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º July 30th - August 5th 2001
Sunday Dum Dee Dum
Saturday 501 32 x 32
Friday Gagging for it
Thursday Revels
Wednesday Growly
Tuesday All human life
Monday Verbigerative
º Sunday 5th August 2001
I'll name that tune in seven.
Critics of the pervasiveness of American culture can draw strength from the news that, in Birmingham next month, a convention devoted to a popular soap opera will be selling t-shirts whose legend will make perfect sense to Brits and be entirely cryptic to everybody else.
The t-shirts read, in full: "Dum Dee Dum Dee Dum Dee Dum".
º Saturday 4th August 2001
David was kind enough to bring me back some Levis from his Stateside trip and, eager to bring them into service as soon as possible, I reached for a pair last night, ripped off the various sales tags and crammed myself in before sallying out to catch the last tube to Vauxhall, Crash and Sleaze. Though I say so as shouldn't, I thought I looked pretty good, what with clean jeans and a new Old Navy t-shirt with added sparkly bits.
Crash is a pretty decent venue, I've always thought, and Spike has always known how to attract a great mixed-up crowd of good-looking gay allsorts that ranges from naked sixty year olds to teens in thongs.
Last night's Sleaze was no exception and I had a thoroughly good time till around five in the morning, after which I followed the river on foot, homewards to London Bridge, wiping something off the back of my neck, something that should have been sweat but probably wasn't.
When I finally got home, I pulled off my newly-christened jeans and hung them on the floor. Hmm. Seems I'd been parading around all night with a big sticker saying '32 x 32 501 32 x 32 501..." plastered over my butt. Ah well.
º Friday 3rd August 2001
GIven that I was rather rude about The Magnetic Fields in concert, I don't think I'll be introducing myself to any of them any time soon. But if one finds oneself standing next to them at a bar, surely the thing to do is order your drink, find out what it costs, toss quadruple that down on the bar and say, loudly, "And a drink for Mr Merritt and Mr Klute" before walking away.
PS: for that matter, what rhymes with 'Brit'?
Willing and Able
You want to be in a relationship, but you're somewhat wary of giving up your independence. No worries -- when Mr. or Ms. Right comes along, you'll know it, and you'll be ready. In the meantime, have some fun and carpe diem while it lasts!
...which shows how much they know.
Die, hippy, die. Joss-sticks 40 times more dangerous than tobacco.
Holiday plans.
- The British Prime Minister is holidaying in Mexico this year.
- The French Prime Minister will be staying at the French equivalent of Chequers.
- The Italian prime Minister is taking his yacht to his luxury home in Sardinia.
- The Dutch Prime Minister is currently touring the bed-and-breakfast hotels of Devon and Cornwall with his wife Rita.
I don't have much of a problem with V S Naipaul's reported view of Forster and Keynes as "exploiters" of young men; who knows whether they traded sex for power to a greater or lesser degree than their straight contemporaries?
What does worry me is the novelist's use of the word sodomised in this context. If he is using the verb in the clinical sense, what evidence does he have that Keynes and Forster enjoyed anally penetrating their so-called inferiors?
(The little we know about Forster's sex-life makes this particularly unlikely, I'd have thought. Forster's description of his only gay hero as having "brought out the man in Alec, and now it was Alec's turn to bring out the hero in him" sounds pretty damn passive to me.)
If, on the other hand, Naipaul is using the word simply as a synonym for any kind of homosexual sex he needs, I think, to examine his own psychology. As do all those others (mostly in the House of Lords) whose fascination with the basic biology of buggery reveals more about themselves than they know.
By using a word so Biblical, so archaic, so powerfully charged with overtones of transgression and assault Naipaul reveals that he is, in a word, gagging for it.
º Thursday 2nd August 2001
If I were the evil queen (or even the evil queen mother) that some take me for, I might suggest that this is evidence that you can buy all the Avercrustie & Itch in the world and still not look like a swoony youth. But you know me better than that.
At Swish Cottage, halfway across London, they slept through four alarms. Me, I rose gently to the surface, like a carp in a lily-pond. (Or was that a corpse?)
Nonetheless, we awoke more or less simultaneously. Which is spooky.
The news-gnomes at Brainsluice have clocked the Scorpion-queen. I think they missed the best bit though: it appears that living with 2.7k scorpions for 30 days is just one in a long line of recent attempts to get into the Malaysian Book of Records.
These include the most heads shampooed in one day at a shopping mall, the highest backwards climb up a staircase and, a personal favourite, the largest number of old people at a circus.
Ah, those crazy Malays.
I wonder if Ralph got here yet? No doubt his project will let us know. (But, gee, I wish I had a friend who would send me a Lincoln town car when I needed one.) (Er, what is a Lincoln town car, exactly?)
And proof, if proof were needed, that Blogadoon's vitriol knows no international boundaries: Saffina (the pocket princess) sent me this (the pocket president)
I don't know why we Brits get so excited by the idea of a group of dull under-educated ugly people being catapulted to wealth and international fame by a mere accident of fate - the Big Brother house is no match for the House of Windsor in that regard.
The news that the Queen Mother has required a blood transfusion (blue blood presumably) is quite properly buried away at the bottom of page four of today's Independent. In the Mirror ("A shot in the Ma'am") and the Daily Telegraph it's the lead story.
The dead-tree version of the latter includes the giggle-inducing subhead: "Her 101st birthday revels will go ahead". Good news for souvenir chocolate-lovers everywhere.
Will there be a different flavour for every year? Will Mrs Simpson's smell strongly of almonds? And will the Blitz taste of powdered egg?
º Wednesday 1st August 2001
I don't seem to have catalogued much minkering lately but please don't think I've stayed at home sulking whilst The FAO Girls were away.
Wednesday was the A-Bar, Friday was The Spiral and Monday was Underwear Night at SubStationSouth. The latter had a particularly hallucinatory quality: imagine an underground platform outside the rush hour but everybody has stripped down to their smalls. That was the main bar. Then imagine a tube train during the rush hour. But everybody has stripped down to their smalls. And beyond. That was the scene behind the curtain.
Highlight of the week, though, was Saturday night at Growl and The Hoist with Guy. it was my first visit to Growl and I recommend it, even if you're not especially into generously-proportioned men (aka bears).
And last night I put my head into Halfway 2 Heaven, Kudos, Brief Encounter, Ku-Bar, Mantos, Comptons and Bar Code before ending up blind drunk at 79CXR with a man I want to have my babies.
My Gay London pages have been considerably updated in consequence.
Also in G News, an article on racism on the gay scene, starring my friend Aigars. (Never seen his name written down before; we've always called him Argos.)
"When I came to London [from Latvia] I didn't feel comfortable in white gay company. I was made to feel secondary because of my poor English. When I arrived here it was only black people who would speak with me."
Excuse me? I remember talking, tortuously, to Aigars in some dingy bar not so long after he arrived, a conversation that culminated with him coming out with a sentence that made no sense at all to me.
I asked him to repeat it. And repeat it again. And again. Finally, it became clear: "Tomorrow I have my spoken English exam."
The conversation lapsed at that point, largely because I didn't know the Latvian for "Er, best of luck mate."
A kinder, gentler Peter Tatchell? Say it is not so!
But what's this, in the current issue of G News: "We should ask ourselves if specifically gay campaigns are still necessary... Maybe we could achieve more by incorporating our queer agenda into the general human rights movement."
Mind you, another article in the same issue reveals that he's been holidaying in Sitges, so this new mellowness may only be a temporary aberration.
º Tuesday 31st July 2001
All human life...
Matt simultaneously loses the ability to speak, and to see. He can still ratiocinate, however, which is good (provided you keep the aspirin handy.)
Iain falls off the wagon with a sickening thump (and more spelling errors than you can shake a stick at.)
Jonathan returns from New York and blogs. Hurrah.
David is back, and doesn't. Boo.
Angie threatens to give up her blog because someone criticises her grammar (not me! honest!). Angie? Girl? Get over it, honey!
Dave packs up home, moves half way round the world, packs up and moves again, and wonders why he has mood-swings. (Like, hello?)
Vaughan discovers that his father doesn't own a mobile phone, thereby placing his entire career strategy in question.
Meg of the Megrims feels old because she remembers being invited to a children's party for Charles and Di's wedding. Oh, har di har. I remember watching it on television. At work.
And today's word is: panspermia
º Monday 30th July 2001
I say, Mater, jolly hot, what?
How the hell do you guys blog so much?
Code Red: Is This the Apocalypse?
Madge's Euro-tour ends with tears before bedtime.
How to dig deeper on the Web.
Why are eggs egg-shaped?
Ken Livingstone, please note: Bus stop shelters in the Ukraine
And for the verbigerative amongst you:The Dictionary of Difficult Words
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