buggery.org

Neo-fascist Italian media baron, part-time Prime Minister and full-time racist, Silvio Berlusconi is afraid of spiders, as well as Germans, according to a Reuters report that suggests that he issued a prime ministerial decree to forbid all eight-legged creepy crawlies entry to Italy.

A new law, apparently an emergency measure which resulted from Silvio’s unplannned micturation upon coming face-to-face with a daddy-long-legs at his Milan mansion, will slap a €10,000 fine on anyone caught bringing the hairy buggers into Emperor Silvio’s domain.

“We understand that the measure was dictated by the prime minister’s fear of spiders,” opposition MP Luigi Merduri told News Limited.

As for me, I love spiders, can’t get enough of ‘em. Seriously, I reckon they are underappreciated creatures; I even have a spider tattoo on my right shoulder. I’ve been fond of spiders since I was a kid, when I became accustomed to my dad picking them up, letting them crawl over him, once I even watched as he sat in front of the TV with a four-inch huntsman on his shoulder, which he absent-mindedly stroked, while watching TV.

The huntsman seemed to enjoy it.

Amid a smokescreen of incense, one of the new bells of St James Anglican Church, dedicated to the memory of those who have died of AIDS, was rung for the first time yesterday.

The bell, the fourth of the King Street church’s eight, is inscribed with the legend “Nomine - let their names ring out”, and plays the note D.

Full story

Dogs add action, animation, agency to things I wouldn?t otherwise notice: doors, beds, floors, things they sniff. We own dogs because they nudge into motion what is stagnant, untouched.

It’s just a few words, but Bentkid understands.

We’ve had our first houseguests; Dermot and Tim came up from Sydney yesterday and we’ve had a pleasant weekend together showing off our new home town. They both seemed surprised by and impressed with Newcastle’s relaxed-yet-cosmopolitan ambience, and it was an energising experience to have my own increasing happiness with being here confirmed through the eyes of others.

Validation, while hardly essential, helps.

Having a couple of tourists in tow, we finally walked down the hill to the Merewether ocean baths, which is where the photo of Brent at right was taken (click the photo to go to the gallery). The baths, opened in 1935, must be one of this town’s greatest assets and are a spectacular sight, with the huge surf pounding the rocks just a few metres away from several hardy souls patiently swimming laps in the chilly winter water. I’m not that brave but once the weather warms up a bit I’ll be in for a dip first chance I get.

New bloodwork results last Friday — generally good news although my liver is struggling under the strain of too many glasses of red wine. Details here.

Moving into a frantic phase of preparation for the next PL, plus returning to university this week after a year away. I’m excited about uni but afraid my enthusiasm for the temple of mediocrity that UTS can sometimes be, will make this semester harder than it need be. God grant me forbearance.

(Click the image for a larger version)

Fred Nile has resigned as a minister of the Uniting Church after the ex-methodists decided to allow ordination of openly-gay ministers a week ago.

The church has thrown out the Bible and is no longer a true church, Mr Nile says.

“They’ve adopted a policy which completely ignores the teaching in the word of God in the bible,” he told The Australian.

“I can’t stay in a church which does that because in fact, to a degree, the Uniting Church ceases to be a church.”

If he’s so principled, shouldn’t Nile have quit his cushy taxpayer-funded position as a member of the NSW Parliament, which recently voted to equalise the age of consent for gay men?

If he really wants to do the martyr thing, shouldn’t he quit the church and the state?

Of course, the $130,000 salary plus associated perks might just have something to do with it…

The Newcastle Regional Museum is missing one dinosaur. And it’s a loaner.

Apparently the 110-million-year-old dog-sized Psittacosaurus sinensis skeleton went walkies in the small hours of Sunday morning, not long after the local TV station screened a Saturday night double bill of The Flintstones followed by Jurassic Park.

The director of the museum, Gavin Fry, told the Sydney Morning Herald that Newcastle “is about more than Andrew Johns, Silverchair and a broken down steelworks,” while expressing concern that the thieves might dump the skeleton.

The Chinese owners of the skeleton are reported to not be amused.

The NRM could try buying a replacement, from here.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): I hope you decided against participating in that weird contest — you know, the one in which you would have competed to see who could bang their head against the wall the most times before passing out. I trust you also turned down any invitations you got to show off your amazing wounds or prove how attractive your problems are. Continue to show a similar forbearance in the coming week, Aries. The worst is over. The pressure to express yourself perversely will soon diminish as the very hassles that have been frustrating you will morph into elegant opportunities.

[Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology, 16 July]

So we went to the garden centre to get some plants for our new house…

Irresistable

We are fairly settled into our new home now after what seems like an eternity of packing and unpacking. Newcastle is being gorgeous for us. More later, although the broadband connection isn’t in place yet so net access is sporadic and slow.

My city of Sydney,
I miss the warmth of you.
Miss the heart of your people,
That little church steeple in Woolloomooloo.

Tonight is my last night as a Sydneysider, at least for now, and it’s hard not to feel a little melancholic. (more…)

You never know how many cardboard cartons full of meaningless impedimenta you’ve accumulated until you move…

Two more sleeps.

Bush on Africa: “It looks a lot like Crawford [Texas], doesn’t it?”

It is hotter inside than out, but I do all right until I encounter the banks of glass doors. Each one has to be Windexed, wiped, and buffed-inside and out, top to bottom, left to right, until it’s as streakless and invisible as a material substance can be. Outside, I can see construction guys knocking back Gatorade, but the rule is that no fluid or food item can touch a maid’s lips when she’s inside a house. I sweat without replacement or pause, not in individual drops but in continuous sheets of fluid, soaking through my polo shirt, pouring down the backs of my legs. Working my way through the living room(s), I wonder if Mrs. W. will ever have occasion to realize that every single doodad and object through which she expresses her unique, individual self is, from the vantage point of a maid, only an obstacle on the road to a glass of water.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s bestselling account of the struggle to survive on minimum wage in ‘welfare-reformed’ America is causing a stir in North Carolina. After Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America was prescribed as summer reading for students at UNC, state legislators have described the book as “intellectual pornography with no redeeming characteristics,” and “a classic Marxist rant” that portrays business people as exploiters of working-class Americans.

Sounds like journalism to me.

[Raleigh News & Observer]

I have been to Newcastle and back today. Photos in the gallery.

Newcastle is stunning today. I’m still shitscared, but Newcastle is stunning.

The unforgiving old pharisees of the C of E, for whom homosexuality outdoes all other peccadillos, threatened their church with schism were Jeffrey John ever to don his mitre, the Queen’s position as Defender of the Faith imperilled, for she must defend either bigotry or buggery.

Brian Sewell goes in hard for the [eek!] Evening Standard.

Sad.

don’t believe the hype. being gay isn’t all that interesting (except during sex).

Dispensing advice for the freshly-hatched homos amongst us, Patric is as succinct as he is wise. As usual.

Six more sleeps in this crazy city.

I’m starting to feel a bit unsettled about the change we’re about to undergo. I find myself noticing the little things I’m going to miss about Sydney: too consciously.

Like Sydney Park at sunset, the sexy smiling strangers on the street, the almost-instantaneous availability of everything, the easy presence of my mates, the spontaneous availability of opportunities for pleasure, gratification, stimulation and hedonism…
(more…)

Bloggers are going at it hammer and tongs in Canada! (Includes lurid photograph of [empty] sling on background of red taffeta and turkish carpet, apparently free of Crisco stains, which is no more than you’d expect from those well-manered and nicely-groomed Canucks.)

I don’t know who’s saddest to see him leave, me or the dogs.

We’ve had a good weekend, productive and fun by turns. We spent a lot of time packing for the move and pretty much everything that isn’t an essential part of our daily lives is now sitting in one of dozens of cardboard cartons stacked up around the house.

Saturday we took time out to join Kabi and Ian for the opening of Art as Agitation: 30 years of Political Posters at Jura Books. It was a borderline stirring/disturbing experience to look at these remnants of the political struggles of the seventies and eighties, blu-tacked up all over the shop.

Yes, blu-tacked. Jura is an anarchist bookshop down on Parramatta Road, they don’t exactly have the money to employ a conservator.
(more…)

POO SINKS: FEDERER FLUSHED

“If I see a lady, I walk over to her and say what I’m feeling. ‘I like the way you look, baby. I would love to get to know you better.’”

Barry White is dead.

Tall moody wog boy makes Wimbledon final. Film at eleven.

“In the Australian context, barebacking is about taking risks and denying consequences. The word seems to have shifted from a symptom to a cause of unsafe sex; more gay men are proudly posting on their profiles that they “bareback”, with a touch of alluring sexual outlawry.”

The gay community’s answer to Miranda Devine, Steve Dow, wanking on as usual about things he clearly knows too little about in this op-ed in today’s SMH.

With almost religious fervour, Dow is utterly convinced that recent rises in HIV incidence in Australia can be directly attributed to “barebacking”. There’s no evidence to support this, and running around like Chicken Little isn’t going to help us find out the real reasons.

Brent calls last night with his bloodwork results: undetectable and 1100 T-cells. Eleven hundred? What’s with that? In my opinion, a CD4 count of 1100 stretches the boundaries of good taste. It is ostentatious in the extreme.

Five hundred, now that’s a respectable number of T-cells in any company. (What I wouldn’t give for 500 T-cells!). As well as being more than adequate, 500 is a polite, proper and gentlemanly CD4 quantum that will not raise an eyebrow in even the most sedate company. Six or seven hundred, while beyond the needs of any one man, is acceptable, laudable even. Anything more than that is showy at best and vulgar at worst.

I recall a time when having too many T-cells was not a matter that one would publicly discuss, for fear of upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the time. When your friends were struggling along with double or single digits, any mention of an oversupply would lead to half-joking requests to spread a few of them around to those who really need them. More than once in the bad old days I found myself embarrassed to be the only person in a group of comrades with a (barely) triple-digit CD4 count.

Of course I’m delighted for Brent. Obviously the Newcastle air is doing him good, and I shall be expecting a similarly shameful superfluity in a couple more weeks.

“According to [Palestinian PM Mahmoud] Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.” — Ha’aretz (via Crikey)

What is Betty Bowers going to make of this?