The healing power of music

"Music can bring them back into it"... I love the comments by the guy at the end talking about how we can put all our individually significant music onto such a tiny device the size of a matchbox, and noting the effect it can have on people when they listen to it. 

 

It's incredible what this guys music does to him, far better than any treatment tried over years. 

It's only these days that we can carry so much music around with us, and have such ease of access to it. We can build up entire collections that fit in our pockets. Personal collections that have special meaning and significance for ourselves. This would have been science fiction only a few years ago. Perhaps we're all embarking on some kind of mass social experiment where we're able to find a sense of healing in our own music.

Gonna start back where I've left off with the book I was reading about it. 

My reading has been stalled for a couple of months going through this period of depression. Seeing the psychologist this afternoon after a 2 month break.

Middle class welfare cuts? - Independents

I don't agree at all with raising the GST (goods and services tax). I was against it from the start as it unfairly taxes people who can least afford it. I doubt either Gillard or Abbott would contemplate raising it anyway, it'd be politically disastrous. It may happen down the track but certainly not in the near future. 

The two independents who met with the PM and treasurer the other day did however make some suggestions regarding the middle class welfare that exists in Australia, despite an ACOSS report recently citing 13% of Australians living below the poverty line. I wholeheartedly agree with their views on this.

The federal government should make deeper cuts to middle-class handouts, the Prime Minister was told in a recent meeting with two key independents, who are also backing an increase in the GST. 

Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott have urged Julia Gillard and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, to face unpopular and tough decisions before next year's election. 

The two government allies met with the Labor pair last week, Mr Windsor arguing against any kind of middle-class welfare if the government was ''serious about the surplus''.

 .......................... 

The New England MP told Ms Gillard and Mr Swan in the private meeting that he believed the time had come to make the hard decisions and ''bite the bullet'' in removing large parts of the middle-class welfare handouts. 

This included the baby bonus - which the government announced in last month's mini-budget would be reduced from $5000 to $3000 for the second and subsequent child - and family cash incentives for families implemented ''during the Howard era as straight-out vote buyers, when the mining boom was rolling and we had the cash''. 

Mr Windsor said he believed Labor would seriously consider deeper cuts to family entitlements if it ''really, really [wanted] to chase that elusive surplus''. Read more

Finally someone who's not afraid to tell it like it is. And they're right that many of these cash give-aways are from the Howard gov (apparently more fiscally responsible than Labor?). I remember it well, Howard would get up on the stage pre-election, on one particular occasion announced something like $30billion in handouts. And this money wasn't going to the poor who really needed it, it was targeted to working people as a vote buyer. It didn't just happen once either, it was election after election Howard kept handing out bazillions to people who just didn't need it.

Now that money is getting tighter for Australia, surely it's time to look at all these handouts in a reasonable way. It's not just a small amount of money either, the amounts involved are huge. Yet people like me have to jump through I dunno how many hoops just to get a pittance.

Police spark riot

A Lady leaves her kid in a car yesterday in Sydney, with the windows down, for 10 minutes as she went quickly into a shop. Yesterday it was cold in Sydney BTW. Wrong yes. But what followed was much worse. Instead of being cautioned by the police or some such thing, the police escalated the situation.

A BABY left in a car while his mother ran into a south-west Sydney shop led to claims of "a riot", with one officer pulling a Taser and numerous shoppers surrounded by police cars and affected by capsicum spray. 

Scores of Campsie and Bankstown police were called to Punchbowl's The Boulevard where they arrested two 20-year-old men after police clashed with shoppers on Friday afternoon. 

The mother of the baby, who wants to remain anonymous, told Fairfax Media she has apologised to police for briefly leaving her sleeping one-year-old unsupervised in her car with windows wound down. 

The violence was sparked by her cousin and brother clashing with police over the "10-minute indiscretion", she said. 

"The first two officers were fine; it was another officer who was yelling at my brother and got into a big argument," she said. "The police officer pushed him to the ground and made an arrest." 
................................. 
Community advocate for south-west Sydney, Rebecca Kay, has taken statements from eight people who saw the "riot" that was witnessed by up to 100 people. 

Those who were sprayed will make an official complaint, she said. 

Ms Kay said about 10 squad cars arrived on the scene and further escalated the trouble. 

"One officer pulled out his Taser," she said. "The street was closed off, there were many people sprayed with capsicum spray, mums, kids, men and women, innocent bystanders. Police sprayed everyone," she said. Read more

Why am I not surprised? It's just typical of them. They take a relatively minor thing, go all ape shit over it, and turn it into some kind of war. There is something very wrong with the NSW police.

Latest blood results

Went to the doctors yesterday for the results of the blood taken earlier this week. I was particularly interested to see WTF was going on with this lot of tests because of how tired I've been. It was too early for the viral load results to have come back, but the CD4 count was in.

At an amazing 720. I couldn't fuckin believe it. That's pretty good man. Doc said given the CD4 count then the viral load won't be anything to worry about when it comes. How the fuck could this be as the fatigue has been enormous? Perhaps, even though I'm sleeping a lot, I'm therefore getting the amount of sleep I need? 

Kidneys are the same, not the best but good enough. But the kidney specialist told me at the hospital that they'd not come all the way better again as there was too much damage done from the lack of oxygen.

He was a bit concerned with my liver results however. Said they're a bit inflamed and the indicators are getting slowly worse. "Oh shit" I thought, "I know what's coming next...." He asked me how much I was drinking these days. *sigh* So I tell him, only sort of a little less than I actually am, and he wants me to cut back on that. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...........  

Well, suppose I'll have to make some sort of effort. Think it's not so much the 4-5 I have generally nearly every day, but these occasions socialising when I tend to get rather carried away. I've notice the last 3 months or so that the hangovers after a night like that are much worse than they used to be. Really fuckin bad man. Last the whole day, screaming headaches, aching all over, takes a couple of days to come back to feeling normal. This is just from drinking beer too. Have had 3 nights like that in the last month I think. Yeah, so I'll try to be  more moderate on such occasions in the future.

Still am going on medication I've decided. Told the doc about all this inner drama in the lead up to the quarterly tests and how I start freaking about it. Anyway he's taken blood for a resistance test. He's gonna be away a lot of this month so I said I'd seem him in Dec. There's no hurry about it all with a CD4 count like that. 

Dunno What he's going to try for meds this time. I can't take Travada or Kaletra. The Kaletra they suspect may have been the cause of my heart nearly stopping when they found me half dead on the bed. Another wonderful side effect of an HIV drug.  

John West rejects Greenpeace

Another email today from Greenpeace in regards to the pressure they're putting on John West tuna, via an online campaign informing people of tuna fished unsustainably and encouraging people not to buy that tuna, along with information of which tuna brands are fished sustainably. I posted about this the other day. 

Now though John West is playing dirty. From the Greenpeace email today:

This week a small billboard company removed our ad exposing John West’s use of destructive FADs, after facing significant “commercial pressure.”

We won’t allow the truth to be silenced. We’re calling on John West to clarify if it was involved in exerting the pressure, and we’re creating our own mobile billboard.
  ................................

John West has stopped responding to consumer concerns on its Facebook page. It has blocked the same page to international viewers. It is busy promoting its ‘pole and line’ range – which is a great tuna option, but only makes up 2% of its entire range (the other 98% still permits the use of FADs). And it appears to be flexing its corporate muscle by pressuring the advertising industry. YouTube today also removed our video.

To be truly sustainable, John West must go beyond vague statements and make clear and unambiguous commitment to ban FADs. This has been done by Australian brands Safcol, Greenseas and Sirena, as well as John West Germany, John West UK and, in fact, the entire UK tuna industry.

There's also a link to a story in The Age newspaper about the billboard being taken down. 

A small billboard company will remove a Greenpeace billboard critical of fishing giant John West at midday after pressure from two media-buying companies. 

Greenpeace spokesman James Lorenz said small outdoor advertising company Independent Outdoor Media had put the sign up at Mentone close to the headquarters of John West's owner Simplot Australia last week, but had been pressured to remove it. 

Mr Lorenz said two companies operated by Aegis Media, MPG and Posterscope, had put pressure on the small billboard company to remove its "John West Killer Deal" sign in Warrigal Road, Moorabbin. Both companies have run advertising campaigns for John West. Read more

The Chaser on gay marriage

Unnecessary guilt?

The first meeting of the Resilience workshop seemed to drag on towards the end, as 3 hours is a long time to be taking stuff in. There was a 15 minute or so break in the middle though which helped. Some of the subjects had been shuffled around to different days because of attendances by outside people, and so yesterday we went into the "Challenging Negative Thinking" subject which turned out to be highly helpful.

This was broken down into a lot of different thought processes, of which one in particular was exactly what I've been confronting lately with Simon. It was directed at an individual, but I related it to what Simon had been saying to me a lot. 

This thought process was called the "Should Statements" (instantly jumping into my mind was Simon's "You should be feeling happy now" statements). These so called "should statements" involved impossible rules, constant disappointments, guilt, anger, frustration, standards and expectations excessively high. On a personal level this is about someone making these should statements to themselves, but for me I related to them there how I'd just been experiencing exactly that from a bloke I knew. That yes he was trying to help but it was probably one of the worst things he could possibly say. I went into all this the other day here, which I talked about some of that yesterday.

I also mentioned the Ian Thorpe thing too, about how clinical depression was independent from life events. Everyone agreed with the bits and pieces I was mentioning. I felt very vindicated; that the direction I'm going with all of this is the right one. I've had a few doubts, maybe thinking Simon is right and I should be making more of an effort of some shit like that, but there it was in black and white exactly the situation I was dealing with.

Has taken me some time to come to this realisation. I've not had the opportunity to take part in things like this before as I've always been working. It's only now that I've actually got time to go into this and look at better psychological ways of dealing with HIV. It gives a very clear focus on what exactly is happening here. Making me think that I should be trying to do something that's impossible only makes me feel bad; guilty and all that. 

Haven't spoken to Simon since we had the disagreement. He's not rung, is either pissed off (frustrated? angry?) or just giving me space, or both. Think I needed that space actually in hindsight. This issue has become a major one with us now and I can't see any way of going further with the relationship unless it's resolved. For now I'm just going to email now and then I think, a "Hi" or something.

Oh yes, there was another related issue that was discussed as well, being the idea of getting away and living somewhere else as some kind of answer to things. The instructor was saying how there's been a lot of gay people move up the coast out of Sydney as the big change for the better. Some of them are fine up there, some not, and end up coming back to Sydney a few years later. In short, you take your problems with you, and getting out of Sydney isn't necessarily a magic solution to them. I thought that was interesting in regard to Simon constantly wanting me to get out of Sydney and live somewhere else (with him of course). Going so far as saying that I needed to get away from all the bad memories here.

And this has led to a certain amount of guilt on my part too. Like, maybe I'm doing the wrong thing staying here. He gets frustrated because I don't actually want to move, am very comfortable here presently. I like inner Sydney, can't stand the thought of suburban death. There's been a lot of extremely good memories here too, and I think I've established to myself that moving out of Sydney won't do anything for my depression and PTS. Triggers could come from anything, anytime, anywhere. 

After the session I actually felt a bit sort of hopeful and brighter. It's been a while since I've felt much of that. Perhaps I've been carrying around a bit of unnecessary guilt?

Alan Joyce clownshow

The Qantas AGM is tomorrow, with the TWU engaged in a campaign to save Qantas from the clutches of that psycho Alan Joyce, who last year grounded Qantas worldwide and blamed the Transport Workers Union for it. No prices for guessing that the move disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world, and rubbed the Qantas name into the dirt. 

This all because Joyce sees his roll as a fascist instead of someone to bring the company together. He wants to take the company his own course without any negotiations with the people that run the thing.

The TWU has released this video, very funny.

 

*Update:

The shareholder meeting has revealed where the $245million loss came from this last financial year. Turns out the great majority of that loss was because of Alan Joyce himself when he grounded the entire airline.

The company slumped to a $245 million loss for 2011/2012, a sharp downturn from net profit of $250 million the prior year, due to high fuel prices and a struggling international division.

It was also affected by one-off costs such as the grounding of the fleet as part of Qantas's dispute with unions that cost $194 million, and a restructuring of Qantas international. more

Judith Durham-The Carnival Is Over(2009)

This is beautiful. all these years later. The Seekers were in then 1960's. Her voice is such a gift.

loser - Beck

A bit of negative thinking happing here I reckon. OMG Honesty. America.

WTF??

again....Pink Houses

Assange attorney interview

"Luke Rudkowski ran into and got the chance to talk to Michael Ratner, the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Michael currently is the attorney for Julian Assange in the U.S and gave WeAreChange an update on the case".

 

That's how the Military Commissions work; they charge you with shit and you can't even see what they're using for proof.

Gay demon exorcism! *updated*

Oh man this is fuckin hilarious!
 

*Update:

Holy crap, have a look at this shit.  A Rev bloke over in the US has been busted wanting sex with people who he's been counselling who went to him to be cured of being gay. That in itself isn't surprising. But take a look at the picture of him:

I think it's the same guy as in the video. Fuck! Here's a snip of part of the above video:

What do you reckon?

An ordained Christian counselor devoted to freeing people from homosexuality was charged with eight counts of felony fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct after two young men filed complaints against him.

The Rev. Ryan J. Muelhauser, senior pastor of a church in rural east-central Minnesota, was affiliated with OutPost Ministry, a group that claims to cure same-sex attraction through prayer. According to a report in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Muelhauser allegedly fondled the two complainants, who had sought his help to rid themselves of homosexuality. The two said the pastor also asked them to masturbate for him to bring them spiritual strength.

One young man said the pastor cupped his genitals with his hands several times to bless him. more

HIV stigma interview

It was a bit strange seeing people on the telly this morning who're involved locally here with HIV. They had a 7 minute interview with two people about the recent report released into the issues surrounding the stigma involved with having HIV, on Channel Ten, including the CEO of Positive Life NSW.

I can't find a way to embed it here though, but you can watch it by following this link directly to it at the Channel Ten site:
http://tenbreakfast.com.au/video.htm?movideo_m=241144

Actually it ties in with where I'm going today, to the first of the "Resilience" workshops at BGF. I got a text reminder for it yesterday. It goes for 3 hours, bloody hell! Oh well I'm committed now. No but seriously, think this would be great. Here's the program again, today is the "introduction and program outline":

On the Channel Ten interview, they discussed the subject of resilience, and how HIV+ people generally gain skill over time to address the stigma that they face. Which looks pretty much what these workshops are about.

I also thought this thing from the interview was interesting:

That's terrible that 65% of people feel ashamed! A real tragedy. It's a disease, an illness, it's this stigma from society that would impose shame onto an illness. "HIV doesn't discriminate, people do" as the saying goes.

Myself I'm cautious as to who exactly I disclose too, but when I do I'm not at all ashamed of it. I was writing something in an email recently about this very subject. HIV is now a part of who I am; part of my identity as a person. Yes, HIV is a terrible disease to get, and I got it in my own case through unsafe sex (so what?), but I'm fucked if I'm going to be ashamed of who I am. I'm not ashamed of my sexuality, my depression, my post traumatic stress, my life. And I'm not ashamed of having HIV. If people have a problem with it then that's their fuckin dilemma, not mine. Haven't survived this far by caring about what other people thought.

At the end of the interview, the last question was asking if there was one thing that people could do to help HIV+ people and break down the stigma, what would it be. He had his own answer, and I considered that for a while. I decided in the end that my suggestion would be for everyone to know that HIV has a human face, that we're not monsters, and that life goes on for us now after diagnosis. And please don't attach any kind of moral judgement to HIV. 

Know the risk: HIV transmission

This new site is absolutely brilliant. I've never seen anything as good as this for finding out the actual risk involved in different ways of having sex. The link came with this weeks Harbour City Bears newsletter. It's all interactive, this just a snip of the site to give an idea. 

http://knowtherisk.org.au/

Simple access to information, rather than ploughing through (*coughs*) long drawn out Googles. Highly recommend this one. Sometimes it seems like there's so much ignorance about what's safe and what's not, and the risk levels involved.