THE WEEK ACCORDING TO GARÇON STUPIDE

*Who will be crowned Mr. Gay Brazil 2009? The finals take place in São Paulo tomorrow. You can vote here. (22-year-old Hugo Santana, pictured left, gets my vote.)

*Every 24 hours, two gay people are kicked out of the military.

*And whilst Don't Ask, Don't Tell cuts short the careers of gay men in the military, this is what the straights are getting up to at U.S. State Department facilities in Afghanistan.

*Last month, we heard about Joseph Rocha's time in the U.S. Naval canine unit: "My Navy peers often harassed me, insisting the extra training I did with Marines was a search for sex partners. Once, I was hog tied to a chair, rolled across the base, and left in a dog kennel with feces. I was forced to simulate sex acts, on camera, to armed service members with trained attack dogs in the room. Men with hoses sprayed me down in full uniform." Youth Radio have a disturbing update on the story.

*Anthony Woods, the openly gay Iraq veteran, has lost his bid to be elected to Congress.

*Remember the racial hoo-ha over the failure to stop Proposition 8 (here, here and here)? A new study has shown that levels of education were five times more important than race in "determining whether a county's residents favored [sic] the ban."

*Rod 2.0 - the popular black/Latino blog - posts pictures of a white boy, and some of the site's readers are up in arms. "I just knew this blog was full of closet snow queens..."

*"Men's Vogue refused to publish Marc Jacobs ad starring gay couple." The magazine was closed late last year. Aw.

*Bet ya didn't see this one coming: Hugh Hefner, gay rights advocate! "In 1955, shortly after founding the magazine, Hefner published a short sci-fi story, The Crooked Man, by Charles Beaumont, in which homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals were persecuted. In response to the flood of angry letters he received, he wrote: "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong too."

*In the ends? Then here's Southern California's 5 Gayest Beaches. (Pictured: Ricky Martin and friend... at the beach.)

*The Flamingo Resort - one of the largest exclusively gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender luxury resorts in the U.S. - opens for business.

*Remember the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck? It's a finalist in the Vendy Awards. Sweet.

*India: "The government will not oppose the Delhi High Court judgment which legalised homosexual acts between consenting adults". Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was repealed in July, decriminalising homosexuality.

*This weekend saw Namibia's first LGBT rights march.

*Elsewhere in southern Africa, Johannesburg will this week host the LGBT film festival Out in Africa; Dykeumentary, South Africa's first full length lesbian feature film, will have its world première there.

*Sadly, Eudy Simelane, a high profile lesbian footballer, won't be there to see it. She was raped and murdered by three men, but South African courts have ruled out homophobia as a motive.

*Brazilian gay magazine DOM has ceased circulation, due to problems finding advertisers willing to support a gay publication in Brazil. Popular Brazilian blog Made in Brazil says, "It upsets me to see that the same global companies which advertise on international publications such as Out and Têtu refuse to advertise on gay publications through its Brazilian branches. If I were to list the Brazilian brands which refuse to lend clothing to a gay publication, you would be surprised."

*Thai Olympic silver-medal boxer Worapoj Petchkoom has been suspended by the Amateur Boxing Association of Thailand for appearing in his underwear on the cover of Stage, a Thai gay rag. "I am straight, with a girlfriend," Petchkoom protests. "I meant to show my six pack - not my private parts." Not to worry dear, there's not much to see.

*Shanghai prosecutors have charged a male prostitute with "having unprotected sex while knowing he had AIDS". The "incidence of HIV/AIDS cases involving men who have sex with men has risen fivefold in Shanghai over recent years".

*Explosives were thrown into a gay bar in Rome on Tuesday.

*On Thursday, hundreds protested against the rising tide of anti-gay violence in the Italian capital.

*File under 'A Word To The Wise': This is what happens when an older gay man becomes infatuated with a confused bisexual kid.

*Who let the... er, pigs, out. Farmer Fonge did. There'll be no sex shenanigans in these woods!

*Stephen K Amos (above left) wants to know: 'Where are all the other gay black comedians?'

*Microsoft's dodgy photoshop job last week was bad enough, but DDB Brasil have managed to top that with this 9/11 ad for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), of all things. Bad taste doesn't even cover it.

*WWF strongly condemns Brazilian ad and apologizes to 9-11 victims and families.

*The print ad is bad enough, but the disturbing television ad is genuinely upsetting. To make matters worse, the DDB Brasil submitted it to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June, hoping for an award. The mind boggles.

*America on fire (above and below): Wildfires in Southern California (The Big Picture, 41 pictures).

*The boy
who cries blood.

*The Afro-Brazilian woman with three albino children.

*Rio de Janeiro is the world's happiest city.

*The Big Picture: Two Mongolias (33 pictures).

*Tea prices set to rise 15%.

*Disney buys Marvel; eBay sells Skype.

*"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green," says Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japan's Prime Minister-elect, Yukio Hatoyama. In addition to her abduction by aliens, she has travelled to the planet Venus, and knew Tom Cruise in a former incarnation. She says.

*30-year-old Joel Hicks (above) wins theWorld Gravy Wrestling Championship. In pictures.

*This woman feels like she's banging her head against a brick wall. She must feel like she's climbing the walls... Oh, I give up.

*The Carbuncle Cup: the ugliest buildings in Britain. In pictures.

*Last week, we heard how the Equality and Human Rights Commission were planning to take the British National Party to court for breaking the Race Relations Act. The BNP limits its membership to "ethnic groups emanating from the indigenous Caucasian race". The BNP has now said it will change its whites-only membership policy because it can't afford a legal fight over the issue.

*Conservatives showing their true colours: Oxford University Conservative Association has been told to change its name after Oxford University itself cut all ties to the organisation following a meeting in which "student politicians were urged to compete to see who could tell the most offensive racist joke".

*The Metropolitan Police face criticism over Form 696, a risk assessment form which asks venues about music genre, details of artists and performers attending. "There is an increasing atmosphere of the police harassing or, at least, making life difficult for organisers of music of black or Asian origin," says Sunny Hundal, editor of the political blog Liberal Conspiracy.

*Dizzee Rascal, the boy from Bow, isn't too thrilled about the effect the Olympics have had on East London: "All that 2012 stuff does my head in. I'm not even a little bit excited. I don't live in Bow, but I go back all the time and it is shit. The whole area is just a big building hole."

*Work has started on The Shard, which will be the tallest building in Western Europe when completed.

*And from the future, to the past... There are 40 abandoned stations on the London Underground network, some dating back more than 100 years... Video.

*Photographs of London streets taken 60 years apart.

*"Londoners are being asked to help design a new logo for the city to rival New York's "I ♥ NY" campaign."

*...So how about A Brand for London?

*The four-year-old boy who has memorised every bus route in London.

*Cutie snapped at the SuperGay BUTT magazine party at Dalston Superstore.

*The Independent newspaper should be sold or closed immediately.

*If you think the WWF ad (see above) is bad, then how about this AIDS-awareness clip? It's by German advertising agency das comitee...

*Meanwhile, boffins have discovered antibodies that prevent HIV from causing full-blown AIDS. It's hoped the find could be the road map to a vaccine. More on this story at NewScientist.

*An injectable biogel, comprised of synthetic and natural chemicals, "spurs on the growth of neural stem cells which in turn repair damaged nerves" and could help "wounded soldiers and car crash victims recover from brain injuries".

*Big thighs (like these, left). Mmm... And boffins agree. Sort of. They've discovered that people with thinner thighs are at greater risk of heart disease.

*How to declutter the brain - and why we should.

*Can the sex lives of gorillas explain human monogamy?

*13 more things that don't make sense: including Morgellons disease, the Bloop and hybrid life.

*Our planet weeps.

*"One of the world's top climate modellers says we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."

*How about a farm for a single person? Introducing the Oogst 1 Solo.

*50 things that are being killed by the internet: including Listening to an album all the way through, Trust in Nigerian businessmen and princes, Watching television together and, er, Sarah Palin.

*With 70 per cent of UK homes now online, why does anyone still use internet cafes?

*How 20 popular websites looked when they launched - and the oldest surviving web pages.

*So how about a universal translator for web browsers?

*Flickr changes its takedown policy in response to the "Obama as Joker" episode.

*What's really up with Google's UFO logo?

*This is steel Velcro, specially designed for use in virgin's undergarments.

*The world's best wildlife photographs.

*This giant Rhodesian Ridgeback has adopted a tiny pot-bellied piglet, in Germany. Lovely.

*Not cute enough? How about the Can't Get Up puppy?

*How about animal pictures of the week? (30 pictures .)

*Rare albino otter spotted in Scotland.

*Pain-free animals? Progress in neuroscience and genetics makes it a possibility. And given the next story you'll read, it's absolutely essential...

*"The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards. These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine. In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle." Can you watch the following clip? After reading that, I can't. Towleroad has more .

*It's that time of the century: the fag end of the decade. "
Music has migrated to the ever expanding margins where everyone's individual tastes can be catered for, but there has been a collapse in the middle, so that there is no readily identifiable stream of popular music that we all share and that will come to characterise the decade in pop history books..."

*YouTube has ended its UK block on music videos after parent company Google reached an agreement with songwriters' association PRS.

*Irish rockers The Cranberries announce a reunion tour. The Nineties really are back...

*Trey Songz is pulling out all the stops to flog his new album.

*"If we were a purely commercial channel, we may have taken a slightly different decision. We might have said, 'You know what, there's probably another two or three years in it, if we're getting two million, that's fine. We'll have that. Thanks very much'." E4 controller Angela Jain talks Big Brother.

*Channel 4 boss Julian Bellamy also weighs in on the post-mortem. Video.

*...And it's all over. The final show's highlights, in order, from start to finish. What a summer. Just brilliant.

*EastEnders gets new titles for the first time in 10 years.

*KITT is the most popular TV car of all time.

*Ricky Whittle (left) promises to show us his tits - and parade around in a thong - on Strictly Come Dancing. Even that couldn't make me watch.

*Idris Elba - perhaps better known to many of us as Stringer Bell - will play the titular role in the BBC's six-part thriller Luther.

*The must-see film of the year, the hugely anticipated Do Começo Ao Fim (that's From Beginning To End to those of you speaking the Queen's English) makes its debut at the Première Brasil film festival (in Rio, September 24 - October 8). Please, someone buy me a plane ticket.

*The 100 Most Annoying Things. For some reason, the revolting, guttural yelps, grunts and screams of female tennis players don't make the list. Neither is Jasmyne Cannick. Strange.

*The Laptop Compubody Sock. You want one, don't you?

*Finally... This is Interlace, a residential project for Singapore, consisting of 31 interconnected six-storey blocks stacked around communal gardens, containing 1,040 apartments. Stunning.

Issue 25 of The Week According To Garçon Stupide was built from articles collated during the week 30 August-05 September 2009.

On the cover: Rob Evans, by Stewart Shining.

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