Lucky

On Tuesday one of our prolific posters will be leaving on that dream vacation he has scheduled to Brazil. He has shared his excitement with us as the day drew near, and I know he will share any tales. Due to the increased prices of hotels as the dollar drops and the real flies, he has chosen an apartment for this visit. I, among others, hope that goes well. Other questions have been raised about the quantity and quality of the sauna boys. With Rio's economy rising, perhaps less guys find sex work appealing. We'll soon know if that is true, as well as whether the higher sauna prices cause less fun. I know that you don't go that far to save money, so I hope lurkerspeaks has his best trip yet to Brazil. And let's see if this video link works: Rio Boys

For the last 4 months, the Palm Springs area has been in what they call "High Season." Snowbirds from all over get tired of that cold, so they head here to warm up. The upside for the residents is that their tax money helps a lot, and also more things are available for entertainment since the potential audience has grown. But then there is the traffic and the lack of parking spaces near to the store. It seems every snowbird has a handicapped sticker, so the locals have to fight for the spots. Snowbirds tend to drive too slow, sometimes way too slow, and they make strange lane changes, usually moving suddenly over to the fast lane so that they can drive really slowly. They have even been known to stop for green lights. And don't even bother to go to Costco, where evolutionary scientists are studying the quick decline of manners in the human species. But, there is one snowbird we miss already. Word has reached us that Oliver is now back home, safe and sound. Memories of his grand pool event are just that- memories. Thanks for the memories, Oliver. Will there be more?

Not to pick on you, but I would like a clear definition of when a post goes in the Politics Forum and when it does not. This one seems to be Politics.

The first time I went to Rio, I stayed in an 11th floor ocean front room at the Sol Ipanema. All 7 nights, in high season with tax, cost me $1100. Now one night- in low season- is $322 plus tax. There is nothing special about this hotel other than the view.

I guess Mexico never called for Oz.

From what I have heard, TY has sent a memo to all department heads in the various regions served by MER. They, in turn, were to hold group staff meetings wherein the issue was to be discussed and any faults reported on. Some divisions even went so far as to hold mock profiling sessions to see where the bugs are. Well above the call of duty, gentlemen.

One month before being arrested himself, Roman Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey negotiated a settlement with the victims of priestly abuse in his diocese to the tune of $15 million. Apparently he then went on vacation. Upon his return, Canadian customs officials examined his laptop and found 588 graphic images of children, 33 videos, and the texts of stories featuring the enslavement of children. Some of the boys in the photographs were only 8 years old. He faces 1 to 10 years in prison. He now is in his second day in prison. So far he has not beaten or raped. One wonders what caused the authorities to open his laptop. Are bishops now all suspects? The Reverend Bishop UPDATE: Apparently my question is answered here: Lahey came under suspicion after he hesitated and appeared nervous when questioned by a border agent at the airport as he was returning from London, England. His passport also indicated that he had been to Thailand and Indonesia. A border agent then found a few images she deemed to be child pornography on his computer as well as sex toys in his bag, according to the statement of facts. Further investigation found 588 images deemed child pornography on electronic devices he owns, as well as stories that depict forced sex acts, torture and degradation of young boys, the crown read to the court from the statement. METRO Ottawa

How much eye candy?

Tampa Yankee,I have always considered you all-knowing. Now I have yet another shattered dream to live with.

When Thailand called, was it in English or Thai? For me, it is always in Thai, so I can't be sure if they are calling me to come or to stay away.

You seem to be missing the fact that I included myself above. We do like these topics, or they wouldn't be here. Now about that college semen problem...

When you are in line at the grocery, there is usually no shortage of magazines available for you to peruse during your wait. Most likely though you wouldn't be caught dead buying one of them. We do like them though. If you say no, then consider the headlines from the latest gossip rag: Victoria Beckham's Hat Obama prooves citizenship Friday's Trivia test Name the tv show associted with each place Today's Trivia Contest Day 3 Royal Wedding Gifts Royal Wedding in 60 Seconds What's your royal wedding guest name? Today's Trivia Contest Day Two Today's Trivia Challenge See how many you can get right What does your smart phone say about you? . . . and who's it talking to? Van Gogh Self Portraits Should you post your travel plans? "Age of America" at an End and no one noticed And, in Next Week's Issue: Hot Prison Sex College Semen Problem Erupts The Not Gay Gay Rapper Sarah Palin Election Hoax

From kennethinthe212.com:

With all of the talk lately about smartphones and privacy violations, a novel I am reading told me about the term of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who once told George H.W. Bush that he thought M15 was spying on him through portraits in his offices. Apparently, there was a lot to it. What with James Bond and Judi Dench, we might think of British spy services as benign, but they weren't. A sample from Wikipedia.com on Harold Wilson: n 1963, Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said to have secretly claimed that Wilson was a KGB agent.[90] The majority of intelligence officers did not believe that Golitsyn was credible in this and various other claims, but a significant number did (most prominently James Jesus Angleton, the Deputy Director of Counter-Intelligence at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and factional strife broke out between the two groups. The book Spycatcher (an exposé of MI5) alleged that 30 MI5 agents then collaborated in an attempt to undermine Wilson. The author Peter Wright (a former member of MI5) later claimed that his ghostwriter had written 30 when he had meant 3.[citation needed] Several other voices beyond Wright have raised claims of "dirty tricks" on the part of elements within the intelligence services against Wilson while he was in office. In March 1987, James Miller, a former MI5 agent, claimed that MI5 had encouraged the Ulster Workers' Council general strike in 1974 in order to destabilise Wilson's Government. See also: Walter Walker and David Stirling. In July 1987, Labour MP Ken Livingstone used his maiden speech to raise the 1975 allegations of a former Army Press officer in Northern Ireland, Colin Wallace, who also alleged a plot to destabilise Wilson. Chris Mullin, MP, speaking on 23 November 1988, argued that sources other than Peter Wright supported claims of a long-standing attempt by the intelligence services (MI5) to undermine Wilson's government.[91] A BBC programme The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast in 2006, reported that, in tapes recorded soon after his resignation on health grounds, Wilson stated that for eight months of his premiership he didn't "feel he knew what was going on, fully, in security". Wilson alleged two plots, in the late 1960s and mid 1970s respectively. He said that plans had been hatched to install Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles's uncle and mentor, as interim Prime Minister (see also Other conspiracy theories, below). He also claimed that ex-military leaders had been building up private armies in anticipation of "wholesale domestic liquidation". In the documentary some of Wilson's allegations received partial confirmation in interviews with ex-intelligence officers and others, who reported that, on two occasions during Wilson's terms in office, they had talked about a possible coup to take over the government. On a separate track, elements within MI5 had also, the BBC programme reported, spread "black propaganda" that Wilson and Williams were Soviet agents, and that Wilson was an IRA sympathiser, apparently with the intention of helping the Conservatives win the 1974 election. In 2009, Defence of the Realm, the authorised history of MI5 by Christopher Andrew, held that while MI5 kept a file on Wilson from 1945, when he became an MP – because communist civil servants claimed that he had similar political sympathies – there was no bugging of his home or office, and no conspiracy against him.[92] In 2010 newspaper reports made detailed allegations that the bugging of 10 Downing Street had been omitted from the history for "wider public interest reasons". In 1963 on Macmillan's orders following the Profumo Affair, MI5 bugged the cabinet room, the waiting room, and the prime minister’s study until the bugs were removed in 1977 on Callaghan's orders. From the records it is unclear if Wilson or Heath knew of the bugging, and no recorded conversations were retained by MI5 so possibly the bugs were never activated.[93] Professor Andrew had previously recorded in the preface of the history that "One significant excision as a result of these requirements (in the chapter on The Wilson Plot) is, I believe, hard to justify" giving credence to these new allegations.[94] [edit] Other conspiracy theories Richard Hough, in his 1980 biography of Mountbatten, indicates that Mountbatten was approached during the 1960s in connection with a scheme to install an "emergency government" in place of Wilson's administration. The approach was made by Cecil Harmsworth King, the chairman of the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), which published the Daily Mirror newspaper. Hough bases his account on conversations with the Mirror's long-time editor Hugh Cudlipp, supplemented by the recollections of the scientist Solly Zuckerman and of Mountbatten’s valet, William Evans. Cudlipp arranged for Mountbatten to meet King on 8 May 1968. King had long yearned to play a more central political role, and had personal grudges against Wilson (including Wilson's refusal to propose King for the hereditary earldom that King coveted). He had already failed in an earlier attempt to replace Wilson with James Callaghan. With Britain's continuing economic difficulties and industrial strife in the 1960s, King convinced himself that Wilson's government was heading towards collapse. He thought that Mountbatten, as a Royal and a former Chief of the Defence Staff, would command public support as leader of a non-democratic "emergency" government. Mountbatten insisted that his friend, Zuckerman, be present (Zuckerman says that he was urged to attend by Mountbatten’s son-in-law, Lord Brabourne, who worried King would lead Mountbatten astray). King asked Mountbatten if he would be willing to head an emergency government. Zuckerman said the idea was treason and Mountbatten in turn rebuffed King. He does not appear to have reported the approach to Downing Street. The question of how serious a threat to democracy may have existed during these years continues to be contentious—a key point at issue being who of any consequence would have been ready to move beyond grumbling about the government (or spreading rumours) to actively taking unconstitutional action. Cecil King himself was an inveterate schemer but an inept actor on the political stage. Perhaps significantly, when King penned a strongly worded editorial against Wilson for the Daily Mirror two days after his abortive meeting with Mountbatten, the unanimous reaction of IPC's directors was to fire him with immediate effect from his position as Chairman. King's resignation was considered a serious enough matter for the BBC to have senior journalist William Hardcastle announce it in a news flash. More fundamentally, Denis Healey, who served for six years as Wilson's Secretary of State for Defence, has argued that actively serving senior British military officers would not have been prepared to overthrow a constitutionally-elected government. By the time of his resignation, Wilson's own perceptions of any threat may very well have been exacerbated by the onset of Alzheimer's disease; his inherent tendency to chariness was undoubtedly stoked by some in his inner circle, including Marcia Williams. He reportedly shared with a surprised George H. W. Bush, at the time the Director of the CIA, his fear that some of the portraits in 10 Downing Street (specifically including Gladstone's portrait in the Cabinet Room) concealed listening devices being used to bug his discussions.[95] Files released on 1 June 2005 show that Wilson was concerned that, while on the Isles of Scilly, he was being monitored by Russian ships disguised as trawlers. MI5 found no evidence of this, but told him not to use a walkie-talkie. Wilson's Government took strong action against the controversial, self-styled "Church" of Scientology in 1967, banning foreign Scientologists from entering the UK, a prohibition which remained in force until 1980. In response, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder, accused Wilson of being in cahoots with Soviet Russia and an international conspiracy of psychiatrists and financiers. Wilson's Minister of Health, Kenneth Robinson, subsequently won a libel suit against the Scientologists and Hubbard.[96]

That's why, years ago, I set myself up with a Chinese partner. Prophetic, huh?

Apparently BiBottom Boy has not been to a prison lately. These guys tend to look a little washed out after a while, although the prison muscles can be nice. But no doubt they are all horny- unless they are in the San Francisco jail, which puts gays together. Orgy city, from what I heard.

The Wall Street journal is doing a series showing all the ways that smart phones are being used to collect data on us. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704547604576263261679848814.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_6

Stream of consciousness. I broke a fingernail and they gave me a certificate for medical marijuana. I broke another fingernail and got a handicap sticker for my car. I drove the car stoned and ended up handicapped. See the danger of giving things out like candy?

Touche'

Thanks for sharing. I like theater articles...and the theater, of course.

More on the Sarah Palin birth controversy, from Huffington Post.It's enough to make me change my mind: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/22/palin-trig-trutherism_n_852585.html

This has gotten beyond my capacity to understand: April 22, 2011, 5:48 pm Google Says It Collects Location Data on Phones for Location Services http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/google-says-it-collects-location-data-on-phones-for-location-services/?hpw Followed by this: Google's Android mobile-phone platform faces soaring software attacks and has little control over the applications, according to security firm Kaspersky Lab. Applications loaded with malicious software are infiltrating the Google operating system at a faster rate than hackers did with personal computers at the same stage in development, said Nikolay Grebennikov, chief technology officer for Kaspersky. The company identified 70 different types of malware in March, up from two categories in September. "The growth rate in malware within Android is huge; in the future there will definitely be more," Grebennikov said. Kaspersky will offer security on Android in the third quarter of this year. Hacking into mobile-phone software has become increasingly sophisticated, forcing Mountain View's Google to remove malicious applications that were available from its Android Market store last month. The applications, which were remotely disabled, gathered information about mobile devices and could be used to access personal data. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/21/BUL51J5G3C.DTL#ixzz1KJDI0Sqk

I saw the last production of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, an early groundbreaking AIDS play, at the Public Theater. Now it is moving to Broadway, where it is in previews prior to an April 27th opening. In my opinion, every gay man that can should make it to see this play. It speaks of what our community suffered and continues to suffer. Playgoers receive this letter from Kramer after each performance: A letter from Larry Kramer PLEASE KNOW Thank you for coming to see our play. Please know that everything in The Normal Heart happened. These were and are real people who lived and spoke and died, and are presented here as best I could. Several more have died since, including Bruce, whose name was Paul Popham, and Tommy, whose name was Rodger McFarlane and who became my best friend, and Emma, whose name was Dr. Linda Laubenstein. She died after a return bout of polio and another trip to an iron lung. Rodger, after building three gay/AIDS agencies from the ground up, committed suicide in despair. On his deathbed at Memorial, Paul called me (we’d not spoken since our last night in this play) and told me to never stop fighting. Four members of the original cast died as well, including my dear sweet friend Brad Davis, the original Ned, whom I knew from practically the moment he got off the bus from Florida, a shy kid intent on becoming a fine actor, which he did. Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Please know that no country in the world, including this one, especially this one, has ever called it a plague, or dealt with it as a plague. Please know that there is no cure. Please know that after all this time the amount of money being spent to find a cure is still miniscule, still almost invisible, still impossible to locate in any national health budget, and still totally uncoordinated. Please know that here in America case numbers continue to rise in every category. In much of the rest of the world — Russia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa — the numbers of the infected and the dying are so grotesquely high they are rarely acknowledged. Please know that all efforts at prevention and educations continue their unending record of abject failure. Please know that there is no one in charge of this plague. This is a war for which there is no general and for which there has never been a general. How can you win a war with no one in charge? Please know that beginning with Ronald Reagan (who would not say the word “AIDS” publicly for seven years), every single president has said nothing and done nothing, or in the case of the current president, says the right things and then doesn’t do them. Please know that most medications for HIV/AIDS are inhumanly expensive and that government funding for the poor to obtain them is dwindling and often unavailable. Please know that pharmaceutical companies are among the most evil and greedy nightmares ever loosed on humankind. What “research” they embark upon is calculated only toward finding newer drugs to keep us, just barely, from dying, but not to make us better or, god forbid, cured. Please know that an awful lot of people have needlessly died and will continue to needlessly die because of any and all of the above. Please know that the world has suffered at the very least some 75 million infections and 35 million deaths. When the action of the play that you have just seen begins, there were 41. I have never seen such wrongs as this plague, in all its guises, represents, and continues to say about us all. Larry Kramer For more information, visit TheNormalHeartBroadway.com

James Durbin seemed much sadder at Stefano's loss than Stefano himself did. Durbin cried, then gave Stefano an endless hug after his last song. I think James will ultimately be the winner, and he and Stefano can still date, so it isn't so bad.

The San Francisco Chronicle today tells us how to travel safely (and where to go in Mexico): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/04/20/mexico_mix_safe_travel.DTL