Hungry? How About Some Cow Stomach?

Some of the UK's favourite chocolate bars (or candy, if you're American) have, since 1st May last year, been manufactured using rennet. As you all know, rennet is a chemical found in calve's stomachs, and is used to make whey.

What's all the fuss about, you might ask? How many of us knew what was in our confectionary before this news broke anyway? Well, I don't know what's in most chocolate bars; in fact, I doubt many chocolate products contain much in the way of cocoa. But what I didn't expect to hear was that something as wholesome and innocent (ha ha) as a Twix or Snickers bar was pumped full of something out of a baby animal's guts.

Masterfoods, who make Twix and Bounty - as well as Mars bars, Maltesers and Bounty - say the new constituent is due to a change in sourcing ingredients. The Vegetarian Society has branded the decision "incomprehensible".

Incomprehensible indeed. At a time when consumers are increasingly concerned about what's in their food, you have to wonder: why?

Luc et moi

Now for something completely different. Who cares about flesh-eating death plagues from hell when there's cute dolls to play with, eh? By gum, if I don't get a Tyson doll by the end of the year I might as well be dead. Two preferably, to make twins. Enough of my sordid doll fantasies, however. I happened to stumble across this very sweet and Heart Warming blog - Luc et moi - and it ought to put a smile on the face of even the most cynical Bitch From Hell. 'Luc And Me' is a photographic project that uses figurines (dolls, to you and me) to represent two fictitious characters and the bonds which link them. Awwww, bless. Oh, and they celebrate male beauty too, as Homosexuals are wont to do. The pictures are genuinely charming, and jolly well done. Go on, have a look. And expect to see my Tyson twins in some adventures of their own sometime soon...

We're All Going To Die

That's the headline splashed across newspapers this week. Actually, that's not true - as usual, the Mainstream Media is more interested in irrelevant nonsense like politicians not declaring donations (yawn) and the Princess Diana inquest (shoot me please, I can't stand anymore). Who cares about the latest pandemic, eh? The potential pandemic is USA300, a strain of the MRSA bug (you know, the one the Mainstream Media loves to use to sling mud at politicians - "the Prime Minister isn't on his hands and knees scrubbing hospitals so taxpayers are dying" blah blah blah). The details are frightening. How does a flesh-eating form of pneumonia grab you? Tennis ball size lumps on the skin? Or fatal blood poisoning? That's what one in 588 people in the gay ghetto of Castro, San Francisco, are experiencing. USA300, you see, is said to be spreading in the gay community, and it's resistant to many antibiotics. It's spread through casual skin contact (and we all know the gays are partial to a bit of casual skin contact), with drug users and people involved in contact sport also at risk. Sound familiar? HIV come to mind at all? (HIV, in case you've forgotten, is that olden days disease that's been cured, which is why everyone is going bareback). But the Terrence Higgins Trust, had this to say: "This is not the new HIV. What we are seeing is the emergence of an infection that can be passed on through close skin to skin contact, including sex. It is worrying that one in ten of the American cases are resistant to antibiotics, but most cases are treatable." USA300 is a blessing for bible-bashing, God-fearing Americans. ChristianNewsWire (a site I visit daily, as you can imagine) sees the infection as confirmation that that geezer with a beard (he's called God, apparently) has it in for us bad, wicked Homosexuals. "Why won't the media make the common-sense connection between these frequent stories about (male) homosexual behavior and disease - and the notion that society should not celebrate homosexuality and bisexuality?" Society celebrating homosexuality? It'll be a cold day in hell.

The Sun Will Explode

I have a Dell desktop, the specificications of which I knew only when I read them on the order page, and which I instantly forgot when I clicked Confirm Order. (I also have a laptop of some description that stopped working for no apparent reason, but which I'm embarassed to get repaired due to the possibly abnormal volume of porn contained on it.)

Golly though, I'd love my computer to look like this:

Oh, and you wouldn't, I suppose? Bah! Maybe you haven't seen the classic, pessimistic SF space opera Blake's 7, in which everyone was a bad guy, even the good guys, and in which the super-computer Orac looked exactly like the box of delights above.

See? So, the logic is, wouldn't it be awesome if my computer looked just like Orac? Don't get it? Grrr... why do I bother?

Such things as the transparent PC case pictured above are sold by Logisys, as well as "cold cathode super deluxe combo kits, liquid neon thunder patterns, and 5 LED lazer lights" (according to Tech Digest).

That same site, Tech Digest, has news of all manner of cool gadget thingumys, like this 150" Panasonic telly:
Oh-er, it's a big 'un, innit? Perfect for watching Matthew Rush, or even David Attenborough (and no, I don't know who of the two I'd most prefer to spend some time with). If your mind is as filthy as that, you might like this accessory for your iPlod - er, sorry, I mean iPod - or even your mobile phone. Yes indeed, it's what it looks like - a vibrating cock ring, if you please.

Apparently, it activates when you receive a text or call, and even on demand, should the need arise. Well, you just don't get that sort of malarkey with MiniDisc, that's all I'm going to say.

Of course, none of this will matter if the sun explodes in 2011 or 2012. Boffins at The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that the sun is going into a new cycle of sunspot activity. The worst case scenario is that power grids will collapse, GPS systems will fail (bad news for planes, trains and automobiles, I suppose) and mobile phone networks will go down (that's a bad thing, is it?)

It's only a possibly, maybe, kids, so don't go out and have loads of unprotected sex because you think civilisation is going to end in a few years. In any case, we'll probably all be flooded out by then thanks to the Americans and the Chinese exacerbating global warming, or be in little bits at the hands of some Islamic nutjobs...

Happy 2008!

The Enemy Within

Straight people in gay clubs? It's wrong. Uh uh. Not on my watch.

In May last year, I could barely contain my joy when news broke that a pub in Australia (of all places) had won the right to bar heterosexuals from its premises. The management of the Peel Hotel in Melbourne felt that heterosexuals were creating a poisonous atmosphere, you see, as heterosexuals are wont to do.

Last night I was belatedly catching up on the rather good blog of Christian St. Croíx, whose myspace url I'd insert here if I could see it, but I can't because he has one of those nice-to-look-at-but-totally-user-unfriendly flash pages. So I can't.

In any case, Christian penned an entry last month entitled "The Truth (According To Me) About Straight Guys & Gay Clubs," which raised my hackles with its revelations of straight guys in gay bars and their wrong-doings.

I'm a separtist when it comes to sexuality. The few straight friends I have aren't my own - I know them through my boyfriend or through work, which doesn't really count. Christian's tale brought to mind the thoughts of one of those straight friends. She's a white French girl, and he's African-American. I like them both.

He once said over dinner that he was brought up to believe that white people are guilty until proven innocent, a philosphy I don't disagree with, and which I also felt was applicable to the issue of sexuality. It's war out there - race, sexuality, class - and we need to recognise our enemies. For those of you who insist on bringing your straight friends into gay venues, ponder on this for a monent: what do you think your straight friends say and do when you're not around? When he and she are alone; when the straight boys are bonding together? Who is the joke, the figure of fun, the pantomine, the circus freak?

You are.

Straights rolling up to the local gay bar to laugh at the freaks? It's not my idea of friendship.