One of the last press releases under the reign of the recently deceased CEO of McDonald’s promised an “Adult Happy Meal containing salad, bottled water and a pedometer.” (If you follow the link, check out the new customer-friendly look Death is wearing as he stands on the right of the photo. That cloak-and-scythe thing was […]
Read MoreApril 2004
The Generation Game
Judith tips us off to the delights of Hezbollah TV, as reported in the New York Times [free registration blah-de-blah].
Read MoreTriumphant Return
Welcome back Timbeaux. While you’ve been sunning yourself, Tony’s been reading your ‘Blog and decided to do the right thing.
Read MoreOptician Fails To See It Coming
“Whoops, I accidentally qualified for the Olympics.”
Read MoreIt’s That Time Again
First PooterGeeker (anywhere in the World) to comment on this ‘Blog entry gets a free subscription to The London Review of Books. (Given its editorial line on The Issue of Our Day, I can understand a certain ambivalence, but, hey, they’re giving it away. Get your share of that taxpayer-funded subsidy now!)
Read MorePublic Schoolboy Humour
[I’m just guessing that the British Ambassador in Moscow in 1943 wasn’t educated at the local poor school.] You shouldn’t laugh, but you probably will.
Read MoreSuccess Teaches You Nothing
Over at Kamm’s ‘Blog on Friday, the proprietor launched a thoroughly deserved attack on Rupert Read. [The rest of this entry was a rant about Rupert and one of his papers. Although I still disagree violently with his letter to the Telegraph and am very skeptical about the content of that paper, Rupert has offered—very […]
Read MoreNews Readuh
[High Court Judge voice] I’ve just heard an excitable young lady deliver the 7:30 news on Radio 1, the BBC’s popular music channel.[/High Court Judge voice]. Yesterday’s assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was about the fifth item: “The leader of a militant Palestinian group has been shot and killed by the Israelis. It was part […]
Read MoreWhat It Is
A lot of us are currently trying (again) to point out the people on the Left that Iraq is not Vietnam. It’s also important to point out to people on the Right that Al-Qaeda is not the KGB. You know those forms you fill in as you fly into JFK, where you tell US Immigration […]
Read MoreMeeting The People
“‘Labour Party’? Dictatorship Party more like!” I am standing in the street with a couple of other local party members and the local Labour MEP. We are armed with highly explosive balloons. The person ranting at me is about 22, has a whispy blond goatee, multiple piercings and a grating, sneering, estuarine voice. He is […]
Read MoreQuick Round-Up
Here’s a collection of links that have been deserted in my virtual in-tray for a while, uncommented upon and unshared: Hugh linked me to this bizarre event at a US university—not an April Fool, there are pearls of wit amongst the pellets of gravel at the Four Word Film Review site—I liked the reviews of […]
Read MoreI Cracked
I was in Sainsbury’s and it beckoned to me with its front-page headline “Bush rips up the roadmap”, and its science pull-out Life, and its article about bioinformatics. Reader, I bought a copy of The Guardian. Anyway, inside was a report on an interesting new band BlöödHag. They describe themselves as “edu-core”. This genre involves […]
Read MoreOn The Counsell Campaign Trail
There are only a couple of months to go now before the crucial election for the hotly contested Cambridge Market seat, and scarcely a day goes by without I and my fellow Labour candidates—running mates, if you will—addressing the media. Perhaps we should have stuck to our original plan to keep a low profile. In […]
Read MoreNot Rattling Teacups
I recommend this piece by Mark Steyn from a couple of days ago, firstly, because he manages to agree with both a recent poster to PooterGeek and with me [see this post and this comment box], and, secondly, because it’s an example of how astonishingly good an opinion piece can be when composed by a […]
Read MoreOut Come The Freaks
I paraphrase the title of the latest email I’ve received from our Israel correspondent. With holy days circled on the calendar and Spring in the air, the thoughts of many a young religious fanatic turn to killing Jews, a practice which conveniently marks out the majority of the fundamentally evil systems of “thought” and political […]
Read MoreRising Again
Sorry about the technical problems with the site yesterday—my 12Apr04 entry is now visible; see below. As well as PooterGeek being back up, I’m generally in a more positive mood after an Easter break of callisthenics and music-making, so I’m going to rave (at more length than usual) about two things—one musical and one literary—and […]
Read MoreDive Dive Dive
First, if you are a musician with a few hundred dollars in your pocket and a desire to make music on your computer, buy Sonar. There is a good reason why it’s the US’s most popular PC-based music sequencing/recording package. Although it runs under Windows, with all the horrible tinkering that implies, once set up, […]
Read MoreKing
The other thing I want to rave about is the work and philosophy of Stephen King. I am not the first person to compare him to Dickens, but they do have a lot in common. Not least among these things is that King is both hugely popular with ordinary people and underrated by contemporary critics. […]
Read MoreFeeding The Crocodile
I’m in a particularly hawkish mood today so I invite you to listen to another proud cry from Victor David Hanson‘s eyrie. No, the term isn’t exclusive to eagles, and the Chambers says so. [The former linked page suffers from that curse of the contemporary Web, tiny font sizes, specifically designed, I suspect, to force […]
Read MoreThe Real Thing
Popquiz! Which of the following is a real reality TV show? “Sing Out, Sisters“: A group of twenty white, middle-class American women from a Bach choir are taught to sing Gospel by members of a black Baptist group in Philadelphia. We watch four of the Bach-lovers being transformed over the run up to their appearance […]
Read More“Judeo-Christian”
There’s a thoughtful, topical and free article over at The Economist at the moment, all about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. (Following on from my rant about The Passion, you should note that it contains this paragraph: “One American Catholic and former priest has gone much further than his Church. In his bestselling book […]
Read MoreTrumpZilla!
Over at Liquid Generation—home of the now dated, but still strangely fascinating, “Mystery of Britney Spears’ Breasts“—you can play “TrumpZilla“. Even the Japanese themselves would have trouble beating it for surreality. Your aim is to intercept biplanes, sushi bombs and flying Pikachus by launching toupees at them. The action takes place over Tokyo, London and […]
Read MoreDi War Don Don
It’s time to put on the perspective-correction spectacles again. Christopher Hitchens argues that recent unpleasant events are a warning of what will happen if the liberation of Iraq fails. Oliver Kamm is re-examining his reasons for supporting military action, saying no outcome would cause him to question his original justification. Glenn Reynolds monitors people who […]
Read MoreSexual Aesthetes
It’s no good telling teenagers that sleeping around will damn them to Hell when they don’t believe in God. It’s no good telling them the sleeping around will lead to infertility when having kids is decades away for them. It’s no good telling them the sleeping around will lead to a nasty discharge or pregnancy […]
Read MoreSlowly Going Sane
If the Tories start talking sense like this and this about the big issues I may be hauled up before the Labour Party for voting for them.
Read MoreOver Here
Thanks to Bill and Judy for brightening up what would otherwise have been a miserable train journey back from London. You asked me what good I thought would come from UK universities being able to charge fees. This short article [Adobe Acrobat PDF file], The Coming Invasion of Britain by Andrew Oswald, an economist at […]
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