According to CalorieKing, I am obese.

Considering that the calculations on the website do not take into account muscle mass (not that I have any) and body frame (I’m thick-boned, me), my only consolation is that if you enter Brad Pitt height and weight he turns out to be even more obese than I am.

A self-confessed homophobic ex-alysum seeker. The campest poof in the UK. A vegetarian activist lesbian. A page 3 wannabe model. A muscle guy in a leopard thong. A straight-A (straight?) student. A post-sex change Portuguese woman. A South African former archery champion. A gay hairdresser who only sleeps with straight men. Three more freak non-entities I did not register. Locked in a tiny space with only one bedroom and ten beds for twelve people.

Watching Big Brother‘s opening night – can’t stop thinking of Dead Famous. Can’t wait to find out who is the first to get murdered.

I was offered the contract work. Just two days of arm-wrestling with Dreamweaver, at a very attractive hourly rate.

That’s be next Tuesday and Wednesday then, because I’m starting another job on Thursday! I have just had a successful job interview for more web work, once again for Her Majesty’s government. It will only last two months, but it pays 25 per cent more than my previous contract.

Getting the hang of this temping thing after all.

An extraordinary coincidence happened last Saturday.

Dr B. needed to retrieve a router from his company’s West End office, and I went with him. Once at the front door, I noticed the logo of the company a friend of mine works for. While writing my name down in the visitors’ book at the reception desk, I noticed my friend had just signed in. I tried calling him but his mobile was off, so we just went up to his office (after picking up the router – and a couple of free chocolate bars and drinks from the fridge).

The look of utter disbelief on his face was priceless. We were of course the last persons he would have expected to buzz in.

This little surprise visit paid off in the end, as he told me that they’ve got a lot of work on one of their websites at the moment – and I told him I had just finished some contract work. I’m going in tomorrow afternoon to see if we can help each other out.

If all goes well, Dr B. and I might technically be working in the same building (if he was not currently working on a long-term project outside London).

London never felt so small.

My knowledge of UK contemporary culture is patchy to say the least, but I absorb it very quickly once I’m exposed to it.

Not so with Carry On movies unfortunately. I never sat through a whole one, and I only recently found out when it is appropriate to say “Ooh matron”, when Dr B. and Ian explained it to me. If I got it right, it follows wordplay charged with sexual innuendo, and is always uttered by Kenneth Williams whenever the matron (a nurses’ supervisor in a hospital, I have just learnt) character played by Hettie Jaques is involved.

I’ve even been kindly provided with examples of the circumstances when it can be used:

“Just pulling off now – oh matron…”

Text message from Dr B., on a train leaving the station

“—charges of witness tampering” Oooh matron!

Text message from Ian

So far, so good. Then I was faced with another challenge, that is pronouncing “Ooh matron” with just the right intonation and nasal quality. And this is where I inevitably fail and never get it quite right.

I’ve searched the web for a decent soundbite but not even this page has one – the “Oh matron” on the list is not the right one.

• Test yourself: How much do you know about matrons?
• Download a “Oh Matron” ringtone for your mobile phone (it sounds like a rather bad Kenneth Williams impression)

Splinter Cell – Pandora Tomorrow
Halo
FIFA Football 2004
Deus Ex Invisible War
Project Gotham Racing 2
Brute Force

These are a few games available for me to can play on Dr B.’s Xbox.

But no, I spent weeks playing Klax, a rather pointless arcade game on the Midway Arcade Treasures CD.

I’m through now, as there are no more levels above one hundred.

I wonder if there is a Barbie game for the XBox.

There is.

The Infinite Cat Project: pictures of cats watching pictures of cats (that are watching pictures of cats) on computer monitors.

Absolutely useless yet disturbingly fascinating.

[via B3ta]

Now that I’ve got a bit of time on my hands, I can do stuff that until last Friday was a rare privilege, such as trekking all the way to Ikea purely to have a hot-dog, or visiting the gym without fighting for space because the only people there are a couple of bored housewives shaking their cellulite on the treadmill.

Or spraying myself with self-tan lotion and letting it dry naturally without rubbing it in, just to see what the outcome would be.

The result? I looked like a zebra and I had to exfoliate sandpaper myself down with a Brillo pad.

Psss… you like see hookers strip yes?

Tomorrow (Friday) night at GrowlHouse, the Kings Cross Steelers (the UK’s first gay rugby team) take their kit off to raise money for the lads.

They are also planning their 2004 calendar (hello? It’s almost June you know). In the photographer’s words, the calendar will be

“taking its terms of reference as the stylisation of the French Team Calendar, and the aggression of the English Team Calendar”

Oh yes.

“It’s official”…
We are the next BIG thing!

With a band member named Gay Marvin, the road to Hussey‘s success is bound to be paved with gold.

[Via B3ta]

A man is making an omelette while his partner is on her knees giving him head – as you do.

He flips the omelette but fails to catch it in the pan. The scorching omelette lands on his partner’s back. His partner’s reaction is to bite hard. The man’s reaction to the bite is to slam the pan on his partner’s head.

This is what emerged when an Italian couple went to A&E with a burned back, a concussed head and bitten bits.

• Read an article in Italian about this story

Two years of full-time drama school and still I cannot give a proper speech if my life depended on it: I don’t project well enough and frankly, I get all emotional and I start blabbering.

This is why yesterday, when the people I worked with for the past three and a half months gathered round my desk, gave me a Goodbye and Good Luck card and burst into applause, I almost did a Gwyneth.

It’s a good thing that, unlike the temp that finished two weeks ago, this time the agency remembered to let me know that my contract was ending.

While testing the redesign for this website, I noticed that the link to my Amazon wishlist was incorrect.

This is the correct location.

I finally know why nobody bothered to oblige.

Does anybody want a used pink highlighter?

A set of fourteen slighly bent paperclips?

A consultancy-firm-sponsored orange mug with three-month-old tea stains?

No? Nothing?

Come on, it’s my last day at work today and if I feel that I don’t pilfer something my Italian passport will spontaneously combust out of shame.

You can take the boy out of Italy…

Blogging birthday bonus: a picture of me around the same age as this blog is today.

I shall have to ask my mother to confirm it, but I think I’m still wearing the same red scarf these days.

They don’t make them anymore as they used to, do they?

Movable Type (the cogs behind Bitful since last July) has just announced the licence pricing scheme for the release of v 3.0 Developer Edition.

If I got it right, the free licence supports one author and only three weblogs. I still fit in there – although I’d have to strip Dr B. of his status as an inactive author on our text-message weblog (I upload his texts myself).

Spoilsports. And on Bitful’s second bloggiversary too.

My child is two today.

My baby blog has been doing fine in a steady, unremarkable way. Whenever visits peaked or the service was interrupted, it did not let anyone know. Hell, it probably did not even notice.

Two whole years of regular blogging. I have seldom used the words “two years” and “regular” when describing something related to my involvement. “Not constant” and “quickly losing interest” are more familiar terms.

I feel it is about time to buy my baby new clothes, for it has outgrown its pink one-page-fits-all diapers. It is also time to let go, experiment and be free.

Be gentle and understanding if my baby acts silly, becomes a little self-centered or just plain pretentious. Make sure to report any misbehaviour to me though.

It is far from perfect. It is for fun. This is why I love it.

Happy second birthday Bitful Boy.

I am watching the Eurovision Song Contest semifinal from Dr B.’s makeshift Eurovision Media Centre (TV with BBC3 connected to the stereo, laptop with broadband connected to Troubled Diva, cordless handset to call him in the other room via intercom should some totty appear on the screen) in the East End of London.

And following Mike’s live coverage from Nottingham.

Almost like being there.

Eurovision Song Contest qualifying round tonight.

Aliaksandra Kirsanava from Belarus looked absolutely gorgeous during the dress rehearsals. She smiled through the whole performance without uttering a sound. Saving her voice for her power yodelling tonight most likely.

After weeks of negotiations nagging, I have managed to obtain Dr B.’s reluctant permission to watch it at his place (it is broadcast on BBC Three, which I do not get in my flat), while at the same time checking out the live coverage of the event on Troubled Diva.

As Dr B. put it in an email he just sent me,

“I might plonk you down on the sofa with the remote in one hand, the laptop in the other and a bell to beckon me attached somewhere else.”

• Read Chig’s reports from the Eurovision Song Contest media room in Istanbul.
• Listen to My Galileo by Aleksandra and Konstantin.
• Download a Eurovision scorecard for Saturday’s final from the BBC website (PDF).

I was walking in the street listening to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest entries.

A car stopped at a red light and I crossed the street. I noticed an unusual registration plate, looked at it closely and found out the car was from Andorra.

Andorra is taking part for the first time in the ESC this year. If memory serves me right, it will also be the very first time that a song is performed in Catalan at the contest.

Wait, a car from Andorra! I was about to put the Andorran entry on and bang on the window to show the driver that I was listening to Jugarem a estimar-nos, and wish Marta Roure good luck for the qualifying round on Wednesday.

I stopped in my tracks when I realised that my message of cross-European brotherhood was very likely going to be met with the unfriendly clunk of the car’s central locking being operated by a panicked Andorran convinced he is about to be attacked by a raving lunatic.

As my trust my readership – yes, both of you – to be made up of cultivated individuals who appreciate the appeal of a good tome, I’d like to ask which David Sedaris book I should read first.

I am entirely new to his works and don’t even know much about him. Would it be a good idea to start with Me Talk Pretty One Day?

Any suggestions in the comments area will be much appreciated.

• Read Let It Snow, a short story by David Sedaris, on the New Yorker website.

The more I listen to It Hurts (see yesterday’s post), the clearer its back entrance metaphor becomes. I almost choked on my chewing-gum when I paid closer attention to the second verse in the tube yesterday.

“I’m trying to forget love
The pain I feel inside
I’m clinging to my pillow
And the tears I cannot hide
I wish it could be over
So I can start anew
Oh…

Hurts, oh it hurts, really hurts…”

Fun-bloody-tastic.

And the winner of the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest is…

Sweden, with the song “It hurts”!

Sex-on-legs Lena Philipsson (whom, if I fancied women, I would probably lust after in a Frida-from-ABBA kind of way) last night dominated the electronic scoreboard (read: an Excel spreadsheet on someone’s laptop) at the Eurovision preview that took place at Retro Bar in London.

As my Icelandic correspondent reported the results live from it via text messaging (I was meant to go but had to cancel at the last minute because I was in bed shivering),

“Sweden won at RETRO… But what do a bunch of poofs know. T”

We do my dear T., we do. And, according to this week’s Popbitch newsletter, the Swedish entry is about anal sex.

All together now:

“Oh, and it hurts, how it hurts
In the middle of the night
In the light of the day
You know that it hurts
Really hurts, how it hurts
And I wish I could be stronger
No longer afraid…”

• Read Chig’s reports from the Eurovision Song Contest media room in Istanbul
• Improve your knowledge of European languages with the Eurovision Tongue Contest on the BBC website.
• Play a memory game based on photos of this year’s participants in the contest.

Last week in Italy my brother gave Dr B. a map of the soon-to-be-enlarged European Union, so that he could learn what the countries are called in Italian.

Later that day we were looking at the map with some friends. Among us there were a few university graduates, one Ph.D., one travel agent and two people who spent a long time travelling the world on cruise ships, and yet nobody was able to name the unlabelled country stuck between Lithuania and Poland.

A quick web search confirmed my guess that it is a Russian enclave (main town: Kaliningrad).

Another mystery solved by the Internet, as shame descended upon the ignorant group of friends.

Dr B. has uploaded a nifty panoramic view of the poplar* field I was writing about.

If your computer authorises a downloaded Java applet to perform the required operation, you will be able to zoom into the picture and scroll. All I can see on the machine at work is a grey box.

You can also view the java-free version.

When I tell people I work for a government department, I often get asked whether there are any other gay men working there, as if there was a strict screening process to weed us out and I miraculously managed to butchify my act and slip through the net.

Until last Friday, my answer was “Well, one of my colleagues keeps on his desk a picture of himself dressed as a nun at a Sound of Music sing-a-long”. That’s the chap I recently referred to him as “the gay guy I befriended at work” – which made Dr B. crouch down, slap his knees repeatedly, smile broadly and say “Where’s the poppers? Where’s the poppers then? Good boy!” (his interpretation of my expression).

There’s also someone else that I swear I saw suspended in mid-air in at Fist during my “slut year” (that’s like a gap year between relationships, only, ahem, wider).

As of Friday night (office do for the launch of the website we are working on) I can add another one to the Friends of Dorothy list, if the following conversation with a very drunk man I already had a hint that he played for my team is anything to go by. Italics are to be read with an Irish accent. Repeat conversation every twenty minutes or so throughout the party. Groping is optional.

Can I ashk you a question?
Of course.
I really fancy you a lot.
That is not a question.
I know. I’m shorry. I’m really really shorry.

I just bumped into him in the kitchen and said hallo. I am not sure he even remembers it. I feel hurt.

Sometimes I say something is green and Dr B. claims it is blue. Or the opposite, I can’t quite remember now. I keep meaning to verify with his chequered duvet cover in several shades of green and blue, but whenever we are under it I get distracted.

The following are simulations of the way bitful is seen by people with Deuteranope (a form of red/green color deficit), Protanope (another form of red/green color deficit) and Tritanope (a blue/yellow deficit – very rare) colour visions.

• Check how people affected by colour blindness see your web page.
• Download a Photoshop plug-in for Windows and Mac.
• Test yourself for colour blindness with the Ishihara Colour Plates.

My last but one week at work starts today. It is very quiet now that the site has gone live and maintenance is not a very demanding task.

A few people are on holiday or have taken the day off to extend the Bank Holiday weekend.

I have just noticed that the guy on my right is manly but skillfully stitching one of the cuffs back on his sweatshirt sleeve.

I wish I had my knitting needles here. It’s going to be a long day.

A warm welcome to the new citizens of the enlarged European Union. All 74 million of them.