THE WEEK ACCORDING TO GARÇON STUPIDE

*Let's open this week's edition with the story that just gets better every week: Flava Works offers Spectacular, lead singer out of Pretty Ricky, $100,000 to get naked in the pages of its FlavaMen magazine. The company says: "FlavaMen magazine made the offer due to the company believing that even straight men can pose for FlavaMen magazine. The magazine's target audience is gay ethnic men of color, but many of its models do not engage in [same-sex] sexual acts or practice a homosexual lifestyle."

*PARIS: A kiss-in against homophobia:

*ISRAEL: Gay Pride Month in Tel Aviv, climaxing in "Israel's first, public, gay wedding ceremony".

*And Towleroad looks at Gay Pride celebrations in Shanghai, Zurich, and a bunch of American cities.

*With that in mind, does the Rainbow Flag Need a Facelift?

*POLAND: The British ambassador is undiplomatic; he gives gay rights leaders in Warsaw the UK Guide To Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender People And Their Rights, translated into Polish. The sheer cheek of it!

*USA: The Mormons think chemical castration is best for us. The opinion of your correspondent is that burning at the stake is best for them.

*USA: Were you "made homosexual because of a coach or a guidance counselor or some other male figure" who fiddled with you? I know plenty of people who would have liked to have been - I guess that's what you call chicken and the egg...

*Faces of Us, putting faces to the campaign for equality. Meanwhile, Lt. Dan Choi is lensed by Adam Bouska for the NO H8 campaign. Speaking of soldiers, The New York Times introduces us to A Gay Soldier's Husband.

*Prisoner Cell Block H: The Butch Wing. No, it's not a movie version of the TV show, it's a story about Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, where butch-looking women have been rounded up and put in a wing of their own to curb illegal sexual activity. Seems to me there's a flaw in the logic, somewhere.

*Are social networking sites killing the gay bar scene?

*JAPAN: The herbivorous ladylike men who are changing Japan. Well. That's not a sentence you're likely to hear in the queue at the Post Office, is it? You might do if your Post Office is in Japan, because the subject - soshoku-danshi (herbivorous male) - is the cause of much debate in that country.

*The riddle of flight F447.

*First his missus copped a feel of our old Queen. Now, her lord and master has gone and given the Israelis the hump (not that it takes much). Odds on Obama getting a size 11 chucked at him next time he's in Tel Aviv?

*WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! North Korea threatens to blow us all up. "Our nuclear deterrent will be a... merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country's dignity and sovereignty even a bit," they piped up cheerily last week. So there!

*And again: WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! If the Korean Workers' Party don't get us, Mother Nature is always up for a fight. You see, a supervolcano may be brewing beneath Mount St Helens. An eruption could spew out enough ash to block out the sun and cool our planet by several degrees Celsius.

*The total destruction of rainforest in Rwanda.

*The full life-cycle emissions of trains mean that they're worse for the environment than planes. Bet ya didn't know that!

*Problems? Sleep it off.

*It's a… oh, what's that word? It's on the tip of my tongue. It's...

*Have people nothing better to do? A giant inflatable tower to the moon, which, apparently, could be ready before a cable-based space elevator. Right then, okay. Good luck with all that.

*Are you an iPhone ibore?

*New York City's The High Line. Very cool.

*London isn't one of the world's top 50 'most live-able' cities. Vancouver comes out on top; Zimbabwe was ranked 140th out of 140. Now, I'm no professor of geography, but I'm pretty sure Zimbabwe is a country, not a city.

*This week's 48-hour strike - which brought most of the London Underground to a complete halt - was the result of interference by Tory Mayor Boris Johnson, who put the kibosh on a last minute deal to avoid industrial action. Didn't I tell you the fat Conservative cretin was trouble?

*The lobster that's one in 30 million.

*The frog that constantly changes colour.

*The hummingbird that's faster than a plane.

*The giant blue whale run over by a cargo ship.

*The Kermode Bear - "so rare it was once thought to be mythical" - is photographed in the wild.

*Zimbabwe's rhinos are being wiped out by demand from the Chinese.

*Eight brand new species, including the smallest known seahorse (Satomi's pygmy seahorse), the longest known insect (Phobaeticus chani), and bacteria found living in hairspray.

*Models.com reveals its Top 10 Iconic Male Models. They're all white and utterly nondescript.

*Oraine Barrett is the first black model on the cover of Brazil's DOM Magazine.

*Bisexual Brazilian cutey Rodrigo is favourite to win Big Brother.

*Cristiano-Watch: is he naked or isn't he? Is it falling out or isn't it? It's just all so confusing! And, bless, he defends his dress sense in The Sun, the newspaper for really thick straight people: "I can see why, if you weren't comfortable with your sexuality, you might not wear it. But I'm very comfortable so it’s not a problem for me. Men wear pink these days. OK, not many men wear flowers, but it's good to be different."

*Naked college boys wrestling! And this time real means real.

*I guess politics are just as dirty when you retire. Disturbing indeed...

*The world's most bizarre tattoos...

*No? Okay then, how about the 13 Best Urban Legends...

*...Or the Celebrities We Love To Hate? Of course, Cristiano is there: "Preening, arrogant, a serial dater of vacuous blondes and... A man of whom it can only be said: it's a good job you're pretty."


ISSUE 13

On the cover: The 17th Lifeball.

POSTSCRIPT
"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."