The Brutality Is Incomparable. I Don’t Want To Even Acknowledge The Details Just Released. This Was

Please please please I know we all love Friends and Chandler was our favourite character and Matthew always put a smile on our faces and that’s all amazing but can we please please please talk about this:

“I've had a lot of ups and downs in my life. I'm still working through it personally, but the best thing about me is that if an alcoholic or drug addict comes up to me and says, 'Will you help me?' I will always say, 'Yes, I know how to do that. I will do that for you, even if I can't always do it for myself! So I do that, whenever I can. In groups, or one on one.

And I created the Perry House in Malibu, a sober-living facility for men. I also wrote my play The End of Longing, which is a personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk. I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me.

When I die, I know people will talk about Friends, Friends, Friends. And I'm glad of that, happy l've done some solid work as an actor, as well as given people multiple chances to make fun of my struggles on the world wide web...

but when I die, as far as my so-called accomplishments go, it would be nice if Friends were listed far behind the things I did to try to help other people.

I know it won't happen, but it would be nice.”

- Matthew Langford Perry

(August 19, 1969 - October 28, 2023)

Gene Tierney reading a script on the set of Sundown (1941)

— mirrorball, taylor alison swift (2020)

i don't want to be making this post, i know none of you probably want to have to read this post, but i feel like i need to embed it into the establishing of this blog, and why, despite everything i built and created and shared there, the sense of community i thought i had, my previous one became unsafe.

if you are here, i am making the baseline assumption that you understand that the slaughter and torture of innocent people is wrong, will always be wrong, should never be celebrated, justified, or upheld as righteous, no matter who they are or where they come from or who's murdering them. i assume, even if you don't understand an entire complex situation or thousands of years of history (something you can do some cursory research on if you feel so inclined and would rather not spread harmful misinformation and outright bigotry about anyone), that you would not suggest that infant children deserve to be eradicated because of the country they were born, that women being brutalized don't deserve it because of actions committed by their government (a government many of them oppose). i assume that you understand that a terrorist organization that has written in their charter that their entire goal is the elimination of a specific people - regionally and worldwide - and causes active oppression, harm, and death to their own innocent people because they are more hellbent on killing and destruction than advocating for anyone (much less human rights), is not a bastion of freedom and dignity, and that conflating them is not only detrimental, but racist. i assume you understand that a right wing authoritarian government does not mean its people deserve to be massacred in their homes.

i assume you would not advocate for more violent death under the guise of progressive values. i assume you would not think that myself and half of my own family, unconnected to this by anything but shared ancient ethnicity, deserve to be exterminated. i assume you would find that inhumane and distressing to suggest.

i assume. but this is no longer something i know.

there have been people - mutuals, friends, i communicated with - who, over the past two weeks proved that none of this holds true for them. there were people instantly celebrating these deaths (that, in fact, was how the news was broken to me - by mutuals' jubilation over mass murder on my dash). there were people immediately justifying that, calling it necessary, saying that even the brutal assault of women "just has to happen" (or didn't happen at all, this from proclaimed "believe women" feminists). there were people spreading openly genocidal rhetoric about how a specific group of people "deserves to be erased" or "i hope they're wiped off the earth," using slurs, praising or mocking or denying the holocaust, and this website's terms of service wouldn't classify that as hate speech worthy of termination. there were people intentionally sharing debunked infographics or misinformed headlines which were later corrected (but never reading the corrections) or outright lies that come directly from n*zi propaganda (wish i was kidding) to call for more violence. vive la revolucion! was used to defend people chanting things like "gas the jews!" right in front of me, every day. there were mutuals reblogging the most vile, hateful people on this website without vetting what they were saying at all (i have a list of them, if you ever need it. did you know, for example, that her*tageposts is a n*zi sympathizer and north korean regime defender under the guise of being "communist"? yeah). the dehumanization and bloodlust and hatred on my dash was unlike anything i've ever experienced online, and what's WORSE, what made it such an agonizing betrayal, was it came from people i thought were allies, people i'd stand beside, who i thought understood and cared about human rights enough to not lust for murder and harm and destruction. i was, it turns out, wrong. all they needed was a reason.

on the surface, i know i am very disconnected from the horrors of this - i have no family in the region, by strict definition this is only half of my heritage. though as my dad would say, whether to g-d or the n*zis and their ilk, "half" doesn't matter. you are who you are, enfolded all the same. i have always loved and been proud of that. even when i was harassed and bullied and threatened and assaulted in my first two years of high-school about it. i always thought it was a beautiful thing to be a part of. i never felt terror around it until these past two weeks. i was consciously aware, but never felt it viscerally in my bones and like a weight on my chest, that people would want me dead. or if they did, they would be condemned as terrible, as fringe extremists, as far-right agitators. except that's not where this was coming from - this was coming from my own ideological side. this was coming from "friends." i don't think i can describe what that betrayal feels like or how profoundly wounding it is. people far more affected than i, far more connected and impacted, reached out to me in their hurt and anxiety, afraid of their mutuals, afraid of saying anything even remotely empathetic out loud, afraid of being attacked.

i have had tough things going on in my direct daily life for the past two weeks, but because of all this, i've barely slept. i can't remember the last day i got more than a few hours. i haven't cried this much since angel died. i have never felt such a pervasive sense of fear and despair. i never had panic attacks simply logging into my blog.

so again i say, if you're here, i assume you wouldn't participate in this. i assume you'd understand why it's dangerous and painful. i assume if i expressed grief or concern over the horrific loss of any human life, you wouldn't tell me i deserved it too. but this is not a certainty. this is not something i'll ever again know for sure. and if you're not, if you disagree with me that quantifying innocent lives' value *anywhere* with, "yes, but-," you don't have to stay, and i won't hold it against you. and if you're here, i love you, and i can only hope you're a safe person for me to interact with and love. but thats's what these past days and this rhetoric has done to me. and it's going to take me some time to not feel like the walls are closing in and to heal from that, though i know i won't forget it. so i hope you understand if i'm a little sad and a little skittish. i hope you don't mind that my most basic principle is that living beings of all kinds have sanctity, and no one deserves to die.

my mom is very ill - she had to go in for a CT scan this week (and next week she has to have another one, with contrast). she's been struggling with a combination of some severe symptoms, and she put off dealing with this because of what happened first with her arm in october, but she waited longer than she should have. they found that not only does she have kidney stones and a progression of her CKD, but she also has a mass on her liver and another mass, with atrophy, on her left kidney. they're not sure what they are. they could be cysts and they could be cancer. her kidneys have been bad for years, but it's escalated from bad to unbearable pain, so we knew something else had to be going on. she actually did go in for help in august (she was starting to feel really sick in may), but they couldn't even get her into a urologist until november, so that didn't help with the time of it all worsening.

her arm still isn't even healed. at least it's less painful though. if the results of these scans come back with a severe diagnosis, she doesn't want to treat it. we can't afford to regardless. I am trying not to process what that will mean for us yet.

we've also been dealing with the upstairs flooding our hall bathroom (which is where the shower is) regularly for the past three weeks, the HOA sent out a plumber not quite two weeks ago, but whatever he did didn't fix it because it happened again. we have to set up a hose connected to the pipe and a plastic tub to prevent water from going everywhere. everything is just ongoing hell atm.

I also don't think I can ever explain or articulate the sheer level of trauma the past two months have caused emotionally and mentally due to global impact, and for me specifically due to my circumstances, the internet.

I read a piece where the author said, "I’ll be honest. I feel like shattered glass. I don’t know how to collect the pieces of me that have broken in this time...I don’t know how much more I personally can withstand losing and I’m finding these to be the hardest days of my life... I want to go back, but I can’t go back. You can’t go back. You can’t have what once was. You have to accept reality, as unforgiving and as stark as it may be. If only we could all go back. Afraid not...What was warm turns bitterly cold. What was fruitful dries up. What was safe becomes treacherous. What was clear becomes murky. What was love becomes strange. What was true becomes uncertain. And it is in everything and everywhere and everyone, and it is too much to hold at once without losing the one thing none of us can afford to lose - our minds...I’m praying that we can stay sane and somehow find purpose, solace, compassion, dare I say love, in a world that is framing us as crazy while we’re hunted down every second of our lives."

you don't understand. there's a post describing the loss of community as "cataclysmic." it isn't hyperbolic, it's accurate. (there's another post which someone tagged: "#i know the internet has ruined the word gaslighting #but that’s exactly what it is #goyim have gaslit jews on such a massive scale i literally cannot trust my perception of reality #prev>>> #i am constantly anxious and terrified #it’s everywhere from everyone both irl and online #i feel like i’m sleep walking into a gas chamber #and idk what to do about it other than scream into the void #like i honestly cannot describe my level of terror #but also i keep doubting myself thinking i’m being alarmist or overreacting." to put it plainly, our fear is ceaseless, and then we're actively shamed and, yes, gaslit over it. read this one too.) there is not a Jewish person I have seen in existence who is unaffected by this. I've followed so many Jewish creators on IG just to give quiet support because they are barraged daily by the most vile things, and hardly anyone from the outside is checking in on them, asking if they need anything. it can't be our 0.2% against the world, despite how beautiful that solidarity has become. no one is asking if we're okay (we're not). even if we're fortunate enough that our lives are untouched directly. our world has changed.

I cannot come onto this website without feeling a sense of panic, I've lost count of how many mutuals I blocked on my former main, and there are more still I need to clear out that I haven't had the ability to deal with. a couple of weeks ago - and honestly, this was...the last straw and a real breaking point for me - this website saw fit to desecrate the shema. I already wrote about its presence in my life, and then I had to see this website frequented by people who would DARE to violate its meaning. we are not only being inundated with hatred and vitriol, we are not only being gaslit, we are not only being accused and shamed because of our ethnicity, culture, and religion, we are watching people lie and try to rewrite foundational, real history and truths and core tenets. you dirty and twist our terms, our meanings, our sacred things without hesitation. I'd BEG for everyone to fucking learn something, but I know learning would make absolutely zero difference because education doesn't matter ("it depends on the context," after all, even if you're calling for our deaths and destruction), understanding doesn't matter, this is driven by hatred, feeding off of it, finding any way to cause harm. the level of evil being perpetuated is beyond comprehension. this website will never be the safe or happy place it was for me again. perhaps that's my own fault, that I was naive enough to believe it was that to begin with. (edit: this is very apt and timely and unsettling.)

I don't think you can understand the feeling of losing faith in the very fabric of things you believed in societally and socially, the institutions, the organizations, the ideals, the politics, the spaces, the human beings. it goes from a macro level of principles to the micro of "friends" you personally interacted with. I have not known how to withstand this level of soul shattering heartache, of the trust being decimated this wholly. in the midst of this, to bear witness, I have read accounts of abhorrent atrocities that shouldn't even be fathomable in the mind, meanwhile keeping tabs on the violent incidents and rhetoric happening daily. I don't know how to disengage from it because awareness feels like a shield. I don't know how to tell you the way it's changed me as a person. I am not who I was mere months ago.

the only solace I find is that this has given me a stronger sense of identity and pride, a strength in responding to things that would doubtless have driven me to tears before, and a newfound centered self-respect.

this particular blog was created out of an anxiety response, a need to flee. and it's not been comforting like I needed it to be. so, back at the end of november, I decided to take my url - which I loved very, very dearly and wanted to keep safe - and save it elsewhere, for a time after I'd rested, when I wasn't as traumatized, as angry and grief-stricken, as panicked. it didn't seem fair to have it here, I wanted it guarded. I took my icon, my header, my pretty pink color scheme, and copied it all over. it was all fine. I logged out. and for some unknown reason, some glitch, some mean little twist of fate, tumblr terminated the account. absolutely no idea why, maybe there was a problem with the e-mail address I'd just set up for it? I contacted support, but of course this site is running on fumes, thus I have heard nothing. my url got evaporated along with it, and I can't reclaim it because it says it's "taken" even though it doesn't exist. I don't know. I don't know if this was a sign from the universe telling me not to bother. that it isn't worth it. there's no real fandom engagement I want to participate in anymore (I'll be honest, I currently can't stomach certain people/artists/things that once were favorites, for various reasons, in ways which may not be recoverable, and there were aspects of fandom already difficult to navigate, but there's an added horror now: I can't engage with anyone, can't reblog a post or follow someone, without feeling the need to comb through their blog to see if they're safe or not. if they'd cheer or ignore or deny harm done to me or not. it's a continual buzz of anxiety, no one is okay to interact with at face value). I was going to lean into pretty aesthetics, classic films and music, my vintage loves (as those never let me down) in a new place, for peace of mind, serenity, escape. alas. if I can't get my url restored, trying again probably won't happen.

so anyway. that's it. I am tired. spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, to the bone and heart, after my entire adult life spent in the throes of chronic fatigue and life-destroying illness, small stresses and strange catastrophes and sorrowful losses, times when I thought I'd die from it all, I never knew I could be quite this exhausted.

we're nearing the end of Chanukah. do you know what Chanukah actually celebrates? do you know about the battle, about the desecration and rededication of the temple? it's about survival and defiance. it's about light that should not exist still miraculously persisting to burn. it was always considered a "minor" holiday, only made more prominent by assimilation and its winter date. someone I've come to admire greatly said in a live, as he lit the candles, that we can't think of it as minor anymore, that is, in fact, essential. because the miracle that happened there, in Jerusalem, 2000 years ago, now is the miracle of the fact that we still exist and live and illuminate such depths of darkness with our ever-present light. viktor frankl wrote: what is to give light must endure burning. I've thought of that often lately. we will outlive them. maybe I won't, but we, as a people, will. "the miracle, of course, was not that the oil for the sacred light - in a little cruse - lasted as long as they say, but that the courage...lasted to this day: let that nourish my flickering spirit."

I don't know what the next step is. can all the words in all the books help me to face what lies ahead?

Will you take nothing from Sleepy Hollow that was worth the coming here?

CHRISTINA RICCI as KATRINA VAN TASSEL in SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999) dir. Tim Burton

What would you do with an autumn breeze? 🍂🎐🍂

Marilyn Monroe at the Plaza Hotel Fountain in New York City (1957). Photo by Sam Shaw.

Motherfuckers will say "Autumn is my COMFORT TIME it's the best season" and then proceed to have the worst month of October of their whole entire lives