The ethics of bug-chasing and gift-giving

For those of you not in on the lingo, a bug chaser is an HIV negative dude trying to become HIV positive, because that’s hot. Note, they haven’t just eroticized bareback sex, they’ve eroticized sero-conversion. (That has to be up there with the people who eroticize their own castration.) Gift givers are the hiv positive dudes who help the bug chasers get what they want.

If the givers (and chasers for that matter) never gave hiv to anyone who wasn’t a bug chaser and if the rest of us weren’t paying, literally, to help cover their medical expenses (not to mention the wide variety of other stds that bug chasers incubate and spread around) I suppose it wouldn’t be an ethical problem, anymore than suicide or self-cutting is.

But the reality is, everyone else is paying for the bug-chasers. They are the new welfare queens, except these people really are actively seeking to be a burden society, even if they don’t think about it that way. Assuming they are lucky enough to be having all their medical needs seen to by private health insurance, everyone else with the same insurer is ponying up for their irresponsible behavior in premium and copay hikes. If not, they’re a drain on tax payer resources. AIDS meds aren’t cheap, and we have a system in place to pay for it.

“HIV isn’t really a problem, we have meds now. And if you can’t afford them, you’ll get help paying.” One, last I heard, HIV meds had some nasty side effects. Two, they’re hideously expensive. Three, fuck you and your reliance on the public dole. Most people sensibly want to avoid HIV, but you want to follow this fucked up little fantasy of yours to your own destruction and then ask someone else to bail your idiot ass out? I almost wish we could make an exception. Not to subsidizing your meds, but to letting you have them at all.

So, if you have any questions about it, yes, bug chasing is fucking immoral. And so is gift giving. Pull your selfish head out of your ass, and start using it to think. Maybe take a trip to Zimbabwe with the money you would have spent instead, where you can see what happens when the HIV+ population overwhelms the caregiving capacity of the society that holds them. Or just do everyone a favor and off yourself more quickly, and more definitely.

I blame the shits who can’t see past the end of their dick for the recent accidental seroconversions of a number people I care about. Happy about it, I am not.

The health insurance dance, while spewing snot in all directions

So, in September I signed up for health insurance with a high deductible health plan (hdhp), because I’m basically a healthy guy, and if it turns out that I acquire a chronic, expensive condition, I can always switch plans in a year. All well and good. I may or may not have received something from them in the mail among the rain-forest-denuding deluge of credit card offers.

So, I get my current sinus plague. I decided at last that I really can’t tough it out. Mom says I need antibiotics. To be precise, she says I’m going to need _expensive_ antibiotics (over $100 to treat what I have), because the affordable stuff won’t help what I’ve got. I call up my insurance company (which I recently paid a fee to make sure they’d accept me) to find out how I would access my coverage. They say, yup, you have coverage, but that’s odd, your hsa (health savings account, goes with hdhp’s) isn’t showing up. We can’t help you until you get that set up. You should contact chase, who manages that. Chase gives me a very polite “Who the hell are you? We have no idea. Talk to your employer.” Office of Personnel Management (OPM, who manages the federal employee health benefit program) says “talk to your agency’s HR people.” I did that this morning. And two other times today. By the end of today, they seem to finally understand my situation. They’re talking to OPM people to get it straightened out.

Single Payer Universal Health coverage, anyone? =)

Settling in with my roots, my people

As far back as age 5, I can recall being rather withdrawn. It got worse through elementary school, and peaked in the middle of high school. Between my junior & senior year, I probably made the biggest change I will ever make in my life, and that was to experiment with turning my defense mechanisms off. Some combination of “I’m real smart” and “nobody understands me” was my #1 defense mechanism. (Rambling asides probably take that cake these days). Powering down the defense grid changed my world.

That was what opened me up to other people. Prior to that I probably had a definite, elitist, people-are-dumb attitude. These days that attitude is nails on a chalkboard to me. I haven’t shed my former #1 defense mechanism. And it took years to reduce its role in my life. But I’m glad I did. I talk to people more these days.

I like to talk about fiction, hypothetical situations, abstract theories, and the future. Always the future. I always have. And those conversations multiplied after I started, well, talking with people. But there’s something especially beautiful to me about getting a group of people (3-8 ideally) together who share a similar joy and know one another then watching/participating in what emerges. No wonder I like discussion classes.

I miss that alot. I had a bit of it with in minneapolis, on a regular basis (usually centered around final fantasy xi). Occasionally with classmates who got together. I had that in spades in pittsburgh, and in the bay area. I’m sort of amazed how little progress I feel I’ve made in that direction in chicago. I have a few such people, but they’re scattered all over the area. (We’ll ignore the scattering of friends across the continent. And the few bright dots elsewhere on the globe). The two guys I saw the most of while in nyc, and inspire a similar sense of comfortable fitting. In very different ways.

is my jewish mother (actually, more like “the jewish mother of my jewish friend” because there was the nurturing without the guilt tripping or nagging) with a beard and piercings. He cooked soup for me, gave me nyquil, and dragged my ass into the kitchen to help him bake a very tasty mango upside down cake. He played video games with me. We chatted, we talked about relationships, we ate out, we did some gymnastics (okay, that last one has no relationship to anyone’s jewish mother that I know of.) It was fun.

On the other hand is incredibly mellow and also quite fun. He was not like I expected him to be. He was far cooler. We chatted comic books, and video games. I overflirted. (Especially considering my sinus plague prohibited any sort of follow through). I didn’t get to hang with him nearly as much. A failure I hope to correct at some point.

In addition to both being fun in their own geeky ways, they’re also both cute, fuzzy guys. Such lucky boyfriends they have… =)

supershuttle, laguardia, flight attendants, and fun with dehydration

Dear supershuttle,
I get that you want me to the airport on time. But 30 minutes before the airport opens? Please to be removing your head from your ass. The airport opens two hours before the first flight is scheduled to take off (I’m on it). Security opens half an hour after that. Here’s a hint, lines won’t be an issue. Maybe if it were thanksgiving, but it’s not. Please to be removing your head from your ass.
Luv, scu

Dear Laguardia,
I suppose you must think that water fountains pose a security risk. And that’s why you have so few of them. Particularly in the highly trafficed area between the two genders of restrooms. This probably does much for the business prospects of your vendors. But it is a skullfucked design. Particularly not having any water fountains in an entire terminal. Particularly when that area doesn’t have any means for obtaining drinking water.
Luv, scu

Dear Flight Attendant,
I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted two glasses of water. Give me both.
Luv, scu

embracing better living through chemistry

So, I’m sick as a dog, or at least, I was yesterday. In the past few years, I took pain meds after surgery, and antibiotics once or twice. And that’s it. Not even aspirin. But this annoyance challenged my stoicism, and so now I’m on nyquil and advil, and it’s working out pretty well. I went from a temp of 101.3 to 98.8, and I’m not hacking up a lung as I’m typing this, so there are clear advantages. Still, nyquil doesn’t taste like ass, it makes ass seem scrumptious. (PS, I’m in Brooklyn, on ‘s couch. He’s my supplier.) (PPS, also picked up a DS lite for me. He is awesome.)