Day 634: Eurovision Winners

How do I feel now that Sweden has won the Eurovision Song Contest yet again? I feel probably the same as most people, that is to say, not a lot frankly.

How did I feel on Saturday night when I was at a Eurovision Song Contest party, wearing a costume to support my randomly allocated team (yaaaaay Georgia), watching the votes coming in and sitting on the edge of my seat when Russia was two twelve point votes ahead of Sweden? Well, considerably more engaged. And that's probably not because we had money riding on it, since Georgia had no chance when they used words like "oximated" in their song.

Google trend showing that people in England collectively googled "Oximated" because wtf?

A lot of people will tell you that the UK doesn't take the Eurovision Song Contest seriously and that they don't care. But I think these people are lying. All the Brits I've ever met can at least converse on a basic level about how shit the entrants are and they wouldn't be able to do that unless somehow, somewhere they had watched the damn thing. For the longest time we had a presenter called Terry Wogan who drawled ironically, sardonically and sarcastically all over proceedings in his Irish accent and most people tuned in just for him, Brits love a good piss take.

He was replaced by Graham Norton, funnily enough another Irish fella who does just as much micky-taking as his predecessor. I've stuck a little load of golden moments from Graham here in the blog, the video is worth watching most at 2:20 when Albania, er, contribute.

The Swedish commentators tell you a lot of factoids in a dry, disinteresting fashion. I will say this though, they may have tried to emulate Graham a little bit and instead of sounding funny and dry they just sounded like they're bitching and slagging off the contestants. If you type in "Eurovision funny" into youtube you get a lot of Graham. If you type "Eurovision rolig" into Swedish youtube you get....a standard list of Eurovision songs. Nuff said.

Everyone left the party feeling like it was really great that Sweden won, also drunk. We mused a bit about why Sweden won. Was it political? Is it because Sweden is viewed neutrally? Maybe it's simply because the song was poppy, likeable and had the best accompanying graphics. Also the singer was good looking which helps.

In fact yeah, I'm guessing that because the song was poppy and crafted in the most generic fashion possible (Swedes being the masters of this as demonstrated by their consistently writing a large number of the songs in the contest and even choreographing some others) it won the Jury vote. But it DIDN'T win over the public, Italy did, by a long way. So perhaps Europe isn't so into shitty, repetitive pop as you might think, and actually prefer shitty opera warbling instead?

Thx Wikipedia as usual

This table also handily shits on our drunken happiness that Russia was not as popular in Europe as Sweden, psshh yeah right. It helps if you have had a massive union of countries under your control at some point in the last hundred years. But not more than a hundred years otherwise they all hate you, right United Kingdom?

I realise you've now spent more time than you possibly bargained on reading an analysis of a song contest which has no bearing whatsoever on your life. But before you go I must point out this: the UK's number one choice was Lithuania's far-too-long onstage kiss and Poland's scraping-the-barrel-sympathy-vote wheelchair lady wearing a giant sail. Sweden, meanwhile, took their votes very seriously and nominated arguably the three most talented artists into their top ranks. Muse on that if you will, or you know, don't. It's only Eurovision after all!

Day 633: INGEN REKLAM TACK

I was just sitting in the flat minding my own business when I heard an almighty KA-THUNK at the door. It was too early to be post and as anyone who has read my post about post would know, heavy post is not delivered directly anyway. "What the F was that?" I wondered aloud. I opened up the inner door and found THIS MIGHTY PILE OF BULLPLOP:

I discovered, much like my neighbours who had the same experience, that upon having all of our front doors upgraded to security doors last week we had lost all of our "INGEN REKLAM TACK" stickers. In England when you stick a little sticker that says "No Junk Mail" on your letterbox it will result in one of two things, either a) nothing. The junk mail will come anyway or b) The delivery agent will see your sticker as a challenge and post 4 times as much shite as they did before.

Apparently I had not appreciated the power of the INGEN REKLAM sticker. A healthy bundle of deals is slammed onto my doormat twice a week now. The residents of the building are quite worried about the loss of the stickers and one of the points for discussion at our annual residents meeting is the printing out of new stickers for everyone. Meanwhile I imagine the delivery agents are having a corresponding meeting about how they need to MAXIMISE THE TIME NOW! SEIZE THE MOMENT! that our defences are down and they can ply us with as much advertising as they can before the shields go back up.

Does this mean that there is some guy who has come and tried to deliver advertising every week for years and years and each time been disappointed that the stickers were still there? And suddenly there was a day when the doors started to get changed and he found that the stickers were gone and Christmas had come early? Or is there a cartel between the door changing company and the advertisers, so that they get information about the stickers not being up any more and can get straight down to business at the earliest opportunity?

This country is so weird. I just don't understand shit like this.

Day 623: RELEASE THE KRAKE-er I mean- COWS

Kosläpp is a combination of two words; "ko" which means cow and "släpp" which means release, free, let loose. I recently had a Swedish friend argue that "cow release" sounds too violent to accurately convey the meaning of the word, I meanwhile believe that it sounds far too sexual. In any case, the releasing of the cows is in fact not a giant, drawn-out cow wank, but the letting out of cows after a long winter in their sheds.

Why is this even a thing? Well, Swedish cows spend a long time indoors on account of the fact that nobody wants frozen milk with their breakfast. Also, contrary to my childhood wishes, cold cows do not produce mini-milk. When they finally get to go outside again in the spring they go a bit nuts. There are plenty of videos on YouTube to prove this, here's just a short one to get you started:

I organised a last minute event to go and see some cows being released (teehee) and expected to have nobody come (and also to be laughed at for waking up early on a Sunday morning to look at cows like I was attending a bovine church.) Instead, 18 fellow bovine believers followed along, including 5 Swedes who were equally new to the whole thing as the rest of us immigrants. According to my milk, the kosläpp phenomenon is really taking off, with record numbers attending (You can learn a lot of Swedish by reading the milk cartons and then you can start sentences with "according to my milk").

We took a picnic spot on a mound to one side of the paddock and waited for the cows. There was a little farmers market where you could get coffee, tea, milk from the farm and hamburgers - presumably from all the dead man-cows, since all the milking cows are ladies. Aww cute cows, now let's roast their manfolk and let them smell the dead (and drink all the milk they never get to feed their non-existent babies). American cowboy-themed music played over some speakers and some fake cowboys wondered around twirling their lassos impotently.

With just a few minutes to go before the cows came out the farm suddenly became absolutely packed with children shouting "MUUU. MUUUU. MUUUU" (Swedish for Moo) and people pointing iPhones and DSLR cameras at the paddock. There was a half-hearted countdown which went something like:

"20...19............................*long silence*......................................9.................*long silence*........................3..2..1!"

for some reason, and then...yay cows! They ran about, jumped with swinging udders, rubbed their faces on the grass, headbutted each other and congregated right in the entranceway so other cows couldn't get out, a bit like Stockholmers on public transport. After 5 minutes a short-lived hail shower started and all the cows tried to go back inside again, but a man with outstretched arms managed to convince them that he was big enough to stop the whole herd and so they all went out into the field.

Now I know I'm putting a cynical slant on this, but the cows were actually damn cute. If you've ever bothered to look at a field of cows you'll know they don't do much. They eat grass and amble. This kosläpp was the most I've ever seen a cow move. I'll leave you with this pic of some cows moo-ving. YES, IT WAS A MOO PUN.