World Aids Day

It's World Aids Day.
I learned about it from blogs I read.
Here's one from Frank H. Jump:

There's something profoundly disturbing about today being both the day to raise awareness about this disease - which brings to mind other diseases as well as the issues surrounding health care in this country - on the very same day that the president is going to tell the world we're sending more soldiers to Afghanistan which is, to me, pretty much like saying we're going to simultaneously throw bazillions of dollars down the toilet and kill a bunch of people on purpose.

Meanwhile, legions of TV "journalists" are camped out at Tiger Woods' house. Last night, a sports writer named David Zirin made a some pertinent points on Rachel Maddow:

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So we see that Tiger Woods thinks it's okay to use civil rights imagery to sell sneakers and profits from all kinds of obscene excess, illegal sex trade and shameful labor violations in Dubai. Apparently he needed hitting with a golf club.

Here at HQ, I'm still pondering my over-reaction to Velvet's comments about Moneypenny and Smurfette (Moneypenny and the Patriarchy, Stonerdate 11.28.09). I've let the Moneypenny thing slide because (1)it all started because of something some other kid said and (2)he took it back gracefully and sincerely when he saw what I meant about the support staff. The Smurfette thing continues to percolate but not because of anything Velvet said.

Aside from my concerns about the double standard perpetuated by the patriarchy that restricts women's sexuality and my extreme resentment that all those "whores" in Congress who have been bought by corporate interests thereby ruining the good name of prostitutes everywhere - I'm pretty sure that whole episode goes back to my own struggles with sexuality. Specifically, I would hate for Velvet to think I was a Ho, and under the terms of that patriarchal double standard, we must all acknowledge that I would be considered a slut from a family of sluts. Granny the Ho was a Ho, after all. It's just that back in those days, getting married was the most lucrative career choice open to most women so she got married a lot.

Any way you look at it, we come back to the world going to hell in a hand basket. I'd be more worried about it, except for all of recorded history shows the world going to hell in a hand basket and yet we're still here shaking our heads over everything from global warming to The C Street Family who are currently working to have gays in Uganda executed.

The good thing about hanging out with two year olds all morning is that they completely pull you out of your own adult head and into their own world order. It's a small, self-contained little world. Bad things happen, of course, but it nearly all comes from the adults. In the preschooler world, all you do is try to make sense of things as they effect you personally.

I guess that's all any of us are trying to do in the adult world too - it's just that the world extends beyond the corner and includes so many awful, awful people that you never seem to be able to make sense of anything.

No wonder I stayed late today straightening out the books in our classroom library. It's safe in there.