Stephen Witherden’s Website :: Esoteric

A controversial new study from a researcher in Christchurch New Zealand shows that if you are a single parent, your kids are 10% less likely to be gay. If you remarry and raise a child with an opposite sex step parent, then the chances of the child being gay are halved compared to if the child was raised by its biological parents.

You didn’t hear about that? Oh I suppose you only heard about the bit where gay people were more likely to have been abused during childhood. Well, I have actually read the study and actually understand the stats and I can tell you why you didn’t see my headline above. It’s because that finding didn’t fit in with the world view of the researchers running the study, so they chose to gloss over it. After all, we all know that divorce and the “breakdown of family values” is the cause of all the ills in the world and, homosexuality being an ill, it can’t possibly be that single parents or different-sex step-parents are less likely to cause gays, can it?

What’s going on? Is this study giving the wrong answers or is it asking the wrong questions? I argue it’s a bit of both.

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As soon as you get off the plane it hits you: it’s like walking into a sauna. No, it is walking into a sauna, in just about every sense. Sweat begins to muster on your brow as you succumb to the humidity; the air is dense with it. Breathing is just that little bit more difficult and movement is slower too.

“Aaah,” I exclaim, soaking in the atmosphere, more literally than normal.

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A few weeks ago I ended up in Brisbane on a conference.

I wish I had written a long, engaging story about my experience, including the sights and sounds of the South Bank in Brisbane, the Queensland Art Gallery, the worst Mohito ever concocted and catching up with my friend Michael who I hadn’t seen for about a decade, but I’m afraid I am running out of time before my next overseas trip.

So, instead, here are some of the pictures I took of beautiful Brisbane. I would like to make special mention of the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary, though, where I met and was able to hold a koala!

A few weeks ago, at the end of October, I took a nice long trip down the length of the North Island from Auckland to Palmerston North to go to my Boss Llanwyn’s Halloween party. On the way down, I spent some time with my friends Chris and Charles.

Now, Chris and Charles have a special place in my heart: they’re the first gay couple I’ve ever known, they got married (civil union, whatever) during the time I’ve known them and they’re living in what can be described as relatively domestic bliss in Taupo. In many ways, they give me hope. It’s always a great pleasure to spend time with these guys. This time was especially fun because Charles and I indulged in the Huka falls jet ride.

Now, the Huka falls jet is much like New Zealand’s infamous shotover jet. You’re in a jet boat, hydroplaning in a very narrow bit of water. I have to admit, it kind of reminds me of a video game, but far more fun and realistic. I highly recommend it, though you’re likely to get wet

In order to celebrate Sarah’s imminent PhD graduation and International Speak like a Pirate Day, a bunch of us got dressed up as pirates and had a bit of a party at our place.

Not much to say except that we all had a great time. More pics are available by clicking the link: International Talk like a Pirate Day pics.

Friday 18th September was Loud Shirt Day. To contribute, I bought a cheap white shirt from the Warehouse along with some fabric paint from Spotlight. I then spent about 4 hours on Thursday night making my own tribute to Loud Shirt Day.

You can see a time lapse video of how I made the shirt by clicking on the link: Loud Shirt Day time lapse.

This past Saturday Daniel (we call him “Step” for reasons I don’t really understand) along with Sebastian were celebrating their simultaneous birthdays. Step wanted a formal cocktail evening, all dressed up with a proper bar, finger food and a cocktail menu of his own devising. I’d like to think it was somewhat my influence because he knows how much I like to mix cocktails.

We were all under strict instructions to dress up and I was asked to man the bar. I was a little apprehensive at the possibility that I might bump into Spaz, since we haven’t spoken in some time. That said, I was excited about the prospect of bartending.

I arrived early, at around 3pm to help make the cocktail food. They’d built a bar for me! When I say “built a bar” one of the guys (an engineer) had literally constructed a free-standing bar out of spare wood, rustic, but sturdy and functional. They had even bought all new glassware. There may not have been more than one and a half teaspoons in the whole place, but they had more than enough martini glasses for a formal function.

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I know, I know, I haven’t written anything. I could use the excuse that “I’m busy” but it doesn’t seem to be a very satisfying one. I hope to write more soon. In the meantime, avid reader, I have been playing with time lapse photography from my balcony. Behold, this is what I see every evening, if I look through the sliding doors towards the harbour:

Ports of Auckland Sunset

I’m always on the lookout for a new cocktail recipe. New tastes come up in the most unlikely contexts. For example, after choir on Monday evenings I usually go to a bar called “The Grange” in Ponsonby for a drink with the other choir members. This bar has a drink I’m really fond of called a “Coco Spice”. It involves Chilli infused Vodka and Creme de Cacao.

I have to admit that after trying Chilly Vodka, I have become kind of obsessed with this idea of infusing alcohol with all sorts of interesting flavours. This picture shows three of my recent experiments (from left to right): Vanilla Vodka, Fruit Whiskey and Cinnamon Vodka.

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“You should come to the Beca Ball” Sam insisted in that demanding, almost pleading way he has about him. I rolled my eyes. “It will be fun, and you can have us over for drinks beforehand”.

“Oh, all right.” I conceded reluctantly. “I suppose I could convince a guy to dress up in drag…”

“Or you could invite Theresa, I’m sure she’d love to come”.

Thus began many weeks’ worth of cajoling before Sam could convince me not only to buy tickets to my work ball, but to ask Theresa (a mutual friend) to come along as my “date” and to have everyone over to my place for drinks beforehand.

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Wow, I haven’t written anything in quite some time. Isn’t it always the way that when life is most interesting you don’t have time to reflect!

Anyway, last week I had a fantastic little holiday to the South Island for a week. This is the first time I spent more than a few hours in the South Island, so I made the most of it!

I plan on writing a whole lot of words about it, but for now, I am just excited to get my pictures out. Here is a link to the collection of pictures for my Southland Holiday.

I’ll post detail later. In the meantime, I have a number of panoramic photos I am rather proud of: (more…)

I was keeping it under my hat for a while, but now that it’s official I’m pleased to report that one of my photos is being used for a stamp!

Details of the stamp issue are available here: Auckland Harbour Bridge 50th Anniversary stamp issue. Mine is the $1.00 stamp. I didn’t get paid for it, but the idea that in 100 years time someone will still be collecting these stamps, maybe even the first day cover with my name on it, well, you can’t put a price on that.

It started at a bar in downtown Auckland called Traffic. I looked at a glass bottle of dark orange murky substance behind the bar. “What’s that” I enquired with inebriated exuberance “Skittles Vodka” the barman announced proudly “special recipe”.

Making Skittles Vodka, as the name would suggest, involves dissolving skittles in Vodka. I tried sorting the Skittles into their colours.

The hard thing is knowing what ratio of different kinds of skittles to use. My current theory is 4 bags worth of one colour to 500ml of Vodka.

Method: dump the Skittles into the Vodka and leave it overnight. As the Skittles dissolve, give the bottle a vigorous shake, dislodging the melting skittles at the bottom. After about 2 days, the skittles will be dissolved and you’ll see white stuff suspended in the Vodka, so you’ll need to strain it. What seems to work best is filtering it through a clean tea towel (coffee filters are too fine).

In the end, you have very colourful sweet Vodka which tastes like something between paint thinners and cough syrup

Sarah & I have long been fans of Top Gear. Well, to be honest, Sarah likes Top Gear and go with the flow. The TV show involves a bunch of middle-aged men behaving like a bunch of kids, playing with fast cars, burning lots of petrol. On Friday the 13th of February, a group of us went to see Top Gear Live.

Ever since my break up with Sebastian and moving into the new apartment I’ve been experiencing a profound sense of listlessness. In Afrikaans, we would use the term “is nie lus nie”. There’s no direct translation but it speaks of a general lack of desire. It’s a nasty sense of boredom. Not that there’s nothing to do, just that you don’t feel like doing anything. It’s the first rung on the ladder to depression and I’m not about to let that happen. 

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Last weekend was a long weekend for those of us in Auckland: Auckland Anniversary weekend, to be precise. Now usually I don’t plan my holidays very well in advance and this one was no exception. In fact, it turned out that I planned my holiday so poorly that I didn’t actually have one.

I had, instead, agreed (in collaboration with my friend Alastair) to prepare the church service for that Sunday.

Now, it’s a great honour to be asked to do something like this and so I do take it seriously. It does mean a great deal of work, though, particularly around choosing the songs. If you choose a song that’s too old, then you scare away the young people (we have far too few of them at our church as it is). If you choose songs with too much “he”, “him” and “father” business, you upset the Lesbians (and we have too few of those as well). If you change the words to someone’s favourite song, however, you’re going to have a grumpy old man on your hands. Frankly though, we have quite a few of those at our church, so we can afford to ruffle a few feathers from time to time.

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Just a quick post to draw your attention to some photos I took while travelling around the North Island of New Zealand.

One trip was to Northland, where I went as far as Whangarei. The second trip involves a sojurn as far South as I have ever been in a car: to Palmerston North.

Both trips rewarded me with exquisite scenery, something I will have to do more of in future. Please click the images for more images of the trips.

In America, the U-turn is a common, accepted manuver. It’s so common in fact that they have signs expressly encouraging you to do u-turn and lanes specifically designed for that purpose.

We New Zealanders find this an hilarious thing because in our country, the U-turn is right up there with peeing in someone else’s tea (or your own tea for that matter). You just don’t do it. It’s just not acceptable behaviour on the roads. To the extent that there are signs saying precisely the opposite: “no u-turn”, even when a u-turn is precisely the most logical course of action. Say, for example, you’ve gone over the harbour bridge by mistake, which happens more frequently than we’d like to admit.

Well, New Zealand has launched into the 21st century with what I believe to be the first (for our country) U-turn traffic light. Feast your eyes! Yes, it’s true, that sign on the right is actually a “U-turn” traffic light, in New Zealand (East Tamaki, to be precise). Below are images of the sign in action:

I was in Queen Street with a colleague, dropping off the collection from church at the bank. We left the bank and started walking up the street. Queen Street was busy, unusually busy. So busy in fact that people were lined up against the sides of the road, looking expectantly towards upper Queen Street.

It turned out that an event known as “Boobs on Bikes” was on town, and since we had never been before, we stayed around to wait and see what would happen. We waited an hour with the rest of the crowd in anticipation.

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This weekend I went to see a play my brother Scot was acting in: “Compleat Stage Beauty”. Apart from watching Scot in his many and various roles, I was also fortunate enough to see a man acting as though he was a man playing the part of a woman who disguised herself as a man. Add to that the sublime vulgarity of the period and it was a great bit of theatre.

The thing that fascinated me most, however, was not the magnificent gender-bending performance of the lead actor, nor even the embarrassingly realistic gay sex scene. Rather, it was the references to the person whom we have to thank for recording this complicated subtext to the restoration period.

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