Glow In The Dark

so what happens is that i place jesus in our living room, and my grandma smiles and asks me if i don’t want to decorate my room with him instead. i ask her in return if she thinks my jesus figure is ugly (which he is), but she reassures me that this is not the case. however, a couple of days later jesus mysteriously disappears from our living room, and appear in my room instead

now, the real jesus christ might have been able to perform a miracle like this, but please remember that the jesus in our story is only a figure made out of wood. he can not move on his own, so i think we can safely say that my grandma is the prime suspect here

the first year i would often confront my grandma about this, but she would always make up an excuse and never straight up tell me she moved him because he’s so ugly it’s an embarrassment to the family

me:

“This is belonging”

We’re introduced to a group of earnest young men. they’re white, they’re black. they drink tea. they play practical jokes. they quote popular TV shows. they talk about sports. they face their fears. it’s loving and domestic and all too easy to overlook the guns and camo and helicopters blaring overhead.

make no mistake, these adverts are aimed at the young and disenfranchised. poor people, people of colour, people who have been bullied and abused by society and made to feel like they don’t belong anywhere. Join the army, they’re told, and you can have the love and acceptance you crave but have always been denied. Elsewhere, you might get called racial slurs. you might get called a pansy or a fairy, but not here. You belong with us.

For example: Islamophobia is rampant in the UK. here we have an advert of a Muslim soldier praying while his squadron, armed to the teeth, sits in silence. the message is clear - while the rest of society may despise you, here, you will be respected. this is belonging.

here’s one called ‘expressing my emotions’, featuring a white man in his 40s - practically the posterchild for the UK’s current mental health crisis. you don’t have to worry about bottling up your feelings in the army. after all, this is belonging.

here’s another one called ‘can I be gay in the army?’. we’re told: “I was really worried about whether I’d be accepted, but within days, I was more than confident in being who I was.” Clearly homophobia is a thing of the past in the army. don’t worry. this is belonging.

and it works. while the response to these adverts from an unfortunately vocal number of people is basically “fuck you, we’re racist and proud of it!” there are young people being taken in by this. I have met gay children, trans children who are determined to join the army because, after being rejected by their parents and peers, they’re now being told “here you will be accepted. here you will be loved.”

fuck that. don’t be groomed; don’t let the vulnerable and desperate people in your life be groomed. we need to fight the root causes of these problems in our society and stamp them out so that wielding a gun and cowering in some blown-out building in a country you helped destroy is no longer seen as some sort of salvation. fight racism. fight homophobia and transphobia. fight the stigmatisation of mental illness. fight the system that prioritises the rich and leaves the rest of us to rot.

Me: Oh, aye,