From Darness to LIght as it Were

Here is a picture of a tree.
The sky above is blue, with a hint of cloud and the stream from a passing jet liner.
The grass is green, the sun bright.
I mention this in comparison to the Eurovision Song Contest which is on telly at this very moment.
This however I cannot confirm as my laptop, like me, is musically minded and will not allow it to be turned on.  This laptop has some taste I can tell you.
The difference between light and darkness is seen between the sun filled park and the dark concert hall.  One has bright sunshine with birds singing, the other bright flashing lights with birds singing badly.  One brings contentment the other bribery from that nice Mr Putin.
Sadly having tried again the TV now works on here and I turned on to find an overacting young man with expensive jeans ripped at the knees pouting into the mike and making me reach for the off switch.
I first saw this contest when Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson won it and that must have been around 1960.  Cliff Richard and Sandie Shaw both featured at one time but rarely if ever did music make an appearance.  Bland songs or exhibitionist crooners certainly appear and at one time the songs made an impression on the pop charts, they never do now.  Indeed it's just horrible.
Years ago in spite of my entreaties I failed to get the family to switch this off in times past so I could watch the football on the other side, for some reason they considered this tripe important and sat entranced discussing the bubblegum music that was laid in front of them.  It appeared to me they enjoyed it and I remain surprised even after all those years.  Even today there are people who hold parties just for this occasion while music lovers everywhere sit watching paint dry and feeling somewhat more satisfied than the party goers.
Why is this contest so popular?
Apart from the fact that almost nobody knows the words of any song and few indeed are ever memorable only the judging and points totals make it interesting for many.  This is incredible considering half of eastern Europe must vote correctly or Russia invades, France will not vote for Anglaterre (They still refuse to call it Britain the racists!), Russia will not vote for Poland nor will they give much support to Ukraine!  Let aone that so many songs follow on quickly one after another that few can remember what went before. They all run into one another like the 'bland leading the bland.'  One day proper musicians rather than the leftovers of Radio 2's late night output might appear and bring something new and interesting to the show.  I suppose this is what is popular today, empty music with no depth, flashing lights, rivalry at the count but little reality.  It speaks for people today.
The Anglaterre attempt has arrived, a two man Boy Band with a drum set each for no apparent reason and quick changing camera images and more flashing lights making me run for the sights far from the blandness and the monotone that is Graham Norton.  I'm off to the park even if the night is dark.

          

Now I'm not one to complain, but....

So for a while the laptop has been doing strange things, one of which concerns Google.  Normally on Chrome I have the Google UK picture, and on the right hand side a link takes me to the next page where the 'Add-Ons' are found.  Now when I click a tab the Google page that appears is different, and the next page link on Google UK has gone.  The new page is not 'Google UK' but a Google page with no Google mail, images, +You link or indeed the email address as usual.  There is nothing aIong the base either, instead under the sign there are links to places I have been, none of which I use as I don;t trust this, and attempting to use the type an address in the address bar takes over.  What is this? Is there a way of fixing this?  I have run the anti bad guys stuff but none have worked so far.  This irritates me, and I am not one to complain.....

There is the usual fuss in the media concerning this appalling event.  It appears this took place last night when I was busy having a life.  As usual banal, trite melodies offered by perverts and weirdos won the day.  It is long since this vapid bilge ceased to be an opportunity for struggling singers and became a replacement for the psychiatric hospitals Thatcher killed off, but why do people watch it?  This freak show 'entertains two thirds of the European public, yet there is nothing there!  I am more and more convinced the end is nigh, when you see what won can I be wrong?

"You'll never get out of here alive!"

Once again I spent Saturday morning at the museum as nobody was available to work it.  Next week l, off my own free will and kindness, will be there on Saturday again.  You see I am so kind and caring gentle and sweet.  I was also knackered!  I did manage to persuade the boss to make up a short advert looking for volunteers for the museum to fill in the empty spaces, far too many are sick, dying or finding jobs, and sweet as she is this happened.  So I shoved them into three churches letterboxes as there are people there who will be available I am convinced.  As one of the churches has many older "cough" peoples there will be historical knowledge also.  We will see!

Hours I have spent looking for my family.  So far none have been in prison but several have disappeared, if only one or two others would join them?   This has helped with finding dead soldiers but there is so much to do and I have hours of work to do to get through it all.  This and watching the football takes up so much time!  Of course dithering, falling asleep and wandering to the shops to obtain reduced price goods has also been required, the falling asleep bit being most popular.  However uncomplaining I battle on, my day ahead is planned out, nothing will deter my study, rise at six and plod on till midnight!  But I ask, what happened to my man George....?

I Canny Stand It!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I canny stand any more of this! Since Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson won the thing in 1959 or whenever it was I can remember the 'excitement' as we waited with baited breath as the 'Eurovision Song Contest' approached. However in those days the songs were bland ballads sung by suitably famous faces. So unlike today! There was the innovation of watching simultaneously with several European nations something that brought us all together. Television was a wonder to us then, television which reached across the vast area of the continent was a fascination hard to believe now. The drama of the points total at the end was breathtaking - at least it took mine away. In fact the whole operation brought me, and millions of others, to tears. It still does.

Of course in those days the tears were caused by the knowledge that my selfish family wished to watch this malodorous tripe when I wanted to watch 'Scotsport on the other channel! How could they, I wondered, want to sit and involve themselves with this pedestrian output when I could be watching Partick Thistle play Kilmarnock on a gray Scotsport film? The tears flowed and the hard hearted family just ignored me and then blamed me for being a brat! I never understood that bit. Now however the tears flow because of the putrid and crass performances in front of me now.

You must understand I did not intend to watch this, I just had it on while I phoned my mother, (and there is another blog or three!). Act after act come on, lights flash, bright, coloured clouds of smoke rise and vanish, a singer, if male with his shirt open to the naval, if female showing as much flesh as she can (bar one fat one from Malta who actually had a 'normal' song and sounded good in comparison), surrounded by a bunch of dancers (always the same ones?) who gyrate in a choreographed fashion in time to what someone calls music. They all have that false 'clean' image. You know where the hair is exactly out of place, the shredded outfits shredded in just the right place, and the face carpeted with enough make up to paint the Forth Bridge (and the women are just as bad!).

I HATE THE FALSENESS OF IT ALL!!!!!!!!!

I was musically educated in the 60's, and watching
this I long for Cream to appear playing 'Sunshine of your love'
or Jimi Hendrix to give us 'Hey Joe.'

Oh please let someone come on and bring the house down with music from the heart and not this plastic, bland, inconsequential pap that fills the screen and the world today! Even the slogan that appears in between acts represents all that is false around us today. The slick, computerised graphics,the good looking lassie (nothing wrong with them usually) with her hair in just the right position, (oh dear the UK lass is on now. A black girl with a high, screeching voice, with another song like all the songs black singers sing these days. (What happened to Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald?) Now someone with his (brand new) baseball cap on backwards is singing (?) while three tar..sorry a backing group scratch a living and a couple of numbskull's swing poles with fire on them around in the background. How exciting...... It's all so false, it goes on too long and it is all the same emptiness that dull the senses and kills the soul. I hate all this, it is so false and empty!

Karl Marx, a hero of the working class who never done a days work in his life and was not working class, made the absurd statement, often misquoted, that 'Religion is the opiate of the people,' (unless I misquoted him) but surely this 'entertainment is today's 'opiate?' This mass of low brow entertainment which fills the TV and film screen, inundates the magazines and press, and confronts all of Europe at the same time, surely this is the 'Bread & Circus's' of today? Empty, bland, innocuous, and in small doses quite harmless and even enjoyable for some, surely we are drowning in the false 'all togetherness' of it all?

Even worse than this 'Match of the Day' has been delayed because of this!
Enough! I am turning it off and putting on the Cream music!