Gay Pride 2007: Glad to be gladiatorial

Those about to wax and buff salute you.

Gay Pride 2007

Gay Pride 2007

Gay Pride 2007: Better Gay than Opus Dei!

Gay Pride 2007

All that’s missing here is a pair of chaps.

Just a taste

Tired of the same face, the same voice…

Further proof of woolly thought and self-delusion from Bush’s poodle.

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Mr Blair was asked why the public was disenchanted with him even though the economy is sound. He replied: “I’ve won three elections and what happens when you’re in power for a long period of time, people get tired of the same face, the same voice. It’s just the way it is. I know people say this is all down to Iraq and so on, but that’s not true. From the moment you start in these jobs, you’re taking decisions people don’t like. If you survive for 10 years, you’re doing well.”

It’s the and so on I’d like to have explained. What on earth could he mean? Other irritating little wars perhaps? Or maybe he’s thinking of embarrassing house deals or arse-licking episodes in Sardinia? After all, they’re all much of a muchness, aren’t they, Tone? All part of the job.

Good riddance to…

…Kurt Waldheim. You can read what Robert Fisk has to say about him here. This is a piece from the article:

It was an Austrian journalist who alerted me to Waldheim, a reporter whose father had fought in the Wehrmacht, who had survived the evacuation of north Africa (“I do hope I didn’t kill him,” the “Enigma” cryptologist said to me when I told her of his attempt to escape by air – his plane got through the Allied net). “Look for the letter W,” the Austrian journalist said, the letter W after each debriefing, each Allied commando captured by the Gestapo, each prisoner to be extinguished by “nacht und nebel” – by night and fog.

No, Waldheim didn’t order their deaths. He didn’t even interview the captured British commandoes, or so he said, but merely “collated” their reports. His junior officers did the interviewing (let us not contemplate what that meant). Then the British prisoners disappeared into night and fog.

Schlock

I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film last night with Sally. The two of us were alone in the cinema apart from a group of teenagers, mostly boys, nerdy types as QT must have been, who behaved in a fairly respectful way and then went home, no doubt to squeeze their spots and dream about Butterfly.

The film had all the essential ingredients, raunchily attractive women in hot pants discussing sex, car chases, gory and apparently gratuitous violence, an intellectual’s attention to tacky period detail, deliberate anachronisms, lap dancing – everything you expect and love (or hate) from Tarantino, in a particularly stripped-back form. Underpinning all this was an extraordinary simple but effective structure: essentially, the same story told twice but with all the difference in the world, which is where the film’s moral purpose (because, of course, it has one) comes from.

I won’t say any more, because I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s extraordinary how something that is so much sheer fun in such a superficially mindless way can also be intellectually satisfying.

Now just let me squeeze that spot.

Revealed truths 6

From Popbitch (what would we do without it?):

This is an excerpt from May 31st, showing an
end-of-term performance by the kindergarten
class of the Islamic Association in Gaza:

Host: Stay with us to watch this performance
by the children of Palestine.

The boys’ show:
“Allah Akbar. Praise be to Allah.
Allah Akbar. Praise be to Allah.
Allah Akbar. Praise be to Allah.
Allah Akbar. Praise be to Allah.
Who is your role model? The Prophet.
What is your path? Jihad.
What is your most lofty aspiration?
– Death for the sake of Allah.

It’s a far cry from the oath I was supposed to learn to become a boy scout. All I had to do there was declare undying allegiance to the Queen, Commonwealth, er, God…

I just couldn’t learn it. That must be why I never got my camping badge.