I have no doubt that you’ve heard the news already. Of course, something like this travels fast across the tangled web of the Internet. Twitter lights up with fans expressing their grief, Facebook goes into overdrive with fan pages and memorials, bloggers start tapping away with gushing emotion… And I join the outpouring.

I hope you like metaphorical posts, because that’s the way I plan to do this.

I was a little late to the Winehouse party. A good friend of mine who knows I love house parties invited me along, suggesting that the music was something a little different, and that people really loved it.

So while I don’t normally like that kind of popular music, I was actually really impressed to hear it when I got there. It was a great mix of blues, soul and jazz with a modern twist, and I found myself dancing along to it. It was a really great house, quite beautiful. The whole place was packed with original style and the owner seemed to have a lot of pride in the place.

It was packed with all kinds of people, old and young, alternative and mainstream. I guess I was having a great time for the first hour or so, meeting new people and checking the place out. But then I started to look around and realized that something wasn’t quite right.

There were a couple of kids throwing up on the balcony. When I went to the bathroom I squeezed past a stumbling young guy to get in and there was a sheen of white powder across the wash basin. In the hall a couple were getting far too friendly while others walked around them. Outside the front door a young couple were screaming at each other, yelling obscenities and slapping each other while the neighbors looked on in disgust.

Then something happened to the CD player, and the music started to jump. It sounded so terrible and everyone who had been dancing and having a great time gave up and took a seat. A few people tried to fix it, but after another hour it was obvious that whatever they were doing was just making it worse. It was really bad, you couldn’t understand the lyrics and although the music seemed to make sense, the energy had gone.

People started to leave. Every time another bottle smashed or another person fell unconscious the numbers thinned out. But a few stuck around and kept on listening to the stereo even though the music was impossible to appreciate. I guess they’d never heard such music before and were not quite ready to let it go just yet.

That’s when I left. I had the music playing in my head, and I really didn’t want to ruin what had otherwise been a good night. It was so sad to see the house being trashed in front of me and hear that music becoming nothing more than a horrid noise.

What had been a beautiful home had become little more than a crack house. There were a few people who were trying to stop the destruction, but it seemed futile. As I walked out the door I knew the party would be raided and closed down pretty soon, and I didn’t want to be there. Plenty of people I talked to as we were leaving thought the house might even be totally destroyed; it was so out of control it was more like a riot than a party.

In conclusion, the party started great. But soon it became clear that it was out of control. I think we all knew that it would end in a mess, we just hoped that maybe it would calm down and could carry on.

Ultimately, Amy Winehouse was an adult, capable of making her own decisions and responsible for her own health. While it is probably right to feel sad that such talent was lost, do we celebrate recklessness and addiction in any other aspect of life? I believe we should mourn, but with a certain perspective – just as we mourned the death of Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix or Marilyn Monroe.

R.I.P. Amy.

Yeah, he is pretty isn’t he? I have to admit I am a sucker for a handsome face and a confident attitude. And, being a gay guy who divides his time between sleeping, gym, the clubs and the Internet (that’s pretty much my life, and I love it) I am a big fan of the English Lads site. I’m sure you know why, given that their tag line is “Uncut Amateurs – Just That Little Bit Hotter”.

I like plenty of the guys there. In fact, I like them so much that I became involved in some fan blogs for a couple of the guys, featuring their content and promoting them a little. It’s a fun thing to do when I have a little time to do it.

Model Josh Peters was actually on my list of guys to promote too, with his hot muscled bod and all that attitude in his pics. Unfortunately, that attitude seems to extend beyond his on-camera image.

You see, one of the blogs I enjoy reading (Queerty) had featured the sexy young man on their site a while ago, showing their appreciation for his modeling work and sporting career.

But before I get into the whole story, let me give you a little background info.

Josh Peters is an MMA Fighter. For those not “in the know” MMA is a combat sport combining various aspects of several styles of martial arts. So now you know where he developed that athletic body. That just makes him a little hotter, am I right? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

Next up, the guy is a professional male model, I believe he’s signed to a UK agency. And still he gets a little hotter, yes?

Our friends over at Queerty added a little content featuring the young hunk, which is a great thing to do and can really do wonders for a young guys career. You know that any post on a blog can really thrust a person into the limelight and if the content is good there’s a real chance of getting something more out of it too. It can really make a career.

So, you’d think that perhaps, if the young man in question happened to stumble across the post, he might send them a message saying thanks. A nice post featuring you is good thing, no?

Unfortunately, Queerty reports that the response they got from this young man when he saw it was anything but appreciative.

Subject: Remove me now

I am getting Sick of finding myself on these stupid gay sites. - Josh Peters

Wow. A guy who wants to be a male model, and poses pretty much nude but for a carefully placed hand, decides to piss off his primary fan base. I guess no one told him that the money in modeling is in high fashion, and that Gay men have a disposable income and an interest in fashion that rivals the likes of your average female pop superstar.

The conversation could have ended there, but after the guys on the site replied pointing out that he might be supporting the stereotype that models have a less than average IQ (of course, they did it in the nicest possible way) he came back with a retort that would make the English fellows of Oxford or Cambridge proud:

I guess you have to be a bumboy to find what you put on that site funny. - Josh Peters

Someone call in a PR rep, stat!

So what is a guy with this kind of attitude supposed to do? Yeah, that’s right, become a gay porn star of course! What else could he do but submit to what he found so offensive to begin with?

But it doesn’t end there folks. Not only is the previously homophobic lad getting naked and having fun on camera for the “bumboy’s” to enjoy, he’s letting other guys “do stuff” for him.

Perhaps he found a PR rep after all?

This is a gay mans struggle with shingles barely in my 30′s when the first case hit me with what felt of a heart attack or maybe even a stroke sensation the pain was unbearable. I though I could never go through it again and then a few years later it attached again. The first time it was mainly on the backside in a vertical show of blisters or dots on my back which were painful and itchy. You think chickenpox is bad which this virus is in the same family, you will find out this virus is far worse and can pretty much cripple your plans to do things in a normal environment and may keep you out of the public for awhile.

The second part of Shingles came on this summer right after I was re-potting trees outside in my backyard I got some dirt in my face which could have been a factor, My computer at home went out on me causing about as much stress as an animal dying because my computer is a human to me it has all my tax and business info on it and is something I cannot loose. Well It was lost as the motherboard crashed and they are telling me I cannot save my harddisk. The computer is still in repair at Sony and that could take months as slow as they are. Another factor is we had a trip planned to Puerto Vallarta and the humidity was overwhelming and I could feel myself getting sick but at that point I thought it was a sinus infection with my eye running non-stop. I did start feeling a strange tingling sensation when I laid down that I knew was not allergies. Something bad was going on.

When I returned from PVR I asked the Physicians Assistant what it could be and she said Sininutis. So she gave me the steroid and some Amoxyicilyn antibiotics. I took that for a day then discovered when I laid down there was a deeper, more fierce pain in my head when I laid down which could no way be allergies. There was also slight swelling around my eye. I thought I had some kind of cancer and was really freaking out.

I went back into the doctor this time and not the P.A. and he said as soon as he walked in the room I had Shingles. From there on the pain kept going up and up and it still has not ended. I got on Valtrex for one cycle plus added 3 days for my eye that was completely red. The Eye dr was worried about the redness in my eye and the inflammation in which I took a dilating drop every 3 hours and a steriod in my eye for every hour all during July 4th week and weekend. That will keep you off the lake and away from the bright sunshine. Although its also hard to drive in the daylight like this.

The shingles pain was a non-stop pain that really got annoying and made you just want to hang yourself. Just horrible. Then came the post-neuro pain which may even be worse it is SERIOUS and something my body just had to give me. The post pain has lasted now about 2 weeks and about 3 times a day it flares up somewhere on the head or eye area and then gives me this outrageous pain that even a terrorist suspect or someone on the electric chair would not even feel. This is a pain that feels like its going across the side of my head and back to the back and then in one targeted area near my eye with the piercing pain.

The shingles affected me from my right nose to my eye brow area around my eye lid over to the sides and all the way up to the end of the right scalp which is a horrible place to have this because there will be no combing or washing of the hair.

I have started taking Gabapentin which has helped some but yet I still get these 1 or 2 a day hardcore targeted pains that make me want to go into a seizure. Ambien for sleep and still doing the steroid eye drops even though my eye is still very irritated and blurry mostly.

I hope this ends it is killing me, hurting my business, and most of all taking away from my time I spend with others. With this horrible Shingles and Post pain it is really hard to be able to have dinner with friends or simple things like exercising. I am scared to get into the pool in case the water hits my head the wrong way and brings me into a pain measure.

I plan on going to the pain dr to hope something will help with this and pray that it ends soon because I do not think my body can handle much more of it.