Pridelets for December 25

Pridelets for December 25
On this day in 1989, Dr. Jonathan Mann, the director of the World
Health Organization's AIDS program, says that the key to ending the
epidemic is a concern for patients' rights.
"We made a big discovery during the 1980s that ranks right up there
with the discovery of the virus and the modes of spread. And that
discovery is that to fight this global epidemic of infectious disease,
you must also fight against prejudice and discrimination. (What
successful programs worldwide) have in common is the careful attention
to developing a supportive social environment that refuses
discrimination against infected people. We've realized that in order to
fight successfully against AIDS, it is vital to protect the rights and
dignity of people."
"It sounds like good sense, superficially, to 'build a wall' around a
country and say everybody who comes into this country has to be tested
for HIV infection, then you get into the realities. A virus, a disease,
doesn't respect walls. As the Berlin Wall has shown, walls don't protect
people; they actually endanger the people within the walls."

BIRTHGAYS (and the occasional straights)
* The pagan celebrated birth of King Nimrod, great grandson of Noah.
* 1908 - writer, artists' model, actor and raconteur Quentin Crisp
* 1936 - Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, best known for
collaboration with his partner, director James Ivory
* 1954 - Scottish heterosexual diva/AIDS fundraiser Annie Lennox
* 1978 - "The Lair" actor Dylan Vox AKA porn star Brad Benton
* 1975 - Junior Senior singer Jeppe Laursen

Q.UOTES
"The excruciatingly twee Thomas Kinkade oeuvre consists of biblically
inspired, light-infused romantic landscapes: rustic, wisteria-strangled
villages, babbling brooks straddled by mossy stone bridges, rose-enrobed
Cotswold cottages with gently smoking chimneys, glistening gazebos,
lighthouses, etc. Though clearly intended to impart a cozy,
fresh-baked-muffin, home-at-last feeling, this overload of feel-good
iconography creeps me out deeply. Its not my fault! Mr. Kinkade provides
no clear narrative and no clues as to what is occurring behind those
misty hedgerows and suspiciously glowing lattice windows, leaving me to
assume the worst. Is Mrs. Kinkade pulling a Bundt cake out of her oven?
Is Granny Kinkade faggoting the perimeter of a doily? I dont think so!
As far as I'm concerned, inside every Kinkade cottage is a veritable
bloodbath, a Pasolini-esque hellhole where -- at the very least --
children are cannibalized, and Granny Kinkade is fed dead rats by Satan
and forced to admit to terrible crimes she never committed. Come back to
the five and dime, David Lynch, David Lynch." -- Simon Doonan

"Nothing says holidays, like a cheese log." -- Ellen DeGeneres