“It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now, it’s happening.”
All this site ever talks about are Italian Grandmas, where’s the appreciation for my Italian Found Grandpas?
I got two neighbours in their 70s and 80s respectively and they’ve both taken a wild interest in my orchard because they both used to plant stuff and now they’re living vicariously through mine, checking on progress, helping out, trying to teach me stuff except most of the time they have wildly different opinions on how to spot bastard branches on tomato plants and I’m living for the drama
We were plowing the field today when one of them asked me why I didn’t have a boyfriend when I’m already 25 and I went “Men are trouble”, you know, like a lesbian, and he just stopped for a second, thought then dipped his hat. “Now, that is true” where else would I get this?
Update, Found Grandpas now planning my future marriage like an heist.
“You like fieldwork, you need to marry the son of a landowner. Lots of land, lots of cultivation. Done! You’re set for life!”
“But he must be dumb.”
“Oh yeah, dumb like a wood plank. So dumb you can do whatever you want.”
“And get the land.”
“And get the land!”
You know what? Bisexual farmer marries landowner himbo is the happy ending I deserve
“China produces more rainbow flags than anyone. My nightmare is there is a factory with nearly slave labor, forced to live within the factory complex and get up every morning and have to churn out more and more rainbow tchotchkes.” He says he didn’t create the rainbow flag in order for others to profit off of “rainbow junk”.
He is horrified by some of the things he has seen. He says, “Walking down Castro Street, I can’t pay my rent, but I see rainbow dildos in the shop windows and rainbow keychains, rainbow rings, rainbow candles and so on.” He said it is similar to when the best music ends up as elevator music. He is gratified that the power of the rainbow caught on as rings, but that power can be diluted by over-commercialization.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: public libraries are the only place where people are allowed to just exist in public anymore without spending money. Thank goodness they already exist and have for so long because they would be denounced as socialism if we tried to implement them now.
This is UK, but the only parts of this that don’t apply to the US are things that ought to.
I still contend that this is, in fact, the best video on the internet, period. The sheer comedic timing. The knowledge that it cannot possibly have been constructed. The very human expression Pallas cats’ round pupils give them. And the backstory that this was literally the first footage captured by this camera in this placement, that this is the cat immediately noticing his environment has been changed and investigating with all the suspicion of a grumpy old gardener whose gnomes have been moved again…. *chef’s kiss*
i watch this about 10 times every time it passes my dash
Thinking about lil nas x. Thinking about how literally less than a month ago, I was seeing thinkpieces about potato heads having gender and how my generation is soooo sensitive. Thinking about how often I’ve been told “don’t like it don’t look” bc “whhaaaat the sandwiches are good” or “they were just JOKING” or “people have a right to serve whomever they want, go find another cake shop if it bothers you, oh my god.”
Thinking about how many times I’ve heard the words “music used to be ABOUT something.” Thinking about all those gotcha jokes where the set up is “if that was my son, why i would” and the punchline is that they’d love him, right, because it’s funny we are at risk of being traumatized. Thinking about this quote I read today about disrespect - that there’s plenty of people who think respect means “accepting as the absolute authority”. Thinking about religious trauma and the “battle for the soul of the nation”.
Thinking about how fighting them off shouldn’t be his job. Thinking about how preformative this pearl clutching is; how it’s just asinine rhetoric to cover blatant bigotry. Thinking about how I am scared to hold her hand sometimes. Thinking about bravery. Thinking about how the first pride was a riot. Thinking - holy shit. He just saved so many lives, and i hope he knows it.
It’s about taking the power away from a scary thing. Tell a queer kid they’re going to Hell now and they can shrug and say, “cool, I’ll be down there taking a turn on the stripper pole.”
The thing that blows my mind about this pearl-clutching backlash is that popular music about having a better time in Hell, away from all the conservative Christian bullshit isn’t even new.
Irving Berlin released “Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil” in 1922, nearly 100 years ago, and it was a direct “fuck you” to white Conservative Christians having a tizzy fit about the immorality of Jazz, especially Henry Ford, who had written a whole goddamn treatise the year before saying: “Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation**. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.” OH NO NOT SLIDING NOTES! HEAVENS TO BETSY! OH MY WORD!
The lyrics to “Pack Up Your Sins” are as follows:
Oh, I got a message from below ‘Twas from a man I used to know About a year or so ago Before he departed He is just as happy as can be I’ll tell you what he said to me He said, “If ever you get heavy-hearted
Pack up your sins and go to the devil in Hades You’ll meet the finest of gentlemen and the finest of ladies They’d rather be down below than up above Hades is full of thousands of Joneses and Browns, O'Hoolihans, Cohens and Bradys You’ll hear a heavenly tune that went to the devil Because the jazz bands They started pickin’ it Then put a trick in it A jazzy kick in it They’ve got a couple of old reformers in Heaven Making them go to bed at eleven Pack up your sins and go to the devil And you’ll never have to go to bed at all
If you care to dwell where the weather is hot H-E-double-L is a wonderful spot If you need a rest and you’re all out of sorts Hades is the best of the winter resorts Paradise doesn’t compare All the nice people are there They come there from ev'rywhere Just to revel with Mister Devil Nothing on his mind but a couple of horns Satan is waitin’ with his jazz band And his band came from Alabam’ with a melody hot No one gives a damn if it’s music or not Satan’s melody makes you want to dance forever And you never have to go to bed at all
Do you sense a theme?
Of course, Lil Nas X totally put his own spin on things to make it specifically about eschewing Christian morality in favour of embracing queer liberation, which is fucking fantastic! But it’s batshit insane to see the actual governor of South Dakota practically accusing Lil Nas X of personally ushering in the beginning of America’s moral decline, as if he’s some sort of gay pied pier leading all the good children away from God, when actually this is LITERALLY THE SAME BASIC THEME OF A NEARLY 100-YEAR-OLD SONG PENNED BY THE SAME COMPOSER WHO WROTE “WHITE CHRISTMAS,” “EASTER PARADE,” AND “GOD BLESS AMERICA.”
It’s just completely manufactured outrage about celebrations of otherness that have genuinely been around forever. These people don’t actually believe it’s going to threaten their way of life, because if these songs really had that kind of power, they wouldn’t still be here bitching about it after all this time. They just can’t stand to see anybody else enjoying being anything but them.
Anyway, here’s a 1938 version of “Pack Up Your Sins” that features a 21-year-old Ella Fitzgerald on vocals absolutely crushing it:
