Cheddar Gorgeous: Let’s Get Visible!

Trump in Drag, credit: Cheddar Gorgeous / Facebook.

Trump in Drag, credit: Cheddar Gorgeous / Facebook.

Oh, I would give so much to be a part of this, it sounds absolutely fabulous and it has the added bonus that it will make the Tiny Tyrant squirm all over.

Queen Elizabeth won’t the only queen greeting Donald Trump when he visits the U.K. in July.

A thousand people have signed onto a Facebook invitation for a drag-queen protest to greet the president in London on July 13. Another nearly 7,000 people are interested in attending.

Manchester drag performer Cheddar Gorgeous and four other performers have issued the call to all drag kings, queens, queers and our allies.

“Due to the appalling way the Trump administration has regarded the rights and welfare of the LGBTQI communities in the U.S., the idea of a Trump visit to the U.K. is unacceptable,” the invitation says.

“Let’s get visible, stand with our sisters, brothers and others in America.”

You can read much more at LGBTQ Nation, and The Guardian. Cheddar Gorgeous on Twitter.  I wish all the attendees the very best, and I hope there are going to a ton of photos.

Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death.

The Knight.

The Knight.

The Dance of Death by the German artist Hans Holbein (1497–1543) is a great, grim triumph of Renaissance woodblock printing. In a series of action-packed scenes Death intrudes on the everyday lives of thirty-four people from various levels of society — from pope to physician to ploughman. Death gives each a special treatment: skewering a knight through the midriff with a lance; dragging a duchess by the feet out of her opulent bed; snapping a sailor’s mast in two. Death, the great leveller, lets no one escape. In fact it tends to treat the rich and powerful with extra force. As such the series is a forerunner to the satirical paintings and political cartoons of the eighteenth century and beyond. For example, Death sneaks up behind the judge, who is ignoring a poor man to help a rich one, and snaps his staff, the symbol of his power, in two. A chain around Death’s neck suggests he is taking revenge on corrupt judges on behalf of those they have wrongfully imprisoned. In contrast, Death seems to come to the aid of the poor ploughman, by driving his horses for him and releasing him from a life of toil; the glowing church in the background implies this old man is on his way to heaven.

Holbein drew the woodcuts between 1523 and 1525, while in his twenties and based in the Swiss town of Basel.

The Miser.

The Miser.

The Monk.

The Monk.

These woodcuts are beautiful and highly detailed. In Holbein’s hands, Death makes its feelings known; Death is quite gentle in the cases of the old woman and old man, poor folk, and those of the peasant class. On the other side, Death is more than a little rude, as in the violin playing as Death drags the Duchess out of her bed. Death is not kind when it comes to the abbot, the abbess, or the monk.

One notable thing makes these beautiful woodcuts all the more astonishing, the size of them:

Holbein’s achievement is the greater because of the miniature scale he was drawing in. Reproductions obscure just how tiny the wooden blocks were — no bigger than four postage stamps arranged in a rectangle. The blocks were cut by Hans Lützelburger, a frequent and highly skilled collaborator of Holbein’s. Lützelburger had cut forty-one blocks and had ten remaining when Death surprised him too. The blocks were then sold to creditors, and eventually printed and published for the first time in Lyons in 1538 as Les simulachres and historiees faces de la mort.

You can read and see much more at The Public Domain.

The Book of Exposition: The Secrets of Oriental Sexuology.

15th Century erotica! Oh my. This looks to be very interesting, and I do plan on reading it. Unfortunately I can’t do that right away, the day before chemo is always a busy one.

A decade or so after the famed Orientalist Richard Burton translated Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi’s The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight (1886), an anonymous translator became the first to critically assess and introduce for Anglophone audiences another of the Middle East’s more controversial and enigmatic texts — Kitab al-Izah Fi’ilm al-Nikah b-it-Tamam w-al-Kamal, or The Book of Exposition — a collection of fifteenth-century erotica. Despite there being much dispute over the authorship of the work, from both Western and Middle Eastern scholars over the centuries, The Book of Exposition is nowadays credited to a fifteenth-century Egyptian polymath called Jalal ad’Din al-Suyuti (1445-1505). Although perhaps best known for his co-authorship of Tafsir al-Jalalayn (Tafsir of the Two Jalals), a classical Sunni exegesis of the Quran, al-Suyuti was also a prolific erotologist, writing at least twenty-three treatises on various aspects of the sexual arts.

The two dozen stories he presents in The Book of Exposition are an exploration of promiscuity and sexual taboos under the societal constraints of the Arab-Islamic world. In “The Strange Transformation that Befell a Certain Believer’s Prickle” a man is granted a “Night of Power” in which he is given three wishes to be fulfilled by Allah.

[…]

In his opening essay and commentary, An English Bohemian sets out to dispel Victorian attitudes to sexuality through the idolisation of the Oriental — setting up “Oriental Sexuology” as a mystical alternative for aspiring libertines/hedonists. He doesn’t just limit himself to the Orient in his examination of sexuality. He offers an insight into the sexual customs of other lands he claims to have travelled and researched extensively as a former practitioner of medicine: from Loango to the Aztecs, Paraguay to Samoa, Europe to Arabia. Despite his intentions, we perhaps end up learning more about Western attitudes to sex than the those of the non-European cultures he examines. His assertions, in their elevation of Orient over the Occident, appear to be motivated more by a desire to rebel against the prevailing establishment of his own culture than offering a nuanced picture of a foreign culture’s attitudes to sex.

You can read more at The Public Domain Review (the book is also available there), or go straight to the book here.

F Is For Fantail Warbler and Fuinha-dos-Juncos.

Fantail Warbler. Fuinha-dos-Juncos.

Common English and Portuguese names for the bird Cisticola juncidis, here perched on a maize tassel. It’s a small insectivorous bird with a characteristic “zit…zit…zit…zit” call and a zigzagging flight, easy to spot in flight but not always easy to figure out where it landed, as it rarely chooses such a conspicuous perch as in this photo. A funny thing is the Portuguese common name, which means marten-of-the-reeds. Yes, marten as in the mustelid. I don’t know why.

Click for full size!

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Jack’s Walk

It’s finally spring around here. The day is warm and sunny and little birds are twittering everywhere. My widows are open and that fresh smell of the season is positively intoxicating. Jack and I decided to go to the forest this morning and found the trout lilies up and getting ready to bloom. We also found a solitary patch of little yellow flowers. I have no idea what they are, but they were a welcome bit of colour. A few more trilliums are also around, but they are coming very slowly this year. We are expecting warm weather all week, though, and I hope that means the flower show will begin soon.

Trout lilies

The first forest flowers

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Sexual Normalcy?

Stonewall.uk.

Bryan Fischer is just about orgasmic over the ouster of the House Chaplain. It seems most people think it was over a prayer by Patrick Conroy, that the tax bill be fair, so Ryan said he was too political.  Anyroad, Mr. Fischer is just so damn excited:

“Here is a good news item for the day,” Fischer declared. “He is an out gay man, he’s married to a man—quote, end quote—so it was a shameful move to the put this guy in charge of the chaplaincy of the House in the first place.”

“This is a great win,” Fischer continued. “He’s pro-gay, he’s a homosexual guy that’s married to a homosexual guy. Big win, because Paul Ryan is not going to replace him with somebody who is going to have that kind of a left-leaning tilt. This is good news for the agenda of morality, especially sexual normalcy in the United States.”

There’s no such thing as sexual normalcy, Mr. Fischer. Missionary “for the baybees” Only is not official in any, it’s boring as fuck, and not everyone is interested in breeding. Mr. Fischer is providing yet another grand example of christian stupidity and inability to fact check anything. Oh no, much better to start spewing lies. I would have though that even someone like Mr. Fischer would know about the celibacy issue in the catholic church. I have no idea whatsoever of Patrick Conroy’s sexual orientation, but if he’s managed to stay celibate all these years, what in the fuck does it matter? He’s certainly not married to anyone. That’s kind of a no-no in catholicism. It took me about 4, 5 minutes to check stuff out, and it turns out the Patrick Conroy is pro-gay. I guess that’s not bad enough, no, better make up a bunch of shit instead. Fucking christians. I imagine they are in such a froth because Patrick Conroy came out and said sex is much more than breeding, oh no!

New Civil Rights Movements has a good article up about this mess. Bryan Fischer’s screeth is at RWW.

Cancer Chronicles 17: Struggling.

My new best friend, Immodium.

Things have not been going well. I am seriously struggling with treatment right now, and at least one thing is certain – I do not react well to being poisoned. The last cycle (5th) gifted me with acid reflux and heartburn from hell, vomiting, nausea, and severe diarrhea, much of which went on for over 10 days straight. Rather than having the 6th cycle last week, I was put on IV fluids for a week because serious dehydration. My last IV will be today, after seeing my pain management person. Then chemo on the 2nd of May. I’m not arguing against being pushed back anymore, particularly because I won’t even consider doing Neulasta again, that shit damn near killed me.

The pain is back, in huge red letters. Butt pain, back pain, sciatic pain, abdominal pain. I’m told the abdominal pain is a result of the chemo, nothing for it except to keep taking morphine, and whatever else in order to keep the morphine down. For most of my life, I’ve usually had very little in the medicine cabinet. The basics, toothpaste, deodorant, bandages, Ibuprofen, and little else. Now, I’ve accumulated so much crap to take, prescription and OTC, I don’t have room for it anywhere. Stuff to keep things down, stuff to plug parts up, stuff to loosen up bits, and on and on and on it goes. You’ll find yourself laughing with a scary edge when you figure out how much all this crap is battling against the rest, and you’re just hoping it all somehow works. I’ve found that standard doses of anything don’t tend to work when you’re in treatment. Well, they don’t work on me. I was recently prescribed Zofran (Ondansetron), and a word about it – it’s for nausea, and the tablets are supposed to be placed on your tongue to dissolve. Once again, I find myself wondering what the fuck people were thinking when they came up with this hideous crap. It’s exceedingly bitter, which I might have been able to handle, but in back of the bitter is this disgusting, fake strawberry cream flavour, and together it triggers a gag reflex. Not the best thing in an anti-nausea drug. You also can’t get the taste out of your mouth for love or money. So, if I need to take it, I lightly crush it, toss it in and wash it down. You aren’t supposed to do that, but it’s the only way I can get it to work.

The bottom line? Do whatever you have to do to deal with any side effects you’re experiencing. If you’re the quiet, doesn’t want to impose type of person, learn to talk your head off when it comes to side effects, there’s little point suffering in silence.

The other major obstacle I’ve been dealing with is a loss of appetite and the attempt to find food which tastes like food. During the latest diarrhea/vomiting phase, I dropped down to 92 lbs, which is seriously not good. I had no appetite, and couldn’t find anything I actually wanted to eat, most everything tasted like cardboard. This is not at all uncommon in those in treatment. When you lose the ability to discern tastes in many foods, you have to do some experimenting with foods and spices. Foods need to be spicy enough that they taste good, and not so spicy as to cause you even more trouble. Right now, for me, taco seasoning is working, along with refried beans, mild chiles, and ground beef. I hope it keeps working, else I’m going to disappear in front of my own eyes. Anyroad, making things a bit more spicy or eating somewhat pungent things (pickled veg, coleslaw, etc.) might help your appetite to wake up and gain a bit of ground. There are also at least a couple of ‘standby’ foods for most people – usually comfort foods which will stay stable in taste. One of mine is chocolate Malt O’ Meal. I have always loved that stuff, and still do. When I can’t get anything else down, I can manage the Malt O’ Meal. Cooking for yourself can be a bit tricky at this point, as the smell of cooking food can suddenly turn revolting. If your caregiver or others can do some cooking for you, so you have things you can simply heat up, that’s ideal.

Right about now in your treatment, when you find yourself struggling with side effects, and feeling more than half past dead, it’s really important to remember your caregiver, even when all you want to do is go collapse somewhere and sleep for a week. You need to remember that seeing you in such a state is tremendously difficult for them, and their feeling of helplessness and anger over that helplessness will seriously blossom at this point. Or, they might become quite depressed, which can be dangerous and needs to be addressed right away. It’s easy enough to understand the helplessness, those of us in treatment, we feel that way too as we have little to no control over what’s happening to us. It’s hard to acknowledge that though, on both sides, but it’s important to do.

I think that’s about all today, I have to be at pain clinic and infusion today. There might be a late start tomorrow.

ETA: I have been told that the Zofran oral dissolve does not normally taste so hideous. That would be the chemo messin’ about. Also, forgot yet another fun side-effect: my nails are peeling. Yes, this can happen, and you can lose nails, too. Taking Biotin in the hope it helps. Also, if you’re in treatment, and get to deal with diarrhea, your Doc probably won’t mention the Immodium Protocol, and yes, that’s a thing to make it actually stop, not a Ludlum title. ;) Ask, and someone will locate it and print it out for you. I have a print-out, but back home just now, going to collapse soon. Actually ate quite a bit today, so that’s a hurrah.

E Is For Eucalyptus.

Eucalypt in English, Eucalipto in Portuguese.

This is, as you can see, a dead and dried branch, part of the landscape now. In fact, I decided to include an extra photo just so you can see what I’m talking about (part of that has already been burned in a controlled manner by my neighbours, a few days after I took the photos). It’s like this everywhere. What happened? Well, many things. First, Portugal has been replacing farmland and native forest by Eucalyptus plantations since the 80s, sponsored by the state and fueled by the demands of the paper industry. Our “green oil” as it was once called by a minister, alluding to its economical value (also like oil, it burns very well and destroys our ecosystem, but none of that was a concern at the time). Second, the process was completely unregulated and suddenly you had entire villages in the middle of one big, messy and chaotic Eucalyptus plantation, with branches touching the houses and no signs of any attempt at spatial planning. Third, we have always had a problem with forest fires, a problem that was arguably made worse by the flammable Eucalyptus and certainly made much worse by climate change. Last year, all of the above + severe drought + atypical weather = the whole country ablaze and 111 deaths. What you see here is part of a desperate attempt to correct 30 years of mistakes within a few months, in time to avoid another deadly summer.

Click for full size!

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