DECRIMINALIZING HIV

NY man charged for not telling of HIV infection - WSJ.com

The stigmatization of HIV has made the incentive to NOT disclose HIV-positive status greater than the incentive to do so. The criminalization of HIV, as exemplified in this case, contributes to said stigma. The laws regarding HIV transmission are not in sync with science and are premised on false information. HPV, another sexually transmitted infection, causes terminal cancer. We do not criminalize transmission of HPV, yet we criminalize transmission of HIV, a non-terminal infection when treated with medication.

AFRICA OBJECTIFIED AGAIN

This fits in nicely with the historical objectification of an entire continent by the West. Exactly like those red, green, and black striped earrings in the shape of Africa that symbolize some romanticized idea that people wear. No different. The ads don't say "I AM SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN" and they certainly didn't say "I AM POOR" - which is the real problem, a product of globalized markets and globalized neo-colonial slavery.

White Celebs Announce That They're African

CAIRO'S FACEBOOK FLAT

Revolution, pure and simple.

A SAFE PLACE

This is not only an incredibly beautiful and shocking piece of cinematic journalism, but it shares the successful story of a society's acknowledgement and acceptance of chemical addiction as a medical - not moral - issue and the taking of radical and revolutionary steps towards improving and saving human lives.

How can society not have anything other than compassion for a person so totally controlled by a chemical that they stick syringes into their face?

I CHOOSE TO HIDE MY FACE

Looking Back at Don't Ask Don't Tell

A powerful photo essay from The New Yorker magazine on the participation in one's own oppression by enlisting in the United States Military.

Naomi Wolf vs. Jaclyn Friedman

Naomi Wolf vs. Jaclyn Friedman: Feminists Debate the Sexual Allegations Against Julian Assange

Fascinating debate. Perspective from both sides are strong.

A TAXONOMY OF TRANSITIONS

A color-coded map of geographical racial distribution in metropolitan Chicago.  This is from 2000, so there would be changes to account for, such as the demolition of Cabrini Green housing projects, the blue cluster on the Near North Side.  Chicago is an example of hypersegregation.

GIRL BODY

Should 14-Year-Old Kendall Jenner Be Doing a Bikini Shoot? - iVillage

The complaint is misogynist and regressive. Standards of decency for how females are SUPPOSED to dress have been created by men and sustained by women, who go along with these restrictions because they are complicit in the historical oppression of females. The fact that we are talking about how girls dress and what is and what is not appropriate for women and girls to wear reminds me of discussions of the burqa. While the  sexualization and objectification of the female body is far from over (if ever), this situation is a necessary evolutionary step in its eventual de-objectification. Men do not have to conform to such stringent standards today because they are not oppressed and controlled by women. It's a much larger picture than imagined.

THE TWELVE STEPS: A RE-WRITE

• Step 1 - We declare that we are powerful and that our lives are manageable
• Step 2 - We understand that we are perfectly sane and do not need to be restored to sanity
• Step 3 - We know that we have control of our lives and responsibility for our every action
• Step 4 - We make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves
• Step 5 - We declare to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our strengths
• Step 6 - We realize we are solid in character and that we are amazing
• Step 7 - We celebrate our strengths
• Step 8 - We make a list of all persons we had harmed, and asked them for forgiveness as we forgave ourselves
• Step 9 - We make direct amends to such people and to ourselves
• Step 10 - We continue to take personal inventory and make frequent affirmations of our self-worth and strength
• Step 11 - Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with ourselves, affirming our will and power
• Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, practice these principles in all our affairs

OCH

WAR IS A SICKNESS

YouTube - Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq

If you haven't yet read about or watch the "Collateral Murder" leak from 2007, you can at the link. It shows the video game our "peacekeeping freedom fighters" are playing. The fact that they mistakenly killed a Reuters photographer assistant whose camera was mistaken for an AK-47, is not the important fact. The important fact is that they killed. "Engaging" is another word for murder, they just choose not to use that language, instead employing euphemisms to conduct their "obligations."

"Laws" of combat? Really?

Obama's Nobel peace prize remains truly questionable because the same thing will happen in his Afghanistan.

When will this end, you guys? What are you going to do about your friends and family joining the military?

DEMONS AND DEMONIZATIONS : P. KRUGMAN

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/demons-and-demonization/
The story of the (statistically probably gay) black boy in the rural south with HIV screwed over by the insurance company has no relevance or capability of being related to by the ignorant American class of comfort that watches, armed in the turrets of their fortress of privilege, for any threat to their PERCEIVED security in health coverage. The same people who will not budge to support health care for all will certainly pay no mind to the Mitchell case, or more likely side with the insurance company in keeping them out. On the other hand, the extreme exoticism of the Mitchell case could lead it to be fetishized enough to serve as an effective symbol and discussion point for all sides, ultimately working to reveal the flaws of the system.

THE IMPACT OF YOUR DOLLAR ON EVERYTHING

Whole Story Blog Archive Our meat: No antibiotics, EVER!

The continual rise of Whole Foods and its power to influence the market and alter the dynamics of industrial farming is not just a blip on the radar. While the more radical tend to find fault in a chain of such magnitude or scoff at the owner's stance on US healthcare, the effect of consumerist activism through the arm of Whole Foods is undeniable.

Remember: YOU and your dollar determine what is planted on the farm.

UNVEILED

Ce que pr�conise la�mission sur le port du�voile int�gral - Lib�ration

The most interesting thing about this is that only 1,900 women in France wear veils and that this information was actually accurately obtained.

Sports, sex, and the runner Caster Semenya : The New Yorker

A fascinating cultural anthropological case. The concept of gender
being mediated by societies and further ideological conflict between
the developed and undeveloped world.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/30/091130fa_fact_levy?printable=true

THE COLONIAL SUBJECTS ARE GETTING RESTLESS

African Archbishop Alleges Aids Workers ’Introduce Boys to Homosexuality’

It's all very interesting because of course there's been a Western agenda on Africa - to colonize and exploit it - and naturally cultural imperialism follows. It's just very interesting to see how and which Western values are appropriated (Christianity) and which ones are rejected (homosexuality), and all using the Queen's English. Sure, the practice of sodomy and male-male love has always happened in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world, but the modern scientific concept of homosexuality is new to us all.

I’d love to remind all the archbishops in Africa that Christianity and the modern concepts of sexuality, homosexuality, and homophobia were all imposed on colonial Africa by the Europeans and that there’s no such thing as an "African culture."

Very good article, cultural anthropologically-speaking. Culture clash, conflicting agendas, moral subjectivity, religious absolutism, public/global health vs. alleged African cultural purity. Juicy!

Moins de 400 femmes porteraient le voile intégral en France

Only 367 women in France wear head covering scarves. Should they all be rounded up and be forced to remove them? The French would like to take away a civil liberty because it makes them uncomfortable. The Muslim response in France needs to be heard:

Immédiatement, les représentants des musulmans se sont unanimement dits hostiles à une loi, soulignant que le voile intégral était un phénomène ultra-marginal et que la question devait se régler entre musulmans, plutôt par la pédagogie que par l’interdiction. Ils critiquaient aussi l’emploi du mot «burqa», qui désigne le voile des Afghanes et qui n’est quasiment pas porté en France. Un fait confirmé par les services de renseignements.

MISOGYNY, RACISM, AND THE BURQA

Further thoughts on the subject:

The "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" axiom comes to mind here. I understand wanting to be respectful of the culture and wearing a scarf if it is a custom when traveling to foreign countries, but one is not required by fear of punishment by the state to do so. If a woman is traveling to Afghanistan, she is not required by the state to dress in a certain way, but it becomes a matter of personal safety as she would be punished by warlords for not wearing a burqa, which is oppressive and denies freedom.

My original comment comes from a feminist perspective. A historical misogyny in the form of male-dominated government control of women's bodies in the Arab world is merely being shifted to another end of the moral spectrum where women's bodies are once again being controlled by the state, but this time in the Western world with France's decision. I am talking about women's bodies and how women are pawns in a game of dueling moralities. Do any of these laws affect men?

A government telling women what to wear is not freedom, in France or Afghanistan. No, we cannot be nude on the street in France, but the particular case of the burqa is different and has political, cultural, and historical considerations that must be taken into account. This desire on the part of France to rule on Muslim women's dress is not only misogynist, it is the cultural anti-Arab/anti-Muslim sentiment of the French people rooted in colonialism, which always employs racism in order to function. That racist, colonial legacy is being played out today in this contemporary situation and the female body and the behavior expected of women as "le deuxieme sexe" is the battlefield.

I want Muslim women to be able to choose to wear the burqa as an individual liberty. I doubt this would be a personal choice - I don't know. I would rather the state not be involved in this. The punishment of a woman for not being covered enough is the same as the punishment of a woman for being covered too much.
OCH

LEAVING TEHRAN

By JASON REZAIAN in Dubai | 24 June 2009

[TEHRAN BUREAU] I decided to leave Iran a couple of days ago for several reasons. First of all, it was beginning to feel as though I could be of little use to anyone by being there. Choked off from most telecommunication, barred from reporting and holding both Iranian and American citizenship, my presence in Iran during this crisis had devolved into being little more than one more thing for my friends in Tehran to worry about.
[more]Leaving Tehran – Tehran Bureau

Sarkozy: No place for 'burqa' in France

Women and their bodies are once again finding themselves the pawns on the battlefield for male abuses of power. In the case of Sarkozy's statement condemning use of the burqa, women are being just as subjugated as they are in the middle east as to how they are and are not permitted to dress. I find this HIGHLY OFFENSIVE and were I in France today, I would wear a burqa to show my solidarity with people who CHOOSE to wear whatever they want.

I think it is a huge mistake, as was the banning of head scarves some years ago in France. It is a violation to dictate cultural signifiers and suppression of free will. It should be a person's choice to wear a burqa and it should be a person's choice to leave France. "Do these women have that choice?" is the question, but it is not the state's responsibility to answer it for them, either.

Moral imposition is highly questionable, as are fluctuating conceptions of freedom, or in this case: liberté, égalité, fraternité.
OCH


Sarkozy: No place for 'burqa' in France

SAY NO TO BIOFUELS

Say NO, NO, NO to biofuels, even ethanol. ALL biofuels require more destruction of forests and soil because we need space to "grow" fuel in addition to food, food production is affected GLOBALLY, and biofuels STILL pollute. imagine that you were a third-world farmer required by your corporation-lobbied/controlled government to grow soybeans on your land that get shipped to biofuel factories in the first world but you couldn't plant food or make enough food to feed your own kid. That's the reality, in a nutshell. ELECTRIC VEHICLES NOW!

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090505/BUSINESS/90505016/-1/NEWS04

US Travel Ban on HIV-infected Individuals

Most Americans are ignorant to the fact that the United States doesn't allow people with HIV to enter the country.


UPDATE: The ban has been lifted, but has yet to be done so administratively.

VARIOUS AND SUNDRY PENNY ARCADIA

If you happened upon this site after seeing the lovely performance at Brava Theater of Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, you were no doubt affected in some way or another. Thanks for seeing the show. It sure is a whole lot of fun, ain't it? I'm curious to hear your thoughts, criticisms, and experiences, so please make some comments!
OCH

INDULGENCES

Indulgences Return, and Heaven Moves a Step Closer for Catholics - NYTimes.com

Funny how some people construct these particular moral codes by which to live and make plans for their life (and afterlife), only to rail full-force against these confinements, momentarily transcend them through sin, then suffer innumerable manifestations of guilt (sometimes violent and criminal) whose lingering shadow, and only its shadow, can be dismissed through a donation to the very organization that sustains the concept of sin, which in turn repeats endlessly into a perceived eternity. Hmm. Sounds like a real hot time. Have fun with that one, kids.
OCH

UNITED STATES ONCE AGAIN DISAPPOINTS

US refuses to sign UN gay rights declaration

This is a good article, particularly as it situates current homophobic practices and beliefs around the world as being imposed colonial rhetoric and ideology. That the US did not agree to this declaration and continues to leave unexamined its homophobia - perhaps, as suggested by Scott Long, inherited from Victorian morality - is a testament to the fact that the United States is indeed a nation regressed into an infantile postcolonial paralysis, incapable of making educated, progressive analyses of its policies that affect human rights of its citizens and the world. How embarrassing. Your country continues to betray you. What are you doing about it?
OCH

ELIMINATE THE INAUGURAL INVOCATION ENTIRELY

...and eliminate any and all religious and spiritual everything from the ceremony, and while you're at it why not explore the novel idea of " church separation from the state." I'm getting really tired of everyone in America pretending to "Trust in God" and conflating governance and law with these imagined absolutes disguised as religion. It's tiresome, meddles with the efficiency and beneficence of democracy, and limits human potential. Let's focus on the here and now, the politics and people at hand, and the job, not invoking a "holy spirit" who represents a dangerously cobbled together ideological tyranny.
OCH

http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/12/19/rick_warren/index.html

CIVIL UNIONS PLEASE

http://www.lambdalegal.org/publications/articles/iowa-supreme-court-hears-marriage-case.html

I'm beginning to pull away from the marriage equality struggle entirely and towards the marriage abolition/equal civil union movement. Separation of church and state is more important than a remedial, symbolic granting of legal rights within the current framework through which "sovereign subjects" foolishly further ingratiate themselves into a false democracy that is crippled by religious structures. Marriage Equality does very little to address the core dynamics of American homophobia. It jumps over them, denies them, doesn't examine their roots in Christianity, but instead tries to include homosexuality in it - which doesn't work with the dominant contemporary Christian paradigm. But it does seem too radical for this country, today.

Why, in 1957 only, did America decide to put "In God We Trust" on our currency? I'm glad the issue is at least being brought to the courts in Iowa, a state where the concept of men having sex with men is usually constructed and understood as a "sin." Aren't people getting tired of all these "sins" that they have to work through? They're so limiting.
OCH

THE REALITY OF THE FIRST BRIGADE

American Civil Liberties Union : ACLU Demands Information On Military Deployment Within U.S. Borders

So, for those not familiar with the First Brigade, it's the latest episode in our non-democracy.

THE RELEVANCY/IRRELEVANCY OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RESUMES IN THIS FAKE DEMOCRACY

Politics are on the mind aren't they?

My response to the email about the petty nit-picked details of each candidates: I don't care about anyone's past, I care about their present. And because Obama is black in America, he HAS to have a perfect resume in order to even be considered. There are some people in this country who still hate "niggers." watch this delightful video produced by Al Jazeera, the CNN of the Middle East, and you'll see what I mean.

But...

Qualifications and degrees and history and past affiliations and records and truth/"facts" about political candidates have no relevancies any more in the American political system, for any party, so all of this is moot.

This is no longer a democracy. People do not trust the government any more because there is nothing to trust. It's the case with constituencies in all parties. There is no transparency, there is no consistency, there is no accountability - this is no democracy. the laws have been manipulated in such a way that the laws are subverted.

One example, our voting system is so flawed and unorganized that it does not even meet the standard criteria required to be considered for observation by the Carter Center, the international organization designated by the UN that ensures democratic voting takes place in developing nations around the world! From their site:

Would you discuss U.S. voting procedures in light of emerging international standards?

Dr. Carroll: According to international standards, the management and administration of elections should be impartial and transparent. Most countries with strong democratic institutions have an independent national election authority that administers elections nationwide with uniform processes and standards. In the United States, elections are administered at the state and local level, often under the direction of partisan officials, and with varying practices, procedures, and machinery.

The United States should adopt uniform voting procedures within states and perhaps nationwide, and antiquated voting machinery should be replaced with more reliable technology in all communities, rich or poor. In addition, simulations of voting systems would test reliability and accuracy before elections and build confidence in new technology.

There also needs to be a way to let voters know whether they have followed proper procedure and a way that they can immediately correct mistakes. Having a paper record of the vote or a paper receipt for the voter is a way to build confidence in the system. There is also a clear need to create an information-sharing system among counties and among states to cross-check voter registration to eliminate duplications, deceased registrants, and other errors.

That's only addressing the voting - not the lobby system, the earmarking, the electoral college issue - or the many other perversions of our constitution. The big problem is that Americans have been so identified with their chosen candidate's personal identity and their "character" presence rather than how they vote on the issues. This happened because Americans don't know what the issues are because the public education system of this country is so terrible.

Things have shifted in a more civilly-involved direction with this particular election because of its star-power, total dependence on the medium of television, and its requirement that characters be "cast" in a role within the structure of dramatic narrative - The Election '08 Program. It means nothing, really. When we all expect a politician to "represent us" we think that means that they must replicate exactly who WE are based on absolute irrelevancies to the political process like race, religion, family background, job history, personal history, life, challenges - not at all how they stand on the issues. But again, Americans don't understand the issues, how the issues directly affect them, or how the political system actually works. I really don't either.

by OCH

BLACK IS, BLACK AIN'T

A review of a show at the Renaissance Society in Chicago by Huey Copeland. (Artforum, October 2008)

“black is, black ain’t” - artforum.com / in print

MONEY AND THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION

This is a fantastic article elaborating on the upcoming changes in the economy of our civilization, the beginnings of which we are seeing with the global finance crumble. This article is explaining what will happen, what already has begun to happen.

Reality Sandwich | Money and the Crisis of Civilization

ON VANDANA SHIVA by O. C. Holm

Vandana Shiva's talk September 2 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California presented by the International Forum on Globalization was an enlightening and infuriating ride through the current global food and agricultural system. The Indian quantum physicist turned environmentalist and agricultural activist addressed global problems of climate change and food insecurity as created by industrial and centralized agriculture and its remedy being the re-localization of food production.

Peppered as it was with magnanimous humour and as jovial as can be throughout, the overwhelming tone in the hall was the painful fact that something has gone terribly wrong with our global food supply, it cannot be denied further, and immediate paradigm shifts must occur for the health of our bodies and the planet.

Some of what I took away from the evening and previous research on the issue:

That five corporations control almost all food production on this planet, that these corporations create laws within countries to determine what is farmed and where and how and for what global markets, that farmers often cannot eat the food they sow because it is to be exported to foreign markets or used for biofuels, that farmers the world over are required by laws to plant certain crops and to purchase certain patented seeds, that said patented seeds are genetically modified to NOT re-germinate and therefore must be purchased annually, that said patented seeds require the application of specific patented chemical nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides in order to grow, that said patented chemical nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides eventually desertify the soil, that said seed and fertilizer manufacturers go to the lengths of hunting down and having farmers who defy the laws imprisoned, that farmers whose only will to power is their now un-tillable land kill themselves, that some people on our planet still cannot get access to food despite that there is - and always has been- abundance, that capital made off market speculation created by this blind, greedy system of maximum exploitation of resources and labor get reintroduced back into said system, locking up capital in the hands of so few...

...is absolutely inexcusable.

This is not just happening in India, this is happening in Illinois, in California, in France, in Bolivia. We are one world because of this globalized economy and thusly, we are all complicit.

Of special mention and worthy of further investigation, Shiva is highly critical of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Africa initiative Alliance for a Green Africa, as it is based enirely in this current, flawed model of industrial, genetically modified agriculture. Specifically, from that organization's website, the exact reductionist strategy that sustains the system (emphasis mine):

"The Agro-Dealer Development Program (ADP) provides training, capital and credit to establish certified agro-dealers who are a primary conduit of seeds, fertilisers and knowledge to smallholder farmers to increase their productivity and incomes."

These "certified dealers" will most likely be enforced by new legal suppositions and not simply be "a primary conduit of seeds, fertilisers, and knowledge," but rather the only conduit (legal, that is). In my opinion, all of this will lead to "illegal seed trafficking" and the criminalization of "illegal seed use," functioning exactly as the current illegal drug industry works, not only in Africa, but worldwide as the industrialized mode of food production implodes on itself.

She also addressed a question from an audience member about commons law and how the manipulation of patents and the patent legal system and its inherent capital-generating greed is at the heart of this destructive dynamic. We must restore the commons.

The disappearance of bees was also touched upon. Might they be disappearing because of genetically modified organisms? It's very possible. Is there a way to prove this?

Some quotes from Shiva:

On monoculture:

"Shrimp should remain a luxury. Who needs to eat shrimp every day? People should not be forced [by this system and some laws] to farm shrimp to satisfy the palettes of foreign markets. "

In response to an audience question "What role should women play in all of this?":

"That question should be: 'What role DO women play in all of this?' They are the majority of the world's farmers! Things would be lot more different if they were not subjugated and they would do things like women do....like share."

by OCH

THE GLOBAL MIND APPROACHES

The strifes of difference, of separateness are fast dissolving as we become one mind. Yes, the noosphere, as conceived by Teilhard de Chardin in Le phénomène humain is congealing. Individualism will not die out, rather flourish for the better as the limitations imposed by the current fragmentations of society lift and the forced assertions against social structures and the superficial differences that divide humanity do not entirely evaporate but instead are shared.
OCH

SLAVERY REPARATIONS

The horror of American Slavery (with capital A and S) has NOT been acknowledged. There has been no public acknowledgment EVER. When one travels to Germany, one sees memorials to the victims of the Holocaust EVERYWHERE. Where the holy hell FUCK is the NATIONAL U.S. MEMORIAL to those enslaved by THIS country, this culture, this society that was created using human slaves?!? It should be the biggest memorial in this country, ever. A monument. Where then also is the national holiday of reflection and remembrance? MLK day is not addressing SLAVERY. only the black side of the human rights movement.

BUT money CANNOT be involved. That gets messy. Monetary compensation is too abstract, too irrelevant, and ultimately meaningless...leading to such ignorant thinking as "you got yer money, nigger, now what the fuck you want?"

Reparations must be symbolic, deeply felt on a national level, with the deepest understanding of how the thinking that produced slavery is still the thinking we have today, and INITIATED by WHITE folks - it is the white folks who have held onto the legacy of slavery and continue to maintain it through their cultural rules, legal institutions, and belief systems. it needs to be initiated by white folks with the intention of apology, and the black folks will receive and ccept only a genuine, public, symbolic, apology (cash is meaningless) and progress will have been made, opening the doors for a mutual understand of this particular problematic social phenomenon that still exists, symbolically, today.

I hope it happens in my lifetime and I will work towards making it happen.

OCH

AFTER A WET DREAM WITH A FEMALE

"Homosexuality" is caused by post-Enlightenment Christianity and science. It has no biological basis. It is not real. Male to male love is real, female to male love is real. Love between anyone is real. Sexual acts between anyone are real. Categories of sexual orientation are not "real." Cheap identifiers, insufficient attempts at grasping that which cannot and probably should not be grasped. Science, specifically AIDS science, has made this particular facet of our lives more difficult by encouraging these categories to profligate. Male to male sex is real, one man can give another great satisfying pleasure emotionally and physically, as that man could then also receive that pleasure from a woman if he is open to receive it. "Satisfaction" has nothing to do with the other's gender, only with oneself. Christian formulation of contemporary society has made these discrete categories stronger: gay marriage issue for example, hardens this. Why do people seek their union to be recognized by the government? There is no need to involve the complications of the state with their stultifying, meddling, superficial, and administrative ways. State marriage has nothing to do with the soul or with love. Everyone needs love and to be loved, or else they should die.

SHELL PROPAGANDA

About Shell - About Shell brand campaign film 'Eureka'

This is the biggest bunch of bullshit I've seen in a long time. A DVD of this film, along with a glossy information pamphlet, was mailed to my parents house. Poor, poor Shell! Don't they get it? Move on from oil! Stop ruining communities!

In no way can I support the manufacture of such a expensive piece of propaganda when I am all too aware of the global atrocities that this corporation has brought upon the world.

Nigeria, anyone?

"A SORT OF...", "A KIND OF...", and "YOU KNOW..."

These three figures of speech and predictable affectation can be found most annoyingly and excessively in overly educated persons in urban centers trying to impress others with their intellectual process. Frequency of their use correlates directly to the degree of abstract bullshit that the speaker is trying to pass off as profound thought.

The British present this complex more often than most.

For example:

(read aloud with thumb and forefinger pinching nose closed)

"It's a sort of allusion to a, you know, asymptomatic experience of a sort of hypochondriacal reaction."

or

"I think the piece could best be explained as a sort of 'running forward through nothing.' A kind of, you know, sort of unparalleled experience that sort of signals a sort of 'coming through.'"

...or some other bullshit.

One might argue that these are just linguistic reposes, during which a speaker might be pausing in order to gather the precise language with which to express his thought. I think it's a bunch of pretentious malarkey, an affectation employed to produce a certain air of pseudosophistication.

Or rather, a kind of, sort of pseudosophicated air.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA ALIVE AND WELL

Brightcove - Jetwave - Coming Out Insurance

First, we must have to subscribe to the concept of "gay." I don't.

This video is not cute or funny at all. Aside from the fact that it's "playing with the issue," that video is stupid, stereotypical, and homophobic.

Most "gay humor" is stupid and stereotypical because by its very nature it must reduce and essentialize what "gay" is in order to laugh at it. It's along the same lines as when a black comedian does black jokes. He must generalize. It's false.

The fact that Ant plays up being a flaming queen and participated in this video shows how homophobia, especially internalized homophobia, is alive and well.

I don't like musicals. I would never join the Madonna fan club.

This video is not progressive, it's regressive.

Sorry to rain on your gay rainbow parade.

Leseraktion: Wir suchen die besten Slogans für die Hauptstadt - Aktuelle Nachrichten von Tagesspiegel Online

Leseraktion: Wir suchen die besten Slogans für die Hauptstadt

Berlin officials are offering five million euros to come up with a slogan for the city, along the lines of "I Love New York."

Ridiculous.

Do Paris or Rome have slogans? And if so, do we know what they are? Are they important? I don't know them.

My entries into the contest would be:

"Ahhh....Berlin!"

or

"Come to Berlin, get drunk, and spend all your money!"

BASIC ASTRONOMY

The Earth/Moon System

In reality from where I stand/exist/experience/perceive as a sentient being, we/Earth spin, so it appears the Moon moves around us quickly through the day and then disappears in a quick orbit, but it us/Earth that spins around completely once during the course of our 24ish hours, giving the appearance that it is the Moon that orbits around us/Earth, when in fact the Moon actually takes 29.53 days to orbit around us/Earth.

The Sun provides a similar appearance of going around the Earth in 24ish hours, but we/Earth orbit the sun in 365ish days, and it is our 24ish hours of spinning that creates the perception of the sun orbiting.

Funny that the center of the universe was considered for millenia to be Earth.

We had to expand our conception, reshift our perception of center, develop new tools, then realize there is no center of the universe....

...and now we realize that the pin-point prick seed of our consciousness is the center of the universe, of understanding.

MORE

There are many instances where people go out and intentionally become hiv positive so they can love and be loved. it is a sick and twisted world we live in, that circumstances have developed in such a way that someone would opt for something ostensibly self destructive to satisfy subconscious desires, even when that very thing believed to be self-destructive may not actually even be so. AAAAAAHHHH! .... but intuitively we all know that disease and contagion and social circumstance and race and gender and whatever else mean absolutely nothing in the spiritual and cosmological scheme of reality and the timeless universe. everybody just fights that intuition all the time with illusions.

i just think about medieval times or tribal cultures, where disease and death is a fact of daily life that is not denied, but rather accepted and understood. No, people may not live as long, but they live more fully and don't run around scared of everything, bound in a realm of scripted beliefs that often are intended to scare or sell. They love, they fuck, they die. passion is the rule.

and all this crap that religion spews on us is a bunch of bullshit. "right" behavior etc. morals. it is all a joke. after having been away from America so long, I see the Americans, my parents and friends, trapped in the silliest little peculiarities of social and moral comportment that seem completely insignificant. Like porn. Who gives a fuck?!???!??! people stick their goddamn cocks into pussies and asses! so what?! why can't it be recorded and shown? I also understand, but do not see, the silly little moral peculiarities that I have taken on that exist here.

THESE NEW FLOURESCENT BULBS ARE BAD

NPR : CFL Bulbs Have One Hitch: Toxic Mercury

Not only do they give off a horrendous light and RUIN the atmosphere of any room, but they contain toxic mercury, which is a neurotoxin that cannot be properly recycled. Have fun with that, everyone, as your brain fries because your lightbulb busted open in your trash. (and got into MY drinking water source)

DO NOT PURCHASE THESE BULBS! Simply use incandescent bulbs to light your home. The old fashioned ones! Your house doesn't have to be lit up like Times Square every night. If a restaurant has these new CFL bulbs, I cannot eat there. It ruins the experience for me.

Candles and incandescents are so much better to live, eat, play, and work under!

CIRCUMCISION

Gay News From 365Gay.com

Now NYC Public Health is jumping on the circumcision bandwagon. I FUCKING HATE THIS! This is insulting. Yes, there remains a choice to NOT be circumcised but who in their right mind would DARE GO AGAINST OUR ESTEEMED MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT?

I'm certain the uncircumsized Germans will quickly follow suit since they worship science and reason even more than Americans do.

Would it be too radical to say that this is simply medicine propagating itself by mandating yet another procedure that makes someone money somewhere, not to mention but further disconnecting men from their bodies?

DRUGS ARE IN THE WATER

Water Pollution - Drugs and Household Products in the Water Supply - Does It Matter? - New York Times
Well, isn't this just fantastic! I'm really happy about this! This is so great!

We are truly helpless. This is why people get religion. Makes me wanna get some too - to help relieve my fear that I will turn into a chemically-distorted monster.

We are all truly one.

If I take this drug, you'll be taking it too. I'll piss some out - the molecules don't disappear. So will the fish - they'll take it too. You eat the fish, the plants eat the fish, the bacteria eat the plants , we eat the bacteria, they eat us, the cows eat the plants, we eat the cows, the cows drink the water.

One.

CIRCUMCISION

WHO: Male Circumcision Could Cut HIV Infection - Science News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology

This is such BULLSHIT. Circumcision is completely unnecessary - I don't care what the fuck the World Health Organization says! Now they're just going to go into Africa, impose all their fucking western medical bullshit onto Africa, mandate it through laws based in "science" (the irrevocable contemporary God of truth) that EVERY male undergo circumcision.

Why not provide proper nutrition and water and see if AIDS in Africa is still such a huge problem, instead of dangerous surgeries?

I am completely against circumcision. It is the first act of violence a man experiences. If you clean yourself daily, you're FINE. I think it creates more self-respect and self-knowledge for men when they have to stop and take the time to gently care for such a delicate aspect of their physicality. It builds a connection to their bodies and fosters self-respect, gentleness, and respect for others.

And it gets people to take a shower.

POOR LADY

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Pakistan 'brothel woman' released

How sad that she has to accommodate her country's morals instead of her own, which are in reality much more nurturing to her community than the criminalization of her actions and prostitution.

AMERICAN FAGGOTRY

NoMarriage.com - Only marry foreign women.

omigod - so so true! That's really a big reason why I'm "gay." Seriously! I have always been so repelled by most American girls, especially the blond, white New Trier types with shrill-ass voices. Totally asexual. Hence relationships with Bengalis (S___), French (C___), and Australian (A___), and non-white American girls (J___). There are of course American exceptions. L___ is bisexual and masculine, which American chicks wouldn't dare consider over effecting a "Princess" stance. Divas are so much more interesting. I used to always tell my friend Andreas that if I had grown up in Germany I wouldn't have developed into and been assigned, the stupid identity of "gay" which, in relation to American women, is one of the only options for non-hyper-masculine dudes (like myself) who have no interest in pandering to the entitlement that American chicks demand and playing sports. Since a man can have another orgasm with another man, it works, sufficiently, and can be considered a lifestyle choice. But then of course, a soul with which one falls in love has no gender.

"NOW THAT LYNCHING IS FROWNED UPON, WE'VE MOVED ON TO THE ELECTRIC CHAIR"

That quote is from the venerable Ani DiFranco.

look at this article!:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/15/lethal_injection_ruling/

FEEL THE LATEST FEAR

oh my god. fucking run for your life. oh my god. get whipped up into a panicked frenzy. get real scared of something. oh lord help us. we're all gonna die. oh my god. oh my god. i just don't know what to do. oh my. we're all gonna die. oh my god. disaster. tragedy. terror. hysterics. enemies. viruses. them. us. other. outside. external. not internal. us. I. they. something else. disruptions. impurities. soiling enitities. safe. safe. safe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4292426.stm

PUPPETS/PHOENIX

so I don't think i ever talked about this because my mother asked me not to because it's been really upsetting to everyone in the family (except me and my brothers), but her brother with parkinson's disease has over the past two years become a complete sex addict. can you fucking believe it?!?! he has spent all his disability money and the money my grandmother gives him on phone sex lines, and would drive himself to strip clubs. they took the car keys away, so he started stealing bikes and would pedal himself across town to go to fucking sex clubs. i just can't imagine what it is like to see someone with parkinson's disease in total spasms trying to get through rush hour traffic in order to go fuck strippers. my grandmother said that his new girlfriend has turned him into a sex fiend and she is TOTALLY beside herself with disgust. my mother is totally disturbed. i just keep saying "well at least he's doing something for himself! good for him for trying to get a little happiness." the whole situation is RIDICULOUS and really unbelievable. the whole thing is WACKO.

BUT THEN IN THE NEWS YESTERDAY IT WAS ANNOUNCED THAT A DRUG THAT PEOPLE WITH PARKINSON'S DISEASE TAKE IS TURNING PEOPLE INTO COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS, ALCOHOLICS, AND SEX ADDICTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

can you FUCKING BELIEVE IT ?!??!?!?!?!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0712_050712_parkinsons.html


this whole moral dilemma in my family was iatrogenically induced.

the world is SO FUCKED UP. I feel so sorry for my uncle having to reconcile his chaste christian beliefs with these uncontrollable sex urges. must have been quite an internal torment for such a good Christian. He's one of those people that says "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." I hope he has the strength and reason to take care of himself instead of being a puppet. i hope with the revelation of this news he feels like he has been a helpless puppet trapped in a hideous world and takes some goddamn control for himself. I wonder if he'll have a complete breakdown, freak out, and then heal himself completely!

LEAVING

I'm very glad I'm leaving San Francisco - it's suffocating and small and although diverse and liberal, quite provincial. It's time for more. I also hope to visit Scandinavia and other countries where faggots are wholly integrated into the culture just to see what it ACTUALLY feels like. I can't really imagine!! It's very bad for my health to have to try to become a man in a society that hates me. That's probably what causes AIDS, really: the psychological double bind of actively participating in a culture that oppresses me through institutions, medicalized fascism, and general stupid stupid hatred and fear is actively participating in my own suicide.

Things are better in Germany. Things are also "better" in San Francisco, but San Francisco is simply a ghetto for liberals and gays surrounded by a country of asshole fuckface morons who vote for Bush and support institutionalized discrimination, war, imperialism, and murder. In a ghetto or marginalized situation like this, self-created or not, they are given the illusion of freedom and being able to live one's life fully, yet they wander around wanting more and when they try to do that by leaving the ghetto, the margin, either physically, psychologically, or culturally, they are brutally reminded that they are not safe and might be violated, so they rush back to the margins, back to the ghetto. This ,aSan Francisco is the ultimate ghetto for sexual "deviants." They run around drunk or spun on speed like teenagers from bar to bar, flitting from culturally unverifiable and emotionally unstable relationship to another, from stupid job to stupid job, from anonymous city to anonymous city because they SIMPLY AREN'T PERMITTED TO LAND. I imagine that in the Netherlands EVERYONE cares for themselves much more than we do here, if we as a culture choose these sorts of behaviors and laws. (mind you, all of this is being said by a spoiled brat able to sell a Saab and just LEAVE.)

SHOPPING IS DEAD

> http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=264019

Now even the press, albeit the French left press, has acknowleged my latest intuitive (and otherwise) proclamation: shopping is totally over. Brands are totally over. Give the television masses a decade or so, maybe a bit more for the new immigrants looking for that commodified American dream, but for the most part, it will be on the decline. This is all of course in direct relation to my most voracious reading of late: No Logo by Naomi Klein.

Hopefully also soon, capital will sift out of the research and development coffers of multinational corporations looking for the most innovative ways to psychologically present their useless products and into more pockets of more people in this world, in a more equitable distribution.

I recently met a girl whose job was to develop a tear-resistant Glad trash bag. It would just be a few dollars more than a regular Glad trash bag. Glad was spending millions of dollars on this trash bag development project. The girl just bought a $985,000 house in Oakland. I think I'll really just double-bag two generic bags that cost one quarter of a Glad bag - especially when after giving me a niftily-wrapped sample package with a single bag inside of it, she then watched me push my finger right through the plastic of her new, tear-resistant bag.

IRAQ

Could someone please tell me why the United States has any reason whatsoever to involve itself in the elections of another country, of another people? Thanks. I appreciate it.

This occupation in order to "spread freedom," as Condoleeza Rice stated after being sworn in as the new Secretary of State, has and will always remain an oppressive form of colonization and imperialism. This spreading of freedom is more like a spreading of pizza sauce. As a reminder, freedom cannot be given to anyone, it must be taken. The people of the world will have to come to terms with this state of freedom that is being imposed upon them and realize for themselves that this freedom is a lie. They are simply being subjected to an ideological imperialism scripted by those in power in order to reserve further power. Is this not completely obvious to most of the world now? Is this simply about money and material resource, or has the Unites States sought to obliterate other ways of conceptualizing how lives might be lived? There really is no such thing as a democracy. We see that every day in the United States. The government of the United States has become the militia for the dollars of multinational corporations.

I'm going to stop, because these ideas are so unoriginal. Repeating them over and over is having no effect.

What are these assholes doing?

PEOPLE STILL AREN'T GETTING THE POINT

Read this article:

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=1011

Yes, the United States is testing drugs on Africans, all under the guise of "combatting the African AIDS epidemic." It is murder and we are guilty. YOU are guilty.

And for all you faggots with AIDS: Stop taking the toxic shit they push on you for profit, you dumbfuck. It's gross and stupid. You look like deformed monkeys scurrying about the gay ghettos of this country, smiling your little smiles that never fully conceal the fear of your death. Wouldn't you rather be dead? You are a vast medical experiment in the machine of capitalist profit. Do you really believe that you've no other choice? Get this: you have a choice. You have many fucking choices. Think about it. Really.

You want me to speak my fucking mind, I will. I'm sick of not speaking my mind for fear of ostracization or expulsion or friends turning against me or imprisonment. And yes, I do feel the situation is THAT grave: when a system is in place, the system works to ensure that the system is infallible. Any exceptions or discrepancies are ousted when the sanctity of that system is threatened. Do we compromise personal liberty for the salvation of the public health? Yes we do. WE quarantine and jail them. We make the mothers give their babies drugs against the will. The body has become the territory of the State in this respect. Inflictions upon the body from without, in the form of questionnaires, injections, extractions, have left the membranes and pulses of our flesh to the vagaries of popular and political trend. Up for grabs in a game of medical fascism, our bodies are. Completely up for grabs.

The way we even think, the way we conceptualize, is molded around the agendas of pharmaceutical corporations. It is they who are presently scripting the language in which we are able to even express ourselves. There are of course hopeful exceptions, but there seems to have developed a double-speak that gallops alongside our everyday American English that nips away at our thoughts, co-opting them so that words like "procedure," "administration," control group," benefits," syndrome," condition," bioengineered" latch on in just such a way that our capacities to express ourselves via any other means are slowly being altered. They may eventually be taken away from us entirely. When entire medical conditions are AUTHORED by pharmaceutical corporations looking for a market for their latest pill, then the syndrome/condition/disease/whathaveyou LEGITIMIZED through proper medical processes and validations such as esteemed researchers on salary, or through an article in a medical journal that can only exist due to the money given to it by pharmaceutical corporations for advertisements, the language begins to change. The ways of thinking begin to change. The ways of conceptualising existence begin to change. Other ways of expression are forgotten. I can no longer "feel a little blue today." Rather now, I am suffering from the newest acronym that can be cured by a particular pill touted in the TV commercial that told me about the acronym, so I do like they tell me to do, and I run run run to my doctor to ask him about it today, then he gives me a prescription for it - and look! I've been supplied with the demand by the suppliers who demand.


--

Do we really test medications on Africans for money? That's not possible! That's HORRIBLE TO SAY!! We do it because we want the world to be a better place! We want to help people!!!!!!!!!!!

BULLSHIT. If that were true, every single medicine would be FREE.

(Just so you know, I am DISGUSTED by this bit of reality. It makes me SO ANGRY.)

ON CELEBRITY POLITICS

Why must a political candidate have an image? Why must all political leadership happen through the realm of television presentation? I do not not care what the president looks like, what he says, or who he fucks. I do not care what myth he creates, to which nationalist sentiments he appeals, or to which emotions he enlists as his soldiers towards reelection.

I simply care what actions he takes as political officer and whether or not his actions are in line with my beliefs. I don't care what party, what race, what national origin, what sexuality, what sex, what anything - all of those are irrelevant.

I wish politicians would stop speaking for one goddamn second and actually take action towards constructively changing our national institutions so they protect and support each citizen equally. As things are now, politicians are only concerned with what they say and how they appear, not actually what political actions they take.

I will vote for you if your actions and platform are in line with my morality.

NEVER GET VACCINATED, EVER, FOR ANYTHING. YOU CAN'T RUN FROM DEATH. WELCOME IT.

The New York Times > Health > A Big Maker of Flu Shots Finds Some Contaminated

Don't introduce ANYTHING foreign into your bloodstream, especially something manufactured by a huge corporation who is SIMPLY IN IT FOR MONEY. They have a failsafe ideology backing their product: the legitimizing force of medical science and the blind faith of the modern world in it, they profit from your fear of death. They either build upon or create myths that sustain belief in need for their product. Stop being scared of death! Don't vaccinate, ever. DIE! JUST FUCKING DIE! It'll be fun!

BOYCOTT STATE MARRIAGE!

State high court invalidates SF's same-sex marriages / By 5-2 vote, justices rule against Newsom, say mayor went too far

See! If we continually require the government to get involved in personal relationships and to validate them through its institutions of inequity, then we will be continually fucked!!! ALL PEOPLE - GAY AND STRAIGHT - MUST NOT PARTICIPATE IN STATE-SANCTIONED MARRIAGE!!! The insitution and its privileges discriminate against people that choose to remain single or who choose to be with more than one person! Just because homosexuals choose to imitate procreative heterosexual couples should not be a reason to bestow privileges such as tax breaks and access to health care and other benefits. It's completely unfair!!!!!!!! The institution is a relic of procreative, Christian governments and needs to be abolished!

Now, having a committment ceremony in front of friends family and community is one thing, but involving the state is OPPRESSIVE.

Catch my drift?

ON MEDICALIZED OPPRESSION

The New York Times > National > Patients With H.I.V. Seen as Separated by a Racial Divide

The linked article above reports on how people with African ethnic origin are much more likely to test positive for HIV than other ethnic groups. Read it. Unfortunately, considering the state of the world today, it is only natural that the medical syndrome authored by the U.S. government disproportionately affects minorities. Of course it does! AIDS is the perfect shadow of the white, heterosexual, non-drug using Christian monolith that rules the world.

Of course black men have AIDS!
Of course they're being diagnosed as terminal with the authored syndrome!
Of course the most feared constituency of the American populace is the one most AIDS-like!
Of course there's a corroboration!

Status quo must be maintained, via all channels available to us.

Of course the actual science of the HIV testing kits is overlooked: that antigens more common in the blood of those with origins in Africa that are known to trigger diagnostic interpretations as positive. (reference) Of course these facts are in wide disregard, as these facts do not reinscribe the dominant modes of discourse that maintain the hegemony of the status quo...and the status quo is to scapegoat black men. (let's be honest with ourselves, really.)

Do not stand there and take racist/heterosexist oppression in the form of medical science. Simply because most of our knowledge and beliefs today are mediated through the legitimating practices of science should not give reason to legitimate your oppression as it is played out in the arena of medicine and the religion of science.

Do not place faith in something as it simultaneously oppresses you, or you shall in turn, be oppressing yourself, even if that thing is the very thing that made you who you are and shaped your beliefs. Oppression can only happen if one permits it to happen by placing credence and participating in the systems and paradigms that oppress you.

ON RULING THE WORLD USING VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION

The New York Times > Washington > Rice Says Iran Must Not Be Allowed to Develop Nuclear Arms

But of course the United States is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

The United States can do whatever the FUCK IT WANTS. It can build as many weapons of mass destruction as it fucking likes, as long as it has that sense of being in control, which is motivated by fear and ultimately is an illusion. Why must we kill? Why must we control?

CHANGE YOUR MIND, AMERICA!

BARACK OBAMA AND WHITE POWER

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Keyes vs. Obama in Illinois Race

The only reason Barack Obama is popular is because he is highly palatable to white people. Popular, because it is white people that make up the majority of the populous.

He is not the "real American nigger" that always makes whites in power uncomfortable. He is an acceptable form of African-American, since he really isn't African-American as America has come to know it. He does not threaten any of the ideologies in question that maintain the institutions of power that are for and benefit white rich people.

I'd like to see a dark-as-night, corn-rowed nigga from da block step forward, full in his ghetto glory, lead the American people in only ways that he can. It's time. I'm completely serious. Perhaps now that Obama has somewhat brought to light and tempered

Prison can't kill notorious student-teacher affair

Prison can't kill notorious student-teacher affair - World - www.smh.com.au

I love this. Completely going against social and cultural convention, the teacher falls in love with her sixth grade student, has two of his children, and gets thrown in prison for fucking him.

I think it's perverse and that's why I like it. Perversion shows us our social limits an challenges our personal boundaries. The authority of law has no business meddling in the personal lives of citizens. Legality cannot enforce morality, as that which is considered moral is continually shifts and changes in dynamic culture, especially one as heterogeneous as that of the United States.

I wonder to what degree cultural difference permitted the boy with a Pacific Island background to pursue a relationship with his teacher. Did he tell his mother about it? Did she care? She's taking care of their children while the mother is in prison - why?

It's a shame that laws are set up to protect and thusly ENFORCE a particular mind set or way of thinking. Herein lies the myth of Freedom, ESPECIALLY that myth of American Freedom that has been constructed and enforced to maintain hegemony by white, male, heterosexual, corporate interests and to reify them into an ideal-to-be-attained.

And YES, we do hear that ALL THE TIME - that particular consituency of our population "oppresses and dominates everyone else" but it must be accepted that this is indeed true!!!!!! If it weren't true, it wouldn't have become such a considerable trope for our age. Every institution and legal mechanism has been built to maintain, privilege, and enforce that world order, and that world order is simply not fair. The institutions that function to serve people must serve them equally. I hope it is understood and FELT that this is true and that they do not.

Love and human connection is one of those beautiful things that can transcend everything - laws, distance, age, physicality, science, morality - and for that we must humbly give thanks. I gain great personal strength from knowing this and have claimed it as one of my truths.

If I fell in love with a twelve year old - and it is possible - would you punish me or would you understand me?

IRAQI SOVEREIGNTY MY ASS

IRAQI SOVEREIGNTY MY ASS

Yahoo! News Full Coverage - World - U.S. Transfers Sovereignty to Iraqi Govt.

FREEDOM CANNOT BE GIVEN. IT MUST BE TAKEN.

Gee, everyone's all happy that the Almighty USA has decided to hand back sovereignty to Iraq. What a bunch of bullshit. I'll believe it when I see it. And what's up with the pussy Iraqis that stand for being "handed back their country?" There must be a highly compliant, pussy indigenous elite that would take it up the ass any which way the USA wanted.

The USA still owns Iraq. Do not believe otherwise. Do not let your United
Statian conscience be cleared by a simple announcement propagated by the Bush administration and advertised by the New York Times. Don't feel relieved - you are still responsible, you citizen of the USA. Do not
applaud the civil behaviors of a compassionate Bush. There have been no such behaviors. Do not think the war is over and the occupation is
done. They are not. There cannot be rejoicing for an ostensive execution of your liberal desires by G Dubya.

The new Iraqi government was hand-picked by the USA - no doubt a group of ass-licking indigenous elite puppets with G Dubya's hand so far up its Iraqi
ass that Jim Henson's turning over in his grave with envy. The troops of the USA are still there, aren't they?

And the USA is still buyin' up all that crude.

Freedom cannot be given. It must be taken. To have someone give you sovereignty is to permit them to completely rule you and enslave you, on
their terms, on the terms of the oppressor.

Do not believe the lies. Iraq is no sovereign nation.

MANDATORY AIDS TESTING

MANDATORY AIDS TESTING

It's like watching an episode of the Twilght Zone. It's a psychological horror story of the most intense disturbance from the inside, out. The mass hysteria (1) required to produce and sustain the collective phenomena known as AIDS are working like clockwork. The mechanisms and structures in place that maintain the hysteria have been carefully architected by the modern mind and its pursuits of order via Christianity's successor, scientific rationalism and the medicalization of the world. Only recently has postmodern insight permitted the self-reflexivity necessary to excavate the structures of our belief systems and expose them for the fabrications of haphazard meanings that they are, yet the tethers of modernity still manage to limit the movement necessary for true critical analysis.

1) See Sigmund Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle

ADVERTISING AND NEED

The callow triumph of advertising has been to create myths of need. Reconfiguring modes of thinking in such ways that what was once previously unthought becomes thought, creating new needs.

We do not need anything that we do not know that we need. There are no exceptions to this rule.

When a salesman or advertisements informs you that you need something, they are wrong. The truth is that we don't really NEED ANYTHING besides food, water, and shelter, but that simplicity has been trumped by myths of consumption and progress, so forget about that. (to be continued)

NOTHING IS ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING

We create entire realities based on apprehension, assignation, and retention of meaningless things (I can't think of a better word for meaningless things - I'm sure there's one in German) into meaningless systems that have created the meaningless us and meaningless world-as-we-know-it. Of course, these realities are NOT meaningless, because they are what create society and self and the world-as-we-know-it and goddammit, we can't mean nothing, can we? I mean something, don't I? Gosh golly gee. If I don't, then I'll kill myself so I can stop thinking about it.

The accumulation of crap (maybe that's a better word) and the organization of crap into knowable objects of understanding is a neverending cycle stemming from and based in the continually solipsistic mish-mash of signs and signifiers and blah blah blah blah blah blab blab bakl bakjsdbkafubiluerfhier7gh

MORE ON PEACHY KEEN MORALITY

The premise, style, acting, and direction of film 'The Girl Next Door' makes me want to vomit red, white, and blue shreds of fabric.

Tight-wad, do-good high-schooler falls in love with his new next door neighbor who turns out to be a porn star, turning his pristine world upside down. He eventually comes around to "loosen up" a bit, and she rediscovers her innocence in the sweet nerd.

So let's see: In the form of porn-star girl, America is presented with a challenge to its anti-porn conservatism. However, America, who has no other option but to relate to the protagonist in this particular cookie-cutter literary format, through a series of cutesy and humanizing (and ultimately universalising) anecdotes and pat affirmations of its moral code, eventually comes 'round, its morality stretched just so to now include and embrace porn stars. "they're just people after all" And the porn star is reassigned a state of grace, despite her previous fall from it.

"Boy, let me tell you, I was really put through the moral wringer. I was made so uncomfortable by this. Eeeew. She's a porn star. But in the end, I came 'round and I too could love a porn star. After all, it's just a girl."

The limited continuum of moral parameters within which this story can effectively happen is my concern here. There are actually people in this world somewhere who could care less about porn stars being a "hush hush topic" and might just simply not understand the HIGH STAKES this character is going through. And that these "high stakes" are completely framed within a secular Christian dialectic of salvation and redemption further illustrates the shallow and extremely specific group of viewers that may be effectively impressed by such a film.

But I should stop because I haven't yet seen the film.

THE CONFLAGRATION OF ENTERTAINMENT AND ADVERTISEMENT

LINK TO ARTICLE

Susanne Somers, under the guise of authorship, has decided to venture into pharmaceutical sales. The manipulation of the popular mind into taking this as anything other than an advertisement for "bioidentical hormones" quite possibly may be one of the most blatant uses of contemporary black magic.

THE MECHANISMS OF MORALITY or GLIMPSES OF THE NIP

Yahoo! News - Wal-Mart Sells Anti-Smut DVD Player

Read the above article and then come back to this page.

I am distressed about the state of "moral affairs" in this country. That people would go to such great lengths as purchase technologies that seek to eliminate any inappropriate imagery or language from entering their personal spheres and thusly, the attendant feelings of discomfort due to perceived infringements on the particular set of selected or inherited morals with which people have claimed as their own and equate with their entire identity, is a disturbing reality.

I cannot endure living for much longer in this culture of shame and psychological complexes that motivate the pixellating of nipples and the covering up of penises and the censoring of voices. It is crippling, even to me with my angry voice of neo-liberal rebellious finger-pointing, to have to giggle uncomfortably when we see something we "shouldn't have seen" and a great waste of time, frankly. Why do we giggle uncomfortably? It's a BREAST.

This failure to address the mechanisms of morality that set us up to perceive pain and to take offense perpetuates this completely ridiculous cycle of set-up-this-moral-code to have it-be-threatened-by-this-breach-of-its-sacredness. We need to ask why and how. Once we understand the why and how the mechanism works, we can then step outside of its conditioning.

WHY does that nipple need to be covered up?

Is it because we in actuality really really really want to see it so so so badly because it stirs in us powerful emotions that we don't get to feel?  Is there a psychoanalytical analysis to be made? (of course)

But then isn't the reason why it stirs up powerful emotions that we don't often feel (and we lust after glimpses of the nip) precisely BECAUSE they're usually covered up?

What if nipples were never covered up?! Would they lose all their power as objects of desire? Would their meaning as objects which lustful tongues desire to lap disappear?  Absolutely.

Why keep things hidden? So we can discover them over and over again in a titillating game of eternal hide-and-go-seek with ourselves?

What a waste of time.

Check your mechanism.

And do not shop at Wal-Mart.

NEOCOLONIALISM IN THE FORM OF CONTEMPORARY RELIEF EFFORTS

Not only is colonialism still around, but the mind that colonizes is still completely operational. It sickens me to see the level of exploitation of other cultures and countries carried out under the guise of "aid" and "help" and correction by the first world and the West. When will we cease to impose our models of existence, our moralities onto the others on this planet? Modern medicine has succeeded in organizing the health of the poor intoits explicit categories and all is done in a completely Eurocentrist condescension towards any other world view.

We still believe we're superior! It's ridiculous! Simply because we claim science as our truth and justification. The concept of cultural superiority may not even be present in the minds of the Others. Not everyone believes that death and illness are horrible things - why must we presume they do? UGH.

Get the FUCK OUT OF AFRICA, you missionary instruments of empire.

why have we shifted labor resources from actually washing people to abstracted technologies? Those whose labor would have actually been the washing of the elderly now count as their labor the contruction of technologies and programming of computers that wash the elderly. What gives?!?! There is only a finite amount of labor energy available on this planet - why has it shifted to machine construction? Time has not been saved! People are not more productive! They just pend time doing other things, like pressing buttons instead.

Japan Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged