes? Oh. Right. Have you brought a takeaway? Sorry about that. I should have phoned to cancel the usual. We’ve got people round this evening for a little cooked supper to celebrate our friend Giles becoming a shrink. You’re not the normal chap. Is it Hamid’s night off?
[silence]
CHARLIE: Look. I am awfully sorry, but—
SUICIDE BOMBER: I am shahid. I bring Death to you all.
CHARLIE: Who?
SUICIDE BOMBER: We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.
CHARLIE: The chap from the Sally Army usually comes to collect on a Thursday morning.
[The SUICIDE BOMBER opens his coat to expose a detonator belt.]
LIZA: Who is it, darling?
CHARLIE: He says his name is “Shaheed” and I think he’s come to blow us up.
LIZA: How funky! Are you going to invite him in?
CHARLIE: [slightly worried now] Er, that might not be the best id…
LIZA: Hello, Shaheed! Come on in. Would you like a glass of Pinot? [slapping her forehead] D’oh! Silly me.
Come and meet everyone, Shaheed. This is Ed and this is Vicky.
SUICIDE BOMBER: Your wife dresses like a whore!
VICKY: Well I think of it more as a “gypsy” kind of look. Whores are so 90s Versace.
LIZA: And this is Uzi who’s visiting from Tel Aviv.
SUICIDE BOMBER: Zionist scum!
LIZA: Uzi usually describes himself as Reform Jewish.
And this is Giles, [gently slapping him on the back] who’s just qualified as a psychiatrist!
ED: Well, Shaheed, that’s quite a waistcoat you’ve got there.
LIZA: Shaheed blows things up.
ED: Is that a performance art kind of thing? Or are you a civil engineer? You know if you look up “Boring” in the Yellow Pages it says “See Civil Engineers”. [His laugh peters out as the SUICIDE BOMBER glares at him.]
UZI: [staring at the construction of the jacket and the SUICIDE BOMBER’s increasingly anxious fumbling with it] Are you guys insane? He’s a suicide bomber! He’s got explosives strapped to him and he’s trying to kill us all! Run for your fucking lives before he gets the detonator to work!
[UZI throws down his wine glass, clambers over the sofa and races out of the door.]
LIZA: [looking at the open door and then at CHARLIE] Well, I know you said Israelis were a bit lacking in social graces, but, frankly, I think that was very rude.
GILES: Uzi was projecting the essence of his apocalyptic fears onto Shaheed. Occupying the political (and, indeed, as an Israeli, physical) space of the neo-con project, the suicide bomber is the perfect mirror of his expansionist vision. There is, in a very real sense, not even an Al-Qaeda as Uzi imagines it. Shaheed is a confused and lonely young man, alienated from his community. He is not a footsoldier in a vast transnational army of Islamists…
SUICIDE BOMBER: I fookin’ am!
ED: That’s not a London accent you’ve got there, Shaheed. Are you from oop North?
SUICIDE BOMBER: I and thousands like me have forsaken everything for what we believe. Until we feel security, you will be our targets.
LIZA: Oh, I think I understand now. You’re one of those oppressed Palestinians. I’ve always wanted to meet one. It must be terrible for you, living in a tent village and everything. This is our mezzanine , by the way. Look, you don’t really want to blow us up. Let’s sit down and discuss it over a cup of Fair Trade coffee. I’m sure we can find some answer to your grievances. We all wish Tony had never got us into Iraq. Terrible mess.
CHARLIE: [gently and shakily taking his partner’s forearm] Liza, darling, do you think this is wise? That young chap might not be part of some global network, but I think he is, “in a very real sense“, going to blow us all to kingdom come.
ED: So how long have you been blowing things up?
SUICIDE BOMBER: Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight. Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood.
LIZA: He’s a suicide bomber, Ed.
VICKY: Well, isn’t that extraordinary? We were just talking about suicide bombers only five minutes ago. When you’re that poor and trapped like that, being shot at by tanks all day when all you can you do is throw stones, you must get desperate.
ED: [sniggering nervously] Oh. Yes, I have to say I get a bit suicidal some mornings riding the Tube into work myself. So how long have you been blowing yourself up, then?
CHARLIE: [attempting blokey firmness] Look, Shaheed, mate, I think you’ve probably just got the wrong address…
BOMBER: Be quiet! Kufr! All you do is talk, and none of you have got any balls.
[The SUICIDE BOMBER finally fixes his detonator and the ground floor of the house is all but demolished. Massive nails rip through the bodies of the guests as their limbs are torn like tree branches in a tornado. The SUICIDE BOMBER and CHARLIE in particular are reduced to a scorched mist of human flesh. All of the windows are shattered. A dog in the street outside is eviscerated by shards of glass. LIZA, making coffee in the stainless steel kitchen, has been shielded from the main blast and takes somewhat longer to die from hypovolemic shock. She speaks, but can’t hear what she’s saying. Blood is running from her broken inner ears.
LIZA: But we voted Lib Dem.
Gaze greenly upon my grammatical geekiness, Pashmina! PooterGeek can now check your comments for spelling mistakes, even as you type. If you want the Dictionary Police to patrol your prose just click on whichever spell-checking option you prefer as it now appears above the Comment box. Be patient. They take a little while to process your words, but these virtual officers are even UK/US-English agnostic. How kewl is that?
[Tested with recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Mozilla. The management accepts no responsibility for embarrassment caused by homonyms or user stupidity. Your Internet connection is at risk if you do not keep up payments to your service provider. PooterGeek is a licensed edit broker.]
There’s been some interesting debate on the ‘Blogs I read about the slinging around of blame in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Before hosting a more-heat-than-light comment scrap, Harry’s Place has posted a couple of extended contributions from readers, one broadly critical, one trying to put events in context. Yesterday Norm drew attention to a National Geographic article from last year warning about the increased chance of such a disaster, which (unknown to me before I commented there) prompted civil mechanical engineer Tim Newman to make some points about acceptable risk. Before doing so, he rounded up some of the partisan nonsense being written about the US government response. Judy at Adloyada does the same and suggests a new PooterGeek competition…
…for the best blame-quote on Katrina. Just to start you off, Damian, my entry would be Ahmed Qurei speaking on behalf of the Palestinian Authority:
“Whilst we regret the tragic loss of life in Katrina, we must remember that as long as the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine continues the Palestinian Authority will be powerless to prevent its ally Jesse Jackson from making damnfool statements blaming President Bush for the disaster.”
I have a feeling some of the real blame quotes yet to come will trump even that suggestion. And I also have a Kanye West post brewing.
How about this “quote” from Nelson “the US wants a holocaust” Mandela:
“This racist storm was deliberately caused by George W Bush’s policies to promote global warming. It was designed to kill black Americans and leave the oil wealth of New Orleans for white imperialists.”
Further to my comment about the relative earnings of Whites and ethnic minorities in this country, I should admit that, not only were four out of the forty entrants in this year’s Miss England Muslims, but, of them, the winner herself was born in Tashkent of Afghan parents who fled Afghanistan in 1980. The favourite to win, Sarah Mendly, was a refugee from Saddam Hussein. I am shocked, shocked to see these young and talented women flee oppression in their own countries only to become victims of this sexist and exploitative “competition”. “Islamic leaders” are also disturbed:
Hashim Sulaiman, of the Liverpool Islamic Institute, said: “There is no way a Muslim girl should be playing any part in this competition, because it is unlawful. The ladies in that contest are always very scantily dressed and the only part of the body that should be on display are the face, the hands and the feet.
“I would like [Sarah Mendly] to withdraw from the contest immediately. I do not know what she was thinking in entering in the first place and I do not know what her parents were thinking when they allowed her to do so.”
Other Muslim clerics agreed that beauty pageants are outlawed under the tenets of their faith. But they were less unwelcoming to the four Muslims among the forty finalists.
Akbar Ali, chairman of the Islamic Society of Liverpool, said that a Muslim winning the competition would be regarded by many as the first step towards breaking down this religious barrier. He said: “Beauty pageants generally are not permissible under Islamic law.”
…
Abdul Hamid, the vice-chairman of the Lancashire Board of Mosques, said that if Miss Mendly took part she would immediately cast herself out of the “circle of Islam”. He said: “It is simply not right for her to take part in this competition as a Muslim, because by entering she forsakes her faith. She has said she won’t wear a bikini, only a swimsuit, but what difference does that make? She will still be exposing her flesh in a beauty contest.”
Besides Dilay Topuzoglu and Sonia Hassanien, other non-Muslim finalists with suspiciously foreign-sounding names and swarthy skin include Peace Blessing Oybio and Emily Okelo. Once again the global reach of cheesy 70s retro threatens the purity of virgin ladies in this country, whatever their origins.
[On the plus-side, judging by her picture on the front of the Miss England homepage, last year’s winner looks like she could teach Kate Moss a thing or two about healthy eating.]
Who Knew? has a telling post. Imagine: you have invested your life savings in a multinational corporation, who would you choose to run, respectively, its US and UK arms: Bill Clinton and Tony Blair or George W Bush and John Major? Whatever happened to the Right’s ability just to manage serious stuff competently?
My mother always taught me that reading books would help me to get on in life*. You only have to look at my dazzling career to see how right she was. (Funnily enough, people in my old job looked at me like I was stupid because I refused to cite a source without actually plodding along to the library to read it.) My mother’s career is illuminating too, given that in Britain the majority of PAs are better educated than their vastly better paid bosses, and that blacks are paid significantly less than whites with matched qualifications and experience. It is interesting that her boss’s name is the same as his father’s which in turn is identical to that of the firm the latter founded**.
Today’s Economist discusses Britain’s celebrity aristocracy and notes that, in our newly meritocratic society, the people are no longer interested in the “private” affairs of lazy, talentless, and ignorant dukes and duchesses, but those of lazy, talentless, and ignorant commoners. It is illustrated with a photograph of Jordan and Peter Andre. Their skin is the colour of a Space Hopper. In fact Jordan appears to have had two small Space Hoppers surgically attached to her ribcage.
The piece discusses the [whimper] synergistic relationship between the media and the giftless, the overseas expansion of the UK fame industry, and examines coolly how, even for sports stars, actual performance has become detached from earning potential. [Surely not?]
This caught my eye:
“The pop singer and the topless model, better known as Jordan, met when their careers were flagging, on a reality TV show—that essential new cog in the celebrity machine. They have sold rights to the wedding, built around a Cinderella theme, as an exclusive to OK! for a small fortune (a price, the gossip press says, that has irked Victoria Beckham, whose marriage to her footballer husband was covered by a million-pound contract).”
The explanation is simple: the supposedly posh Victoria Beckham has, famously, never read a book; Jordan has at least finished the story of the Yorkshire Ripper. Although both stars’ breasts are thought to contain inorganic polymers, OK! is paying a premium for Jordan’s infinitely greater erudition.
[*I should point out that my mum also taught me to read. This is one of the most wonderful and precious of many wonderful and precious things she has done for me. She taught me to read good English; my dad taught me to write good English. I will be grateful to them until I die.]
[**Enjoy this line now: my mum’ll be on the phone later to tell me to remove it. ]
I am told by PooterGeekers, including the currently-one-armed Hot Wheels Helena, that they come here by typing “poo” into their Web browsers and letting auto-complete do the rest. Be careful that the rest of the URL is filled in before you hit “Return” or, like Hot Wheels, you are likely to find yourself at the not-safe-for-work “Poo.com“.
Britney’s first-born could be called “London Preston”, but will be known as “M6” to all his friends.
[I love that Wikipedia has a page devoted to the M6. Wikimedia: harnessing the power of Asperger’s syndrome since 2000 AD. Did you know that the entry about Coronation Street used to be twice as long as the one about Tony Blair? It’s the People’s Encyclopedia, i’n’t it?]
There isn’t actually a scene depicting a gamine brunette whizzing past a Parisian landmark on a moped, but, if this trailer is anything to go by, scientists at an Israeli biotech firm have finally succeeded in cloning all the other clichés of self-conscious art house French cinema.
On the BBC News Website you can find this transcript of BBC Radio 5’s interview with the BBC’s new political editor Nick Robinson. Put out of your mind this dizzying circularity to marvel at the content of the discussion. Robinson is particularly strong on the attributes that mark out a great political journalist:
“Yes, John Cole on the BBC with that extraordinary Northern Ireland accent that people mocked at first but came to love. The herringbone coat, as you say. And then his rival at ITN, Mike Brunson, who was an incredibly successful political editor. The big glasses, the drawl, the wry observation. They made people want to listen, they made people want to know.
…
[Y]ou’re right John Cole was one of the first characters – he was certainly for me, one of the people that made me think that’s a great job, that’s someone doing something that matters and looks fun as well.”
Why does this kind of guff immediately make me think of The Fast Show‘s Ron Manager?
File this one under “Amazing If True”:
“Cornell University and Tel Aviv University researchers have developed a method for enabling a computer program to scan text in any of a number of languages, including English and Chinese, and autonomously and without previous information infer the underlying rules of grammar. The rules can then be used to generate new and meaningful sentences. The method also works for such data as sheet music or protein sequences.”
And, Jackie, if you’re reading this, why is your friend Cathy top of the Scienceblog ‘Blogroll? Ooh, you’ve graduated to WordPress too. Everybody’s doing it. I am such a fashion leader. You should convert Cathy. She could take the opportunity to find a cleaner ‘Blog design. She’s got interesting things to say, but her homepage looks like the inside of my nose. And you have no idea how irritated I am that the that the “profile” link from “Cathy Seipp’s College Roommate Recollects Her Naked Ways” is broken.
I have observed before that Cambridge has Goths like other cities have pigeons. Thanks to The Guardian online (in turn thanks to Pashmina in her comment at Quinquireme), I have discovered what they get up to in the summer months: shooting townies.
Reading the extract from the Evening Standard article that Norm quoted today, I was distracted by the phrase “a self-help guide for would-be terrorists”. Huh? What’s it called? Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway? I’m OK, You’re Kuffar? Who Moved My Caliph?
This International Herald Tribune article is built around its author’s belief that award-winning British star of stage and screen Ralph Fiennes is incapable of playing an ordinary fella. Outrageous! Early on, as a struggling young actor, Fiennes actually started to make his first serious money playing “Third Bloke” in a series of successful 80s lager commercials. Here is a transcript from the filming of one of those sessions:
DIRECTOR: Okay, people, it’s nearly wrap-up time. Just this one to do now!
It’s the small hours after the stag party and Terry and Dave have finally found Steve chained to a lamp-post wearing nothing but a lathering of shaving cream. Steve looks on in misery and cries “Oh no!” as Terry downs his pint of Carling Black Label, then Dave mugs to the camera saying, “You won’t be needing any lubrication then?!” Finally we cut to Terry raising an eyebrow and the jingle plays. Everybody got that?
[Weary acknowledgements go up from cast and crew.]
And… ACTION!
STEVE: Oh no!
[TERRY [RALPH] downs pint.]
DAVE: You won’t be needing any lubrication then?!
RALPH: Not in Yalta, no. You remember Yalta? Sometimes Ivana and I were so happy there that I thought my tears of joy would flood the very sea!
[There is a shocked silence on set.]
DIRECTOR: CUT! Ralph, what the fuck was that about?
RALPH: Sorry, Tony, I don’t know what came over me.
And it’s “Rayf”, not “Rowlf”. I’m not a Muppet.
STEVE: [under breath] Could have fooled me.
DIRECTOR: Okay, Rayf, let’s take it from the top again. Please focus. Everybody ready? ACTION!
STEVE: Oh no!
[RALPH downs pint.]
DAVE: You won’t be needing any lubrication then?!
RALPH: Ha! Give me an age and I could tell you how these Jews have sucked the lifeblood of the Fatherland!
DIRECTOR: CUT!
RALPH: Sorry, Tony. Had a bit of a turn there.
DIRECTOR: You’re telling me. [Walks over to Fiennes to have a quiet word in his ear.] Look, Rayf, darling. I know it’s been a long day, but we’re just a mosquito’s buttock away from having this all finished now. It would be just dandy if you could restrict your (undoubtedly wide-ranging and classically-trained) acting talents to the raising of a single eyebrow [points to script] as specified by our friends at Saatchi and Saatchi.
RALPH: Tony?
DIRECTOR: [warily] Yes?
RALPH: Do you think perhaps that Terry, my character, is limited to raising his eyebrow because the rest of his body has been burned to a smeared landscape of scar tissue in an horrific flying accident, so that one corner of his face is the only part of his tortured shell that he can move without suffering terrible agony?
DIRECTOR: [stealing an eye-rolling glance at the other two members of the cast] Rayf, if that works for you, sweetie, it works for me.
Could we have that boom back a bit, Gary? Okay… ACTION!
STEVE: Oh no!
[RALPH downs pint.]
DAVE: You won’t be needing any lubrication then?!
[RALPH raises his eyebrow, a look of agony etched across the rest of his features. The DIRECTOR groans. WILLEM DAFOE bursts onto the soundstage. He is dressed as A BEAR and carrying a can of HEINEKEN.]
WILLEM: You get to the morning and the poison leaks away, doesn’t it? Black nights, fucking black nights, when you want to howl like a dog. [He takes a swig from the can.] I thought I would kill you. You killed my friends, you ruined my hands. But the girl was always here, like some Guardian Angel.
RALPH: You can’t kill me. I died years ago.
[The DIRECTOR begins to sob quietly. JINGLE plays.]
Since I last mentioned her work Gloria Salt has moved to a new home at her own domain. Thanks to the alphabet she goes almost to the top of the PooterGeek ‘Blogroll. The new banner for her ‘Blog “Apropos Of Nothing” carries a nice big photo of her face too, which could quite reasonably be captioned “All this and brains too”.
Beating Gloria to the top of the list is Adloyada, the handiwork of a PooterGeek commenter and correspondent. Have you seen 221B Baker Street lately?
I have also added two members of the glittery literati to the “Friends of the Geek”: Linda Grant and George Szirtes. Admittedly, I’ve only read them, not met them, but, thanks to normblog and PooterGeek, they have now met each other. And it’s only a matter of time before television runs out of unemployed fitness trainers from mid Wales and we are all locked into the Big Brother house together to discuss the semiotics of semi-colons.
At this rate I might have to start an entirely new collection of links in the PooterGeek sidebar devoted to procrastinating writers.
I have mentioned the wacky “campaigning windows” of Cambridge residents before. Today I walked past one that had a picture of a Labrador on display, with the caption “Liberate Laboratory Animals!”
Also today I read this story:
“Animal rights activists have stolen six huntaway dogs from a Massey University farm, some of which are carrying a fatal genetic disease also found in humans.
The dogs – a bitch and five puppies – were sent to Massey by a farmer reluctant to have them put down. Instead he hoped Massey’s Veterinary School could find a cure for the disease which attacks the nervous system, killing animals and young children.
Massey veterinarians had hoped that because of the genetic similarities, if they found a cure for the dogs they would also be able to save children. In this respect, they were working with the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
The disease, mucopolysaccharidosis, specifically targets the brain.
Without expert treatment, the infected dogs will waste away and die fairly quickly.”
Via Fark too, the people who brought you microwave radar bring you fizzy ice cream.
That’s the trouble with Test Match Special: evocative commentary, unintentional innuendo, amusing anecdotes about furry-costumed Test Match attendees, bizarre guests (Bobby Charlton—what was that about?), occasionally slightly bonkers contributions from actual cricketers, but never searing analysis like that offered by Aussie Tony T at After Grog Blog:
“Well, that’s it then, The Ashes are gone. Time to pray for a miracle – or rain. Or both. So long, and thanks for all the eel-pie, you bastards! I mean that in the nicest possible fucking way, you understand.
“Ok then, enough with the politesse, let’s not beat around the mulberry. In recent years Australia have profited big time from dropped catches, favourable umpiring and general opposition clownishness. “Christ, we got away with one there,” is an oft heard phrase hereabouts after yet another bungle in the field or a rank howler from the men in white.”
…
“That is not to say they weren’t deserving of success, just that they have been building up an enormous overdraft of luck and/or happenstance. Sooner or later, the debt was bound to be called. What goes around, comes aground, as they say. All that need be negotiated was When? and By how much?
Well, it’s stating the bleedin’ obvious, but when is NOW. And how much is TOO FUCKING MUCH.”
I found this via Jackie’s furl stash [via James Hamilton]. It’s advice from a successful ‘Blogger on how to get new readers. She happens to be an illegal New York lap dancer who’s dating a British socialite. Next week: advice to struggling media studies graduates on how to get into the competitive business of TV production from Edward Windsor.
Visiting Australian tourists consider volunteering to stand in for the guinea pigs:
“Flintoff brought up his 50 with a six off Shane Warne and hit debutant Shaun Tait for three fours in one over.”
Susurration has been quiet for yonks, but the proprietor’s back comparing the reactions of two different ‘Blogs to the infamous “burning flag of Israel” photo illustrating the Corporation’s reports on the Gaza withdrawal.
Recent Comments