I don't have any words and so this morning sought out music created in response to AIDS and found this article in GLBTQ Arts. From the article, here are a few youtube links of some of the songs.

Tori Amos: Not The Red Baron

Patti Smith: Death Singing

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson: Halloween Parade

and more some Laurie Anderson: Love Among The Soldiers

A complex piece by The Jams in 1987 about the media's response to the AIDS crisis: All You Need Is Love

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/f0USXfzze1A/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=212169

2009 will be my sixteenth year living with HIV. I tested positive through my own bravado and stupidity - and have paid all sorts of prices as a result. HIV is terrible business.

I hope you can take a moment today and think about the people in your life that are living with HIV and AIDS. There might be someone in your life that is HIV+ - and you wouldn't know it. a co-worker. a friend. someone you commute with every morning and say 'good morning' to.

I have a photo on the wall in my office - of the fern grotto in the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. Inscribed in the meditative circle on the west end of the grove are the words of famous San Francisco poet Thom Gunn:

“Walker, within this circle, pause. Although they all died of one cause, remember how their lives were dense with fine, compacted difference.”

It was written in a time of holocaust in our community where we were in a constant state of mourning and struggle. I'd like to think those times are behind us - but we're still here living with HIV/AIDS and taking our morning and evening pills. and hoping one day we'll find a cure.

World AIDS Day has always felt like my own personal Memorial Day. So many people lost on the journey. I don't fear those memories - they just remind me to live and love fiercely and never take even a single healthy breath for granted. and to live with "fine, compacted difference."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/TtBS4yC-HTo/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=217716

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/NJ6LBJCuPiU/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/12/01/video-contortionist-kitteh/

For those unfamiliar with him, Tiki Taane is an incredibly talented singer and musician from New Zealand and could easily be the next Ben Harper or Jack Johnson given the right management.

Thanks to the heavenly and angelic unclecliffy for what came in the mail! The dvd box set of Charlies Angels Season 4!!! It really made my day. Thank you so much !!!!! There are episodes on here I haven't seen and really I think this series only ever screened once in Australia. The packaging is gorgeous and they really put a great deal of effort into making this a collectible box set. It shall provide me with years of unadulterated joy.

It reminded me of how in 1979 I would arrive at school on a Friday morning and sit on the back stairs of the school building and wait for a boy called Mohammed and we would sit there in the sun and talk about last night's Charlies Angels episode. He wasn't in my class and I don't really recall how I knew him but somehow we must have struck up a conversation and Shelley Hack was our favourite Angel. He was a gentle soul like most of the Muslim boys I knew and being Muslim was nothing out of the ordinary then, I would barely have been aware of it. We didn't know the difference, kids were kids.

We all had "scripture" classes on Thursday mornings and you would play with your friends at Little Lunch then everyone would go off to their respective religion class, mostly to Muslim, or Greek Orthodox and I would go to Church of England with Mrs Brown who would see the golden spirit of Jesus move through the room once she asked us all to close our eyes. I peeked and saw the golden light she described, moving through the centre of the room. I shall never know quite what I saw. Then after our classes in entirely different religions we would meet again and take the lunches out of our bags, whoever had salami on their sandwiches was always teased and I begged my mother to buy Lebanese bread like the other kid's had but she wouldn't touch it until years later. Instead I had cheese and vegemite sandwiches except on those days my mother would make Devon and tomato sauce sandwiches which would stink out your school bag so much we begged her to never make them again.

We would all play soccer and everyone got along regardless of their background. If it was left up to the children of Belmore North Primary School the word may still be that way.

I had no idea until much later that the Church of England was one man's invention to rid himself of his wife so he could copulate with a teenage girl, whom he eventually beheaded.


I can remember sitting there on the blonde bricks in the morning sun with Mohammed next to the train line that ran behind our classrooms like it was yesterday. Then the bell would ring, I think at 9:20, and we would go off to class. I went to high school the year after but not to the local one, I was on the wrong side of the boundary line so I went to a different school than some of my friends. I don't think there were many Muslim kids at my high school, but many Maoris and Islanders and waves of "boat people" from Vietnam.

I wonder where Mohammed is now.

I hope he is happy. Insha'Allah

Melbourne lunchtime streetscape.

I thought colin5353 might like to see this big new apartment building on Commerical Road. Given that it's right opposit several nightclubs, and it's a busy, busy street at night, I think this is going to be a noisy place for whoever lives there. I do like the Green but it's already the colour that was 2008. Yet more cafes downstairs! How many cafes can one city have? I guess people have to have somewhere to take their children on Saturday mornings. They are building another place the same size alongside this one.