I
The winter's evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves across your feet
And newpapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On empty blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all the muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul is constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
And clasped the yellowed soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock,
And short square fingers stuffing pipes
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.


T. S. Eliot

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mood: investigative
listening to: the radio

recently i have gotten into a debate with members of my supergroup about the origin of HIV/AIDS. while many sources say it is "generally accepted" by the scientific community and mass media that HIV/AIDS can be traced to a related virus found in african chimpanzees, it is but one of many theories. personally, however, i tend to side with new information that a cross-species transferrence of HIV/AIDS is not possible. although science, biology, and medicine aren't really my bag, history is. there is a compelling case for the theory that vaccine testing in the early 20th century and the emergence/progression of HIV/AIDS were not mere coincidences. new research has brought the OPV (oral polio vaccine) theory and the hep-B vaccine theory into the origin of AIDS discussion.

the problem i have with people who believe that HIV/AIDS came to the U.S. because some guy had sex with a monkey in africa and then brought it here is that it is completely arrogant, prejudiced and false. i find it very convenient that so many people subscribe to the idea that the worst pandemic in the history of the world originated in the jungles of africa and was catalyzed by a homosexual male. let's be for real. more reasonable people generally believe that western scientists contracted it from chimpanzees they were studying, either through a cut or a splash of blood ("the hunter theory"). but what about more human involvement than that? why discount human invention? because it's easier to go about your day thinking that it was a natural, and therefore inevitable, occurrence, and there is nothing that could or can really be done about it. because it makes people feel better. because it makes people feel superior.

on the other hand, perhaps it is easier for me to believe that HIV/AIDS was a human invention because i can't imagine that nature, fate, or evolution would develop such a deadly and devastating disease. more than that, i can't accept that any universal creator or higher power would allow certain segments of the population to be more susceptible to it than others, because that would also indicate that some people are better than others; which is obviously just plain wrong. for example, we all know that sub-saharan africa is the hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. while the region is home to only 10% of the world's population, it accounts for 60% of all people living with HIV/AIDS. figure that one out. not only are these people continually exploited economically and politically by the U.S. and former european colonial powers, but also by god? i don't think so. that's why to me, accepting the common belief that HIV/AIDS was a natural occurrence is a very dangerous thing.

this article is interesting enough and explains the vaccine theories well. i don't know though. every piece of information is written by a person who had some kind of intention when they wrote it. why should alternative theories be any different?

The Origin of AIDS and HIV May Not Be What You Have Learned

Most people believe that the origin of HIV, the AIDS virus, derives from some natural evolutionary event. Key among these HIV origin theories is the so called "cut hunter theory" in which a human, allegedly African native, received a bloody wound or infected splash while preparing a chimpanzee carrying a similar virus (i.e., SIVcpz). Most recent research, along with the scientific consensus, holds that the origin of HIV and AIDS could never have happened this way.

In 2001, The Royal Society of London's conference proceedings, which sought to determine the initial cause of AIDS and the origin of HIV, were published for the world to behold. The most highly respected scientists and academicians debated the possibility that HIV-1, the most widespread and deadly human AIDS virus, evolved from accidental vaccine contaminations and subsequent transmissions to mostly to African villagers. The oral polio vaccine (OPV) received the focus of interest here since that vaccine was partially derived from growing live polio viruses in monkey kidney cells that have historically proven to be contaminated with cancer viruses such as SV40 -- the 40th monkey virus ever discovered -- currently linked by medical scientists to widespread human cancers. By the end of the symposium, the esteemed delegates concluded the HIV origin and AIDS was not likely to have come from polio vaccine transmissions as chimpanzees were not proven to have been used during the manufacture of this vaccine.

More importantly, among the most respected of all HIV/AIDS origin theorists, the U.S. Government's chief DNA sequence analyst at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, Dr. Gerald Myers, reported with his colleagues that the origin of HIV could not have begun with "cut hunters" or other single isolated cross species transmissions (called "zoonosis"). He reported that genetic sequencing studies prove some "punctuated origin of AIDS event" took place during the mid-1970s giving rise, virtually simultaneously, to at least ten different HIV "clades" (or genetic subtypes) associated with ten different distinguishable AIDS epidemics in Africa alone. The most likely cause of this widespread bizarre zoonosis was some man-made (i.e., iatrogenic) event involving chimpanzees, this group reckoned.

Myers and his colleagues offered the following best explanation for the origin of HIV: "It is not far-fetched," they wrote, "to imagine the ten or so clades deriving from a single animal (perhaps immunosuppressed and possessing a swarm of variants) [as might have been the case with chimpanzees used in the process of vaccine manufacture] or from a few animals that might have belonged to a single troop or might have been gang-caged together. The number of animals required is secondary to the extent of variation in the source at the time of the zoonotic or iatrogenic event. The [vaccine] hypothesis makes a case for such a punctuated origin . . ." (See: Burr T, Hyman JM and Myers G. The origin of acquired immune deficiency syndrome: Darwinian or Lamarchkian? Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B (2001) 356:877-887.)

So if chimpanzees were not used to make the polio vaccine, and therefore the origin of HIV and AIDS did not come from this vaccine nor time period (1950s-early 1960s), then what other vaccine, given during the early to mid 1970s, might have used one or more SIVcpz-infected chimpanzees in the manufacturing process?

The answer to this question was singularly advanced by a Harvard-degreed independent investigator, Dr. Leonard Horowitz in the award winning book Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola -- Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Press, 1998; 1-888-508-4787; http:www.tetrahedron.org) Dr. Horowitz unearthed and reprinted stunning scientific documents and National Institutes of Health contracts proving that chimpanzees, contaminated with numerous viruses, were used to produce hundreds of hepatitis B vaccine doses administered to central African Blacks along with homosexual men in New York City at precisely the time Dr. Myers and colleagues claim the origin of HIV "punctuated event" occurred.

Unfortunately, as another Royal Society conference presenter, Dr. Julian Cribb, protested, too little attention is given by drug-industry-influenced medical journals, and the mainstream media, to controversial truths in science regarding the origin of HIV and AIDS. (See: Cribb J. The origin of acquired immune deficiency syndrome: can science afford to ignore it? Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond B (2001) 356:935-938.) As a result, documents such as those published by Dr. Horowitz, and others, showing AIDS apparently derives from contaminated hepatitis B vaccines, have never received adequate attention.

source: http://www.originofaids.com/

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sometimes you sing the lunch table song from WOMS with your oldest friends at a bar called beaches.

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mood: severely hungover
listening to: the fray

um, yeah. as a general rule i suck as a person. after i drank myself stupid last night, i think i must be mildly suicidal. haha. not really, but it has become apparent that my friends and i are often out of control.

so i wrote a palinode in this blog last month that doesn't make sense in light of the fact that i posted semi-personal stuff yesterday and today. and in light of my overall feeling right now that i will continue to post when i have time. it doesn't really matter. whether i continue to write here or not i will still make an effort to not completely incriminate myself...

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mood: weepy
listening to: the fray

so i have an addiction to celebrity gossip from sites like thesuperficial.com and others. i love thesuperficial. i'll even admit to perusing old news in the archives. how can you not with headlines like these, from 2005:

Richard Gere mean to handicapped
Jenna Bush shows bush
Angelina Jolie says stuff in Vanity Fair
Kevin Federline still trash
Tara Reid has a weird stomach

and a few recent ones:

Nicole Richie says she's healthy
Stephanie Tanner is a meth addict
Jessica Simpson is inspiring
Natalie Portman is tiny

i find the stories hilarious as well. most of them are probably made up, but i think they are based off of some small truths. like this one from yesterday, for instance:

February 02, 2006
Katie Holmes is the queen of fashion

Katie Holmes got some coffee yesterday sporting what can only be described as a fishnet leotard tucked into her crotch. I can't imagine why, but I can only assume Tom Cruise is up to his wild and crazy antics again. Maybe stretching weird fabric through his fiance's vagina is his way of pleasing the galactic ruler Xenu, because I hear galactic rulers are really into that sort of thing.

and, i'm sorry, another:

January 27, 2006
Larry King is disturbing

Ok, now before you read this story you should probably just relax. Take a few deep breaths. Go to your happy place, a place where all is good, a place where nothing can - LARRY KING NAKED!!! Sorry about that, but this story is like a cold swimming pool - you gotta jump right in or it'll only hurt worse. In an unsettling interview with Howard Stern, Larry King's much younger wife Shawn Southwick claims, "Larry has this Indian costume that just drives me wild . . . I wear chaps!" She adds that 72-year-old King's bedroom battle cries didn't ring out until after they were married in 1997. Southwick, a devout Mormon, made King wait until their wedding night to have sex - and only after a doctor signed off on it because of King's heart problems.

The only explanation I have for posting this story is that I secretly hate you all and want you to suffer. Larry King, Indian costumes and sex - add a spandex-clad Dan Rather and some titty-twisters and you've got yourself the seventh ring of hell. Unless the ladies here find Larry King sexy; the gravelly voice, the wrinkles, the mushroom-shaped head, the scent of old cauliflower. He's been married like twenty-six times, so some people must. These people must be destroyed.

in other news, i am not a happy camper of late. in other other news, i actually attempted to start writing a poem the other day while i was bored to delirium in class. something about fences and milkweed. this is significant because i haven't written a single poem or anything that can be counted as a poem since june 2005.

the fray rocks and they need to make another album. they just released their debut album in 2005, but still. i have similar sentiments toward the postal service, who haven't released anything good since 2003. we will become silhouettes doesn't count because there are only 4 songs there. not cool.

i am fake smart, fake lovely, and probably fake nice. definitely fake classy. however, i am a real lush. i haven't been feeling terribly obliging, which really means i am pretty much malcontented by everything. i hate the word blessed. i don't even like lucky because that implies that i had nothing to do with it. which, don't get me wrong, is more often the case than not. maybe fortunate? i will keep searching for the right word.

i haven't written like this in a very long time. more streams of consciousness coming soon.

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