Choices and Consequences

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There are no solutions to life's problems, only choices we make and the consequences that arise from those choices.

The Old Year passes and whether we like it or not we reminisce. Goals acheived? Acheivements compounded?

I really and truly deeply despise New Years Eve .... the fake sentiment, the drunks, the parties, the fireworks, the promise to keep in touch with people you won't see again until next year same time same place same party.

So .... where will I be tonight?

Yes .... at a New Year's Party having a wonderful time ....

and a Happy New Year from Chinatown, Amsterdam to all of You too!
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Carpenters - It's Christmas Time/Sleep Well, Little Children

.... open this present just before midnight tonight, with someone you love in your arms, or in your heart ....

Santa is coming ....

Laugh and your libido laughs with you!

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Its official!

High Testosterone levels are directly linked to how funny you are.

So, as Gay men are traditionally accused (or proven) to have naturally high testosterone levels (or if you are Poz, artificially enhanced) then it just goes to show that Gay men (and Gay Poz men in particular) are not only better looking than their/our heterosexual counterparts but are also more fun at a party!

I'm not saying anything we didn't know before of course, but its nice to know that the medical world is sometimes on our side ....

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TIME Person of the Year 2007

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How? How is it possible that one of the leading global magazines thinks its okay to elect this man, Person of the Year?

Yes, in lots of ways he is person of the year, but not for his humanity, goodness, struggle for civil liberty or any other human trait that one could wish for in a leader.

This is the man who allowed the Mayor of Moscow to call Gay people Satanic, who swore that Gay people would never have the same rights as 'normal' people. That single sex marriages were a 'moral poison' in our schools.

Who encourages Orthodox Christian Youth Groups to patrol Moscow parks looking for 'criminal activity'.

Who demanded that public artistic representations of Gay people were banned.

But lets be honest .... is he really doing anything radically different to that which many american states are doing at the moment. Opposing same-sex marriage, queer-bashing as a national sport once more, creationism, god in the classroom, maybe people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

.... and just maybe monkey see monkey do ....

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Aries - A December Story

Chapter Three

A call to pursue your real true actual goal (the one you'd regret not pursuing, if you never even tried), rather than playing along with whatever cards got inadvertently dealt to you.

Pluto now sits at a very crucial location in your solar chart, Aries. It's the point known in a natal chart as the Midheaven, or the region in the sky that the Sun occupies at high noon. This zone represents all that we achieve, through sustained effort and long-term strategy, out there on the world stage (principally, for example, our professional accomplishments and/or community reputation).

With Pluto lodging himself there for the time being, and with his many-years' transit of your solar 10th just beginning in a few weeks, you are entering a profound period of transformation in what you are to become publicly known for.

In other words, you're entering the phase of 'shit or get off the pot', when it comes to your career and the many fanciful dreams you might attach to it. And in order to get from where you are to where you want to be, whether it requires only a couple small steps or necessitates a total about-face, you'll have to start by literally murdering any of the internal voices that might tell you why it's simply impossible.

You Aries folks are the fearless pioneers of the zodiac, bursting at the seams with courage and strength… so I'm totally unwilling to accept that you couldn't secure that golden flag, if you put your whole self behind its acquisition.

Jupiter's also moving into your 10th, providing that much more emphasis to any actions you might take toward satisfying your ambitions. His presence virtually insists that you do more in '08 than you did in '07 (or any other recent year), at least in regards to causing a big splash professionally and/or among those whose opinions matter to you.

This is your year to ascend to a new level of greatness.

But that means not being afraid to sacrifice the small victories for the one friggin' big one you covet more than anything else.

With everything you've got, go for it… and accept nothing less than a grand attempt from yourself. No matter the outcome, should you invest every last ounce of pluck and pushiness you possess into this one arena of life, I'm confident it will change your life forever.

astrobarry (Barry Perlman)

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Town Meeting Song

Well .... I may as well give them what they want .... and the best I must confess I have saved for the last for the ruler of this Christmas Land, is a fearsome king with a deep mighty voice (least that's what I've come to understand) ..... and I've also heard it told he is something to behold like a lobster huge and red, when he sets out his sleigh with his reindeer on, carting bulging sacks with his big great arms (that is so I've heard it said) .... and on a dark cold night on a full moon light he flies into a fog like a vulture in the sky ........ and they call him Sandy Claws ........

Cranford - The Last Episode where all ends well, or at least so as it should.

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"Marriage, my dears, can hardly be said to be good for the constitution.
Look at me!
I have 'Spinster' carved in my bones,
and yet have never had need for a physician!"

Miss Pole

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The Nightmare Before Christmas - Jack's Obsession

Eureka! This year Christmas will be ours!!

Meet Me In St Louis

The one, the only, the original

Aries - A December Story

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Chapter Two


In which, if you actually do what you really want to do, nobody can dare to claim they missed your point or were unclear where you stand. And that's precisely why this week is hardly an occasion for subtlety.


With the holiday spirit nipping at your nose, a rapidly approaching new year to anticipate, and a mounting lack of patience for having to make ethical or philosophical compromises, just to keep other people snug in their complacency… the climate is ripe for you to mount a 'Fuck Discretion!' campaign.

How will anybody suffer from your pre-new-year's resolution to quit doing crap you hate, as a token of commitment to your own well-being?

This is your life we're talking about here… and I'd hate to see you suck in your disruptive creative antagonisms, just to secure that ten-cent-an-hour raise at the paper clip factory, especially when there are Everests to climb and Amazons to ford, gods to bow down before and values to cherish at all costs.

Stir that shit, homey.

Tell 'em where they can stick the logo-encrusted coffee mugs the company has chosen to distribute this week in lieu of a bonus check. Then, throw the mug out the window.

Growl if you've got to.

Bark at the moon, even.

And please, oh please, don't fear the repercussions.

For every punitive restriction they try to place on you, there's another rule you've just been invited to break. As long as you've spent adequate advance effort in articulating to yourself what your rules for a meaningful and successful life are to be, you should feel profoundly free to follow 'em—at the expense of other, more limiting or altogether ill-fitting prohibitions imposed by folks who hardly have your best interests in mind anyhow.

astrobarry

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Let's Misbehave

You could have a great career,
And you should;
Yes you should.
Only one thing stops you dear:
You're too good;
Way too good!

If you want a future, darlin',
Why don't you get a past?
'Cause that fateful moment's comin' at last...

They say that bears have love affairs
And even camels
We're men and mammals--let's misbehave!!!

Cole Porter by Elvis Costello

Leather Flag

Somehow this disappeared from the blog - resurrected - Mike and Dean helping to raise the Leather Flag and the temperature on the Castro - dear god i miss them and San Francisco ....

25+ (+)

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Finally finished reading 25+.
If anyone thought beforehand that this was going to be a coffee table book they must now be seriously dismayed at the amount of reading material stuffed into this epistle.

Conclusions?
There are a lot of gay poz men who know damn well what they want and need but aren't getting it for one reason or another.
Hiv and Aids is slipping out of the grasp of several institutions who need it to stay alive.
All is fair in love and war when it comes to manipulating facts and figures in order to support your own story (and keep your grants coming in).
Some directors really do have an enormously high opinion of themselves.
A lot of people in the care sector really do care.
A lot of doctors and specialists etc are convinced that the input of gay poz men absolutely necessary is in order to move forward in any direction whatsoever.
The institutions that were/are existing for gay men in the Netherlands have declared hiv a 'non-event' in the Netherlands, and have somehow managed to justify spending all their government money on projects that have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the Netherlands.

My greatest conclusion from taking all of this in is that 'we', gay poz men, need a
Gay Men's Health Centre.
Privately funded, or at least to the point where it is not susceptible to political fun and games.
Open only to Gay Poz Men, run by Gay Men (so possible Poz).
SOA tests, hiv tests, Hep A,B, HPV vaccinations. Anal Cancer tests.
Gay Male General Practitioners.
Gay Male psycho-social help. Individual and group therapies.
Alternative therapies, treatments etc.

Information gathering over Gay (Poz) Men available to institutions such as the GGD onder strict controls.
Active discouragement of Gay Men taking part in (for example) Schorer Monitor, GGD Monitor etc.

Ayone want to help me give it a try?

Gay Poz Men for Gay Poz Men - only we know how it should be
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Merry Christmas Darling

God made Karen - then he made Christmas for her ....

MemoryLand

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There's a world of difference between 'perceived memory' and 'actual memory'.
Two worlds in fact.

It begins, as does all science and religion, with doubt.

I held many of my memories to be basically 'true'. Of course I was perfectly prepared to believe that on a particular day the sun didn't shine as brightly as I remembered, that my little sailor suit was red instead of blue, and that I probably didn't fly to NeverLand, but basically all the rest would be truthfully stored in my brain.

And then I discovered the 'truth'.

I wasn't remembering things in the same way as my Mother or Brother. Not tiny little variances but huge chunks of radical differences.

So I started to gather 'facts', believing that I could find out that way who was 'right'. I couldn't have been less wrong.
Truth, as memory, actual or perceived is so subjective that it renders itself useless in retrospect. All memories are coloured, mostly by emotions, to suit ourselves.

We are storymakers and in our world of memories we need to make the stories work.
In MemoryLand the bad guys must always stay bad, the good guys must always sit on their white chargers, and there is a moral to every story.
Grey zones are the scary places in MemoryLand. Gray zones are sticky areas of doubt and possibilities for alternative answers.
We can never be truly happy without a 'Happy Ending', or at least a story that has a beginning, middle and end.

The fundamental problem arises at preciesely the point where we decide to accept all of this as 'fact', 'truth', 'memory'.

The passage of rite to adulthood is one that forces us to accept that we cannot trust all adults to speak the truth.
Then, as young adults we are forced to accept that we cannot trust ourselves (our brains) to speak the truth.
A double sword.

Trusting memories as truth is impossible. Trusting emotions as relevant and/or proportionate is just as impossible, and dangerous too. Our whole emotional vocabulary is built during the first 4 years of our lives, but we know that our memories from that time are not necessarily 'true'. The implication is of course that our whole adult emotional vocabulary is based upon these early 'lies'.
Emotions are notorious deceivers. One day you wake up and there is no coffee and you feel like there is an international plot to destroy the world, the next day there is no coffee so you go to the store to buy some more.
The facts aren't changed, the only variable is your emotions, subjective emotions at that. Emotions are dependant on what? A thousand little things.

Memory? Truth? Emotion?

Just like men, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
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What's This?

Be afraid, be very afraid .....

Yo ....

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Yes, dear children, its the 5th of December and its almost time to leave the innocent vulgarities of Sinterklaas behind us in order to concentrate on the great journey towards Christmas. A journey fraught with peril. On a road paved with fear and insecurity. Yes, dear children, no-one is safe until the fat man bellows Yo-Ho-Ho ....
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Aries - a December Story

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Chapter One

And try as you might to mentally distinguish between your 'personal' life and that which you do for career and/or monetary purposes, neither your body nor your soul can perpetuate such false distinctions. That's why if your professional situation or role in the community stifles your spirit, or is otherwise akin to embodying a zombie-tastic 'living dead' sort of half-personhood… fuck, Aries, you've got to find a way out of that horror film, whether through demanding massive script changes or by walking off the set altogether.

astrobarry

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Hitting the bottom stair

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Like most people I just want to know that my life has/had a purpose. That there is/was a reason for it all.

Waking up each morning to a brand new day was a reason to live. My life had purpose. I was there for Herman.

No matter the shame of not having a job, of being an unwanted guest in his ex's house. No matter the need to wait until his ex had left for school before I came down to see Herman and have breakfast with him. No matter the smiling face that I had to arrange on my face before I hit the bottom stair, the fear of being screamed at if my smile wasn't real enough, if my tread wasn't light enough, if I didn't make him laugh, brighten his day.

It was no matter because that was my life, that was my reason for being.

To make him forget the daily rapes by his ex, to weaken the attacks made by his father, to listen to his raging against his mother and try and comfort him. To act like nothing was wrong but to know that everything was wrong, to be the fault of everything and the cause of all pain.

But it made me real. Without it I was nothing. Without the pain and the screaming and the beatings and the hate I had lost everything that was mine to lose. I had ceased to exist.

Maybe that was what they wanted? Herman, the ex, the mother, the father, was I the scapegoat for them all? If I had not been there would they have destroyed each other? but they did destroy each other, would they have done it sooner, would they have destroyed each other sooner and left me whole?

And would I now know who I am?
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Cranford

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"Nay sisters.
My Father was a man.
I think therefore I may understand the sex."

Miss Pole

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

1809 - 1892

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25+

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.... and finally its here .... after months of blood sweat and tears .... and its worth every bloody euro .... get out there and buy it damn you!

p.s. there will be a quiz later on this week ....

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Stop Aids Now 2

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Just to clear things up for those of you who thought i was being too cryptic .....

What are they going to put on the posters next year?
Hiv-infected baby seals being clubbed to death in antarctica?
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