Blogging 2.0

Apologies for the recent hiatus.  A mixture of being out of town, busy and not very well - nothing major, just a cold, but certainly enough to slow me down.  Not sure to whom I'm apologising mind you, maybe only me!  I'm getting semi-regular hits, but I have no idea whether anyone's actually reading the things I'm writing or just happening upon the site on account of some sort of random keyword search. Still, like I said, I'm doing this because I wanted to do more writing, it's half of my two New Year's resolutions, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep going.  

Another reason for the delay in posting anything is that I've been struggling a little for motivation.  My concern when I started everything off again was that I would have a brief flurry of ideas and a brief flurry of posts before I got bored and stopped, just like the time before, and the time before that.  The thing is that I'm essentially writing opinion posts, essays of perhaps a thousand words or more, and they take effort!  Most blogs that I visit don't work that way, and in fact the one I visit most regularly isn't really a blog as much as a community.  Nothing much is written post-wise, but the comments go on for miles and miles, as the discussions and arguments that are had by its huge readership have actually transcended any actual prose from its author.  I'm not looking for any sort of massive readership, I'm looking to find my voice, really - and I know that I always feel better about ideas if I can verbalise them or write them down.  Writing them down is always the best way though, particularly if you're happy with what you've written, as you can re-visit everything later on.  As far as finding a voice is concerned, I'm also scratching an itch for my mother in a way - she's convinced that I have it in me to be a writer, and I said to her at the end of the year that I'd fire up the blog again and see what came of it.  I've lasted six weeks or so so far and there's been some reasonable output I suppose, although nothing has REALLY grabbed me - I think I've made some reasonable points here and there, but I haven't really hit as many nails on the head as I thought I might.  

We'll see how it goes, though - I don't want my writing resultion to be the equivalent of someone else's getting fit resolution - one that usually lasts a month or so before they get bored or don't see the results they were hoping for.  I definitely have some ideas for pieces bubbling away, so hopefully there'll be a lot more to come.  

Carrot  

Karnevel in Köln

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Karneval, one of the pillars of the the cultural calendar in Germany.  Despite the fact that I live much closer to Düsseldorf than I do Cologne, I chose the latter of the two places for my visit, as I have friends there.  Of all the places that celebrate Karneval in Germany and The Netherlands, Cologne is really supposed to be where it's at, anyway - bigger, wilder, boozier, more fun, etc etc etc.  

I didn't really know what Karneval was for quite awhile, even when I lived in The Netherlands.  I knew what it was in Brazil, and obviously Venice as well, but I had no idea that it even existed in Northern Europe.  Essentially, it's exactly the same thing there as it is everywhere else, though - a traditional street festival which marks the entry into Lent, when everyone gets to let their hair down and have fun before the 40 days of fasting, observance and general boredom before you stuff your face with chocolate over Easter.  Hurrah!  Bring it on.    

I wasn't quite sure what to expect though, as I had heard that Karneval could be a bit .... unpredictable.  Having already been to Oktoberfest in Munich and New Year's Eve in Berlin, It seemed to me that for a quite conservative, socially and culturally observant place such as Germany, a fair few of the big "moments" on the calendar can get a bit crazy - sometimes in a good way, sometimes bad.  

Silvester (New Year's Eve) in Berlin was unfortunately the latter, and it shocked me beyond measure.  It was an absolute war zone.  It seemed that the entire place just descended into absolute bedlam in the worst possible way with people throwing bottles around, letting off fireworks everywhere, shooting them into crowds of people, letting them off in trains and in taxis, together with a real "who let the dogs out" sort of in-your-face aggression and casual violence.  I expected it to be wild-ish, but not quite as destructive, and really didn't enjoy it at all.  I went when I was living in London, long before my recent foray into German life, and I'm afraid I returned with some grave doubts about Germany and German people at large.  What did it say if people feel the need to break things and throw bottles around to have fun?  It was like they had been on their best behaviour all year, with all of the pent-up rage building and building, until they were allowed to let go in a mindless explosion before squeezing themselves back into their too-tight shell for another 364 days.  It seemed really unhealthy to me; I was actually more than a little worried for my safety at various stages, and I also just found the whole thing more than a little troubling.  It's only been quite recently that people have explained to me that Silvester in Berlin isn't really German, given the huge ethnic populations there, and shouldn't be seen as reflective of the rest of the country on that basis.  

Oktoberfest was different - there was a LOT more sex in the air.  I noticed it as soon as I got off the train, and it continued when I joined my friends and witnessed my ex-girlfriend flirting outrageously with one of her colleagues.  Later on she kissed him passionately in full view of me and despite the fact that she had a live-in boyfriend, to whom she returned to that evening.  It was one of the most wilfully base - and I'm afraid to say, erotic - things I have ever seen.  I didn't understand it at all at first and was quite confronted by it, but she took pains to explain to me that this sort of thing was virtually expected; what happens at Oktoberfest stays at Oktoberfest, and she held no illusions that said boyfriend was doing exactly the same thing when he went.  In the end it made sense to me.  The clichés were all there about the brass bands and the busty girls and the men in little shorts - if Oktoberfest isn't about being naughty, then what is it about?   

Karneval, I had heard, was a bit of a mixture of the two.  A bit of bedlam and madness, a fair amount of sex.  In fact, I heard that one of the defining features of Karneval was that it was a time where everyone gets a hallpass, and gets to let off a bit of polyamorous steam without getting in trouble.  I even asked a couple about this once, when the topic came up.  I wanted to be diplomatic, in case one of them exercised that "right" without the other knowing or something (these things can be complicated), so I asked in as neutral a manner as possible.  In my best bumbling, vaguely Hugh Grant manner, I said "er - I've heard that Karneval is sort of, er, about ..... partner-swapping.  Is that true?"  I wasn't sure what they'd say or whether I would dredge up some bad blood somehow, but the reaction was pretty funny.  They both shared a look, giggled, and said to me "yes, that's EXACTLY what it's about".  

So what was Karneval going to bring me, I wondered?  Was I finally going to get laid, after however long?  And if so, was there an ettiquette to it all?  I was also going with couples who were all locals - would someone's girlfriend or wife suddenly throw herself at me like something out of "Perfume"?  Would my natural studliness cause all of the women in the vicinity to take leave of their senses at some point?  How would it all fit together??

I needn't have worried, of course.  It was altogetherly much more sedate than any of that.  Despite the above conversation I didn't see much evidence of "goings-on" at all, in fact when I engaged one of the locals in conversation at one point she made it very clear that she was married - clearly she hadn't read that manual either.  What I did see was a general openness and a willingness to engage with strangers that was really fun, and actually quite nice.  We spent quite a bit of time in a bar in the middle of town, which for me didn't seem to serve much of a purpose beyond going to the pub in the middle of the day in stupid outfits, but once I'd had a few drinks I was more than able to get talking to a few local girls, all of whom were really happy to chat.  I'm used to the equivalent scene on a Saturday night being pretty grim, where only the tallest, big-shouldered guys carry much cred, but it wasn't like that at all.  One foray to the streets outside even precipitated me being bailed up by a sexy policewoman, pirate and Robin Hood, who all apparently took umbrudge to me accidentally bumping into one of their party by flirting with me outrageously and stealing my headgear.  Like a complete doofus, I didn't take it any further though and didn't even ask for so much as a phone number.  I'm really going to have to work on acting in the heat of the moment if I'm to get myself out of this rut that I'm in!  

The purpose of attending Karneval is not just to pick up, of course.  It's to have fun.  And we did that in abundance.  It was the complete polar-opposite of anything I experienced in that Berlin New Year's Eve, either - the whole city seemed to have relaxed into a loud, slightly pissed state - that part of the evening when you're about three or four beers in and everyone is your friend.  Thankfully, that feeling lasted from the first drink to the last with me, and together with the street bands, wurst vendors and cheap but good beer, it was a really fun day.  These sorts of things are great for my German as well - like a lot of people I speak much better when I'm relaxed, with friends and .... pissed as a newt.  Call it "social lubrication".  Hopefully there'll be more chances to do similar things in future - it's further evidence that my German experiment is working, and I really hope that I can go again.  Two slightly drunk thumbs up!!!  

  

    

Social Media and the Political Pinhead

I'm not a big follower of politics.  I mean, I'm a follower of it, just not a BIG follower of it.  I'm a follower of it in the way that the average person is a follower of football - you can't not really, it's all around you all the time, pretty much 24-7.  You can't not pay attention to politics in the same way that you can't not pay attention to the weather.  It's just there.  

So, this means that I'd have a stab at knowing the names of prime ministers and presidents of various countries and the parties they represent, but not much more.  Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm not well-informed mind you - I think I definitely am, but the political process leaves me pretty much cold.  The machinations of what one party is doing to another, who is leading whom, how and why is completely uninteresting as far as I'm concerned, and how the political game is played more-or-less amounts to moving of chairs around the Titanic.  Such-and-such is going to change everything, such-and-such is a nasty piece of work, such-and-such is doing this, that and the other and that's wrong/right and clear proof that the Labor/Tory/Rebublican/Democrat/Octogenarian Mothers' Nosehair Collective party is providing the sort of leadership that will take this country to the top/bottom, is just the sort of stuff that bores me to sobs.  This sort of talk just seems such a gross over-simplification of .... well, anything really, simply from the point that it's just so unlikely to be true.  You cannot divide the entire population of the world neatly in half and, depending on your standpoint, label one side "right" and the other side "wrong", that's not how ANYTHING works.  Neither is the leader of xyz party likely to be Super-Jesus or Beelzebub either - like anyone, he/she will selfish interests and ambitions, they're almost certainly not motivated by any real desire to "make a difference", and somehow they ended up at the top of the pile.  Kind of like your boss, really.  The best you can hope for is for some basic competence and intelligence, but as we all know that's not a pre-requisite for being in charge of something anyway.  .... Kind of like your boss.         

This is why the social media desperados drive me up the wall, as well.  You know the type - the type that will publish any and every article they can get their hands on to their Facebook/Twitter feed and shrilly declare that whatever dickhead who happens to be in charge this week is freakin' .... HITLER ...  on ..... STEROIDS, and that's why they deserve to DIE, NOW, VERY PAINFULLY AND SLOWLY because of this THING that their party did and ...... blah.  I tend to find that more often than not the "thing" is probably not as politically motivated as you would think and could have happened on anyone's watch, but people do love a good yell, don't they.  These platforms are there for people to air their various interests and opinions, but I always find this sort of online behaviour to be so intrusive and discourteous, too - particularly in an international context.  Really, who gives a damn about your political leanings in your inevitably uninteresting little part of the world when there are wars being fought and actual injustices going on - the "cause" you're representing is almost certainly less significant than any of those, but the fact that you're being so shrill about it implies that you think it is.  You're also very likely to assume that everyone is approaching your cause from the same standpoint as well - after all, EVERYONE is a middle-class English speaker in a large urban centre, and everyone will relate to your story on that basis.  

It's this last point that really gets my goat when it comes to things like feminism and race, and when statistics are published in articles.  Something like "80% of women will be sexually assaulted before the age of 16" is a good example, not least of which because its actual meaning isn't clear (80% of female sexual assault victims, or 80% of all women?).  It's the sort of thing that gets bandied about a lot, as well as "X% of non-white people experience racial discrimination in the workplace".  The statistics might actually be correct, but where are they correct?  The article you're linking to on your newsfeed was probably written for a specific publication with a specific catchment.  What's true for that part of the world isn't necessarily true everywhere else, and posting them as though they're universal is just plain stupid.  What it also does is colour these issues with your local brush, and if you're from a big enough and culturally significant enough place (the USA, I'm looking at you!), you can fool everyone into thinking that police habitually beat up black teenagers everywhere, or that men really are bastards all over the world.  

This is pretty much why my Facebook page is mostly meaningless bullshit.  Lately a lot of cats have been making an appearance, which sort of reflects where this blog has gone, too.  I'm sure lots of people must think that I've become some sort of Mad Cat Lady.  When I haven't been talking about cats, it's been cricket - 'tis the season in Australia after all, and we're on the verge of a World Cup.  Red hair has been a recurring theme for the past few months as well because y'know - Carrot.   I do often wonder whether people somewhere think that my blatherings are really frivilous and annoying, though.  Maybe my cheerful, unintelligible rubbish is half the world's idea of obnoxious, attention-seeking behaviour and everyone hates me.  It's something that genuinely crosses my mind from time-to-time, and will occasionally preclude me from posting anything at all.  It has genuinely made me a bit quieter than usual!    

Sure as hell though, I won't be inviting you to play Candy Crush Saga anytime soon.  That really IS obnoxious.  Anyone who does that deserves what's coming to them!