So apparently we’re in some kind of tumultuous astrological climate because Saturn (or perhaps Mercury?), which turned retrograde in the middle of this past January, is now slowly but surely retracing his steps back to return to Virgo.

What this linguistic blah blah means is that the current star forecast for all the zodiac signs is calling for structure and form. In the meantime we’re all temporarily bathing in a sea of confusion, indecision and chaos. And from now until September 14 – the official date decreed as the end of our astrological misery – while the communication lines remain garbled, delayed and/or misunderstood, we’re all supposed to focus our energy on re-evaluating our obligations, responsibilities and commitments.

I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t have time to re-evaluate the way I spend my time while I am wasting time constantly thinking about some invisible impending wrath imminently menacing my life (at least until September 14). So I did what any other mature and responsible adult women would do in light of these glooming circumstances and I pulled a “geographic”.
That’s right! I ran away for 4 days and trekked me, myself and I all the way to the other side of the continent, namely New York.

I figured if I catapulted myself in time, as in three hours ahead into the future, I wouldn’t so much have to deal with facing up to my current obligations and commitments because, realistically speaking, things wouldn’t really be enfolding in my “real” present (if you know what I mean). However you want to look at it, the bottom line is that my illogical logic told me that that was the responsible thing to do. So just like that, I took off.

I will have you note that the choice of my destination was not random though. I settled on the Big Apple because my BFF, Edward, incidentally, was stationed there for 10 days (visiting from Paris) and I estimated it to be my duty (as a good friend) to go pay him a visit – see, after all, I know where my priorities are.
SOCIAL OBLIGATION, CHECK!

So there I was sitting at the very far end on the very last seat in the very last row of the very undesirable middle aisle section of the freaking plane – you know, that prime spot with no window access, unfamously located near the last two lavatories and the kitchen where a nauseating bouquet of uber potent odors interminably titillate your nostrils like one of those everlasting, barf-conducive, plug-in Glade deodorizers. Suffice it to say, my royal highness self had no intentions on spending some 5 hours plus in such insufferable, unacceptable traveling conditions.

I was so ready to cause a major ruckus and deliver one of my notorious spectacular public scenes to have these American Airlines Flight-attendant fools accommodate me pronto with a more decent sitting proposition- at the very least one deserving of my self-appointed VIP social status. But that was until some vivaciously charismatic, intriguingly good looking twenty-two years old chap – a foreign exchange student from Greece by the name of Costa – came and sat next to moi.

Clearly this creature was the sexiest thing I had seen all week, other than me – at least sexy enough to make me change my mind about changing my seat. This had nothing to do with the fact that for a brief moment, I seemingly forgot that I usually have a preference for the members of the other team. But somehow there was something about him that told me to stick around; that I might be in for some spectacular entertainment. So I did. And surely, Costa did not disappoint my expectations.

About thirty minutes into the flight, my little Greek god jump-started the conversation.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said. “Where can I meet women in New York?” he then triumphantly announced in his cute youthful insouciant way. I found his directness to be rather endearing – obviously the boy’s DNA was not affected with the embarrassment gene.
“It depends,” I answered, “what kind of women are you looking for?”
Completely evading my question, he then went straight to the point.
“Well, what are you going to do in New York? Can we go out together?”
I couldn’t help but instantly burst into laughter. Poor thing was totally oblivious to the very apparent fact that I had almost two decades on him.

“Listen sweetie, I’m flattered but I’m way too old for you,” I decreed in a very matriarchal tone.
“No, you’re not!” Costa immediately counter-attacked. “I just dated a 30 years-old woman in LA”, he defensively argued.
I must confess, his naïveté made him all the more charming.
“I’m almost 40 years old kiddo!” I retorted quietly laughing out loud whilst convinced the big 4.0 would put a definite end to his solicitation.
“So?” he said disturbingly unaffected, “I like older women!”
I wasn’t quite sure if such statement still qualified as a compliment or if this was one of those brutally honest verities kids unconsciously throw at you for lack of knowing the art of diplomacy. But for the sake of my own vanity, I opted to stick to flattery!

Granted, I could have easily switched to bi-sexual mode to treat my Mrs. Robinson ass to a weekend-long one-night stand in Manhattan, but I suffered a major mental block. What urged me to veto this adventurously wild invitation was not so much the humongous age gap between his Justin Bieber generation and my Twentieth Century George Michael epoch but very much the daunting fact that he was the exact same age as my younger brother. Somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be taking the lead in my already quite dysfunctional family state of affairs by now committing incest. He aggressively persisted, but I successfully resisted.
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY, CHECK!

Cut to the next day when I decided to make my habitual New York stop at St Patrick’s Cathedral on the trendy chic 5th Avenue to go pay my respect to my late grandmother. As soon as I stepped foot into the majestic cathedral, I immediately proceeded towards St Anthony’s statue to light up a candle in memory of my grandma and, yes, chat with her for a little while (don’t judge!).
For the record, I give St Anthony the preferential treatment because biblically he is my boss – meaning I was born on St Anthony’s day (June 13th). And for those of your non-catholic asses who don’t know, St Anthony of Padua is the super cool patron Saint of lost and stolen items and missing persons –which, come to think of it, might explain a few things about me.

Anyway, standing in front of his altar, I pulled out a $1 bill and inserted it in the little donation box right next to the candle shrine facing his statue. I then grabbed a fresh candle from the unused batch, placed it in one of the empty glass candleholders and delicately lighted up the candle. But as I started my mental conversation with my grandma, my eyes somehow drifted to the side and inexplicably zoomed in on the inscription written on the donation box – it read: “CANDLE DONATION $2.00”.

For a second, I tried to pretend I didn’t see the suggested price but my damned eyes wouldn’t steer away from that “$2” sign. That was when I then decided – as my plan B – to play dumb and pretend I didn’t know I had only donated one dollar and that another buck was sacrilegiously missing from my contribution.
As I was about to successfully convince myself that it was no big deal, that I wasn’t committing a major crime and that no one would hand-cuff me upon exiting the sacred establishment, this obnoxious voice inside my head started to harass me.
“Shame on you M.,” I kept hearing. Feigning deafness, I resumed my tête-à-tête with grandma. But somehow I suddenly sensed she was MIA, and while, assumingly she took a potty break, that menacing voice came back.
“Put another dollar in the safe! You spend a fortune on cigarettes and you can’t give two dollars to the church! For crying out loud, have you no integrity? Do you not think your grandma is worth two miserable dollars?”

Shamefully, all that my overly defiant ego could think about then was: who the fuck is talking to me?
Because my competitive side felt challenged and very much needing to win this argument, I then opened up the debate:
“Can’t you see it’s too much work to dig up another dollar? My wallet is buried all the down in my purse. And who cares anyway? Nobody saw me; not to mention that the Catholic Church will certainly not go broke on my account,” I told the voice.
“Listen to you M., you’re demented! I’m so disappointed. This is not the way your grandma raised you. God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and your grandma saw YOU! There’s no reason to be stingy for $2 dollars”, it retorted.
“My point exactly”, I promptly said, then added: “give me a break, it’s only $2 bucks.”
“Suit yourself! You’ll have that burden on your conscience,” were the voice’s last words.

Needless to say, the voice of reason finally settled the score and I, of course, dropped the missing dollar into the donation safe.
“Happy now?” my smart ass self belched out while patting myself on the back.
Strangely, at that precise moment, out of abso-freaking-lutely nowhere, I distinctively heard my grandmother’s recognizable trademark giggles – that soothingly contagiously intoxicating sound that would always put an instant smile on my face. That’s when it finally dawned on me that very ironically the joke was on me! Seriously what retarded fool comically wastes 5 solid minutes of useless mental torture, debating whether she can inconspicuously get away losing her mind and cheating her own values – all the while standing in front of the man who runs the lost & found department!
MORAL COMMITMENT, CHECK!

Clearly my Manhattan weekend escapade gave me more than what I envisioned to be bargaining for. As much as I was impatiently eager to take a bite at the Big Apple, somehow it was the Garden of Eden that took a bite at my big A – as in fat “Ass”.
Or perhaps some other wanna-be Adam and Eve bozo had beaten me to the punch by collecting the one remaining forbidden fruit? Either way, here’s what I know: You can run and airborne your ass miles away, but you can’t hide… your ‘horror-scope” always catches up with you!

…I’m just sayin’!

Wondering why you haven’t heard anything from Celine Dion of late? Well that would be because Celine is busy getting more and more pregnant by the day, as seen by new photos released in a bid to quash the rumors that Celine’s pregnancy is in trouble and that she’d been rushed to hospital.

Speaking on behalf of Celine, a representative backed up the photographic evidence saying that Celine had never been in hospital, but like with most women expecting multiples she  is staying off her feet as much as possible. Celine personally has also acted to confirm that all was good saying in typical Celine fashion that “everything is falling into place”.

Once Celine has popped out her two baby boys she will be returning to the Colesseum at Caesars Place in 2011 for a series of concerts running over the next three years.

Going from unknown name to the voice singing in everyone’s head following his collaborations with B.O.B (Nothin’ On You) and Travie McCoy (Billionaire), Bruno Mars wowed the crowds last night at his packed out first headline show in London’s Notting Hill’s YoYo and is creating just as much excitement today by revealing the name of his debut album which will be released on October 5th  something we’ve rather spoilt for ourselves by putting in the title of the post…

However whilst we’ve kind of stolen our own thunder with the “Doo-Wops and Hooligans” name, we’ve not spoilt every thing for ourselves as we have still got the artwork to reveal which is something of a retro comic book style piece that keeps things nice and simple and does have something of a classic cover feel about it.

Oh and before you get all whingey about having to wait till October 5th  for Bruno Mars solo music you don’t as his first single “Just The Way You Are” is already to buy online.

It’s a well known fact that the readers of Queeried are some of the most stylish on the planet and that doesn’t just mean your clothes, we know you’re sporting some seriously stylish designer mens underwear too, but with the global economy in the state it’s in you’ve probably had to cut back on your designer undies spend and not be able to order as much as you used to right?

Todd and Terry, the top Australian underwear label, understand your pain, and certainly don’t want you getting all down because you’re having to wear old undies, so have decided to come to the rescue by slashing their retail prices permanently meaning from now until February 2011, you can buy any pair for only $15.50. And that’s not all, they’re guaranteeing that after that price won’t go above $20 through to February 2012!

And and and we’re still not done because  Todd and Terry are also offering you the chance to get a whole year of  their underwear for free, all you need to do is come up with a truly needy story that will make sure you’re one of the five that the public votes for!

You can find out more about the competition and check out the full range of T&T underwear at the official Todd and Terry website.

Kylie has just premiered her new “Get Outta My Way” video. Directed by AlexandLiane of Factory Films  the video begins with Kylie having a little nap on a lit up floor (god knows how she managed that we can’t even sleep with the lights on…), before waking up, finding herself slightly surprised she’s wearing gloves that light up (surely she’d put them on before going to sleep) and well we can’t really work out what’s going on but she ends up on stage doing a little dance with some half naked males (and white chairs) in a nice gold dress before appearing in a red robe thing, high high boots and a long white train. We’re sure there’s some big old secret message in there but we have no idea what it is.

Mr Heidi Klum, also known as Seal, has unveiled the video for his first single “Secrets” that is featured on his upcoming album “Commitment”. Available to download now from iTunes, the new album, which is released on the 28th September, is described as a mix of both soul and pop numbers something that sees Seal sticking to a formula that we have to say has worked pretty well for him so far.

Teaming up with producer David Foster, who also worked on “Kiss From A Rose” with Seal, this will be his first release of new material since “System” in 2007.

Check out the video for “Secrets” below,download your copy from iTunes and pre-order the album from  Amazon

Alvin Green, the South Carolina Democrat candidate for the US senate has been accused of using anti-gay slurs in a voicemail message for a local Democratic activist Will Bigger. Dottie Sue Maggart-Feldman, a former campaign aide, who is making the claims said that he had called Bigger a “fat white f*****” something that Greene, who spoke at a froum organized by Bigger in York on Monday has denied. A documentary crew following Greene also report that there had been arguments between the two with Dottie Sue threatening to “ruin” Greene.

Greene shocked many by getting the Democratic nomination mainly because this unemployed military veteran is facing a felony charge for allegedly showing pornography to a femal student at the University of South Carolina.

Via WISTV

Yesterday was all about the boys stripping down to their undies with our behind the scene footage of the Rugby’s Finest Calendar shoot by Aussiebum and in line with equality regulations today it’s the turn of the women, well one woman in fact. The rather gorgeously lovely and very sexy Zoe Saldana. Best known for her roles in Star Trek and Avatar, after watching this teaser for the new Calvin Klein Envy range we could quite happily say we don’t mind if she doesn’t do anything but film underwear adverts from now on.

Enjoy….

Calvin Klein underwear is available online for both men and women at Amazon.

Politics is meant to be about people working together to come to decisions for the greater good of the country and the international community, however if you glanced at any reporting of British politics this week, and it’s intense focus on Foreign secretary William Hague, you could think that it’s all about who is gay and who isn’t, and it’s far from a one off thing.

So why does it happen? Why does the media get so excited about who someone is sleeping with at night (or in the day if you’re particularly adventurous) when it realistically has nothing to do with the work their work as a politician?

Well that’s simple. It’s because it sells newspapers, but the sad thing is it’s not selling them because people are particularly supportive of someone coming out as gay or not, it’s all about constructing these people as deceitful and liars.

Take for example the coverage of British Prison Minister Crispin Blunt, who came out last week, and the way the Daily Mail in the UK chose to cover it. Now they could have celebrated Blunt’s coming to terms with his gayness and feeling strong enough to speak out against it, then use the rest of their article to look at the way the Conservative Party has changed in it’s attitudes to LGBT rights over the years. It would have been a brilliant way to get people outside of the the LGBT community thinking and questioning things.

But of course that isn’t the story they ran with because supporting a minority group is never as effective as doing what the British press is best at – criticising and undermining people at every opportunity. Cue an article that didn’t act to offer Crispin any support, but instead spoke of how “traumatised” his wife was by it all (though it should be noted that this came from good old unnamed sources as opposed to directly from her) and acted to pick up on any seemingly homophobic decision that Blunt had made in the whole of his political career. This was in no way an article that constructed someone who comes out as brave, it constructed them as deceitful and untrustworthy.

However the problem is that Prisons minister isn’t a particular interesting role and Crispin Blunt isn’t one of the biggest names in the party. However William Hague, well he would be a much bigger catch. Just imagine being able to out him as gay, expose his not particularly positive gay voting record, the cheating on his wife AND potentially be able to throw in some way he used his MP expenses to cover up his gay relationships and well you’ve got one of the biggest stories of the year. And the thing is it doesn’t really matter if it’s not true anyway because let’s face it whilst the Conservatives are on the surface becoming more gay friendly they still need a whole of education on how to deal with situations like this.

Take for example William’s statement denying that he was gay. Now essentially that’s all he needed to say, but no Hague went off down that look I am really not gay and here’s all the reasons why not, a route that will be reminiscent of the reaction that many of us have got when we’ve told a straight person we’re gay and they immediately start telling us all about their very heterosexual lifestyle and their partner as though just because they’re of the same sex we must fancy them. And him doing that was just as much of a treat for the newspapers as if he’d said he was gay. Now they have information on his personal life that he would never normally have revealed. Cue articles on how miscarriages can ruin a relationship and lead to affairs, on whether it’s possible to be in a relationship with someone and not know they’re gay, you get the idea…

To deny that someone coming out as gay is nothing but a joyful experience for everyone involved is a lie. It’s not. People are always going to get hurt when things like this happen, however for each and everyone of us who have come out we know as hard as it is, it’s also a life-changing experience. Yes you will potentially lose friends, and sadly family, on the way, but to be able to live as the person you truly are is a very empowering feeling. It’s about bringing honest and truth into your life. Sadly though the mainstream media reporting all too often takes the opposite view constructing us as deceitful people who have only acted to bring hurt with our lies. And the sad truth is until that stops selling papers that’s the stereotype that each and everyone of us is stuck with.

Photo credit: ShironekoEuro

So you may not be able to get gay married in that many places down on the ground in the US, but if SAS get their way then you could well find yourself getting married in the skies as these guys are trying to organize the first gay wedding in the air.

Scheduled for December 6 2010 and onboard flight SK903 from Stockholm to New York, SAS are planning to turn one of their lounges into a wedding lounge before departure then replace their Business class cabin with an exclusive wedding cabin, and of course once the ceremony is over it will be time for the wedding reception complete with full wedding menu, wedding cake and celebrations all the way to New York.

And it’s not all over once the flight lands either. Once in New York the couple will be transferred by limousine to the one of Manhattan’s most luxurious and LGBT-friendly hotels, the W Hotel where a second  wedding reception will be co-hosted by VisitSweden and the Stockholm Gay/Lesbian Network.

Following that there will be a three night stay in New York for the couple before SAS take them off to Los Angeles and West Hollywood where they will get another three nights at the fabulous Andaz West Hollywood (we can vouch for this as Queeried’s editor in chief has stayed at said hotel…) as well as some of the best dining, nightlife and pampering West Hollywood has to offer.

And once that’s all done of course the couple need to get home which SAS will be providing Business class style.

Jealous? Well if you’re in a relationship, or can find someone to marry super quick, you don’t need to be because it could be you as SAS don’t have their happy gay couple yet and are calling on all you happy gay couples to sign up to their website and create a couple profile, complete with photos and video telling everyone why you two deserve to win.

Oh and if you do win can we be guests? Oh pretty pretty please…

You can find out more and enter SAS’s competition at the Love Is In The Air website.

*We made that bit up but we’re sure if you’re subtle you might be able to manage it….)