Me in a nutshell

So here's my priorities...

A few years back I had the opportunity to shake hands with then-President Clinton.

Do I look back on that memory now and go "I got to shake hands with one of the most powerful men in the world. Cool."?

Of course not.

I currently look back on that memory and go "OMG I am now one degree of separatation away from somebody who has touched Jon Stewart!!!11!!!"

Shameless? You bet. 8)

Fist of death? You bet

twistedchick is a useful person to have friended, period, so if you don't already I highly recommend her.

But today she posted about something in particular which has had me seeing red for a while. It's about how Dubya et al. are forcing the CDC to say that condoms don't work, provide no safe sex education whatsoever, and to push for abstinance-only. Which would be wonderful, if we lived in BIZARRO WORLD where any of that actually correlated with activities that helped to prevent the spread of HIV.

Twistedchick quotes an editorial which explains more of why this is so wrong.

I have to say that for me what absolutely boggles is that we now have a medical organization which is not giving out information based on scientific fact, but - well at best I'd call it religious belief but quite frankly I think it's more accurately termed wishful thinking. I mean what the fucking fuck?? I keep wanting to make a joke about it, like "See what I want is a president who also tells diabetics that eating nothing but Hershey bars actually cures their disease." but the thing of it is this is so literally dead serious that there is really nothing you can compare it to.

I - I - I... I want to stop living in the Matrix. I really do.

On the plus side, to quote twistedchick: There's one slim chance to change this. The deadline for public comment on the new rules is August 16. Email your comments to HIVComments@cdc.gov or fax them to 404-639-3125.

So, yeah, that. Or else we all buy an island and move there. One or the other.

ETA: Check out these comments, which include a link to an essay about how the new guidelines might not be as bad as we think.

More on the CDC thing

I was asked why the new CDC guidelines are bad, given that they mention that it's okay to talk about condoms as long as said talks include "medically accurate" information about how safe or unsafe they are. My answer got too long for an LJ comment, but as I'm quoting the guidelines directly I didn't want to shorten it. Hence, new post.

For anyone interested, the new guidelines are here..

( Now let's highlight the not so funny bits.... )