HIV+

If you haven't heard, yes. I am diagnosed positive with HIV. And as today marks the 27th Anniversary of its discovery, I would like to share this with you.

Having HIV is not like what it was in the past decade. People living with HIV/AIDS itself will understand. People without it are often encased in a stigma of uncertainty.

However, it's not about the human immunodeficiency virus I am talking about here. No, I don't have that so you can breathe again. Think of HIV+ as this:

Health IS Valuable (Positive)

Current HIV/AIDS education has often most likely fallen onto alot of deaf ears. They've tried everything from print ads, tv slots, movies, flyers, and millions and millions of dollars spent on HIV/AIDS Awareness programs. How many percent of respondents actually give a fuck? (pun intended). Yet the number of people infected keeps rising and rising by the second.

Health Is Valuable (Positive) is a viral campaign ^estudio started on Facebook today, which made a huge handful of people nearly shat their pants when he changed his status update. The stigma of HIV+ being AIDS has been too prevalent in the last century, which was evident from some comments he received from doing this. His facebook status was merely: "Evangeliss is HIV+" followed by "Health Is Valuable (Positive)" as its subcomment. We do not fear it as much as we used to. We hear about it, we brush it off our shoulders. We think. We even celebrate it.

The Health Is Valuable program is to re-educate the masses with regards to HIV/AIDS Awareness. Value YOUR life. Be positive about it. Whether you ARE indeed HIV+ with AIDS or not. It's time to change your mindset. Already I've seen a few people changing their status to the same and increasing by the hour! We've heard it already: "Wear protection. Don't share needles. Be safe"... But do we? Everyday? And why do I have to "joke" about this, one asked.. This is no joke. Many people learn things, but the information goes from one ear and out the other. This is a shock-and-awe approach. It makes you tremble with fear of the reality.

Change your stigma. Stop your ignorance. If you don't have it, doesn't mean you won't. So you might as well believe that you ALREADY have HIV+ (of course, my version of it). THINK. RESPECT. PROTECT. Together we can end HIV prejudice. If you dare, tell the world you are indeed HIV+. Say it with me: HEALTH IS VALUABLE (POSITIVE). This is one HIV+ you wanna spread! And I dare you to do the same by doing a "Hi. My name is _______ & I am HIV+" journal.

(The above was taken directly from *GimmeMahFishsticks, which she took from ^estudio)





What is world AIDs day?

World AIDS Day is an opportunity to be inspired to respect and protect the health and well being of ourselves and those around us through knowledge, action and consideration.

Are HIV and AIDS the same?
No. When someone is described as living with HIV, they have the HIV virus in their body. A person is considered to have developed AIDS when the immune system is so weak it can no longer fight off a range of diseases with which it would normally cope.

Get Involved

* Sport a red ribbon. Either an actual ribbon or post this in your journals
* Support a Local campaign
* Shop red products
* Get informed. Knowledge is the best weapon
* Help ^StJoan make her AIDS walk [link]
* Feature HIV/Aids related artwork. Help spread the word


Why this Journal?

Because myths keep on spreading. The numbers keep rising. If I can help just one person, that's enough.


STATS
the numbers keep rising (no real novelty with this, sadly)
the fear (of knowing one has it, in case one does have it) and shame (of going to a medical center to take the test) are great enemies of the tests
while africa is still the "recordist" China is actually increasing numbers, related to last years - while other countries have it "stable"...



MYTHS
Sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure AIDS
Sexual intercourse with an animal will avoid or cure AIDS
HIV cannot be transmitted through oral sex
Showering after intercourse will prevent AIDS
HIV can infect only homosexual men and drug users
HIV was introduced to North America by a Canadian flight attendant

(This part was also taken from *GimmeMahFishsticks, who took it from *Flutterings)


I just thought this was a wonderful campaign when I saw what it was, and I wanted to take part, even if it isn't World AIDS Day anymore. There are still so many people that have startling misconceptions about HIV or AIDS or are afraid of people who have it, simply because they do not have all the facts. I hope that this campaign (and maybe even this journal) will clear up some things and inspire some people.

Peace and Love

~CLUBS:

So, told that I would do my own version of one of her previous journal entries about ten things she loves and then things she hates about Teh Narutard. xD
Here's my entry, featuring that one faggy show everyone loves...South Park!

Ten Reasons why I love (in no particular order):

1. Matt.

2. Trey.

3. The comedy.

4. The social commentary.

5. The gayness.

6. The cute things the boys sometimes do.

7. The outlandish plotlines that are totally weird, but make sense in their own way.

8. The fact that the animation has vastly improved over the years and while it was once crappy little plain cutouts, it's now really good.

9. The fact that Primus did the original theme song.

10. Style! (Stan/Kyle, for those who don't know.)


Ten reasons why I hate (I don't think I can even come up with ten of these...)

1. Kenny doesn't get nearly enough attention.

2. Issac Hayes (I don't really hate him, he just freaked out about Scientology way too much. And now I feel bad that he's dead. What happened man, you used to be cool! D8)

3. It makes me think really questionable things about the characters.

4. These questionable things make me feel like a pedo.

5. The anime fanartists (I don't mean all of them; there are a lot of really great anime artists who do awesome SP stuff. I mean the people who bishi-fy the characters beyond recognition and seem to know nothing about the show.)

6. The fact that a lot of people seem to misunderstand the show and it's humor.

7. Uh...they make fun of hippies a lot? (Running out of ideas here.)

8. The fact that it seems Stan and Kyle will stay Super Best Friends and nothing more, despite how ghey they are together sometimes. xD

9. Stan/Wendy

10. Uh...the fact that the show's so awesome, I can't even think of a real tenth reason! xD



In other news, my boyfriend (who has been away for almost five months) is coming home in roughly twenty days. Excited! Fuck yea!
His parents are actually visiting him right now and I'm getting paid to take care of their pets. There's a lot of those fuckers. Two dogs, two cats, and another cat that they found and took in one day and her five kittens. And I love 'em all!

School's going pretty good. My History of Western Art class is frustrating as hell as well as very boring, though. I feel like I'll end up failing. I met this really cool dude in that class, though. He's fun to talk to and he says his hometown is in Peru.

As for my art, I'll be trying to do more varied fanart. Fanart about a lot of stuff that I like, but have never drawn before or don't draw that often. I've actually been trying to start that already, but for some reason I'm having trouble drawing anything that doesn't look either deformed or completely not how it should look. D8 Ah well, keep trying.

That's it for now. Shalom, bitches!

~CLUBS:

Yeah, I'm using "gay" to mean both something unfavorable and something homosexual. Whaddaya want, huh? xD

Okay, so I just took my first History of Western Art exam today and was really upset. It wasn't too terribly hard or anything, I just ended up not having enough time. I left, like, 15 out of the 50 questions in the multiple choice portion blank. And the teacher made us stop testing, like, half an hour before class was over! Why not use at least a little of that time to finish? Blah...

Aah, but I did have a really awesome Comedy and Literature class. We watched Seinfeld for the last portion of class. I fricken love that show. And it was the one where everyone thinks Jerry and George are gay for each other. xD

And South Park came back with the first episode of the second half of the season! Haha, that sounds way more complicated than it actually is...Anyway, it was so...oddly wonderful. And there was a point where Stan and Kyle were crying and holding each other and said "I love you!" More gayness! xD I know it was strictly in the platonic sense, but it just sounded cute.

Back to more bad news now. I submitted a piece of art over at Y!Gallery about an hour ago. It's only over there and not here because I felt it was too...adult for here. Well. I submitted it and right away it was reported and I don't even know why yet! I have no idea what I did wrong and I'm a little afraid I'll get banned for a while or something. I guess that wouldn't be anything too bad, but it would suck.

Now, I'm watching Queer as Folk. The gayiety continues!

~CLUBS:

I had a pretty good day today, considering I thought it would turn out to be boring as hell.
I got about seven dollars return for my recycling this afternoon. Then I went to lunch with my parents to this Mexican restaurant my mom had been going to since she was a child. My dad got two beers (Corona) and let be have a sip of one, not knowing that I'd already beer a bunch of times Ha, I like Corona, though, so I was happy.
There was also this guy the restaurant had hired to come from 2-4pm on Saturdays to make balloon shapes and stuff. He made me a little balloon monkey I went out later and took some pictures with it, which I might post here if I feel like revealing my ugly face to all you lovelies.



~CLUBS:

So it's been a while since I've written a new journal. Didn't see much point in it since hardly anybody reads these things, but now it's more of a way for me to get some stuff off my chest and maybe seek help from the few people who do read.

I graduated high school in mid-june. It was interesting. I felt good knowing that I made it all the way and had a sense of completion, but I never felt really accomplished because it was always in my sights that I would graduate high school. While a lot of other people seemed so proud that they'd made it this far, I was all, "So I made it through high school. Okay..." I was happy, but I didn't feel like I did anything really great. I wonder if that's odd...

Anyway, after that I was happy that I never had to go back to that school as a student, yet sad that I was leaving behind a lot of people and places. And a bit scared that I was off to more difficult things. But after a while it wasn't on my mind too much and I was enjoying spending time with my boyfriend during summer. That is, until he was sent away to a school in Utah by his parents with no prior warning. I won't go into much detail here, but the point is that it is a school for children up to age 18 that have bad mental problems or are doing damage to themselves in some way. And though he's got a couple small mental issues he was taking meds for, there was no reason to send him off. I think they just didn't know how to deal with him or communicate with him and jumped into this harsh decision.

Anyway, he's been gone for...about a couple of months now and he'll probably be gone until at least December. But if not then, then they can only hold him until January since that's when he turns 18.

So I've resumed my life as normal without him and we've been writing letters to each other. He's even gotten to call me a couple times. Well, the last time he called was just today (or yesterday, since it's after midnight) in the morning. And while we were talking, he told me that he's just found out a friend of ours had killed himself. Hanged himself. It had actually happened it late July, but he had just heard about it the day before from his parents. I almost couldn't believe it. I was tired and shocked and it just didn't seem real. I had just talked to this guy at a friend's graduation party earlier in the summer and now he was gone. Forever. I fear I didn't come off sounding as concerned as I actually felt when he told me, but I just didn't know what to say. Once it sank in a bit more, I felt terrible...and he wasn't that close of a friend to me. We had a few classes together in school and talked when we saw each other. He was someone I really liked and respected, though. And I know that if I already felt that bad, my boyfriend (who's been the guy's friend since they were kids) must've felt like total sh*t. He'd told me he'd cried so much since hearing about it. Isn't that a wonderful way to start a day?

Not only that, but lately I've been getting very paranoid about things and have already had a few panic attacks. And sometimes I worry about the stupidest things. But I can only help it so much and I often let it all get to me and worry me about things someone like me shouldn't worry about. This is a pretty good example of the kind of crap I get into in my head: [link] I'm a weird person.

And I'm starting college for the first time in the morning. Man, am I nervous...

Lastly, here's the bit where I ask for help. My parents bought a new desktop computer recently and I've had to go and redownload a bunch of the programs I had on the old one. Our old one came with a really outdated version of photostudio that I still used all the time to clean up my pictures and all. It had some specific features that I liked that other programs don't have. But the new computer didn't come with it. I managed to find the latest version of it, but I had to download this free trial of it unless I want to pay a bunch for the full version. Does anyone know where I can download it for free?

~CLUBS: