The Gay

OMG. These four songs are the highlights of the year. They are my Eurovision lifeblood, camp disco schlager music that just make me smile and then dance inanely. Even when they're actually shit. Joyous times.

Sweden/Sverige – "Popular" – Eric Saade

This sounds like a lot of Swedeish schlager-pop and good on it. Eric belts out some crackingly bad lines; the early rhyming of “impossible” with erm, “possible” is a big humdinger of a bleurgh, but he makes up for it with a series of Bieber-licioius mini-dance breaks. In truth, this is utterly ridiculous, but pretend that you’re a thirteen-year old girl in your bedroom and you’ll love it (so obviously I do)

Hungary/Magyarország – "What About My Dreams?" – Kati Wolf

Think “Hungarian Sarah Jessica Parker” and Kati is it. This starts as a power ballad that you hope becomes a “traditional” Eurovision stomper... and it does, though it momentary blip in the middle with far too much warbling, though this is redeemed at the end when Kylie’s “Disco Needs You” choir climbs on board. If you’ve had enough to drink and/or are in a club, this is the kind of song that will have jumping around pretending you’re in a spotlight with rain pouring on your face.

Malta – One Life – Glen Vella

If Glen isn’t gay then my ‘dar is way off and someone needs to tell him to smile less, stop flailing around and wear less neon. The music and lyrics are pure diva anthem, this is “fabulous”, but it ain’t a grower. (In case I’m not clear, it’s awful. Like, really B.A.D.)

Israel/יִשְׂרָאֵל‎‎/إِسْرَائِيل– "Ding Dong" – Dana International

S/he’s back! Ex-winner Dana belts out this gay club-friendly choon with the campest title this year. She also manages to sing in Hebrew without it sounding like a respiratory disease ward in winter, no small achievement. Having said that, it does a sound a bit Eurovision of 10 years ago, but that doesn’t stop it being fabulous.

Apathy

It's been a while hasn't it?

There's a good reason but something I'll leave to explain for another time.

It's 1am on a Sunday night and there really are better thinsg to do than tap away in my living room. But I was reading some old posts and it made me think a little about where I am (and I don't mean literally... I've already established where I physically am).

I used to be what I thought was a "considered part-time activist". I'm not the type to shout my beliefs from rooftops, but certain things really get to me, and I used to be a lot more involved in trying to change them.
I now find myself taking the easy road so often, reasoning that the effort required to change something is not worth it. I think I hate apathy more than anything in the world, so I find myself embarrassed to realise that I have become apathetic. The lack of blogs along is perhaps a sign of that... I think I felt there was no point in writing anything because what was it doing except taking up memory on a server somewhere?

I realise that I've been irritated by little things a lot but not really done anything about them. And this week, I challenged some racist "jokes" at work. I'll be honest and say that part of my upset/anger was because I had a personal relationship with the person in question, so maybe my motivation was not quite altruistic. Nevertheless, the experience has jolted me into remembering that standing up for things was something once very important and prominent in my life.

I've spent many years being teased for simple easy things like recycling or re-using shopping bags. Every housemate I've had has seen me rummaging through the bin to retrieve tin cans they've thrown out, or tut when they come back from ASDA with a zillion carrier bags.
There's photographic evidence of me running around University with a rainbow cape on my back. I've written in a student newspaper about religious tolerance. I rarely let people get away with using the word "gay" as an insulting term.

I think it's easy to think that one person can't make a difference, because actually one person can't affect that kind of change by themselves. But what I had started to forget until this week was that one person can remind others of important things, and in that way, perhaps change can be affected.

Is change important? I think so. Perhaps the hardest and first problem is getting other people to agree with that.