Monthly Archives: December 2009

I can’t help thinking – just stop building the goat?

Animals

Sad news. People in Sweden have built a straw goat, which has burnt to the ground. Poor goat.

Well, let me expand a little – the 43-foot straw goat, a “traditional Scandinavian Yuletide symbol” was erected this Christmas in Gavle (just north of Stockholm) as it has been every year since 1966.

Though also every year (well almost – only 10 times since goat number one has this not happened), the goat is vandalised in some way, usually by being set alight and burning to the ground.

And this has happened to poor Mr Swedish Goat yet again, as he went up in flames early this morning.

Now, initially I sat here sniggering – oh, those Swedes! Building straw goats! And then always burning them! But then…I found out that the straw goat has his own blog. Gavlebockens (snappy name! Ahem, though it just means “Gavle’s Goat”) posted regularly (in both Swedish and English – a bilingual straw goat, you can’t get more impressive than that), even finding time to post whilst he was going up in flames. This appeared this morning:

Terrible night! Slept so well under my beautiful snow blanket, when it suddenly became awfully hot. It was fire!!! At 3 AM, someone managed to set me on fire and destroy the amazing Christmas spirit in Gävle. So sad that I can’t celebrate Christmas with you all, but thank you so much for now, dear friends. I’m sad to sad to say that I must go now. I’m going on holiday now to get some rest – but will of course be back for next Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

You know I’m now sitting here sobbing my eyes out over this poor, straw, not-even-real goat. (Hey, I’m a girl, I cry at anything.) *sniffle* He didn’t even get to see Christmas…

You rotters! Who sets upon a poor, defenceless straw goat? Anyone touches ol’ Gavlebockens next year, they’ll have me to answer to.

P.S. Ohmagawd, there’s something about Gavlebockens having a baby brother that was vandalised and never came back, and he was said, and…*waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh*…

P.P.S. Oh wait, then there’s another post about him watching Swedish Idol. Urgh.

The biggest non-upset upset in UK chart history (or is it just about Christmas number ones?)

Music, The Charts,

Well done everyone! We’ve done it! We’ve beaten the evil kitten-eater Simon Cowell and the winner of his spreadsheet talent contest The Excel Factor, Steve Brookstein, in their bid to get the Christmas number one with their cover of Disney starlet Billy Ray Cyrus’s hit, The Fall. (Yeah, that sentence has too much “spoof”. I know. Well, I haven’t posted properly in a while, I’ve got to get my remaining spoof out before the year ends. Plus I don’t watch X Factor, so only have a vague idea of what actually goes on.)

Anyways, yes, a lot of “us” bought Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name, regardless of whether we liked it or not or remembered the song first time round etc etc. And we drove it to number one, with 50,000 more copies sold than Joe McElderry’s The Climb.

Though why people are calling this a chart upset beats me. Or even a Christmas number one upset. Sure, the X Factor winner has been number one for the last 40 years so this year’s X Factor’s winner was guaranteed it again, even if the winner had been a raisin wearing a woolly hat. But then a Facebook campaign/group started, attracting almost 1 million followers – 500,000 more members than actually bought the single. (Eh?)

So when you expect several hundreds of thousands of people to buy a single and there’s a damn good chance that it hits the top spot – that it actually gets there isn’t that surprising or even that much of an upset. Okay, so it beat what most people expected to be there instead (well, most people prior to December), but it’s just not that surprising. If Lady Gaga – who ended up in the third spot – actually got to number one instead of either single, that would be an upset. If Michael Jackson had suddenly appeared on the Monday in HMV Oxford Street and urged everyone to buy his new single for Christmas and it hit the top spot, that would be an upset. If the number one “spot” magically disappeared and there was NO number one, that would be an upset. If…oh, you get the picture.

And the same goes for Christmas number one upsets in previous years. For example, 1985 is often mentioned as an example – when Shakin’ Stevens Merry Christmas Everyone beat Whitney Houston’s Saving All My Love For You. Upset – what upset? More people bought Shakey’s single.

And it’s about Christmas, at least.

And look at his nice red scarf:

Today’s Best Headline

Hair Metal, Music,

From BBC News:

Normally I’d write a bit more in a blog entry – make a wise crack, explain what the eff’s going on, blabber on about the 1980s, mouth off about Simon Cowell – that kind of thing.

But this doesn’t need any of that. All of us can just sit back and smile, safe in the knowledge that a Def Leppard cartoon is – FINALLY – about to be made.

Phew.