buggery.org

SADDAM Hussein’s key aide Tariq Aziz is set to live like a king in Britain – at one of Prince Charles’ mansions.

Security chiefs want to give the brute a royal hideaway in return for spilling the beans on the whereabouts of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, The Sun can reveal.

WITH trendy new specs, a groovy beret, and moustache replaced by a goatee, this is how Tariq Aziz might look with a new UK identity.

As plain old Terry, complete with peace corp badges, he may fool some.

But others would Azizily Tel.

After a couple of days of exhaustive coding (but I’m getting to love PHP/mySQL) here’s a new toy for y’all to play with:

Yes, it’s time to rank the worlds princes, presidents and potentates as we play World Leaders: HOT or NOT?

New bloodwork results today: T-cells are up, viral load is undetectable, I’m smiling. Details in the lab.

…Queensland University Professor John McKenzie, currently in Hong Kong investigating the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), said there was a possibility AIDS sufferers could become super-spreaders of the virus because their bodies could not fight it…

(Sydney Morning Herald, today)

I thought we had expunged the term “AIDS sufferer” from the language. What next, innocent victims?

In response to overwhelming public demand (well, one email) qWords, my huge list of queer names has returned! Now database driven, fully searchable, with definitions (most of which I have yet to write) and other neat features.

It’s still a bit rough around the edges but it’s fairly functional.

Comments and feedback appreciated.

I don’t know whether to be flattered or furious, but some spotty English boy called Drew James Robinson has built himself a little House of Love at www.the-house-of-love.org.

Unfortunately it’s a bit hard to feel the love for Drew as he seems to have stolen virtually every word on his site from me, down to representing my ex-boyfriends as his own (Drew, you can have the exes, I just want my words back).

The sad thing is that (unless this guy really is a total clone of me) there’s nothing about him on the site at all — it’s all me. I suppose I should take this as a compliment but mostly I just feel sorry for the silly bugger. That and violated, ripped off and, yeah, furious.

Go visit his site quick before he wises up and pulls it down. And let him know what you think: drew@the-house-of-love.org.

UPDATE 2003-04-24, 17:42: I sent Drew a short, sweet, and darkly threatening letter yesterday — he seems to have taken the hint as his site is no more.

Paul and I decided about a week prior to going camping that we should go – especially since I now had a drivers licence and we would be able to see if the guys would love it as much as we do. We had no idea…
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There’s a moment in every holiday when you realise you’ve let go. For me it usually comes with sleep – I find myself falling into a deep sleep, usually in the middle of the day, inexplicably exhausted. When I wake, I feel a great deal lighter, unburdened by the troubles I’ve left behind at home and ready to enjoy the break.

This happened last Saturday. We woke, we walked, we ate, and … crash! I slept for three hours, and woke with a smile on my face that lasted the rest of the weekend.

Our campsite at dusk (notice the full moon)

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We’re back from the Barrington adventure. Weather was pretty changeable (ie wet) but we had a beautiful, peaceful, loving and energising weekend in the bush. The boys had a great time, and the whole experience has whetted our appetite for more.

Right now we’re all pretty exhausted. I’ll write a proper journal entry in the Lash tomorrow.

(From Tom Roberts)

Since 1984, some people have observed Bicycle Day on April 19th. This is the anniversary of the day that Albert Hofmann intentionally took LSD in 1943. On the 16th Hofmann accidentally absorbed a bit of LSD, but the 19th was the first intentional experience, when he took what he then considered a minimum effective dose, 250 mics. In LSD, My Problem Child he records that day:

“By now it was already clear to me that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before, only much more intense. I

had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me we had traveled very rapidly.”

In this dark hour of ignorance and superstition about psychedelics, you can light a candle of hope and reason. To commemorate the bicycle ride that changed the world forever, let’s celebrate Bicycle Day with bicycle trips, sending cards with bicycle pictures on them to friends, joyful picnics, and other festive activities.

Remember Bicycle Day and Keep it Holy.

My bags are packed, I’m ready to go…

B and I are about to step off into the wilderness for a few days in the beautiful Barrington Tops. It’s been raining all night and the forecast is for more of the same, so we may be communing with the mud spirits a bit. At this point poor weather is as nothing to me — I’m ready and eager to get on the road and out of the city.

We’ll be back on Monday or Tuesday — expect word pictures and picture pictures then. Also new bloodwork results early next week. Fingers crossed.

Been so busy I didn’t even notice that I was in the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend… fortunately, I google myself daily.

OK, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this Greymatter thing. I’ve posted a few starter entries and all seems to be in order, if still a bit rough around the edges.

Some explanation is probably called for.

I have struggled a bit with the weblog format. I’m attracted — who isn’t? — by the immediacy, the ability to quickly post short snips of my life without having to formulate a full essay. But I worry that weblogs are (often) like fast-food: cheap, filling, not very nourishing, dangerously addictive.

Hopefully I can snack here and still have room for the full meal deal at least a couple of times a month. I like writing longer pieces but need more discipline to do it regularly … ergo my blog discomfort.

The Greymatter software is a total dream to install and work with. I’m impressed with my choice and I tip my hat to the very fine author.

An exciting aspect of this is that Brent will now be able to post from time to time, should he feel like it. He seemed fairly enthusiastic at the prospect when I announced it, glass of red in hand, last night…

We’re heading off over the Easter weekend for a camping trip to the Barrington Tops, with the boys. It’s their first journey into the wilderness, so it should be entertaining for all. No doubt there will be many photos next week.

OK so the war ended, and the good guys won. Or it didn’t end, and the bad guys won. Either way, there’s cigars and smiles aplenty in the boardrooms and warrooms where these things are planned.

Now it’s onwards to Damascus (hey, we’re on a roll!) and in with the reconstruction workers.

Terry Jones in the Observer explained all this better than I can at this early hour.

Stroke victims are being given intravenous infusions of coffee and booze: SMH

Added some articles I wrote for this month’s Positive Living to the Lash — a roundup of news from the Retrovirus conference in Boston, a Backgrounder on Superinfection, and various news articles, here.

There’s been an outbreak of ugliness in my neighbourhood lately. Kabi and Paul were justly angry over the appearance of this racist graffito outside the Blockbuster video in Enmore Road the other day:

This has now been painted over, but since then I’ve been seeing the same message daubed all over the place. It’s a depressing sign, even if all the daubs are clearly in the same hand, suggesting one deluded xenophobe, not a groundswell. Luckily, Newtown is a pretty progressive place, and there are messages in favour of peace, justice and truth too, by far outweighing the bellicose, the racist, the hateful.

I took my camera in search of signs of war and peace in Newtown, a place far from Baghdad but close to my heart.

You can view the record of Newtown’s reaction to the war on Fickr.