On Saturday 13 October I challenged another poster to refrain from posting for a week, and I would do the same. Sadly for many of you, that poster suffers from Relevance Deprivation Syndrome – he needs the Forum to give his life meaning and relevance - so he declined, all the while describing SGT as “a little read and ever littler important gay message board”. I guess he meant “and ever less important”. His stated reason for declining was that he said he believed that I wouldn’t keep my side of the bargain because he believes (as he admits, no proof) I have multiple posting handles here
He later changed his story to claim that my absence would only be for a week because I knew when I made the challenge I’d be “away” for a week. By the end of the second week he was celebrating my “permanent ban”. Napoleon’s maxim is always apposite: “Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake”. I notice he introduced an Egyptian word for his own style of “Moderator” at one point – “bewhab“ - https://sawatdeenetwork.com/v4/showt...069#post252069. Worth adopting?
When I last took a (then enforced) absence from the Forum for a week I posted on my return that when I post, I post for the Forum’s elite, and named most of them (a repeat of an earlier post on the same theme). In my absence - for a few weeks now – it’s mostly the non-elite of the Forum who have posted. What a depressing spectacle it has been - latintopxxx provided the intellectual heft early on but could not sustain the effort involved
Theresa May, the current British prime minister, was a Tory party official in 2002; she gave an address at the party conference where she said “You know what some people call us? The Nasty Party”. Her argument was that the Tories were perceived as “nasty” because, among other things, they were homophobic. Had she read Forum posts since mid-October she may well have formed the view that many of the more prolific members posting are blue rinse old-fashioned Tories, “nasty” to the core of their being. A psychoanalyst would argue they are internalising their own homophobia, evidenced when they write about “real men”
Like most things, the answer is probably a simple one, and it’s set out in the results of a small study published in the Journal of Research in Personality. The study suggests that one’s comfort with being teased and laughed at — and telling self-deprecating stories — is associated with higher sexual satisfaction. To use a phrase beloved of Smiles, who’d’ve thought that’s the explanation for paborn or gerefan2, let alone The Wombat
There have nevertheless been some wonderfully entertaining posts – Lonely Wombat’s dogged pursuit of stories about 14yo Thai boys is one theme. The Wombat appears completely ignorant of the evocative power of language as opposed to what is actually said. Perhaps Australians don’t study poetry at what passes for their schools? I recall an episode of the British comedy Coupling (intended to show the Americans how Friends should have been written) where the three female characters demonstrated how just a single word (“naked”) in any context could disrupt a heterosexual male’s thoughts completely. I have only to suggest to a friend of mine that a nearby youth might not be wearing underpants to distract him entirely. Remind everyone about a dozen or so young teenage males alone (without even mentioning their raging hormones) in a cave for a fortnight? What else needs to be said? One interesting fact I’ve learned - not from the Forum – wombats’ poo is in the shape of a cube. Square peg, round hole?
Then there’s MFAS’ complaint that the Forum posts had become boring (in contrast to his own efforts, presumably). And who could miss our middle-aged American originally from Houston, “posing as” (using the Marquess of Queensberry’s provocative term) an extraordinarily knowledgeable Singaporean youth
My favourite news story didn’t make the Forum. It was that the hero who defied King Edward I and helped maintain Scottish independence, Robert the Bruce, was probably English after all. Cue for typical snide remark from our bitter RDS bewhab
Where have I been, you may well ask. Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been on a journey towards Extreme Wellness? It’s about adventure, sharing accommodation and a bathhouse, with singing bowls, crystals, a yogi, some hiking and even a shaman. After my return from the land of mad kings (Bavaria) I went to Koh Samui, staying at Kamalaya
