bitful

The Vatican has condemned homosexual unions as "immoral, unnatural and harmful". [via Guy]

How quaint. Immoral, unnatural and harmful are exactly the first three adjectives that spring to my mind when I think of the Catholic Church. And believe me, I've had a good look at it from inside.

Average speed of a British InterCity train: slow.

UK rail speed record: 162.2 mph (set in 1979 by the Advanced Passenger Train, the notorious tilting rival to the French TGV that never went into service).

Eurostar UK record, to be attempted later this morning: 205 mph.

French rail speed record: 321.8 mph (set by the TGV Atlantique in [...]

I am very fond of functional pieces of furniture and furnishings that serve more than one purpose: coffee tables that turn into dinner tables, footstools that contain precious storage place, armchairs that open up into beds for guests, bags that unfold into picnic blankets…

This is why my new bedroom curtain is ingeniously crafted so that [...]

Barely emerging from a comatose state due to gay gras mardi pride, which sounds keep going around in my head:

Je crois qu'on se connait de Paris
someone I knew from Paris recognized me while dancing in the park and came up to say hallo under Dr B.'s jealous glare

And he covers you with flour / And [...]

A brief history of the Rainbow Flag, from the original eight striped version to the current one.

Today is Gay Christmas [© Dr B.]

It's Big Poofter Day [© Marcus]
Be proud.

The Big Brother 4 house is finally being vacated tonight. As far as I can tell from the fifteen minutes I must have watched the current series for, as well as from what I overheard and read, here is my tuppence on the final four:

Cameron: would love to bash a few bibles on his tiny [...]

Test your senses with a bbc quiz. Surprising results, although those about taste are bound to be more subjective than they claim.

I scored poorly. So bad in fact that I had to take this traditional IQ test to get my usual reassuringly high score.

Not that I'm bragging or anything. We all know these tests are [...]

I was about to take out About a Boy from my gym (it must be the only video they have there that I have not watched yet, apart from the yet untouched stack of bollywood extravaganzas - but I would not give them too long before I start munching through those too) then I decided [...]

Sometime tonight (OK, at precisely 7:25pm - yes I've worked it out calculator in hand) I'll have saved 1000 pounds since I stopped smoking 5 months ago.

One thousand pounds.

Five months.

Funny that just last night I dreamt that somebody caught me smoking, and I justified myself by saying I was doing it without realizing it, completely [...]

Help - there's a gigantic withered prune asleep on my sofa!

False alert - that's just by my flatmate who's back from his holiday in Sitges Barcelona (he likes to make it sound less gay than it was).

My Little Pony and Care Bears are making a comeback, and are tipped to be the hottest toys this coming Christmas.

Strangely enough, the top result if you Google "my little pony" is this page where you have to guess whether a name belongs to a porn star or to a My Little Pony. I got [...]

One of the main items of news BBC News 24 this morning is the reopening of Baghdad Zoo.

I guess it was worth going to war after all. And this too I suppose.

You can always trust the French to fiercely overprotect their noble language from external attacks. The latest expression that got the axe is email, deemed to be too foreign and from now on bound to be replaced in all government documents, publications and websites by a more gallic courriel (from courrier = mail, and électronique [...]

Alright, I confess: I used to love Adam Ant. I was pubescently trying to make some sense of my stirrings for boys, and he was such a pretty one, so how could I resist? I never put a poster of him in my bedroom (I was just not that kind of teenager) but at some [...]

"Always match your earrings to your shoes: you never know when the two might meet."

(Daniel Hopwood, on Tuesday night's Britain's Best Home programme, in defense of a house where everything was in matching shades of green)

Think nothing can be more traumatic than having to evacuate a building on fire? Think again. The building next to it could be a gay sauna and you'd have to get out in the street in your towel.

Chariots Sauna Shoreditch was evacuated Wednesday evening due to a
massive fire in the building next to it.

[Source: DiscoDamaged [...]

I took Gattaca out last night and finally watched it, only six years after it came out. I was rather curious, the little I knew about the plot (traditionally conceived - hence imperfect - man fights his way among his genetically manipulated fellow beings) had raised my expectations.

I was disappointed. I must have imagined it [...]

The perfect Pride day present for the homosexualist who has everything: a set of Village People ducks keyrings.

Beat the bishop. Choke Kojak. Visit Rosie Palm and her five daughters. It's for your own good. (And no, it will not make you blind).

Gay Porn Blog (via GeekSlut). The title says it all. Probably best left for comfortable home browsing.

With three times more sand than last year (three tons), the Paris beach is something I'd love to see. Being fair-skinned with moles (burn baby burn) and easily bored by beach-bumming, I quite like the idea of a beach right smack in the center of town that I could go to for short periods of [...]

"The flowers of life come to everyone. One has to be ready not to miss them. Mine arrived after I was 90"

[Compay Segundo]

Latin music does not really do it for me. I can't therefore say I am a fan of Compay Segundo, who died on Sunday night aged 95.

I have a very fond memory of [...]

The king is dead. Long live the king.

Owing to the fact that my database is a mySQL version 3.mickeymouse, it only took Dr B. a little over four hours to migrate the existing comments to Movable Type.

Dr B. is a star. So is Movable Type. Happy happy joy joy.

There still is some minor tweaking to [...]

If your man asks to come and see you in the middle of a lazy Sunday afternoon, and then calls back to warn you that he's rather horny, do you a) change the sheets so that the bed can live up to the expectations or b) do not change the sheets because you know perfectly [...]

The Hollywood sign is 80 today. It originally spelled "Hollywoodland" and was erected to promote a new property development.

It cost 21,000 dollars and each of the original 13 letters was 30 feet wide and 50 feet tall. A giant white dot (35 feet in diameter, surrounded by 20-watt lights) was constructed below the sign to [...]

Dr B. has got a surprise in store for me. All I've been told is a place and time where I should be tonight, having already eaten and being slightly dressed-up (no vest, shorts and flip flops then).

Dying with curiosity. Will tell all - if it turns out to be something that can be shared.

update: [...]

The lovely quiet days are over. The two silent sisters who lived in the flat underneath ours have gone. They never made a sound, so much so that we often wondered if they were in at all during the weekends (they weren't) or in the evenings (they weren't). No music, no TV, no loud talking. [...]

So, for the first time ever an evicted contestant is voted back into the Big Brother house.

Are we sure it is the very same Mr Tickle though? Couldn't it be Phil (Jon's identical twin brother)? Now, that'd get me watching at last.

If there was such a test as Which Iranian conjoined twin are you?, I would definitely end up being Laleh.

I'd be the one wanting to be a journalist but accepting to study law to please her sister Ladan. The one who probably speaks perfect English but does not feel confident enough to utter a word [...]

They could have stopped there but no, the novelty had to be squeezed dry.
So ladies and gentlemen, it is with cringing pleasure that I introduce to you… Cheeky Holiday! (sung on Boney M's Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday tune - hey di hey di hoh).

Can't wait to see Romania's latest export on stage at Pride [...]