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, […]
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 […]
[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 […]
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 […]
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’ve put all my bedroom furniture together now, and my bedtime reading over the past few days has been Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle. [Typically, Penguin publishes the book inside two different tarted-up covers, but with the same nasty old typesetting inside.] As “what if the Axis won the War?” novels […]
Your meagre anecdotes insult Bast, Perfumed Protector, Cat Goddess. The one you call “Little Mo” has paid the ultimate price for your failure to show sufficient respect. Until all households of the Infidel West are part of the Catiphate our martyrdom operations will continue. Until the sacred lands of the desert again flow with milk […]
[BASRA. Outside a terrorist hideout, two undercover SAS men wait for their final instructions from their Mahdi Army handler. They are sitting in a Morris Minor dressed in Lawrence of Arabia costumes and wearing blackface. One is wrapped in a girdle of fake sticks of dynamite, stamped with the legend “ACME”.] FIRST SAS MAN: Durqa durqa […]
Watch out, Gloria’s back—and she’s packing heat.
Glenn McGrath: “I think I was saying 3-0 or 4-0 about 12 months ago, thinking there might be a bit of rain around. But with the weather as it is at the moment, I have to say 5-0.” Jeff Thomson: “England will lose the five-Test series 3-0 and the margin will be worse for them if […]
Mark A Rayner at the skwib has found William Wallace’s long lost USB stick of PowerPoint presentations. Here are those crucial Battle of Sterling Bridge bullet points: We smell like crap We can’t read We’re covered in woad Time to kick some ass!
A coloured guy, a lesbian, and a Jew settle down to enjoy a game of cricket… Before the great battle begins today I must remind you of what is at stake, not merely a century-old sporting trophy, but the pride of the English-speaking ‘Blogging world. …And the coloured guy says to the lesbian: This is a fantasy, […]
[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 […]
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?
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.”
AYATOLLAH KHAMENEI is man-handled into his office. Waiting for him are four associates, standing: CONDOLEEZZA, RUMSFELD (an old Wise-guy), VICE-PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER, and BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BOB HOSKINS (a fireplug pitbull type). PRESIDENT WALKEN sits in KHAMENEI’s recliner KHAMENEI is knocked to his knees. He looks up to see a smiling WALKEN. They pick him up and roughly […]
I think I’d have enjoyed this article rather more if it had been called “The Rhetoric of the Stupid”, rather than “The Rhetoric of the Left”, but you can’t have everything. No one who has any time for the views of a bunch of Jew-hating, wife-beating, Muslim-killing, gay-hanging, Koran-thumping mass-murderers is any kind of man […]
Mick Hartley does the necessary.
As Claire put it when emailing me this link, “Has The Onion started writing everyone’s headlines?”: “Sudan situation ‘totally bad’”
BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme five minutes ago in its report on the 60th anniversary of the dropping of The Bomb: “In the United States there was a steely determination to triumph [in the war] in the Far East by whatever means, at whatever cost.”
When I was a boy and my written German was quite good, I used to have a pen-pal in East Berlin, a young soldier. We would scribble symbols over the seals of our letters to each other, hoping that we’d be able to tell if the authorities had opened our correspondence. Today I was completely […]
BBC Radio 1’s news—normally pitched at the educationally subnormal—referred to Osama bin Laden as a “terrorist” this morning.
British elites have been inventive and subtle in preserving their advantages. Their most important achievement has been to tilt Britain towards meritocracy and then restrict access to the means by which citizens can prove their “merit”. Those amongst the rich and connected who fancy themselves as progressives have played into the hands of the most […]
My last post was provoked by the continuing gloatiness of Australia’s cricket fans and it linked to a normblog post that looked suspiciously like an example of such behaviour. Truth was he was just being sarky so I’ve changed the link. My apologies to Norm, who isn’t a bad loser—though I very much hope that […]
Lately I have promised various people various things, including a hugely superfluous full-length post on PooterGeek about the recent British bombings. I must apologise to those I have so far disappointed. Tony Blair in particular keeps phoning me, hoping that I will be able to provide him with some choice phrases. Sorry, Tone. I have […]
One of the witnesses to the police shooting of the suspected bomber on Friday saw wires sticking out of the man’s coat. Everyone saw “New York” on an alleged bomber’s sweatshirt.
My Auntie Clarina in Sierra Leone is worried that, living in Cambridge and visiting London as I do from time to time, I might be in danger.
Over at Norm’s place Alan Johnson asks why the Labour Party has not been opposing terrorism more overtly. I can’t believe Alan hasn’t had the Bateman-esque experience of, say, commenting favourably on George Bush’s foreign policy in the company of Labour activists. If he hasn’t, thoughtful James Hamilton has some answers.