buggery.org

Anyone who still doubted that blogging has entered the consciousness of the wider world need only have been working on yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald cryptic crossword:

24 across: We belong pointlessly to key journal (6)

Cryptic crossword fans will have no trouble with this. The rest of you can read the extended entry.
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Brent and I are joining the State Emergency Service. Last night we went along for the preliminary orientation/information night, next week we’re going back to sign up and start training.

We decided we wanted to do this a while ago, as a means of getting involved in our community a bit more and, as they say, “giving something back”. What we’ll be giving, in the short term, is our Wednesday nights from here until goodness-knows-when. The SES will be giving us a spiffy orange uniform, unlimited tea and biscuits, and training in such useful skills as first aid, chainsaw operation, climbing about on roofs during storms, and flood boat operations.

Fun fact: With their bright orange uniforms, the SES are known in some circles as “jaffas”.

The orientation evening was fun. We were shown a video about the SES, had the training program explained to us and had a tour of their local headquarters. The SES people, all of whom seemed like very amiable, grown-up boy (and girl) scouts, seem to take their work very seriously and seem to delight in the blokey activities (sandbag filling, roof tarping, chainsaw wrangling) that make up the average SES volunteer’s occasional call to duty.

Whether there are any homosexuals in the local unit I do not know. There will be soon, so let’s hope they’re cool with that.

I have been inundated with messages from people kindly pointing out that it is inconceivable that I could agree with Andrew Sullivan. I concur — plainly I was drunk, or deluded, or precaffeinated, at the time I wrote my last post. I’m better now.

I am quite energised by this week’s developments on same sex marriage and have been trying to find time to follow the global discussion. Unfortunately I have a magazine to publish (next week), so time is somewhat limited.

It seems to me, notwithstanding the quite legitimate debate about whether marriage should be our defining political struggle, that we may be approaching a kind of “Stonewall Moment,” a tipping point in the struggle for queer rights.

I realise that it’s quite possible — likely, even — that the US Constitution will be amended to prevent same sex marriage. But whether that happens or not, it feels like we may be about to galvanise around this issue. Do I dare talk about a “movement” for queer rights? (There’s a word no-one’s used for twenty years or so).

Are the middle class queers discovering that the right is not their friend? Are we getting political again? Is this the (post-AIDS) last push for the summit, lads?

And are we doing it because we want to throw bridal showers for ourselves? No.

Marriage is only the vehicle. Equality is the destination.

… you find yourself agreeing with Andrew Sullivan:

The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land.
…
Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.

The news this morning is distressing. George Bush is going to try to amend the US constitution to enable him to treat queers as second-class citizens. While he’s at it, he might want to insist that we travel at the back of the bus, too.

Tyler has expressed his outrage more eloquently than I can at this early hour:

I have been on the edge of tears for most of the day. I am physically ill. George Bush just declared open warfare on gays and lesbians. He has asked that the full machinery of the state be brought to bear against a group of its citizens.

This development is scary, but hardly surprising. Hate is a powerful emotion, and queers are the last frontier of hate for the conservative “religious” right. The same people who once argued that negroes should not use the same bathrooms as whites, who tried to deny access to contraception and abortion to women, who forbade miscegenation, who argued in favour of slavery, are coming after us.

It’s not going to be pretty.

James is measured and reasonable, as always:

I consider neither the right to marry, and certainly not , for that matter, what I think of as the dubious privilege of performing military service, to be the first priority for gay rights activists when Queers still have no protection for the most basic rights of employment or residence in most parts of this benighted nation.

Are we going to see [the 3000+ San Francisco gay] unions declared dissolved, “divorced”, when California’s forces of reaction, led by an ex-terminator, are able to regroup? And will that be followed by the still more disastrous blow of a 28th Amendment to the federal Constitution, for the first time removing civil rights?

I think there’s going to be a very big fight.

Barry can see the battle lines being drawn:

Do not trust the mainstream media to tell you the truth about this.

One last thought. The Democrats’ (including Kerry and Edwards but not Kucinich) position on this, one of “we don’t support gay marriage but we don’t support the amendment either” is bullshit. This kind of splitting hairs is revolting when we’re talking about civil rights, and they’re going to be painted as homo-loving liberals by the GOP no matter what they do. Why not take a principled position rather than some stupid focus group-created one? I will hold my nose and vote for the Democratic candidate, but I can’t say I’m excited about it, unless a miracle happens and we get Kucinich.

More to come, no doubt.

For the third month in a row, buggery.org has exceeded it’s hosting allowance, incurring extra costs. While this costs money, and that’s annoying, on another level this is good news — people are visiting my site. I should be happy, or so I thought.

This from this month’s log file:

65.54.188.39 is MSN’s searchbot. It is a glorious testament to the talent of Microsoft’s programmers that, over a 48-hour period, they crawled and recrawled my site so recursively that they managed to suck 252Mb of data off it. The whole site, by the way, weighs less than 18Mb. My monthly data allowance is 1000Mb, so fully a quarter of that data went into Bill Gates’s black hole.

In what way is this not a DOS attack? I should send them the excess traffic bill.

Fucking Micro fucking soft.

A thank-you to the several people who’ve enquired after my health in the last few days. I’m not dead, I’m just very busy with work and other commitments so it’s hard to find the time to post.

No word on the immigration front yet, but it could happen any day now.

I’ll try to find the time and inspiration to drop a few posts in today, so the front page doesn’t look quite so austere.

The buggery.org online store is now a much better deal for shoppers in Australia — the T-shirts are being printed locally so the postage won’t break the bank. Any T-shirt will cost just A$26.95 plus $4.00 for registered post anywhere in Australia. It’s a better deal for me too — I might actually see some cash one day.

To celebrate, I’ve unveiled two new designs — Tasty Bugga and Bleeding Heart. Check ‘em out in the Shop.

I’ve had two letters in the Herald this week, one on the Free Trade Agreement and one on Politicians’ Superannuation. Regular readers will observe that they both are based loosely on buggery.org posts from the same day..

Howard has given another indication that he plans to use gay rights as a wedge issue in this year’s election, speaking out against gay adoptions in Launceston:

“I respect people’s choices about their own lifestyles — that’s their right, and I don’t seek to discriminate against them — but I have a view that gay adoption goes against what the community regards as the traditional family formation, and that is a mother and a father.

“Therefore, I don’t support gay adoption and I regret attempts to achieve it in parts of Australia.”

For folks out there that don’t “get” this, I recommend substituting the word “black” for “gay” when politicians talk about family issues:

“I respect people regardless of their race, and I don’t seek to discriminate against them — but I have a view that adoption by black people goes against what the community regards as the traditional family formation, and that is a white mother and a white father.

“Therefore, I don’t support black adoption and I regret attempts to achieve it in parts of Australia.”

History will judge you, Howard.

After 43 years of going steady, Barbie has dumped Ken for an Aussie surfer called Blaine.

Numerous media outlets have wondered out loud whether Ken might be about to come out of the closet:

Of course, nothing would be more modern than for the truth to come out about the perfectly muscled, blonde-bouffant Ken. Rumours have circulated for years that GI Joe was really the partner of his dreams. Are those gay wedding bells we hear from the toy shop? Surely not. Mattel may want the media’s attention, but that would be taking things too far. [
Here's news for GI Joe: Barbie's Ken is single at last, The Independent]

There’s heaps more. Just the headlines are enough:

Australian love rat blamed as toy world rocked by celebrity split (The Guardian)
Australian boogie boarder has his eyes on Ken’s doll (Taipai Times)
Ken: My Barbie agony (The Sun, taking the piss out of themselves in really fine form)

But the prize for most cynical attempt to cash in on the plastic tragedy (and you know it really belongs to Mattel, for peddling this tripe on Valentine’s day) goes to the manufacturers of Zestra™ for Women, for their press release blaming Barbie’s sexual dysfunction for the split:

“After so many years, some relationships can become a bit dry and often the fireworks are gone,” says sexual medicine researcher and pharmaceutical scientist Martin Crosby. “Zestra(TM) increases and restores sexual pleasure for most women that experience a broad range of sexual difficulties related to perimenopause”. The 43-year-old Barbie represents a common age for women to experience a loss of sexual pleasure and satisfaction.

1. Are you superstitious? Only for the purposes of making my answers to this week’s Friday Five more entertaining (honest!).

2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition? Some airlines don’t have a thirteenth row of seats in their planes (presumably because superstitious people who are assigned to that row will think the plane will certainly crash and everyone but the occupants of row 13 will walk away from the crash unscathed while they die an agonising death).

3. Believer or not, what’s your favorite superstition? One should never spill salt or, if one does, one should always be sure to throw a little over one’s left shoulder, preferably with the incantation “Get behind me, Satan!”

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. [Matthew 16:23]

Why it’s safer to have Satan behind you than in front is a mystery. It certainly was never that way around with most of the men I’ve known.

Speaking of men, Brent actually spilled some salt earlier today. “Throw some over your shoulder!” I exhorted him. He did, although somewhat reluctantly. I insisted that he say the words as well.

“Get behind me, Satan,” he said, a little mechanically.

Brent didn’t have a religious upbringing, liberally peppered with half truths, superstitions and old wives tales like I did, so I feel it is my duty to alert him to these things.

Salt, I explained, was in ancient times a commodity of great value, so much so that roman soldiers were paid in salt, which is why the words salt and salary have the same roots. As well as it’s culinary uses, before refrigeration salt was the only preservative we had, so it’s not surprising that it was understood as both sacred and purifying.

We repeat Matthew’s words when we spill salt, but the origins of the practice are decidedly pre-Christian: the salt goes over the left (in Latin, sinister) shoulder because that’s where evil lurks. We’re told that this is to blind Satan but the practice dates back (I’m told) to the Sumerians.

More on this spooky, saline subject: here and here.

4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual? Of course I believe in luck: if you win the lottery, you’re lucky. Even the most died-in-the-wool sceptic would admit that. But can you improve your chances of winning Lotto by using your lucky numbers or by wearing your lucky slippers while Alex Wildman and the cardigan brigade from the Department of Gaming announce the numbers? Doubtful.

On the other hand, I did once have a pair of lucky boots. Actually, correct that: I still have them, although they’re too old and worn out to wear. I wore this particular set of Dr Marten’s 10-hole black lace-ups to every dance party I went to from 1988 to about 1999; I once calculated that I had done at least 1.5 million dance steps in them. Were they lucky? Oh baby…

5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not? I do not “believe in astrology.” But I do believe in Rob Breszny.

(fridayfive.org)

(Letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 2004-02-14)

It’s been a big twenty-four hours in the world of cloning: scientists in South Korea have created the first scientifically-verified cloned human embryo; the Raelians claim a cloned baby (their sixth!) was born in Sydney a few days ago; and John Howard has successfully cloned Mark Latham’s superannuation policy.

What happened to the old shit list?

(Letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 2004-02-10)

From the Bush interview on Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: How do you respond to critics who say that you brought the nation to war under false pretenses?

BUSH: The first of all, I expected to find the weapons. Sitting behind this desk making a very difficult decision of war and peace, and I based my decision on the best intelligence possible, intelligence that had been gathered over the years, intelligence that not only our analysts thought was valid but analysts from other countries thought were valid.

Leaving aside the bizarre syntax of Bush’s answer, there is a bigger question here. Is it enough to say that war—a pre-emptive, first-strike war without the approval of the UN—was justified, or can ever be justified, on the basis of “intelligence”, even if it is “the best intelligence possible”?
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So the big big BIG news this morning is that Australia and the United States have made a Free Trade Agreement. Well a Freeish Trade Agreement—one that opens up Australian markets to virtually all US exports but which isn’t quite so unrestricted in the other direction.

Australia’s sugar growers and dairy farmers will be rushing to their local music store to get a copy of the appalling idolette Shannon Noll’s execrable hit “What About Me?” after hearing there’s precious little in the deal for them (and here was me thinking the US appetite for sugar was unquenchable!)And most of our beef farmers will be dead in their graves from vCJD before the 18-year phaseout of US beef tariffs is complete, so I doubt they’ll be celebrating.

But the US will drop its 25% tariff on that most Australian of icons, the ute. Our car manufacturers, who have such quintessentially Aussie names as Ford, General Motors Holden, Mitsubishi and Toyota, will be delighted. Now the yanks can get their hands on one of Brittney’s sisters at an affordable price.

On the plus side, we are being told that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has survived the negotiations intact, despite demands from the US pharmaceutical lobby that Australians should pay more for their pills and potions.

Whether that’s really so or not, only time will tell. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and those have not yet been shared with us.

Related: How Capitalism Works.

It’s been an action-packed and fun-filled Sunday here. After first giving Brent a stern lecture about the need for us to bring our credit card debt down, naturally we went shopping. We now have a new sofa … actually, we now have two new sofas, and another three and a half thousand clams worth of plasticised debt to manage.

Well, we needed a new sofa (or two) and we found one we liked. Neither he or I actually enjoy shopping, so there seemed no point in being responsible and sleeping on it or shopping around any more than was absolutely necessary. A fabric has been chosen (the colour is “mongoose”, which sounds dead sophisticated, a lot more exotic than “brown”), the order has been placed (including stain protection unconditionally guaranteed to repel “pet bodily fluids”), promises have been made for delivery (four to six weeks), the deed is done.

Having just committed to spending the per capita GDP of Argentina or Brazil on living room furniture is not normally something I’d crow about on here, but it does speak somewhat to our increasing sense of confidence that our (Brent’s) immigration will soon be settled favourably. We still have a few weeks to wait for that decision, and we’re not counting our chickens before they hatch, but it seems fair enough to feel quietly confident that the biggest unsettling influence in our lives will soon be behind us.

So it’s either a new sofa or it’s a metaphor for our lives, depending on your point of view.

In other news, I have this afternoon had my first driving lesson. Actually, my first driving lesson was about a quarter of a century ago, when I was closer to the usual age at which people have driving lessons. Like today’s lesson, that lesson took place in a pickup truck—a green Toyota Stout belonging to my brother Bill. Unlike today’s lesson, that lesson ended with the said green pickup truck travelling through my mum’s prized Callistemon bushes and into Beulah Rush’s fence. No-one was injured on that occasion, Beulah was pretty pissed off but my mum just laughed.

Today’s lesson ended with no such drama. We went around the block a few times, I tried and, at times, succeeded in operating brake, clutch and accelerator in more-or-less the right order, I inconvenienced only one other motorist (”You’ll get there,” she said, encouragingly) and no-one—plant or animal—died.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

1. What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done? I’ve had sex in all sorts of places … trains, buses, in parks, on beaches, on the footpath in front of the Police Headquarters. I did it in a tree once. This was all a long time ago.

2. What one thing would you like to try that your mother/friend/significant other would never approve of? Skydiving. All three would be against that.

3. On a scale of 1-10, what’s your risk factor? (1=never take risks, 10=it’s a lifestyle) I used to take a lot of risks when I was younger, but I doubt I was ever a 10, maybe an 8 at best (or worst). These days I’m a lot more restrained—I think I’m being bold if I get out of bed.

4. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you as a result of being bold/risky? Brent. We’d never have got together if I hadn’t had the nerve to plant a kiss on him on the dance floor at the Inquisition party in 1999.

5. … and what’s the worst? Syphilis.
fridayfive.org

John Kerry’s comments on the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on Gay Marriage amount to a halfhearted endorsement of gay rights, notes Miguel on Come Undone.

Responding to the decision, Kerry said:

I have long believed that gay men and lesbians should be assured equal protection and the same benefits—from health to survivor benefits to hospital visitation—that all families deserve. While I continue to oppose gay marriage, I believe that today’s decision calls on the Massachusetts state legislature to take action to ensure equal protection for gay couples. These protections are long overdue.

Kerry does, however support the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, apparently.

I guess Kerry’s halfhearted support for gay marriage is to be expected—politics is supposed to be “the art of the possible” after all, but Miguel has a point.
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It’s been quite a week in Australian politics, eh?

It’s a delicious spectacle for those of us who’ve suffered through eight years of the John Howard kakistocracy. Suddenly, Howard is facing the twin realisations that his Iraq escapade is going to come back to torment him and that Mark Latham is likely to make mincemeat of him at this year’s election.

The air is thick with shadenfreude, and for once it’s oriented in the right direction. (more…)

Apparently.

A women’s choir has been banned from performing two songs about the Iraq war and any other songs about “personal and political freedoms” in Australia’s Parliament House, ABC News reports.

The group performed the songs while wearing gags in protest.

In a legal first, two Melbourne gay men who married in Canada are planning to apply to the Australian courts to have their union recognised at home, The Age reports.

Family law expert Professor Regina Graycar, of Sydney University, said: “I wouldn’t be so confident that a court would recognise such marriages, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby co-convenor David McCarthy acknowledged that it was a “grey area”, but the group supported the move to have overseas marriages recognised. “It’s a battle that has to be had,” he said.

Bill Muehlenberg, of the [evil, right-wing, fundie] Australian Family Association, said validating gay unions would “radically revolutionise” marriage. “If we gave in on this one, we might as well give the whole game away,” he said.

Brush with fame … Dionne Warwick breaks out the body paints yesterday to help raise AIDS awareness in Sydney. Photo: Edwina Pickles

Dionne Warwick is a self-confessed big mouth, and, for her, it is a character trait to be proud of. The pop star is a determined AIDS activist and is not afraid of stirring things up to help sufferers.

Yesterday she took time out from preparations for her Sydney shows this week to meet workers from the AIDS Council of NSW and add a bit of colour to their campaign.

In between serious discussions, Warwick happily daubed yellow and blue paint on the bodies of two performers, turning them into the gay safe-sex characters Bill and Ben the Positive Men. [SMH]

Pity about the “sufferers” bit.

The Guardian has a good article by David Fickling about the Latham ascendancy. The comparison with Tony Blair reads like it was written just for me:

So there should be a lesson for Australia in those comparisons between Latham and Tony Blair. Next to the priggish figure of the British prime minister, the sharp-tongued battler from western Sydney may seem attractive to the left, but it is Blair’s third way, rather than Whitlam’s socialism, that Latham has marked out as his political model. Those who now flock to support his tilt against John Howard may find in the long term that their white knight is a very different character to the one they had hoped for.

Shepherd’s delight.

The leader of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, has admitted that he passed nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran. It appears that he did so with the knowledge, encouragement and support of the Pakistani military. Given that Pakistan is about two steps removed from being a military dictatorship, for “military”, I think we can substitute “government” without much fear of contradiction.

Let me summarise: Pakistan, a country which really does have weapons of mass destruction, has been passing nuclear technology to the whole of the Axis of Evil.

President Bush says: ” “.
Prime Minister Blair says: ” “.
Prime Minister Howard says: ” “.

Pakistan, of course, is a key US ally. We won’t be going to war with Pakistan any more than we’ll be going to war with Israel.

Hypocrisy is no longer merely common, it’s normative.

From morons.org:

You may have heard that although CBS plans to run ads for erectile dysfunction and the White House drug policy office (which has brought us ads suggesting that smoking pot is akin to causing mass murder by aiding terrorists), it won’t be showing the winning Bush in 30 Seconds ad, “Child’s Pay” which says “guess who’s going to pay off Bush’s $1 trillion deficit” after showing children working in menial jobs.

You can see the ad that CBS thinks is too “controversial” for TV at www.bushin30seconds.org.