Bad Lads Army

UKTV started broadcasting a rather enjoyable reality TV series, called "Bad Lads Army", in which a group of English yobbos (or do we call them Asbos or Scallies now?) volunteer to go through a few weeks' of 1950s-style national service in the army, to see whether they could be made real men out of.
Never mind that it never worked in the 1950s and the army then had better things to do (and thought it could better spend its time and resources elsewhere) than to babysit ne'er-do-wells. But I guess the idea was irresistible to programme producers who may have detected an eagerness among the general public to get back at those surplus males.

And what an enjoyable sight that meted-out humiliation is. The first episode focused on the natural exhibitionist streaks and one-upmanship one encounters whenever groups of males are out of sight of females. They tested their manhood against the alpha males - the rather unassuming looking but hard-as-nails corporals and other officers in charge - when settling in their new surroundings.
The first half hour was an almost constant stream of bleeped out swear words, and it got so bad in the second half they didn't even bother bleeping anymore, which actually made for much more natural coverage of events without drawing too much attention to the vocabulary used.
I was a little disappointed in the physical condition of a large part of the recruits, but perhaps I was expecting the extraordinary - not all of current 18 to 24 year olds are rugby players or porn stars, although a lot of them looked they were spending at least some time thinking about grooming, physical fitness and general personal hygiene.

The medical was a hoot, especially when the doctor asked one of the recruits, who had excellent eye sight: "Don't you masturbate?" The embarrassed silence on the boy's face was priceless.

UPDATES:
Episode 2: in which the lads get acquainted with how to wash their cock, balls and arse properly using a smidgen of water and a corner of their towel. The sergeant obliged by showing them how to do it. The army could make millions by auctioning off their used towels on specialist auction websites.
Episode 3: in which the lads get bugled out of bed early in the morning only to line up at their bunks with morning wood sticking out. This piece of shameless sexual advertising drew gasps of admiration in our household.

The joy of internet searching

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Simpsons-mania

It was inevitable that Simpsons-mania had to engulf me. I've never been a huge fan of the series, but here is my avatar slightly tweaked for follicle purposes.
The second picture is my own photo "simpsonized".

You can make your own with some difficulty downloading it afterwards due to long server outage times.

Alternately, you can upload your own picture and have it "simpsonized" here.

The Woodsman

Kevin Bacon starred in "The Woodsman" on last night's Rialto TV's schedule, and what a deeply reactionary picture it was.
The (female) director skilfully manipulates us to make us feel sympathetic with the plight of our "hero", who is a paroled child sex offender after 12 years in gaol. The exact mature of his crime is never made explicit and it's gradually revealed he likes to smell girl's hair and enjoys them sitting on his lap, which sounds to me a little incongruous to me given the length of the sentence he got. When he gets to play the character of the film title - taken from the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale in which the woodsman saves a little girl from a wolf - we get the opportunity (through the figure of the policeman who stalks his every move) to forgive his past sins by beating up the real "monster" of the film: a gay paedophile character, dubbed Candy, who stereotypically hangs around children's playgrounds shaking candy bags to lure a little boy, dubbed Cherub, into his flash car. We hear it's all alright to beat him up because "he's wanted for boy rape in another state". Needless to say the Candy monster is a character without dialogue who does all his seducing in silent film manner: the perfect voiceless, anonymous, deeply seductive demon that is wanting all our boys, so much more monstrous than our hero, who at least is heterosexual and basically only did what any loving father in a family does - as was made clear in the film too. His only sin was that he was unrelated to his victim.
One must uphold family values at all times, obviously.

A man and his underpants

My mate Duncan, originally from South Africa, featured in an interview on Gaynz.com.
He designs underwear for men that keep your tackle snug and make you feel quite comfortable in wearing them as beach or party wear.
Designs, model pictures and shop here, because gaynz.com forgot to link it.

Rough Trade

Via BBC News:

At a time when CD price wars and music downloads are putting entire High Street chains at risk, independent retailers Rough Trade are opening what they say is the country's biggest music-only specialist store.
If all goes according to plan, the 5,000 sq-ft Rough Trade East on Dray Walk, just off Brick Lane, will start trading on Friday, 20 July.
The first Rough Trade shop opened in Notting Hill, west London, in 1976, and soon became known as one of the best places to find new wave music and fanzines.
A record label of the same name followed, but the two businesses went their separate ways in 1982 and are now run independently of each other.

I remember visiting the Rough Trade shop in Notting Hill many times during my frequent pilgrimage trips to London as a wide-eyed innocent punk rocker in the late 1970s. It was just the most magical shop where the reggae and punk rock 7 inch singles sounds wafted out of the shop as if it was Notting Hill Carnival time permanently. Not only the music was important. Also the piles and piles of fanzines and badges. Every punk rocker worth his second hand clothes and hairstyle either played in a band or published a fanzine (sometimes both) and not would be complete without lapels full of badges.
Reading about Rough Trade always makes me quite nostalgic. I still have a pile of Rough Trade singles and fanzines (the badges seem to have gone AWOL while moving between countries and continents).
And it does prod me to finally do an English translation of my BA Sociology dissertation and put it online. Maybe when I'm retired.

Winter warmers

Since the weather lately hasn't been too kind to us there is very little else to do but to watch what is on the dreaded gogglebox, perchance finding some totty worth whiling the night away with. And so there was this week:
Jamie Maguire (Aaron McCusker) in "Shameless". Yes, move over, Lip, and your fucking of stick insects. What were you thinking?
No, give us our Jamie instead, perving very convincingly on Katie Jackson fucking the delivery man and humping her dress while sleepwalking nude. Makes you go "hmmmmmmm" thinking he spent 10 years in jail. Who was his very, very lucky cell mate experiencing that every night! Nice dark down-covered arse too.

And there was the "Midsomer Murders" episode featuring champion rower Henry (Owain Yeoman) preening himself in a very metrosexual way before his date with his blond girlfriend and proudly showing off his package in his well-cut corduroy trousers (this is a terribly middle class series after all) when confronting his coach of a certain age.
His classically looking head landed him a role in "Troy" as Lysander, the captain of the Trojan army. He can sleep any time in my tent on the battle field.

Ewen insisted on adding Peter Pascoe (Colin Buchanan from "Dalziel & Pascoe") to the totty lineup, and who am I to refuse? Big chested, constantly brooding and looking amazing at age 40. Who wants to resist that? And it gets better: IMDB reports that before becoming an actor, he worked as a builder, a delivery man and sang in a couple of bands.

Do you think there is a common thread in our taste in men?

When psychologists are let loose

Psychologists are a strange breed. Constantly trying to categorize your mind, behaviour and desires and then berating you for deluding yourself as to your true self - charging you all the way of course. Now their in-house magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article called Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature: Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.
Let's go through a few of them.

Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)

"Women's desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.
Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman's health status."

The picture is wrong: it portrays heterosexual (why do these psychologists always forget that rider?) men as wanting to mate for offspring with Paris Hilton only, as if sex had no other function in the human world (apparently not according to psychologists). It illuminates the sexual fantasies of psychologists better than explaining sexual behaviour of guys.

"It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing."

Some of those psychologists must have attended one too many conference in Scandinavia to cloud their science. In no other cold climate population do women have blond hair: not the Sami, Mongolians, Iniuit or Taiga dwellers - none of their women have to use blond hair to advertise themselves because of their heavy clothing. Scandinavian women are the exception rather than the type. And what about the blond boys in Scandinavia? I do have trouble taking blonds (real and fake ones) seriously, female or male, I'm sorry about that.

Humans are naturally polygamous and Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy

"Women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. [...] Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy."

Again the psychologists forget the homosexuals, now all in the name of economic advantage for women's offspring whether to share a rich man or have one poor guy. If there was polygyny many men could only have guy-on-guy sex because all the girls are taken by the richer guys. Which leads to the next statement:

Most suicide bombers are Muslim: polygyny in Arab countries, resulting in many un-marriable young men, combined with the promise of 72 virgins in paradise (some sort of afterlife reversal of polygyny compensating guys for the sexual hardship they suffered in the real world) leads to guys taking the shortcut to paradise.

The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of

"Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it's not because they are middle-aged. It's because their wives are."

And that's also why gay guys never have a midlife crisis. And yes, old girls, there is no hope for you. Getting a toy boy is obviously anti-evolutionary and mad-as-hell behaviour.

The other half a dozen statements are worth checking out, really.

The Cadaver Calculator

How much is your dead body worth?
$4750.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

Apparently the amount is about just over half the maximum.
I think I would be worth more (for the planet) just being buried complete to replete the earth with nutrients and allow a nice tree to grow on my grave. Sounds better than donating organs or increase the carbon emissions by being cremated.

The joy of heterosexuality

A sick story in the news this morning:

Officers were called to the 73-year-old's home in Mangawhai, north of Auckland, just after 11pm.
The woman had awoken to find a man lying next to her in bed, armed with a knife.
She was sexually assaulted but Inspector Gary Hill says there was a struggle during which the woman managed to get the knife off her attacker, who then ran off.
Mr Hill says the woman was courageous and is coping well considering her ordeal.
The intruder is believed to be in his 20s.

I'm awaiting the howls of outrage against this vile act and for the banning of heterosexuality. Of course, a 73 year old man would never experience this ordeal. Why can't these young guys find a proper girlfriend instead of taking the concept GMILF to new depths?

UPDATE: The cops caught the perpetrator, turns out he's not in his 20s but 49. Get it right, girls.

Vintage male photography

A gorgeous treasure trove of male photography, the collection of DCWooten on Flickr.
Absolutely recommended, and mostly work safe.

Women Strip Naked Against Wool Cruelty

A media alert from PETA:

PETA Beauties Descend on Australian Consulate to Expose the Naked Truth About Mulesing

Standing naked behind an Australian "flag" that reads, "The Naked Truth: Australia Tortures Sheep" on one side and "Australia: Turn Your Back on Mulesing" on the other, two PETA beauties will protest against "mulesing" (live flaying) mutilations of lambs' bottoms – calling for an immediate end to this cruel, outdated practice – outside the Australian Consulate-General in Auckland tomorrow.

Mulesing is a painful procedure in which gardening shears are used to cut chunks of skin and flesh from lambs' backsides – without any painkillers – in a crude effort to reduce maggot infestation from blowfly strike, even though humane control methods exist and are already in use among 98 per cent of New Zealand wool farmers as well as many Australian farmers.

The majority of New Zealand farmers don't mules but instead choose humane alternatives such as the timely jetting, crutching and shearing of sheep; breeding for bare-breeched and plain-bodied sheep; and implementing better animal husbandry practices. Mulesing continues in Australia simply because it is the cheapest and easiest thing to do.

"Australia's treatment of sheep is a national disgrace", says PETA member Lana Went. "Mulesing is indefensible. Purposely breeding animals who aren't suited to the country's climate is no excuse to continue the practice. Consumers are demanding that Australia follow New Zealand's lead and choose compassionate alternatives to cruel mutilations."

Where: Australian Consulate-General, Level 7 Price Water House Coopers Tower, 186-194 Quay Street, Auckland
When: Thursday, July 12th, 12 noon

Considering the freezing temperatures and the gales we've been having here in Auckland lately, good luck to the PETA girls. Don't freeze!
And boys, why don't you join in?
More information at SaveTheSheep.com

9 Bonks

Rialto Channel featured a quite graphic sex film last night called 9 Songs. Ostensibly it was a concert film of some trendy (in 2004 at least) British bands playing live in a few London venues, attended by the film protagonists: a skinny waif (Margo Stilley) and hunk (Kieran O'Brien). Between songs, they fuck in all sorts of scenarios to make it look less boring. The dialogue is rather inane as befits a sex film ("Do I look like a boy", she purrs while she arches her body into even greater skinniness and titless-ness. "Yes" he says, but we groan: "Oh no she doesn't, she looks like a tranny who forgot to take her hormone pills.")
Lest any feminists berate this film as sick porno, au contraire, she treats him mostly like a piece of meat - and what a succulent piece of meat Kieran's was too. Instead, imagine or remember, if you will, one of the sex scenes: he's cooking dinner and she is pleasuring herself with a whirring vibrator. He goes into the bedroom and looks at her doing her thing. She cums noisily and lengthily, and he just goes back to his cooking. If the roles had been reversed there would be howls of outrage, screams of objectification, calls for bans on the film.

In all, not a great riveting story, more constructed like what you would remember after a nine bonk affair. It's fun to construct your own story in the film because there is very little explicit going on story-wise. My theory is that the film is actually about the revelation of the phallus. Kieran's dick is the hero of the film and gradually has a more and more explicit presence in the film. Unlike a real porn movie, his dick is playing hide and seek in chiaroscuro lighting early on and only comes to prominence in the final fuck scenes. With a spectacular ejaculation (image NSFW) in the final round. There the film ended because there was literally no more to reveal or for us to discover (I'd have had a go at his arsehole too if I had been the director, because that is the final frontier of manhood).
Kieran O'Brien has a great future in porno if he wants to avoid being an unemployed actor. He leaves those Hollywood badboy dicks like Colin Farrell for dead.

EU says: "Let's Cum Together"

Fusty, fuddy-duddy, Eurosceptic English MEPs have been spluttering about the EU launching itself on the YouTube generation (EU-Tube!) with a witty, sexy video splicing a range of sex scenes from European movies together to promote its support of European film making. And it's bloody great stuff.
It all goes to show that at least one of the advantages of the EU is the continent-wide opportunity to bonk everybody, which, in my view, is not a bad thing.

Old Queen criticises New Zealand

A rather amusing peek-behind-the-scenes of royal tours in New Zealand, with the acquisition by the Alexander Turnbull Library of a cache of private letters from the 1920 tour by the then Prince of Wales, the later King Edward VIII (him of Wallis Simpson and exile in Paris fame). It was a gruelling schedule, before air travel: 42 places in 29 days, and reading his private account would dispirit any soul.
Some of his remarks are a hoot:

(in Wellington): It is a rotten way of seeing a fine country. Returned soldiers & shrieking crowds & school children are all I shall remember from my visit my beloved though I might add drunkinos[sic] as half the men are overflowing with scotch at most of the places I’ve been to

(in Wanganui's Imperial Hotel): Such a pompous address my beloved but its really a miserable hole; no electric light & the hotel boilers elected to burst before dinner so no baths & a very nasty dinner!! But we are all rather peeved tonight as we have had a desperately twying[sic] day…. I’m frozen as there’s no heating in my room & I’m sitting huddled up in an overcoat!

Wanganui hasn't changed much. But I must say the worst meal I have ever had in New Zealand was in 1991 in Tauranga. The establishment's name (a chain restaurant) will remain secret because they're still trading, but reading Prince Eddie's letter I could sympathise.
A lot has changed since then, though, and you're now never far from a decent dinner now - and the coffee in New Zealand is damn better than anything in Britain or Northwestern Europe.

Another (rather morbid) meme

When were you happiest? On a hot night in Paris
What is your greatest fear? Going blind (I must stop wanking!)
What is your earliest memory? Getting a fish tank with dozens of gold fish, I was about 3
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I can't multitask
What is the trait you most deplore in others? stupidity (sorry, in PC speak: dyslexia)
What is your most treasured possession? my health
Where would you like to live? Where I live now
What would your super power be? Being able to tell the future in cryptic terms
Who would play you in the film of your life? The little devil on my left shoulder
What is your most unappealing habit? Wanking
What is your guiltiest pleasure? Eating
What is your favourite smell? Cacharel Pour Homme (on my first boyfriend)
What is your favourite word? Gin&Tonic
What is the worst thing anyone's ever said to you? That I was a lazy bastard
What is your fancy dress costume of choice? Birthday suit
Cat or dog? Cat
What or who is the greatest love of your life? My main man
What was the best kiss of your life? Barcelona, 7 September 2003
Have you ever said 'I love you' and not meant it? No
Who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Socrates, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde - and the Marquis de Sade for after dinner capers
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? So, what with, actually
What has been your biggest disappointment? Country music
If you could edit your past, what would you change? Emigrate sooner than I did
How do you relax? Reading, blogging, sex
How often do you have sex? Enough
What is the closest you've ever come to death? Was knocked off a bicycle by car, was with my dad age 8 and was carted off to hospital
What do you consider your greatest achievement so far? my job
What song would you like played at your funeral? "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
What is the most important lesson life has taught you? be patient, be tolerant, don't judge quickly (but make your mind up eventually)
How would you like to be remembered? Unsure whether I want to be
Tell us a joke... I'm the worst joke teller in history
Tell us a secret... You read my secrets here every day