Cav's Place

We’re only hours away from the start of very likely the strangest and riskiest World Cup edition in recent history. And I really don’t see how at least the first part of that statement, about the strangeness, could possibly be proven wrong. Unfortunately, I also don’t exactly see the second part, about the risk, being proven wrong either, though I certainly hope it will somehow be…
This push to forcefully globalize every aspect of football creates more and more dangers each time. First it was only for the matches themselves, when highly unsuitable referees were introduced simply because FIFA wanted to grant each continent what it considered to be its fair share in that aspect as well, but now having this edition take place in a country like South Africa is a threat to the security of the players, staff members and fans, as well as to the likelihood that fans will be able to enjoy what they’re seeing.
Quite frankly, while we could never have managed to build the stadiums, from all other aspects, such as security, organization, culture and the entire system required to manage something of this magnitude, I think even Romania would have been a more suitable World Cup host than South Africa! And that’s saying a lot…

Anyone who watched the Confederations Cup should be well aware of what I mean when I mention the reduced likelihood of fans being able to enjoy the matches, or even the reduced likelihood that players will be able to properly play the matches. I’m obviously talking about the constant dreadful noise generated by the thousands of vuvuzelas used by the South African fans, which drowns out commentators, players and coaches alike and is quite frankly very annoying, especially since it’s heard constantly from the first to the last moment of every match, and likely also before and after.
It was apparently decided that, despite all the protests, these instruments can’t be banned because they play a key role in an authentic South African experience and they’re deeply rooted in the culture of South African football fans. Well then, I’ll say that means the South African football culture is incompatible with hosting an event of this magnitude, because neither the players nor the viewers from other countries signed up for this “complete South African football experience” that FIFA decided can only be achieved with the help of these instruments. So if FIFA decided to get everyone over there for its own interests, it should at least try to make them feel somewhat at home, because this is its fault and not the fault of the South Africans. In the end, the South Africans do what they like if they’re allowed, just like anyone else would, but FIFA should have reminded everyone that this is an international event and not just a South African one!

As for security, I think everyone is quite well aware of the problems. There’s a significant level of crime, including organized crime, a good part of it violent, and the number of homicides that take place there is really shocking. And let’s not forget the huge number of HIV positive people in South Africa, many of them not even aware of the disease, which creates a different kind of threat when you consider what this huge number of fans, most of them male, means for the local sex trade and that people will skip using condoms even under normal circumstances, so even more so in the insanity generated by the World Cup.
So, while still hoping I’ll be proven wrong, I don’t think it’s a question of whether there will be more than what could be considered an usual number of tragic events during this edition, but only of exactly how many more and how tragic. And, while those are only risks that ultimately affect those who choose to go there, the risk of an HIV pandemic after the fans will return home is truly frightening.
And then you also have things like this, which show the kind of environment those teams need to train and play in and highlights other risks and health hazards faced by those who go there…

So, while I know pretty much everything is being done to reduce the risks and therefore don’t really expect something of catastrophic proportions, I do expect a lot of bad things to happen, some of them only being noticeable after the World Cup will be over. But I’m posting this here now so I’ll be able to compare the end results with the expectations. We shall see.

I believe I can now safely say that my expectations were met, as in she completely ignored my request and left it at that. So I should probably calm down regarding this issue right about now… But not about anything else, since this leaves me with the same worries and uncertainties, the same mood and the same problems.
Sure, if she’d have somehow accepted it I’d be replacing “ignored” with “terrified” up there in the title and the rest of this post likely wouldn’t exist because I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. But at least it would have been a change and, assuming she’d have actually said something as well and I wouldn’t have died of shock right away, I’d have seen later if it’d have been for better or worse.

As it is, I get to spend my time realizing just how lonely I am and being angry at the woman living below me who decided that the “weeds” behind the building need to go, so took it upon herself to rip out nearly everything that was more than a few centimeters high. I’m not sure if she’s also the one responsible for a similar “operation” that took place behind the fence that’s behind the building, but the effects are certainly very similar.
It used to be a pretty nice place in front of my window. Granted, the one I live in seems to be the only column of apartments in this entire group of buildings that doesn’t have a tree in front, but even so it was pretty nice to see a whole lot of green. I’m not talking about the little flower garden this woman set up in front of her windows, but just about the wild growth that was beyond it, around and especially behind that fence. Yet somebody decided it had to go, so a while ago I woke up one day to see pretty much all the trees and bushes that were behind the fence simply gone. Then nothing more happened until recently, when two people came and in two days tore out pretty much everything else that was left behind that fence, usually things that had grown right on it, turning it into something that looked somewhat like a hedge. They even pulled on little trees until they simply ripped away the crown and left the stump there! And then they piled everything up and walked away. But that apparently wasn’t enough and now, in two other days, this woman did something similar on this side of the fence, ripping away everything that was left growing on or around it and saying she’s just getting rid of weeds. At least she took them away instead of leaving them in a pile, but that doesn’t count for much…
Well, those “weeds” turned this atrocious barbed wire fence into something I didn’t mind seeing whenever I looked out the window, kept some of the dust from being blown in here by the wind, kept moisture in the ground a little longer, provided some additional oxygen and even cooled the air a little during summer. But I guess that to some people a barbed wire fence, a huge pile of dead vegetation and whatever that ugly thing is between these buildings is a far better view than some pretty big and green wild plants. And of course that says nothing about the other benefits those “weeds” were bringing, which nobody seems to care for.

Now that I let that out… I’m getting back to being really lonely. Nobody around that I’d actually want to spend any time with and apparently people aren’t even logging on Yahoo! Messenger much anymore, so there’s nobody to even chat with even if I stay logged on for several hours per day, just in case someone would eventually come on. It’s a very “nobody would even hear you scream” feeling…
Even the few people I was talking to now and then are too busy with “real life”, whether that involves things they choose to do or, most often, things they somehow end up having to do. So I must once again say that I’d really like to bump into someone who’s in a similar situation, with no “real life” to speak of, that I’d really get along with, and preferably could also actually spend time with. (All right, so Liz may partially fit the “no life” part of that description, but that’s not what I’m talking about…)
So… Anyone who spends a lot of time thinking, dreaming and living in her own world, reckons she’d get along well with me and has a whole lot of free time available, which would imply, among other things, no school or work and no more than a small number of friends, please raise your hand. Though, of course, the “get along well with me” part already means I’m addressing a very small and perhaps even nonexistent subset of humanity, and that’s only made worse by me further limiting it to females mainly aged 20 to 30, though being a couple of years outside of this age range could also sometimes work without me feeling too weird. But I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable around anyone else…

As it is, I’ll keep worrying, being lonely and occasionally angry… And see if I can use all this time to actually get some work done towards that utterly insane idea that started developing in my mind after a dream I had last year. But that seems highly unlikely, as I don’t have even a small fraction of the skill, the determination or the confidence required to do anything like that, and the sheer scale of the idea would likely be daunting even for a skilled and determined person anyway.

You know, I wanted to end this post there, but I realized I have more to say… This may well be just because I no longer think there’s a chance she may respond to that request, but I was thinking there might just have been a chance for me to be able to talk to her, at least for a while, assuming she’d have put my worst fears to rest quickly and she’d have been at least reasonably open. In part, that’s because my mind is so often occupied with that insane idea lately and therefore I have a slight “shield” that I can get some limited use out of when a problem arises, but mainly it’s because right now I miss what I had with Elena P. more than what I had with Andra.
Being able to just sit down on a park bench, or perhaps cuddle on the bed or couch when she came over, and talk for three or four hours without ever getting bored, without ever running out of topics, rarely disagreeing and never getting upset even when we did disagree, easily weaving in and out of very intimate and very important stories, problems, thoughts, dreams and desires, feeling disappointed when we eventually had to say goodbye because there were still so many things we meant to talk about… I still don’t know, and probably will never know, if it was real from her side as well, but the kind of mental connection that allows for something like that to happen, while otherwise obviously lesser than an emotional connection, is the kind of connection you need the most when you feel alone in a crowd. That’s the kind of connection that makes you think you may not be the only one to hear your screams after all.
Interestingly, Elena P. was in school, even worked for a week while we talked, and also mentioned her family pretty often. And, of course, she had her boyfriend, though he seemed to be pretty much the only other person close to her. So she obviously had a “real life” and normally I’d say that’d be a huge problem. Yet it wasn’t, and not just because she made time for me but because of how she handled those “real life” issues while talking to me. So it’s probably more about what she had in her life than about what she didn’t have.
You see, when people tell me about school, work, relatives, therapy, treatments, parties and other such things, at best I don’t really care and usually I get quite pissed. And then also feel really bad, because I’m obviously of no use to them in those conversations and because I’m obviously not a real friend if I don’t care about what they seem to care about. I ask about these things if I know that’s what their life consists of, but I’m asking because I’m interested in them, not in any of these things. What I’m looking for are their deepest thoughts, dreams, desires and problems and the intimate details of their closest personal relationships. I offer all those things whenever I think the other person could be listening to me, and sometimes even when she’s not, and desire to get them in return, as that’s what creates a bond from my point of view. So I want to know about you, not about the confines that struggle, and unfortunately nearly always succeed, to make you less you.
But that part about closest personal relationships may well be the worst problem. Quite frankly, I just know one person who seems to have something like that and even in her case, while the relationship itself would indeed be extremely interesting to discuss at length, I somehow doubt it’s quite the kind of relationship I’m talking about. And she doesn’t exactly tell me anything about it anyway. Yet talking about the intimate details of her relationship was probably the most important “ingredient” of what I had with Elena P., so the fact that the other people I’m talking to don’t have something like that, and don’t say that much about any potential past relationships either, may well be a far worse problem than the annoying things they do have in their lives. Which only means that we’re all alone and lonely… Just that we are different kinds of lonely, so we can’t even be alone together…

As always, said less than what’s on my mind but likely way more than I should have… Not that it matters much anyway. And besides, in about one hour I’ll be going to sleep and at that time all of this will be forgotten, as the one thing I always miss the most whenever I’m in bed is having her there with me, and the fact that she’s not has turned going to sleep and waking up into pure torture every single day out of these past four and a half years and will keep doing so…

To start with the good, at the end of my last post I said I was thinking of creating a separate category for posts about overpopulation and going through everything to move the relevant ones into it. And that was easy enough to do, so here it is. I think I found all of them at least…

But now… You see, after I started to actually use Facebook, when Ami persuaded me to, around the beginning of last year, I was wondering what was I going to do if Andra’d show up under suggestions. After a while, seeing as it didn’t happen despite seeing most people I knew showing up there, including some I would have had no idea how to track down otherwise, I started worrying less about it, assuming that it wasn’t going to happen. Still, the original thought I had was that I was going to try to add her if someday she would show up, despite not having the guts to try otherwise.
Well, now she did. A couple of days ago, actually. I apparently had a full list, but it wasn’t showing up on the side, so I only noticed the other names after I actually went to check. But what did show up on the side was her name. Just her name, not two people as it usually happens when it decides to make such suggestions.

I have no idea why now and until a little while ago I had no idea what to do about it other than freak out. But then I said it’d be hard for things to get much worse from that point of view, especially since she’ll very likely just ignore my request, and decided to go with the original plan. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll try to add her just before going to sleep tonight… Then I’ll go for a walk after waking up, assuming I’ll manage to sleep at all, without going on-line first. And then… Who knows when I’ll have the guts to actually check and see if my request got a response.
The worst thing that could happen is getting a response and finding out something that’d confirm my worst fears, but that’d fall firmly under things already being as bad as they could possibly ever be and me already being hurt because of that, but simply not knowing it for sure yet. A very distant second worst thing would be for her to actually put me on ignore I guess. On the other hand, if she’d just ignore the request but take no other action then nothing’d change. And pretty much any other option, as highly unlikely as it is, would be a positive one, at least for a little while.

At least I now have two posts written this week, so if things go badly, or if I simply can’t find the guts to poke my nose out again these days, I’ll be able to crawl under a rock and stay there for several days. And then, if I’ll be unable to think of anything else, I’ll be able to write several personal posts without worrying about breaking my rules…

A while back I wrote about women being sterilized supposedly by force, though more exactly through trickery, in Uzbekistan. Certain organizations were in an uproar about that issue as well, but you know that overpopulation is by far the most important issue for me and therefore any measure that prevents births has my support. I did say that beating around the bush and tricking women into undergoing the procedure wasn’t exactly the right thing to do, suggesting actually persuading those few who could be persuaded and using direct force on the rest, and of course targeting men as well as women, but the end result was certainly positive, though still only a raindrop in the ocean compared to what needs to be done.
Now a somewhat similar situation has drawn the attention of certain organizations and the media. At the time I’m writing this, a petition about this issue is the first one displayed in my sidebar by the change.org widget, which really pisses me off and makes me seriously consider at least temporarily removing the widget. I’m talking about women being sterilized by force or through trickery in Namibia. The campaigns started against this practice seem to focus on HIV positive women, but that article leads me to believe that they’re not the only ones being sterilized.

Let me first get the issue of sterilizing HIV positive people out of the way: While I obviously don’t approve of anything that I’d see as punishing people for being sick, I fully support making sure that people who suffer from diseases that could be directly passed on to their children won’t have any before being cured. And HIV is something that can be passed on directly to a child and right now can’t be cured. I know that an HIV positive woman who receives the proper treatment has a 98% chance of giving birth to a healthy baby, but who’s going to take responsibility for the 2%? Are those who support the right of HIV positive women to have babies going to kill the 2% at birth, or explain to them later why are they so sick and likely going to die just around the time they could really start experiencing life? Besides, being HIV positive is simply one more reason not to have a baby at a time when there are already way more than enough of those for everyone…
Of course, a person doesn’t need to be surgically sterilized in order to avoid having children, and in fact a surgical procedure may not be the best course of action in that situation, but the available alternatives depend strictly on the patient. If the patient would understand that she needs to avoid getting pregnant at all costs, other contraceptive methods could be used, as long as their efficiency and safety wouldn’t be reduced when used by HIV positive women. But if the patient seems unwilling or unable to understand that simple fact and is likely to get pregnant if not sterilized, the doctors have to do what needs to be done by any means necessary. It’s as simple as that. So, just to make my stance very clear, anyone complaining of having her “right” to have babies taken away from her absolutely has to be sterilized.
And yes, in this particular situation, if the patients are being sterilized for being HIV positive, it is something that applies only to women. The mother is the one who can pass on the virus to the baby, so you avoid that by making sure that she won’t have children in the first place. The father can only pass on the virus to the mother, not directly to the baby, and whether or not he’ll get her pregnant, or whether or not he’s even fertile, is completely irrelevant when it comes to that. So sterilizing men can’t be justified by the fact that they’re HIV positive, as there’s no potential benefit strictly from that point of view, though of course both sexes need to be targeted equally in order to solve the overpopulation problem.

While a lot of the fuss is made over whether “informed consent” was given by the women in question, which implies that trickery was once again used, it does appear that in some cases the procedures were performed without any kind of consent from the patient. The doctors deny that, but actually if that were to be the case I’d approve of it much more, as I said before. Sure, those who consent to having medical procedures performed on them without learning exactly what the procedure in question entails and what its effects will be are quite obviously stupid and deserve whatever’s coming to them, but I do have serious issues with unnecessary dishonesty, so obviously favor actually forcing the patients to undergo the procedure over tricking them into consenting to it without really knowing what they’re consenting to.
That said, if there’s any truth to these claims that some sterilizations were performed without any kind of consent from the patient, I could actually say that Namibia took even one more step than Uzbekistan in the right direction. Especially when you see some of the statements from the women in question, such as the one who was sterilized after having her sixth baby and is now scared that her boyfriend will leave her because she can’t have any more. That’s something like a bank robber complaining for being arrested after the sixth heist, saying he’s afraid that his gang will kick him out because he won’t be able to participate in any more, and expecting me to take his side over that of the cops who arrested him!

And once again I find myself pleasantly surprised that I have something to write about efforts to control population… Unfortunately, my posts need to be against the actions taken against the efforts in question, but that’s not surprising in the least, as such measures will never obtain popular support. But that doesn’t make them any less right or any less necessary…
Actually, I’m thinking of creating a new category just for these posts and then going through them all and moving those that deal with it into it, as there are now quite enough of them to justify something like that. Maybe someday I will…

I really should start with the good and state that this was the best edition I have ever seen. It started pretty poorly, with a rather weak first semifinal, but the second one was very good and the final was even better. Quite frankly, there was a single song I didn’t like that made it to the final, namely Serbia’s. Then there were two other good songs that were sung poorly, namely those from Belarus and the United Kingdom, and Belgium’s performance, which I really had to place last because I judge the entire act and when you just have a single person who does nothing but sit on stage, and that person is also male and sings a song that I didn’t think was one of the very best either, that performance really can’t get any noticeable amount of points from me.
That leaves 21 good performances during this final, which is probably a number you could only reach by adding together two finals from previous years, and perhaps not even then in certain cases. And I really wouldn’t have minded if any of the top eight out of these 21 would have won, which is absolutely unprecedented as there usually are only two or three songs that I think should fight for first place.
And before I move on to the bad, I should also point out that I really liked the interval act. No longer showcasing only the traditions and culture of the host country, but a piece that made a statement out of the international nature of the show and tried to send a message about bringing people together, all of it doubled by a bold choice of music to say the least. It was an interval act that I was curious enough to watch, which caused some problems as during that time I normally take the opportunity to turn my ratings and notes into a neat classification.

Moving on to the bad, I need to start with the new voting system. It would appear that they completely gave up on even trying to persuade people to vote fairly, as allowing voting all through the show means people are now able to vote for the country they want to vote for without even watching its performance, much less the competition. At least until now voters were more or less forced to at least give everyone a chance before they could vote, which meant that at least a small number of them could be persuaded by a particular performance to change their predetermined “political” vote… Plus that allowing people to vote up to 20 times even for the same song instead of limiting it to a single vote per person for each song makes it a question of whose fans have the most time and, most importantly, money to spare instead of a question of who can get the most fans. And the juries are made of people too, so adding them in doesn’t really mean there will be fewer “political” votes.
The result of all that was that in plenty of cases nothing changed, many countries still giving points as expected, so instead of making the contest fairer the new voting system pretty much removed even the theoretical chance of fairness. Which is why I say don’t forget to flush and use plenty of air freshener if you happen to mention the new voting system, because it’s nothing but a huge pile of shit!
And the bad part from a very personal and subjective point of view was that none of those eight I thought could have won made it even in the top three, four of them actually being in the bottom seven, two of them even in the bottom four!

But let me stop that rant and move on to my classification. (Actual place between parantheses, as always.) The system was the same as always, of course, and it was actually easier to judge based solely on the performance at hand this year than it was in 2008 and 2009 because, while I still knew all songs before the competition, I no longer looked for other information, such as interviews or rehearsals, so there were fewer things I had to ignore in order to be able to focus properly.

1 Ireland (23)
2 Azerbaijan (5)
3 Georgia (9)
4 Denmark (4)
5 Moldova (22)
6 Iceland (19)
7 Russia (11)
8 Norway (20)
9 Albania (16)
10 Armenia (7)
11 Turkey (2)
12 Spain (15)
13 Romania (3)
14 France (12)
15 Greece (8)
16 Germany (1)
17 Bosnia (17)
18 Cyprus (21)
19 Ukraine (10)
20 Israel (14)
21 Portugal (18)
22 Belarus (24)
23 United Kingdom (25)
24 Serbia (13)
25 Belgium (6)

Now I will do something different and, instead of commenting only on the first five songs in the actual classification and the first ten in my classification, I’ll comment on all songs. Or all except the bottom four, as I already explained why I placed those so low.
Ireland was obviously this edition’s ballad and unless there’s something else that somehow blows me away I will always put ballads first when it comes to Eurovision, at least as long as the singers are female. Not much show value to speak of, but at least there was more than one person on stage and they didn’t look like they really had to go to the bathroom, so I was content with a neutral “show” rating, which was good enough to allow this performance to rise above the rest.
Azerbaijan continues the run of good results, entering three times so far and finishing eighth, third and now fifth in the actual contest and being first, second and now second again in my classification. This was one performance that certainly required forgetting what I saw and heard before the actual competition because I initially thought their entry was quite poor… Until I saw how it all worked out on stage and completely changed my mind. I’d have been quite happy if this would have won, but at this rate I’m pretty sure they will win soon enough anyway.
Georgia was yet another entry that required me to forget what I previously knew about it, as it sounded and certainly looked far better during the actual competition. Incredible vocal strength and a basically perfect performance, but there were some bits of the song that bothered me a little and that’s why it’s only third.
Denmark’s entry sounded pretty nice, was very catchy and benefitted from a very good female voice as well. I certainly wouldn’t have minded if it won, but a certain part of it sounded too similar to a certain great song of decades past and that’s why it’s only fourth.
Moldova was bold. This is not the kind of song you expect to see on Eurovision and it impressed me in a good way. At first I thought the male voice wasn’t going to suit the song, but during the final they actually sounded great together. But they’re only fifth because I think you need to really blow everyone away with something if you want to be at the top with a very atypical entry.
Iceland presented something that was somewhere between a ballad and a catchy song. Sure, it was nice enough, it could even have won, as any of my top eight, but it just wasn’t quite good enough to beat the ones I ranked above it, possibly just because it was somewhere in between genres.
The Russian lead vocalist had an absolutely amazing voice. I still wonder if he’s castrated, but that’s not the issue here. The song and the entire performance may have been somewhat strange, and certainly not in the sense of certain past winners we can all remember, and it sounded like they needed a few seconds to warm up at the beginning and were getting a little tired by the end of it, but it was still a very interesting and notable performance.
The Norwegian song was also very good, with the possible exception of the first few seconds, and the guy singing it blew me away with his voice, but I very strongly prefer female vocals so that’s why he’s not up there competing with Ireland for the first position. The neutral show value also meant I had to place Norway lower than Russia, but in the end it was yet another performance I thought could have deserved to win.
Albania came with a performance that struck me as a little bit better than all those ranked below it, but far from the top eight, so it has a pretty firm position in my classification.
Armenia put up a pretty nice show, but unfortunately the song fell just a little bit short when compared to the nine ranked above it, so all that was left for me to do was rank it as tenth. It’s also possible that I penalized this performance a little because the singer looked to be surgically “enhanced” in pretty much every way…
Turkey was also bold, coming up with an atypical entry that was certain to be remembered. Pretty good show value, nice message, but having only male vocals meant I wasn’t going to like it quite that much, plus that there actually was something about the song itself that bothered me a little.
The Spanish entry sounded nice enough, the vocalist did his job well (twice), there was also a pretty good show value, but… It just didn’t stand out, unlike many of those ranked above it. And you can really see this edition’s quality level when I rank a good song that’s also performed well and has a pretty good show value only 12th.
And then we have Romania… I really didn’t find the song to be quite all that when compared to the rest, though of course it was also nice enough and very catchy, and Paula has an absolutely amazing voice. But there are some parts of it that rub me the wrong way, plus that the performance itself was quite static, relying mainly on the pyrotechnics for the show value. I think they could have managed while having only two people to do the backing vocals, allowing for two others to actually play with fire on stage.
The French song would have sounded much better a couple of weeks from now, during the World Cup, but it certainly was catchy and entertaining. It was also yet another pretty bold entry.
Greece’s entry somehow grew on me between the semifinal and the final. Not enough to rank it higher than this, but it’s a pretty bright and happy song that doesn’t sound bad at all. And that’s saying a lot, as I don’t respond all that well to those rhythms…
And then there’s Germany… It is indeed a very complex song that also manages to be pretty catchy as well, and the singer seems extremely charismatic. Sure, I can say I like it, but this year I can say that about nearly all of them, so I really couldn’t rank it higher than this, especially since the show value was only neutral.
Bosnia’s entry was really not bad either and it would have very likely been well in my top ten in pretty much any other year, but this time around there really was no room for it any higher than this. You’d say I could have been drawn to the genre, but that no longer applies when you take the competition into account.
And most of what I just said applies to Cyprus as well. Not a bad performance, but when you compare it to the rest of them this year…
The Ukrainian song was extremely complex and also had pretty deep lyrics, or about as deep as an Eurovision song could hope to have, but complexity doesn’t equate sounding very nice. I believe I can recognize a good song when I hear it, and this was a good song, but it just didn’t have an appealing sound to me and this is, after all, my subjective classification. The barely neutral show rating, as that’s about as much as a single person can get from me no matter how well she’d act her part, or how hot she’d be for that matter, didn’t help at all either.
Israel’s entry actually sounded really well, but once again there simply was no room for it higher than this. The fact that the vocalist was male, sang in that dreadful Hebrew and only had a neutral show value meant this seemed like the proper place for it.
And finally we have Portugal, which featured a good singer singing a decent song, but otherwise really getting lost among the rest as it had nothing to make it stand out in any way. And I really can’t stand Portuguese either.

So I got Bosnia and Denmark right, was two places off for Belarus, France and the United Kingdom and three off for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Portugal and Spain. On the other hand, at least ten places off for Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Moldova, Norway, Romania and Serbia.
As for the semifinals, I’d have picked Macedonia, Malta, Poland and Slovakia instead of Belarus, Belgium, Portugal and Serbia from the first one and Croatia, the Netherlands and Slovenia instead of Cyprus, Israel and Ukraine from the second one. In fact, you can see how the seven I wouldn’t have picked to make it to the final are in the bottom eight in my final classification, with only the United Kingdom, who are automatically qualified to the final and therefore gave me no opportunity to judge their performance sooner, in between them.

So why did Germany win? Well, unlike last year when Norway’s victory came as a complete and unexplainable surprise for me, I believe I have a reasonable explanation this time around. I believe that, while the singer’s charisma also played an important role, this is an excellent example of manipulation of and by the media.
You see, first you had some people very thoroughly making sure that all uploads of Germany’s entry would be quickly deleted for copyright infringement in order to only leave the official video and artificially increase the number of viewers for it in comparison to the rest, as said viewers were all forced to watch the same thing instead of being able to choose and therefore spreading the number of views among multiple videos. The very high number of views drew the attention of some bloggers who proceeded to write about this entry more than about others, while perhaps some others were even encouraged to do so through other means. Then some survey results, which are all too easy to forge, popped up and claimed that this entry was the favorite, which increased the attention it received even more. Shortly, all this on-line attention made its way into more traditional media, and from there to pretty much everyone who was in any way interested in Eurovision. That triggered the herd mentality, as the message sent was that you’d be the odd one out if you had another favorite. And, since most people want to fit in and the new voting system also greatly favors preconceived opinions, that resulted in many more votes for Germany than the performance itself could ever hope to gather.
It’s rotten, it’s dastardly, it’s petty… But it’s also highly effective and therefore utterly brilliant, if this indeed is how it happened. Others should learn from this, and I’m no longer just talking about Eurovision contestants. Politicians certainly try to do the exact same thing whenever elections are coming up. The difference here is that it would appear that Germany was the only country having such a campaign this time around, or at least the only one who managed to get it to work…