Twenty Third & Seventh

Only in New York...

From: the Sydney Morning Herald.  It's time for Chelsea residents to lobby Stanley for avant-garde toilet paper!

It's new, it's avant-garde. Is the world ready for dark toilet paper, asks Penelope Green.

An ink-and-gold Manhattan nightclub, Double Seven, recently carried new accessories in the men's and women's bathrooms: rolls of black toilet paper. You could hardly see them through the gloom, as the club's bathrooms are tiled in black, have black toilets and sinks, and are lit by candles.

Laurie Black, a customer relations manager who was there having a drink with her boss, tugged out a length of the stuff and squinted.

"It doesn't jump out," she said. "You'd think, wow, black toilet paper. Am I going to use this?"

Good question. Can toilet paper make it as an object of design, a touchstone of chic?

Paulo Miguel Pereira da Silva is the president of a Portuguese company called Renova, which has begun testing Renova Black at New York hot spots such as Frederick's Bar and Lounge and La Esquina.

Da Silva says black was an intuitive choice for toilet paper because it signals "avant-garde creative work". "In a design sense, black means irreverence, maybe touching a bit on the core nature of art, which is to break rules and set new ones. Culturally, deep down, Renova Black invites people to break down whatever might be limiting as common sense ideas."

Clown Paranoia

This is too funny...

from: the Age

Organisers of a British rock festival have been forced to change its circus theme after a ticketholders told them they had a phobia of clowns.

The Bestival event on the Isle of Wight, off England's south coast, in early September was to have encouraged festival-goers to dress up in curly red wigs and oversized shoes.

Last year's Cowboys or Indians theme broke a world record for the biggest fancy dress party when 10,000 people turned up in disguise.

But organisers feared thousands of clowns in one place could spark mass panic in the psychedelic atmosphere of the festival, which is popular with so-called "nouveaux hippies", The Times reported today.

"We have had so many people with clown phobias contact us I am worried everyone might end up hiding in the woods," Rob da Bank, a BBC Radio One disc jockey who will "curate" the show, was quoted as saying.

Fear of clowns - or coulrophobia - has symptoms including shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, nausea, sweating and a sense of foreboding, The Times pointed out.

Heavy make-up and bulbous noses, plus negative childhood memories of the supposed funnymen and women, are thought to be the root cause.

Going Salon

Just as the phrase 'to go postal' starts to lose the lustre of immediacy, we have a potential replacement, going salon.  We love this story, a drunken hairdresser in a rage at the mere suggestion that his crimping skills aren't up to speed.  Never piss a hairdresser off, I say.

Salon wrecked in stylist's strop

A HOOLIGAN hairdresser, ticked off by his boss for his poor crimping skills, wrecked the salon during a drunken rage.

Nicky Cranston caused more than £20,000 damage when he smashed up McAuliffe's in Peterlee town centre during the late-night attack.

Durham Crown Court heard the 19-year-old flooded the first-floor shop – and pharmacist Savers below – by leaving taps running and ripping water heaters off the walls.

When salon manageress Maria Arnell went to open up the next day she was greeted by the police who had been called to probe the break-in.

Cranston told detectives and told them he had been at the shop on the night of the attack – but only to get a plaster after cutting his hand on a night out.

He later confessed to wrecking the salon in a text message to Mrs Arnell which read: "I have ruined everything. I am nothing, I realise that now."

Cranston, of Welland Close, Peterlee, admitted two charges of criminal damage in Upper Yoden Way, on November 5, last year.

He has a previous conviction for criminal damage.

Mitigating, Stuart Graham said: "While he had been told off during the course of this employment, this was not a grudge or revenge attack.

"He was very drunk that night and was genuinely shocked when he realised what he had done.

"He says he will never, ever, offend again."

Judge Tony Lancaster passed a 30 week sentence, suspended for 12 months, but Cranston must carry out 150 hours of community work and pay £500 compensation to the salon and £250 to Savers.

The judge told him: "You must learn to deal with your problems in an adult way, and not behave like an undisciplined child as you did on this occasion."

Nudist burnt. Barbecued sausages served for supper.

Link: The Daily Telegraph | Nudist burnt.

Ha ha! Stupid hippies!

A NUDIST suffered burns to his bottom yesterday after an attempt to incinerate a spider went horribly wrong.

Paramedics from the NRMA CareFlight Helicopter said the 56-year-old's lack of clothing may have contributed to the severity of the burns.

One said the man poured petrol down what he thought was a funnel web hole at the nudist resort 40km west of Bowral and received burns to 18 per cent of his body.

Cats Are the Only People Worth Knowing

Female cat carrying one of the three adopted baby chickens that she is caring for at the same time as caring for her own 3 kittens in Lalin, Galicia

Bebe Bearwithme Update

We received enquiries this week seeking reassurance on the well-being of BeBe Bearwithme, a.k.a. 42nd St Bear.

A few of you have met BeBe but for the as yet unitiated, BeBe is the bear I adopted while in NY.  He was living on the streets up around the low fifties somewhere, I've forgotten precisely where.  I took pity on him and moved him into the Chelsea on a temporary basis. As it worked out, he acquired a fake passport from somebody on Canal St and followed me home on the next flight.

As you can probably see from the picture, spending his formative weeks at Hotel Chelsea, in Dee Dee Ramone's room, has had a serious impact on his emotional development. BeBe is going through his punk phase and we all just need to humour him and pretend that we can't tell that he has scraped up a ratty old wig from somewhere. He is very proud of his 'Dee Dee hair'.

BeBe can be difficult, he has punk spirit in buckets, but it is sometimes wearing.  He only agreed to pose for pictures if he was allowed to hold up a sign 'like on the Katie Couric show'.  He claims to have been fed food scraps by Ms Couric while living on the streets.  Who am I to argue? What the bear wants, the bear gets.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present the product of a Chelsea Hotel youth, Mr BeBe Bearwithme...

Harass a Jock

I should have grown out of finding a destructive application for everything I encounter.  Fortunately, I haven't.

This site is great fun. One can send abusive messages to randomly selected [or targetted if you wish, I don't know one from another] Commonwealth Games competitors.  I just sent a random swimmer a message about what a waste of public money funding elite athletes is.  I expect to be censored but one can only try.

Grab a sick-bag, a thesaurus of expletives and head here.

Don't Ask, Don't Pose for Pornos

This in intriguing, perfect titilation material. 

AP are reporting on a busted gay-porn ring that used models from the Fort Bragg Base.  I suspect that these men may have misunderstood the famous 'don't ask, don't tell' rule.  Being seen sucking on a juicy big dick on the interwebs could be considered telling. 

I can see the spin-off telemovie now, Conduct Unbecuming.

But really, who would ever have thought that a porn site advertising 'real US military' actually featured real US military?  Perhaps I'm a cynical X-er, I would have expected to find a few siliconified, depilated, LA 'out of work actors' poking their members out of army fatigues and feigning butch.

An experiment in typing 'gay military' into google images led to this kind of outcome.  Lots of out of work actors with prominent tanlines waving their reproductive organs about.  Have a look where the 'models wanted' link leads.  These people do not appear to be army to me...   [n.b. XXX site. DEFINITELY not work-safe. Especially if you work for the military.]

Right now, hundreds of thousands of queens will be trolling about the interwebs looking for this site in some kind of naive hope that the military haven't entirely vanished it.  I'm going to wait awhile until someone publishes the collected pictures at another, altogether different, site.  That's the magic of the interwebs.

From AP:

ARMY CHARGES 7 WITH HAVING SEX ON GAY PORN SITE
by: Estes Thompson, The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The Army has recommended that seven 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers be discharged following allegations they engaged in sex acts shown on a gay pornographic Web site.

Three soldiers face courts-martial on charges of sodomy, pandering and engaging in sex acts for money. Four others received nonjudicial punishments, according to a statement released by the military Friday.

The charges do not mention the name of the site, but the division had previously been investigating allegations that soldiers appeared on a gay pornography Web site. A spokesman for the division said the charges were a result of that investigation.

The military-themed Web site did not make any direct reference to the division or Fort Bragg, a sprawling post about 70 miles south of Raleigh.

"As far as we're concerned, it's isolated to the unit, and our investigation determined that these seven individuals were the only ones" involved, said 82nd Airborne spokesman Maj. Thomas Earnhardt.

The charges indicate the soldiers' behavior is "a much more serious matter than just their sexual orientation," said Steve Ralls, a spokesman for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a legal group that helps gays and lesbians in the military.

"I'm not going to make excuses for service members who are taking part in sexual conduct for money," said Ralls. "It would be absolutely criminal regardless of whether they were heterosexual or gay."

Earnhardt said the three soldiers charged under military law had been appointed military attorneys, but he said the lawyers would be unavailable for comment on Friday.

The three soldiers who face courts-martial are: Spc. Richard T. Ashley, Pfc. Wesley K. Mitten and Pvt. Kagen B. Mullen. The Army did not release their ages or hometowns, but said all seven paratroopers were members of the 2nd Battalion of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

An arraignment was scheduled for March 7.

The other four soldiers who received nonjudicial penalties were not identified. Their punishments included reduction to the rank of private, 45 days of restriction to the unit area, 45 days of extra duty and forfeiture of a month's pay.

The registered owner of the Web site's domain name lists an address in Fayetteville, the city that adjoins Fort Bragg. A phone number listed for the registered owner was not in service Friday, and e-mails to the owner have been regularly returned as undeliverable.

The 15,000 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne are among the Army's most elite soldiers, having volunteered to serve in a unit that trains to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours.

The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy states that "homosexual orientation alone is not a bar to service, but homosexual conduct is incompatible with military service." Service members who violate the policy are removed from the military.

Psycho or Resident Round Two Now Closed

Head to the sidebars for the exciting outcome...

Loser of the Week

Further to the argument for sterilising stupid people before they can spread their corrupt DNA:

A Star Trek fan has filed for bankruptcy after spending almost $71,000 converting his home into the Starship Voyager.