Tuesday 23 November 1999

Portrait

Pic of the day: Is our main character raising his prostate awareness, or just lazing the evening away? Get all the details in today's entry!

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Today I was sick and home from work again. I also lived very healthy today. First I lost some weight, fast. The medical term for it is something like diarrhoea; but you do lose weight really fast while it lasts. Luckily this did not last all day. In the afternoon, I took a brisk walk. This is also very healthy. Of course this could have something to do with the fact that my wrist did not allow anymore Civ2 playing, and there are limits to how much you can sleep in one single day. But still, a walk is a walk. And to top it all, I did not eat any chocolate today! (I did drink some chocolate milk, but that's a lot more milk than chocolate anyway.) No prizes for guessing that I was all out of chocolate and too sick to get to town and stock up. Still, no chocolate is no chocolate. Man what a healthy day! Oh, and I did not have cheesecake for breakfast either. (In fact, breakfast was pretty much the last thing on my mind. Still, no cheesecake.)

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In health-related but otherwise very different news, there was a post on one of the journal-related mailing lists to the effect that December 1st was a good day to not write a journal, but instead put up some darkish banner on the index site in honor of the yearly AIDS awareness day.

I think this is a bad idea, and I said so. This is not because I think AIDS awareness is a bad idea. If people were more aware of the risk of HIV infection, they would probably think twice about various things which could use some thinking. And if they were aware how easily they could become a victim themselves, they would keep a very low profile with the ha-ha attitude. Not to mention how the virus is doing unspeakable things to much of Africa, decimating an entire generation. Now the same is starting to happen in parts of Asia. "AIDS: It's not just for queers anymore."

So, a little awareness is probably not a bad thing. But I don't see an online strike as the way to go. Yes, it is a strike. When you withhold your services, you are for all practical purposes on strike. I know I'm a journaller and not a journalist. But even so, if I could deliver my daily dose of (often involuntary) entertainment, and I don't, then I'm really on strike. If an e-shop is closed, the same applies. Most online sites are visited because they offer some kind of service. How is closing them different from closing a school, like the teachers here in Norway are doing these days? It is a strike, and by any name it smells of self-importance.

Mind you, AIDS is important. It is even deadly. But we are all going to die, and few of us from old age. In all fairness, we would need to have a car crash awareness day, a breast cancer awareness day, a hepatitis awareness day, a stroke awareness day, a clinical depression awareness day, a hypertension awareness day, an alcoholism awareness day, colon cancer awareness day, malaria awareness day, asthma awareness day, domestic violence awareness day ... 365 days all in all, with black banners on all Internet sites.

This is the double edge of the strike weapon as a way to capture attention. It works as long as you alone use it. But when all your competitors do the same, it leads to a downward spiral that tears the social fabric asunder. Which is why I recommend that you use your own words to spread whatever awareness you want to share.

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Since nothing really happened today (except for spanking the evil Egyptians who stole my technology in Civ2) I guess I could just as well wind down. The idea of color coding my entries is already a fiasco, by the way. I find that almost all of them would end up as light grey... a mixture of personal experience and thinking about things that are really a bit too big for my head. But that's my life, yours for free.


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