Eurovision Day!!!

May 15th, 2004 - 16:21 | 13 comments

Today is the day! I bet you’re all secretly excited really. To aid in your decision as to the best country Kate and I have produced:

THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST DECISION MAKING TALLY COUNTING ACT JUDGING GENERATOR MACHINE

Which, happily, takes the form of a spreadsheet. Fitting perfectly onto an A4 piece of paper, this stunning example of modern tabular and mathematical advances lets you assign each country points ranging from 1 to 10 in a number of heavily researched categories designed to increase your appreciation of the performing artists. It can be downloaded here (OpenOffice.org version here). Enjoy.

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13 Responses to “Eurovision Day!!!”

1 Lil May 15th, 2004 at 10:01 pm

I want the Ukrainian whip bondage people to win!!!!
Tho that Bosnian Deen guy deserves major points for entertainment value XD
2 Lil May 15th, 2004 at 11:16 pm

Yayyyyyy they won!!!! XD
3 Edward May 16th, 2004 at 12:27 am

well the english entry was rubbish…. and the Swiss one, err, how shall we put this… ’significantly wose’?!?! ehhehe.
4 Simon May 16th, 2004 at 1:33 am

You know, we should enter the competition as England, Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland. Then, we do a deal with the Irish, and there we have it. Block votes for us. Mwah ha ha ha ha. Plus, we would have to give less votes to these other countries anyway. This increases the chances we don’t give points to France or Germany. This is a plus in my books. Thats my solution to the problem. Can’t beat em join em. And ofcourse, play the game, play the system, use it against itself. Exploit, cheat, lie our way into the top spots. And if all else fails tell the americans there is an al queda training centre in one or two of the other countries. That would sort them. However, the combined roles of the US and UK in arming Iraq and the CIAs and other agencies roles in training militant groups, you know, we would probably have to get them to bomb us
5 Simon May 16th, 2004 at 1:52 am

I am confused by your scoring thingamadoodoo. See, the level of irritation column. Is pants off a good thing or a bad thing in this column? In addition, surely all acts would get a default 15 score in this column with the possibility of a 1d6 +/- modifier? Also, if amusingnessness includes laugh-out-loud moments wouldn’t TW taking the piss out of anyone and everything guarantee high scores for everyone? I think the originality, cheesy smiles and lyrics columns are also going to be mostly low given the super pop and euro-pop level of the competition. Possibly a few exceptions but mostly starting at -1 with a 1d4 modifier applicable only after rolling a high enough score on a d10 DC. For France and Germany the DC is 100 and thus always fails.

Now Size of Chesticles is an interesting one. Since there is now precedent for a single person to have both in the competition well…I think it is best to treat this one lightly.

In many cases catchiness and irritating go hand in hand, but in any case 5 is actually the best value in the category for self explanatory reasons.

Dance routine i presume ultimately comes down to how much chesticle gets shook on screen and how vigorously? The more gyrating the better? Well, in general I can see the appeal from an entertainment perspective but I would normally mark this down since its a song contest. However, since I have eliminated most of the other categories from the equation this is in fact the deciding vote. With reference to this years competition it does appear that a certain amount of showmanship did manage to collect the elusive non-political vote.

As for croonage, any one capable of accessing and sensibly assigning a score to this category should go kill themselves, now. Don’t wait to see if I am joking. No joke. Shoot yourself. Now. Get some rope…if you have a ceiling fan, you know, Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom style. Kitchen knife. There are plenty of solutions. Be creative. I’ve got a ready made score sheet here I haven’t used to judge your performance. Eurocide Death Contest. Knock yourselves out, just make sure its fatal.
6 Nodster May 17th, 2004 at 2:36 am

even simons random statements were more entertaining than the contest. i have to agree though - either we release one per country as opposed to united kingdom, or .(and). we (heck even one of us!) release some crappy tune with lots of nekkid women (volunteers please?) that will appeal to the european masses.

In fact.. if wales were to do their entry in welsh i betcha itd get a few votes. a) its not in english == good. b) its gotta be hard to sing in welsh. c) pity factor cos the poor persons larinyx just exploded.

im not correcting my spelling.
cmon andrew new post in the run up to 21sthood. if for no reason but to stop simon posting another lengthy reply to my comments. please!
7 Nodster May 17th, 2004 at 2:42 am

How does the bbc justify showing eurovision? Is it paid to? Does the govt or some legislature force it to? Does it simply have no good shows anymore? (surely simpsons can take up a slot on bbc 1 now then?) I am sure that local tv stations such as the now dissappeared (mini-mexican-wave in celebration) portsmouth tv. etc. etc. or perhaps make eurovision -> eurohear and broadcast it on shortwave. lalalala.
8 Simon May 17th, 2004 at 8:12 am

Hmm, I suppose I could have commented on your comments Nod. I got up today at 2.45AM. Thats the time I set my alarm clock for. A lengthly post disecting your comments over breakfast might have proved appealing though it slipped my attention to check this site and so it has had to wait until lunch time. Besides, I had something more important to do. Just turned in 5 hours work on trimming my project report down to the word limit, well, you know, close to the word limit. There is only so much meat you can trim for a discussion into the art of computer chess before you are looking at a rake posh spice would be envious of. Mostly I just moved the meat into appendicies. Its a bit bloated, it might burst. Ambulance teams are on stand by.

By the time I have attended a revision lecture today I would have completed a full days work before noon. That is so unlike me its pretty damn scary. Today must be some kind of weird voodoo twilight zone temporal paradox day or something. A convergence of lines of power coinciding with certain star alignments. Evil stalks this day.

Anyway, back to the point. Until now none of my comments in to this post have been random. They have been on topic. Your sudden post on the second day after the event was in fact the most random in this topic until you posted a second time. Your only redeeming point was that in regards to scantily clad ladies performing. See, it doesn’t matter what the friggin song is if you have block votes and a saucy performance. Crappy tunes in welsh or otherwise are more than the requirements stipulate. In fact, because of this they could actually be detrimental. I mean, a decent fucking song is above and beyond the call of the competition and it sure as hell would get low points with european voting. You need an appropriate mix of properties, too much is just asking for trouble.

Now, the thing I want to know is, does the kind of voting seen on eurovision parallel in any way that which goes on in the european parliament? just a thought
9 Andrew May 17th, 2004 at 10:51 am

The scorechart was compiled using solid psychological studies and analyses of the factors considered most important by right-thinking people all over the world. That some of the categories crossed over, such as chesticles and clothing, is nothing to do with me. For me, the less irritating the more points were received, but in the spirit of the competition perhaps the reverse should be true.

I’d like to point out that the Ukraine won on my markings, so I am therefore representative of ‘Europe’ as a whole. Hmmmm.

I think you’re being most uncharitable there, Nod While the songs may be pretty dire, the whole show is pretty entertaining (and sure as hell beats Casualty!), mainly because Terry doesn’t take it seriously. If everyone was pretending it was important etc. then it would probably be pretty unwatchable! Incidentally, I think The Simpsons is moving to C4 in the not too distant future. Afaik it’s Friends’ replacement.

“Evil stalks this day” is a nice phrase. I’ll steal that one and later claim it as my own. Thanks!

Your point acout the voting being comparable with european parliament elections is actually, I think, quite interesting. Given that politics so obviously had such a large effect on the voting of something completely unrelated to governing, it would seem that people genuinely seem to judge each other based on their country of residence, which is totally crazy. How can the votes of the people be representative of anything when this is the case?
10 Nodster May 17th, 2004 at 2:59 pm

hehe i know ur post wasnt random si =) Well done with the project - overwhelmingly organised!

Yeah i always wondered about the voting… i mean.. im assuming (without proper evidence) that *all* the countries give the people the chance to vote and not just the ones who say ‘televoting’ like its the new hotness of technologies. Which would mean that its the people in general of each country that votes for their neighbour.

This is worrying! If *everyone* (in the main) just votes for their neighbour with no regard as to the quality of what is to be judged, then what does this say about other items such as racial predjudice? hmm?
11 Simon May 17th, 2004 at 4:10 pm

Well, since everyone was ment to have televoted we are presented with a bit of a problem. So, either guns were directly or indirectly pointed at heads, or in some way it was assumed that not giving 12 to your neighbour was a declaration of war or something. Or, they have a distinct dislike for everyone else so had to give the votes to their neighbours. Or it was rigged. Or only two people have telephones in some of these countries, that being the ruling body and an immigrant from said neighbouring country. Perhaps the inhabitants are sheep, easily lead around by the government etc. This is unlike us, we are easily lead around by the government but this is mainly because we ignore them and they go off and do their own thing. The last possibility is they all have similar musical roots and therefore appreciated their neighbours songs better.

I found it especially funny when they cut to the uk camera and no one was at the eurovision street party. No one. Everywhere else millions of people, England, no one. Hahahaha, shows what we think about europe. Apparently we get automatic places in the finals because of our sizable monetary contributions to the competition. That sounds like cheating to me. In addition, wouldn’t the money be better spent? Plus, we could just get a satellite feed and have TW commentate anyway, just much cheaper.
12 Nodster May 17th, 2004 at 9:34 pm

broadcasting rights? perhaps think of the money as a charitable donation to the musically challenged?
13 Lil May 18th, 2004 at 10:39 am

LOL Nod! XD

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