26

Nineteen year old Oliver Kingonzila was stabbed to death in Croydon, South East London, in the early hours of Saturday.

He is the 26th boy to be murdered in the capital this year; his death comes exactly two weeks after the fatal stabbing of 14 year old Shaquille Smith.

Oliver's story is grimmer than usual; his older brother died earlier this year of a heart attack, aged just 27. Oliver himself was a keen footballer, having been captain of the Barnet youth team. His manager called him "a gentle giant."

"He was bright-eyed, keen and eager to be a professional footballer. I remember on his first day of arrival he bashed around the first team players when we had a little game. Everyone stood back and was amazed by his power and strength and yet impressed by his gentle personality when he wasn't on the pitch."

Two 18-year-old boys have been arrested following Oliver's death.

LENSED: Wendell Lissimore

Never let it be said that the ka-os blog lacks a moral compass or a sense of community spirt, not to mention family values yadda yadda yadda. With that in mind, I feel bound to warn readers against the scandalous pictures of Wendell Lissimore at a particular blog, lest your young minds be warped.

DON'T LOOK! at his sinful, thrusting thighs...

BEWARE! his ripped abs...

TAKE CARE! against those dangerous, protruding nipples...

WATCH OUT FOR! his overpowering, sexual maleness...

Seriously, don't click on this link to see THESE pictures or THESE shots. Or these or these or these.

I'm off to confession.

Oraine Barrett

Rod 2.0 reports on Jamaican model Oraine Barrett's latest snaps, in which he's draped in the rags of Phat Farm (why didn't they spell Farm with a Ph too?)

Mr Barrett is different from other manikins because he has a distinctive facial scar. Lots of people like facial scars; it presents them with a fantasy of violence and brutality, without having to take the journey themselves (source: The ka-os School Of $2 Psychology).

Over at Rod 2.0 they're excited that Barrett's scar hasn't been airbrushed out ("it is very refreshing to observe some honesty in the fantasy-driven fashion industry"), but it seems to me that they're missing the point. Since when did serious tissue damage become a selling point for rags? Or could it be that the selling point is that Oraine Barret is being presented as a Big Black Buck, A-Brutal-Street-Thug-Who'll-Throw-You-Down-And-Drill-You-With-His-Big-Black-Dick.

Those crazy kids in the fashion industry, what! Knocking back glasses of champagne and snorting up lines of coke - and in doing so feeding the kind of crime they're fetishising. It's all quite ironic.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe Barrett is just a handsome man who happens to have a facial scar, and the world's suddenly such a wonderful, tolerant place and that doesn't matter anymore. Or maybe it really is as f**k-up as I think it is.

On the surface, the pictures are sexy. But what they stand for makes me sick. Sorry, Phat Farm, but I don't buy it.

25

A fourteen year old boy has become the 25th teenage victim of violent crime in London this year. He was stabbed in the stomach on Saturday night in Hackney.

He died this morning.

His death comes less than a week after the murder of 18 year old Charles Junior Hendricks.

On 31st December last year, I wrote a blog entitled 25 Teenagers Who Died Before They Lived, which listed the 24 boys, and 1 girl, shot or stabbed in 2007. It's only August 31 and we've already equalled 2007's total.

The Metropolitan police are seeking witnesses to Saturday's murder: “Police were called at approximately 11.46pm on August 30 to St Thomas’s Place to reports of a male assaulted. The male, a 14-year-old boy, was taken to an east London hospital suffering a single stab wound to the stomach. He was pronounced dead at 8.12am on August 31. We believe we know the identity of the deceased but await formal identification before naming him. Next of kin have been informed. A post-mortem is scheduled to take place at midday on 1st September at the Royal London Hospital. It is believed that the two victims had been involved in an altercation with a group of youths prior to being assaulted. No arrests have been made.”

UPDATE: 01/09/08. The boy has today been identified as Shaquille Smith.

Being Gay In Iraq

Back in July we heard how young gay men in Iraq were being raped and murdered. Newsweek has more on the subject, with grim stories of Shiite militiamen hunting gays before raping and killing them. Male on male rape isn't a homosexual act, you see.

Iraqi LGBT, a London-based organisation, says 430 gay men have been murdered there since 2003. I'd hazard a guess that that's a conservative estimate.

The plight of gays in the beleaguered nation goes largely unreported and the world turns a blind eye. Even the United Nations human rights office thinks the question's just too hard.

Check out Iraqi LGBT here.

Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild

Gay cinema is amazing, and I don't just mean the efforts of the French, the Italians, the Chinese, the Israelis and even the Nigerians. The English can toss out the occasional gay masterpiece, too.

Surprisingly enough, Americanites can too, as anyone who's seen Mysterious Skin will attest. And I have high hopes for the forthcoming movie version of Noah's Arc.

So who watches gay cinema, exactly? Most of my gay friends and aquaintances don't, and I suspect it's mostly women and the dreaded liberal middle classes (in between bouts of coke snorting and civilised dinner parties).

The release of Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild hasn't met with much approval by the mainstream press, but they seem to be missing the point. "What ever happened to gay style and flair?" asks the New York Times. Well, Mister Times, not every fag is blessed with it. (Style and flair, that is).

I wasn't a big fan of Another Gay Movie, to which AGS:GGW is a sequel; it was a trashy 90 minutes with only Matthew Rush and Darryl Stephens holding my attention. It was a gay version of brain-dead American crap like American Pie et cetera.

And that's the whole point.

The beauty of Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild is that we can. Five, ten years ago, would there be a movie like this? It's fun, mindless nonsense that we can tune out to, be grossed out by, laugh, grimace and rail against. We deserve the freedom to be truly awful - breeders do it all the time, and so can we.

Here's to a second sequel - and if you're oblivious to worthy gay cinema, it is out there: you just haven't found it.

Shirts & Skins

Oh my gosh! Black gays and white gays and Latino gays in a TV show together. In shocking news sure to rock the foundations of gay media, Logo series Shirts & Skins is waving two fingers at this self-imposed apartied. From Queer As Folk to Noah's Arc we're only ever black or white, and never the twain shall meet. Only the brilliant Metrosexuality embraced diversity, featuring characters that represent the true kaleidoscope of humanity - not just the insular Snow Whites and haughty Nubian princesses of Folk and Arc. Shirts & Skins isn't a groundbreaking drama though, it's a reality show. That probably means RAPID CUTS! Scripted talking heads - AND! Dramatic music smothering everything... This is American reality telly, after all. Here's what Logo have to say about it all: "Shirts & Skins follows the true-life story of the San Francisco Rockdogs, a young all-star basketball team who must reunite to uphold their city's three-generation legacy of international gay games gold medal, and national tournament wins. After their last gold in 2006, the team fell apart, only to be rallied back together by their founders to defend their title at the upcoming National Gay Basketball Championship in Chicago. When the Rockdogs join together as family, they win. So will this new generation of talented players be able to put aside their interpersonal differences, love lives, and late night rumbles in time to get their game on and bring home the championship?"

24

On it goes.

Charles Junior Hendricks, 18 years old, was stabbed to death in Walthamstow, North London, on Sunday. A 19-year-old and a 17-year-old have been arrested.

He is the 24th teenager murdered in London this year. The news caused barely a ripple in the frenzy of Olympic flag-waving this weekend. No doubt the media are saving the superlatives and the finger-pointing for no. 25.

Weda Campbell, Charles' grandmother, said: "He was a beautiful boy, I'm telling you this from the heart not because he was my grandson, but because he was a very good boy."

24 beautiful boys are dead this year. Who cares? Who remembers?

Racial Purity and Deformed Mutants

How many of you own a pedigree dog? A Cocker Spaniel, a Husky, a Dalmatian? Or for the ladies amongst you, a Chihuahua? I guess you feel pretty proud of yourself, with your pure breed canine - no ugly mongrel for you, right? Well, this might come as a shock, but what you really have there is a deformed, disease-prone mutant with a life of suffering ahead of it: and it's your fault. The BBC has exposed the dark underbelly of pedigree dog breeding and the horrific consequences of decades of inbreeding. Three quarters of the dogs in the UK are thought to be pedigree and there are some two hundred different breeds - each with their own set of problems. Labradors are beset with joint and eye problems. Golden Retrievers face an alarmingly high rate of cancer, whilst Boxers suffer brain tumours and a rate of epilepsy twenty times that of humans. Rhodesian Ridgebacks have tiny holes in their skins that form direct channels to bone, tissue and organs. Bulldogs can't breed or give birth without human intervention. Cavalier Spaniels are plagued by brains that are too big for their skulls. In human beings, it's generally accepted that reproduction between mothers and sons, and brothers and sisters, et cetera, is a bad idea. But for some reason the practice has been encouraged - indeed, enforced - in canines. The result is that pedigree dogs have only 10% of the genes they had forty years ago. There's around 10,000 Pugs in the UK, yet amongst those 10,000 dogs, there's the equivalent gene pool of only 50 individuals. The faces of Pugs are now so flat that the animal damages its eyes when it bumps into things. It wasn't me describing pedigree dogs as deformed, disease-prone mutants. That's the opinion of the RSPCA's (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Chief Vet: "What I see in front of me is a parade of mutants. It's some freakish, garish beauty pageant that has nothing to do with health and welfare." He's talking about the glamorous world of dog shows, and Crufts in particular. Crufts is described as the world's greatest dog show, and is organised by the Kennel Club. The Kennel Club publishes the Breed Standards, which breeders follow religiously; the Breed Standards dictate the qualities dogs must display in order to win at Crufts. These qualities are purely cosmetic - Boxers must have "massive" heads, Pugs curled tails, sausage dogs short legs - and dogs are bred for these qualities alone, with no regard for their quality of life or long term health. Just look at the footage of German Shepherds at Crufts, unable to walk properly because their hind legs are so ludicrously short in comparison to their front legs. In the UK, £10 million a week is spent by pedigree dog owners on vet fees. It costs half as much to insure the health of a mongrel as it does that of a pedigree dog: that's because mongrels live longer and have considerably fewer health problems. Here's something else to ponder on: Crufts was born out of Eugenics, the doctrine that sought to genetically improve mankind by breeding the best with the best. Mixing of the races was strictly forbidden (James Earl Hardy would approve) so the human race could be purged of undesirable traits. The movement found its ultimate champion in Adolf Hitler. You can still see the BBC documentary, Pedigree Dogs Exposed, here. If the footage of Boxers having epileptic fits doesn't sicken you, nothing will.

23

Nilanthan Murddi has become the twenty-third teenage murder victim in London this year. The seventeen year old was stabbed in the throat in Croydon on Saturday. But his death wasn't caused by a fellow youth - police are seeking a Caucasian man in his early twenties or early thirties. It's thought the killing could be racially motivated.

Since the start of last year, a total of fifty teenagers have died violently; almost without exception, it's been at the hands of other teenagers.