Ten Good Posts From The Past (Nov 2001-Jan 2001):
1) Gay Gangsta : “Palare had a word, ‘omipalone’ (Oh-Mi-Pal-Oh-Nee) which was a combination of Man and Woman (‘palone’), and which at the time meant something along the lines of ‘poof’. Creative etymology leads me to posit the creation of the word ‘Homey-Palone’, referring to the almost non-existent phenomenon of the ‘Gay Gangsta Rapper’. “
2) On not being a proper ****: “OK so it’s a standard conversation. You’re out with women and you’re chatting away about someone who’s just fucked them over in some way and they say things like, ‘All Men are pointless’, or ‘I’ve never met a man who didn’t like football’. And then you look a little perturbed.”
3) Portillo Predictions: “And that was before Thatcher’s gradual lunacy pushed her over the brink into Hawk-Nosed Hitlerite. But now … well now politics is all about image, which is why William Hague will never become Prime Minister.”
4) Health advice: “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen – even pointless, lacklustre, unimaginative, dreary, workaday, missionary, vanilla sex with someone you are bored with can have tremendous health benefits. “
5) Presents for multi-millionaires: “And while you are there perhaps you would feel like buying the cheery multi-millionaire a Zircon 50793 Studsensor Pro 4.0 or a Star Trek electronic key chain (three types requested).”
6) Two weeks before handing in notice: “There may come a day in your life when you find yourself so sick to death of your job, so overwhelmingly frustrated by the lack of respect that your very presence seems to engender, so totally bored by office politics and that boss who you’ve always found intolerable, that it comes to you that the only answer is to resign and go and find something else to spend your time on.”
7) The beginning of the rot: “Since I am going to have to be drearily positive for the next seven weeks as I scrabble around for a new job, I thought I may as well take this opportunity to moan about how appalling my life is at the moment in laborious and tedious detail.”
8) Rebranding: “Merely take two words that you feel ‘represent’ your site in some way, and then combine them to produce your newly rebranded site-name. If in the process you can spend $600 million, then all the better. With this spirit of adventure in mind, I hereby declare plasticbag.org to be called ‘fascillåte’.”
9) Photo of father: “Imagine my shock when I realised my father (bottom-right) was a big, baldy, 70s-style beardy-weirdy…”
10) Tom Coates Explains Everything: “No, strudel is beyond my meagre talents in the kitchen, I’m afraid. I think I missed out on many of the important gay genes that make you able to decorate effectively and not fart in public.”