Biohazard

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Leo reminded me yesterday about the re-clamation of the biohazard symbol.

It has always been an agressively defiant yet almost secret symbol in the Gay community. Many Gay Poz Men have it tattoed somewhere on their bodies, in sizes ranging from postage stamp to football size (there will always be size queens).
Its a Tribal symbol 'I am one of the group', its a warning 'I am hiv positive', and its an invitation 'I'm like you'.

The 'real' symbol is a warning against toxic waste, contamination.

As we have always done before, we take the symbol of discrimination and reclaim it for our own.

The world still sees us as toxic, poisonous, dangerous.
The world still sees us as the disease itself and not the victims.
Then we are hiv.

No.
There are so many of us now.
The biohazard symbol is ours to use as a group.
The red ribbon has little or no meaning for us on a personal level any more. It has been taken out of our hands and used and abused by politics, religion and corporate business alike.

I'll wear the biohazard symbol.
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Tiger Lily

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According to the cosmic order of things, 'my' flower is the Tiger Lily.

The Tiger Lily stands for Wealth and Pride.

But I'm really not too proud to be wealthy if anyone is offering ....
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Home again

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After an unexpected wobbly last week I'm back home again.

More 'business as usual' tomorrow ....
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REVOLUTION

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Revolution

Positive Force invites you to come dance at San Francisco's premiere event for the HIV positive community and our friends.
DJ Robbie Martin will be rocking the decks while the sexiest go-go dancers entertain in one of San Francisco's hottest locations, Club Eight.

SUNDAY
January 28
Doors open at 3:00 PM - 8:00 PM and the cost is $5.
Club Eight
1151 Folsom Street @ 7th
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There is a God!

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US team makes embryo clone of men

"US scientists say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, in an attempt to produce patient-specific stem cells.
Researchers removed DNA from donated human eggs, and replaced it with DNA from the skin cells of two volunteers.
They produced embryos with genetic material that matched the men's, but did not go on to extract stem cells."

About bloody time!

Now all we have to do is get the only two Tops in Amsterdam to donate and we could solve the city's greatest problem ....
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S.I.N.

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Strength In Numbers

Check it out ....

"The mission of Strength In Numbers is to provide social support and educational resources to HIV+ gay men around the world thereby helping to improve their quality of life, quality of health and their ability to help others.


Our activities include operation of an interactive Internet-based communications system, development of programs that increase self-esteem and social interaction skills, organization and guidance of activites that increase physical abilities, and promoting volunteer opportunities by our members in HIV-related efforts including fundraising for treatment services and research (such as AIDS Walks and the California AIDS Life/Cycle) and HIV prevention campaigns."

http://www.strengthinnumbers.org/

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Colton Ford Featuring Cazwell

Pumped Picture Perfect Power Porn Pop ....

Immune Deficiency

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Hiv+'ers have become to the bacterial, viral, infection world what the butterfly is to the environmental world. Lots of pollution means little or no butterflies. Lots of bacteria, virusses and general nasty diseases means lots of very ill Hiv+'ers.

We have little or no defense of our own against most common or garden virusses. Everyone of us on hiv medication is in actuality constantly in chemotherapy. Add to that all the stuff that depresses the immune system of even healthy people, like depression etc and its hardly surprising that it sometimes seems as though we are dropping like flies.

Anything weird, wonderful, and exotic that hasn't been seen in centuries, type disease we seem to get. Have we turned into disease sponges? Has this stuff been around for years and years waiting for humans to drop their guard physically? I'm knocking on wood as i write this, but I'm not going to be surprised when the first cases of Bubonic Plague show up.

Lets not forget also the run of the mill epidemic/pandemic scares like Avian Flu, TBC en MRSA.

MRSA is of course nothing new. Its been the great fear of all health institutions for quite a few years now. Why? Well, first and foremost financially. Closing down wards and putting wings into quarantine is not good for the budget.
Oh yes, and people die of it too.
But thankfully for the hospitals its only people with poor immune systems like old people and hiv +'ers.
My old House Doctor always told me to use all means and measures possible to avoid going to hospital. Because, as he put it, "If you want to go down with something really nasty then stay away from the place where they put all the people with really nasty stuff together".

One (if not the) reason that implementation of vaccine programmes against, for example, HPV is that the only people in real danger of getting anal cancer from it are people with a poor immune system who allow other people to put penisses into their anal cavities.

I try not be cynical about this sort of thing but its hard not to be.
In a lot of cases a lot of pain and hardship could be relieved or avoided completely if Gay Poz men were seen as a valid group of patients. Which is of course what patient support organisations are for. Care and support for the own patient group, and lobbying within the establishment for (amongst other things) adequate representation. Unfortunately most patient support organisations aren't willing to bite the hand that feeds it. Especially in the Netherlands where funding is to a large degree directly and/or directly from the government. The world has long envied us for having government funding for Aids and Hiv but there are great problems, opportunities for mis-use, etc. inherent in the system, but that's stuff for another article.

Gay Poz men want to be seen as 'normal' people. But we aren't and can never be until we stop being patients. We are, by definition of the condition we have, people with little or no defenses of our own against the world around us.

The current MRSA scare in the States is pre-presidential campagne propaganda, but is symptomatic of how we as Gay Poz men are perceived; the perpetrators of medical evil and the origins of all things epidemic.

No. We are the victims not the perpetrators.

Saying that we are victims is going to get me angry responses from the brethren I know, but it doesn't work any other way. The longer we tell each other that a couple of pills a day means that we can live life like 'normal' people then the longer we live our lives with our heads in the sand.

As people we don't want to be 'deficient', and as Gay men we would rather be 'absolutely flawless'. As Gay Poz men we can't be perfect, so we try to be Poz Perfect. How many times have you seen on a dating site "Hiv+ but healthy". Don't get me wrong, I applaud anyone who has the guts to be on a dating site and openly disclose their status there.
But what is being said here?

"I'm hiv+ but I can function in society as if I wasn't",
"I'm hiv+ but I don't look like I am",
"I'm hiv+ but no-one would ever know if I didn't tell them",
"I'm hiv+ but that doesn't mean I'm ugly",
"I'm hiv+ but that doesn't mean I'm not hot and gorgeous and fuckable",
"I'm hiv+ but don't worry there's no drama involved"?

So how subjective is health?
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New Year's Reception

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Its the Aids Industry's annual New Year's Reception this evening and unfortunately I'm still too ill to make an appearance. Broad spectrum anti-biotics and alcohol don't make a good cocktail anyway.

Its a shame really.

I mean, all these institutions, companies, funds etc get all this subsidy all year round and the only real chance to get any of this back as a gay poz man is to drink as much free booze as possible during the New Year's reception.
After all, we aren't going to see much of it the rest of the year ....

However, I will miss doing what I always do, sitting on the sidelines watching and listening;

Checking the guy who wanted it but didn't get it hating the guy who did.

Waiting for the moment when some guy throws back one too many and lets rip into his nearest enemy.

Keeping my eyes on 'Mr Embarrasing Moment Waiting to Happen'.

Mr ex-chairman brown-nose leaving a trail of stickiness as he oozes around the room.

Clocking the asshole who always seems to over estimate himself by trying to climb the ladder a couple of rungs and at the same time get his fuck arranged for the evening.

Bitchin' 'bout the bitch that did the bitchin'.


However, it seems that I won't be the only one not there this evening.

Not that anyone there will notice. Not that anyone there will see the importance of it. Not that anyone will really see that many good people will not be there because they won't play anymore.

They'll never know until its too late.

Too caught up in their own lives, saving their own skins, jobs, status.

This is the year when they find out that its too late ....
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Growing Old Gracefully

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Growing old gracefully is not an option for gay men with hiv according to the New York Times.

The older we get the more ill we become is something we have been telling the medical world for a while now without response. Anal cancer, Lymph cancer, HPV, HCV, KSHV, Castleman's Disease, diabetes, heart disease, renal failure, and of course severe clinical depression and PTST amongst others are becoming more and more prevalent amongst the gay poz community. Even the old favourites that we thought were long gone such as Kaposi's Sarcoma and PCP are rearing their ugly heads again in more dangerous versions such as KSHV and all its variations.

Most Health Care workers have been (are) sticking their heads in the sand, but sometime soon they will have to wake up to a community of gay poz 50+'ers who are in need of constant medical support.
Medical support that will not only have to be individually tailored to each patient but will also be increasingly more expensive.

According to research done in the Netherlands (vague at best), +/- 25% of all hiv plussers are now over 50. I know myself that there are just very few of us still alive at this age. However, thanks to HAART that percentage should be more than doubled in the next 10 years, and in actual figures more than tripled.

As I've said before, the Health Care community is in no way prepared for a flood golf of old pozzers on zimmer frames camping out in their waiting rooms.

We knew when AZT came along that by pushing to get it used without clinical trials we would be setting a precedent and could be asking for trouble along the line. But we had no concept of 'along the line' then, 'now' was all that mattered and lives were saved.

Let's face it. We were/are the pharmaceutical companies dream patients. We didn't care what the side effects were of the un-tested drugs as long as they kept us and our loved ones alive. We didn't ask what the drugs would do after 10 years because we were glad that we had 10 more days to live. We lobbied and pushed and organised ourselves to get as much money as possible to find new drugs, the drug, to end all suffering with no thought of the future because without the drugs there would be no future.

However, we can now never say to a Hospital, Pharmaceutical Company, Professor, Scientist, "Were you careful enough? Did you take into account the long term effects", because we took that responsibility from them.

Quotes from the New York Times article:

Larry Kramer founder of several AIDS advocacy groups, 73 and a long-term survivor, said he had always suspected “it was only a matter of time before stuff like this happened” given the potency of the antiretroviral drugs.

“How long will the human body be able to tolerate that constant bombardment?” he asked. “Well, we are now seeing that many bodies can’t. Once again, just as we thought we were out of the woods, sort of, we have good reason again to be really scared.”

Marty Weinstein, 55 and infected since 1982, has had a pacemaker installed, has been found to have osteoporosis, and has been treated for anal cancer and medicated for severe depression — all in the last year. He also has cognitive deficits.
A former professor of psychology in Chicago, he presses his doctors about cause and effect. Sometimes they offer a hypothesis, he said, but never a certain explanation.

“I know the first concern was keeping us alive,” Mr. Weinstein said. “But now that so many people are going to live longer lives, how are we going to get them through this emotionally and physically?”

How are we going to get through this? With the Health Care System as it is in the Netherlands at this moment I see possibilities and willingness for adaptation. But the so-called Gay Community Care Institutions are far from ready or willing to take this on board. Most of them are still in the process of convincing themselves that Aids is no longer a problem in the Netherlands.

I believe it is this sort of problem that demands we take up the spade ourselves and dig the foundations for the future.
Our Future.
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What's Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?

John Corvino is a writer, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Pope Benedict XVI

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The New Year's Mass at St. Peter's Basilica. The 80-year-old pope, dressed in ornate white and gold vestment, waved and smiled from his studio window to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square.

In his speech Benedict returned to his favourite topic: Traditional family, marriage between a man and a woman.

"Mankind is a big family", and family is the "first and irreplaceable educator of peace," Benedict said.

The remarks were in line with a strong Vatican campaign under Benedict for the protection of the traditional family and against proposals to extend rights to gay couples or other unions outside traditional marriage.
Taking an aggressive position in two overwhelmingly Roman Catholic countries, the Vatican has decried attempts by Italy's center-left government to give legal status to de-facto couples and denounced the Spanish social government for passing legislation recognizing gay marriage and facilitating divorce.

"Whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace,"

This is the Pope (without actually using the word Homosexual) accusing Gay people of undermining community, national and international peace. He, and therefore the Catholic Church, puts Gay people, us, up for grabs. Officially declaring us a valid, acceptable and desirable target in the fight for peace.

Just in case you didn't get the drift of the above:

The Catholic Church has just declared war on anyone who (whether they know it or not) does not support the traditional family as proscribed by the Catholic Church.

p.s. the Pope called his speech 'The Gift of Peace'
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zarah leander - ich weiss es wird einmal ein wunder geschehn

"Die Grosse Liebe" 1942

Resolutions ....

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Learn to breathe (and keep doing it),

Grow more brain cells (and learn to use them properly),

Cultivate Snowdrops (and see Grandma in them),

Stop worrying about life, the universe and everything (including myself),

Have sex (brush up on theory beforehand),

Take control (by putting it down and walking away),

Lower demands I make on myself (Global Domination is not a realistic personal goal),

Make the dream happen (as long as it is truly impossible),

.... and teach as many americans as possible to point out their country on a map of the world (nah).
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Jay Spears: SMAK DEM CHRISTIANS DOWN

Hey - here's an idea .... let's make the world a better place and make Christians our target this year!

Happy New 2008!

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