Baroque and Rolls

As I’m sure most of my mutuals are aware by now, my book ‘The President’s Son’ was released today on ebook for $3.99 at JMS Books.

Thank you to everyone who encouraged me & supported me through my journey (and to those of you who pre-ordered - I love you!) & I hope people will consider buying it if they have some spare change ❤️

The UK is an absolute cluster fuck at the moment, people are suffering and all our gov wants to do atm is launch a smear campaign against workers and individuals who advocate for them (Mick Lynch) also teach the kids maths.

The audacity of implying that nurses and paramedics are endangering lives when they strike, when the actual endangerment is the calculated destruction of the NHS. The implications that nurses don't work hard enough when they work ridiculously tiring shifts. That if they worked some more they wouldn't need food banks.

That is simply one example of how workers are being mistreated and exploited by this government. And its an important one, we as a country were united by our health service, one we all could be proud of and rally behind.

Our workers desvere so much better, striking is the solution and it's not a decision taken lightly by workers. They need protect.

If you are uk based I'm asking that you sign this petition, demonstrate some solidarity.

If you deny protests, outlaw strikes then that only leaves fucking riots

Nah hold on, I think I already RBed this version, but we bringing it back:

"If you deny protests, and outlaw strikes, then that only leaves fucking riots."

Remember, when they take away the right to protest peacefully, people stop being peaceful about it.

*casually draping my arm around your shoulder and gesturing with my other hand*

Now hear me out, pal, what if– what if I think ALL culture, art and writing are important and worth preserving, regardless of who wrote it and whether or not they’re deemed marketable by the capitalist institution?

If you give this woman money, it will go to transphobic causes. If you give this woman a platform, she will use it to boost transphobic causes. This isn't a "well nobody's perfect" or "well x other creator also did something bad once" situation, this is an inordinate amount of influence for a creator to have, and supporting her by word or wallet actively hurts trans people.

Do you ever eat popcorn out of the palm of your own hand with such ardent desperation that you feel like both a wild horse and the gentle schoolgirl feeding it treats to gain its affection 

Hey there guys. It’s me, in 2022, commenting on this post from 2016. There’s been a lot of people on this site lately being like “oooh no don’t make viral uwu I’m so pathetic, little, and defenseless and my poor notifications can’t handle 10k reblogs” well first of all ALL of us are pathetic, little, and defenseless and secondly none of our notifications can handle 10k reblogs and thirdly I’m not a coward and I think this should have a million notes. Not because of its own merit as a post, I just think it’d be funny if when I turn 30 this year and I reflect on the greatest accomplishments of my life thus far, I have to at least consider putting “famous tumblr popcorn post” on the list

Hi there guys. It’s me, again. It is December 8, and my birthday is December 16 (and fyi I didn’t even get my birthday off from work which I’m being so brave about, just saying) and I want you all to gather round and listen to my pitch. I could tell you that I really want this, which I do but I also think it’d be really funny to NOT reach my goal and to start my thirties on the note of failure but like a really stupid kind that doesn’t matter and is very funny. I could tell you that getting this post to a million notes will benefit you in some way, but it absolutely won’t, except in the general tumblr sense of getting to participate in committing to the crowdsourced bit, which is actually the truest joy this webbed site can offer. I could even be very earnest and say something how for better or worse tumblr had a hand in defining my twenties, and even when I’ve been infuriated with parts of it, it is genuinely the only social media that doesn’t make me feel like shit and isn’t impossible for me to use, and at very hard times in my life the weird community has been a comfort, but that’s TOO EARNEST. Knock that shit off.

Instead, I offer you this: if you reblog this post with tags, like anything at all in the tags, multiple reblogs won’t be collated together meaning that you can make my notifications truly unusable. Think about that you fuckin jackals. Can you resist the urge to be both helpful and annoying as shit

YOU hates terfs

rb if u hates terfs

are you fucking joking

I'm sorry I can't read that book you recommended. Yeah, no, it's just that beginning something new that I don't know if I'm in the mood for is to me what plastic bags are to horses and if you play 30 seconds of an unfamiliar audiobook I WILL spook and break two of my legs.

someone in the UK threw eggs at Charles and was arrested and has been banned from openly carrying eggs in public and has since been sent death threats but their statement on the matter was so fucking good

(X)

Hey OP? What the FUCK does this mean?

decay exists as an extant form of life

That’s a terrifying answer, have a nice day

when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c

#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line

it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired

THAT IS EXACTLY WHY

I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though It all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

um woah

I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??

In Yiddish

In Hebrew

In Ladino

Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.

You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.

None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace - you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.

Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise - hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.

Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.

(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)

holy shit. woah.

This.

That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.

A small addition: This song is such a deeply resonant Jewish touchstone that every synagogue I have ever attended uses its melody in services from time to time.

It is so important, so powerful, so spiritually resonant that we use it in prayer.

If memory serves me, the cover we most often hear came about specifically because Jeff Buckley was like “man, this song is badass but I don’t know that I can do its concepts justice” and Leonard Cohen was like “you need different verses? Here, I wrote over eighty of the fuckers, pick what you want to use” and so Buckley put together verses that spoke to him as a non-Jew about sexuality and this idea of a failed relationship.

Which wouldn’t be an issue if Christians didn’t then take his adaptation (done, I emphasize again, with Cohen’s blessing) and rewrite it in ways THAT DO NOT COME FROM THE ORIGINAL VERSES.

Yes, this.

Considering how passionately erotic many of the lyrics are (and this is deeply aligned with Jewish tradition), I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at this being turned into some tepid meditation about faith.

they should invent a day that does not exhaust me and suck the life out of me

[id: art of pat butcher, robin and kitty from bbc ghosts looking up at the night sky. they are shown from the shoulders up and are shown staring up at the night sky so that the viewer appears to be standing behind them. robin points up at the brightest star in the sky, which represents mary. a halo of clouds surrounds the star. /end id]

There’s a twinkle 

absolutely could sell the daylights out of something like that, this feels brilliant to me

bbc ghosts + tumblr text posts [5/?]