David's POZ Blog

Festus, looking as happy as ever.

It’s 4 a.m. on Saturday and I should be soundly sleeping under the covers.

I should be, but I’m not.

Instead of being sprawled in a warm bed, I’m sitting up in an armchair, and instead of clutching the covers (or someone else,) the only thing in my arms is a looseleaf binder. Instead of having sweet Sustiva dreams, I'm sitting here reading about guns and gangstas.

Oddly enough, I don’t mind at all. In fact, it’s kind of fun. Last Friday, I was ordered to start a trial this Monday in federal court. Ordinarily, we are given months to prepare for trials, but for reasons that I cannot disclose, I was only given 10 days to pull this one together. And I’m really digging it.

I’m telling you this because you may not be hearing from me for a week or two. That’s probably a good thing for both you and I though, because for the next week or so, my adrenaline and testosterone levels will be so high that Shaun White could do double backflips off my lab results on his snowboard. It won't make me a particularly pleasant person to have to deal with, to say the least.

The chemical cocktails that our bodies produce in these situations is amazing stuff. Our senses are heightened and we can work for days on surprisingly little sleep. The downside to that is that it stresses your immune system, and that worries me. Can I still hack it? Will my CD4 count crash and my viral load become detectable to again? We’ll see.

Still, I wouldn’t give it up for anything. I love my work, and I’m lucky to have been given the privilege to do it, even if it means that I may not be able to watch the Giants beat the Patriots in a stunning upset victory.

So there it is. You have my excuse. I’ll see you next week, after the jury comes in.

The Man!

And who could forget Miss Kitty - Whatta woman! (Did she and Matt ever _____?)

She finally did it. I knew that Cupcake was addicted to those darned cookies, but I had no idea how serious her problem had become. I have no idea what I am going to do. She refuses to let me post bail for her, and I can’t seem to get in touch with any of her relatives back in the old country. To make matters worse, Cupcake is in complete denial about her problem and refuses to seek counseling. The whole situation really sucks.

Addiction to Girl Scout cookies is a serious problem in this country - over four million people are believed to suffer from this condition, which is an annual crises that contributes to global warming and strains our health care system.

I've tried everything. I've tried hiding the boxes, but Cupcake's keen vampire olfactory powers defeat me at every turn. Our condo is so littered with empty boxes that I keep tripping over them. I'm completely freaked out, and I feel like I'm enabling her in some way. If anyone has any suggestions, I could really use some help here.

This is a picture of the enemy:

These cookies are a danger to society; they are a gateway to serious substance abuse. I would call our congressman, Buck Sludgemaker, for help but its very hard to explain how I ended up living with an HIV positive vampire in the first place, and I fear that someone like Sludgemaker, who is a right wing religious conservative, will use our dilemma as another means to demonize the HIV positive community. On the other hand, if they keep her locked up I'm afraid that something terrible will happen to her in jail, and I'll feel like a real crumb. HELP ME!

Phew! Its over! I’m happy to say that the trial is over and that I seem to survived. It was a trial about guns and gangstas, but in a way, it was also about my own abilities and priorities, and the effects of the stress on my health. As to the former, I think I probably would get an A- to an A on my report card. I say A- because there's always room for improvement.

What you see on Law and Order is the Cliff Notes version of what criminal defense is really about; at its best, a good trial is like an intellectual and theatrical gunfight. This trial was probably the most fun I've had in years. I could rhapsodize about it ad nauseum, but suffice it to say that it made me feel incredibly alive. That’s a pretty good feeling to have, and I intend to enjoy the buzz for at least another day. I realize that is a dangerous statement to make of course, as we never know when the old cosmic brick is going to fall on our heads. That’s what to happened to this young lady’s little sister:

I happen to know for a fact that before that twisted wench Dorothy dropped her load on the wicked witch of the east, this poor woman, now so irreverently and unfairly dissed, was a churchgoing mother of four named Barbara. She was also something of a dish - a very good looking brunette who also played a mean game of scrabble. After Dorothy did her in, Barbara changed. She withdrew, and her anger turned her into Ms. mean grean. Dorothy’s deliberate act should have been properly investigated and prosecuted by the government, and Barbara should have been paid enough in damages to cover the cosmetic surgery to fix the skin condition that her justifiable rage wreaked on her sweet cheeks. Instead, she was maligned, melted and turned into an icon of evil.

Will this happen to Hillary if she is elected? Will it happen to her if she isn’t? Will Obama become Abummer? I favor Barack right now, but that could change. Either way, its going to be a very interesting convention, and a lot of fun to watch.

Although I respect McCain, I can't see myself voting the inevitable McCain-Romney ticket. I've had enough of the Republican party, and McCain - who reveres Ronald Reagan - is not someone likely to support the kind of progressive thinking that our country needs.

We need to start thinking ahead. I'm talking twenty five years ahead. We need to divert most of our military budget to science and research. If we do that, we will become net exporters of energy and agriculture. Obama talks the talk but his position is not as aggressive as the future requires. Our security quagmire is the direct result of America's overconsumption of the world's resources, and until we change that, it will only get worse. Islamic terrorism is largely fueled by America's consumption, as are most the other security threats we face. When we start treating the rest of the world fairly, they will have less animus towards us. If they need our energy and our food, and we can supply them, you can bet that they'll stop flying planes into our cities. This isn't idealism - it's the truth
.
It will take a president with real cojones to take on the military and the entrenched petro-arms industries that rely on and support it. It will take honest, bold thinking. We can make it happen. We can lead the world the right way. But it will take hard work and commitment. If we don't start looking ahead, Dorothy may drop her McMansion on us all.

In today’s New York Times Op-Ed page, Robert Reich delicately calls for a restribution of wealth in America. “Were sliding into a recession or worse,” says Reich, “and Washington is turning to the normal remedies for economic downturns. But the normal remedies are not going to work this time, because this isn’t a normal downturn.”

I’m not posting this here as a prophet of doom and gloom. No one wants to hear that. We need to hear how to fix it before it gets bad. It can be done.

Reich, who is a professor of public policy at University of California at Berkeley, correctly observes that one of the roots of this recession is that Americans have been spending beyond their means for three decades. For thirty years we’ve been financing our lifestyles with cheap credit - credit that is now no longer available in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis that has burned so many banks. Lower and middle income Americans are also earning less than they used to, as adjusted for inflation. As they earned less, they borrowed more in order to live the way they became accustomed to. Now that the cheap credit is gone, Reich explains, “we are finally reaping the whirlwind of widening inequality and ever more concentrated wealth.”

Reich proposes a larger earned-income tax credit for lower and middle income families. The earned-income tax credit is a cash supplement that the IRS gives to lower and middle income families. It puts more money in your pocket, and that promotes consumer spending. Reich would fund that credit by increasing the taxes paid by wealthier Americans.

Reich is correct. We need to fix America’s economy now. We also need to redistribute the wealth in this country before its too late.

Here is the link to Reich’s piece:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/opinion/13reich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

The state of the economy may not seem important to Americans living with HIV and AIDS, but believe me, it is. When the money stops flowing, some of us may be paying with our lives.

What a day! Its Presidents day and because the weather was so unusually warm, the family came over for a little swim. As you can see, we have a very large family. The catering bill is brutal. The last of the clan didn’t leave until a little while ago, but they’re finally gone. Cupcake is resting soundly in her coffin, and Ginger is veiled over the sofa. Life is back to normal.

After being arrested for the Great Girl Scout Cookie Heist, all charges against Cupcake were unexpectedly dropped by the police. It appears that someone ate the evidence, and they had to let her go. I’d like to think she’s learned a lesson from all of this, but you know how it is with these kids today - it all goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe she’ll grow up in another three hundred years or so.

People have so many misconceptions about the undead. Its widely assumed that they have no taste for human food, preferring only blood, but believe me, Cupcake has very human tastes, as the whole cookie episode clearly demonstrates.

I’m not sure that Presidents day means that much to me lately. While I respect the office and most of the men who have held it, the last seven years have been very uninspiring, to say the least. The people who run our country are just that - ordinary people. They have their own instincts and urges, their own places in history, their own weaknesses. We can only hope that whoever our next president is, he or she will do the right thing. It would certainly be nice to feel proud about being an American again.

"If you don't have anything to say, don't say it"

- Anonymous

Its been a few days since I posted my last entry. Sometimes I don't have anything worth blogging about, and god knows there are enough interesting blogs on the internet so that one or two less entries from me will hardly be noticed by whoever it is that keeps score of the these things.

It's been a beautiful Sunday here in NYC. I walked across Central Park to the museum under a bright blue sky and let the crisp air blow out the funk that's been hanging over my head the last few days. We all have our moods, and since Thursday, I've been more than usually occupied with trying to figure out exactly what the point of my existence is. I'm still not sure I have the answer, but here are a few choice thoughts on the question:

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."

- Brendan Gill

"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it."

- Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)

"The purpose of life is to fight maturity."

- Dick Werthimer

"Life is just one damned thing after another."

- Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."

- Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )

"Life is something that everyone should try at least once."

- Henry J. Tillman

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

- Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

"Life is a long lesson in humility."

- James M. Barrie (1860 - 1937)

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

- John Lennon (1940 - 1980)

" Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894)

"Life is a sexually transmitted disease."

- R. D. Laing

"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."

- Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."

- Truman Capote (1924 - 1984)

And then of course, there's my personal favorite:

"I’ve got my mojo working."

-Muddy Waters

It feels good to feel good again.