The Sit-In at the Altar: No ‘I Do’ Till Gays Can Do It, Too
Yearly Archives: 2006
World AIDS Day
It’s 1 December again, which means that it’s World AIDS Day. This year I am manning a booth set up by the LGBTA. We have lots of free literature and ribbons, and we’re collecting donations for the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a community-based AIDS clinic in Washington, D.C. Donations are completely optional. Honestly, if I collected five dollars and got all the ribbons distributed, I’d count it a success.
I’m trying to get people to come over and take a ribbon. They don’t have to stop and chat. It doesn’t cost them any money and only a split second of their time. Why is that so hard? Do people not want to let others know they are aware of the AIDS crisis that is going on? Do they themselves not want to know? Heterosexual, Caucasian, upper-middle class people can contract HIV too. The excuses are the worst part.
- “No thanks, I’m aware of AIDS.” — and what about people you know?
- “My hands are full.” — I’d be happy to drop it in your bag for you.
- “Sorry, I don’t have time right now.” — to take a pin off a table!?
You can’t spread a message if people don’t want to hear it, and people don’t want to hear about unpleasant things if they don’t think it applies to them.
Maybe we should try an AIDS FUD campaign.
My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists
HIV to be top health problem within 25 years
kthxgivingbye
I got back from Thanksgiving at home last night, but that drive really takes it out of you.
So I was home all last week for Thanksgiving. We did the whole dinner thing on Thursday with Mom’s big family. There were two pork shoulders weighing in somewhere around 25 lbs, a deep fried turkey and a traditionally cooked turkey, wet and dry stuffing, pineapple mold, mashed potatoes, sweet potato with marshmallows, carrot casserole, broccoli casserole, and more arroz con gandules (orange rice with green pidgeon peas) than you could shake a stick at. I didn’t really have any turkey. The pork roasts were so phenomenal that to eat any other meat would take away.
I felt reasonably miserable for a good portion of break. I think I’m allergic to my house. My sinuses got all plugged up, then that dripped down the back of my throat and into my lungs. The result was a painful wheezing cough and quite a bit of difficulty falling asleep. I’m still having some of the lung issues. That will take a couple of days to clear.
Holiday traffic was hellish. The vast majority of my ten hour trip is spent on I-81, from Binghamton, NY to Christiansburg, VA. All the way through PA and the brief corners of MD and WV were congested, but there weren’t too many slowdowns. I hit a couple of spots in VA near I-66 and I-64 where traffic was crawling. They cleared up as soon as I passed the exits. Then near Roanoke, for no discernible reason, I was at a dead stop on the interstate for 45 minutes. When that happens at the beginning of a trip, it’s frustrating. When that happens in the eleventh hour of a ten hour trip, one begins inventing new profanities.
I’m home now, though, and my roommate erected a holiday tree, and Sebastian is still adorable, and the water damage in my wall is finally corrected, and I’m going to eat a bowl of cereal and ponder navel lint.
Killer Tofu
I’m at home for the week, currently chilling in the basement and catching some wireless leeching love courtesy of Frontier DSL. I thought I would be SOL for internet connection, but the modem they use also includes a four-port wireless router. Awesome!
I’ll be enjoying Thanksgiving, as I usually do, with my extended family on my mother’s side. Steve will be joining me in a couple of days. I really love the closeness of our family, I think it has had a big impact on me. I sometimes forget that not everyone has this kind of relationship with their family. I really do feel badly for them, it’s a wonderful thing to have. If you can’t be with your family, give them a ring and say hello. Let them know you care.
Now that I’ve been all sentimental, I’ll give you the haps. Days Inn apparently has free wireless internet for guests, so if you’re ever in a pinch for internet access, you can always park in their lot. I drove ten hours home from Blacksburg, with only a quick stop in Lebanon, PA for gas, Wendy’s and email. Just the essentials, folks.
I’ll be heading home on Saturday, giving me time to situate myself at home before class gets started on Monday. Painters are supposed to be in this week to paint one wall of my room which is suffering from water damage from the apartment above. Because of this, my furniture is all moved away from that wall and I’m entirely disorganized. I was getting sick of looking at the water spot on my wall, though.
I also found an mp3 of Killer Tofu by The Beets. For the uninitiated, The Beets are a fictional cartoon band from the Nickelodeon, and later Disney, show Doug.
Old and Unchanged
It seems that everything is so “Web 2.0″ these days, with all their AJAX thingamabobs that update your information five seconds before you enter it, and custom switching stylesheets based on the weather in Brisbane. I didn’t even have any shiny or glassy starburst graphics… until now!
Unfortunately, my content just isn’t very Web 2.0, nor is the site in general. That’s why I was forced to create my very own starbursts that didn’t have any new-fangled technological references.
They were created using PS CS2, and a couple of Web 2.0 button Photoshop tutorials.
As an aside, I do believe this is the most categories any one post has ever belonged to.
Sanity is relative.
Sanity is a relative thing, but I think my roommate is crazy.