June 2004

How The Mighty Fall

Traumatised both by France's failure to stop the Iraq war and its soccer team's embarrassing and premature exit from Euro 2004, international footballing legend (and amateur philosopher) Eric Cantona disappeared last weekend. Today, psychiatric nurses from the Centre Hospitalier Sainte Anne in Paris safely removed him from a makeshift underground refuge he had constructed for […]

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“Cynical”

People who love English because the language can be precise and powerful can't protect it from people who love English because they love the sound of their own voices speaking it. Words like “disingenuous”, “chaotic”, and “appalling”, for example, have distinct and useful meanings. To the journos and pub bores and politicians they have become […]

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What Are You On, Tom?

Talking of blowing it, Tom Watson (Labour) MP attacks his Lib Dem tormentors by denouncing their party for being soft on drug addicts. This is like attacking the Monster Raving Loonies for supporting representative democracy. [Once you've read the parent post on his site I warn you no to go any further; some of the […]

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Militant Accountants Against The Occupation

The Anonymous Economist sends me Paul Krugman's opinion piece in the New York Times today. Krugman meets expectations: he makes some valid points about American incompetence and corruption in Iraq's reconstruction; then he blows it with his conclusion: “Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for […]

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David Duff's Book Club

Also doing my work for me today is PooterGeeker David Duff. He's back from his hols and emails with book reviews. He recommends The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips. David writes: “Like all good pulp fiction, it is very cynical and morally dubious but an absolutely cracking read.” He points those looking for something rather […]

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Another Sheet On The Roll

In the absence of anything amusing from me, read someone else. I've added Mick Hartley's 'Blog to the PooterGeek 'Blogroll, having inspected it at the recommendation of Backword Dave. You might want to wander over and enjoy the righteous kicking Mick gives Bianca Jagger today—no, not that Mick. I salute a man ready to lay […]

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Quiet Day

Iraq begins self-rule ahead of schedule. NATO promises 10 000 troops to secure Afghanistan's upcoming elections. Evidence appears in support of the Accelerated Life Theory of Britney Spears, within hours of my first postulating it. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything to write about any of these things.

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WordPress Update

For Backword Dave and Timbeaux and any other 'Bloggers interested, here's my list of gripes/tips from my two weeks of using WordPress: You can get yourself in a terrible mess if you forget who you are logged in as. Don't. WP takes forever to timeout from pinging back URLs when you press Publish, so just […]

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Hit Me Baby One More Time

When Dolly the Sheep was cloned from a single cell of her mother/twin's udders, one of the science-fiction-horror side-effects of the manner of her conception was the premature ageing of Dolly's own cells. Someone should tell Britney that the terrible downside of being created from a flash-frozen scraping of Madonna's left breast is that she […]

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Bang Per Buck—or Why I Willingly Sponsor Killers

My mate Tony Blair's emailing me again. After I complained about the Word documents he kept sending me, he kindly switched to HTML mail with minimal formatting and a graphic of his signature at the end. He attaches a slightly more elaborate PDF document telling me what's wrong with the Tories' plans for the National […]

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In Praise Of The Little Guy (And His Girlfriend)

This another oldie, but it's never too late to read a story about the Mail on Sunday being humiliated. Mil Millington wrote a Webpage and a newspaper column and a book and, soon, a film—sorry: “major motion picture”—called “Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About”. [Mil's homepages might be funny, but they're ugly and […]

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Crime News

11 English tourists were robbed last night in the Portuguese capital. One of the party, Londoner Solomon Campbell, 29, said to reporters: “I was sure I'd put it away safely, but, by the time we'd returned to our hotel everything we'd worked so hard for was gone.” Although a Swiss David Bowie impersonator, currently touring […]

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Distractions

Leasey brings us a fascinating tiny game. I could warn you of the little wrinkles, but you'll have more fun working them out for yourself. She also recommends that we catch up on the latest drama in Britney's life. It's not just the world of international refereeing that's gone topsy-turvy: pork scratchings are becoming a […]

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Festival Round-Up

Despite featuring the towering talent of Morrissey, this year's “alternative rock” Lollapalooza tour in the States has had to be cancelled because of poor ticket sales. You mean the young (ha!) people don't want to hand over their hard-earned to witness the still-fresh and boundary-breaking virtuosi of the Pixies and Sonic Youth? Say it isn't […]

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Whoda Thunkit?

Join me on the bleeding edge of radio broadcasting, where Tony Blackburn and Cliff Richard form a radical alliance against corporate music programming. No, I'm serious. The cheesy, 61-year-old Blackburn is a true rebel and has put his job on the line to prove it. I find myself in the disturbing position of supporting him […]

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Hard Sell

In the latest Spectator, Jonathan Keates reviews Adam McQueen's new biography of William Lever, the philanthropic founder of what became the Unilever empire. Apparently one of the earliest marketing slogans for Sunlight soap was: “Buy our soap or your husband will divorce you” Lever can't have been all bad; he "survived a dirty-tricks campaign by […]

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More Cheap Innuendo

The headline alone is worth a 'Blog post, but Christopher Saigal, one of the medics involved in the ground-breaking study showing that "Sex Life Can Improve When Obese Men Lose Weight" is going to wish he'd been on the media training course when his colleagues start reading this quote out aloud in the doctors' mess: […]

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Closely Fought Race

A friend of mine reckons Ashcroft is “one of the worst Republicans alive” and often posts evidence to my inbox in support of her case. Here's today's submission. [Requires New York Times registration. Do not apply to irritated skin.]

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Money Tip

Since moving from New York to The Jewish State a few years ago, Judith has discovered that popular prejudice about the country's inhabitants is wrong in many ways. One less important example is that Israelis repeatedly demonstrate to her and her husband (ex-Wall Street workers both) their chronic incompetence in the supposedly competitive field of […]

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WordPress Review [Warning: Geeky Stuff]

As requested by Timbeaux, here's my report on the new software running this site: WordPress (WP). Like a zombie twin, my original Movable Type installation is still shuffling along in the same directory of the same server, delivering old pages to the local people. Despite this, PooterGeek coped fine with the Geras-lanche of outsiders yesterday. […]

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Wits Out For The Lads

It was appropriate, given my last post, that I should watch England's alternately dazzling and comical game against Croatia perched next to a pair of extremely knowledgeable American lesbians. They admired “Cole's overlap play” like the girls on the other side of me admired James's torso when he took his shirt off at the end. […]

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Slip Of The Tongue

Many column inches have been devoted to the latent homosexuality of football, from communal baths to post-goalscoring kissing. I am skeptical. In England, the game is, like me, boringly straight. I am listening to Radio Five Live—or “Radio Bloke” as it is often mocked. One of the presenters of the England-Croatia match, Alan Green, has […]

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