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Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art
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WE ARE DERANGED. We are psychopaths, sociopaths, up the garden path,' said Tanith. 'We are mad, and you are trapped with us.'"
Back in the 1990s when Doctor Who was off the air, Virgin Books - deciding there might still be some life in the brand - decided to publish original Doctor Who novels.
Following directly on from where the TV series left off, the books were written with an adult audience in mind, and were peppered (controversially) with swearing, violence, drink'n'drugs, sex and - in the first book, famously - paedophilia. One of the later novels was written by Queer As Folk impresario Russell T. Davies. Set on a London sink estate, Damaged Goods featured a middle-aged man who visited cruising grounds for gay sex whilst one of the Doctor's then-companions, straight buff blond cop-from-the-future Chris Cwej, was enticed into some boy-on-boy action of his own. Pretty astonishing developments for a series that started out as a kids show in 1963, and - despite the strides made under Davies between 2005 and 2009 - was this year desperately trying to offend no one and please Disneyophiles.
The Virgin novels were 90s cool, angst-ridden, edgy, challenging and very, very dark. They electrified my young mind, and fed my lust for words, for creativity, for drama. So much so that a short story I managed to get published featured a cruising sequence in a park based entirely on what I'd read in Damaged Goods - yes, Doctor Who taught me about cottaging.
The New Adventures were ahead of their time, and very much of their time. One of the last novels was entitled Eternity Weeps. Christ on a stick - what angst-ridden teenage boy wouldn't want to read a book with a name like that?
ka-os|theory presents the best of The New Adventures...
Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt
'Spare no sympathy for those creatures. They were witches, they deserved to die.'
"A coach crashes on the M40. All the passengers are killed. The bodies carry no identification; they are wearing similar new clothes. And each has a suitcase full of banknotes.
A country vet delivers a foal. The mare has a deep wound in her forehead. In the straw, the vet finds a tapered horn. In the darkening and doomed world known to its inhabitants as Tir na n-Og, the besieged humans defend the walls of their citadel Dinorben against mythical beasts and demons.
The TARDIS’s link with the Eye of Harmony is becoming ever more tenuous and is in urgent need of repair. But the time machine takes the Doctor and Ace to a village in rural Wales, and a gateway to another world."
Transit by Ben Aaronovitich
'Oh no, not again...'
"It's the ultimate in mass transit systems, a network of interstitial tunnels that bind the planets of the solar system together. Earth to Pluto in forty minutes with a supersave non-premium off-peak travelcard.
But something is living in the network, chewing its way to the very heart of the system and leaving a trail of death and mutation behind it.
Once again a reluctant Doctor is dragged into human history. Back down amongst the joyboys, freesurfers, chessfans, politicians and floozies, where friends are more dangerous than enemies and one man's human being is another's psychotic killing machine.
Once again the Doctor is all that stands between humanity and its own mistakes."
Sanctuary by David A. McIntee
The Doctor pointed at Bernice. 'The wench’s mind is addled,' he said. 'Arrest her before she spreads her ungodly heresy.'
"The TARDIS is caught in the gravitational field of a dark star. The Doctor and Bernice are forced to evacuate, and find themselves stranded in medieval France - a brutal time of crusades and wars of succession.
As the Albigensian crusade draws to its bloody conclusion, men inflict savage brutalities on each other in the name of religion. And the TARDIS crew find their lives intertwined with warring Templars, crusaders and heretics. While the Doctor begins a murder investigation in a besieged fortress, Bernice finds herself drawn to an embittered mercenary who has made the heretics’ fight his own. And they both realize that to leave history unchanged they may have to sacrifice far more than their lives."
Sky Pirates by Dave Stone
Avast, ye scurvies!
"Hoist the mainbrace, splice the anchor and join the Doctor and Benny for the maiden voyage of the good ship Schirron Dream, as it ventures into the fungral dark of air spaces occupied by the Sloothes - those villainous slimy evil shapeshifting monsters of utter and unmitigated evil that have placed a system under siege!
Watch Roslyn Forrester and Chris Cwej have a rough old time of it in durance vile! Meet the intrepid Captain Li Shao, and the beautiful if somewhat single-minded Sun Samurai Leetha t’Zhan! Roast on the dunes of Prometheus, swelter in the fetid jungles of Anea, swim with the Obi-Amphibians of Elysium and freeze off inconvenient items of anatomy on the ice wastes of Reklon in an apparently doomed search for the Eyes of the Schirron, the magickal jewels that will either save the system or destroy it utterly! Who will live? Who will die? Will the Doctor ever play the harmonium again? All these questions and many more will be answered within the coruscating, fibrillating pages of ... Sky Pirates!"
Damaged Goods by Russell T Davies
'Wherever this cocaine has travelled, it hasn't gone alone. Death has been its attendant. Death in a remarkably violent and inelegant form.'
"The Doctor, Chris and Roz, arrive at the Quadrant, a troubled council block in Thatcher's Britain. There's a new drug on the streets, a drug that's killing to a plan. Somehow, the very ordinary people of the Quadrant are involved. And so, amidst the growing chaos, a bizarre trio moves into number 43.
The year is 1987: a dead drug dealer has risen from the grave, and an ancient weapon is concealed beneath human tragedy. But the Doctor soon discovers that the things people do for their children can be every bit as deadly as any alien menace - as he uncovers the link between a special child, an obsessive woman, and a desperate bargain made one dark Christmas Eve."
Title quote: "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art." Susan Sontag, American writer.
What's wrong with Doctor Who?
John R. Gordon writes exclusively for ka-os|theory about this year's series of Doctor Who. Gordon wrote the screenplay for Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom
, as well as episodes of the TV series, the short film Souljah, and for the stage, Faggamuffin. His novels iclude the award-winning Skin Deep
, Warriors and Outlaws
, and Black Butterflies.
, as well as episodes of the TV series, the short film Souljah, and for the stage, Faggamuffin. His novels iclude the award-winning Skin Deep, Warriors and Outlaws, and Black Butterflies.
Parallel Lives Y
ou know when you have one of those moments where you find yourself in a parallel universe? I’ve been having that sensation in relation to the latest series of Doctor Who. Everyone I know personally who’s a fan found it deeply unsatisfactory. Everyone else out there in the world seems to absolutely love it. Yet despite reading blog after blog after review after review of raving enthusiasm for the new season I also read that ratings slid downwards as the season went on, suggesting a growing dissatisfaction among viewers. Is some sort of misperception filter in effect? If so, as in Amy’s Choice, is it working on us or on them? For what it’s worth, here’s my thinking on the subject…
Remember when Russell T. Davies stepped down from Doctor Who, leaving it in what seemed to be a safe pair of hands, Steven Moffat’s? I was hopeful at the time because Moffat was one of the best writers on the show, and also one who seemed to revel in what I believe to be Doctor Who’s true (or at least most successful) aesthetic – the fusion of science-fiction and horror achieved by writers like Nigel Kneale and H. P. Lovecraft, and of course within the show’s own history by Robert Holmes in the 1970s. It also seemed reasonable that Moffat, in order to renew it and add to its success, would address what viewers of all sorts had identified as the annoying and unsatisfactory features of Davies’ vision of the show.
The primary annoyance, picked up on by the tabloids as well as fans, was an excess of sentimentality and soap-opera-ish ‘relationship’ elements in many stories that tended to lead to denouements to episodes that were both lachrymose and repetitive. Many of us started to long for a dry eye in the house. This tendency repeatedly resulted in emotional resolutions to dramatic situations that outweighed logical or scientific ones. This inevitably weakened the show in terms of basic story-telling in a cumulative fashion, which was why so many of us went from loving Rose (and Billy Piper’s mostly wonderful performance) in Season 1 to sneakily – or not so sneakily – longing to see the back of her by the end of Season 3 – never mind 4.
The second annoyance – to me, and surely to the mass of more casual viewers - was an increasingly cumbersome weight of overarching cosmic back-story which oriented too many stories around the choices and actions of the companion, not the Doctor. This necessarily diminished the wonder of the show, as it tended to promote the reductive cliché that the wonders of the universe are as nothing when compared to the wonders of the human heart.
At the same time people were recognising that there was an embarrassing tendency for the Doctor to shout at any enemy he came across that he was the most powerful, dangerous person in the universe, that he always won, and that they should give up right now – and he would then go on to win, not because of any particular skill, courage or wisdom on his part, but because the show’s called Doctor Who, so he’s not going to be killed off, is he? Thus the Doctor’s grandstanding became a grotesque parody of its original intention, which was to show the pluck of a lone individual without any resources beyond his own intelligence in the face of insuperable opposition. This sort of approach inevitably created all sorts of weird narrative ‘cheats’ – most obviously the random assertion that some events in time are fixed, and so even the Doctor can’t change them. Unless he can. But then he can’t. Or he can. Or can he? (cf Waters of Mars).
I like a great deal of what Davies did with Doctor Who: so many initially really good choices – like the simple rooting of the show in the wonder of an ordinary working-class girl (revolutionary for Doctor Who just for that!) at being shown the illimitable strangeness of the universe. Like attending to what being with the Doctor does to his human companions in terms of the rest of their lives. Like including gay characters, about which even the Daily Mail didn’t complain. Like casting determinedly multiracially at all times. Like reworking the Doctor as the last of the Time Lords, a decision that was bold and a real success. And he often used elements of the suburban, domestic and soap-operatic to touching effect. But he’d expressed his vision by the end of Season 4, and he was right to go when he did.
Taking all of that into consideration, (and bearing in mind RTD’s stated decision to leave behind him as clean a slate as possible for his successor), my hope was that Moffat would pare out the increasingly-burdensome & overly-foregrounded season arc ideas, cut down the soapy sentimentality that had come to distort the story-telling, and go for punchy, suspenseful scripts that were clearly and efficiently told. I felt a twinge of unease when I heard he had mentioned bringing in a ‘Twilight’ style fantasy element, but put it aside – after all, I had very much enjoyed, say, Tooth and Claw back in Season 2. And what happened?
He magnified everything that seemed to me to be most unsatisfactory in the show to a level that made it near-unwatchable.
What I find odd is that no-one seems to have remarked on the painfully recycled nature of pretty much every single element in the new series. We have yet another girl companion with a nerdy boyfriend (Rose & Mickey); yet another girl who falls in love with the Doctor (Rose, Martha); yet another girl who is at some centre of series-arc convergence of meaningfulness (Rose, Donna); yet another girl who spends too much time being unimpressed with the Doctor (Donna); yet another starts-off-nerdy-but-becomes-heroic boyfriend (Mickey). The main change is that Amy’s romantic issues are now allowed to dominate the whole series as if her trivial relationship with Rory is the most important thing in the Universe. In the final episode, The Big Bang, Matt Smith’s Doctor even validates the notion that saving your fiancé is more important than saving the lives of billions of other people – a conclusion we’re meant to applaud, when in fact it’s selfish to the point of moral bankruptcy.
RTD was careful to pull back from an excess of convergence by including a decent amount of what I would call ‘normal’ stories – that is, tolerably self-contained ones - even creating a series of one-off companions for the final season in order to ensure the focus returned (in however annoyingly overblown a fashion) to the Doctor. In the new season virtually every story was about Amy’s arc, and as she became more ‘mysterious’ (no parents, no memory etc) the effect became more perverse and unsatisfactory. It’s the Doctor who’s meant to be mysterious; the companion is meant to be someone for the viewer to relate to.
I had heard Moffat say that he was ‘aiming the show at a younger audience’. By this I’d assumed he meant children, and in the first episode Matt Smith is at his charming best in his scenes with the ten-year-old Amy. Having such a young actor playing the Doctor meant that a child companion made sense in terms of dramatic and psychological balance, and everyone I know who saw that episode said they would have enjoyed it if she had joined Matt Smith’s Doctor in the Tardis.
What I didn’t think Moffat meant by a younger audience was teenage girls and pretty much no-one else. For myself I really couldn’t care less about Amy’s underpowered affiancement to her dull boyfriend. Her slatternly style, her happiness to run off with the Doctor on the eve of her wedding, and her blunt attempt to have sex with him, made it plain that her relationship with Rory was trivial, and the rest of the series had to try and claw it back from that obvious fact in order to make us care. It seemed to me entirely a straight man’s fantasy that sex-pot Amy would fall for cloddish but amiable Rory. But then one could argue that Captain Jack was RTD’s fantasy. What I found more troubling was that this focus on relationship issues must surely have bored, alienated and/or confused children. So many stories, (quintessentially The Lodger, itself narratively a rehash of The Girl in the Fireplace), ended up with the proclaiming of a romantic relationship as the deus ex machina that solved the plot dilemma. Surely this is something no pre-pubescent boy or girl would really relate to or be excited by; surely it would make them feel shut out. Why make such a choice?
Moreover, consider the confused morality of Vampires of Venice. Amy, despite knowing she will be marrying Rory ‘tomorrow’ tries to press the Doctor to have sex with her. He declines, stating (on no evidence at all) that she ‘really’ loves Rory, and so her wanting to fuck him is just – I don’t know; perhaps what my friend Mat Frasier, the Thalidomide Ninja, calls ‘freak fucking’. To correct her moral turpitude and prove (by psychological mechanisms that seem obscure to me) that really she loves Rory, the Doctor whisks them all off to plague-ridden Venice for a romantic weekend get-away. Because we all know that an expensive holiday saves a marriage, don’t we?
At this point vampire fish intervene and distract us briefly from the moral and psychological shambles of the set-up. The Doctor dispatches them (fairly callously) by climbing up a tower in the rain, (a clone of the denouement of a previous yarn, The Magic Lantern, and as someone else pointed out, the fish-vampires were the second fish-type aliens in this season). But my point really is that the confused emotional romance-focused set-up of the story is inhospitable to children. Amy doesn’t even have parents, never mind siblings, and nor does anyone else: only romance (or romantic-fraternal relationships in the case of the Doctor) seem to exist in Moffat-land.
Hence the inevitable River Song: the Doctor’s wife-to-be. Or is she? Or isn’t she? But how interesting is all this? Is it really that much more interesting than good, strong sci-fi/horror story-telling? Really? And to who?
A consequence of this misdirection is that poor Matt Smith has to stretch his characterisation between the - to my mind – mostly embarrassing Tennant-era ‘I always win’ grandstanding and a slightly wet ‘best mate at school you can talk to’ subordination to precocious Amy’s mundane relationship tribulations, which, we are constantly told, are what is ‘really’ important - a ridiculous, contradictory set-up with which to lumber the star of the show. I say ‘star’, but I think Moffat’s ultimate goal is to get rid of the Doctor altogether and just have Amy pouting in a short skirt and wittering on selfishly. It’s telling that the only episode that gave Matt Smith a chance to establish himself as a different Doctor from David Tennant, The Lodger, was the one where Amy was stuck in the Tardis for the whole thing. He did so very successfully, I thought: he was charming, quirky and endearing, and it was a pleasantly different light-comedic take on the Doctor’s alienness, even if it ultimately turned out to have the most reductive Moffat-inflected declaration-of-love-saves-all denouement of the entire season.
This endless privileging of Amy’s role in the show (including, in most of the early episodes, providing the crucial information to save the situation that the Doctor would normally uncover), left me with the sense that I have yet to see Matt Smith’s Doctor. I feel as if I’ve only watched the trailers and never seen the actual show, because the actual show would have given the Doctor so much more to do.
What’s discouraging is that there’s little hope that the next season will improve. We still have the crack and the mystery around the Tardis exploding dragging on, and River Song and her repetitive ‘spoilers’; none of this year’s new monsters were any good, and the ‘reimaginings’ of the old ones were simply dreadful – the bumper-car Daleks (that admittedly no-one likes), and the binocular Silurians. There is nothing subversive, surprising or in any way new about the new season, bar the sexualisation of, and over-focus on, the companion. Yet all of this has attracted rave reviews. Like I say, sometimes I find myself in a parallel universe…
Words and art: John R. Gordon.
Big lads, Mongolia, Bel Ami and heat
a news compendium
with a gay bias
issue 70 | July 2010 | FREE
issue 70 | July 2010 | FREE
||| Cover shot: Pablo Moraes in the July issue of Attitude, lensed by Vicente de Paulo. Made in Brazil has video from the shoot.||| Does racism trump homophobia? Eusebius McKaiser writes at the Mail & Guardian Online, "There is no hierarchy of prejudices and we must tackle the homophobia that has taken hold in government."
||| Religious extremism driven by anxiety, boffins say. Oh, not just stupidity, then?
||| Dirty old men fiddling with little boys is bad for the bottom line: The Vatican posts financial loss for third year in a row.
||| Disco bunny, A-Gay, Old Hand and Grand Old Gay: Your guide to gay stereotyping.
||| Exploitation and tokenism: Gay best friends, and the straight female parasites who use them.
||| Gay Pride around the world, in pictures. Left, Madrid. Right, Venezuela. 29 more pictures.||| The FIFA World Cup Final, between Spain and the Netherlands, was "the first ever between two countries that have marriage equality for same-sex couples", UK Gay News reports. None of those tolerant African countries, then? Ain't that a shame.
||| Massachusetts judge deals body blow to anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.
||| But could the impending Proposition 8 decision doom same-sex marriage?
||| Downtown Soccer Toronto launches sexy calendar to raise money for the UK-based Justin Campaign and its first Football vs Homophobia Initiative.||| Foul play in Cleveland Gay Games selection?
||| Gawker announce: LeBron James Is A Cocksucker. Sorry Gawker, I must have misheard? He's a what?
||| The best bad books you've never read. Bizarrely, none of James Earl Hardy's badly written thug/blaxploitation trash makes it onto the list.||| Speaking of distasteful things: The Pentagon is asking troops how gross it would be to shower with a gay person. Nice.
||| Rob Smith (right) - Iraq war veteran - has something to say about the survey: "I sometimes wonder how on earth I managed to suppress this desire for the five years I served in the U.S. Army. How I possibly managed to work, live, and go to war with all of these heterosexual soldiers when being gay obviously meant that my mind was utterly consumed with sexual fantasies about them at all times... Imagine my shock that there were private showers! In Iraq! It was almost enough to make me want to give my two weeks' notice right then and there." More about Rob here.
||| Be afraid: Anita Bryant is back.||| Beers and queers: what do Prohibition, the gay community and the religious right have in common?
||| This is Josh and Trent (left), a couple who were attacked by a gang of teenagers - the youngest of whom was 13 - in Atlanta.
||| Some justice for Terrance Aeriel (top right), Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey (bottom right), murdered the day before they were to attend New York City Black Gay Pride in 2007.
||| The Police Women of Memphis investigate a domestic violence call involving a gay male couple. Video.
||| Personal tales: A date with a blind guy.
||| Looking back at Broadway Bares... and looking ahead.||| Home Office gay asylum policy in tatters following legal defeat, UN condemnation.
||| Why the Supreme Court ruled against the deportation of gay asylum-seekers: Lord Rodger said, "What is protected is the applicant's right to live freely and openly as a gay man. To illustrate the point with trivial stereotypical examples from British society: just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates."
||| But Cameroon has denied the GBLT community faces persecution. BBC report includes video.||| Zac (right), a gay man from the United Arab Emirates, talks to PinkPaper.com about
||| Right-leaning tabloids like The Sun will use Zac's story as evidence that the government U-turn will be abused. Michael Cashman MEP writes about the damage the media does to legitimate claims for asylum by threatened members of the GBLT transgender community.
||| Sex, state and church: "'No room for gays' it trumpets, in a bizarre throw-back to the worst aspects of 1950s society."
||| Speaking of right-leaning, yob-lad-trapped-in-an-old-man's-body Jeremy Clarkson's been up to his old tricks on Top Gear. Journalist Alistair Campbell wrote on his blog about comments Clarkson made that were cut from the finished programme: "I cannot remember how the subject of homosexuality came up, but I said at one point that [Clarkson] wasn't very sound on gay rights. 'Oh yes I am', he said, adding, to more laughter from the largely adoring (of him) crowd, 'I demand the right not to be bummed'."
||| More disturbing was the complete apathy - and even endorsement - by so many members of the GBLT community on the Stonewall Facebook page. Your correspondent fought hard to point out that casual homophobia like Clarkson's provides a breeding ground for serious gay hate. Virtually no one agreed. Finally, Stonewall closed the 
subject with, "Well everyone we'll certainly take all your comments on board. Just to mention again we posted this as it was high profile and our Chief Exec had responded with a simple quote (in the article). We must also remember that casual homophobia (however it may be intended) can be v dangerous."||| The edited highlights will appear next week as part of our occasional Forum Or Against 'Em series.
||| Why imposing tougher sentences for hate crimes is not about creating privileged parts of society – it's about protecting the vulnerable. Right, 15-year-old Jason Mattison Jr., who was brutally murdered last year.
||| The gay community should help south Asians,
Balaji Ravichandran writes in The Guardian. "In the south Asian diaspora, being gay is often deeply taboo. It's not just the Forced Marriage Unit that should offer support."
||| Don't accept drinks from flirty, tactile Eastern Europeans, police warn.
||| A Liverpool woman sexually assaulted 5-month-old baby while her boyfriend took photos... Yes, more tales from the world of "normal heterosexual family units".||| London hospital used for "big budget" porn shoot.
|||Spain: More pictures from Madrid Pride, below.
||| Finland: Helsinki's attempts to become a leading gay tourism magnet have been thrown by recent homophobic attacks...||| ...And attacks could soon escalate.
||| Hungary: Pride continues to sweep across the world; Budapest Pride was held in a closed off street on Saturday; in pictures, left.
||| Russia: Two art curators are facing jail for a 2007 exhibition entitled Forbidden Art.
||| Syria's attack on gay people must end, Dan Littauer writes. "The crackdown on homosexuality in Syria is not about public safety, as claimed. It is a serious breach of human rights."
||| Mongolia's GBLT community face hate crimes and discrimination.||| China: In our last issue, we heard about a gay man in Beijing who planned to sue the Red Cross for refusing to take his blood. But a court has thrown out the lawsuit.
||| Taipei: The San Francisco of Asia? Left, last year's Pride parade in the city.
||| Tokyo: Elderly woman breaks student's nose for failing to give up bus seat.
||| This is scary: Boffins in South Korea have figured out how to "switch off" heterosexual urges in female mice. Where will that line of research lead, ultimately, I wonder?||| Gay Pride in Medellín, Colombia, above, and right.
||| Jamaica: "Tricked" into receiving sex from a cross-dresser, and outed on YouTube. Thanks to Corve DaCosta for the local flavour!
||| Watch Africa's Last Taboo, a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into the homophobia sweeping Africa by award-winning filmmaker Sorious Samura. There's interviews with many of the familiar faces we usually only read about, like an amazingly positive Tiwonge Chimbalanga (following his release from prison), and a heartbreaking glimpse of his former partner Steven Monjeza. One of the most important things you'll see on TV this year. Also available on YouTube.||| Uganda: In the footsteps of a gay man... A journalist's journey into the Ugandan gay world.
||| Uganda: Visit Icebreakers Uganda. Formed in 2004, the organisation supports GBLT Ugandans.||| Uganda terrorist attack: Well, it must be God's will, mustn't it? And with recent reports indicating that American missionaries were also caught up in the blasts, it couldn't be more just.
||| Uganda: Lou Engle makes a special appearance in the aforementioned Dispatches investigation. At OpEdNews, Daniel Vojir writes, "Lou Engle's goal of demonizing gays to extinction is working."
||| Uganda: Gay Ugandan activist decapitated, dismembered...
||| ...Or maybe not.
||| Fame, blame and shame: Jide Macaulay's story.
||| The constitutionality of anti-gay laws in Nigeria: "In a society where security of lives and property has become an issue, where corruption has completely destroyed public service, it is extremely hard to fathom the reasoning behind these anti gay laws," Gbenga Asiwaju writes for The Colorful Times, "How does murder (an act that affects the lives of other citizens and that is indeed dangerous to society) fit into
the same category as an expression of love conducted between two consenting adults?"
||| Nigeria: Undercover with the GBLTs of Lagos.
||| Iran: where bill posters are raped; 27-year-old Farrokh tells his story.
||| Now Amazon is selling groceries - but something just doesn't add up.
||| The London Tube station... that isn't.
||| Postcard from Ireland: Oscar Sibanda's story.
||| So your photo doesn't fit the narrative? Never mind - our old friend Madam Airbrush is here to help! Journalism - The Economist way.
||| The Big Picture: Summer is here (38 more pictures). Above, Pakistan, where temperatures have reached 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 Fahrenheit). Below, men jump into the Han River in China.
||| China heatwave, in pictures, below left and right.
||| New York heatwave, in pictures.
||| The Big Picture: Poverty within white South Africa, above (26 more pictures).
||| Boffins in the US "have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered".
||| Could teen anti-social behaviour really be caused by brain defects?
||| Meet Kyle Kane (left), the world's strongest boy. He's 12.
||| Why can't I get to sleep?
||| Marriage doesn't make relationships stable, boffins have decided. Now tell me something I don't know.
||| Another reason why it's good to be gay: Having kids makes people unhappy.
||| The male virginity test (might not be entirely accurate...)
||| Animal pictures of the week (29 more pictures).
||| Tiger population in terminal decline.
||| Birds sing at higher pitch to compete with city noise.
||| Birds that devote less time to their offspring engage in more same-sex behaviour: Parental care linked to homosexuality.
||| A rogue baboon has been euthanised after he repeatedly broke into houses and terrorised residents - often with the aid of juvenile baboons - in Cape Peninsula.
||| MySpace not for sale, its owners News Corp protest - as yet another relaunch is planned for latter this year. ka-os|theory started on MySpace in September 2006.
||| The recently out Angelo Garcia (left) talks to Towleroad. Big lad, isn't he?
||| Massive Attack, 25 years on.
||| Pecs, abs and rock'n'roll: Spend some time getting to know JLS.
||| Usher, you ain't been swapping nut again have you? Oh, it's milk? I see...
||| Was gospel artist Tonex snubbed by BET for being gay?
||| Prince steps up his war on the net.
||| Kylie Minogue - ugh. I despise her cynical, parasitical attachment to gay men (I wonder, does she give anything back, or just take the pink bucks and run?) but I felt it was important to share this picture of the knackered old skank "performing" at Heaven in London. I'm sure you'll see why. The original (without my additions) is at Towleroad, where there's also plenty of video.
||| Joe Manganiello (left) in last week's Us.
||| Betty White calendar, anyone?
||| Stephen Perry, the writer behind 80s cartoon ThunderCats, is now believed to have been murdered by his roommate.
||| British writing team Christian Martin and Darren Flaxstone talk to This is Bristol about their third film - Buffering - and the lack of support from the BFI for their earlier project, the hugely successful Shank.
||| What isn't mentioned is that the BFI - and the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - have an agenda dictated by women that puts gay men firmly in the background. Neither Shank nor Rikki Beadle-Blair's eagerly awaited KickOff (both young, relevant, sexy, male-centric films) were included in this year's programme. Check out the festival's front page and see how many carpet munchers you can spot!
||| The Outrate Online Short Film Festival has opened. Say the organisers: "The festival exists so that up and coming gay film makers can showcase their work to a global audience at no cost and with minimal fuss." Check out the films - and enter your own - here.
||| Shooting is about to start on the film version of Taylor Siluwé's Dancing With The Devil (ka-os|theory review here). says: "Despite the tough economy and even tougher funding raising, we're forging ahead - even if we have to live off Ramen noodles for months. Yes, it's that serious. As artists and writers and activists struggle to tell stories geared toward same gender love, our stories, any and all donations from the community are greatly appreciated. Whatever you can spare, know that you are helping to bring more and more of our stories to light." Support our arts: donate here.
||| Porn: An ideological weapon. Anthea Buys talks to Canadian filmmaker/pornographer Bruce LaBruce.
||| The future isn't now. Were you fooled by the Back To The Future hoax?
||| Towleroad has a fascinating interview with Bel Ami maestro George Duroy. On the subject of the fairly recent advent of barebacking in his films: "I don't encourage and I don't promote. If I did, I'd be much richer now. I promoted condoms and healthy sex for seventeen years in my films. In exchange for my goodwill, I lost about thirty percent of my
customers at one point. I am unaware of a single case of somebody paying for my films simply because I was promoting safe sex... Not a single gay lifestyle magazine — all of them owned by our major business partners — would ever do an interview with me or promote my business in appreciation of our work. Most of them didn't even acknowledge in these magazines that we exists. Mainstream gay media treats porn like dirt, but keep using porn profits to finance their operations. If they want to promote safe sex, they should start promoting my safe-sex porn in their flagship glossy magazines. That is if they really believe we influence public sexual behavior that much. And if it is not so, then it would seem we simply create 'dirty' fantasies, and condoms don't come into play. The day The Advocate will publish its first ad for BelAmiOnline or some other porn company, I'll stop my occasional condom-free adventures. For the time being, I'll settle for compromise and try to stay afloat."
||| And another kind of interview entirely, this time with Michael Lucas firing questions, with "all the tact of a chain-smoker in a cancer ward" MOC Blog writes.
||| Everything You Wanted to Know about Gay Porn Stars but were Afraid to Ask...
||| Jesus in a field.
||| Lego and M.C. Escher - two of my favourite things - come together in this acrylonitrile butadiene styrene masterpiece.
||| Televisions through the years, in pictures.
||| Doctor Who tribute at Berlin Fashion Week, as Patrick Mohr makes his models (left) up as Sensorites (right). Well, what other explanation could there be for this horror?
||| Uganda: Lou Engle makes a special appearance in the aforementioned Dispatches investigation. At OpEdNews, Daniel Vojir writes, "Lou Engle's goal of demonizing gays to extinction is working."
||| Uganda: Gay Ugandan activist decapitated, dismembered...||| ...Or maybe not.
||| Fame, blame and shame: Jide Macaulay's story.
||| The constitutionality of anti-gay laws in Nigeria: "In a society where security of lives and property has become an issue, where corruption has completely destroyed public service, it is extremely hard to fathom the reasoning behind these anti gay laws," Gbenga Asiwaju writes for The Colorful Times, "How does murder (an act that affects the lives of other citizens and that is indeed dangerous to society) fit into
the same category as an expression of love conducted between two consenting adults?"||| Nigeria: Undercover with the GBLTs of Lagos.
||| Iran: where bill posters are raped; 27-year-old Farrokh tells his story.
||| Now Amazon is selling groceries - but something just doesn't add up.
||| The London Tube station... that isn't.
||| Postcard from Ireland: Oscar Sibanda's story.
||| So your photo doesn't fit the narrative? Never mind - our old friend Madam Airbrush is here to help! Journalism - The Economist way.
||| The Big Picture: Summer is here (38 more pictures). Above, Pakistan, where temperatures have reached 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 Fahrenheit). Below, men jump into the Han River in China.
||| China heatwave, in pictures, below left and right.
||| New York heatwave, in pictures.
||| The Big Picture: Poverty within white South Africa, above (26 more pictures).
||| Boffins in the US "have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered".||| Could teen anti-social behaviour really be caused by brain defects?
||| Meet Kyle Kane (left), the world's strongest boy. He's 12.
||| Why can't I get to sleep?
||| Marriage doesn't make relationships stable, boffins have decided. Now tell me something I don't know.
||| Another reason why it's good to be gay: Having kids makes people unhappy.||| The male virginity test (might not be entirely accurate...)
||| Animal pictures of the week (29 more pictures).
||| Tiger population in terminal decline.
||| Birds sing at higher pitch to compete with city noise.
||| Birds that devote less time to their offspring engage in more same-sex behaviour: Parental care linked to homosexuality.
||| A rogue baboon has been euthanised after he repeatedly broke into houses and terrorised residents - often with the aid of juvenile baboons - in Cape Peninsula.||| MySpace not for sale, its owners News Corp protest - as yet another relaunch is planned for latter this year. ka-os|theory started on MySpace in September 2006.
||| The recently out Angelo Garcia (left) talks to Towleroad. Big lad, isn't he? 
||| Massive Attack, 25 years on.||| Pecs, abs and rock'n'roll: Spend some time getting to know JLS.
||| Usher, you ain't been swapping nut again have you? Oh, it's milk? I see...
||| Was gospel artist Tonex snubbed by BET for being gay?
||| Prince steps up his war on the net.
||| Kylie Minogue - ugh. I despise her cynical, parasitical attachment to gay men (I wonder, does she give anything back, or just take the pink bucks and run?) but I felt it was important to share this picture of the knackered old skank "performing" at Heaven in London. I'm sure you'll see why. The original (without my additions) is at Towleroad, where there's also plenty of video.
||| Joe Manganiello (left) in last week's Us.||| Betty White calendar, anyone?
||| Stephen Perry, the writer behind 80s cartoon ThunderCats, is now believed to have been murdered by his roommate.
||| British writing team Christian Martin and Darren Flaxstone talk to This is Bristol about their third film - Buffering - and the lack of support from the BFI for their earlier project, the hugely successful Shank.
||| What isn't mentioned is that the BFI - and the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - have an agenda dictated by women that puts gay men firmly in the background. Neither Shank nor Rikki Beadle-Blair's eagerly awaited KickOff (both young, relevant, sexy, male-centric films) were included in this year's programme. Check out the festival's front page and see how many carpet munchers you can spot!||| The Outrate Online Short Film Festival has opened. Say the organisers: "The festival exists so that up and coming gay film makers can showcase their work to a global audience at no cost and with minimal fuss." Check out the films - and enter your own - here.
||| Shooting is about to start on the film version of Taylor Siluwé's Dancing With The Devil (ka-os|theory review here). says: "Despite the tough economy and even tougher funding raising, we're forging ahead - even if we have to live off Ramen noodles for months. Yes, it's that serious. As artists and writers and activists struggle to tell stories geared toward same gender love, our stories, any and all donations from the community are greatly appreciated. Whatever you can spare, know that you are helping to bring more and more of our stories to light." Support our arts: donate here.||| Porn: An ideological weapon. Anthea Buys talks to Canadian filmmaker/pornographer Bruce LaBruce.
||| The future isn't now. Were you fooled by the Back To The Future hoax?
||| Towleroad has a fascinating interview with Bel Ami maestro George Duroy. On the subject of the fairly recent advent of barebacking in his films: "I don't encourage and I don't promote. If I did, I'd be much richer now. I promoted condoms and healthy sex for seventeen years in my films. In exchange for my goodwill, I lost about thirty percent of my
customers at one point. I am unaware of a single case of somebody paying for my films simply because I was promoting safe sex... Not a single gay lifestyle magazine — all of them owned by our major business partners — would ever do an interview with me or promote my business in appreciation of our work. Most of them didn't even acknowledge in these magazines that we exists. Mainstream gay media treats porn like dirt, but keep using porn profits to finance their operations. If they want to promote safe sex, they should start promoting my safe-sex porn in their flagship glossy magazines. That is if they really believe we influence public sexual behavior that much. And if it is not so, then it would seem we simply create 'dirty' fantasies, and condoms don't come into play. The day The Advocate will publish its first ad for BelAmiOnline or some other porn company, I'll stop my occasional condom-free adventures. For the time being, I'll settle for compromise and try to stay afloat."
||| And another kind of interview entirely, this time with Michael Lucas firing questions, with "all the tact of a chain-smoker in a cancer ward" MOC Blog writes.
||| Everything You Wanted to Know about Gay Porn Stars but were Afraid to Ask...||| Jesus in a field.
||| Lego and M.C. Escher - two of my favourite things - come together in this acrylonitrile butadiene styrene masterpiece.
||| Televisions through the years, in pictures.
||| Doctor Who tribute at Berlin Fashion Week, as Patrick Mohr makes his models (left) up as Sensorites (right). Well, what other explanation could there be for this horror?
||| Plastic boy slut risks melting on the roof of New York hotel...||| ...Has a date with Lance Bass...
||| ...And prepares 
||| Only orange boy could afford the Thunderbolt watch, at a mere $US158,000, designed by Maximilian Büsser of MB&F.||| Tired Gay succumbs to Dix in 200 meters.
||| And finally, let's visit the Tired Old Queen At The Movies, who's looking at East of Eden this week.
||| READ THE LAST EDITION: ISSUE 69
||| ka-os|theory, ONE YEAR AGO: 12.07.09
||| Access any back issue of the ka-os|theory news compendium from the backissues menu in the sidebar.
||| Contact me with tips and suggestions for next week's copy!
_____________________________________________________
Issue 70 covers 05 July - 11 July 2010
ka-os|theory is not responsible
for the content of external websites.
POSTSCRIPT
"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come.
The whole thing's been ridiculous."
© 2010
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