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August 22 2025

M’era Luna 2025

There now follows a summary of my time in Germany this summer at the M’era Luna festival. This one will be known as the first one where we had VIP passes to the Hannover EBM marquee and beer.

On Thursday we woke early to head to Heathrow. Flight was good. Landed at Hannover and got the train to town. Found our “hotel” which was a box hotel. We elft our bags and headed off to meet friends. We saw quite a lot from the top of the new town hall but the best bit was the lift that took us to the top dome. It curved inside the building so the floor was level at the start but not at the end. It is more of a tourist attraction that actually being at the top. We ate at a Greek restaurant that night after seeing our room which was small (expected) and a very curious design. The floor smelt of piss though. We popped to the Maschsee Fest then headed back to the hotel, I had been up since 0400.

Friday was a train journey to Hildesheim, get wristbands and buy shuttle bus tickets to the site. We had to wait for tickets, wait for the bus and then it took two hours to get to the site and the traffic around Hildesheim was fucked. But, once at the site we found a pre-made tent and chilled. We had arrived in Hildesheim at 1045 and arrived at M’era Luna at 1600. Ants seemed to be attacking our tent but when we returned after the bands they had moved on, maybe we weren’t their correct flavour of person. Strangely for M’era Luna there were bands on the Friday night. I think this was because it’s 25 years of the festival and so a special occasion. Lord Of The Lost played and also released their album on the same day.

Lord Of The Lost – Friday headline set, a good show, lots of fireworks, your man singer from Unzucht (now Oomph!) came on stage to sing a song about M’era Luna.

After the bands I showered. There were no lights in the shower tent and no shower curtains. This is sometimes how things go. Also, definitely not the worst shower I’ve ever been in.

Saturday bands went as follows:

Null Positiv – main stage. Good metal. Female singer. I enjoyed it. Well structured songs. Good audience engagement.

Chris Harms – club stage. He’s the singer from Lord Of The Lost. 80s fucking shit. Good songs I guess but left me really cold.

Tanzwut – main stage. Rock with bagpipes.

Ambassador 21 – club stage. Fucking angry industrial. Great set. Ended with Power Rage Riot Death.

Funker Vogt – club stage. It just misses live. Can listen to their stuff not live. It’s just a little boring live. Good atmosphere though.

Faderhead – club stage. Fucking great. Excellent songs. Good vibe. Really good. My absolute best of the weekend.

Solar Fake – club stage. Solid set. Elliott MF Berlin on keyboards and guitar at times. He had so much energy. Not quite excellent though.

Eisbrecher – main stage. Excellent show as ever. The sound was really impressive.

Sunday things included watching bands, meeting people, checking train times for Monday and having a good time. The train times is a pain as you work from your flight time and keep subtracting time until you find out “get up” time, which was about 0600. This meant there was time for one missed connection but not two.

Beyond border – Main stage. All right. Two farmer dads and their son. Left to see:

Corlyx– club stage. Female singer. Good bass. Hate the guitars, very “The Cure”.

Manntra – main stage. Viking looking but good metal/rock. Classic metal with good audience participation.

Schattenmann– main stage. Metal. Liked the voice of the singer. Good show but left to:

Noisuf- X – club stage. Hard and fast dance. Big crowd for club stage at 1300. Played Hit Me Hard and Hit Me Fast

Sierra Veins – club stage. Electronic. Slow with heavy bass. Little singing and though a chorus box. I enjoyed it. But I can’t classify it. I have since bought some.

Leather Strip – club stage. Damn good. Just Kurt. Proper EBM. Really good. Oddly, given how good it was, I’m not too fussed about seeing them again.

Rotersand – club stage. Fucking great. Loved it. Singer came into the crowd near me and Smith, we pogoed together.

In Strict Confidence – club stage. A bit meh for me. I don’t get on with the deep male voice.

None of the Sunday headline bands interested us and so we went to the tent, whereupon we had the idea of travelling to Hannover Sunday evening to remove a lot of the hassle from Monday morning. There ensued quick investigations of trains and hotels and we left. We walked past the main venue entrance with two bands playing and headed to Hannover. This hotel was much nicer than the Box Hotel, and, with no explanation at all, was next to the red light district.

Monday was the flight home and to chill. It was a great weekend with Faderhead and Rostersand sticking out for me.

June 4 2025

Get In The Sea

I recently heard about a faction of the Labour Party who call themselves Blue Labour. Well, it turns out those Blue Labour people can go fuck themselves.

Blue Labour group urges ministers to ‘root out DEI’ to win over Reform voters

I don’t understand why we want to blame DEI for things that might be going wrong. Actually the bigger issue is why should Labour attract people who are voting for Reform. People who vote reform can get in the fucking sea. If you are convinced the reason you can’t get an NHS appointment is because of asylum seekers or DEI hires then perhaps you should fuck off. Maybe it’s the fault of the more than a decade of austerity caused by the Tory government. Chronic underfunding of all services in the country have led us to where we are today. Blaming asylum seekers is the racist thing to do. Blame those tory fuckwits who failed to invest in the country.

Labour shouldn’t be paying any attention to Blue Labour and they certainly shouldn’t be proposing policies that agree with the political right. If anything, Labour need to go harder to the left. Start offering people real hope. Let the racists vote for the racist party. Let the bigots vote for the bigot party. Let them slowly die in their own hatred. Labour need to move further to the left. Become a caring party. Become a helping party.

I had spent most of my life thinking we were progressing socially and becoming more accepting of others. But it feels like the last ten years have been a slide away from being nice. It feels like we are heading to fascism and war in ten years. I’ve never felt this way before and I grew up in the 80s when nuclear armageddon was four minutes away. It depresses me how little I look forward to the future. And I’m not even thinking about anthropogenic climate change as part of this.

All I can do is concentrate on the things I can control and do my best for the people close to me. I can also give money to what I consider good causes and I will do so as long as I can afford it.

March 13 2025March 16 2025

Celebrations

As the days roll by I approach a celebration day. CHAIR. I’ve been wondering what I should get to reward myself for this celebration day. CHAIR. I have been slowly upgrading my kit at work to make my job more comfortable/doable. I have a rising desk, second monitor, good mouse, desk fans, charging points, PlayStation, Lego ruler and pencil case, and a Darth Vader pen holder. All of these are things that please me and make the day-to-day grind more tolerable. CHAIR.

The next thing I have been thinking about, especially given recent back problems, is a suitable sitting object. CHAIR. Perhaps I could get an decent office chair that supports me well and is comfy. Something I like, something that says – ME. My current desk chair does not have wheels, squeaks and doesn’t have arms. It’s an OK chair but I’d rather have something more special.

An issue with decided what to get is that my room is used by all manner of people and even children so any CHAIR would potential need to cope with uninvited torsos. Obviously, there would be rules but people do like breaking rules, especially if they think they can get away with it.

So, buying a chair seems to me to be a very personal business. I want to know that I find it comfortable and that it is made well. I have sat on some chairs in PC World and they have been mostly shit. This could be because many people “try” them out and also, maybe, they aren’t put together with love and attention. I don’t know if the abuse they get means they feel “cheap” or they are just cheap.

I’ve also tried some chairs at Ikea and although there seem to be some promising types there we still come across the “feel cheap” side of things. So, what to do? CHAIR. I keep having intrusive thoughts. This is made worse by the fact that, at home I won a really nice, well put-together chair. It also costs that much. But. It is a nice chair. My current thoughts are to get a new chair from that company and the bring the current home chair into work. I think it will make a nice addition to my workspace.

More complications arise as the when I bought the current home gaming chair I had it delivered to work. This then required me to transport the box to my house. It almost didn’t fit in the car. It definitely doesn’t fit in the boot and so the last time I had to slide it into the back seats, which normally wouldn’t be an issue but I did have a human I needed to sit in the back as well. It was a tight squeeze and I’m not sure that human would want to be squashed like that again. So, I have to think carefully about delivery. I’m not at home during working hours, but transporting could be an issue if delivered to work!

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