buggery.org

Tassie is pretty. Not as cold as expected (at least, not so far), very green and unspoilt and friendly.

The trip over on the ferry was easy enough – relatively calm and the cabins are comfortable (if a little cramped). Much better than a crummy plane seat tho’.

Today, after arriving in Devonport at the crack of dawn, we spent ten hours touring through the countryside and down the east coast of the island to Hobart. Today was our only free time really on this trip so we made the most of it. We travelled through some very lovely countryside, had a great fish and chip lunch in St Helens, and laughed our head off at Tasmania’s hilarious place names (e.g. Black Charlie’s Opening, Wooly Butt, and Break-Me-Neck Hill).

The coast is picturesque with the most intense sapphire blue water. There are beautiful old buildings in most of the towns, sheep everywhere and the Freixenet National Park is just stunning. Tasmania seems to have more roadkill per kilometre than anywhere else on Earth – there were dozens of dead native animals on the road.

At the moment I’m too buggered to write much more, but I’ve put a few pictures onto Flickr, of course. Just wanted to say we’re here and so far we’re loving it.

Tomorrow the conference starts first thing in the morning, and continues to Saturday. These things are always a lot of work which leaves limited time to post or even think about anything else, but I’ll try to find the opportunity from time to time.

• How Not to Make Me Ex-Gay
  Jason Kuznicki’s pictoral rebuttal to the ex-gay movement (via harley)
  (tags: ex-gay queer glbt gay blogs)

Heading off in a few hours’ time to Hobart aboard this ship for this conference.

Everyone I have told I’m going on the ferry to Tasmania says either (a) “You’re crazy!” (if they’re from Melbourne) or (b) “That’s cool!” (if they’re not). As the body of water which separates Tasmania from the Australian mainland (Bass Strait) is renowned for its turbulence, most people would rather fly, which has the added attractions of being cheaper and faster than taking the boat. We’re doing it for the adventure.

Plus we’ll have a car to toodle around Tasmania in, which we won’t really have much time for, but there is a few hours drive between Devonport and Hobart to look forward to.

The sailing takes ten hours – we’re doing it overnight with a couple of friends. A full report, possibly with pillowfight pictures, will be posted in due course.

It’s been confirmed that Sydney will host the next Hitler Catholic Youth Day in 2008. Personally, I can hardly wait – it’s been ten years since Australia enjoyed the spectacle, glamour, and naked hypocrisy of a full-blown papal visit.

No doubt there will be opportunities to protest. No doubt I’ll be there.

I’ll have to think of some appropriate items to add to the buggery.org merchandise catalogue.

Several of the news reports are confirming that a Mel Gibson-produced “reenactment” of the crucifixion (I blogged about this a while ago) is still planned as part of the festivities. Personally, I hope this comes off – there’s nothing I enjoy more than a little public scourging.

• Library offers imam, gypsy, gay person for ‘loan’
  Local library in Sweden has nine human beings for loan, including a muslim cleric, a journalist, a gypsy and a gay man.
  (tags: glbt what-the)

• Viking ship built with 15 million ice cream sticks
  A replica Viking ship made of 15 million ice cream sticks is to be launched in Amsterdam by a former Hollywood stuntman who hopes eventually to sail it across the Atlantic (ABC).
  (tags: what-the)

• Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names
  (via antiminke, who likes “arsole”, but I prefer “cummingtonite”)
  (tags: science funny chemistry)

• Rally for gay marriage action
  MORE than 1000 gay rights activists today gathered across the nation to rally for marriage equality, marking one year since the Howard government’s changes to the Marriage Act. (Daily Terrorgraph)
  (tags: glbt same-sex-marriage civil-rights)
• Gay lobby groups go separate ways over same-sex marriage
  A year after Federal Parliament imposed a ban on same-sex marriages, the soldiers for change have turned on each other. (SMH)
  (tags: same-sex-marriage glbt civil-rights acon glrl)
• Weddings to tie the law in knots
  TWO gay couples exchanged public wedding vows in Hobart yesterday — but their unions are not legally recognised. (Hobart Mercury)
  (tags: same-sex-marriage glbt tasmania civil-rights)

I’ve installed a little bit of script-fu that enables you to browse my Flickr photo library from the photos link in the menu bar. It’s still a little rough around the edges but it works. This is a replacement for the now-obsolete gallery section of buggery.org. (The old gallery is still there, and it kind of works, but will be deleted once I move all the photos to Flickr.

• Last.fm
  Audioscrobbler and last.fm have merged, relaunched, expanded and generally taken off.
  (tags: music folksonomies web social-software streaming audio mp3 internet radio)
• They needed a research grant to prove this?
  A new study shows that if a man is told he is not “man enough”, he tends to overcompensate by acting macho. The study shows men whose masculinity is challenged are more likely to support the Iraq war, exhibit homophobia or think about buying a four-wheel-
  (tags: men science homophobia well-duh masculinity sociology gender)

• Crucifixion in Sydney
  Mel Gibson is involved in a bid to re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on the streets of Sydney for World Catholic Youth Day in 2008. Last Supper at the Opera House, crucifixion at St Mary’s, probably a lot of scourging in between. Yay.
  (tags: gibson,mel sydney catholic-church god bread-and-circuses society-of-the-spectacle decadence pell,george)
• Lesbian couple seek tribe’s legal blessing
  In the US Cherokee Nation, Dawn McKinley and Kathy Reynolds are fighting to have their same-sex marriage recognised.
  (tags: usa same-sex-marriage glbt lesbians native-americans legal)
• Cabbie loses money, clothes to gay robbers
  A 55-year-old taxi driver not only lost his earnings worth around R2,800 but also his clothes after three gay robbers who posed as passengers robbed him in Quezon City, police said.
  (tags: weird gay)
• How do you say ‘bugger off’ in Cornish?
  “E ve lacka an vlethan ez passiez; e reeg glaw rag hanter meez warbar” (It was worse last year; it rained for the entire fortnight) (The Observer)
  (tags: linguistics)
• ‘One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony’
  Deeply disturbing first-hand account of how the US policy of rendition (torture-by-proxy) works. (The Guardian)
  (tags: usa war torture human-rights)

It’s a clear, chilly night in Melbourne after a very cold day – it snowed in some parts of town, something that only happens every twenty years or so, we’re told.

The moon and Venus have been putting on a show for the last few days; I took this snapshot:

• Two Canadian straight men to marry
  Two heterosexual Canadian men are to tie the knot to enjoy the tax benefits of being a married couple.
  (tags: same-sex-marriage canada straights)

• Sth Aust Liberal MP admits to having gay sex in his electorate office with young, intellectually disabled, man
  Mark Brindal (state member for Adelaide, 57, married with four children) claims he is being blackmailed by the young man’s foster carer; Speaker of state parliament says it’s “not a crime” for MPs to shag in their offices, “as long as it is consensual.”
  (tags: queer sa mp sex-scandal politix adelaide)

Windows/Internet Explorer users should find buggery.org significantly less borked from today. The rest of us will also see there have been some tweaks and fiddles. The sidebar is back – as much as I wanted to be the-only-blog-on-Earth-without-a-sidebar, I wasn’t able to get things quite the way I wanted with a minimum of fuss, so it’s back.

I guess that’s why everyone has a sidebar, eh?

• Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook has died.
  Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook has died after collapsing while walking on a mountain in northern Scotland. (ABC)
  (tags: death the-left uk)

Sixty years ago today:

This was the work of good guys, done in the name of peace. We can only hope it never becomes “necessary” again.

Today is also an anniversary of mine. Fourteen years since diagnosis, and at least twenty living with HIV. Happy birthday, Iris.

Jetlag is a bitch.

I was in South America just long enough for my body clock to adjust to the time difference, now I’m home and going through the same sleepless hell. The time difference between Rio de Janeiro and Melbourne is 13 hours, which makes this about as tough an adjustment as it’s possible to make. And as any seasoned traveller will report, the jetlag you get when travelling west is that much nastier than that travelling east, so here I am at 5 AM sitting at my desk and wishing I could just lie in bed.

That’s the price I pay for my jetsetting ways, I guess.

Since arriving home I’ve been busying myself with work and dealing with the minutiae of replacing my lost property, filling out the absurdly complicated insurance claim form, that sort of thing – all while trying to manage a circadian rhythm which insists that I fall asleep at 2 PM every day and wake at 4 AM.

Nonetheless I like the still of the early morning, when Brent and the dogs are still asleep and I can putter about doing my thing undistracted. The first of the birds are stirring in the trees outside and the Saturday newspaper just landed with a thud on my front step, and I’m sitting here in my dressing gown and slippers catching up on email and fussing about. Today there is talk of yard work and tonight we will be at the footy.

It’s not glamorous but it’s good to be home.

Have just spent a few passably enjoyable hours wandering the streets of Santiago, Chile. I’m not really supposed to be doing anything more here than changing planes, but the layover is so absurdly long (10 hours!) I decided to blow a few dollars on a visa, a taxi and a decent lunch rather than sit in the airport eating crap and going slowly insane. I think it was the right idea.

Santiago (or at least the neighbourhood I visited) feels a bit like a Latin Prague – lots of once-grand but now somewhat dilapidated buildings, wet and cold and noticeably economically challenged. Still, beautiful in its way – I’m quite fond of shabbiness.

I had hoped to visit the new archaeological museum, but it turns out to be closed on Mondays. Probably just a bunch of old pottery shards and cane baskets anyway, eh? I guess I’ll never know now.

It’s been kind of fun to wander around an unfamiliar city with no real plan, no idea what, if anything, there is to see, and no expectations. I chanced upon the Castillo Hidalgo – an historic fortress on a hill with lots of pathways, statues and parklands around, which made for nice wandering material. Turns out the place is something of a local lovers’ lane, with dozens of young couples making out on park benches around just about every corner. Sweet.

Not much else to report except to say that the Chilean Carabinieros have the best uniforms. I must go see if they sell them in the duty free

I wrote this post last night but was unable to get the hotel computers to work for me. At the airport now, on my way home. The last of the holiday snaps are on Flickr now … see you in Melbourne in a couple of days, or en route if inspiration and opportunity coincide.

I’m kind of too tired to write much right now but I feel obliged to post one last entry before I leave Rio, otherwise it’ll never happen. (more…)