Maribor has become the European Cultural Capitol. My patriotic self is proud, but knowing what this cuntry is all about, I’m like a parent worried their kid will do something to embarrass himself. Simply because I know standards of culture in Slovenia are a lot different than abroad. I truly believe the opening ceremony was nice. But that’s all. Many foreign journalists (not just one) criticized the city for being dead and dull. And knowing Slovenian cities it doesn’t really surprise me. Not many of them have much going on on a regular day, especially on the streets, but the counter argument of our leading commercial television told more about Slovenian culture and our perception of it than any cultural event before. See, according to them the reason why the journalist thought nothing of cultural value is happening in Maribor is because she didn’t go down to the cramped suffocating bars full of happy people gulping down pints of beer. Who says nothing is happening in this city? The bars are full, aren’t they? Need I say more? Well, maybe just mention that these counterarguments were presented onto a backdrop of a totally empty square. But hey, as long as we have drinking in pubs and all sorts of other parties with go go dancers we have culture, right?

We are frequently criticized for being too closed in, and this is a clear sign of how right those critiques are. In fact, we’re so detached from the rest of the world that we can’t even understand some normal standards of what culture is. Obviously, the standards that are believed to be worthy of a title of Cultural Capital. And here’s the catch. It’s not like Germany has no bar parties or cities where nothing else but bar parties are happening. And it’s not like Maribor only has that. But when the civilized world speaks of culture they don’t have that in mind. Standards are much higher. And although we know Maribor can do better, well, it didn’t, did it? Or it should do better more often, I guess. The entire country should. But instead we defend ourselves by claiming bar parties are culture. And that’s my main concern. That we honestly believe and even publicize (and therefore mark as the truth – people are docile) our belief that this is culture. And we are so full of ourselves that we don’t even think twice when going against opinions of foreigners. That’s just amazing. How the intelect can drop.

The quality of culture is obviously a very distant notion to most people in this cuntry. It’s clearly seen in what cultural products succeed. Those of us who frequently glance outside our borders are simply amazed at the absurdity here. But that absurdity is present throughout the mentality and even the media started using the word bizarre for some of the behavior we now see in our country. Soon it’ll be an abomination. But first we need to ignore or get rid of all the products that exceed the required quality. In fact, quality is almost the last criterion in choosing services. Which is why our cuntry is frequently named Šalabajzerland. You can go through the entire day dealing with people who do their work sloppily or don’t know what they’re doing at all. Most of it is done by halves, because well, people are either not qualified (because they don’t need to be to get the job) or simply have their minds somewhere else. Usually it’s got something to do with themselves. Remember, the egotism. Well, yeah, it’s a well known fact that you can’t expect too much from people in our cuntry on Fridays, because their minds are set on having fun over the weekend. In fact, that’s true for any other day as well. Way too often. Which indicates another thing. No one cares about professionalism here. If you’re good at something, and professional, leave this cuntry before it deestroys you. And it will. In your struggle to make it here, you will wear yourself out, catch diseases, ulcers and cancers, cronic fatigue etc. You’ll feel a hundred at 35, will have no personal life, because it will give way to work, and still you will have no future and no chance of life, while continuously fighting people putting spokes in your wheel. In an environment where professionalism has no place, unprofessional, immoral and corrupt ways are stepping stones of success and progresss. What will you say to yourself when you die on the job struggling to get a completely unimportant shot of some local idiot, foolishly chasing that one coverage that would give you a chance to break out of this cuntry? Worth it? Or a waste of life?

Here’s what we did to the world. This is Valdoltra. It is renowned to be one of the best orthopedic hospitals in this part of Europe. It was also believed to be the kindest surrounding for patients. The photo shows the empty halls of children ward. Yes, it’s dark and sterile, just like you probably know hospitals. Well, you probably know them by total chaos and indescribable crowd, too, but that’s a different story. I want to focus on this sterile environment to show you how far we’ve come in less than 20 years.

For the past few months I’ve been photographing a story I believe should be told in full, not just bits and pieces we see in the media quite often. Therapy dogs. Oh yes, there are many articles around, but none of them grasps the entire scope of what these dogs do. My aim of course is to help this therapy get stronger and so universally known that one day it would be funded by our sinking country. Yes, despite the common definition of a photographer (and citizen) in Slovenia, I’m not doing this for myself, but to give something back. Remember, I spent my childhood in hospitals as well, many of them are those that I’m visiting now, and frankly, I’d love to have been a part of such a therapy. Unfortunately, people back then didn’t even know the risks of vaccination, let alone that any alternatives exist. After all, doctors tried reviving my leg with electroshocks.

But we’ve come from Medieval practices to postmodern paranoid existence also by the use of media. See, what people nowadays don’t know, because a college professor’s idea of introducing education on how to critically view media was crosschecked by bigger power&money-hungry entities, is that today’s media is 80% primitive selfish gain for attention and money while the other 20% is educational, has a greater purpose and is well intended. But it’s easy to be fooled. The majority rules the shelves. The majority also rules the web and TV. And since their morals are inferior to their gluttony, the economic, capitalist self-serving function, they can easily use methods to reel people in that are at least questionable. Most people still don’t question themselves why a news network website looks like the sleaziest tabloid, if not a porn site. Brainwashing.

Although it seems I’ve wandered away from the topic, I’m still very close. And this context is crucial. What we are bombarded with in the media constructs our reality. We picture the world through media, because our personal experience is nothing more than a bit of traffic, a long working day in some cubicle, and a trip to the shopping center. They won’t notice the twenty percent of wise media. They won’t go read National Geographic, they’ll pick out of five other long shelves of flashy shameless magazines invading someone’s privacy for their own selfish purposes. And yes, ego-tripping people have flooded the media. With no correlation to the real world, it is no wonder that people tend to see the world as it is shown to them by the media. Little do they know how many times information is misrepresented, or how puffed up it is, especially if they watch pop tv.

Another example. CNN has covered the anniversary of 9-11 with a soft, calm, respective rhetoric and showing acts of kindness, remembrance, respect, and showing citizens sowing together a torn flag. We switch to our own commercial tv and we hear barking, aggressive tone, panicky, swift and in a hurry as if in an emergency. No kindness, the topic is completely different. It’s all about the frightened, shocking report of how New Yorkers are awaiting and are terribly afraid of a new big terrorist attack with police all over the place, actually the police has “flooded” the streets etc. For an average Slovenian who only watches this crap, the paranoid rhetoric along with the news given to them has shaped the perception of reality.

The twenty percent of smart media, the non-selfish ones, are sidelined. People believe most media are out to do them harm, just because so many of them really do. Or they want to invade their privacy for shallow articles with hardly the context of seriousness the story perhaps demands. And finally, when we speak of photojournalists, it’s only the elite that is trusted by people. Which in some cases, like the news channel website I mentioned earlier, is pretty irrational, but goes to show that people tend to let others do their thinking. If more than half a population deem one media popular, then that’s what they’ll watch and read. Because people have inherited from the past the idea that what’s popular and worshipped by many is also good. Amazingly, their mind doesn’t activate even when they see the majority of news on the media’s website is for example naked women. Instead, they take it into account. And that’s how the feeble human mind is transformed from an intelligent one to a primitive one. That’s why people who used to read quality newspapers now read articles that are poorly written, superficial and misleading for the purposes of collecting views. Not to mention throwing in a naked woman or two just to be on the safe side. They think that’s the norm these days. Well, you made it the norm.

So let us now return to Valdoltra. Twenty years ago, the ward was a happy bright place. Children running around playing, socializing, meeting new friends, laughing. Kids in this ward don’t have diseases that would prevent them from being active and happy and communicative. Only people can. And they did.

These kids can walk and the ward is quite small and as you can see, it’s not very busy, so there’s no danger for the kids. But 20 years of media rhetoric and news selection and the way that news is presented have created a paranoid society. A society that couldn’t see past the media to inform themselves of what the world is really like, so they just went with the flow. Restriction after restriction and now there’s no more kids in the hallways. They don’t visit each other in their rooms anymore. Hardly a new friend is made. It’s quiet. No more laughing. The air and sound, all sterile. It’s a vacuum. Why? Because we have come to believe there’s someone who wants to abuse us or our trust or our lives on every step. We have come to trust nobody, believing they act out of their selfishness, greed or any other personal interest. People have come to believe everybody is out to get them. Stories of good people and those that educate the world or do something good (when we speak of hospitals) are so rare here that people immediately think of how the media would trash the story if they show interest in their institution. They immediately think of how negatively they would be presented. Or how they would be abused. No one does a story about people in the hospital, unless they want to show how bad the hospital is, right? So surely whoever wants to do these stories has some hidden agenda. That’s how far we’ve come by media negativism. In the US, hundreds of medical stories are made, all of them with good intent and positive feedback that usually helps the people in the story. Which in turn makes these people grateful for journalists coming to their rooms and telling their story. Simply because the media have shown that they mean good. But here…

Valdoltra’s security measures are merely a reflection of reality. The media have brainwashed an entire population and it’s that many that can change the world. If they’re dumb and ill-informed, then the world will have to follow or suffer the consequences. So the sterile environment in the children ward is an answer to parents exhibiting extreme paranoia and lack of trust to people who are basically very much like them. They forced the hospital to undertake such measures bz fearing parents like them, all having kids in the hospital. And these kids are now not allowed to visit each other in their rooms anymore. They must stay in their rooms. To make matters worse, the rooms are populated by having the least possible amount of kids in them. So basically, a child could be alone in there and not allowed to go visit a friend in the next room. Furthermore, there are no personal objects ANYWHERE in the room. It’s like it’s just the kid and nothing else. Nothing personal. Even the charts that hung on the bedside rails are gone. Just empty plastic holders. I ask why. We loved to read our own charts and to see the date of our going home… They said they’re not allowed to, because of privacy protection.

I think this ward just might be the culmination, the summary of what have we become in 20 years through the misuse of the media. Through our failure to understand the workings of capital driven media. We’ve failed to protect ourselves. From brainwashing. And now you’re going to take away the life experience of your kids because of that. Because you’re downright stupid.

When it comes to producing medical stories, if a freelance journalist wants to do a story like this, it will be difficult. You’re not big and important like the crappy popular media. But who cares if they’re crappy if they’re popular, right? And besides, who even thinks they’re crappy? And of course, Slovenians are known for their blindness to long-term benefits, and failure to project into the future. So when somebody they deem small wants to give them something back, not only do they think they will be abused, but they also don’t want it, because in their mind it’s all or nothing. They don’t see a small contribution as a step to building something more. They think it’s worthless. And simply because they’re not used to working step by step to reach a goal. Most people in this country got their success or wealth almost instantly through channels other than years of hard work. Hell, even the country itself rose seemingly in an instant when we took on euro etc. So the mentality of this nation does not allow for understanding a small contribution to be one of many steps to something much bigger. If you can’t give us a lot, then you don’t have to give us anything. Wow. What a brainfart.

It’s fairly normal that when someone wants to tell the story in the right manner, and make it positive, and try giving something back, the brainwashed minds of people will build walls. And with that, they will allow the media to continue blocking serious, educational, positive and humanitarian stories, while the negative, the primitive, superficial, selfish, dumb stories will prevail. You’re doing it.

I have met institutions that understood what I’m trying to do and I’m grateful. One of these is a rehabilitation center in Dornava. And despite the fact that only one photo was published, because print media have limitations, my intention is to present these stories in full online at Dax Photo. Which is currently offline for the sheer purpose of reconstructing so that it would look better, because I want to present these stories in a manner worthy of them. I think it’s pretty difficult to understand this. Too many people in Slovenia are abusive self-centered opportunists; so it’s not easy to believe that my only concern is that I wouldn’t give the people in my stories back enough. …

We’ve created a world of low respect and no trust.

I’m old school. And I have difficulty living here.

]]> http://lukadakskobler.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/the-evolution-of-human-civilization/feed/ 0 Dax http://lukadakskobler.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/the-marble-trout-festival-sitcom/ http://lukadakskobler.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/the-marble-trout-festival-sitcom/#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:46:22 +0000 Dax http://lukadakskobler.wordpress.com/?p=662 ]]> This is not actually a funny story, but you’re not me (which I guess is one thing to be happy about) and from a different point of view, it’s fucking hilarious. So let me assume that point of view for you. First, you need some background. This summer, I had one painless swim. After that, the sadistic author of my life script decided to screw a bit with me enjoying my favorite time of year and gave me a herniated disk. Well, I assume that’s what it is, because doctors of course can’t say. I knew they’d be useless, so I didn’t see a doctor until September, which means my cripple-ness was one level higher throughout the summer. Now, constant pain in my lower back and hip has two sideffects. The highly predictable elevated bitchyness and the less predictable childish playfullness. (I know, right?!) Thankfully, I’m a trained professional and have controlled myself enough to prevent my parents from killing me and my girlfriend from leaving me (or the other way around). In fact, I just did what I’ve been doing for the last oh let’s say twenty five years – bottle it all up. The Canadian style, I’m told. Keep all the anger and especially sorrow inside until it grows a cancer. If I could walk painlessly, I’d be going crazy. But most moves were painful, so I couldn’t break much. But I could screw things up collossally. Fortunately, for myself only. No biggie, right. And here’s the story.

By the start of September I was fed up with this stupid pain, so I went to the doctor and after tests she told me my right hip’s deteriorated (from walking the way I do, because of my left leg). I knew it wasn’t the cause, but she told me something I thought I’ll hear a bit later. Like, when I’m sixty. Keeping in mind that my time as a photojournalist is obviously running out when I haven’t even got a chance to achieve my goals, I adopted the pregnant bitch reaction: I swung from resignation to stubborn persistance in working even harder. Soon, it hurt so badly, I could hardly move. And I lost it. I took on an assignment of working on a story for the entire day on my feet. And hips. And lower back…

The funny thing is I could hardly move to pack all the gear. And on D day, I could hardly drag myself to the car. And to make matters worse, you can’t take pictures of fishing without the biggest lens, so I was packing EVERYTHING. I was even ready to wear most of it on my belt! Well, that would heal a herniated disk and work wonders on my shitty hip! But I wanted it! Call it stubbornes or selfdestructive behavior, but I sat my ass in that car although it took me a while to get there. And to make matters EVEN worse, my job was in Kobarid. For foreigners: that’s a town squeezed among the mountains above the Soča river. The damn country has no normal, straight road to that town. It’s just a bunch of sharp turns in both directions, like driving a rally. So I threw my diskus and that nerve around a bit (who needs phisio!), drove there and started looking for fishermen. The morning fishing was scheduled on the river Soča and it’s tributarties, so I kept glancing towards the river as I tried making the turns. No fisherman in sight. Nobody in the Idrijca river. I turn right, away from Soča, to Bača. Nobody there, either. On to Tolminka. Nobody. So I go scan Soča and it’s a big river. I stop at my favorite place and I’m just soooo happy there’s a fisherman under the bridge. I drop out of the car, get up, throw myself backwards at the side of the car to straighten myself (it’s a bit hard to take pictures if you’re offering your ass to the gods), I open the trunk, get all the shit together, the 300mm lens and all, strap everything around my waist for the best painful pleasure, and start looking for my memory cards. By then, I could kill somebody. Seriously, if I had to shoot a party and a drunk would barf in my face the famous words: “Take my picture”, I’d take my camera and beat him with it! Just don’t piss me off now. And that’s exactly what happened.

Painters on the riverbanks painted on the topic of the Marble Trout

Oh, yeah. NEVER pack photo gear when in almost unbearable pain. Usually, you don’t think straight. I sure as hell wasn’t. In my mind I was gassing managers after I kidnapped them from their beachouses. And I left all my damn cards at home. So after I fought the urge to bash my head against the car, my crisis management kicked in. I started contemplating possible solutions. Ok, I say fuck it and go home. I say fuck it and go swimming. I say fuck it and throw myself into a gorge. I go to Kobarid and buy a memory card. No, it’s Sunday. OK, I go home. What if I borrow a camera? What else do I have that takes pictures? And here comes what I said I’ll never do.

Restaurants made great fish at the Kobarid main square.

Many photojournalists have tried it, but I think David Guttenfelder did it first, so I call it “pulling a Guttenfelder”. In my case, it’ll always be the last resort when it comes to print. But I always wanted to do it, and this was my chance. To shoot the entire Marble Trout Festival with a Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. Yes, in case you haven’t noticed, that’s what you’re looking at. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Cold fish? I'd probably shit rivers, it's like throwing a bone to the guy writing the script.

But that’s not the entire story. I start taking pictures and after an hour, my battery which was at 25% to start with was going dead. So the only time I could recharge it was when driving. By a car charger. Needless to say, I wasn’t driving much. Only when I was searching for the fishermen. But here comes the old sadistic script writer. I plug the charger in and realize it only works with an iphone 3G. Fucking great! So I was about to lose the only picture taking device on me. Stupid photographer. The other fairly annoying fact was that I consciously threw out my compact camera I had in my bag, thinking I won’t be needing it. I should get a medal! So now what?

The painters exhibited their works in main square...

...then moved the exhibition to the tourist office bulding.

Again, I contemplate: I say fuck it and go home. I say fuck it and go swimming (it was so bloody hot!). I say fuck it and drive my car off a cliff. I buy an iphone 4 charger. So I drove my wobbly herniated diskus to the petrol station in Kobarid, bought an overpiced charger and started charging the phone while driving back to the same spot. That’s basically the end of situation critical. My crisis management did a great job. The battery lasted to the end. And my back was thankful, my hip as well. No heavy gear strapped around my waist. But I felt like an idiot taking pictures of speeches and the concert with a phone. I’d kick myself!

Just a lovely fishing game

...and a creepy painting at the crafts bazaar.

But here’s the good part. Somewhere along the way my back and hip pain stopped. I guess being so utterly pissed off is a good remedy. Screw painkillers, just let someone piss you off! And the pain didn’t even return as powerful as it was before this story. Oh, I’m still a cripple, and my back and hip pain is still the icing on the cake, but it’s not that bad anymore. Meantime, I’m doing phisio with people that could be my grandparents and wiaiting for some other anti-pain treatment that I’ll start in a month’s time because in our country the queues are monstrous. The procedures that are a bit urgent always take so long. They’re hoping the patient would die or give up first. Not me, I’ll go there and I’ll TELL them I’m in no pain anymore. But hey, I got the prescription, so do it, throw away the money! I’m sure they’ll love to do it.

A puppet show about a girl that came from the Soča river.

But you know what, there’s a very bright side to all the screw ups on that day. Compared to the famous Metalica story. The weather was beautiful, I could piss in the bushes, and my gear didn’t die (because I never used it).

The day ended with a concert.

It could just be me, I know that. Because in trying to resolve the issue, I haven’t managed to take out one variable from the equation yet. Despair. And I strongly believe that such comparisons don’t exist in a happy world nor in a world where big changes aren’t for the worse, or – on an individual level – where one’s life hasn’t gone astray and wondered into some form of idle running, waiting for the end.

Compared to the starry nights of the nineties, nowadays, most young people don’t even look up. The magic of life is narrowed down to partying in clubs and open air festivals, while everything else is transition from one such fix to another. The disconnection with life is crucial. It comes with the territory. The world has been reducing the ammount of personal in everything and raising the amount of impersonal for years. The most common personal gestures today and the only time people in this country get very personal very fast and very often are insults. Everything is turning from sane humane premises, the human touch, to formalities, inhumane following of written word, regardless of the person inside. People are reduced to numbers and price tagged. Even music follows the trend. Robotic voices and electronic sounds, lyrics made of humming or lalala don’t exactly express much of a band or a singer. That’s normal. Personalities are gone. The touch is gone. Distance is king now.

It’s no wonder ALL women at a party wear high heels and miniskirts. They stumble like young calf in those shoes, but they have to wear it – it’s PR and public image. Some look like they were made in Madamme Toussauds museum, but hey – it’s public image. Their mind only registers the hunky guys that look like something out of a fitness magazine. The men worth mentioning according to popular media. And that’s what they are. They’re spitting images of people in the movies and superficial magazines. The hotshots that drive fast, drive angry, party hard, solve problems with violence, and drink till they do a lot of damage and drop. These primitive people appearantly don’t have a critical mind to distinguish between real life and fiction, or the brains not to mimic fiction in reality. Africa: Look what happens when you give weapons to primitive people. Slovenia: Look what happens when you give mass stupid media to primitive people. But they have an enormous ego, and that’s why they don’t try to fly or become superheroes, but they love to absorb and mimic characters that exhibit a lot of ego, because idiots will always look for ways to boost their egoes. A bald head like Vin Diesel’s will help. A pimped car, too. 200 kph driving gives an edge. Acting like an alpha male of a pack of chimpanzees at a club would also do the trick. Especially, if it involves showing off how much you can drink. And spill on the floor. And spill on other people. …

Nobody cares about the person inside now. It’s the presentation on the outside that gets the attention, but it has to be satisfying in terms of personal benefits to your “viewers”. The individual has turned into a mass media outlet, going for ratings rather than truth. But in today’s world, you only have two options. Go with the flow, or decide to be human and be alienated from the world in which you live. These are hard times for humans, fun times for intoxicated minds. Sorry, if I prefer to live my life, not something my mind conjures up in a fake trance. Yes, even if it’s FUBAR. If I want twisted reality, I only have to go to sleep and dream.

A music referrence: J-Lo symbolically turns the Lambada song of the sane nineties that meant something back then to a club dance song of the 2000s singing about “the new generation of party people”, telling them to “grab somebody, drink a little more”. See how values change? That’s who you are now.

These people enjoy life, drink away, party, and when they destroy things, it’s because they like it. Because it makes them feel great. It’s not a goddam reaction to any political turmoil, which is what we keep hearing from people who are obviously so removed from the generations of young hooligans that they don’t see what their mentality is all about. Ten-year-olds sure as hell don’t express their political beliefs. And I don’t think a manic laugh, toungue showing, shaking heads and beastly screams – the kind you see in hardcore football fans – are a picture of a politically affected protester.

Capitalism, popular culture and the “new” morals are all about the ego, screwing other people over without second thought, guilt, or moral objections. Working for your own benefit on every step and getting there over dead bodies. In our country, it’s a daily game of who will screw over who. There’s a lot of screwing going on here! A lot of shady business, a lot of screwing all over the place on every level. Yap, quite a big whore house! These people made a routine and a valued skill of finding how to get away with crime without any consequences. It’s a national sport of trampling over human rights, worker’s rights, of robbing people and exploiting them to gain wealth and live happily ever after. This is the criminal’s mekka.

And don’t EVER tell me this country’s not well off. Most people earn pretty good money, but their mentality prevents them from creating a system where money would be equally distributed, not only tunelled into their pockets for – of course – personal pleasure. Remember, it’s the “me” that’s important. Egotistical capitalism is the new democracy. We’re used to it on a global scale. Picture it on a scale of Manhattan.

An hour at the city pool

“Yeah, on Monday I’m going back to Spain for some surfing, to get in shape,” a bit dishevelled man tells his friends. You know what I do when I need to get in shape? I go cycling 20km not surfing in Spain!!!

Two minutes later, different guy, about the same age – twentysomething: “Under 20k a month I don’t consider a career. Thousand, two thousand a month is nothing.”

How about 180/month? Where’s that in your book? The conversation continued with a discussion on how many people can afford a big swimming pool in front of their house, how swimming pools aren’t expensive etc.

What followed was an hour of listening where people have been for the summer. Not from one person, but from many. And finally, a word about a woman whose father lives somewhere abroad and stacks her with money, along with 5,000 eur purses etc.

Hm… Yeah, we’re poor. Let’s destroy the country.

Social criticism aside, there comes a point when you run out of words to fight either outside world or the one inside. There’s no more words describing the feeling of empty dark summer streets when 80% of everybody else are enjoying life somewhere on the streets of seaside towns bustling with life, people living in a rich world, in every sense of the word. It’s impossible to comprehend and come to terms, no matter how you discuss it with yourself, the path your life has taken, the dead-end you’ve reached. In fact, there’s nothing left to say to the stories you document, especially not on a blog. It’s just useless when you know you can’t fight the ignorance, the world of narrowed interest, based mostly on some close personal benefit. It’s important that you still produce stories, but any socially critical rants are highly redundant in the new world. Any personal rants are even more absurd.

A popular Slovenian writer wrote a collumn on how this country is trying to build and promoting a society based on drinking. The propaganda is present on every step. They’re as pushy as door-to-door salesmen. He gave an example of a billboard ad for a popular beer that’s directly saying it. He condemned it. So did many of his readers. Thousands of people read that collumn and agreed on the criticism. Today, the country is again full of these billboards, because people are back from holidays, the young are back for school. They shrugged off criticism. What have we learned? It’s yet another sign that the politics of “let’s-get-everybody-drunk-so-they-won’t-complain” is prevailant in this country. This mentality has such a majority that they can consider criticism like that a voice of the minority, shrug it off, and shamelessly continue their propaganda. This exact reason (having the majority) gives their “party” (what a convenient name for the followers of the being-drunk-whenever-possible culture) a pass on all the innocent people killed on the road by drunk drivers. Don’t mention it and move on, “drink a little more”.

So why mention it? Nobody cares. And in a situation where things are wrong in other fronts as well, why waste time and energy. Anyway, there comes a time when it’s all over. When so much has accumulated, twisted and turned, churned and rolled, mixed and spiraled, simmered and conjoined, that there’s nothing left to say. No words to describe it or to fight it, or to alleviate it, make sense, see the purpose. This blog was originally intented to host text and photos, but the 25-30 people reading it is hardly a reason to keep it in this form. Especially when time is not on my side, and words don’t come easy anymore.

Which is why this blog will only rarely be updated. A new one might turn up, a design of only one photo and a bit of text. Not likely though, considering the lack of interest.