Entries Tagged 'Rants' ↓

More outrageous cowtowing to the Repugnant Party convention.

Madison Square Garden, where the event will take place, is between 7th and 8th Avenues, from 31st to 33rd Street. The 8th Avenue side is across the street from the James A. Farley Post Office, the main postal facility in New York City. During the convention, space in that building will be used as a media center.

To accomodate these assholes, a footbridge has been built across 8th Avenue.

Why?

They can’t get their precious feet dirty walking on the sidewalk? Are they afraid that drivers will aim at people in polyester suits or who have large hair?

I have no idea why this structure was built nor what it cost. I just know it was totally unnecessary.

But then some of us could have told you so!

For more than a year now, the mainstream media has been blasting all kinds of stories about how supposedly “down low” or “DL” black men are having sex with other men then having sex with women, and as a result, are the link to the spread of HIV among heterosexuals.

A no account Nigrow named J.L. King has tried to make a lot of money with a book telling his own personal tale of internalized homophobia and self-hatred as if it were gospel truth and widespread reality, and even the queen of daytime talk herself, Oprah, jumped on the bandwagon.

Well guess what?

The federal government researcher whose study on young gay and bisexual men was cited in those mainstream press reports as evidence of the health threat said her work was not focused on down low men and there is little evidence to support the view that these men threaten the health of others.

Imagine that!

So what can we learn from this? Somebody (I don’t want to speculate as to who) has spent an awful lot of time misrepresenting facts so as to demonize black men who have sex with men. Ask yourself why.

AND–this is the important part–the rise in HIV infection rates among heterosexuals is most likely the result of…hold onto your hats now…unprotected heterosexual intercourse, just as most people who work in the field believed all along.

You see kiddies, the HIV virus doesn’t give a damn about sexual orientation. It is spread through an exchange of bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, mother’s breast milk (a low risk transmitter) or saliva (an even lower risk transmitter), which are present in gays, straights and bisexuals. People at highest risk are those having unprotected sex (like anal) with multiple partners. (For those of you who have never watched porn, lots of straight folks do this too.) Intravenous drug users who share needles, are also at high risk. Shooting up is not limited to any one type of person either.

So, twenty odd years into this worldwide epidemic, don’t you think it’s time we stopped thinking HIV only affects “other” people?

The truth is now out about the great DL myth. Let’s see how widely it gets reported.

UPDATE: I came across this commentary and thought it similarly appropriate.

Ok, so this thing was supposed to be updated a while ago. Not that there was anything wrong with the old design, it’s just that I got sick of looking at it. I have no plans to be one of those people who redesigns every few weeks. Once, maybe twice a year at best. But I had it in my head to do the damn thing–or rather get somebody to do the damn thing–and then we’d be done with it.

But noooooo! Technical shit had to go wrong, and glitches and shit, and all at the wrong time. With a main blog and five side blogs to fill each week, I write a lot, and last week in particular I had a lot of stuff I wanted to cover. But noooooo! Shit goes wrong and I can’t blog and it was really pissing me off. To have something to say and no place to say it is one of the most frustrating feelings in the world. I guess that means I’m a hardcore blog addict.

So anyway, the crack design and technical team is hard at work rectifying this problem. I don’t understand it all, I just do content. What you’re seeing now is another stop gap measure. It’s gonna change again, so don’t get use to it.

So now you know.

Trust me, it ain’t the change in seasons. I’m bored by work. I hate fuckin’ New York City. I’m tired of being pulled in several different directions simultaneously. I’m sick of getting strange reactions when I suggest doing some social activity that’s “outside the box”. I’m sick of going out and doing those things by myself anyway. Yeah, we turned the clocks back this past weekend and we’re now in darkness for most of the day, but my mood was pissy long before this.

I went back upstate this past weekend, to the place where I lived for 11 years. I was invited up to facilitate a town hall meeting for a group I helped found and on whose board I served in its infancy. This was to be a means of further assessing the needs of the community, so that more programs and services could be developed and addressed. In the five years I’ve been away, it was heart warming to see how far the community has come, what they are already doing to help themselves and work together while doing so. It was good to see new faces of folks I didn’t know when I lived there who had the courage now to come out and be a visible part of the group. And it was great to reconnect with old friends I hadn’t seen in awhile.

I had rented a car for the trip and marveled at the scenery on the Thruway, the leaves showing their fall colors. The drive was peaceful and relaxing. Once in town, I stopped by a hospital to check on another friend I had recently learned was ill, and ran into other friends old and new. Despite the occasion, it was good to see everyone and catch up.

Sunday, before the event, I was driving around and seeing all the changes around town. There is a lot of new building going on all over the place which is a sign of growth and positive change. Clean, quiet, safe streets where total strangers nod and say hello. Just the way I remembered it.

I walked through my old neighborhood and oddly enough ran into a guy I met since I moved to NYC. He and his partner now live up there, and he invited me to stop by. My heart fluttered at the sight of their humongous apartment, with high ceilings, two bedrooms and baths, hardwood floors, a separate dining room and spacious kitchen and a living room the size of my whole apartment. Yep, just the way I remembered it.

The town hall meeting went great, people openly shared and talked about their needs as individuals and as a community and what they’d like to do to move things further. We left there on a very positive note, and I feel secure knowing they will try their best to follow up on the ideas generated that evening, limited resources or not. Then I hit the road heading back to New York.

The fucking streets are as covered with litter as the ones upstate were covered with leaves. The volume of the city was deafening even on a Sunday night. The same annoying crowds, pushy obnoxious assholes talking on cellphones as if they’re important, and selfish, unruly bastard children on the train acting out simply because they can. Lines everywhere. The long ass commute to and from work crammed with a subway full of strangers, some of whom bathe regularly. My small, shit hole of an apartment, convenient only because of its price, but otherwise stressing me out by its size and location.

There are 8,000,000 people in New York. I’m happy to leave to make room for someone else.

Have you ever felt as if you were living your life entirely to please someone else? As if you were on a treadmill to nowhere, unable to get off, carrying out some master plan you had no hand in designing?

I’m feeling like that right now. This so-called life has been consumed with work and family obligations that have me so stressed and overwhelmed that even when I do lay down for a rest, my mind is so busy with thoughts I can’t get a decent night’s sleep.

If you’ve been reading along then you know what has consumed a lot of my time over the past two weeks. My caretaker duties were not an unwelcomed obligation, I assure you. It’s part of being a family. It’s just that while I was off doing that, I still had to study for that increasingly more annoying class I’m taking after work for the job, as well as prepare for the training workshops I conduct at work. In between taking care of Dad I was trying to steal moments to read my textbook and write case studies. When I got back into town, I was immediately dropped right back in the thick of things and I haven’t had a moments rest.

I don’t have any time for me. I’m dashing off these notes now because I have to vent to somebody and don’t have any time to hang out. In a moment, I’ll get back to studying for a midterm, and completing an outline for a training, both to take place on Wednesday. And I’m at home!

No time to grocery shop. Need to do a little clothes shopping too, but haven’t haven’t had time for that. Have not seen a movie in weeks (and no, I’m not on my head to see Kill Bill), nor gone to a play in months. Got a pile of laundry in the corner of the bedroom. The apartment is a mess, and the decorating I so sorely need to do is on near permanent hold. Then I come home to find a hate-filled letter from these assholes.

I’m in a constant state of anxiousness, worried I’m gonna forget something, or not have time to prepare for whatever is next on the long agenda. And the agenda isn’t even of my own creation. Talk about waiting to exhale.