OK, the name is a bit of a mouthful (repeat that in your best Kenneth Williams voice) and he is currently battling to remain as the President of Iran, so he probably doesn’t have much spare time. But we still have to ask - would you do Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
In-depth political analysis after the jump…
A friend of ours - of otherwise impeccable morals - got trashed one afternoon and ended up at Chariots in Vauxhall. After he’d cleaned up, we asked him what it was like.
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Please could you walk us through the whole ‘customer experience’. Starting at the front desk/reception - what did you say?
‘Two adults please’. There was a sheet of paper stuck to the desk that said concessions were available, but it wasn’t clear who was entitled. The HIV-free? Children? I thought best pay the full price.
Who was on the desk?
Some thin, tanned chap who handed over the two towels - two towels each - and a couple of other ‘heavies’ guarding the door. I say heavies, I mean gym bunnies.
Probably not a contender for Scrabble or Monopoly (although less likely to lead to board-shutting tantrums), it’s the latest game sweeping the Rentist office*: ‘Would You Do..?’ The idea is simple - considering all the available options, would you do [insert name of person/fictional character/under-age sports star]?
So to get the ball rolling, here’s round one: would you do the man from the Scott’s Porridge Oats box?
Analysis after the jump…
This has not yet been confirmed by Amazon, but a well-known troll has published a convincing mea culpa about the gay books censorship storm. He claims to have exploited Amazon’s ”report as inappropriate” feature and his own coding knowledge to spam the retailer with complaints about queer titles. This - he alleges - is what caused hundreds of books to lose their sales ranking, making them less visible in searches and bestseller lists.
I’m no programmer, but the explanation tastes truthier than the “Evil Amazon Hates Gays” hysteria that took over Twitter yesterday. That otherwise-wonderful platform may lend itself to self-righteous posing, but it’s still unsettling to see so many people (9,000 signed a fucking petition in a day) leap to conclusions despite huge logical flaws in the allegations.
As another blogger, who seemed to be in on the trolling, wrote:
Now, let’s just put ourselves in Amazon’s shoes. Keep in mind that Amazon is a smug, fairly liberal company headquartered in fucking Seattle of all places and, last I checked, Jeff Bezos is not exactly a Christian fundamentalist. Why on earth would they suddenly censor only a specific group of content that deals with a marginalized and politically active community? Why would this policy change not take the form of a specific policy, but rather of very discriminately flagging only certain titles as “adult” content? Why would this happen over a weekend?
Well that’s if you believe some bloggers and the whole of Twitter (#amazonfail). Picking through the scant detail, it seems that Amazon actually acted to withdraw all adult-themed books from its sales rankings and a lot of cockteasy not-rotic gay titles were caught up in the clumsy sweep.
This book is not porn. NOT PORN
Books called things like ”First Awakening”, “Finding Larry” and “Simon’s Secret”, books with nipples and torsos on their front covers, books that market themselves discretely but obviously as 180 page filth romps only to reveal themselves on reading to be hammy nonsense about feelings and emotional journeys and “relationships”. Books written by Dan Brown’s gayer, soppier, dumber brother.
Unsurprisingly, my plan to send regular updates on GayLife in the People’s Republic has been scuppered by booze, fun & poor internet accessibility (I even had to use the wi-fi in a Shanghai branch of KFC - don’t talk to me about glamour). But as you can see from the posing of myself & my guide Himself (aka Teej) in Diagram 1, the understated 3.5 star luxury & peaceful environs of the Bund Riverside hotel has given me chance to reflect on my time here so far:
Apologies for being unforgivably late on this one… but Jake Myerson. Yes?
From the Daily Mail
Yes.
His shoes, not so much.
Also of note: there’s a fake Julie Myerson on Twitter. Not quite as funny as it should be, but if in some small way it helps make that money-grabbing harridan just a little bit unhappier then what’s not to like?
Hey sacked people! Given that there are so many of you chasing like 12 vacancies, and that most jobhunting advice is asinine or lies, we thought you might benefit from a new perspective. Too dull? Well how about a new homoerotic perspective starring a young, demented Matt Damon and sexy young twins*?
Watch How To Keep A Job (1949) in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
This 1949 public education film is titled How To Keep A Job, so it’s best watched as a “what you did wrong, dumb fired boy”. Note down the lessons and hold them close for when you finally secure some cleaning work around 2012. The standout tips seem to be:
Travel-blogging is the last refuge of teh interwebz scoundrel, an excuse to trot out various cliches about the glamorous world of air travel being reduced to another form of bog-standard public transport, the struggle to find somewhere to smoke in airports, and the perceived racism of Customs officials who pick on shady-looking gold-drenched businessmen. So Rentist have decided to join this noble tradition, and I* have been sent to Beijing to see what gaylife is like in the Far East.
