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Im just back from two weeks in Colombia, having visited Barranquilla, Cartagena, Cali, Bogota and Medellin. Its a wonderful country, full of beautiful and interesting people. But the scene is not nearly as well-organized or convenient as in Brazil. When I mention Brazil, I mean the sauna boy system wherein there are places to go to see a variety of men, choose whom you like, and strike a bargain right there. Nothing analogous exist in Colombia, sadly. Perhaps they await the right couple of entrepreneurs to set it up. There is very little English spoken among the sex worker class. Colombia seems to trend somewhat toward the youngish twink types, with visible indigenous ancestry rather than the big-dicked, versatile mulattos that make Brasil so wonderful. Hotels- I generally stay in upscale hotels connected to American chains when possible. In every city, my guests had to check in at the front desk and leave a copy of their ID. In the most upscale, Hilton and W, I actually had to register to the room. Barranquilla and Cartagena- Local rentboys, few in number and frequently visiting from Cali or Medellin, seem to subsist on the cruise ship and other foreign visitor trade. The prices are at North American levels ( $125-150 USD) because tourists seem willing to pay it. These transactions are initiated online via Mileroticos or other such sites. Cali- Not much rentboy action to speak of, not even online. Bogota- Much like Cartagena and Barranquilla with prices a little more reasonable. Medellin- As close as you get to the Brazil factor, though not all that close. The Chaturbate Factor- Those of you who frequent chaturbate will have noticed that a plurality of the Latinos present there live and work in Colombia. I found it relatively easy to arrange in person time with some of my favorites in Cali, Bogota and Medellin. For $325COP ( ~$100USD), I arranged a wonderful 3 hour threesome with my favorite m/f couple in Cali and spent the whole night in Bogota, with a delightful twink, for a similar amount. In Medellin, I connected with another Chaturbator who brought a friend along at no extra charge ($120 COP for both). Grindr / Hornet Factor Both of these smart phone apps are full to overflowing with men looking to play for free and a few prepagos, as the rent boys are known there. Apparently, the conservative society, combined with the history of violence makes for a strong desire among gays to have exciting experiences with foreigners whom they won't bump into on the streets and who are beyond the age of drama for drama's sake. I will admit, upfront, that I am not the type physically to usually inspire much lust. But in Colombia, there was ALWAYS someone who wanted to come over for some dick and cuddling. I paid for taxis, a drink or two. But, not much else. If you tend to have luck with these apps in the states or elsewhere, Colombia just might be a smorgasbord for you.

I speak Spanish and have visited Argentina many times for an average stay of a month. FWIW here's my advice 1. Buy the local gay monthly magazines available at any kiosk. Each has listings of escorts and houses. 2. If you hire an individual, make sure you emphasise the need to be on time. Argentinas are chronically late. 3. If you go to a house, they will offer you a drink and let you see the available guys. If you do NOT hire, it is customary to leave a small payment for the house: I suggest 100 Pesos (=$6) 4. Since you mentioned them, taxi-boys do hang out on Santa Fe at the 2 classic intersections but usually only after midnight. 5. If you hire a street guy, be sure to take them to a 'telo' (hotel by the hour, again listed in the gay magazines) and NOT to your own hotel room. Be extremely careful. There is a lot of crime and poverty, and Argentines do report getting robbed at knifepoint by street guys. The police are not interested. 6. Be very specific about what you want and agree the price. Be aware that local prices are in Pesos but displayed as $ - Dollar prices are displayed as either USD or U$S. As a foreigner, you will pay more than a local. The rates quoted by Axiom are correct. 7. If however you are thinking of a well muscled young man with model good looks, be aware that his rate will be 200-300 Dollars or 200 Euros but you may be able to negotiate a much longer encounter than usual. If he is not a regular working guy, you will have to be discreet and suggest dinner or drinks first. Again FWIW I was approached several times when at the gym and had fun with some very nice guys. 8. Ihpguy is correct that you must take Dollars and Euros with you. Any good hotel will have a reliable money-changing place to send you to, and these places want large notes. The black market rate is known as the 'blue' rate. If you go to a bank, they will only give you the much worse official exchange rate..

Four men were arrested for sex with a 15 year old boy they met on Grindr. The boy told his family and they pressed charges. http://www.hometownlife.com/story/news/local/south-lyon/2015/09/25/gay-hook-teen-leads-charges-men/72796334/

I personally thought that this was a really nice story, and like many things in life, things always look different in the morning.

The gay man who got a surprise call from the pope: ‘I would like to give you a hug’ By Dan Zak October 2 at 6:16 PM The Washington Post Yayo Grassi, left, and his partner, Iwan, meeting with Pope Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature on Sept. 23. (Marisa Marchitelli) Yayo Grassi’s phone rang in early September. “Is this Obdulio?” said the caller, using a nickname given to Grassi 50 years earlier by a high school teacher. “Who is this?” said Grassi, spooked. “Who else calls you ‘Obdulio’?” “Only one person,” Grassi said, “and I’m not going to talk until you identify yourself.” “This is Jorge Mario Bergoglio,” the pope said, using his given name, according to Grassi. “I would like to give you a hug when I go to D.C.” That hug — between the leader of the Catholic Church and a lifelong friend who is gay — came Sept. 23 at the Apostolic Nunciature during the pope’s first visit to the United States. Grassi put on a bright-blue checked blazer, brought along his boyfriend of nearly two decades, and embraced his former teacher in a sunlit parlor of the Vatican embassy. This quiet meeting came to light Friday, after the Vatican — responding to questions about the pope’s meeting with Kim Davis, the controversial Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to approve same-sex marriage licenses — clarified that hers was only one of many “brief greetings” within a larger audience on his visit to the Vatican’s embassy. [Pope Francis met with a same-sex couple the day before he met with Kim Davis] “The only real audience granted by the pope at the Nunciature,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Holy See press office, “was with one of his former students and his family.” That student was Grassi, 67, and that family was his boyfriend, Iwan. The embassy visit lasted about 15 minutes and consisted mostly of pleasantries. “We have taken up too much of your time,” Grassi said, after the pope blessed three of Grassi’s friends and asked them to pray for him, in Spanish in a video of the pope's visit. “No, by God,” the pope said, “thanks for coming by.” He then hugged Grassi, kissed his boyfriend twice on the cheek and said goodbye to the group. Grassi and Francis first met in their native Argentina, at Inmaculada Concepción high school in Santa Fe, where the future pope was a teacher. On Friday afternoon, a few hours after CNN broke the news of his papal audience, Grassi was cooking Argentine-style beef tenderloin at his home in LeDroit Park in Northwest Washington. His cellphone and land line were ringing off the hook. A team from ABC News was at the door in the rain, but Grassi politely shooed them away. The caterer had to prepare a dinner for 25 at the Phillips Collection by 4:30 p.m. But he was willing to chat for a couple of minutes about a friendship that he considers sacred. It began in 1964 and 1965, when Bergoglio taught Grassi Argentine literature and psychology. “He was an extraordinary teacher and a great mentor,” Grassi said, turning off his buzzing iPhone and lighting a Dunhill cigarette. “He kept pushing my horizons, to oblige me to keep looking. He asked me to put on the skin of my fellow man, to feel their pain.” Grassi’s mother used to cook gnocchi for Bergoglio when he visited the family home in Parana. Grassi, who learned to cook from his mother, has operated his own D.C. catering business since 2005. Before that he was the director of catering for the National Gallery of Art. Grassi moved to the District in 1978 and lost touch with his teacher until 2008, when then-Cardinal Bergoglio granted him an audience in Buenos Aires. Bergoglio became pope five years later, and Grassi reached out to Francis ahead of his first trip to the United States. A meeting was planned for Sept. 23. When news broke this week about Davis’s visit, Grassi decided to speak out. “Although I didn’t know any details, I knew immediately that [Francis] had nothing to do with this, that this was arranged by other people without telling him the real character” of Davis, Grassi said in his kitchen, checking on the tenderloin. “I received, from friends of mine, a lot of quite disturbing mail, telling me that: ‘This is your pope, look what he did,’ and ‘He’s a coward.’ And my defense is, we don’t know anything. Just wait until things come out. And I’m extremely pleased that I was right. And I never had any doubt that I was right.” The Vatican was far less definitive, and it described the meeting as a routine visit between friends. Grassi, Lombardi said, “had already met other times in the past with the pope” and asked to introduce “several friends to the pope during the pope’s stay in Washington, D.C. As noted in the past, the pope, as pastor, has maintained many personal relationships with people in a spirit of kindness, welcome and dialogue.” The Vatican on Friday similarly played down the significance of the Davis visit, which opponents of same-sex marriage had hailed as validation of their cause. The Vatican said the meeting was initiated by the papal embassy — not Francis himself — and was not meant as an endorsement of all of Davis’s actions and views. In 2010, when Francis was still a cardinal in Argentina, Grassi read media reports that his former teacher had condemned the country’s legalization of same-sex marriage. So he sent a long e-mail to the cardinal expressing his disappointment as a gay man. “I stood firm on my position,” Grassi said of what he wrote. “And I ended the e-mail saying: ‘Don’t think it was easy for me to write this e-mail, but I had to do it. And I think it was the right thing to do because 40 years ago you taught me I had to do it.’ ” The cardinal — who as pope would respond, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay priests — responded that his words had been cherry-picked and twisted by the media, according to Grassi, and that the reported sentiment was not true. “He wrote back to me, telling me, first of all, how sorry he was that he had hurt my feelings, that he had hurt me,” Grassi said. “One of the things he said on that e-mail was that ‘I want you to know that in my work there is absolutely no place for homophobia.’ And I think that’s what I want people to know.” With that, the alarm for the tenderloin began to beep, and it was back to work. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-gay-man-who-got-a-surprise-call-from-the-pope-i-would-like-to-give-you-a-hug/2015/10/02/41c9f65e-6927-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

I figure the meeting was setup by some right-wing asshat politician without the Vatican fully understanding the issue, but the Pope did specifically mention in one of his speeches something about people being able to stand by their religious convictions... still, a 3-4 time divorcee as the poster child for family values is the height of hypocrisy. If people want something to be pissed at the Pope/Vatican about it should be that they are still against the distribution of condoms and instruction on use in AIDS plagued Africa, not this silly stupid bitch. She wants to stand up for her "religious convictions"? Then she can fucking resign! She wants to take a salary of taxpayer dollars then she can fucking do her JOB and follow the law of the land! It is either-or, cut and dried, and her behavior is hopefully the last nail in the coffin for any thinking person. Unfortunately that leaves out an alarming percentage of the US electorate...

And from another article: https://www.yahoo.com/politics/the-real-story-behind-the-1269547693457462.html "Perhaps the most stinging line in the statement was this: “Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness.” Translation? He was only being nice. And woe to those who take advantage of that kindness for their own purposes."

In my initial post in this thread I expressed doubt that the Pope would meet with such a hateful and bigoted person as Kim Davis and applaud her behavior, as she and her lawyer claim he did. Supposedly, the Pope met with Davis in privacy with no one else around - sure they did Since the story first broke, more information was published that seemed to confirm that such a meeting actually took place between the Pope and Kim Davis. However, this afternoon, the New York Times released a long article concerning the controversial meeting and set the record straight. Clearly, the Kim Davis woman and her lawyer (a vocal anti gay attorney) severely exaggerated the superficial meeting that took place. In the below cited New York Times article is a link to a film of two gay guys (married to each other) having an audience with the Pope. These two guys were the only people granted an audience with the Pope. The Pope embraced the two men. The film of the event confirmed that the Pope did not treat the two married gay guys with any less respect that he would treat a straight couple. In fact, the Pope has been friends with one of the gay guys since the gay guy was a student of his many years ago. This long article tells the real story of what happened in the meeting that was blown out of proportion by the Kim Davis freak. Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/europe/pope-francis-kim-davis-meeting.html?_r=0 The goodwill created by the Pope during his visit has been tarnished but not destroyed despite the efforts of Kim Davis and her attorney. -

Here ya go Mr. Smith... You can thank me later. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-clem-fired-for-farting-too-much-at-work-lawsuit_560ee6e7e4b0af3706e0d0c9?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592 Pennsylvania Man Allegedly Fired For Farting Too Much At Work "Flatulence and farting is the sexy part of the story." David Moye Reporter, The Huffington Post Richard Clem is in a stinky situation: His wife filed a lawsuit last month against their former employer who allegedly fired him for farting too much. The 70-year-old man and his wife, Louann, both worked at Case Pork Roll Company of Trenton, New Jersey. He was fired in February, 2014, for his supposed flatulence, according to court documents. Louann Clem claims in a court filing that her husband's termination was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Richard Clem supports the lawsuit and is taking legal action on his own through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "When the suit was filed, I din't know it would go viral," Clem told The Huffington Post. "I was very surprised." Richard Clem started working at Case Pork Roll in 2004 as a comptroller and believes he did a good job. "I brought them into the 21st century," he said proudly. At the time of his hire, Clem weighed about 420 pounds, but underwent gastric bypass surgery in October 2010, to get rid of his own porky belly. Clem lost about 120 pounds before gaining back 10. He's also suffered some embarrassing side effects, including "extreme gas and uncontrollable diarrhea." In 2013, Clem’s symptoms worsened, which caused “significant disruption in the workplace,” according to the suit. Louann Clem, who began her job at Case Pork Roll in 2008, said company president Thomas Dolan repeatedly griped about her husband's gassy problem. The suit alleges Dolan made Richard Clem work at home and said things like, "We cannot run an office and have visitors with the order in the office," and "Tell Rich we are having complaints from people who have problems with the odors." Richard Clem was fired from Case Pork Roll on February 28, 2014, Louann Clem quit the same day “because of the harassment and discrimination her husband faced as a result of his disability and the resulting symptoms,” according to NJ1015.com. The Clems' lawyer, David Koller, said his client's gastrointestinal disorders may be getting headlines, but aren't the key part of the case. "Flatulence and farting is the sexy part of the story, but my client suffers from obesity, which is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act," Koller told The Huffington Post. Louann Clem is seeking damages from Case Pork Roll that include pain and suffering, compensatory damages and punitive damages. Richard Clem also wants company employees to go through training programs that will prevent future incidents from occurring. "I'm speaking up for people who are overweight," he said. "Does being obese mean you can't do a good job? Of course not!" READ THE LAWSUIT: http://www.scribd.com/doc/283457389/Lawsuit-over-farts-firing

bottom line: if it works for both parties, then by definition it works for both parties.

One of those not-jokes.