*AFGHANISTAN: A men only audience "chanted and whistled" as bodybuilders in "tiny, skin-tight underpants... showed off their painstakingly toned muscles, contorting their bodies and tensing their metallic bottoms, backs, thighs and stomachs. Nothing gay there, then.
*You can guarantee that the boys on stage will be getting more sex than the skinny/flabby couch potatoes in the audience. That's because "muscle-bound men tend to have more sexual partners than slender men". We know this thanks to boffins at the University of Pittsburgh, led by an evolutionary psychologist, no less. But there's a downside to all that bouncy muscle sex - a poor immune system and increased appetite.
*SYRIAS'S Got Gays: and they're not prepared to remain invisible. The urban middle-class are the "driving force behind homosexual emancipation". So they can't be all bad, then.*INDIA'S first (and only) SGL publication, Bombay Dost, is relaunched; homosexuality remains illegal in India.
*A UGANDAN man forcibly deported by the Home Office last year has been allowed back by High Court judges. The full account of John Bosco Nyombi's seven-year ordeal is horrific.
*NORTHERN IRELAND sees 64% of SGL hate crimes going unreported.
*UK SGL hate crimes have increased by 9% in the last year; in Manchester, anti-gay violence has surged 64%. Ee, it's grim up North.
*AUSTRALIA: A "pompous little pansy prig" and a "pillow biter". Welcome to Australian television.
*US: Writer Taylor Siluwé is appalled at the vitriol leveled at a sweet young fem boy's YouTube dance moves - and some of it comes from Us.
*US: Gay men do incrementally better at college than straight men.
*ISRAEL: The boys (and girls, I suppose) in Tel Aviv get their very own Gay clinic.
*"They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal." The Boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has turned his back on the Buddhist order.
*Food manufacturers are bulking out chicken breasts with a solution comprised of bone and gristle from pigs and cows. Apparently, it's not bad for us. Well, that's okay then.
*Could we be the generation that runs out of fish? By 2048, all global fish populations will have totally collapsed. So what does Mitsubishi do? Hoovers up even more and increases freezer capacity. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, eh?
*Singing whale!
*Greedy whale!
*Dead whales!
*Big ant!
*See like a bug.
*Spot the difference? Geddit, geddit? Oh, why do I bother...
*Remember the gay penguin couple they tried turning straight by importing some Swedish birds? All's well that ends well - the boys fostered an egg and are now the proud parents of a chick. How chic.
*How to Come Out on Facebook. Helpful advice like... Good: Noting your relationship in your profile. Not so good: Tagged photos of you and your partner in matching leather harnesses.
*But if you do come out on Facebook, will anyone care? Maybe not. (Well, a "friend" you've never actually met might poke you, I suppose.) Boffins think that the bombardment of information - from 24-hour news, mobile phones, emails, ka-ostheory and social networking sites - is too much for the brain's 'moral compass' to process. "When everything is screaming at us, we start withdrawing so that normally nice people become unempathetic," says psychologist Felix Economakis. I am frequently unempathetic, myself.
*"Women are taking over the health service!"
*Stem cell contact lenses that cure blindness.
*Some 1.1 million American men and 800,000 women (aged 25 to 45) have never had sex. And cor blimey, gay males are 11 times more likely to be virgins than heterosexuals. Who would've thought. Anyone know a real virgin?
*The ten best conspiracy theories.
*And if that doesn't tickle your fancy, how about the 20 Sexiest Ugly People. For some reason, neither 50 Cent, The Game, Flo Rida, Usher, nor Peter Andre make the list.
*Introducing the FlavaMen Blatino Awards, "created to honor clubs, adult performers and websites devoted to ethnic erotica". The awards will be held during Atlanta Black Pride later this year; voting is open until 30th June. Jovonnie Jovonnie Jovonnie! You can also vote for Best Blog (I assume it refers to those related to erotica) - Tré Xavier's controversial, opinionated mess of a blog gets my vote.*Collin O’Neal is quitting the adult entertainment industry for mainstream Hollywood. "I am... very tired of how the industry is being destroyed by free porn sites and the proliferation of porn sites being thrown up," he told AVN. It's a real loss - his movies are a rare confection, sampling every flavour of man Planet Earth offers.
*On that note, here's this week's Cristiano-Watch! (He features so regularly I thought I'd give his entry a name.) The glossy semisynthetic plastic-product slut machine has been snapped getting an abdominal massage from some fat bald geezer in Sardinia. He's got a pink flower behind his ear and tight white shorts that I can just picture myself burying my-*AHEM! Moving on...
*PLANES! Well, this is pretty revolting: the world’s largest private jet. Why?
*TRAINS! Okay, so let me get this straight: woman decides to spread herself all over the tracks with the help of a high speed train, but the train somehow manages to miss her. So she gets up and walks away. Why?
*Escape from (baking) New York. Thank God I was only there for winter.
*What is Crime? - a photographic competition about harm, injustice and crime in three categories: Environment, Finance and Violence...*Ikea opera!
*Tetris is 25. "The addictive rhythm of its task-by-task race against time was an early sign of our inbox-clearing, Twitter-updating, BlackBerry-thumbing world to come..."
*Has implicit bias - what you or I might call racism - really fallen 90 per cent thanks to Barack Obama? Maybe, maybe not...
*Pet Shop Boys special edition.
*Free Bow Bow! Yippie-yo yippie-yay...
*LL Cool J looks like he could use some free too. Free willy, that is.
*"I got a situation to address. For everybody that watched that video — and it wasn't really for you to watch — I clearly said, 'Strictly for the ladies,' " Pretty Ricky's Spectacular protests (too much). Then he goes and has sex with a chair.
*Three sexy naked boys and a boombox loose on the streets of Paris.
*Props for the straights: gay men.
*Can't hear what they're saying on TV? I said, CAN'T HEAR WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ON TV? Well you're not alone.
*Coronation Street's William Roache - who has played Ken Barlow since 1960 -
*EastEnders has employed its first adult disabled actor, David Proud.
*Thrilling extended trailer for Torchwood: Children of Earth released. Well, I'm excited!
*God help me, Big Brother is back. I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself. At least there's some eye candy this year: Charlie (left) is yummy (and he's fam), and I could stare at bisexual Brazilian Rodrigo's sunny face (right) all day long. Fingers crossed our two gay pretty boys end up under the famous dancing duvet. Or soap each other up in the shower. Or make a man sandwich with the African-American kid. Or-*GRRRRR... Can we stop getting off topic please? As I was saying...
*In America, 11 participants on reality TV shows have recently committed suicide.
*Millvina Dean, the last survivor of SS Titanic, 1912-2009.
*Danny La Rue, "the most glamorous woman in the world", 1927-2009.
