northern soul

I can’t get over this video, it’s hilarious (note the seagull at 1:47!)

In other (good) news, I’ve also found a documentary on the whale that played Willy in “Free Willy” (remember?! Ah, the memories…) – it was released ages ago and I used to own the tape when I was little. It got lost though when I moved out, and there’s no point in trying to find it as I don’t own a video player anyway, but I’ve spent a great deal of my childhood watching “Free Willy” and this documentary, so it was lovely to see it again; I almost forgot that orcas are amazing animals!

I’ve found this clip of Seal performing his version of the Beatles classic “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” at the Royal Variety 2007 in Liverpool – personally, I don’t like Seal much, as I think he’s too over the top in his videos (‘Kiss From A Rose’ immediately springs to mind) and too married to Heidi Klum to be taken seriously, but I really like his take on the song!

What I like even more though is how they use different ‘levels’ on stage to create depth – that’s the thing I really noticed about this particular performance. Did you realise how the stage is absolutely empty at the beginning of the song and bursting with artists towards the end? It’s a nice way of underlining the change of pace in the song itself – someone’s done some very clever thinking on this one

Originally, I was planning to simply go back to sleep after the boyfriend has left for work – but as Stewie would say, my elaborate scheme hasn’t worked out! Oh well…

I’ve been going swimming (almost) every morning for the past three weeks; it’s really hard to get up some days – it starts at 6:30 – but it’s also a very satisfying thing to do and I really enjoy it! I’m not going today, however, as it’s always full on Mondays (when everyone still has the energy to drag themselves there at this ungodly hour? That’s my opinion anyway)..I don’t want to zigzag my way across the swimming pool! And I can’t rinse my swimming suit properly afterwards, as we’re getting a  new heater today and won’t have any warm water all day long (isn’t it ironic?)

I actually want to talk about something serious in this entry, so I’ve decided to put all the other stuff in front; I don’t want to talk about the deaths of 19 young people and then go “oh well, reopened my collective!1!!”. Which I have done; you can have a look here. And if you want to be an affiliate, just let me know
I also have to resolve the issue of my smilies turning not turning up in weird places where they definitely shouldn’t be…I’ll have a look at it later in the day; I know how the problem will blow up to unforeseen proportions if I even attempt to resolve it without breakfast..

Anyway. You might have heard about the LoveParade in Germany, one of the biggest electronic dance music festivals in Europe. There’s certainly a lot about it in the news now, after 19 people have been killed and over 100 injuried in a stampede on Saturday afternoon. The panic was caused by the fact that the only entrance and exit was via a narrow tunnel which was, absurdly, divided (endways) to have one side for people coming, and the other for people who were leaving the area. An area which was laid out for 300.000 people, which is ridiculously small if you have looked at the LoveParade in the past years - in 2008, one and a half million people turned up for the event in Dortmund. And as you can maybe grasp from this  video (it won’t embed, sorry), the area around the tunnel was pretty crowded.

So what seems to have happened is that somehow panic broke out in the tunnel; the official version currently is that a scuffle started, which then caused people to panic. They tried to get out of that dark tunnel as fast as they could, and I really don’t blame them — if I was in a crowded, dark tunnel, possibly slightly (or a bit more) intoxicated and suddenly started to hear screams and feel the weight of thousands of people pushing (and possibly crushing) me, I’d be trying to get out of there as fast as I could, possibly with little consideration for others around me. It’s what people do when they panic — a normal reaction to a stressful situation, but I do not think that the panic itself is at the heart of the problem. I think the problem is that the organisers haven’t taken a panic into their considerations at all, which strikes me as odd especially since they knew from previous LoveParades, especially the one in Birmingham (and common sense really) that they couldn’t expect over a million people to behave sensibly at all times. Their system to ‘combat panic’ was to put up speakers along the way to the festival area and ‘send calming messages’…to which you can no doubt pay close attention with the beat of the music booming behind and people shouting around you…full marks for a successful Orwell imitation, none for brains.

If you have watched the video, you will perhaps get a sense of how overcrowded the area was, and how unfortunate, if not stupid, it was to try and get all those people through one narrow tunnel. Apparently, people tried to climb the tunnel walls to escape the stampede, fell down and died; others were trampled to death by hundreds of people in a state of panic. I’ve seen a news report yesterday where they showed how the police was closing off the tunnel at one end to stop people going in; which was actually the right idea, just that they should have left room for people to come out at their end as well instead of pushing them all into the tunnel, thus increasing the panic. I will post a video or pictures if I can find anything on the Internet later on.

It is most incpomprehensible to me how the organisers could not have seen this when they were planning the parade; even users in forums pointed out that the idea was riduculous and “would lead to people being killed”…if they could see it, why not a committee of experts that was specially put together to ensure that the festival would be safe? How could they just assume that nothing would happen? How could they even give the go-ahead for the event when they knew that well over a million people would turn up – in an area that was only ever capable of holding 300.000?

I am truly shocked about the things that have happened – and the things that apparently haven’t happened in the organisers brains. My thoughts are with the friends and families of the victims; and while I know that no justice that can ever make up for a lost friend, son, brother, daughter or sister, I hope that the inquest into this tragedy will be able to identify those responsible so that they can be punished.

The time I actually have to work on my website really seems to be inversely proportional to the free time I have – I don’t even know how the time I spend reading, swimming, doing little things around the house etc. can add up to fill a whole day!? :O

Anyway, I was thinking to maybe get into fanlistings again — it was fun a few years back when I did it, especially the part where I ran a couple of fanlistings until it got too much with me entering my final years at school :/ I’ve even looked at some possible designs for a collective already (my own design will have to wait until I feel a bit more comfortable with coding again) and found one called “For me it’s you” – Final Fantasy 8-themed, yay – at celestial-star.net! I’ve used it before; it’s so neat! Alas, the download link seems to be broken, so I can’t use it now, but I hope Melfina manages to fix it soon…

In other construction noise, I’m planning to work on the book section in the next couple of hours/days – it’s my love of  books  that provided a name for the website after all! I want to add some more books that I own as well as think up a structure for my reviews – that’s the main thing I want to do, actually. I don’t want to end up writing novels about novels that take me forever to write and you forever to read! So I have to think about that today…preferably over a cuppa as long as it’s cool enough outside, lol!

ETA: Aw, look! My favourite fanlisting (of the ones I ran back in the days) is still up! And so pretty! Ha, I remember spending ages on the layout (and randomly affiliating that one with just about everything…ahaha) /end mother hen

Did you run/are you still running a fanlisting? I had the feeling that they’re not as popular as they were a couple of years ago – do you think that’s true? Or does it just feel like that because I’ve been “out of it” for a couple of years?

Now, they’ve got catfish on the table
They’ve got gospel in the air…

So I probably jinxed it there with all my babbling about elusive fish and that – for me at least! I almost caught a catfish (I hope that’s the right term now anyway – big grey fishy thing with whiskers?) with our dip net, but whenever it was almost within reach, it sort of seemed to ‘smell the rat’ and swam away…so no luck for me, but at least Daniel caught three of them – and big ones, too!

But even though I didn’t catch anything – which acually is just as well for me, I’m an animal lover – it was an interesting experience and a lovely trip and I’d definitely  go again! Even if it’s just to drink sparkling wine out of a mug again, and wake up in the middle of the night just to realise that it’s raining so hard that you can barely see three inches from your nose…lol ;P

Today, it’s a lot cooler than in the past couple of days, which is just as well really because we reached the critical level for ozone yesterday – it was absolutely impossible to do almost anything from loading the washing machine to cleaning the grill…I think my trip to the careers officer today will be much more doable now!

I probably want to study medicine after I’ve finished my training as a nurse, and the German university system can be very confusing with entrance procedures and modules and all those things – and to study further without going to university is equally confusing, there are tons of possibilities!  I’m looking forward to (hopefully) bringing some light into the dark…:)

Well, hello! First post in ages! Also, first post here on bookish, made possible by the wonderful staff at bubble.nu, who processed my application so super fast that I needed the rest of the week to get my head round the fact that I’ve been approved! =D

As you can see, everything’s still pretty much in the making…it’s really hot here in Northern (!) Germany and you can’t do anything after eleven, twelve o’clock because the tiniest bit of activity just makes you melt like a crazy melting thing – and yes that does include webdesigning! Right now, though, the temperature is still quite bearable so I thought I’d quickly add some content to make it at least look like as if someone is doing something round here  ;P

I’m planning to add some more books to my Now Reading library next week; then, the subpages need to be fixed as they do weird things with my sidebar (always the same with this plugin…grr); the ‘About’ section to the right needs editing, and then there are more subpages with content and minor things like finding decent smiley sets (anyone know a decent site?) and such. I really have my work cut out there..

Today, though, I’m going night fishing – now before you start pigeonholing, I don’t read any mags called “Trout Attack” and love talking faaar too much to be a good fisher…my boyfriend, Daniel, is a huge fan though and, what with trying everything once and all that, I agreed to at least have a go.
I’m actually quite excited right now  and really look forward to staying outside all night, just us and the fish (and my IKEA hippo ;P)! We’re taking a grill and food as well, so it really should be good – fingers crossed it doesn’t rain..

Exploring the “fishy” theme of this post a little further: this video still gives me the creeps even though I’ve seen it dozens of times by now! It’s one of the weirdest sketches by Monty Python that I’ve ever seen, which really has to mean something..

By the way, it is not at all improbable that I’ll be sitting there tonight, wrestling with an eel or trout – or whatever you happen to catch in those waters – which will then get away in a spectacular (I hope) manner, leaving me to shout “It is a most elusive fish!”

..Actually, part of me is really looking forward to that.