A Rose for Gauss Jordan

... who came out one year ago. Happy anniversary!

Same-Sex Reproduction FTW

I should be packing, but I have this nasty habit to read while sitting on the loo. While doing so, I came across this scientific discovery that the nasty fellow Candida Albicans* can reproduce by having male with male exchange of chromosomes (read about). Unfortunately this fellow is also quite ugly (see picture).

* A diploid fungus (a form of yeast) causing opportunistic oral and genital infections in humans

Glee for India

The 150-year-old section 377 of India's penal code, introduced when the British ruled the subcontinent, described homosexual intercourse as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and imposed a 10-year jail term for offenders.

The Delhi High Court yesterday declared the laws a violation of "fundamental rights" and unconstitutional.

Hindustan Times

An Indian project just raised significantly in my priority list and I will dedicate today's labour hours to it. I reckon I will be very productive.

Arko Datta, Reuters

Let it begin...

We're on the eve of another weekend. This one will be devoted to celebration and commemoration.

On Saturday, we will parade and celebrate at EuroPride, which this year is held in Zürich. The evangelicals prayed hard that it may rain and it most probably will. Though there was one thing they hadn't reckoned with - LGBT people are a quite waterproof bunch. We've been trough a lot more than a bit of rain.

This Sunday, Toño and I can celebrate our first anniversary - that is, a year ago, we invited our friends to celebrate with us*. We plan to solemnize this at the hottest party in town in the night to Sunday.

Sorry Ms.Mac, I nicked your pic.

Also on Sunday, we will commemorate our friend Isabel, who passed on a year ago. We plan to have dinner with the Swiss part of her family and friends. Toño will make ceviche after a recipe of his sister Chilo.

* We did everything in the wrong order: honeymoon, reception, registration. But it worked just fine this way.

It's About Love

schwulengeschichte.ch, a webpagew covering about 170 years of gay history in Switzerland went on-line. I especially like it's tag line "it's about love".

The Devil's Paintbrush

Last week, Jake Arnott's brand spanking new novel The Devil's Paintbrush arrived in the mail. I just could not resist, neglected Toño and rushed through it from cover to cover in barely a day.



A book with a title that is derived from the Maxim machine gun¹ can expected to be a bit like a Roman holiday.

Briefly summarized: Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald, a paragon of Victorian military virtue, is about to be court-martialed for pederastic activities. In Paris in March 1903, he encounters the occultist Aleister Crowley, who calls himself the Beast. Together, they embark into a memorable nightly ride through the sinful city, which ends with Macdonald doing the honourable thing.

As always with Jake Arnott, his ability to drag you into the authentic atmosphere of a time is astonishing. And yes, it is a bit sordid.

¹ The Maxim machine gun has a rate of fire of 666 rounds per minute, which makes it splosh red everywhere - hence the pet name.

Johnny Come Home

Last Sunday, I was in the mood to read. I grabbed Jake Arnott's latest novel Johnny Come Home from the shelf where it had been collecting dust for almost three years.



I have no idea how it could remain there so long. I loved Arnott's gangland trilogy, consiting of The Long Firm, He Kills Coppers and truecrime, which was the sophisticated fusion of gangsterism, show business, politics and gay culture. I particularly liked that they were without this coming-out or coming-of-age thing that is often involved when there is a gay storyline. The gangster boss just happened to be a bender and nobody dared to mess with him because of this (if I recall correctly).

Whatever, I started the book on Sunday and finished it yesterday. It has turned out to be a page turner. The Guardian review covers my thoughts quite good. For the once who just want the synopsis:

It's 1972 and as the dreams of the sixties give way to anger and political unrest, the charismatic anarchist Declan O'Connell commits suicide, leaving his boyfriend Pearson and fellow squatter Nina to try to make sense of what has happened. Enter Sweet Thing, a streetwise rent boy, who has an uncanny hold over glam rock star Johnny Chrome; and in the wings lurks Detective Sergeant Walker of the newly formed Bomb Squad, who knows more about O'Connell than anyone ever suspected. The course of all their lives is about to change forever -- for better and for worse.

Jake Arnott's fifth novel, The Devil's Paintbrush will come out by the end of this month. It is set in Paris in 1903, and deals with an encounter between disgraced former British Army officer Sir Hector Macdonald and the occultist Aleister Crowley. It's ordered.

News Addiction Top 10

I'm addicted to news. If I enter a hotel room, I first switch on the telly and tune it to CNN. And at least the first hour of the day is dedicated to reading newspapers (with a mug of coffee Toño brought me to the bed).

I'm subscripted to quite some newspapers and magazines. Here I tried to put some of them into an order. The main criteria was whether I would miss them, if they would not be delivered any more (1: I would jump off a cliff - 10: hums the Great Song of Indifference)



That was easy. Toño works for Vinum (Europe's Wine Magazine), hence it helped to pay the bills if you would also subscribe to it (available in German, French & Spanish). Occasionally, Toño models also for the magazine. It would also help to pay the bills if you ordered a warship. In that case, you would have to send the email too me.



BUTT is a pocket-size, quarterly magazine for and about homosexuals, founded in 2001, published and printed in The Netherlands, available world-wide. I have never read anything alike. It is packed with interviews with the broadest range of homosexuals. They questions don't stop at the waistline. Despite of that it is full of adds of luxury brands.



The Economist does not precisely coincides with my point of view, but at least it has one (which I prefer to the so called nutral). It's an authoritative weekly newspaper focusing on international politics and business news and opinion. The paper is excellently written and covers the world we live on. The leader of the pack!



Monocle is a global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design. This basically covers all my interest. And the editor-in-chief is a good looking, dressed and groomed homosexual who used to live in Zürich.



FANTASTIC MAN is the gentlemen's style journal from the editors of BUTT. According to this bi-annual fashion magazine life begins at 30. Targeted at a more mature group of readers, FM's aim is to re-invent the 'gentleman's style journal'. The magazine contains, as the name implies, interviews and fashion features with inspiring men and interesting personalities. It features men in clothes rather than models in fashion.



Yes, I'm one of this frigging pinkos who read this lefty WoZ. It has the only sport section I actually flip through.



The Zürich daily NZZ is brilliant when it comes to foreign affairs, science (Wednesday's) and Feuilleton (which is a rich mine for electronic music). However, the others sections are complete bollocks.



Le Menu is a cooking magazine published by the Swiss dairy farmers, which explains that there are few recipes without any dairy products. We mainly subscribed to it for its well assorted internet data base with almost 5000 recipes. We can search the data base at work for what we would like to have for dinner, print the recipe and pick up the ingredients on the way home. Very convenient indeed.



The Tagi is the other of Zürich's dailies. I mainly read it for the gossip and to be able to keep up with the small talk at the coffee machine. Though its supplementary magazine on Saturday is usually quite entertaining and Constantin Seibt, Switerland's best quill-driver, writes for them.



Is there any good Sunday newspaper in the world?

If we run out of trees and oil-based ink, I'm to blame.

Topless Backside

I can't help it. IMHO the Dior add on the back cover of the Springtime 2009 BUTT is just too sexy.

Gay Rum

Two of our swim buddies spent three month travelling through the Americas. The last month they spent cruising on a sailing ship in the Caribbean. From there they brought exactly what we were looking for to celebrate their return:



Exactly, the oldest rum in the world.

Penn on the 'Issue'

Josh: What effect do you think this film [Milk] may have on audiences, especially audiences grappling with their own feelings on gay rights issues?

Sean Penn: Even the word “issue” about this—it’s only an issue because of ignorance in the first place. If we could criminalize—we don’t have an excuse of being ignorant of the law, so if we could have no excuse of being ignorant of human history, then any support of Proposition 8 would be, minimally, manslaughter, because history tells us there will be teenage boys who will hang themselves out of a reach for an identity they can’t get. As long as it’s an issue it’s an obscenity, and if this movie is part of an engine to help reveal that, that’s going to make all of us really happy and proud. I also think it’s important to remember that the tension is not between the gay and faith communities, but between the gay community and a pseudo-faith community which has nothing to do with god, love, or anything of real faith. It’s really just hypocrisy and hatred. So any faith community that deserves the title of “faith community” really won’t have a problem with these issues.

Read the interview.

Rum, Sodomy & The Lash

Craig brought this to my attention ...



... accompanied with a salvo of puns such as take it up the poop deck, which happens to be at the rear of the ship et al

Turning Gay

It's a Mexican superstition that with 41 men trip over the edge and turn gay. I have no idea what happens, if you're already a friend of Dorothy. Today at 9:31 am I'm supposed to know more. So far I'm still quite clueless.

Like An Angel

Yes, it's The night of the year when I'm wearing white socks.



Enjoy the night!

Is the Wife Male or Female?

Two and a half years ago the Swiss citizens accepted the law for civil unions for The Gays™ in a referendum. I took one and a half year until the law could be exerted, because the institutions needed time to modify all those forms as they claimed (Spain needed less than a week). However, this was still not enough time to adjust tax forms, for which they had an additional year at hand.

Here in Switzerland, married couples are punished tax-wise - that is, they usually pay more taxes than singles. Of course, this unjust system has also to be applied for the The Gays™. Fair enough.

Swiss tax forms have to be filled and signed by the man/husband under his name and then the wife has to sign them as well (yes, Swiss politicians still want to keep wives close to the stove).

Well, the combination of both went terribly wrong. The good news is that the Latin part of Switzerland got it actually right. In the German speaking part, only the cantons Zug and Solothurn managed to do so. Most did nothing - that is, one of the couple has to sign as husband the other as wife.

Some software solutions did only accept husbands that are actually male - weird since civil unions are also open to lesbians and I've never heard that lesbians don't do computers.

Half way right got it Basel-Country and Aargau, which give you the option to tell whether the wife is male of female (der oder die Ehefrau).

However, only fools expect to be treated with dignity by the tax office.

[Source]

Carnival and Humiliation

Usually Carnival is celebrated just before Lent. However, in Morelia things are a bit different. Carnival is celebrated at the end of Lent, i.e. on Easter Saturday and Sunday.

The tradition is called Torito (small bull) and has its origins in the Spanish conquest. In times of the Colony, the Spaniards organized bullfights. As an answer to this the indigenous people created their own version. In the centre is the "bull", which is actually an imitation carried by a man.

The freely decorated bull is accompanied by a musica de banda which plays popular folk songs. Gaudy dressed Maringüias are dancing around the bull. The maringüias are usually played by males who are dressed like women. It's one of the funniest carnivals I've ever seen.



Talking about cross-dressing... On Sunday evening, a cousin of Toño and his boyfriend took us to a local gay club. It was a nice place in the town centre which an illuminated dance-floor in the inner courtyard.

Everything was fine until the show started, which was hosted by two drag queens and consisted mainly of playback singing by the vertically challenged one and stand-up comedy by the ugly one.

Well this ugly one decided to choose me as the butt of most of her jokes (my italics). She even dragged me on stage for an interview on her couch (I could have worked a bit more on my Spanish). Towards the end of the endless hour she even referred to me as Gringo.

Well, I might engage in buggery and arms are my bread and butter, however IMHO, being a gringo is definitely on dark side. Clearly the climax of humiliation.

Black Day for Zürich's Darkrooms

Not that I frequent such locations, however I'm rather pissed off by today's verdict by the district court of Zürich. It has toppled a Gentlemen's agreement between the Police and landlords of gay establishments on the rules of how to run a darkroom. Or in the words of the court: violation of order and public morals by tolerating sexual activities. Thankfully, the convicted will appeal against the decision. What will be next? Prohibition of toilets on air planes?

Epically Classical

Mr.Mac has brought me a copy of the TV series Rome, which was a brilliant idea *patting Mr.Mac's shoulder* I like it. As chance would have it, I was reading two books about that period.

The first was Imperium by Robert Harris. Yes, it's a typical Robert Harris. I leave it with that.

Another calibre is The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian by Robin Lane Fox.



Historians might gripe about one or the other detail. However, I'm none of them and highly enjoyed the read. I'm now also updated about the importance of buggery in the various phases of the Classical World. Just in case time travel will ever make headway.