#(for real tho zero obligation re giving me things for real)

[kirby-the-gorb]

(No Obligation Whatsoever but if you *want* to give me a birthday present my kofi is in the pinned post or you could always draw a kirby :> after all I started drawing him every day in the first place just cuz I think low key simple kirby drawings are fun and there should be more of them!)

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Montenegro to Eurovision with 6 young souls

(this is a pre-vamp review so take this whole thing as “something I wanted to publish but my schedule was withholding until it was specifically time for them to be reviewed”, therefore, this is a bit of a retrospective review. Will tackle on its revamp later!)

Montevizija, which finally has an official Twitter account (we all should forget the times some dude named Vasilije pretended to having made one), offered us another batch of 5 songs for another year, actually revealing all of them beforehand this time and not just the snippets! Joy to the world I guess.

You gotta love Montevizija for it being the most underrated ex-Yugoslavian national final btw. Granted, it only lasted for 2 editions as of now, and it will take years to grow bigger as a thing, but so far, for us the NFs that are ingrained to our brains more are Dora, EMA and Beovizija (and even Skopje Fest when THAT was used to pick an act and not just served as a festival like it originally was meant to be), therefore Montevizija seems more shunned. But what do you expect when the lineup of 5 for two years in a row is not exactly as stellar as hoped for? Well, there are gems here and there, but they haven’t really won on either years (or at least not on the 2nd year if you call Vanja’s song a gem too), and yet somehow they find someone who call them great. But for me this Montenegrin entry is not. :L

And who is up there to be colossally blamed for its existence? None other than this group of 6 refering to themselves as D mol (with “mol” decapitalized for whatever reason... they used to have hyphen separating the ‘D’ and ‘mol’, but now they scrapped it altogether, an anime death I’ll never forget). Worth noting that I, as a 19 year old, have this particularly ugly feeling I must get rid of, and that’s the one of “feeling old”, already at my age. And this is how I felt seeing that the band whose song I am not fond of today is made up by members that are of 16-17 to 21-ish years old!!! So my heart insists that I shouldn’t go too hard on these poor younglings, even if this is just me, currently tackling the brethren of my age. Prepare as I’ll go to shred their composition they’re going to Tel Aviv with, “Heaven”, to bits.

Although, what I call “shredding to bits” is merely just nitpicking the reasons the original version (keep bearing in mind that I haven’t heard the revamp yet) sucks imo, and idk, the new “Heaven” miiiiiiight just grow on me, but I heavily doubt about it because I never cared for it in the first place (youhouuu, they were my last in Montevizija ‘19 for a reason), and I’m rather looking forward for the new faves from the 8 songs I haven’t listened to yet rather than those that were already chosen. And even the Eurofans were not quite fond on the revamp, as some think the additional ethno sounds made it sound worse (and of course there are some that kinda like it or think of the song as their guilty pleasure). So why shouldn’t I? :O

Anyway, old “Heaven”. The first sounds on here to grace my ears on this song consist of one light piano note being tapped to an exact rhythm and a confused baby girl stuttering. And I’d’ve maybe enjoyed this more ironically at some point if it weren’t for the latter sound effect being re(ab)used later in the song!! Ugh I hate it. The lyrics are fine I guess... though isn’t it ironic the only English song in Montevizija’s lineup this year won?? It’s like the Montenegrin people were openly cringing when being the only ones to understand Vanja comparing his life to cat’s and mouse’s and calling his heart “the most expensive toy” in his song and then they were like “you know what? Let’s let the WHOLE Europe understand how terrible our lyrics are! ^_^” (no but for real, who still uses “I’m in heaven, falling straight into your heart” as a pick-up line? Did they travel through time from 1998 to 2019 or something???)

Speaking of the 90s, the whole song smells like a dated cliché of that period. You know, the kind of “the high school prom song from that 90s teen sitcom’s who you’re forced to watch when your elderly aunt is in the house with you and there’s nothing else on TV” dated. Dated even more than “Chain of Lights”. Seriously though! It includes the pathetic “wah wah” bassline, mid-tempo beats, the boy/girl-group harmonies... catch me puking sugar-coated cheese to this, no thanks. Oh and if you already read my “Zero Gravity” review (which you probably never even bothered to after seeing how much text would you have to read), I definitely mentioned that I’m not a fan of those “two verses-two choruses” songs, and especially those kind of ones that aren’t sounding like something suited for radio (e.g.: Poland 2018, “Light Me Up”)... this obviously sounds like something from the radio of the times the at-the-time senior highschoolers are currently over 30 or slightly over 40, and that should be 4 and a half minutes long. These verses could just not be more ridiculously dragged out for the choruses to prevail and get stuck in our brains... fucking welp [sic] me already.

Well, if there are any brownie points I could give this, it’s pleasant, it’s harmless if I don’t take into account the cheese vibes this emits, and all this bunch are made up by up-and-coming talented singers that clearly deserved a better song...

And the staging concept in their NF was cool tho (illustrating their power of D mol), and I applaud the couple chemistry I guess

Oh and this below is one of the most underappreciated memes this Euroseason:

*stares into your soul in Montenegrin*

So yeah. Oh and the Rizo(tto) guy who is self-aware of his hotness and the hotness of the much older Eurovision guys this year, but he’s not doing it for me so that I could be in heaven falling, so he’s getting a hard pass.

All in all - a nostalgia cash-in made to appease the housewives from Podgorica to Skopje, from Novi Sad to Štúrovo, and nothing quite else, sung by a cool bunch of people that if anything are deemed this year’s "great people with an unfortunately too dated song and a shitty draw” by me. I don’t know much of their personalities but I do believe that even if they like what they’re singing, they’d be much better off doing a better sounding throwback, at least. So that even the disappointed-by-”Heaven” Eurofans could at least call it “so dated but a BOP!”. And hey, I’m aware of those fans that will likely be pissed at me for not bopping along to this, but I said what I said about it and yet again, if revamp changes my mind, I will change my opinion, but right now I’d not prefer to. Grumpy Adio.

Approval factor: Hell with the no. I would like Vanja back instead. At least he made himself a somebody to be cared about even if the Eurofans didn’t quite adapt to his song in return.

Follow-up factor: somehow, both “Inje” and “Heaven” were/are seen by the masses as instant NQs, so it somehow doesn’t sound like Montenegro is following a great path so far. And after this year anything that audience favours and wins can be seen as a way better follow up after something meh coming after something wrose.

Qualification factor: For the n-th time, I’m yet to check the revamp out to state where this will actually go, but being put 2nd in the draw is a massive stab in the knee, as demonstrated by even the national finals this year (Electric Fields in Australia Decides, Aly Ryan in Unser Lied für Israel, Lisa Ajax in Melodifestivalen final... the only glaring exception is ZENA in Eurofest but is it me or these producers did this just so they could be all like “heeeey we put a winning song on 2nd just to show that a NF song can win from ANY draw! ANY DRAW!!!” lol nope), and from it only a few lucky souls have crawled out victorious (Nathan Trent for example, the draw might have pushed him down in the semi but he got up again!). D mol, for as young and developing in talent as they are, don’t seem to be such. You can be young and pitied for your personality, but you always can at the same time have a song that completely crushes your chances to do well and sweeps up the last shards of hope right in front of your eyes despite being an angel worthy of protection (Ari Ólafsson, anyone?). Unless the D molians work all their magic and the random ethnic vibes into their favour for some reason, but for now it ain’t gonna work.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

And even then, what was so interesting about Montevizija 2019?? Let’s see...

• First off, let’s address one meme of the beginning of 2019 that Facebook may or may have not used purposefully to upgrade their automatic “facial recognition” skills - the 10 years challenge. Our first one of this season is the sassy maneater who spent her ESC stint by trying to unlove a guy so hard that he just couldn’t oblige - Andrea Demirović. Her decade-later A-game happened to be this one song she sang in her mother-tongue: “Ja sam ti san” (I am your dream). Now, I wasn’t particularly into it - I enjoy some electro tracks out there (like hello, “Igranka” is one of my favourite Montenegrin entries, and 2013 entries overall as well) but this one just ended up being the right amount of cool AND overbearingly unsettling for me to not really fancy it. Kinda like “Red” by HyunA - I can only bop to this if I don’t care about the fact I actually hate it, oops. (Or maybe it is just because Andrea once again used a composition done by one of those “rent-a-NF-songwriter” people. Which is at least better than collabing Ralph Siegel who’s stopped being relevant ever since starting to work with San Marino, or even since the hilarious attempt of a peace song sung by the original common framework, six4One. But since Michael James Down has co-contributed to one of the better Montevizija songs last year, I will not allow myself to think it’s thanks to those kind of songwriters.) Nevertheless, the Eurofans actualy kind of loved this song, but sadly, Montenegrins and the international jury did quite not, and she didn’t land on to the superfinal 2 (as opposed to a superfinal 3 last year, to which she could have easily qualified if it still were a 3). Here’s her song to y’all anyways (and the performance too, which just needed to include some random monster dudes dancing around... why? Because Eurovision! ^^):

• Speaking of Andrea, during the results part there was this one shot of hers where she was pictured just casually chilling on her phone, not giving a damn that she’s being underrated on the scoreboard. Not only she was badly rated, but this moment was such an universal #mood!

• In between the finally final results announcement (which I didn’t really know when exactly was it taking place because the winner wasn’t really said out loud before the event I will describe next was taking place??) there was this lottery going on of who would be the lucky two audience observers that’d win tickets to Tel Aviv... hilariously enough though, it somehow malfunctioned and there were some sort of errors regarding the announcement of the RIGHT winner <3 but the winners happened and I hope they’re getting to go to Tel Aviv at some point during the Eurovision events! Hope they don’t feel startled by the lack of taken seats this year.

• Unlike Eesti Laul, Montevizija this year took up the job of showcasing tweets of Eurofans, and somehow this fellow fella ended up seen by a handful of Montenegrins AND international viewers. Take a wild guess which of them know what a daddy Serhat is.

• And who could not forget the magic flying envelope for to announce the winner of the NF:

there must have been some Harry Potter magic in there :O

As for what touches the other songs, well there’s the last year’s fan fave Nina Petković with another song, but it’s no “Dišem”, so don’t even bother. Or bother, but imo it’s just okay-sounding, nothing that groundbreaking or pleasant enough to be competitive. The other few songs were also nice but I’d like not to make this longer as my other write-ups, to be fair. Sucked to be Mr. Kállay-Saunders who, as the international juror chosen for this national final, had to rank its songs... as that NF happened right on the same day his second A Dal 2019 performance was taking off. Not that the international jurors were supposed to be present in Montenegro on the day of this NF, anyways...

Anyway, despite all this goddamn criticism (that could’ve flown more smooth had my computer not restarted in the middle of me doing paragraphs for this review), I’m fare welling the D mol-ians and would like to wish them a heavenly Eurovision experience. ^_^

[lafortis]

oops *social programs. like increasing class sizes, cutting bursaries, cutting library funding, cutting OHIP drug coverage. that kind of thing

so like

idk this is a topic i feel like i should say more about but i’m tired rn so this is what u get

increasing class sizes, presuming you could link that directly to a decrease in quality of outcomes in education, is dumb and short-sighted. education, especially in k-12, is one of the safest and best long term investments and state actor can make, no questions asked. in cutting it, presuming class sizes actually do actually cause disengagement or worse outcomes (not a huge leap), you run the risk of increasing crime rates (delinquent youth - in-class engagement, extra-curriculars, and economic opportunity brought about by success in education all have been show to decrease crime rates [iirc, citing things when ur hunched on a roadcase is a little beyond me rn but if u want citations i can provide]) and decreasing flow of graduates to jobs that require ppl with higher education, either stymieing broader economic growth or forcing them to look elsewhere and bring ppl in either interprovicnially or internationally, which i get the impression isn’t the outcome foug dord seeks, were he asked. 

cutting bursaries falls under the same category in my opinion; it is, broadly speaking, a good use of gov’t money to offer money for higher education. the increased income tax revenue over the person’s lifetime would likely more than pay for it, even in a zero sum game where the gov’t doesn’t also benefit from a more educated overall populace/workforce (which they fucking do). again, long term substantial benefit being sacrificed for short term gain in the name of deficit reduction (which i’ll... get to)

library funding is just a kick in the fucking teeth tbh, but if i have to address it seriously, libraries’ benefits are similar to that of higher school engagement; lowering crime rates as otherwise delinquent youths, poor families etc have a place for their children to spend time safely and productively. besides their use as a repository for local history (which i’m sure ford’s rural base would approve of if they realized it was there, but he’s from etobicoke and therefore doesn’t give a shit), they host events, help educated local children, represent the most freely available source of learning to low-income individuals, and offer a safe space to the public during business hours. for how much money they consume, cutting them is almost always a bad idea, regardless of province or country.

cutting OHIP coverage is dumb. single payer pharmacare is good. for reasons why see the folllowing:

suck my dick

for real tho i know my man wants to privatize health care in this province i done seen it in his eyes IRL. 

and as a serious answer: those whose drugs you know longer pay for will likely burden the system in another way later down the line, and that’s usually much more expensive. unless he plans to defund ERs as well (which doesn’t exist anywhere, even private systems, which is why private systems are dumb; you turn people away until they’re literally dying, do an extremely expensive procedure to save them because you’re practically ethically obligated to, and then hit them with the bill, which they can’t pay any of, or they would’ve fixed it earlier. they go bankrupt, but you can’t squeeze blood from a stone either. everyone loses) preventative care, even ancillary care like non-essential pharma, is cheaper long-term than waiting for someone to be more expensive and more necessary to fix. you could split hairs about which are necessary and which aren’t or what have you, but quite frankly those administrative costs plus the quality of life downgrade ppl get from an obtuse pharmacare system means that it’s probably easier to just pay for it all. and THEN GUESS WHAT

you’re fucking single payer now. congratulations. want access to a market of 14 million? gotta negotiate with OHIP on drug prices now. fuck you. 

it’s literally more economically efficient for everyone except drug manufacturers, whose profit margins are so economically aberrant that they can kinda go fuck themselves. like it’s the exact kind of thing taxes exist for: something that can be accomplished better, cheaper and more consistently under a single entity than individually. federal liberals are threatening to move this way and if they get re-elected i’ll personally suck trudeau’s dick to make it happen. it’s just fucking common sense.

 so that just leaves us with uhhh,,,, one thing left, which is the provincial gov’t’s assertion that ontario’s debt is out of control, way too high, etc. as the reasoning behind austerity measures like these. which is like, it sounds good on paper? to the layman, sure, it holds up. their $343bn number is intimidating, there’s the “highest sub-sovereign debt” factoid floating around always, wynne was unpopular, liberals spend too much, so therefore spending was too high in the eyes of the ppl. whatever. economy doesn’t exist solely in political ads and the heads of those they’re targeted towards. 

governments are made to hold debt. more than an individual, or a company, or a mega-corporation or conglomerate, governments are debt-holding entities. the actual amount is rarely important, as long as it’s payment has been earmarked over the time agreed upon. the interest over time is weighed against the economic growth that that spending is projected to create. actual cost of the debt is minimal. ontario’s interest payments appear to amount to about $4bn LESS than quebec’s, despite quebec having about 2/3rds of our debt. their debt to gdp ratio is 52% to our 39%. 

the reason our debt is so much higher than other comparable sub-sovereign entities (i.e. american states) is because our provinces bear MUCH more spending burden than their peers. if you average out provincial and federal debt to get a more even representation of debt per capita, ontario is SAFELY in the black compared to other similar economies (which, to be fair, is partially because america’s federal debt is so high, but state debt’s and spending are so low that it’s not even a comparison otherwise). the only concerning stat in our entire economic portfolio is that economic growth

further research on their direction on the topic actually leave me less angry than before in a broad sense; their fiscal policymakers seem to generally agree that the best way to reduce debt is to spend at current levels rather than increase. it’s mostly i suppose the specifics you brought up as well as their rhetoric and political ads that i vehemently disagree with as short-sighted. 

as usual canadian politics is a watered down version of american, so even their post-trump candidate actually still staffs genuine fiscal conservatives who don’t make obvious and easy to avoid mistakes.

vic fidelli can still suck my dick tho. this statement is dumb and obviously not true. “hey economic winds are blowing well so our long term strategy is obviously ALREADY WORKING”. fuck you. fuck off. stupid bitch.

so yeah

tat’s me onion