The good news is that Paul Watson has been granted bail on Friday and released from prison yesterday. The bad news is that the extradition process continues and, if Costa Rica will submit the required paperwork within 90 days and the German Minister of Justice will not intervene to dismiss the case as politically motivated, this obviously won’t make any difference, as he’ll still end up in a Costa Rican prison. Worse, he and those around him appear genuinely concerned that, if that happens, the Costa Rican mafia will make sure he won’t live long enough for the trial to conclude.
The outpouring of support for captain Watson and the pressure generated by it ever since his arrest undoubtedly had a significant influence on the decision to grant him bail, but this pressure must be increased in the coming days if he is to be allowed to return to what he does best, which is struggling to save the lives of whales, turtles, sharks, tunas and many other species of fish. As such, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is calling for a global day of action with the occasion of the Costa Rican president’s visit to Germany. Tomorrow, May 23, is S.O.S. Day (Save Our Skipper), and you are being asked not only to continue sending respectful messages to the German Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs, but also to take the demands to save captain Watson to the doorsteps of Germany’s diplomatic missions around the globe by staging protests demanding his release in front of German embassies and consulates everywhere between 11 AM and 1 PM (local time).
This is a message not only for all Sea Shepherd supporters, but also for all those who care for life on this planet in general and for the oceans in particular. If you can participate in such a protest, please do so. If not, try to at least contact the nearest German embassy or consulate in some way and perhaps also send another message to the German Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs, remembering to remain calm and respectful. Unite and make your voices heard tomorrow in any way you can!
I was saying that I hoped to somehow manage to write two non-personal posts this week, but I was obviously right to doubt that I could do it. In fact, with the previous post being nothing more than an action alert, it could even be said that I wrote no proper posts this week and only did the bare minimum necessary to keep the “buffer” at two. And that certainly wasn’t because I was busy doing anything else, since the only noticeable thing I did this week was update Mario Wibisono’s section in my little fantasy art gallery after he added some new works on his deviantART page and also modified several older ones, quite a few of which were already among the ones I had selected for the gallery. Otherwise, I didn’t go anywhere, I’m still not playing any games and I’m ashamed to say that I still didn’t start reading any of those books either…
At least I keep adding to my story and did manage to get somewhere for a moment, after five or six more or less pointless chapters, but it certainly seems like it won’t last and I’ll get stuck again very quickly, since I’m still in that portion that requires things that I simply can’t wrap my mind around. But the simple fact that I manage to keep adding something to it every day, as little and as crappy as it is, certainly explains a good part of the reason why I simply can’t handle the blog almost at all anymore, since I just calculated that the number of words that I now add to my story per week is pretty much equal to two serious blog posts of average size. As a result, after struggling for the past year to improve my pace there, perhaps from extremely embarrassing to “just” very embarrassing, I’m now hitting my limit for serious and at least reasonably calculated writing from it alone, leaving absolutely nothing for the blog.
I’ve been following up on the story of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society‘s captain Paul Watson‘s recent arrest in Germany, hoping to be able to write a brief post about his release. Unfortunately, the situation developed in the opposite direction and a preliminary extradition warrant has been requested instead, which turns this post into a call to action. We’re talking about a man being arrested essentially for doing the right thing, about an iconic leader of the environmental and animal rights movements risking being handed over to those who care nothing for other species and readily trade the long-term good of the world in general and even that of humanity in particular for selfish short-term economic benefits and about a very important organization wasting precious time and resources with a legal battle instead of going out there and saving the lives that need saving! Admittedly, perhaps those aren’t human lives, but why should that make any difference?
If you want to help, and I’ll come out here and kindly as you to do so, you can at the very least respectfully contact the German Federal Minister of Justice, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Guido Westerwelle, since they appear to be the ones who can intervene at the moment, even the public prosecutor stating during the hearing that they have the power to stop the extradition procedure if they consider that the charges are politically motivated. On top of that, you could and likely should also spread the word about this, especially if you know anyone from Germany or even anyone who at least knows German well enough to write the messages in it, as that may well increase the impact. And last but not least, if you can afford it and are willing to do so, you can of course also donate to Sea Shepherd’s legal defense and education fund in order to help cover their legal expenses.
Oddly enough, if last week it was hard not to immediately start reading the books I got, this week I hardly even thought of it, so they’re still sitting there on the shelf. And it’s not like I did much of anything else, to say that I had to focus or had some other use for the time. Sure, I somehow managed to stick to my writing plan in spite of being almost certain that I’ll fail every single day, but I didn’t spend as much as a single minute playing any games, didn’t do any more work on the site… I did go through that other little book I mentioned in that post, but didn’t even manage to “compress” a part of it into a list and turn that into a post, as the original plan was.
Admittedly, for a good part of the week, on top of the usual issues, my mind was stuck on the fact that I had a dentist’s appointment on Friday to sort out that filling that fell out some two months or so ago. Thankfully, that went very well, though oddly enough it apparently hadn’t fallen from where I thought it had, but instead from above that place, simply lodging itself in between those teeth then. Or at least that’s what I was told, because I still find it rather hard to believe, but at the same time it would explain some things, so I guess it may be true.
The first order of business for next week is to submit some more things on MobyGames, because I’m still quite a lot behind “schedule” this year due to the fact that I did next to nothing until the end of February and have so far made up for only about half of that. Otherwise, I obviously need to at least maintain the current pace, as crappy as it is, with my story and should also find some way to write two non-personal posts here and therefore finally get that “buffer” back to four at least, though I still find it hard to believe that I actually will manage to do so, so don’t hold your breath. Past this, I don’t even plan to try anything else, hoping to at least manage to recover a little energy and perhaps be able to do slightly more later, though of course that hardly ever works out.
But now I just managed to find a moment when the kitchen was clear and went there to grab a little to eat and today’s newspapers, so that’s about it with this post and let’s hope that I’ll somehow manage to hold it together well enough for the next one to not be personal as well. And let’s also hope that I’ll actually get around to starting to read those books very soon, because this is starting to be pretty embarrassing, if not necessarily unexpected, considering my usual state of mind and how long it’s been since I last had new books to read.
No, the two aren’t connected, but I didn’t have enough to say to write separate posts for each. Or, more exactly, all I can say about Antichrisis at the moment fits in a couple of paragraphs while, on the other hand, writing a separate post for Omnia out of the blue would feel rather weird since they’re hardly a new find but I had little reason to pay attention before, which explains why I only now noticed their last two albums, the first of which having been released back in 2010.
To start with Antichrisis, I’m happy to announce that, although the band itself essentially disbanded over three years ago, Sid and Ayuma, with a small amount of help from a few former band members, have recently released the first Antichrisis album that actually contains new material in over a decade. It’s called Not Fade Away and it’s available for purchase through Bandcamp, which obviously also means that you can legally listen to all of it on that site if you are so inclined. Then again, almost all the songs had already been available on the band’s site, though they had stopped also being available for download some months ago.
As far as the music itself goes, this album sticks to their regular rule of being noticeably different from those before it while at the same time having a sound that I’m not particularly keen on. But that’s entirely a matter of taste and you may enjoy it far more than I do, just like you may also relate to the lyrics far more than I do, because most reflect the recent events in Sid’s life and his current outlook, which may have seemed to match mine incredibly well in many aspects back when the other albums were recorded but has apparently moved away from it since. As such, at this point the recommendation may largely be for old times’ sake, but I’ll still make it, especially since I did find myself enjoying Restless Years, which is a track that hadn’t previously been available on their site, a fair bit from the beginning. Who knows, the rest may grow on me in time as well…
Moving on to Omnia, I have to start by saying that I first heard of them when somebody who had been pointed to them by someone else pointed me to them, most likely around the start of 2009. At the time, I certainly recognized the value of what they were doing, certainly realized what they were all about, but other than a couple of poems recited on music, namely The Raven and Fairy Tale, nothing really caught my eye (or ear). In fact, there were only a few other songs that I could see myself listening to more than once or twice, the issues I had with the rest ranging from the one I always have with songs with lyrics in languages that I don’t know to the fact that certain sounds simply rubbed me the wrong way, many sounded too happy, there were too many instrumentals and so on. As a result, I rather quickly put them largely out of mind, though I did find myself looking for those two poems on YouTube a few more times since.
However, I just stumbled into I Don’t Speak Human completely randomly Sunday night, around 1 AM, and it, or more exactly the lyrics and the resulting message, perhaps aided by a certain picture added at exactly the right moment in that little slideshow, made me burst into tears. Now I’m not keen on the instrumental line heard on the chorus and bridge, but the text had me glued to it from the start and at the “fuck you” I found myself giving a round of applause while sitting here in front of the screen and then had to take my glasses off and collapse… And seeing as it’s next to impossible for me to cry while alone, that was quite something, especially since it happened completely out of the blue like that.
The immediate reaction, once I recovered, was obviously to start looking for what they released since 2009, which led me to quickly discover Wolf Love and Musick and Poëtree, being very pleasantly surprised by a good part of what I heard once I listened to them. Of course, their old fans tend to be up in arms because of this new direction the band has taken, and I can certainly understand them since I often find myself in their shoes when something I like changes drastically, but this time we’re talking about a change that steered the band in a direction that I very much approve of. I mean, just listen to Wolf Song, Cornwall and Sing for Love, which are the last three songs on Wolf Love and stunning pieces, every single one of them. And when you also add their claim that the entire Poëtree part of the latest album, made up of traditional songs and covers, has been recorded in a single take, it’s really quite mind-blowing!
