gbsngrl

[gbsngrl]

i recently revisited one of my favourite (and dearly cherished) records of all time - ray of light, by the lovely madonna.

it’s odd, to be honest, how an album that’s over twenty years of age could still be immensely relevant in today’s day and age, especially considering how much our ways of thinking and communicating with each other has changed over the years - and continues to change, even during the time i’ve spent writing this. 

one track from the aforementioned album that always makes me question everything i’ve ever learnt and known is nothing really matters, a nearly five minute house/dance pop infusion during which madonna dissects and dwells into themes of selfishness, human companionship, and life itself. 

‘’nothing really matters love is all we need everything i give you all comes back to me,’’ 

the chanteuse coos - and as cliché as it is to say it (thank you, carrie bradshaw), i can’t help but to wonder - does anything really matter? is everything we’ve grown during our reign of earth really just a small piece of lint stuck on the lens of the greater scheme the world has?

it’s a phrase i, alongside everyone nowadays, obviously repeat like a mantra - like a blanket is to a newborn, it’s something we shroud ourselves in to seek comfort in from the threats of the outside world. when times get rough, it’s easier to just roar ‘’fuck everything’’ and let it run amok than bear the white-hot scorch of humanity.

over my relatively short years though, i’ve started to realize the ‘’true’’ (who’s to say what’s true, and what’s not) meaning of the phrase - nothing really does matter! and no, by saying that, i’m not offering a hand to join me in a revelry of nihilism, but to rather take a moment to breathe. stop and smell the flowers, if you will!

think of yourself as an ant colony, with every single moment of your life being one of those small, pesky (but oddly charming) six-legged creatures building the nest up, day by day. 

there’s three types of ants - there’s the queens, meant for establishing the colony and laying eggs, then there’s the workers whomst are responsible for maintaining the nest and building it further, foraging - and most importantly, caring for the young. then at last, there’s the ‘’males’’ (as google tells me - is this the future the woke left want?), meant for mating with the queen, dying shortly afterwards. 

the way i see it, the meaningless, run of the mill, mundane moments are the workers, providing filler and clearing the path for important, character-building moments to be able to pass through, with the queens and the ‘’males’’ (seriously? these guys are just called males?) representing the ups and downs of life. 

in a way, you’ve got to endure the shittier parts of your life to be able to birth positive ones - it’s really just about not getting stuck in the shadows, but taking those few steps around for you to be able to bask in the light.

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and they said romance was dead

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Thank you to everyone who got me to 100 likes!

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Tales That Witness Madness (1973)

[gbsngrl]

well, it’s that time of the year again - pride is here and i can’t help but to feel both, a sense of dread and an exciting thrill (though one plagued by naiveté towards the current state of the world). it’s the one month of the year where me, alongside countless of others are finally entitled to basic human decency, or atleast once it was. 

like almost everything nowadays that the majority of people like to claim, pride ‘’isn’t political’’, - but in my honest opinion, it’s even more political now than it’s ever been before. we’re living in a day and age where everything is linked to politics, whether you like it or not - from as menial, everyday things such as the burger you choose to indulge yourself in during your forty-five minutes of a break, into whoever you choose to voice your support to during elections. 

pride, by itself, has always been about politics - it’s about the freedom of choice, about the freedom to choose to be comfortable in your own skin, about basic human rights. which, in fact, are politicized. 

and not everybody has those rights. certainly not the people in gaza. 

you see, while i am happy of pride and all the wonderful celebrations that come with it, i am, also in fact, quite terrified of what’s going to happen afterwards - and what’s to happen during it. and i can’t (and neither should you) sit by idly, as if everything’s fine while the world as i’ve come to know it is burning down. 

as of writing this, israel is already gearing up to weaponize the month of june to gaywash (certainly not the correct wording!) their atrocities of war - from holding up rainbow flags in front of contested territory for the purpose of propaganda to spreading pure hate and lies of how the palestinian people feel of lgbtq+ people. 

yes, it’s true - palestinians don’t care of lgbtq+ people - but here’s the thing;

neither would you if your life was on the line. you wouldn’t care whether or not gay people are allowed to express love towards eachother publicly if you lacked basic human necessities such as food and water. which yes, israel has been ‘’delivering’’ to gaza as humanitarian support - but they failed to mention the fact that they’ve also consciously starved the gazan people by blocking lorries sent by the u.n - not to mention that there’s been multiple instances of the state of israel itself sending humanitarian support to gaza, with the exception of providing more body bags rather than food.

and the acts of war aren’t just limited to that of what’s happening on the west bank - as is only natural. it wasn’t too long ago where israel was still permitted to participate in arguably the biggest gay event in the world, eurovision. their participant, yuval raphael was a survivor of the october 7th attacks at the nova sukkot gathering -music festival. could be a coincidence, surely there’s a good chance of it being simply that (considering that israel, like many other participants of said contest choose their artists for it via a contest of it’s own), but i personally hold that highly unlikely. 

because there’s nothing more eyewatering than a conventionally attractive, white-passing woman singing of a better tomorrow, while sneakily slipping in the fact that she’s had to hide under dead bodies for eight hours. 

you see, there’s a reason almost every single piece of propaganda more often than not features a person whom you would think is white at first glance - even better if it’s a woman, right? because that’s far more easier to relate to than a brown person, considering the majority of the world being white. as for women, we still to this day and age see women as these almost mythological creatures who can do no harm - they’re our mothers, sisters, wives and such. so if i told you that yuval raphael, the israeli participant of eurovision this year was a border guard for the idf, you’d probably be a little bit gobsmacked. 

surely, she could’ve been a victim of the october 7th attacks, in no way or form am i allowed to deny anyone’s pain and suffering caused by those attacks - but here’s the thing; the festival was held roughly three kilometers away from gaza. it was moved from it’s original location in southern israel only two days before it was to begin - for reasons that are still, to this date unknown. 

a festival that was promoting ‘’peace and love’’ was held within walking distance of the world’s biggest concentration camp. 

gasp.

i wonder why. 

could it be because the israeli government doesn’t actually care of it’s peoples lives (nor the palestinians)? could it be because this was a deliberate plan the wake up a sleeping dragon, to intentionally antagonize the palestinian people even further by reveling in front of them, indulging yourself in panem et circenses? it was a deliberate choice to hold the festival where it was held - one that caused many young people to die. both of the hamas’s arms, but the israeli as well. little did you know that the idf also opened fire in retaliation at the crowds.

yes, at the crowds. no, not towards the enemy.

you see, members of the idf (which, by the way is compulsory to join by the israeli law. the punishment for refusal is imprisonment, which by itself should tell you how the israeli government conditions and cultivates it’s citizens to be active cogs in the machinery of genocide) are trained to simply believe that a dead soldier is better than a captured soldier - via the hannibal directive (which essentially means that you’re better off using every single ounce of force you’ve got within an arms reach to avoid members of the militia being taken into hostage, even if that means killing them), which the idf does deny being responsible of using, as it does to accusations of genocide as well. then again, the idf has been reported publicly to have instructed it’s soldiers to kill themselves. 

i can’t feel but to feel sorry for the israeli people, as controversial and idiotic of a sentence it is to say in this current day and age - no, i’m not apologizing for the atrocities they’ve committed, but rather i’m taking pity upon just how deeply they’re propagandasized, just how deeply they’ve been brainwashed into being active cogs in the machinery of a planned genocide, and for how they’re so blissfully unaware of what they’re committing themselves into, until it’s too late.

so when you’re out there celebrating pride, you should remember those whose invitations to the party were blocked off and revoked by the idf - the palestinian people can’t afford to forget what’s going on around them, and you certainly can’t either.

i’m not saying that it’s morally wrong to celebrate pride or to being able find happiness in the current state of the world (which i do, in fact encourage you to atleast try to do. everyone needs a drink or two every now and then!), but rather i’m trying to say to be wary of what’s going on in the same time - to not be sally bowler from cabaret, if you will. (sally is a character in cabaret who willfully ignores the alarming rise of the nazi party & fascism in germany in exchange of nihilistic parties in 1940s weimar-era germany, basically. an amazing musical and a great movie which i do cherish deeply and do encourage you to see as it’s become increasingly more and more culturally & socially timely, plus it’s got liza minnelli in it, in the movie atleast.) 

[gbsngrl]

i'm moving to helsinki in (less than) a month and honestly i’m scared yet still more excited & passionate of this than i’ve ever been of anything

it feels honestly insane just

uprooting everything i’ve been building up & carefully (and equally just as carelessly) cultivated over the past five years or so, then just leaping off into nothingness with not even a hint of what’s going to happen

but i guess it’s really just one of those things you’ve got to do while you’ve still got the time for it, isn’t it? and now that i’m in my twenties (as undeniably awkward and early 2010s lena dunham-esque it is to say it), it’s really just the correct time to strike the iron while it’s still hot and not brittle

overall i’ve spent my whole teenage years just daydreaming away, really wanting all of these wonderful things to the point where it’s pretty much become an ache without actually giving it split-second of a genuine thought that maybe, just maybe they aren’t just delusions of grandeur but rather genuine possibilities (which i partially blame lorde & her 2013 album pure heroine for.)

and it feels insane how much a person can change in just a year, how it really just takes a few moments to shed your skin away and grow it back again, rinse and repeat

though still i’m probably always going to be the too-cool-for-kallio, uninterested in everything too popular, faux-ginger riddled with copious amounts of naivete and anxiety about the most ridiculous things ever (like anyone would actually care that you’ve got one rip in your stockings too much. and i’m not kidding i used to not go out if i had more than 30 holes in my already entirely eviscerated stockings), i do feel like i’ve finally found my own place in my own skin

though i’m praying that this is like, actual genuine change and not just an another manic episode. either way i’ll live through this and come back renewed

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Chloë Sevigny behind the scenes of Gummo (1997) 

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Go Girls Go! | First Dyke March in Washington DC, 1993

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lets go no contact with mama

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Nintendogs Chihuahua & Friends (2005)

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neopets forum posts i reference all the time but nobody gets

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