Cussing badly in swiss

Webkam Kaput ! ! !

Well, there I was, happily sitting up all night in front of my computer screen waiting for the grand Güdismantig parade for Fasnacht 2005 to begin after cleaning the residual mess in my kitchen from all the food I'd made for our Super Bowl tacobar extravaganza party thingy.

Merrily scanning the streetscene excitement visible in the gathering crowd in the form of fireworks and smokebombs, kids running around as if standing still would cause them to implode in place, vans with bullhorns attached to their roofs slowly creating the boundary of the route where they wanted spectators to hold fast to so that the floats and bands could safely pass through, I settled in with a deep breath for a long multi-tasking sit.



It finally commenced around 3pm Luzern time with the first horse-drawn floats being met with hardy waving and rousing applause. Then the big guns started coming into view, looming larger as they appeared from the east end of Schweizerhofquai. The webcam had been artfully repositioned and the whole parade was going to pass perfectly in view, face front and exquisitely detailed with help from the clear contrast provided by the plentiful sunshine.



I laughed and shook my head at the throngs of Fötzeligwändli, folk dressed in what amounts to gaudy, clown-ruffled body-bags that are worn over street clothes with a zipper on the back. You simply step into it and voila!: instant refried Fasnacht costume. One sees these unimaginative, generic, hideous monstrosities everywhere. They are regarded by those who painstakingly hand-craft their own costumes anew each year, according to the theme they've decided on, as lazy Fasnacht hicks. I can see why.



So, there I was gleefully taking screen shots from the Schwanenplatz webcam, anticipating the time when Nicole's group, Amphoria-Fangoria, would appear within range wearing the ornate hippo grende as she descibed to me, when the camera . . . stopped . . . responding . . . 404 internal error blahblahblah; Forbidden access to server blahblahblah . . . scheisse!!!



Once again, here's what's posted on the site this morning, in the gacky-tacky English translation, of course:

Report: Our Webcam at the swan place ran to around 14:38 on one of the fastest servers in Switzerland with a GB glass fiber binding. Unfortunately this server could not indicate also sufficient chamfering at night power around the pictures. We had 100 MT data traffic per second and over 10,000 requests von Besuchern. We were to be switched off again forced by the Webcam. The Webcam at Schwanenplatz remains now to end of chamfering night, off-line. On the chamfering night 2006 we will find a solution, which sufficient range capacity will exhibit. Please select in place of our Webcam at the swan place the live-stream left from the SF DRS.



Qua? What that means is that the best camera they have is down for the rest of Fasnacht 2005. Now, only the small, poor resolution Weinmarkt, the finicky-now-unstreaming Kapellplatz, and the static Rathaustreppe cams are left. Bummer. And I didn't get to see Amphoria-Fangoria, didn't get a chance to try and ferret out which masked figure was Nicole and get a webshot and and and Goptverdammte huere shissdräck verpiss di kamera Arschloch Hueresohn Kopfschmertzen Schlampae arschfiecher wichser fleischpeitsche mutterfügger mit em brombeeri am uspuff !



There. I feel better now. Cussing badly in Swiss always seems to effectively remove the bad juju from my brittle constitution. So here are a few more webshots I grabbed before Swissipus gouged his eyes out with inadequate technology. I apologize for the generally poor quality of the images, but it's directly from the camera located atop the roof of Hotel Schweizerhof. And it's better than nuthin'. Enjoy. I'm gonna go sulk for awhile.