Dance & Drink & Screw

With the news that another teenager has killed herself in the Bridgend area (bringing the total number of deaths to 17), I'm struck by how these events are starting to resemble a horror movie. I'm thinking of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, where teenagers are attacked by Freddy Krueger in their dreams, and their deaths are then explained as suicides. The chilling fact, for myself, is that 16 out of the 17 young people hanged themselves.

Because they nearly all died in the same manner, there's this lingering impression that they shared a secret we are not aware of (yet). Is there a website which they all went to for suicide tips (such as the initially suggested Bebo)? Is there one person which can be linked to all of them (even if it's one of the first who died?) Or is there some sick desire in each suicide to emulate the previous one, by choosing the same manner of death?

Like some commentators said, it's very likely that a combination of fame-hunger with isolation/depression has sparked the suicides. Kevin told me that when he was in high school, there was a strange spate of suicides amongst twins in his school (only one out of each pair of twin killing himself/herself). While growing up (in Brasil, Singapore and Hong Kong), I never knew of anyone who killed themselves. The few deaths that happened around me were from kids who had crashed their cars while drunk. If I had grown up in a small community (like these Welsh kids, like Kevin) my experience might have been different.

* Kevin got a viral infection at the start of the week and now, just as he got better, a cold settled in his chest. It's freezin' and 'orrible outside and we have no money. The apartment is a tip and there's no getting away from the fact I'll have to clean it today, by myself. I very much expect this guy to show up Monday night.

* I got all tarted up for the gym this morning, only to arrive and discover they are shut down for a training day. So I went to Woolworths instead.

* I've worked for the last five weeks in a prestigious university's press office. It was one of my best working experiences: everyone was kind and friendly, the work was interesting and yesterday's goodbyes were genuinely full of good wishes. I have a job interview in the new year for a job I really, really want, with a small charity that works with gays, lesbians and transexuals. And they pay good. And I have a few days off during the week which I can use for my writing or temp work. Fingers crossed I don't fuck up.

* Russell Brand is going to be in Morrissey's next music video. I hope Morrissey gets his thugs band to hold him down and shave that awful hair of his.

* I love crazy cults, in particular American ones. They always seem to twist the Bible into something a lot worse than it is. Don't you just love their brain-washed stares? The old leaders who sleep with pre-pubescent virgins in the name of the Lord? Channel 4's documentary The End of World Cult was an unmissable, terrifying and sad story of people with no education, in the middle of nowhere, who make me all the more thankful I'm not a religious person.

* My last meal in death row will consist of freshly-baked bread, salty butter and a cup of coffee with milk and two sugars.

Singapore bans Xbox game because of lesbian scene.

For some reason, I thought homosexuality was now legal in Singapore, or at least de-criminalised, much like marijuana in Amsterdam. I guess not.

I wonder sometimes if I'd have come out of the closet earlier if my parents hadn't moved us to Singapore when we were teenagers. I lived there from the age of 16 to 18, studying in an international high school. Boys could not have long hair or earrings, though some westerners with their foot in grunge flaunted it. Books, plays and movies on homosexuality were completely forbidden (though I did manage to get myself a copy of Interview with the Vampire). While I was living there, Singapore introduced a ban on chewing gum. When we travelled abroad, we brought back boxes of gum and used it as a type of bargaining power at school (the more chewing gum, the more popular.)

One of Singapore's beaches is popular with windsurfers. I took a course on windsurfing when I arrived on the island, then tried to go there a few times on my own to practice. I heard rumours in school that it was a gay hang out - anyone carrying a bottle of mineral water was suspect; it was every gay man's secret signal. There was a shower room where we washed after windsurfing; looking back, I realize it was a big cruising spot. I was so naive. I still remember this muscular guy staring intently at me - I thought at the time he wanted to teach me windsurfing! Doh.

I find it ludicrous that the Portuguese police wish to turn the parents of Madeleine McCann into suspects [Google News]. Anyone who has been following the case from the start and has an ounce of common sense knows they are innocent.

To me, this is just another notch on the long list of errors and mistakes the Portuguese police have committed. Starting from a crime scene that was not protected (anyone could wander into the room and check out the bed from which Madeleine was kidnapped) to material needed to be flown to the UK for DNA tests because they didn't have adequate facilities, the whole investigation has been a joke and I'm sympathetic towards Madeleine's parents fight to keep the case on the news - it's not like they could rely on the Portuguese.

I can see how seductive it is to believe the McCann's did it (as already seen in most tabloids): it plays into many people wishing the McCann's to be punished for leaving their children asleep while they dined with friends; it plays into our desire to see a Hollywood lining, a conspiracy theory, behind any crime that becomes major news; and it plays into the hands of news addicts who need a twist in the story to keep them interested, or their tabloids selling. But the truth is that if you look at the whole thing objectively, it's impossible the McCann's did it. Remember, they were in a resort with plenty of witnesses that had seen them with Madeleine until dinner time (leading to an initial suspicion that someone had photographed Madeleine at the beach); they were in a foreign country which they didn't speak the local language nor lived there; they were with friends during dinner and had no time to get rid of the body; and as soon as the alarm was raised (during dinner) they were surrounded by the media, the police and their family/friends/lawyers to the extent that they would have to be Houdini to sneak a body out and bury it.

The truth is that Madeleine was taken by a stranger (as witnessed by one of the dinner guests, who only realized the gravity of what she saw afterwards) and is now buried somewhere. Like the thousands of children that disappear each year, we'll probably never know the truth. As for the blood found in the car the McCann's rented 25 days after the disappearance, if you consider that these are parents holding on to any memento they have from their lost child, they could have easily carried into the car a piece of her clothing that had blood (from a nose bruise, from a cut) - the kind of minuscule evidence they were not even aware of as they drove around carrying Madeleine's old stuff - and some of it remainded in the car.

A part of me wonders if this latest turn in the investigation was some cynical arrangement between the McCanns and the police to keep the story in the news. But then I can't imagine the Portuguese police would be so crap as to allow that kind of manipulation to take place. It's more likely that they wanted to pose new questions to the McCanns, the kind they are not allowed to make if they are not suspects, and thus the reason for the whole charade. What a circus.