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Thursday 20 November 2008
Mocking The Afflicted
I know it's cruel, but I am having a rare (at the moment) chuckle over Iain Dincan Smith's predicament. Having challenged people who think he should face a No Confidence vote to put up or shut up, he's now in the situation where they've put up.
And so he's left putting a brave face on it. At his press conference yesterday he said that he'd called on the party to resolve this situation one way or the other by Wednesday, and "I can therefore say today that I welcome, and am pleased, that we will have an opportunity to do that".
Right, so you were really hoping for a challenge all along then?
Diabolical Night
I found myself feeling all queasy when I went to bed last night (I'm really not looking forward to some stuff), and couldn't settle. Even once the queasy had faded, which a cup of tea helped with, I really couldn't settle. It's been one of those nights where you just lay there, acutely aware of every sound, and not able to be comfortable no matter the position you adopt.
What a great start to the week.
Just Some Stuff
I'm still here by the way, just not talking much at the moment.
My original plan for this weekend was to hermit, but it was suggested by one or two people that in my current frame of mind sitting at home and brooding (which I would do) was not a particularly sensible plan. So Alison, Chris and I went out last night for Mexican food and *finally* to see Calendar Girls. So it was a good break from the weekend routine. I had a bit of a brood, but they kicked my right out of it as best they could.
Today's Observer is running a feature on The 20 Most Oustanding Gay Men and Lesbains in Britain - some interesting choices. More than a few of them I'm quite surprised by, but I guess they had their criteria for 'outstanding'.
By the way, last week's Observer contained an excellent Pet Shop Boys interview :
Neil: Some people think that with pop, everything you write is autobiographical.
Chris: Well, Robbie Williams's entire back catalogue is about him.
This of course is ahead of the release of PopArt, which looks like an amazing collection of material.
As Bad Days Go....
.... I'm placing this one in the top few that I can remember. One of those days where nothing that I do seems likely to get me past the obstacles that are in the way, and even past those obstacles there are others looming.
I may be about to go a bit quiet. Don't worry if I do - just keep talking among yourselves :-)
Hear Hear
Over at Blogadoon, Ian had a few things to say last week about the event that I still insist on calling Pride.
Well said, that man.
Modern Man's Guide To Monsters
I've been meaning to plug Working Title Comics for a while. It's a kind of semi-offshoot of MillarWorld that produces online comics created by a group of contributors.
The reason I've finally been kicked into mentioning it is the addition of a new comic drawn by Guest Blogger James, The Modern Man's Guide To Monsters, which I think is pretty cool, so I'm suggesting you check it out too. It picks up on the Japanese monster tradition of Gojira/Godzilla and its ilk. Very clever.
Uncrashed
Thanks to Dave's sterling work, I'm back with a functioning laptop, though with a new hard drive, so certain stuff is gone away forever since I hadn't backed up for a little while. Among the specific things that are gone is my ICQ contact list, so if you were on it, can you drop me a message so that I can add you into my new one? Ta.
Crash (Literally)
Hellfire and damnation.
Owing to a small accident on Saturday, the laptop hard drive is dead. Which is a complete bugger of course. I had every intention of being extremely productive on some of my own stuff during my projected quiet time yesterday afternoon, and that plan came to naught.
Anyway, the other crash was the one after Ted's party. It was well after 5am Sunday morning when I crashed into bed, so I didn't get up to play tennis, inevitably. Good do though. Ted throws a good party, and there was much entertainment gleaned, plus a few sightings of people I haven't seen for a while, including my scary psycho-stalker of a few years ago.
Anyway, Dave is attempting to sort out the laptop for me, so hopefully I'll be back online at home at some point.
Weekend? What Weekend?
Argh.
Just when what I want more than anything is two days when I can sleep late and do nothing, I'm getting a weekend of busy busy busy. I'm helping move furniture all day today (just about to go and collect the van), though I'm getting a cooker and a fridge-freezer out of the deal, so I don't mind that so much.
Then tonight Ted's having his big 65th birthday party - which based on his last big event birthday five years ago should be a bit of a stormer, then tomorrow it'll be up for tennis and the final dispersal of furniture items.
I'm hoping to have afew hours of quiet time tomorrow evening....
Next weekend, I'm promising myself a hermit weekend. Definitely.
Comment Spam-Posting Fuckers
Having received my first ever comment spam overnight, I've since had two more from the same source.
And I can't be doing with this at all, so at Chris's suggestion, I've installed MT-Blacklist, deleted the fuckers, and blocked them from reposting that particular spam.
Unfortunately, when retroactively removing, the posting still shows up as having received a recent comment in the list on the left, but I'm willing to put up with that minor inconsistency.
*Cough*, *Hack*
You know, this bloody bug is still just hanging on and hanging on.
I feel a huge amount better, but my throat is still raw and my chest all congested.
I'm officially bored with it now.
Lesbians In Non-Kissing Shock
James asked me if he could step back in for a quick rant. I said yes.
******
First of all, a BIG "Thank you" to Jon, for letting me use his blog to vent my frustrations.
This is a rant on something that happened on the last chapter of a Brazilian soap opera.
Before the proper rant starts, a bit of background: In Brazil, soap operas are a HUGE mass media product. Lots of money are invested in them, and the production values are really high. Unlike other places in the world, soaps here have a limited time on air. They don't stretch for many years, like in the U.S. or, as I've learned, on the U.K. Here, they generally last about nine or ten months, and then get substituted for another soap at the same time slot.
Last Friday, October 10th, the final chapter of Mulheres Apaixonadas ("Women in Love") aired. This has been an enormously successful soap opera, and about 80% of the audience on the country was watching it unfold.
Among stories of cross-generational lovers, teacher-student relationships, spousal abuse and beating, heavy adultery, psychopatic jealousy, urban violence (a huge national campaign against guns and violence was launched with this soap) and abuse towards the elderly, there was a teenage lesbian couple featured on the story. And this is where my peeve starts.
Throughout the story, these two characters, Clara and Rafaela, were portrayed as a couple. They hung out together in school, were regarded as a couple by their peers, made romantic dinners for each other and even said "I love you" to each other.
But there was minimal physical contact, and no kissing.
At best, they would hug, but without thouching the lower parts of their bodies. The hugs would happen "from a safe distance", where only their chests touched.
So, often the following would occur:
"I love you, Clara" smile
"I love you, too, Rafaela. Very much." wide smile
....
....
Nothing.
At best, one of the hugs.
It dragged on for months.
So, one of the many questions the nation was asking (believe me, it is that huge) was, "will they kiss at the last chapter?"
And they did. In what I consider the most coward, stupid, convoluted and insulting manner possible.
Get this - At the graduation ceremony of the school class the girls were a part of, there was to be a presentation of Romeo & Juliet, with Clara playing Juliet. The guy who would play Romeo broke his leg, and then Rafaela played Romeo in his place.
Now, why any High School graduation party would have a play inserted in the middle of it is beyond me, but moving on...
The scene that was acted was Juliet's death scene, when she wakes up and finds Romeo dead by her side.
So she kisses his lips, in hopes of dying from the same poison that killed him.
I couldn't believe it, not only was this, technically, a straight kiss (as one of the girls was all dressed up as a man), Romeo was already dead. So he couldn't kiss back, and Juliet might as well have kissed her own arm, in what was the most cold, chaste, boring kiss EVER.
To add insult to injury, the very next scene was the last scene of the entire soap, where all the couples kissed passionately, while the final credits rolled and the music played. Isn't love beautiful, if you're straight??
I hear that, at the previous week to the one Mulheres Apaixonadas ended, there was a soap in the U.K, Coronation Street, that featured its first gay kiss in the 40 years it's been on air. But I've also been told that gay kisses are not a first in British TV, only in this particular show.
So I'm left to wonder, why the hell they made such a big deal about a simple kiss?! It was pretty much estabilished that the girls were, indeed, lovers, and it was the last chapter of the freaking thing. No audience would be lost! EVEN if it was annouced that there would be a kiss, it wouldn't harm the ratings, because everyone would've have tuned in anyway!
And here I'm talking about a story that involved:
-Steamy sex scenes between a married woman and her maid's lover
-Sexual situations involving a thirty-something woman and a teenage boy
-More steamy sex scenes, this time between the young lover of a fifty-something woman and her daughter-in-law
-A man who repeatedly beats up on his wife (the thirty-something woman) using any object available, most notably a tennis racket, in all gory detail
-A man who has a daughter, outside of marriage, with a prostitute
-A woman who makes heavy sexual advances towards a priest, who ends up in bed with her
And many other subjects and scenes that could be, if one was of the easily offended/prudish kind, considered objectionable or downright immoral.
Particularly, I don't have any problems with any of those scenes/subjects being presented onscreen. What pisses me off to no end is that all of that will make its way into the final cuts of the episodes, while arguably the most stable, loving relationship in the whole thing gets to be treated with so much fear and worries.
There's this talk of "treating the subject in a delicate, subtle manner", as if a kiss would automatically make it "dirty", or "unpure" or any such nonsense.
I'm really, really mad over this.
I'll get off the soapbox now.
Remarkable. Really.
I was talking to someone earlier, and one of the things I mentioned was how I was feeling a bit low at the moment, as has previously been mentioned. I was stunned by what he responded to me. I'm not sure what I've done to justify this kind of perception even when I'm on top form, never mind at the moment:
"I don't know that this will make sense, but you never struck me as the type that could be defeated, (in the general life getting you down sense). Not to say you always have the perfect answer, but you seem like when bad situations arise you can find your way out of them and not buckle. This is long winded and rambling, boiled down you just seem to me to be the type that can get through just about anything.
You're a really strong person. That's it."
I'm....stunned, I guess is the only word.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
No, not that Thanksgiving - Canadian Thanksgiving.
My word I wish I was over there having a weekend of Thanksgiving Dinners....
Anyway, to mark the occasion - a Canadian image.
News Stuff - It's Been A While
Seems ages since I did much of a round-up:
The BBC reports on the continuing splits being caused in the Anglican Church over the issue of ordaining gay bishops. The way they're painting the picture, it looks like the possibility of a major split in the church is a very serious one. Of course, I don't much care what they do, but I watch with interest to see how the institution works its way through this.
The BBC also carries a story about the continuing effectiveness of combination drug therapies in dealing with HIV which is worth looking over.
And The Observer reports that :
Downing Street is set to dump controversial proposals that everyone in Britain should be forced to have an identity card, after new evidence revealed that the scheme would be 'close to useless' in the fight against terrorism.
Maybe more later.
Gloom
I'm not generally a gloomy person. Cynical, yes. Grim, even, sometimes.
But not usually gloomy.
Just at the moment though, it's proving hard to shake off a certain amount of downward drag.
Normal service will hopefully be resumed.
Global Internet Crash
We've been having some trouble with our connection over the last week or so, and the building's telecoms people have been trying to sort it out. So just now I had a phone call from the receptionist, just to let me know that "The Internet will be down for a few minutes shortly".
I hope you weren't all inconvenienced too badly.
Who Would You Believe?
The World Health Organisation, or The Vatican?
Well, when it comes to whether condoms help prevent the spread of HIV, I think I'm going to go with the experts, not a load of daft old codgers who think that their insane fixation with sex is reason enough to enourage infected people to have unprotected sex, rather than encourage the use of condoms under any circumstances.
There ought to be a law.
Still Ick
My throat/chest thing progressed sufficiently overnight that I got up this morning with the shivers. Not nice.
So I took the day off, spent most of it in bed, unplugged the phone, didn't even connect the PC, and managed only to ring in and check I didn't need to do anything for work three times. It was almost like an actual day off sick. This is the first time I've been online all day, and I'm now going to go back to bed. Radical.
Holiday Highlights
Well, still feeling a bit rough, but here are a few bits and pieces:
* The weather, though changeable, was generally good, and I've returned with something approaching a tan, which is not a common ocurrance.
* Ibiza remains as beautiful as ever. The secluded bays, clear waters, green hills, all give it a very unique feeling. I didn't take many photos, because I have lots from previous trips, but I'll post a few in the next day or two.
* Food was good, with lots of healthy salads and fresh fish. Drink was plentiful.
* We discovered the joys of the Caipirinhia cocktail, based on the Cachaca spirit, one of the most popular in Brazil, so I'll have to ask James about it.
* No out and out raving was done, though we had a few extremely late nights, and some consequent slow starts....
* And the total highlight: Snorkelling around Ibiza is always very rewarding, there are lots of fish close to shore or many different types. Apart from day one when the weather wasn't great, we swam every day, and on Friday we visited a location called Cala Conta, where simply stepping into the water was like walking into an aquarium. Having swum quite a way out, I saw a rock cleft and dived down to see what might be sheltering in it, I was completely shocked to see an octopus withdrawing under the rock. I kept going back down to watch it emerging and moving around. Totally awesome.
* Less of a highlight as such, that was the same day I had my moment of semi-heroism by helping someone having an asthma attack in the water get back to shore
Anyway, that's that.
I'm Back. (What did he break?)
I have returned (late last night in fact), but despite a generally good break, I've come back with a horrible throat/chest infection, so I'm not up to doing much more than saying hello at this point.
I'll try to do some holiday highlights and catch up on what James has been posting later today.
So, the week is over...
Jon will be back by the end of the day, so I wanted to talk about a couple of nice things before handing the place back to its owner. No, I don't bitch all the time ("shock")...
Today, I spent a *really* nice evening with a group of friends I haven't seen in almost two years. We've know each other since '96, and we finally managed to get everyone together to spend some time enjoying each other's company.
It was incredible, we spent from 7pm to 2am just talking and relaxing, as if we've never lost contact with each other at all.
At some point, we were by the lake, just chatting and feeling the cold breeze.
Really, really great moments - I don't want to loose this people again, ever.
And my computer is back to work! Woo-hoo, go me!
All I have to worry about now are the anxiety attacks that come over me everytime I turn the bastard on. Oh, sorry, I'm back to bitching...
Please hold the tomatoes.;^)
Best, everyone.
J.
Long rant ahead. You have been warned.
So, back to the kissing (because it’s the most interesting event that happened around here this week. Pity me).
We have here a word for places that are not exclusively gay, but are friendly towards the glbt public – GLS. It stands for “Gays, Lesbians and Sympathizers”. I believe over in England there was an equivalent expression...SLAG (Straight, Lesbian and Gay), I think.
Anyway, Brasilia has this bar/restaurant, Beirut. It’s been around forever, almost since the city was founded, some forty years ago. Over the years, it has, somehow, became a gay point, to the extent of being nicknamed “Gayrut” or “Gay Roots” by the people.
EVERYONE in Brasilia knows Beirut is a place with a huge gay and lesbian public. It’s notorious. Thus, it is considered a GLS house.
However, the management of the restaurant never really acknowledged this publicly. So, last week, one of the waiters aproached a lesbian couple at one of the tables, and warned them that, if they kept kissing publicly, they would not be welcome in the premises of the bar.
Oh, well. Now, personally, I think this was reason to sue the hell out of the place. Brasilia is one of the cities inthe country that specifically forbids discrimination under the basis of sexual orientation in its law chart. And, since Beirut is considered a “gay friendly” place, I firmly believe a boycott would be the best following to a legal action.
Anyway, people decided for the kissing. Wich is fine by me, because it makes the simple gesture of kissing a strong political action. My main trouble with this is, while they waited for the scheduled hour for the event to begin, everyone was drinking and eating, as if nothing had happened. I find this really, really incoherent. I mean, stop giving the bastards money, and let’s see how long they keep mistreating the public that, basically, keeps the place in business. I stood by my conviction of never, ever giving that place another cent again, though. I didn’t drink or eat anything in there last night.
The counter argument is that, since there are few GLS houses in Brasilia, a boycott wouldn’t work because people would not want to lose one of these few “gay friendly” places. As it is, it was difficult enough to make some costumers believe the discrimination had happened at all, in the first place.
I don’t agree with that, but since the kissing happened, the whole thing was televised and photographed by the major newspapers and TV stations, and the place was absurdly crowded, I count this among the successes. It was really a sight to see, a lot of gay couples kissing feverishly, straight couples joining in support, and the waiting staff dumbfolded, trying to keep working as if nothing was happening.
As I said before, it was really beautiful.
The down side, of course, was being there and not having anyone to kiss. Curses! :^)
I also got to see a lot of friends I haven’t seen in the last five or so weeks, wich was a MAJOR plus. And appeared on TV – Go, me.
Anyway, I’m looking foward to the next event. It’s aways great to shock the homophobes.
Kissing, again
Went to the kissing event thing.
The place was loaded with people, press, TV, the works.
It was beautiful, really.
But it's six in the morning here, I haven't slept a bit in the last 20 hours or so, I'll get back later with details and impressions.
Ho, hum...
So, today I found myself telling *my* students that they shouldn't be so lazy and make a little effort to deliver their weekly work, because they have an exam in a few weeks, and they should aim to develop their skills and blah, blah, blah...
The irony is sickening. :^)
Kissing
On another note, i just got an e-mail from the local gay support group.
It seems that one of the most known (though not officially) gay bars of the city has reprimanded gay couples for kissing inside the premises of the bar.
In answer to that, there's a kissing being scheduled for this Friday, plus the opening of a legal action against the managing of the place.
I'll go to the kissing event, but the whole thing makes me ask, again, why in the world people keep going to places that don't treat them with the respect they should.
I'll get back to that later...
Next time I'll just write a note
So I was at my drawing class at college this morning.
Our teacher has assigned us with a minimum of 10 drawings per week, plus the organizing of a lecture on an artist of each student's choosing.
After I showed him my drawings for the week, I went back to my board and was chatting with a classmate.
In answer to her question, "why don't you try coloring your pieces?", I said that I don't do colours very well, and also that I'm a bit lazy regarding that particular aspect of drawing.
At wich point my teacher promptly raised his head, from the other side of the room (big room), and said: "Forget you said that. Lazy students don't get good grades."
"Well, forget you heard it, then", I answered, jokinng.
But I should learn to keep my mouth shut...
