Random Thoughts to Fill up the Page

I think my life is turning into some kind of soap opera and it's not Home and Away, it's becoming a cross between 7th Heaven and Judging Amy.

Saturdays is my coffee club meeting. I know, when did I become one of those people that have coffee with the same group every Saturday at the same time and at the same Cafe? Sundays is brunch group meeting - similar group, similar time, same Cafe. Like the goldfish in the ad, "certainty, Peter likes certainty". That's the great thing about having a 'local cafe', they know you, you know them - it's all very easy.

Last Sunday I spent the day at Jamberoo, (the Southern Highlands), with the 'ex', he was working. I sat on a large verandah writing and looking out over the fields down to the ocean while Kangaroos drank from a dam in front of me. A fantastic early Autumn day, it really is, along with Spring, my favourite time in Sydney.

I seem to be a week ahead of myself. In my mind I am going to Berry next weekend for Easter - Easter isn't for two weeks. I always get everywhere early but even for me that's a little extreme.

"Should of" said the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard. Perhaps she needs to sit the Literacy and Numeracy Test that the Govt. has introduced.

Off to see Travesties on Thursday night - I was supposed to go last week but I had one of 'those' issues.

I can not believe the fuss being made about a little Lesbian kiss on Home and Away and some of the readers comments in The Daily Telegraph. Here's one I prepared for you earlier, thank you Martha Stewart.

"I have watched Home and Away since l was very young...l often objected to the constant bed hopping in the show anyway.....everyone sleeping with each other is not a good thing for kids to watch,,,they take it as you can have as many bed partners you want!! Now they are going to push homosexuality? why? l often wonder why homosexuality is pushed so hard.....hetrosexuality is not constantly pushed into peoples faces..."

Posted by: SallyAnne of Sydney 11:20am 28 march 2009
Thank you Sally Anne I have been wondering what was being pushed into my face for the last 50 odd years at the movies, on TV and in every book, magazine and poster I have been reading

Just when you think there is progress... still, when you consider the audience of Home and Away I shouldn't be surprised.

Why should it take one well known ... no I better not write that otherwise I may not get any more work with them ... but please send the cheque it's been over 75 days.

Q and A was very good last week on the Net Censorship trials. Poor Stephen Conroy took a bit of a battering. Andrew Bolt is a piece of work, but then I think the same about Piers Ackerman and Miranda Devine. It frightens me sometimes when I actually agree with them. They say that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

That's enough for today don't you think?

p.s. What is the deal with 'booking fees' for tickets when you book over the internet. I do all the work, I don't waste anyones time, I'm not talking to anyone, my credit card is instantly billed, I pick up my tickets on the night at the theatre - who actualy gets the fee and why? Surely the Promoter is paying a fee to the booking agency as well. It's a puzzlement.

Boys and Their Dresses

Drag has always been about beautiful costumes, colour and movement but recently there has been a tremor in the force. A new ingredient has been added to the mix. Drag is under going a revival. I’m amazed, and that’s no easy thing these days, by the number of boys who like to “frock” up. If I had been asked in the early 90’s did I think Drag would survive? I would have shaken my head and knowingly pontificated that, “The young ‘Gaylings’ have moved on and Drag has had its day, like the rotary dial telephone”.

How wrong I would have been.

A potted history - Drag came of age in Sydney in the 60’s and flourished through until the early 90’s. Most of the performers, especially in the 80’s were “professional” full time live in a frock and grow your hair long kind of DQ’s. When Drag moved off the revolve and out of the proscenium arch of Cap’s and onto the bar of The Albury I was convinced that this was the beginning of the end of “the Show”. The great production shows of Mitchell and Penfold that had theme and story were now replaced with a succession of spot numbers. Oh sure a few of the shows were still held together with a storyline, like The Priscilla Show, but mainly they became a pastiche of star turns.

With the closure of The Albury, Oxford Street lost some of its glitter and Drag seemed to disappear and for a while it went into a form of stasis, waiting for the next wave of gender bending, in-your face entertainers that we have today. Little did Miss 3D and Cindy Pastel know what they had begun or perhaps they did.

Drag is back, bigger and better than anything we’ve seen for a long time.

These days it seems as if every pretty and some not so pretty boy is tarting up his visage with taffeta, toile, mascara and makeup, then hitting the boards and the bars to dance, mime and even sing LIVE. The world has gone brilliantly mad.

Sequins and glamour are back and it’s wonderful to see. Choreography is queen and high heels are “strutting” their stuff up and down the tiles of a battered and bruised Oxford Street. Whether it is a career choice or a casual dalliance Drag is wowing them again in the bars of Sydney. Performers like Prada Clutch, Tora Hymenand Trevor Ashleyare the Aeysha, Rose and Michael Michelle of the new generation.

Heading this pantheon of impersonators is the wonderful and very talented Courtney Act, a former contestant on Australian Idol, who now also spruiks make up to a frightened and confused Larry Emdur on breakfast television. Courtney has made Drag fashionable, fantastic and feminine again. Courtney by night and Shane by day is leading a parade of “glamazons” who are proud to embrace the history of Drag gone by and create the myths of tomorrow.

As post party Sydney drags it’s aching head reluctantly into recession and winter, isn’t it great to see splashes of rainbow colour reflecting from the sequins and once again lighting up the pavement of Oxford Street.

The Golden Mile is getting a little of its glitter back.

The Queer Bill of Rights

For thirty one years we’ve been marching. We’ve been marching against discrimination. We’ve been marching against a disease that everyday, still takes our brothers and sisters in ever increasing numbers. We’ve been marching against inaction, self interest, prejudice and greed.

We’ve won a few battles but our march continues.

Our warriors don’t have tanks and armour; our warriors wear overalls, suits and high heels. We don’t have weapons of mass destruction hidden in our borderless country; our weapons are humour, wit and strength of character. When we march we don’t march for conquest, we march for recognition, for understanding and for compassion. Our uniform is rainbow not khaki, we have no need of camouflage yet too many of us are forced to hide.

We count each small victory as a stepping stone. We don’t see defeats we see hurdles.
We see hope rather than despair; we feel elation rather than desperation.
Our troops live not only in Darlinghurst and Newtown but also in New York, London, Beijing, Harare and Tehran. We are not restricted to any one country or religion and no amount of denial by narrow minded bigots will ever change that.

We are a universal nation that is inclusive not exclusive. We welcome into our hearts all that seek healing and peace. We do not discriminate because of gender, race, sexuality or religion.

There are those who will persecute us, threaten us and in too many cases harm us. We will no longer simply lie quietly and die. We do not believe that we have any more of a right to exist than anyone else but neither will we accept that our right is any the less.

We know we have made mistakes but from each mistake we have learned and grown. We learn our lessons the hard way but we never have to learn them twice.

We will not stop and we will not be stopped.

Ahead of us there are the glimmers of hope that give us the strength and courage to continue this fight. Yet still we need new treatment regimes, greater accessibility to medication in developing countries and we need, now more than ever, to work together to bring about an end to the policy of greed, self interest and selfishness that keep medication from being made available to all those who are in need.

We need the help and support of ALL our elected leaders every day not just every three or five years when elections are due. We are not apart from society; we are a valuable and necessary part of it.

We’re here. Were queer get used to us.

Something About Miranda

I love ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, it’s a witty, colourful fast moving romp. I was watching it again the other night on cable and suddenly it hit me. The movie has a message and the message is not about what shade of blue the colour cerulean is. It’s about choices and making them.

Life is all about making choices and then taking responsibility for them.

Simple choices are easy, we make them with out thinking, every second of every day; tea or coffee, toast or bran, bus or train. But it’s not just the little things we choose; it’s the big, life altering, reality shifting things as well. These are the ones we’re always quick to blame someone else for especially if they go pear shaped. If it’s a good outcome then of course its “yes I knew all along that I had to make that decision and now seemed like the right time”. We’re all happy to take responsibility for the good things. It’s the tough things, the hard choices that we like to shift blame for.

It’s the hard choices we make that define us.

The concept of taking responsibility for our own actions is becoming something of a rarity in these 'victim consciousness' days. Someone else is always to blame. ‘You make me feel bad; you make me sad, you make me so angry’, and even better, there is always someone lurking around the corner that is more than happy to put up their hand and say, “hang on you’re right, it was my fault – I did it. Blame me”.

In the movie, Andy played by Anne Hathaway, constantly uses the excuse, “That's not what I... no, that was different. I didn't have a choice”. Whether it’s missing her boyfriends’ birthday party or firing Emily, it’s Miranda’s fault. Finally Miranda, played by Meryl Streep, turns to her in the limousine in Paris and says, “No, no, you chose. You chose to get ahead. You want this life. Those choices are necessary.” Miranda for all her faults which are as numerous as they are enormous at least has the courage to stand up and take responsibility for the choices she has made.

In the end no choice we make is bad as long as we own that choice. Everything provides an opportunity for us to learn and grow. Some choices may in the short term seem better than others but we have to look long term, see things in perspective. There is no point in sinking into the abyss because things ‘ain’t’ working out the way we had planned. Forward motion is the thing that keeps creating opportunity. Sure there will always be something that we look back on and think ‘maybe if I had done this rather than that then it might be different now but who knows’.

Barack Obama’s mantra has been, 'Yes We Can'. Our mantra should be, ‘Yes I Do’. If we say it often enough then we will begin to believe that Yes I Do create my own reality. Yes I do make choices; yes I do take responsibility for those choices, not only personally but nationally and globally.

We are responsible for the society we are creating, each one of us. We are ALL responsible for the Cronulla race riots, we are ALL responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, we are ALL responsible for the state of Aboriginal health, we are ALL responsible for the man who dies alone in his council flat and is not discovered for a year.

As our communities have become more fragmented and urban isolation becomes more of a way of life for so many, we have started to see ourselves as islands; once our homes were castles now our castles have shrunk to the size of tiny rooms cut off from man and nature. More and more we live our lives in front of an LCD screen counting a curser as our best friend.

Like Andy we can choose to get out of that limousine anytime we want and reclaim our right to choose a better reality.

What a Piece of Work is Man.

It is disturbing to read in the paper how the International Space Station crew were forced to take evasive action for fear of being hit by 'space junk', this seemed to tie in with the Chinese container ship that floundered off the Queensland coast spraying oil and ammonium nitrate into the ocean and the sea of plastic bags that form an island twice the size of the United States off the coast of California. All in all we are a messy bunch.

As we sit and argue about how best to clean the mess we are creating on this lonely blue planet we are now busy leaving our usual dust and debris trail through the cosmos. Experts believe that there are 300,000 orbital objects measuring at least 1cm to 10 cm in diameter and millions possibly billions of smaller pieces circling the globe. These travel at speeds of thousands of kilometres per hour forcing our astronauts, in the Space Station that we want to use as our launching pad to the Greater Universe, to take evasive action.

Every year while Ian Kiernan is busy cleaning up Australia we are busy messing up the solar system. We make learning nothing an art form. The movie Wall–E suddenly becomes a documentary and not a work of fiction.

Isn’t it the height of arrogance for us to believe that we have earned the right to consider searching for life on other planets while we are intent on destroying life on this?

Can you imagine the reaction on Altaris 9 when they see one of our satellites, blasting rock and roll and Beethoven, entering their solar system? Panic. The Altarians, a civilisation that is justifiably proud of the society they have created, working with their environment, learning to dispose of their waste effectively and creating a world of peace and harmony. Then from out of the darkness of space come the Earthlings – the “Trailer Trash” of the Universe. Their property values plummet as we begin to leave our little carbon footprints of rusting piles of carelessly discarded Iridium; a nuclear reactor here an Isotope there. Before they know it they have mountains of non recyclable waste fouling their forests and lakes, their off-spring have begun to gain weight as they become addicted to the sugary tang of left behind food wrappers.

As we gaze out with wide eyed wonder from the safety of our Command Capsule at this new world of possibility, without consultation, we send a signal to the folks back on Earth, “Y’awl wanna pack up all your cares and woes, time to go, say bye bye dead earth”. The great unwashed humanity, that we all so proudly belong to, descend like carrion fowl on this once pristine planet and we begin to populate.

“We come in peace” we say proudly. We’ll have a piece of that and a parcel of that if you don’t mind. Oh and by the way we’re changing the name for you, from now on this planet will be called “New Eden”.

As that Prince of Denmark said “What a piece of work is man”.

Sex and the Sissies

Sex, sex, sex is not just a phone number in New Zealand. Sex is a confusing, clumsy, enjoyable, frustrating, messy, irritating part of everyday life.

I just had sex, when will I next have sex, am I getting enough sex, why do I crave sex, am I any good at sex? Everywhere we turn sex is thrust down our throats.

Gaydar, Arq, Stonewall, Town Hall, it’s a non-stop barrage of sensuality and opportunity. We crave sexual satisfaction and, like Chinese food, once we’ve had it we want more, just from a different wok. At least that’s the theory.

But do we do more talking about sex than actual sexing? Night after night in the chat rooms of Australia cyber boys are pounding keyboards bemoaning the fact that no one is having sex, at least not with them.

All the bottoms are in Melbourne, all the tops are in Sydney, all the versatile guys are in Albury-Wodonga and the ones who are up for it — well, they’re just not up for it with me!
It’s as if we’ve made this subconscious pact to always want the person who wants someone else, the ass is always keener on the other side of the bar.

To paraphrase Marx, Groucho, not Karl, “I would never have sex with someone who would have sex with me”. I know exactly what he meant.

We’re told that we’re the great sexual hunter-gatherers of our time, rutting and sucking at the drop of a pair of aussieBums. Is it true? Maybe it’s all just a myth.

Do gay men have more sex than anyone else? According to the Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behaviour, on any given day intercourse (fucking), happens 120 million times. So that’s about 1 out of every 25 people in a population of 6.1 billion people.

Now if gays (male and female) are numbered as roughly ten percent of the population that means… you do the math, because I can’t. But it’s not a lot of us who are actually doing “it”.
As a sidebar, if you’re lucky enough to have sex, choose a Brazilian. According to the Atlas they can go for thirty minutes. The quickest are Russians — they only last for 12 minutes. Suddenly I’m feeling a little better about myself.

The upside is that there is great peace in knowing that we’re not the fucking machines that the writers of cheap porn novels and makers of those DVDs would have us believe. The relief of not having to live up to an expectation allows us to just enjoy the monthly shag and not feel as if we’ve failed the numbers game.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some people are keeping their end up and taking one for the team, but I reckon most of us just lead normal, lustful lives that are never sated.

We go out, we stand around, we perve, we flirt, we make out (pash and grope), but still end up collapsing into our double beds alone at the end of the night. The only happy ending we usually get is a good night’s sleep after a little self-pleasuring.

Thank God for IQ and those replays of Scrubs. And that’s not such a bad thing… is it?