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DesDownunder

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Blog Entries posted by DesDownunder

  1. DesDownunder
    Firstly I offer my condolences, respect and tears for the loss of Heath Ledger, a great bloke and a fine actor.
    That anyone, especially a man professing to be a man of God, should ridicule a man at his death for not fitting in with their concepts of religion is to me down right abhorrent. To claim knowledge that the dead person is now in Hell is irrational, illogical and deplorable.
    Who would do such a thing? Fred Phelps, who else? See the link that TR has provided here
    Fred claims to have knowledge that Heath is in Hell, complete with flames.
    During all this, Phelps also claims that Australia is a land of sodomites.
    Then we have Trab's illuminating report here that Aussies are being warned to steer clear of Canada because,
    "An Australian government website lists Canada as a country where travellers need to be cautious about terrorism, dangerous winter driving and cold weather conditions."
    Obviously the government thought because it is too cold for us practise sodomy in such weather or while driving the car, that it would be terrible for us.
    On behalf of the Australian people I would make it known that we do not concur with any ideas that Canada is so dangerous as to warrant such a statement.
    Some Australia Day this is turning out to be.
    oh yes I suppose I should tell you that January 26th is our National (booze up) Australia Day.
    Similar to our US friend's July the 4th, except we drink more than they do.
    In the light of Fred Phelps' sodomite claims, I am wondering if he got it mixed up with our national food, Vegemite?
    Just what does Fred put on his sandwiches? Inquiring minds want to know in case his mentality is diet related.
    Fred also has a go at "Faggy England" but I will leave that for Camy to comment on.
    I am asking our Government agencies that they quickly offer apologies to our Canadian brothers and sisters for any insinuation that they are are mad terrorists hellbent on killing the touring sodomites from Australia.
    I will tell them we should offer package holidays to Canadians who would like to see our national sodomy games, perhaps even take part in them.
    You will know when you have met an Australian because we always greet people by saying "G'Day"
    short for "Gay Day". Some people have thought G'day was short for a welcoming, "Good Day"
    But no. It is actually short for Gay Day, and we always say it before we sodomise anyone.
    G'day, mate?
    Which also explains why we call each other "mate."
    Australia, land of the sodomites. I guess that explains our low birth rate.
    Australia, Land of the Sodomites, we live in hope, I wish.
    It's a wonder Fred didn't claim that Australia sucks.
    And we are very good at that too.
  2. DesDownunder
    I was reading about some of the horrors that are happening around the world...always a lovely way to pass the hours ...when it occurred to me that the religious right and their conservative cohorts are not all that friendly to LGBTQ people. But it doesn't stop with them. Various regimes are imposing anti-gay legislation in many different forms, all around the world.
    The familiar suspects, who deny the rights of LGBTQ people, can be thought of as waging a war against more than LGBTQ people. They are in fact waging a war on reason, and their arsenal is full of weapons of mass hysteria; fear, ignorance, oppression and hypocrisy, which, when accompanied, as it usually is, with myth and superstition, all in the cause of greed, avarice and dominance over all who resist, makes it, in my opinion, nothing less than a Holy War, complete with human sacrifices.
    So my wrath against organised religion raised its hand, and wrote an article.

  3. DesDownunder

    Hopeless

    By DesDownunder,

    Pecman posed a (perhaps rhetorical) question in the News and Views Forum on the loss of two young people through suicide.
    I have no argument with Pecman's post, but I did not want to make the following statement in the News and Views Forum because it might be taken that I was chastising Pecman, which I certainly am not. What I do have to say is somewhat a personal statement, but one I would like to share with you from the relative safety of posting it as an opinion in my blog. Of course you may wish to respond, and consider yourself invited to do so. Personal flames will be deleted. Be warned this is not going to be everyone's opinion.
    Pecman's original post is here, and well worth reading. My heart goes out to him for his concern.
    Quote Pecman:
    It is so easy to say, "yes it is," but it is not just the bullying of the young that invites such a response.
    At any moment of our existence, we are in a state of confusion, torn between serving our desire to live loving lives, and fulfilling the social roles imposed on us by our various cultures. Enlightenment can be defined as overcoming one's culture, but that in itself is probably a lifetime occupation.
    Blinded by the pressures to conform, we so often do not see that those demands are challenged by our natural desire for peace and love.
    We allow ourselves to be swayed by all kinds of doctrine to believe that aggression and avarice are the natural states of human existence.
    Those young people, who are exposed to such doctrine, often see no alternative other than to side-step adopting it as their own, by opting out.
    They are not yet able to accept that life is a battle, a quest to affirm goodness; they do not yet have the capacity to withstand the onslaught of those who have been persuaded to preach that love and goodness are illusions and that life is about cruelly taking whatever you want for yourself at the expense of others. They are overcome by the feeling that they cannot and will not participate in the hopelessness, in the horror they perceive around them. This is particularly so in the young people (11 years old in the article.)
    These sensitive souls are the very ones we cannot afford to lose. They are but a few moments of living away from being able to say. "I love life; I will do all that I can to live fully and completely without harming others. I will do all that I can to fulfil my humanity, I say yes to life!"
    But they are deterred from developing this inner-strength of human love, of recognising the power of the goodness of life in themselves, because they have been subjected to, attacked and bullied by, those who have submitted to the doctrines of hate, negativity, guilt and fear.
    These young people are denied their natural inclination to access the discovery of truth and beauty, all in the name of subservience to their culture's rules and beliefs in some kind of external salvation.
    Love is within, it resides within us. It is not given to us, it is what we are, unless it is taken from us; and too often love is forcibly removed from us, by denouncing it as wicked and that it somehow makes us unworthy, immoral and all sorts of other imperfections. We are made to feel guilty for being creatures of love, when in fact we should be rejoicing the goodness of our love and its expression.
    Too often do those, who have submitted to being negative about life, try to force their negativity on others. Too often, love is discriminated against by the forces of fear and guilt. And too often is love strangled in the hands of the bully, just so he feels justified in his denial of accepting his capacity to love. He does not understand it is his own love that he kills.
    But a young person just coming to terms with puberty, mystified by developing emotions, discovering the potential for his own capacity to love, will come to think that in the face of all the hypocrisy which abounds in his culture, of all the tragedy which seems to surround life, in the face of his time and time again being denied his own human existence, that it is just easier to escape from a world in which he feels alienated, which is just too much to bear on his own.
    Sometimes he will find someone his own age to assist their common survival, sometimes lovingly, sometimes not.
    I have at times been asked what a young person gets from a relationship with an older person, because as far as can be seen it seems that only the older person gets something from such a relationship. That may seem true, but only if we consider it in terms of sexual gratification. Certainly there is that horrifying molestation of the young that must rightfully be condemned, but it should not be confused with the transmission of the lust for life that an older person can give a younger.
    Such a relationship can give the younger a model of hope, of what love really is, as opposed to just sexual urges. The love of an older for a younger person recognises the glamour of life (as Oscar Wilde called it) in the younger person, it encourages the celebration of life and it shows love as being the reason for sexual expression, rather than the way far too many people think of it today, as sex being the motivation for love.
    And no this last statement is not an attempt to justify paedophilia. Sexual relationships before puberty is completed, is definitely not part of this argument. Paedophilia is the negative, the abusive aspect of sexual expression between an older and a younger person.
    However, just as destructive is the doctrine of hate which teaches the young and often the very young, to live in fear, with guilt and to deny love by denying the inherent goodness in humanity.
    A loving relationship between an older and a younger person can reverse this hate, this denial of life and replace it with loving goodness and therefore lead the young person to exclaim, yes to life.
    To quote Oscar Wilde from the dock during his first criminal trial:
    [?]It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
    It is important to understand that many people have imposed a non-sexual interpretation on this speech that any student of Greek Love would patently deny. Wilde was quite clearly defending his love of youth as being worthy, both in the intellectual and physical senses.
    Of course, the parallel argument for heterosexual love between a younger person and an older person of opposite sex also holds true, but in practice this has been an instruction in heterosexual sex rather than the noble-minded values described by Wilde. Still I have no doubt the argument is valid regardless of gender. (I also have no doubt that humanity is sexually omnifarious, eventually succumbing to availability and habit, even if influenced by genetic propensity or cultural expectations, which of course cause further problems.)
    Rites of passage through loving relationships of differently aged lovers, is part of the human experience, and I would maintain a necessary one if the young are not to find life as hopeless as it sometimes seems.
    In historic cultures, both civilised and primitive, and in classical literature such relationships were understood and revered. Then came the puritan dark ages which still influence us today and we wonder why we feel hopeless.
  4. DesDownunder

    I'm Hot

    By DesDownunder,

    I'm Hot, but you all knew that didn't you?
    We are sweltering in a heatwave here in Adelaide South Australia with 3 days (or is it 4) over 44C (111F).
    We have had over 30 people suffer sudden deaths from the heat with more expected.
    The politicians are to blame for the heat according to a section of the local community.
    I don't think any of our politicians could get up enough energy to expel the
    quantity of hot air that would be needed to raise the temperature to where it is at the moment.
    Our pollies are just too lazy and incompetent to make things this hot deliberately,
    that would take vision and they haven't shown any signs of that in years.
    I am very hot, dudes, and I need to go have another cold shower. But then that is not a surprise
    either, I have often been told to go take a cold shower, even in the middle of winter.
    Oh and that is another thing, we are running out of water...and electricity.
    They are doing rolling outages for the electricity and of course, according to the whingers,
    that is the politician's fault too. As I said earlier, the politicians don't have much energy.
    You will be pleased to know that the gas is working so I can cook the BF a nice hot meal when he gets home from work.
    I'm hot. I said that didn't I? The air conditioner has broken down, blown up, reached the end of it serviceable life.
    Damn thing only lasted 30 years. They don't make them like they used to.
    At least the fridge is working, (when the electricity is supplied.) And I have all you real cool dudes to chat with on the forums.
    I got to go have that cold shower. Hope their is enough water...
    Anyone for hot times?
  5. DesDownunder
    Like all good video stores we have members who insist on showing us how well they can scratch the DVDs.
    I have wondered if the opposition actually pays people to borrow from us and use the discs as Frisbees for the dog.
    Off course it is likely in our rich area (where the shop is, not where we live, we live in the slums on the other side of town; (of course, we are poor white gay males in case you hadn't guessed)), anyway as I was saying, it is likely that these rich folk don't even know what a DVD does, they think it is pretty silver flat plate for serving the hors d'oeuvres, which my father always called "horse doovers," but that is beside the point.
    What led me to thinking this, was the disc that was returned today covered in spaghetti and the remains of either a pizza or someone's stomach contents, or both. The amazing thing was, that after I washed the disc there were no scratches on it -not a one. Perhaps spaghetti vomit is an excellent DVD polisher. Yes? No? Damn, that is going to take quite a bit of research.
    Unlike many stores we don't limit our customers to the nearby suburbs. We rent to anyone from anywhere. We even have a couple of members in the US. They visit Addle-aid every year on business or to see relatives, probably to make sure they are still alive. (It is hard to tell if Adelaidians are alive without actually watching them move about the room.)
    Anyway one of our US members walks in and in that delightful American drawl, announces that he remembered to pack his membership caahd!
    "Ah just had to borrow some more of your Aussie dinkum movies. Did I say that right?" he asks.
    "Not quite," I tell him, "the phrase is, "fair dinkum Aussie," not Aussie dinkum, but it's okay, we get what you mean."
    "Fair dinkum Aussie," he repeats, "Got it!" And he wanders off to make his selection.
    Shortly after and while he is still in the store, another visitor, this time from interstate walks in and wants to know if he can borrow a DVD. I check out his driver's licence and he is from a Sydney suburb. He has that typical golden surfer boy look that is so common in Sydney, and I checkout more than his licence, until his friend (another sun-tanned beauty), yells out to him, "Hey they got fag movies in here."
    Together the two of them descend on the Gay and Lesbian movie section and guffaw loudly at the advertising slicks on the DVD boxes.
    One of our regular customers overhears these two and comes over to the counter and asks me if I would like him to throw the two guys out of the shop.
    I tell him no, because if they keep looking at the Gay films they might ask me if I know anything about them and I can offer to show them in the store room. The customer bursts out laughing, which causes the now unusually large number of foreign looking customers to look at him.
    Suddenly I realise what has happened. It is raining outside and the visitors to the state who have come to see our world famous (yeah right) car race have all decided to get a movie for the night.
    "Do ya have any racing movies?" asks a dark skinned Latin, petrol head from South America.
    "Have you seen Fast and Furious?" I ask him.
    "Is it good?" he wants to know.
    "Sure, I say, "It's just like my sex life." hint, hint.
    "You Aussie peoples are so funny," he answers with a wink. (He winked at me! Yes! and it was all I could do to restrain myself from jumping over the counter and letting him have his way with me, but I restrained myself. I pointed to the action/thrills section which was alongside the gay section still being examined by the two surfer boys from New South Wales.
    There are moments in the life of a video store that brighten the owner's day. The following is one or two of such instances of opportunity that presented themselves.
    A middle aged couple, obviously from out of town because they were of good humour, approached the counter, where the woman asked in a loud clear voice, "Can I join with my husband?"
    I looked over the top of my glasses at her and said just as loudly, "Well we don't usually allow that sort of thing in the store."
    There was a deathly silence for a few seconds until her husband began laughing, the American guy went into hysterical guffaws, only to be joined by everyone else in the store.
    "Oh," said the woman after stopping her own laughter, "I just have to be a member of this store."
    I smiled and said in my most polite voice, "Of course you do, madam." She giggled.
    The two lads fingering through the gay selection were also laughing and chatting with the hot Latin looking guy.
    The Latin guy had decided to watch the Fast and Furious movie, and placed the box on the counter. I got his DVD for him, but when I returned to the counter, the two bronzed surfer types have also placed not one, but two gay movies on the counter.
    The Latin guy tells me he will pay for them all, and the two lads' bronzed faces are blushing red. They leave together to research what I suspect (hope) will be fast and furious international gay relationships. Who knew?
    I just hope they don't scratch the DVDs in the process.
    What a day.
  7. DesDownunder
    Where have I been?
    Friends, despite rumours to the contrary, I haven't been ill, dead, or ignoring you all.
    Our video store has been in decline for several months and that has left us with many troubles which have demanded most of my time.
    We finally closed the store at the end of February. Renting DVDs has become too difficult in a small town like ours, especially when you consider that 70% of discs are returned with scratches, dried pizza and greasy etchings from fingers. I suspect some people have used the shiny silver platters to serve the Hors d'?uvres. So we have stopped renting DVDs and decided to go online to only sell DVDs. Our website should be up and running shortly.
    The local cinema (run by friends of ours) has also given us an area where we sell new and ex-rental stock. That has been doing quite well too.
    At present we are trying to keep our heads above financial poverty with other projects, and hopefully we will realise some rewards which will permit some free time to write some stories again. I managed to sell my old car for more than it was worth, and got $180 for it. we eat this week.
    Of course I would like to blame our dire state of affairs on the right wing politicians, but it seems the left is almost equally to blame. Thankfully we didn't vote for either of them. We voted for the Australian sex Party. And no, I am not joking, they actually exist. LOL
    So just as soon as I get some free moments I will attempt to write a story or three, but it may take a little longer before I am able to do so.
    Cheers.

  8. DesDownunder

    Life's Journey

    By DesDownunder,

    I wonder if I should blog about all my worries?
    No, I better not, I could start a panic.
    Shall I put on a happy face and pretend that I am gay?
    Is it possible to pretend to be something that you actually are?
    I could pretend to be straight, but I doubt if anyone here would believe me.
    I'm sure I could fool the locals into thinking that I am straight, after all they have fooled themselves into thinking they aren't gay.
    Some of them even went and married a girl to prove it. Seems a bit drastic to me.
    What's worse of course is that in a moment of misguided enthusiasm they managed to get the poor girl pregnant and then a few months later she had to go through that labour intensive procedure of giving birth to the brat.
    Of course the brat turned out to be so cute that everyone oohed and aahed for a couple of weeks until it started to throw up on everybody's shoes.
    Still the child seems to have survived into the toddler stage, you know the one where it wanders around the house looking for somewhere to show its expertise at doing number two. This of course inspired the once house trained cat to remember that it too likes to leave territory markers wherever it goes. The canary in its cage decided to fling its droppings as far it could as well. The dog wasn't a problem. It was too busy licking its nuts.
    Unfortunately, the brat saw the dog and then tried to show the visiting church committee, his impersonation of being a doggy, growling and licking as best he could.
    And that is how the family came to hire an exorcist.
    It was all perfectly understandable. The child showed all the symptoms of possession. It vomited over everyone, it shat everywhere, and it had weird control over the beasts in the house. (When the the brat failed the self lick test, he was found letting the dog do it for him, which of course caused him to laugh with demonic fervour. It didn't help that his grandmother was the one who found the quite excited dog with the boy.)
    So early on a Sunday morning the exorcist arrived in full regalia armed with crucifix and holy water.
    The brat ran and hid in the dog kennel, while the dog stood guard at the entrance, with snarling teeth, saliva foaming and dribbling on to the ground where it solidified into flaming thorns from Hell. (Well not really, but I thought it was a nice image.)
    No one could get the brat to come out of the kennel. The parents left food which the dog took into the child. Some years later, when puberty struck the child with all its power, the boy drove out the demon and left the kennel.
    He immediately went to highschool where he was known as demon-boy, but it was too late. In the kennel he had already worked out that civilisation was f'd, and no amount of indoctrination, er I mean education, could affect the now teenage youth.
    He moved into a cave in the foothills just outside the city limits with the High school star footballer who had fallen in love with him.
    The lads' fathers were aghast, not at the boys, but at each other when they met outside the cave. They too fell instantly in love with each other, but that and their divorces is another story.
    Meanwhile the two youths in the cave were busy practising peace and lovin'.
    All of which goes to show that you don't need Television, the Internet, a fast car, an ipod, an education, or anything else except love, to to find happiness on your life's journey from the kennel to the cave.

  9. DesDownunder
    So I'm having a pessimist moment:
    We're living in some kind of culture warp where politicians are intent on reversing all the gains made since The Enlightenment. It's not that we are moving in reverse as much as we have turned our back to the future and are walking (sometimes it seems like we are running) backwards, into a future with no idea that we're going to fall over a cliff grasping at the thin air of cartoon-like superstitions. Then when we hit the road at the base of the cliff we get run over by a medieval body cart returning from delivering our humanity to The Inquisition. Can it get any worse? Yep...Beep-beep.
  10. DesDownunder
    Should I use my blog to tell you of something I am proud?
    (inner Voice:) No, no, that would seem like bragging.
    (other inner voice:) Do it, do it, yes tell everyone what you did.
    Perhaps it would be wrong of me, but damn it, it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to.
    (inner voice:) don't say 'brag.'
    What should I say then?
    (other inner voice:) tell them you want to ....pst, pst whisper whisper
    Okay so I want to share the following little story with you all.
    In effort to be in the face of all who need me to be out and in their faces, I recently made a post on YouTube in the comments section of a posting of Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto. Here is the finale.

    I have chosen a different version (from the one I commented on,) for this post, but the experience is the same except for the pianist's hair. Following are the comments between myself and two people who replied. All was well until I wanted to let people know I was gay in an open YouTube comment section.
    Should I have done that? Well I consulted the inner voices and they actually agreed I should do it, so I did.
    Here are the comments:


    Desdownunda:
    I was 16 when I first heard this concerto. I still love it today at 66. It is one of those pieces of music that makes you realise that life without music would be intolerable, that death is suspended whenever it is played. How can such beauty be so fleeting? Just like life itself.
    As long as someone plays it, and someone hears it, adores it, then our love, lives forever.
    missiheartballet:
    @Desdownunda - beautifully said.
    MrAkihiros:
    @Desdownunda That's beautifully said. Are you by any chance a poet? Your prose sings, just like rachmaninoff.
    Desdownunda:
    @MrAkihiros Thanks, I am flattered by your words. I am gay, so yes, I write poetry. My poetry and short stories are at CodeysWorld, please Google for it.
    Look for DesDownunder's stories under Authors. So far I have not received any further comments. Maybe the shock that they wrote to a gay man was too much for them.
    I'll keep y'all advised.
    (inner voice:) should I ring 911?
    (other inner voice:) no, call a defence lawyer.
  11. DesDownunder
    This is totally unexpected.
    I was typing away working on special things for Codey's World (please see What's New at Codey's World from Ben) when the Muse suddenly appeared and dropped a story into my poor excuse for a head.
    So here it is my Chrissy present to you all in the form of a short story called, A Christmas Cage
    May you all feel like all your Christmases have come at once.
    Merry Christmas.

  12. DesDownunder
    For 50 years my working life has been involved with motion pictures...on film.
    It is therefore not without some sense of nostalgia that I saw the headlines about Kodak filing for bankruptcy.
    I knew when I came out of retirement late last year that the cinema I am working at would succumb to the deadline, in about 18 months, when all new movies will only be available for digital projection - no more movies on film. From what I can see all cinemas including large screen format theatres will be digital within a year or so.
    To my eye digital projection is at about the same stage as the Compact Disc was when it was first released; not as good as the analogue in some areas, but better in others and with more convenience. Undoubtedly, further development will render further improvements for digital projection in cinemas and for home.
    I was lucky, very lucky. My experience in the industry spanned the era from the early 1950's through to the present. Most notable were the large screen presenttions in Cinerama, CinemaScope, TODDAO, and the other 70mm large screen procesess including IMAX.
    From a performance art point of view there was nothing like seeing 1-2 thousand people sitting in a theatre waiting for that magic moment when the lights dimmed and the curtains parted to reveal a spectacle that would transport the audience to another world, time, space, or all three.
    Sadly most of the cinemas of today have no sense of showmanship, being forced to survive commercially by selling foul popcorn and ice cream at exorbitant prices. My current cinema is a real joy, as it has one of the largest Wurlitzer organs in the Southern hemisphere.
    It's great fun to watch the organ rise out of its concealed pit with the organist playing away for all he or she is worth, whilst I dim the lights to set the mood.
    Last Friday night, at midnight, we screened Rocky Horror Picture Show to 400 screaming fans. The manager, organist and I decided to do a presentation at the start with me playing Riff Raff. I really didn't need any makeup, but I decided to gild the Lily anyway.
    Here is an atmospheric photo of your trusty orang-utan made up to look like an aging Riff Raff. I think I look more like a zombie. And yes, that is my own hair, I didn't need the Riff Raff wig.

    During the screening, I wandered around the theatre and sat alongside members of the audience as they threw rice and toast etc., at each other. Some of the expressions on their faces were priceless. We had a great fun night and the evening raised a huge amount of money, so we are going to do it again on the next Friday 13th with some different antics.
    I should add that the theatre is a non-profit organisation run by volunteers of the Theatre Organ Society who owns the theatre, with the projectionist and manager being the only paid employees. Naturally I didn't charge them for my performance as Riff Raff. (I wasn't projectionist for the show that night.)
    I managed to tell the audience about one of our currently screening movies, The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher who was just a jump to the Right.
  14. DesDownunder
    SO what do you do when you have an embarrassing, cute idea for a story and you just know it is going to be full of clich?s, and breaks a whole pile of rules about writing? Why of course, you go ahead and write it.
    So without further ado, I announce my latest short story Abducted For a Reason for your reading pleasure right here on AwesomeDude.
    Hope you enjoy it.
  15. DesDownunder
    I make no apology for the following links, but I will warn you, many of the images are disturbing.
    For those who wish to get the full effect of my New Year message, please click on the underlined links as you read them, watch the video link in its entirety, and then return to this page to continue the journey.(21 minutes)
    Merry, merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. (more than what you think).
    Loving is not a problem because we are love, all we have to do is let our love exist, to let it be.
    Our time is short and all we see is the time in which we live,
    Modified by what we are told to believe,
    But what if we discovered life was more,
    Than shopping at the store,
    That we live by more than what others have in store for us,
    That living is not to have, but is being in love, not lust,
    Giving us the hope that defeats strife,
    As living is the only meaning of life,
    And Love is the only sane reason for its existence.
    The need to love is all you need to be able to love.
    Thus all reality is already present in every hope and dream you can imagine.
    So go to work and everyday without fear,
    Help create a Happy New Year all year, every year.
    So did you expect something else from a libertine, agnostic, peacenik, hippie orangutan?
    HAPPY NEW YEAR to all
  16. DesDownunder
    Like old people tend to do, I was recently aware of reminiscing about my early teenage years; in particular about my school days, and specifically, my high school nickname, 'De-link'.
    Now you might actually think you can work out how I was given this name, but I'm willing to bet you'd never get it right.
    As fate (and my poor study habits) would have it, I had to repeat my second of year high school. I was pissed, to say the least; another year of being bullied and tormented by both teachers and students. Here's what happened.
    I walked into the class room, late, because as a repeat student I had to be reassigned to a specific class and it took time for the school dictators to work out where I would go, or perhaps which teacher would put up with me. After all, who would want to deal with a snivelling, red-headed sports-hating boy who was only good for being ridiculed, bashed and intimidated?
    So I walked into my new classroom, and the teacher told me to choose a seat. I sat down at the nearest desk, which was right next to the older, bigger, hirsute boy who, unbeknownst to me, was regarded by every student in the class as the most terrifying yeti on the planet.
    I didn't know any better, so ever the polite nerd, I greeted him, "Hi, I'm Des."
    He looked at me with astonishment, through eyes that hid behind a tangled fringe of black hair that wanted to curl, and told me his name was Barrad. I later learned he was referred to as 'The Barbarian'.
    The teacher muttered something along the lines of, "Oh, that's just great, the outcasts sitting together."
    I immediately lost it. I'd had enough. I stood up, swallowed my rage, and calmly told the teacher that we were not outcasts unless he treated us like outcasts. If it had been 1975 instead of 1958, I feel certain someone in the class would have proclaimed, "The Force is strong in this one." The truth was, I'd had it with being a victim. Besides which, I was going through puberty and didn't need this 'outcast' crap to think about, along with trying to work out why some boys looked better to me than others.
    The teacher just looked at me with a severe expression on his face and told me, "Don't be impudent; I'll have no delinquents in this class."
    And for the next two years I was known as 'The Delinquent.' It was quickly shortened to 'Delinkie' and then to just, 'De-link'. I loved it. It was a term of respect and friendship. It changed my life. Looking back on it now, I wonder what would have happened if I had rejected the well meant intent of the friendly nickname. It's so difficult to sort out the slings and arrows of torment from the terms of teasing endearment.
    The Barbarian seemed to become quite upset, over time, as I think he felt he was 'the missing link', and 'De-link' should have been his nickname. Luckily, he had his own friends in another class so I didn't need to worry about him.
    Thus began the first time in my life in which I could relate to my class-mates without fear. It didn't hurt that I was nearly a year older than them. In hindsight, we had developed that link of trust so often missing amongst young teenagers, who are ever anxious about being hurt by each other.
    For the next two years I lived without fear of being bullied or intimidated. I had made four great friendships which continued into my early twenties, when they all found girls to marry, and when I went out of my way to get laid as often as possible...until I became happily entangled in the bonds of love for these past forty years. And no, those high school friends were not gay, but we admitted to loving each other as we shared growing up together; teasing each other, exchanging our discoveries and wondering anew about life. I know some will think we were lucky, and I guess we were, but so often, it seems to me, we need to jump that chasm between fear and trust, the unknown and the known, instinct and intelligence, or our sophistication of thought becomes a missing link forever.
    With that link to reality no longer missing, we have the means to recognise the real perils of our existence. We then can realise the rewards of sharing our lives in friendship and love, and we discover that living...well, it does get better...and I remember that even that teacher's attitude improved.
  17. DesDownunder
    My de facto partner, (that's how the Australian Government regards my relationship with my boyfriend of over 40 years) and I have been lucky enough to share our home with a number of cats. All have lived happily with us for 16 - 20 years without any real traumas, until they died. I won't go into the heart-wrenching details of the death of our beloved cats except to say that I doubt they could have been happier, whilst they lived.
    I digress for a moment to describe how we recently overcame our financial problems which threatened to see the bank foreclose on our mortgage and force us out on to the street. The best we could hope for was a nice tree in one of Adelaide's park-lands with a broadband connection.
    Anyway, to cut short the story of a year long effort of challenges with the local council and the real estate agent, the bank, thank the deity of your choice, granted us a bridging loan to subdivide our property and sell it. We were able to reduce our mortgage to a very small amount which the dear bank would allow us to repay over 18 years. We were able to keep our home on the now smaller block of land which doesn't worry us.
    As an aside to this digression, I should tell you that the Real estate agent presented us with a quote for overseeing the subdivision which I refused and organised myself saving over $7,000 in the process. Of course it meant that I had to physically go all butch and build the council's demanded carport for our car, as well as organise the concrete, fencing, tree clearance, etc.
    Our clever accountant made sure we didn't have a capital gains tax problem.
    My friends, such as they are, were all very helpful telling me, whist I am up on the carport roof (at the age of 69) to "Be careful." I was beginning to feel like one of my characters from my Doors Of Love stories.
    Finally we overcame all the council objections and the real estate agent found us a buyer for the newly created block of land.
    We took out a small extra loan so we could paint and carpet the rooms. Then the gas cooktop blew up in the kitchen, and we replaced that. The electric stove stopped working and it was cheaper to replace it than repair. I still have some tiling to do in the laundry.
    The keyboard on the computer lost the plot and I replaced that. I now have a wonderful mechanical action keyboard...I love it, no more tysop.
    So that left us with a vacancy for a cat.
    We decided that rather than get a kitten we would adopt an adult cat and thereby rescue it from the dreaded death by lethal injection. I always wonder about death by non-lethal injections.
    We searched the local used cats site, and found a lovely 4 year old black male (neutered). The owner was a girl who just graduated her engineering degree and was moving to a job in another city where her accommodation didn't allow pets.
    So we get the cat home. It had a name we didn't like, but decided that we would wait for it to show its character and that would give us a clue as to its new name. Little did we know.
    First it wouldn't come out of its cat carrier cage. It hissed, snarled and growled in no particular order. It bared its fangs and snapped at our fingers. Okay, so I patiently offered it food and sat with it, making silly cat noises of soothing and welcoming sounds. Nine hours later it exited the cage and rubbed itself against my hand and leg.
    It then proceeded to vomit on the floor.
    An anxiety attack if ever I saw one. I knew about anxiety attacks as the de facto boyfriend had one when it looked like we were going to be destitute, but thankfully he made it to the bathroom and didn't vomit on the floor.
    The next day pussycat ate and threw up, ate and threw up quite consistently, so I made an appointment with our local Vet.
    I looked at the previous owners' Vet documents and saw that the cat had been vaccinated, but no other examination had been done because of, "extreme temperament problems."
    So when the de factoed one got home I told him we were going to the vet. He told me he felt okay. He had just manage to land a full time job. We had some extra income. Lucky us, the Vet must have known and charged us $89.
    Calmly we arrived at the Vet and the cat had sat quietly in his carrier cage. Once the door was opened he sprang at the Vet sunk his claws into her and clawed the now shocked and horrified de facto one.
    The Vet decided a hairball might be part of the vomiting problem as the cat was very active and not at all underweight.
    We returned home with some cat laxative. I was already having the shits with this animal. My poor lover's hand was looking quite lacerated.
    Four weeks later, the cat is loving and sookie, and then for no reason attacks our ankles, and bites and scratches exposed skin. We are not going commando until we sort this cat out.
    We watched the videos at My Cat From Hell site (recommended) where cat behaviourist Jackson Galaxy, advises on how to handle difficult cats.
    We've done everything he suggests and the cat still summons the demons from the underworld right in the middle of his loving us. He's mental...So we have called him Psycho.
    We'll post further bulletins, if we survive.
  18. DesDownunder
    I wonder how much of what we write is truly original?
    I read a poem by bi_janus today, just now in fact, and I allowed my mind to go blank. This is not a difficult feat for me, unless I think with my feet.
    Anyway back to bi_janus' poem, which you can read here, Original Face Instruction Manual for Worrywarts
    I confess the title seemed to not do the poem justice, but it works if you think about your original face. The poem gave me pause for thought, and I was put into the frame of mind that usually only meditation brings; that quiet moment, seemingly endless, yet always too short.
    My thoughts turned Zenish and then it happened; I started to type, and this is what I wrote,
    "The silence between the notes is still music."
    I looked at it. Could I have possibly come up with that?
    Is it original? Surely someone must have said that before me.
    I must be old and forgetful, and I thought, of course someone would have said that before me.
    But it doesn't matter does it? I like it and added it to my signature.
    If someone has seen it before do, please, let me know. I'm curious.
  19. DesDownunder
    Slumdog Millionaire has won the Best Picture Oscar and I had to walk out after 20 minutes.
    Why?
    Why did it win, or why did I walk out?
    I can't begin to guess why it won except to reward new wave filming for by-passing tried and proven techniques of movie making.
    Why did I leave the screening?
    Because the handheld camera and sloppy filming interfered with my being able to relate to the image.
    The smart-ass cinematography and editing got in the way of the story for me. And when the hand-held camera did stop moving, the supposedly 'interesting' but really only perfunctory images were framed at an angle that made me feel like I should turn 122 degrees clockwise or anti-clockwise in order to comprehend what I was suppose to be looking at.
    My natural view of the world does not tend be obtuse or at an obtuse angle, and I detest having such an obtuse view being imposed on my visual perception.
    To me it would be like trying to read a story with the words all jumbled in a way that destroyed the message of the sentence.
    Imagine the words all at odd angles, scrolling across the page and then suddenly scrolling up or down the page. There are reasons why the early directors and cinematographers spent so much time and effort developing conventions in the medium to communicate to audiences without the medium getting in the way of the story.
    All the time spent, while I was occupied trying to ascertain what the hell I was looking at, slowly ate away at my desire to continue watching.
    I was feeling a headache coming on, with a touch of dizziness, any longer and I would have suffered vertigo and nausea.
    So I left. Reluctantly.
    I say reluctantly, because I really wanted to see and understand what I thought would be an interesting movie. I have seen many Indian movies and know they can do better than this.
    Sadly, I am not able to cope with its form.
    Does anyone else have this problem with these kinds of modern filming techniques?
    I'd be particularly interested to know if any younger people can relate to my experience, but I already have the feeling I have suddenly got old, if not a bit cranky.
  21. DesDownunder
    Following my blog post of 10th March 2014
    Sweet, yeah, right.
    I've never seen such aggression in a household cat.
    I can only think that he was taken from his mother too soon. (I had a boyfriend that was taken from his mother too soon, when I was 18, but his problem was that he didn't know that my boyfriends don't entertain the local harlots (female) in the woodshed.)
    Psycho the cat continued on his journey of training for the remake of the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name, slashing at our ankles. He even rushed into the shower with fangs and claws striking out at our ankles and lower extremities. He was well named.
    Then he stopped eating. I consulted the vet, again. This time we were well prepared and the vet decided to wear leather gloves and wrapped Psycho in a heavy blanket...a feat in itself.
    After an examination the vet said that he must start drinking some water or he wouldn't survive the weekend. He just snarled and hissed and tried to bite us. She told the cat that he was very lucky as most people wouldn't put up with his tantrums.
    I was horrified at her suggestion that we would abandon him or worse, have him put down. I didn't even try to put down the old boyfriend when he was running rampant in the woodshed. After disappearing for the weekend and leaving us very distraught and worried he (the cat, not the old boyfriend) suddenly reappeared on Monday looking very healthy and smoothed against our legs.
    Anyway, the vet said we should try a product called Feliway which released cat pheromones into the room and might serve to calm him down. Three months later and I'm happy to report that Feliway worked, to a degree. He now sleeps on the bed with us. He begrudgingly will let us give him a cuddle, but in the middle of his very loud purring he will still snap at us and then go back to purring. We finally worked out that his snapping at our ankles is his way to let us know that he wants to be fed.
    We bought him a tree house which he loved until winter arrived and he discovered that the bed was a better choice for keeping warm; a fact that my de facto and I had previously discovered some years ago.
    We've stopped using the Feliway and so far so good. Feliway isn't a complete cure but we think it has helped.
    If I knew where that old boyfriend lived I'd send him a bottle.

    Psycho the cat, contemplating his next attack.
  22. DesDownunder
    Parents - Three of Each
    A humorous introspection
    by Desmond Rutherford © 2012
    I’ve been asked for a short version of little Dessie's early years of parental influences.
    It all seemed to me, even back then, to be rather ordinary really, but in reality my early years were a minefield of historical precedents setting our cultural taboos and traps.
    How's that for an opening sentence? Okay, don't get excited, here are the details.
    Most of the time my mother and her sister suffered from the malady known as 'choosing the wrong husband'. Basically, they would marry any man that addressed them as “My Lady.” Their domineering mother, my grandmother, (duh) had better luck with my grandfather, but irregardless, he died at the early age of 57, leaving me stranded, at eleven years old, without a biological father figure. How did that happen?
    My father was one of those men who never grew up. At 16 he joined the crew of the last windjammer to sail to England via the Cape of Good Hope where the ship encountered a storm, and in his words, "a dry bed was just a wet dream," which was how he wrote it to my mother in the letter describing his travelling conditions. They fell madly in love with each other, and when they were both 24 they married and he took to making the bed wet with her, but not before I was conceived. Or was that why I was conceived? Anyway, he was very good at making the bed a wet dream, but not with my mother. She divorced him when she discovered him practising his, 'get a wench pregnant' skills with another woman.
    But you wanted the short version...I'm sorry, I get carried away. Let's just say that step-daddy number one was a real 'good guy', until he revealed that he really was The Step-Father From Hell, as we soon discovered after grandfather (remember him?) died. For some reason, known only to the Psycho Step-Fathers' Guild, my step-father decided to beat my mother up every night after grandfather died. It was probably some kind of escape clause in his Step-Fathers' Guild contract, should he ever discover he was totally unsuited to marriage.
    After a couple of years of being beaten nightly, my mother became weary of his futile desire to prove himself a man, and divorced him. He then ran off with one of my godfathers; a detail I would not learn until I was in my late twenties. He was one of those guys who try to prove that he is something he isn't. No, I'm not making this up. Luckily, he didn't molest me. My cousin has to accept responsibility for that, when he taught me to play 'doctors' with him, but then I was so naïve at 9 years old, that I thought he just wanted me to examine his body as any good doctor would. Goodness knows what I was touching, as he never did take off his clothes, and later he married. I wonder if that lasted. No traumas for me from that encounter.
    I remember the trauma I did have, when I discovered my sexuality. It was a school boy thing. The school doctor, who looked like he could have been someone's father, tested my testicular travelling tendencies and I decided I wanted to improve my range. Once it became apparent that I was only interested in touring the same destinations with same minded teenage males, I knew that my family, such as it was, was not going to cope well with my self realisation of my sexuality. In a moment of insanity at age fifteen, I checked with the local Baptist Church as to what God said about homosexuality. The priest (who should have been a father figure) told me it was better to be homosexual than to molest little girls. What incense was he smoking? It turned out that he was later arrested for, you guessed it, molesting little girls. He obviously didn't take his own advice, but I felt freed from the restrictions of Scripture. Atheism was added to my repertoire and I cancelled my covenant with my childhood religious fantasies. Feel free to do the same. You have nothing to lose but your insanity. But I digress, again.
    Step-father number two was much more docile; he was in fact somewhat boring but loved my mother. He was a butcher, and at age fourteen, I told my mother that she married him for his meat. She told me, “Not really, dear,” and then we both burst out laughing. He was not a large man.
    In the meantime, my mother's sister (that makes her my aunt) was busy sorting out her 'husband number two'. I think the first one died when I was infant, and much later, when I was in my teens, so did number two. She had better luck with husband number three as she died before he did but then he was sixteen years younger than her. She didn't have any children, though I'm certain she managed to get her consorts to have wet dreams. Needless to say she hovered around her only nephew (me) like any good mother-figure would.
    In between all these comings and goings, my biological father, who had joined the merchant navy, visited me whenever his ship was in the local port. He was evidently successful in making beds wet whenever his ships berthed, and indeed found a number of women who were only too happy to give birth to his children. We still, to this day, have never found all my half-siblings and I only met one of my ex-step-mothers, who was really nice.
    Then mum died, and even though I was 21, my aunt and my grandmother decided I needed to be looked after. I escaped to Melbourne and found true love, for six months.
    All in all, I have to say I was lucky I was gay, or I might have been tempted to shoot myself had I thought life for me would hold only the possibility of heterosexual relationships like those paraded by my parental units. What was that about a man and a woman, a mother and a father, being the best environment for a child? Obviously, whoever claims that, never met my family. Did I mention they were all alcoholics? Setting all their faults aside, I did grow up feeling loved by my parents, all of them.
    Even though there was an additional male role model in my life, in the form of a mentor, I do not talk about him directly, though you may find his creative and loving influence in nearly all of my stories. I would have been a very different person without him.
    So, this mostly happened over fifty years ago, in a time when gay relations were a crime that could lead to a social disaster, with no chance of redemption. Somehow, I never felt tempted to contemplate suicide. I was always far too interested in discovering how things would turn out. Even the daily beatings and bullying I suffered during my school years, until my mid-teens, never made me question the worth of being alive. As I have said before, I was lucky. I was determined to live. As I approach my sixty-eighth birthday I can tell you now, with no uncertainty, that seventy years of life is not enough, despite all the trials and tribulations we encounter. Indeed, I am wondering if they are what makes life worth living, if we can just accept the beauty that surrounds us, giving us the opportunity to love each other.
    Will my partner and I marry? Will we have children? I can tell you we actively support equal human rights for marriage, but we might not enter into marriage ourselves. We never had children despite trying nearly every noon and night for these past forty years, but, like my dad, having made our bed wet, we dream in it.
  23. DesDownunder
    So is it New year yet?
    I guess it must be. We have had our usual spate of arrests and murders and other various activities that the local peasants seem to think is necessary for the celebration of the Earth having completed yet another orbit around the sun.
    Some of them don't believe in that though, which makes me think of what it must mean to be so obsessed by a belief that others have to be subjected to it, beyond, in some cases, any semblance of validity.
    Such things were not foremost on my mind however when at 11.52 pm I crawled into bed, several hours ahead of my usual bedtime and looked at the man of my nightmares, I mean dreams, definitely my dreams, who was watching a DVD movie of no great worth except to act as nightmare fodder for someone else.
    "Whatcha doin'?" he asked.
    "Helping you watch the movie." I answered.
    "Oh." he replied. "I can stop it if you want."
    'If I want to what?"
    "It is hot!' he said
    "So it is," I confirmed for him.
    ****
    I believe we were thinking the same thing, that is, we had the same beliefs. At least they seemed similar.
    Some people do not seem to understand how important it is to allow other people to have beliefs that conflict with their own.
    They seem to be obsessed by some primitive neanderthal necessity to want others to think as they do.
    Well that might have been necessary when we lived in tribes or in caves. You know when our ancestors clubbed each other to death out of fear of the differences between one tribe and another; or over claims that cavemen from one cave were better than cavemen from another cave. It was a time when they could not explain things like lightning or wind or rain or fire. The Sun revolved around the Earth which was flat. You could be burned at the stake for saying you believed otherwise.
    Today on this the first day of a new year, actually it is the second because I was busy yesterday, it occurs to me that we no longer need to worry about what others believe, provided each of us does not try to club anyone else into submitting to their beliefs.
    It is not beliefs themselves that cause problems. What creates the problems is when we allow our beliefs to dictate what we do, without recourse to reason, common sense and human compassion.
    In short when my actions are the result of my beliefs, I should make sure that I do no harm to others or their right to believe what they will. I would ask only that they grant me the same courtesy.
    Now that for me, would be civilised.
    ***
    By 12.07 am New years day, the boyfriend and I had confirmed the compatibility of our beliefs by having them in a rather uncivilised way, but very full of human com-passion, for a whole year from 2007 to 2008. It was a great year even though it only lasted fifteen minutes.
    May you all have a splendid 2008 with many happy 15 minutes or longer.

  24. DesDownunder
    I thought I would quote some of my replies I post to newspaper sites and blogs, and stuff.
    Hopefully they will make sense without referencing the article, which I won't do because I do not mean this to be a reference report, just a place to list my comments that perhaps might have a general relevance to other communities or situations. A kind of pin the quote -tail, on the (blindfolded) asinine news of the day, and let it fall where it may in the readers' realm.
    .
  25. DesDownunder
    It's been an awkward year for me and I hadn't been able to get to the local poetry reading group for about 8 months (I think.)
    Anyway, the stars aligned with Jupiter and the moon was in the seventh house, etc., and I had the night free to attend the local poets reading their poems. Most of them of course read descriptions of 'things' as if they were shopping lists delivered like a telegram, but hey, people were attempting to be creative, so who cares?
    The first shock was that the admission had risen to $5, but the nice girl at the money taking table knocked off a dollar because I looked so old and decrepit.
    I picked up the handout for the evening and was shocked into the middle of next weekend. The group was going to reduce the allotted time for reading from 4 minutes to 3, for each reader, with a promise of looking to go to 2 minutes!
    Okay so they were going to trial 3 minutes in April and May. Well I can tell you there is no may about it, I won't be there. I mean what can you read in 3 minutes? the dinner menu?
    This irked me somewhat, in case you haven't gathered. In one fell swoop they would wipe out reading any of the classic works by Tennyson, Coleridge, Rimbaud (hi Jason), let alone my own unworthy efforts.
    When I complained, I was told I could just read an excerpt. A what? Are these people insane or is their brain missing in action?
    So I sat down and waited my turn to read. I managed to talk to few people during the break, and discovered that the bohemian element had decided to rename Adelaide as 'delayed, because we were always behind what was happening anywhere else in the world. The fact that it has taken so long to think of this is proof that they are right.
    So I questioned people about the proposed reduction in reading time, and was told that people didn't want to stay out till 11pm as it was too late. Too what? Late? Do these people even know that 11 pm is the starting hour for the local gay bar?
    Come to think of it I don't think they have heard about being gay yet, despite my gay poems and a couple of very nice young men skirting around the subject in their poems.
    I watched as people revealed their total lack of knowledge on microphone technique, one man trying to lick it as if it was a black aniseed ice cream, while another woman decided it was in her view of her text and so pushed the microphone away until it fell off its stand. We all got feedback for her effort.
    I finally got to read my Reflections and my All I can Be, poems. I was pleased with very enthusiastic applause, so they are not too bad a bunch of people after all.
    Then I remembered I was in Adelaide and probably the applause was for the previous poet, his applause being delayed.
    I've now had some time to think this over, and I have come to the conclusion that the Church controlled conservative government has decided to use its influence to eradicate the left-wing poets by limiting their reading time at poetry meetings because it won't fund someone to lock up the hall so late at night. The volunteers want to get home early.
    This will mean that there is an opening for a really good poetry group to spring up but as it will take sometime I guess that will be 'delayed too.
    Foo on the lot of them. If they want decent poetry, they will just have to come to AwesomeDude and Codey's World.

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