It's semester break. I'm at Jake's house. Jake is Steve's cousin. I've got nothing terribly exciting to report. I'll be here until January, except for a brief stint in the City for New Year's Eve. We won't be doing the Times Square thing, just a little gathering in Steve's dorm.
I'd also like to note that the pressure in my sinuses is about pushing my right eyeball out. I'm considering having them removed; my sinuses, that is, not my eyeballs.
World Aids Day happens every year on 1 December. You'll notice now that it is well past 1 December. You'll notice it because I've just pointed it out. If you choose to consciously not notice it, you're just being silly. Stop that right now.
I found it to be a different sort of experience this year, something a bit quieter, a bit deeper than before. I was trained by the Red Cross to educate my peers, young people. We are the generation of imitation, riding on the coattails of all that came before us. What is our rallying cry? We have no Kent State. We have no liberation, no revolution. It seems nobody is interested enough anymore. I try to educate my peers on how to not contract HIV, because that's the best way I know to fight it. It seems like it falls on deaf ears.
I fight AIDS because it is a worthwhile cause. I think that it's important, it doesn't get enough attention, and that some people are maliciously or ignorantly spreading misinformation. It's just a cause for me though. What made it different for me was speaking with one of my professors. For me, AIDS is a disease which kills tens of thousands of people in the US and millions of people globally each year. For her, it meant the loss of friends, classmates, and colleagues. She remembers when Ronald Reagan first mentioned AIDS publically, four years after the first outbreak and two years after the virus had been isolated. I was 16 days old. Hearing her talk about it gave me new resolve. The job of an activist, I learned, is twofold. The first is to raise awareness, educate the public, and influence policy-makers. The second is to remind those who pioneered this cause that the fight isn't over, and there are still people carrying on the torch.
I was on the subway the other day. I don't make a habit of it, but I had to get to Port Authority to catch a Greyhound because my shady chinatown bus was cancelled. I digress. If you're a subway rider, do what you can to sit facing another train going in the same direction.
So I was sitting on the A train headed up to 42nd, and we happened to leave at about the same time as the C. As we travelled through the tunnel, we slowly passed the C. It was rather intriguing to watch. It was like five second silent films of the other cars, with frames punctuated by the dark flashes of support beams. One movie was about a woman yelling at her daughter for stealing a pack of gum from the store. Another was a young couple discussing their plans for later that night. A man stood deep in thought about his wife, his affair at work, his kids. The most intriguing film was one where a man in his mid twenties watched me. Do people really do that? Do they sit on the subway and look into other people's cars, watching them, observing them, judging them while they sit innocently and watch movies?
A British man may hold the secret to a cure for HIV. I can't make heads or tails of it, there's not enough information. Read for yourself.
To be perfectly honest, I'm thinking it was a false positive right now. I wanna see more actual facts. Part of me still hopes though.
I got really bored with my previous layout, and thusly I'm trying some new things on for size. Basically everything's gonna look really ugly until I figure out what I want, and then it'll probably be worse. I've given up the idea of making my own design. I'm way too lazy for that. I'm just tweaking the hell out of someone else's work. I don't have to feel bad about it though. They zipped it all up nice for me to use.
I've just realized that I'm doing quite a bit towards preserving my previous visual style. You'll just have to take my word for the fact that stuff is changing in the backend. In light of such, you should poke around. Leave a comment here if you find anything broken.
