With the season of bonhomie fast approaching, patrons are reminded that any festive shopping done via the following Amazon links – here for the UK and here for the US – results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

That is all. 

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my new PalPay.Me page can be found here. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade or so, and in over 2,000 posts and 70,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. There you’ll find odysseys in consciousness-raising by fearless taxpayer-funded artists; several displays of the true warmth and compassion of Guardian readers; the bewildering mental contortions of leftwing academics; and quite a few things like this. 

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Not too long ago, we were discussing a survey of the most aggravating forms of online advertising, from modal windows that slide in and obstruct whatever you’re reading just as you’re getting immersed, to the unspeakable evil of auto-play videos that even when manually paused still follow you around the page, as if intent on degrading the quality of your stay. As noted at the time,

I’m sometimes approached by small agencies that want to clutter this place up with apparently random, low-rent advertising. So far, none of the products – insofar as I’d have any say in what they are – seem likely to entice the kind of people that I imagine visit this blog. It’s just ugly visual noise that would bog down the site. You’re all welcome to bear this in mind – my heroic high-mindedness – next time I do a fundraiser.

Well, heavens. Here we are.

And so, patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade, and in over 2,000 posts and 65,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

As some of you may be gorged on bank holiday goodwill, now seems a good time to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade, and in over 2,000 posts and 60,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Yes, as of today, this blog is officially ten years old.

I have to say, back in February 2007, I had no idea what I was doing and no expectation that I’d still be doing it a decade later. Much as I’d like to applaud my own obstinacy, the fact that I have a slightly better idea of what to do, and am still doing it, is due in very large part to you heathens. Without readers and commenters, and feedback and inspiration, and links to news items about exploding toilets, I doubt this disreputable establishment would still be here.

So, er, group hug.

And now that we’re all feeling warm and fluffy and well-disposed, I’m going to slyly remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, and insert a coin for the dancing monkey, there are buttons in the sidebar with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last decade, and in over 2,000 posts and 60,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are happily accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Think of it as a way to turn that filthy consumerism into an act of piety.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for – blimey – close to ten years, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. There you’ll find, among other things, a guide to rationalising sub-optimal life choices in the most grandiose way possible, and a feminist intellectual who tells us that “a curfew for men” and “an end to masculinity” are necessary and “make sense.” Along with some exhilarating performance art involving hand dryers, an artistic release of gas, and an unpopular leftwing novelist explaining why unpopular leftwing novelists deserve nicer homes than yours. 

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. You can then excuse any reckless purchases as an act of high-minded virtue.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last nine years or so, and in over 2,000 posts, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Now you can indulge your base appetites and feel saintly while doing it.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last nine years, and in over 2,000 posts, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. There you’ll find our leftist betters agonising at length and performing great feats of mental contortion. From a gloriously neurotic guide to inter-racial dating, and the extensive preconditions for ordering takeaway in a politically correct manner, to a deep rumination on litter inequality, and a Marxist academic’s belief that competent, caring parenting and reading to one’s children causes “unfair disadvantage” and should therefore induce feelings of guilt, being as it is an act of class oppression. 

Meanwhile, aesthetes among you can savour a wide, possibly baffling range of artistic projects, including some thrilling interactions with automated hand dryers, Shakespeare enhanced with underpants and shrieking, and the immense political radicalism of amplified trousers. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

As today is this blog’s ninth birthday, it seems as good a time as any to have one of the quarterly fundraisers that keep this rickety barge afloat. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Now you can indulge your consumerist lust and feel saintly while doing it.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last nine years, and in over 2,000 posts, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start. If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in. 

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. 

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant for a while longer, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love for this low establishment. Debit and credit cards are of course accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. Additionally, any Amazon shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last eight years or so, the reheated series and greatest hits are good places to start. There you’ll find wonderfully neurotic tips on interracial dating; a not-at-all-racist Guardian columnist complaining that living among white people is a “psychic burden” and worse than being mugged; and a Marxoid academic attempting to make you feel guilty for reading to your children and thereby causing “unfair disadvantage.” You’ll also find some unconvincing nostalgia for collective parenting in an Islington squat, some bizarre misremembering of a popular 70s sitcom, and a terribly radical artist who’s subverting “oppressive discourses” by, er, amplifying his trousers.   

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in. 

Again, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.