Stupid stupid stupid

It's stupid o'clock in the morning, and I'm awake because I have to be in at work shortly. Normally I work Thursday nights, but I'm doing the mornings all this month because of a class I have to take for grad school. That in and of itself could be the subject of an entirely different rant, but I think I'll see how this one goes before I post about it here.

Meanwhile, one of my acquaintances found a link to an online forum where apparently, bug-chasers are pussies. (If you don't know what a bug-chaser is, you probably don't want to read any further. Hell, you probably don't want to read further even if you do.) These are guys who get off on bare-backing guys who are HIV-, and intentionally trying to infect them. They lie to the guys, saying they're neg, or use condoms, but the condoms have holes poked or cut in them. There are guys who are trying to make a resistant strain of virus, by signing up for drug studies, taking the drugs the first few weeks, then completely throwing the protocol out the window. There are guys who deliberately try to get infected with as many strains of the virus as possible.

That, to put it succinctly, is some fucked up shit. And how am I allowed to say that? Because they are deliberately harming themselves and others by this behavior. Ergo, fuck them. Or rather, don't.

This hits doubly-close to home, as I've participated in an HIV vaccine trial. I can't understand the motivation of trying to fuck that shit up. HELLO, WE'RE TRYING TO SAVE PEOPLE HERE, MAYBE YOU COULD NOT FUCKING INTERFERE. Christ. When I was reading excerpts from the forum yesterday, I was starting to get physically ill. It was like the world was reminding me, oh yeah, there are some fucked-up things out there. And here I thought I was all internet-tough and thick-skinned. Obviously not.

The other tie-in is, well jesus fuck, who can you trust? Maybe I'm just a stupid girl, but I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I am completely clean. I don't even have HPV. I got nothin'. I'd like to stay that way. And when I read stuff like this, it gets harder and harder to even think about having sex with people. How the hell am I supposed to trust them, when stuff like this happens in the world?

Anyway, now that I've ruined everyone else's day (including my own, again) by talking about this stuff, time to move on. Work calls, and then class. Hopefully this one will go better than the first; which had me so angry I was swearing on the phone with my mother, and I flipping never do that.