And let’s all say hello to Bishop Janusz Kaleta, who has decided that the gays are not welcome to visit the Vatican.

I consider if someone is homosexual, it is a provocation and an abuse of this place. Try to go to a mosque if you are not Muslim. It is abuse of our buildings and our religion because the church interprets our religion that it is not ethical. We expect respect of our church as we expect to respect that a person does not have to belong to the Catholic Church. If you have different ideas, go to a different location.

He doesn’t sound very nice, does he, readers?

(via ETurboNews)

‘A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed.’ Deuteronomy 22:13-21

Via The High Definate

This is the first in an occasional series in which we let It Was Ever Thus explore some aspect of contemporary life. Here he muses on the pursuit of Pilates amongst certain posh postcodes of London. I find his musings edgy, occasionally sweet and sometimes difficult to take.

Like snorting sherbet. We hope you like it too….

Cellular Memory

We apologise in advance to those who might have Googled ‘cellular memory’ in search of stories relating to bits of other peoples bodies inside them (which is to say bits within and not bits attached to others without – that’s an entirely separate and, frankly, somewhat oversubscribed internet category). We speak here of the memory of what we physically had which like most memories is distorted by present events so as it may more accurately reflect what we might have always wanted to be.

In thus fashion has an industry been created to cater to this memory or aspiration to memory. I exclude from this discussion those fat kids who in memory terms remain forever rotund and though possessed of bodies of the gods have that forever goblin on their shoulder to remind them of the skin sloughed off . You can usually identify this person through their baton-charge-ugly lover who clearly would never leave them out of sheer gratitude.

As with most things the gay man takes the premise and ramps it up – why be interesting when you can be FABULOUS? So the protein shake guzzling, chicken breast eating, is-this-fennel-is-their-fat-in-fennel faggot is the guy in the artfully-coordinated gym gear with the just out of bed tousled hair that took three hours to gel into place. He has the body born to be displayed at Vauxhall, and while much of it is achieved through pain and sheer dint of will, much is also achieved through mechanisms that make his donor card an accessory rather than something that will be executed on.

The day will come when the Vauxhall arches close in, the spotty back not such a good look, the porn star coupling with fellow hard bodies easily achieved but maintained with difficulty. The lure of the North London dinner party and arch conversation over glass tables proves irresistible and, while he yields the bitch tits to the mists of time, his cellular memory convinces him that toning and stretching and paying sixty quid an hour will somehow hold and encage the inner fat child reasserting his dominance over your gay middle ages.

Welcome to Pilates.

Begin your novel with the protagonist getting out of bed and seeing that it is raining outside, which perfectly mirrors his life

 

Jake opened his eyes and heard the rain battering against the outside of the glass window. Well, he thought grimly, it’s raining outside, and it’s certainly raining in my soul, which is about as inside as you can get.

It had only been seventeen days since he had lost his job and been dumped by his girlfriend, all of which made him very sympathetic without actually having to establish him as a character. Ever since that fateful day, he had been hearing the drip drip drip of his hopes (raindrops) and aspirations (hailstones) tumbling down onto the corrugated iron roof of his memory before disappearing forever down the drain of missed opportunities.

It was a dark and rainy night when first I read of this fine new blog. Return to it I will in various methods.

Write Badly Well.

Yes, being constantly connected to teh interwebs has brought on some form of ADD. Therefore it is quite rare for me to sit down and read a book these days (unless it’s about teh interwebs). Who has time to wade through a few hundred pages in teh off chance of being mentally-stimulated or experience something touching and beautiful when one can find out what’s trending in Dublin right now?

So it is with great relief that I can say that not only have I read an actual real book again, but it totally captured my imagination and I have to share.

David Eagleman’s Sum consists of 40 very brief descriptions of what the afterlife might be. In one version of the afterlife, we find ourselves accompanied only by people we know. We soon tire of being unable to meet strangers. In another, it turns out that our creators are have brought us back from life in order to ask us: “Do you have answer?”. Another version of the afterlife has all of the beings that have at some point in history been worshipped. They are now forgotten, marginalised and bored and we tiptoe around them oblivious of their previous glory.

This gem of a book is not one of those awful self-help things nor is it New Age gubbins. ‘Heaven’ is present in many of these tales, but the plurality of alternative afterlives reflects the fact that we no longer have to (can?) accept a prescribed or authoritative version of what comes next.

Here is a reading of the first and titular tale from the book. In this version of the afterlife, you live your life again, but instead of having events spread out, you experience everything one at a time. So, you spend 30 years sleeping soundly and two minutes thinking that you are falling etc etc. (The extract’s only a couple of minutes long.)

Each tale is similarly brief, witty and thought-provoking in a secular, modern way. I haven’t thought as much about existence and meaning since I was an annoying Philosophy undergrad.

Highly-recommended.

Of late, the UK album charts have been on a bit of an nostalgia trip. Astonishingly, Vera Lynn (Vera Lynn) got to number one. Inevitably, this trend has been seized upon by the compilation peddlers and we’ve had Land of Hope and Glory and Songs That Won The War etc etc.

So, it is not great surprise that the series that gave us 101 80s Songs, 60s Songs, Running Songs, Rock Anthems et al now gives us the decidedly granny-friendly 101 Golden Memories. It’s just *lovely* with Dame Vera, Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Alma Cogan, Doris Day and Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel Ken Dodd.

Delightfully amidst all that saccharine, we find this little gem. It’s called ‘My Girl’s Pussy’ by Harry Roy & His Bat Club Boys. It’s from 1931 -before sex was invented.

Why oh why must we throw this filth at our pop kids?

PS: Harry Roy has a second track on the album: ‘She Had To Go And Lose It At The Astor’. Filth!

xkcd is what it’s creator describes as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

A favourite:

And here’s a cute animation of the xkcd strip “xkcd loves the Discovery Channel“;

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

The woman at my polling place asked me “Do you believe in equality for gay and lesbian people?”. I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her: “What do you think I fought for in Omaha Beach?”

via Boing Boing

Image: Fire by Roberto Manrique (via Homotrophy)

Despite the name, this is full-on Big Room commercial/funky house. Oh, go on, there’s always an occasion for *that*… Where else will you hear Kanye West slamming into Patsy Cline?

1. Remedy (K@sk@de Club Remix) * Little B00ts
2. She W0lf (M0t0 Bl@nc0 Club) * Sh@kir@
3. Milli0n D0ll@r Bill (Freem@s0ns Club Mix) * Whitney H0ust0n
4. W@lking On The M00n (Se@mus H@ji & Em@nuel Club Mix) * The-Dre@m fe@t. K@nye West
5. She C@me Al0ng (UK Extended Mix) * Sh@r@m fe@t. Kid CuDi
6. R@in (Se@mus H@ji Big L0ve Remix) * Mik@
7. Ins@ti@ble (Meck’s B@ck T0 The Future Remix) * Out Of Office
8. The T@ke (Origin@l Mix) * P@ul H@rris & Obernik
9. Y0u G0t The L0ve (Pitr0n And S@nn@ Mix) * Fl0rence + The M@chine
10. C@n’t Get High With0ut U (D@vid Penn Mix) * J0ey Negr0
11. H0w S00n Is N0w * Dirty S0uth, Seb@sti@n Ingr0ss0, D@vid Guett@ fe@t. Julie Mc Knight
12. Bulletpr00f (D@ve Aude Club) * L@ R0ux
13. Celebr@ti0n (Benny Ben@ssi Remix) * M@d0nn@

Download Dark Appetites 71 mins 320kbps continuous mix.

What with my younger brother getting married last weekend and my younger sister attempting to upstage him by having her baby two weeks early, I became distinctly uncomfortable with getting less attention than my siblings.

So, I decided to make a baby with Andrew. Isn’t he adorable?

I think we shall call him Shoreditch.

[You can make your own babies with Morphthing, but none will be as lovely as our Biological Lifestyle Accessory.]