buggery.org

Buggery.org will be unusually quiet over the next couple of weeks, as I’ll be quite some distance from the nearest internet connection (in Tamworth, Armidale, Lismore, then back to Sandon). No doubt I will return rested, refreshed, and re-energised in the new year.

Best wishes to all for the holidays. Here’s to a peaceful 2004.

Told you I had something big to announce:

A lengthy explicatory essay is in preparation.

How hot is it this evening?

Observations for Nobbys Head
Mon 21:00 EDT

Temperature 29.5°C
Dewpoint 7.4°C
Relative Humidity 25%
Wind SW
Gusts 9kt 16kt
Rain Since 0900 0.2mm

NEWCASTLE NOBBYS SIGNAL STATION AWS 151.7985°E, 32.9185°S 33m

At least the dogs can sleep on the floor in the hall where it’s cool.

Things that are making me happy at the moment:

1. I’m on holidays. Off work until mid-January, which would be an untrammeled delight if it weren’t for all the organising and planning and catching up that must be done in the interim.
2. We’re going camping soon. Looking forward to seeing long-lost and far-flung friends including Claudio, Jim, Will, Aaron, I and Craig at the Tropical Fruits party on NYE, then to the beach.
3. My website OzPoz.org has been redesigned and re-energised in ways that I’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s still a bit wobbly in parts but I’m enjoying coming to terms with Mambo and excited about the possibilities. All I need now is some active members…
4. My first column for POZ is in the magazine, available at a newsstand near you now. And the final edition of Positive Living for the year hit the street this week, at last.
5. We’ll be making a major announcement about our future tonight, at dinner with my Mum. More details on here soon.

Things that are pissing me off at the moment:

1. The heat. The temperature in our bedroom doesn’t fall below 24C overnight. It’s beyond oppressive — I’ve taken to taking cold showers several times a night just to stay sane.
2. Various agencies of the Commonwealth of Australia, for reasons too complex to detail here (but you can probably guess at least some of them).
3. We are entering the final, scariest, phase of Brent’s immigration process. This could have gone on the other list (it’ll be over soon) but it’s a cause of significant aggravation for both of us and, as we approach the date of our hearing in the MRT (27 January) the knot in my stomach grows ever tighter.

The first list is longer than the second. Good.

Singer Lauryn Hill has shocked an audience of cardinals and bishops at the annual Vatican Christmas Concert by telling it like it is…

I did not come here to celebrate the birth of Christ with you but to ask you why you are not in mourning for his death inside this place.

God has been a witness to the corruption of his leadership, of the exploitation and abuses … by the clergy.

Hill told the assembled clergy she did “not believe in representatives of God on earth,” and told the crowd to seek blessings from God, not priests.

[Reuters]

One for my American readers:

aidsvote.org is a new website advocating for HIV issues in the 2004 US presidential election.

Its goals are “to educate and inform presidential candidates of the concrete steps necessary to ensure our country is the world leader on HIV/AIDS and public health, and to educate and inform voters on the stands taken by the candidates on these crucial issues.”

American voters can read their full platform statement and register their support online.

Suddenly, the US has a public health program:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The flu is spreading across the United States and the government is concerned enough to buy up 250,000 available doses of vaccine to make sure it goes to those who need it most, officials said on Thursday.

“Those who need it most”? Sounds awfully like socialised medicine to me, unless they mean the armed forced, the national guard, the military reserves, police, FBI, CIA and INS…

Andrew Bartlett is to stay on as leader of the Dipso Democrats after his Senate “team” decided to stand by him, or perhaps to stand between him and the drinks table.

Bartlett will return to the leader’s job early next year and will lead the Democrats to the political wilderness next election, the ABC reports.

This is not especially interesting news but it does provide a convenient, if somehat flimsy, excuse for the photo … and this comment by Kirsty:

It’s the Alice Cooper look that gets me. I don’t know whether he wants to save the chicken or bite its head off on the senate floor.

No wonder Jeannie Ferris was so freaked out.

Note for foreign visitors: “chook” = Australian slang for “chicken”

Last night we trundled off to the local queer group’s end-of-year do at the Newcastle Art Gallery, where I consumed heroic quantities of white wine and more than a few cubes of cheese in nice surroundings with many queer people.

The gallery is showing “Master Works” from its collection — basically all the best pictures hung in the same room. They do have a couple of crackers — a nice Whitely, a really nice Arthur Boyd — but the standout picture is William Dobell’s Portrait of a Strapper, a striking picture of a young man, painted in 1941, just a couple of years before Dobell won the Archibald Prize and all hell broke loose.

It’s an extraordinary painting, all the more so because Dobell, born and raised in Newcastle (”just a few hundred metres that way,” the effervescent gallery director helpfully told us) was (allegedly) queer. (more…)

“If the Supreme Court says that you have a right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”

The man responsible for the reactionary tripe quoted above, Republican Senator Rick Santorum, has given us — at last — a word for something that really needed snappy name:

santorum /san-TOR-um/ noun 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

Dan Savage’s project to popularise this excellent neologism is at www.spreadingsantorum.com.

Anal sex doesn’t necessarily have to result in “a visit from the senator,” a handy euphemism that’s already in circulation. Anyone who encounters santorum every time he/she has anal sex needs to get a little more fiber in his/her diet, as well as spending a little more time in the can, pre-buttfuckin’.

The mystery about Prince Charles, his manservant, and those allegations has finally been solved.

You know that funny accent Chuck and all his family have? Well, that was to blame. It was all just a misunderstanding. The heir simply demanded that his loyal retainer “sack my cook” and…

[via Crikey, via Popbitch...]

Thank the lord that the folks at American Decency dot org are fighting the good fight against the recently-defunct Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue.

From their PDF “Fact Sheet” on this important topic:

Most recently, A&F’s Back to School - fall - catalog 2003 portrays a topless woman in a convertible with two nude men. Now anyone who comes in contact with the catalog - from mail carriers to children who pass by the displays of the Quarterly in A&F stores are exposed to sexual allurement.

Oh, to be exposed to sexual allurement, now that summer’s here.

Blood test results back today: 361 CD4s, undetectable. Generally good news. My cholesterol level remains a little high (7.0 mmol/l)

Ewan McGregor, in his forthcoming film Young Adam — click to enlarge.

The nude scene will be cut from the US version of the film, apparently, a fact that has Ewan seething.

“If you want to see my penis, you’ll have to fly to Britain,” Ewan told the British film magazine Premiere. “If I’d blown away 5,000 people with a semiautomatic machine gun, that would be fine. But I showed my penis.”

“It does amuse me, the horrific violence that comes out of American cinema. But someone’s [cock] is too much.”

In a postmodern irony, the word “cock” in that last sentence is displayed as “****” everywhere I look, so I’m guessing … I doubt he said “dinky”.

According to Ananova, “The scene will remain uncut in Britain.” [chortle]

[pic via letmegetthisstraight.com]

Sorry to keep quoting Mark Latham at every turn but there’s just so much material! This [deliberately decontextualised] exchange from last night’s interview with Kerry O’Brien on The 7:30 Report:

KERRY O’BRIEN: What is this obsession you have with bottoms?

MARK LATHAM: I’ve no particular obsession with bottoms, it’s a figure of speech —

This is a cool idea: bored with the same old gay bar scene in their town, Guerrilla Queer Bar groups colonise straight venues for a night.

The Detroit Guerrilla Queer Bar site has links to others in the US.

Newcastle? Are you ready for this?

[via Minke]

Another extract from the same speech:

“In his statement to the parliament, the Prime Minister dismissed the opposition to war as ‘just anti-American prejudice’. Imagine, the member for Bennelong lecturing us about prejudice: the same Member of Parliament who opposed sanctions against South Africa, who wanted to cut Asian immigration, who opposed the Mabo judgment tooth and nail, who welcomed Pauline Hanson’s first speech in this place as an outbreak of free speech. He still refuses to say sorry to the stolen generation and, to this day, cannot bear to utter the word “multiculturalism”. This bloke has a PhD in prejudice; he has no right to be lecturing anyone else.”

Latham has promised to tone down his language now he’s the alternative PM. “No more crudity” he says will be his mantra. If he needs to use more tempered language, then so be it, but hopefully he won’t stop saying what the rest of us have been thinking. That would be a loss.

Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., casts a shadow on the flag as he is introduced to speak at a rally Monday, Dec. 1, 2003, at the police station in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Gephardt, faulting President Bush for “gambling with our safety,” on Monday called for spending $100 billion over five years on homeland security. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

[via Drudge]

Australia has a new opposition leader. Although Mark Latham is not my most favourite politician, I’m happy with the outcome of this morning’s caucus vote — the Labor party has (more…)