March 31

Athletic pursuits:

Ten Years of Blogging

Your blogger missed it.

An alert reader reminded me that my very first blog entry

was March 10, 2010. Thanks for the heads up!

For the record, this is my 2,540th post.

1,672,100 readers from 220 countries have visited this blog 6,341,275 times. Not that I'm counting or anything.

The most reader-requested categories are spanking and frat.
My personal favorites are frot and nips.
Some tan lines are in there, too.

Readers from the Vatican have visited
this blog 33 times. I know what they're up to,
and it has nothing to do with a rosary.

Nearly 500 gay or bisexual men
have been featured with biographical posts.
493 to be exact.

I get many responses to these.
My favorite was from the son of Howard Hughes,
who threatened to sue me.
Howard Hughes had no children.

Second-most favorite was a demand from
an unidentified "spokesperson"
for gay country music performer Josey Greenwell,
ordering me to take down my post. The next day
I read that he was rebranding himself as a straight man,
in an effort to restart his singing career.
Changed his moniker to Nate Green.
Second attempt failed more spectacularly than the first.
Now he's a NYC fitness instructor. Josey Greenwell again.
Guess he can sing a country tune while you lift.
His recent online quotes consist
of a flurry of run-on sentences and split infinitives.
Not a mean bone in my body.
By the way, that post is still up from November 29, 2011.

Your blogger has seen a thing or two.

Thank you, gentlemen,
for visiting my home in the blogosphere.

March 29

COVID-19 tips:

Shelter in place & self isolate!

Harnessed energy:

In Homophobic Middle East
Gay Sultan Is Laid to Rest

Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman

When Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman died two months ago, on January 10, 2020, at age 79 without an heir, a letter was opened that revealed his hand-picked successor. The transition of power to his cousin, Haitham bin Tariq (two sons, two daughters), was peaceful, and so far, that peace has held. 

Sultan Qaboos lived as a homosexual in palaces shared with elegant, somewhat effete young men he had gifted with Rolex watches and other luxury items. He was also known to have a male English lover. Qaboos had been educated in England and even served in the British Army. Although everyone in the Middle East knew of his homosexual proclivities, the Sultan never came out. 

With support from the British he seized power from his father in a 1970 coup to become an absolute monarch who ruled by royal decree. The press was muzzled, and all media was censored before publication or broadcast, so nothing of the sultan’s homosexual activity was ever revealed to the public.

Yet Sultan Qaboos enjoyed a reputation as an “enlightened” despot. Quite naturally he received good press in England and at home, where even the “live” news broadcasts were pre-recorded for purposes of censorship. Not a single unflattering comment or photo was allowed to be made public.

The sultan presented an image of a Renaissance Man – he played the flute, built an opera house (above) and maintained a full symphony orchestra. He was partial to the pipe organ and had a large German-built instrument installed in his opera house in 2011. One of the stops is labelled “Flûte Qaboos” in his honor. 

Over the course of a 50-year reign, he rolled up his sleeves and modernized his backward nation. He ended Oman’s international isolation, raised standards of living, increased business development, abolished slavery, granted freedom of religion and quelled a rebellion. He paved roads, built an airport, schools and hospitals, established a telecommunications network and brought electricity to the entire country. For a brief three years (1976-79) Sultan Qaboos was married to his first cousin, who later remarried. Their union produced no heirs.

  

To celebrate a reign of 30 years Qaboos adorned the capital of Muscat with a grand mosque, the second largest in the world, accommodating 20,000. He liked things on a large scale. When it was unveiled in 2001 the handwoven carpet in the men’s prayer hall was the largest in the world (4,200 sq ft, woven by 600 women in Iran), and the central chandelier, also the largest in the world, measured 45 feet tall and 26 feet wide, weighing more than 8 tons.

Now that Sultan Qaboos is dead, there remains only one other Middle Eastern royal known to engage in homosexual activity, the bisexual Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed al Maktum of neighboring Dubai. But he deserves a separate blog post. Stay tuned.

References:

San Cassimally

Wikipedia

Royal Foibles (blog)