Accident at the Freimarkt

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Cora

There was an accident at the Freimarkt, our local autumn fair tonight. Apparently, a gondola broke off from a carousel and crashed into the boundary. Six people injured, one of them critically, according to the local radio news.

Even worse, the carousel in question is Die Krake (the Kraken), owned by a family of local showmen and one of my all-time favourite fairground rides. The Kraken is as old as me and I must have ridden her more than 30 times over the years. Though she’s an older ride, she’s in top condition, extremely well maintained and was completely refurbished a few years ago (the company who did the refurbishing is one of my translation customers). So whatever caused this accident, I really cannot imagine that it’s a maintenance issue. And two previous incidents with the same type of ride, a Schwarzkopf Monster III, both at Heidepark Soltau, were not due to any faults of the ride*. What is more, a Kraken gondola can hold two passengers, three at most. So in order for six people to be injured, a whole arm must have come down.

Besides, German fairground rides are the safest you’ll find anywhere, since they are given a full inspection at every fairground site they visit, i.e. approximately every two weeks during the season. I have never been worried about the safety of the rides on a German fairground (I’m a bit wary of foreign fairs, though – I was at a state fair in Kentucky years ago, where the rides were very rickety). I’m far more wary with regard to amusement parks, because the maintenance intervals are longer.

My Dad actually was at the Freimarkt tonight with a bunch of colleagues, though he doesn’t do rides anymore and hasn’t been on The Kraken ever since I’m old enough to ride alone. He didn’t see anything either, but only heard of the accident on the radio on the way home. I was planning to go yesterday, but didn’t go after all, because I’m still a bit tired from my UK trip and my muscles are still sore. If I’d gone tonight, that might have been me, because I always ride The Kraken.

*The Kraken was built by legendary rollercoaster and fairground ride manufacturer Anton Schwarzkopf, whose rides are known to be very safe. A few years ago, there was a CSI episode where Grissom and friends investigated a rollercoaster crash. I took one look at the coaster and said, “That’s a Schwarzkopf coaster and they don’t crash, so it was sabotage.” Gil Grissom came to the same conclusion 45 minutes later.

ETA: According to the current status of the news, nine people are injured, one of them in critical condition, and the gondola fell into the spectators and people waiting for their ride by the sidelines of the carousel. This version of events makes sense, because with the Kraken it’s common to wait for your turn on the ride platform, directly next to the spinning gondolas. And because the ride is always fully booked and there is no queue, people scramble for the gondolas as soon as the carousel slows down.

ETA 2: Nonstopnews has more information and photos.

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One Year Blog Anniversary

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Cora

Or would that be bloggoversary?

At any rate, today is the one year anniversary of the new corabuhlert.com blog. Well actually, it was yesterday, but I missed the date in all of the travel uproar. If anybody is wondering what happened to the old blog which I kept from 2002 to 2006, there is an explanation here.

In its first year, the blog got 28168 views (which is probably what the likes of John Scalzi get in a day). The busiest day with 2692 visitors was on July 11, 2011. The average daily view count hovers somewhere between 50 and 120.

Here are the ten most popular posts of the last year: Continue reading →

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Back Home

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Cora

I’m back home in Bremen again. That is, actually I got back late last evening, but I was too tired to post or do much of anything else.

Luckily, I seem to have evaded all of the coughs and sneezes on the plane, particularly the goth girl who coughed so heavily that she might have been auditioning for a part in Contagion. My legs are really sore though, probably because I had to walk quite literally from one end of Amsterdam Schiphol airport (which is huge) to the other. And because it was fairly late in the evening, several of the automatic walkways were out of commission, so walking truly meant walking.

But other than that I had a great time in Newcastle upon Tyne. Expect photos in the next few days. In the meantime, here are some links:

At Genreality, there is a great post about delving deep into your characters’ emotions by urban fantasy writer J.A. Pitts.

The Daily Telegraph wonders whether Downton Abbey has jumped the shark. I don’t want to gloat, but I predicted that this would happen back in August.

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Beware the Tynemouth cuckoos and orientation for time-displaced Romans

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Cora

I had a really nice time here and Newcastle. I’m flying home tomorrow afternoon, so regular blogging should resume soon. There will be photos as well.

Today we took the Metro out to Tynemouth on the North Sea coast. Somewhere along the way, there was a station with bilingual signs. Now the linguist in me is fascinated by bilingual signage, so I took a closer look.

“That’s strange”, I thought, “It’s probably Italian, but it looks exactly like Latin”.

Then I noticed the station name. Wall’s End. Yup, this wall. So the bilingual signage made sense after all, sort of.

I still wonder whom it is for, though. Is it just to please Latin geeks like me or is it there in case a Roman legionaire accidentally falls through a crack in time? After all, that was a subplot in a Torchwood episode years ago. Though a Roman legionaire would probably still find a sign that says “Noli Fumare” mightly confusing, if he would manage not to get run over by a train, that is.

Also in Tynemouth, we happened to spot an uncommon number of toddlers with curly red hair. We spotted several and they all belonged to different families, too.

“They’re genetically enhanced super-toddlers who are bred in a lab somewhere round here”, I joked, “They’re the Tynemouth Cuckoos, just like the Midwich Cuckoos and they’re going to take over the world, once they’re out of diapers.”

Oddly enough, we also spotted a whole lot of billboards looking for foster families for troubled kids. And what did the billboard show? A smiling toddler with curly red hair.

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In Newcastle

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Cora

I arrived safely here to Newcastle, though I was pretty tired yesterday. Getting up at half past 4 AM to catch the 6:20 flight to Amsterdam was bound to take its toll. Okay, so I did snag one of those comfy recliners at Amsterdam Schipol airport and dozed in front of the panorama windows while watching the sun come up over the airfield. But while that was very nice, it doesn’t replace the truncated night of sleep.

Word of advice: When flying a Fokker 70, avoid the last two or three rows (rows 16 and 17) as far as possible. They’re directly next to the engines, which are at the side of the hull in the Fokker 70 and not at the wings, so it`s terribly loud.

And is there some law of nature that news of international importance must always happen whenever I’m abroad. When I was in Ireland this spring, Osama Bin Laden was killed. And now I’m in the UK and and they finally catch and kill Gaddafi. I first heard it on the radio in the taxi from the airport.

“Did they catch Gaddafi?”, I asked the driver.

“I think they killed him”, he replied in a heavy Geordie accent.

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Away – and an awards mishap

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Cora

First of all, I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK from tomorrow until Monday. I don’t know how frequent my internet connection will be, so there will be only sporadic blogging for the next few days.

To tide you over, here are some links:

The 2011 Man Booker Prize goes to Julian Barnes for his novel The Sense of an Ending.

This will probably please the traditionalists who were unhappy with this year’s shortlist and the jury. And it’s certainly nice for Julian Barnes to finally win on his fourth nomination. Nonetheless, I can’t shake the feeling that the least interesting book won.

Meanwhile, the fashion for one word titles in young adult publishing has caused an embarrassing mix-up in the YA category of the National Book Awards, when a novel called Shine by Lauren Myracle was mistakenly announced as a nominee rather than a novel called Chime by Fanny Billingsley. Chime was eventually given an extra slot on the shortlist, while Shine was supposed to remain on the list as well, until Lauren Myracle decided to withdraw. Still a very embarrassing situation.

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Quick Post on Consistency

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Cora

I had planned a much longer post for today, but I was busy with something else, so here’s a quick link:

Dave Farland a.k.a Dave Wolverton has a great post about the importance of consistency in fiction. Found via Passive Guy.

I find consistency, particularly character consistency, incredibly important. Because while cool ideas and unique world building may draw me in, characters are what keeps me reading or watching. Indeed, characters suddenly acting out of character are my main reason for abandoning a series I used to enjoy. Though inexplicable characterisation shifts that throw me right out of the story happen far more often in series that are written by committee, i.e. TV shows and comic books.

The kiss of death for a TV show is usually when we sit on the sofa, look at each other and say in unison, “This makes no sense. This character would never do that.”

Sometimes, it’s just a hick-up, an inexperienced writer unfamiliar with the character handing in a script. But usually, the character inconsistencies start piling up, until one day you notice that none of the characters behave in character anymore and that you don’t even like this people.

In recent years, I have stopped watching Lost (halfway through season 2), Supernatural (I stopped within two episodes of season 5, but it started going downhill when the angels showed up), The Vampire Diaries (lost interest in season 2), Being Human (season 3), Torchwood (in season 2, long before Children of the Earth and the American travesty) and Doctor Who (and that was before the Doctor got married to River Song who is the biological daughter of his companion Amy and has Timelord DNA, which smells of incest) for exactly this reason. I fear that NCIS may be going the same way, because the inconsistencies pile up and the show just isn’t enjoyable anymore.

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Salman Rushdie is being controversial again, the Booker Prize shortlist is too readable and a headline from a parallel universe

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Cora

In a lengthy interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz Salman Rushdie talked about a lot of things such as the fatwah against him, the persecution of writers worldwide, the Arab Spring, the upcoming film adaption of Midnight’s Children – oh yes, and Game of Thrones. Basically, he considers Game of Thrones “well-produced trash” and “addictive garbage”. If you don’t want to read through the whole interview (though it is interesting), Blastr has a relevant quote.

Unsurprisingly, that brief opinion about Game of Thrones has turned out to be the most controversial thing Rushdie said in that interview, as the comments at Blastr and even Haaretz show. And as if annoying the George R.R. Martin fans wasn’t enough, Rushie also calls The Wire, that holy grail of television, “rather good, but just a cop show in the end”. Methinks Mr Rushdie likes being controversial.

What the enraged commenters miss, however, is that Salman Rushdie actually enjoyed Game of Thrones. He simply doesn’t think it’s a great masterpiece. I also find it interesting that what Rushdie actually said about Game of Thrones…

It was garbage, yet very addictive garbage—because there’s lots of violence, all the women take their clothes off all the time, and it’s kind of fun

…applies to half of all HBO shows and the programming of the various HBO wannabes, the half that actually manages to be entertaining that is. The rest has the sex and the violence and doesn’t even manage to be fun.

***

Salman Rushdie’s not considering the Game of Thrones TV show a masterpiece will probably be filed under the neverending genre versus literary fiction debate. Another part of that debate is the annual discussion why there are never any SF or fantasy novels nominated for the Booker Prize. Never mind that there have been SF and fantasy novels nominated for the Booker Prize (Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie), some of which even won. They just weren’t marketed as such.

Now China Miéville has offered his take on why explicit SF and fantasy novels are not nominated for the Booker Prize, drawing on Darko Suvin’s estrangement theory.

Though this year, the Booker Prize doesn’t need enraged SFF fans to be controversial, because apparently there has been a lot of controversy that the shortlist was too populist and that Dame Stella Rimington, former head of the MI6 and thriller writer, was unsuited as the chairwoman of the jury. Though the real reason why everybody is upset is apparently that Alan Hollinghurst was not nominated, while a bunch of unknowns were. The Guardian has a round-up of the controversy.

I was quite stunned to hear about the controversy, because I found that this year’s shortlist sounded a lot more interesting than usual. And the Booker Prize at least rewards something other than upper middle class family sagas set against the backdrop of 20th century history on occasion, which is more than some other wannabe major awards have managed.

***

In what must be one of the more bizarre exchanges of recent times, the Guardian‘s TV critic Charlie Brooker called British prime minister David Cameron a lizard subsisting on the flesh of sacrificial animals in a column that was actually about budget cuts at the BBC. One Graeme Archer, a political blogger at the Daily Telegraph, begs to disagree and claims that newspaper columnists calling the prime minister a lizard is a sign of Leftist depravity. Charlie Brooker retorts by writing that David Cameron is indeed a lizard and that the Telegraph is denying the truth.

I perhaps shouldn’t find this funny, but I do. I mean, here we have two well-respected journalists at two major newspapers having an argument about whether the prime minister is a lizard (and while Brooker is tongue in cheek, Archer is obviously not). And it’s not an episode of Doctor Who or V but the real world. Unless yesterday’s hick-ups with the Guardian site have accidentally linked me to the Guardian site of a parallel universe, that is.

Considering that the biggest political controversy in Germany in recent times was one politician telling another that he can’t stand seeing the other guy’s “shitty face” anymore, because he was only talking shit anyway, an argument whether the prime minister is a flesh-eating lizard is actually a step up in political discourse. At least, it’s funny, whereas the shit face affair wasn’t funny at all beyond the mildly amusing fact that both gentlemen are members of the same party.

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Margaret Atwood does not hate science fiction

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Cora

At the Guardian, Margaret Atwood talks about science fiction and speculative fiction, utopias and dystopias and how she views her own work.

This should hopefully put all of those “Margaret Atwood hates science fiction and thinks it’s all just crap about giant squids” to rest. But then, the comments section (which seems to have disappeared in the meantime, because the Guardian website is having hick-ups, was full of the usual “Wah, she’s just an evil literary writer who hates SF and anyway Harlan Ellison/Philip K. Dick/Robert Heinlein/Insert SF writer of you choice here is much better anyway” stuff.

In fact, I am beginning to suspect that the infamous “giant squid” comment was probably just a misunderstanding. A couple of years ago, when I was working on my MA thesis, I tried to track down the source of the “giant squid” comment, because I was looking for the exact quote. However, while I found dozens of blogposts about how Margaret Atwood had said that she didn’t write SF, because SF was just about giant squids, the one thing I did not find was the exact quote or at least a link where that heretical statement might be found. The closest I came to finding a source was a post by Dave Langford who claimed to have heard the offending words in a BBC radio interview, which of course was no longer online by that point.

So did she really say what everybody believes she said? Was it just an unfortunate comment that slipped out due to the stress of being interviewed on radio? Did Dave Langford mishear or misunderstand her? We may never know.

However, the Guardian article as well as her new non-fiction collection In Other Worlds will hopefully help to clarify the relationship between Margaret Atwood and the science fiction genre.

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Of Folk Poetry and Scary Songs

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Cora

I obviously survived the family function and the event was actually rather nice, even though I’m not a party person at all. The venue was one of the nicer hotels in town and the menu was a step up from the usual chicken soup and sliced meat fare. We even got the house specialty, green pepper cream soup. Continue reading →

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