:: Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngh! ::

Following the minor stress of having to complete a project by the end of last week, I took the opportunity to unwind big stylee: dinner with La Gribouilleuse on Friday, dancing with Tigger on Saturday and (another) boozy BBQ to round off the weekend. Dinner was lovely, but involved my walking 3 miles home afterwards at 2am. "My Beautiful City" was the inaugural hip-hop night at Key in Kings Cross (where Bagley's used to be), which promised great things with the likes of DJ Yoda and Cutmaster Swift on the decks. Unfortunately, although we had a good time, the DJing was a bit lacklustre over all (v. disappointing to hear a DMC winner plonk one track on after another without bothering to mix). I liked most of Yoda's set, though, especially when it veered towards the Old Skool or Bootleg ends of the hip-hop spectrum. And there was some silly 80's electro-pop stuff too - if only I could body-pop like this guy... The barbecue was a chance to meet up with everyone from the play I was in last month, which was great until a bottle of vodka was produced from the freezer and the Russian toasts began...

Yesterday started off a bit blurry and grew worse as I realised the lastest project I'm working on is a piece of shit (inconsistent research, not enough time to recommission, technical problems, etc.) However, the Twelfth Night rehearsal I'd been dreading all day went OK and I was cheered at work by the news of a deadly stiletto attack and the latest dumb-arsed BB challenge. Gordon Brown's pontifications regarding the Euro were perfectlly summed up by today's Steve Bell cartoon in the Grauniad:

Elsewhere, things all seem to have gone a little gay. The news that Homo sapiens nearly became extinct was the first sign that all might not be well in the world of breeders. Repeated rumours that the gay mafia controls most of our media might be justified with the high number of related articles in the past day or so. The House of Lords is supporting a Gay Loo Sex Ban and cash-strapped Czech soldiers have resorted to posing for porn to "make ends meet". I giggled when I read that the name of the Head of the Castle Guard quoted in that article was one Mr Pekar, although being a Slavo-glot, I'm aware that his name means "baker" not "throbbing manshaft". I also read about Britain's most famous transsexual (not strictly gay, I know) and revisited Channel 4's excellent Gay-O-Meter. In case you're wondering I ended up with a very respectable 56% Gay, which is probably justified as I'm hardly a screaming Mary. Talking of which... I recently bought a copy of Kenneth Williams' Acid Drops, a fantastic collection of bitchy put-downs. For me, one of his most memorable creations was with Hugh Paddick as one half of Julian & Sandy from Round the Horne. Wickedly rude for their time, these sketches (La Casserole de Bona Gourmet is a good example) made extensive use of Polari, the gay slang of the time, to circumvent the stuffy BBC censors of the day and invoke the most outrageous level of innuendo. A fuller list of terms and their etymologies is available here.

A final faux-mosexual link takes us on to these fake fags stickers. Oh, the punnage! I think I might crawl off and die now. Tomorrow, I'll get back on the straight and narrow...