This weekend, there's a "Midwinter Festival" in a small town, in a rural area, probably 20 minutes from where I live. It's in an old apple museum, which was, I kid you not, bought by hipster wankers and turned into a cidery, and more recently a brandy distillery...

Their cider is objectively terrible, but it's expensive, and hyper "local", so everyone pretends to love it, even while they get food poisoning from it, lol.

So yeah, these people have been running a "festival" there, for nearly a decade, in collaboration with the local version of fucking Bilbao, or the Getty, which... Is owned and run by a literal professional gambler, who made his money by cheating the state's Keno system (yes, literally. That actually happened), and refusing to pay tax. He runs the museum for "good PR", and to get government grants to promote his own degeneracy.

So, onto this festival. I would link their website, if it wasn't (literally) too close to home, but let me explain:

In the past, while it was still exceedingly pretentious, it was initially actually free, and you could drive to the festival and park (there's no public transport, and it's on a highway in the middle of nowhere). You could arrive when you wanted, and leave when you wanted...

Guess what it is now, post-Covid? $10AUD PER HOUR, just to get in. Food is extra. Drink is extra. And you have to buy separate tickets for those, too. Entirely cashless. So that means you're paying $70 for tonight, and $90 for tomorrow, just to get in. No discounts. No "half time" passes. None of that. Absolutely fucking outrageous.

Once you're in, you're in. You can leave, but that's it. You're out. You've just wasted your money. No big name acts, either, and it doesn't include anything. Oh, except a bus.

On that, they no longer let you DRIVE to the festival. You're not even allowed to be dropped off. If you want to get in, you have to get on their bus, which is, apparently, included in the ticket. But seats aren't reserved. And there's no timetable.

Worse still, they are deliberately not running enough buses from the nearest city (where the accommodation actually is), because it is "too far away". So to get the bus, and be sure there is space, you have to get to the nearest town to the venue, yourself, in the first place, and just hope the buses there turn up. No joke. Which, because there is hardly any transport there, means that you will have to drive to that town, anyway.

So let's just be clear about this: to get to the festival, you have to drive down the highway, to the nearest town, which will mean you will have to drive past the venue. But you can't stop. You can't park. You can't be dropped off. You're expected to keep going, drive past, find a park in the nearest town, *and then get their stupid bus back, IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION...

And they are so smug that, in case anyone complains, their website now has a poem, a poem, which insults you, in rhyme, for even thinking about complaining about this situation. I am not kidding. I would screenshot it, but again, too many place names there...

This festival is being funded by government grants, to attract (hipster) tourists from interstate, because it's winter, and that is what kind of person the state government here wants to market to, apparently.

All it includes is shitty local bands, "wassailing", fires (heaps of that shit, including "fire twirling, and probably actual fireworks), shitty overpriced food and "craft" drink, live butchering of animals (yes, really), degenerate costume parades, Morris dancers, woke "welcome to countries" and white guilt parades, and finally, the burning of actual fucking wicker man effigies, because that is what it is all about, really... An entire festival of degeneracy.

You know what's funny? No one in the local town (where the buses go from) will be able to afford to go to this. None. Not that they would probably even want to, at this point, anyway. This is a poor town, which has been utterly decimated by policies put in place to appease these kinds of people (i.e. shutting down both the forestry and apple industries), and which is like... The antithesis of what the festival is. So it's almost like this is a deliberate slap in the face to them (and to me). A... "Fuck you. If you don't like it, you wouldn't be able to afford to go, anyway". And now, with the ticketing bullshit, that is literally, unironically, the case.

That has to be deliberate. It has to be. It's disgusting.

One final note: this festival is largely run by (aside from the cider wankers) that museum I mentioned, which also runs "edgy" hipster arts and music festivals in the city, twice a year.

You know what that festival has had, as previous events? A man who sewed his lips together, and stuck needles in his whole body. For "art". Another year, he suspended himself (or his head) inside a box, for three days, and didn't move. For "art". Then he buried himself under the main road of the city, in a shipping container, for five days. The council PAID for that, and for digging up and closing the road, twice, in that one week. Deliberately. To disrupt traffic (because these people hate cars, and humanity). For "art".

But worse than that, a few years ago, the festival sacrificed a live bull and bathed in its blood. Yes, you heard me - people paid good money to bathe in the blood of a bull that was killed in front of them. As a "ritual". For "art".

Two years ago? The festival asked for Aboriginal volunteers to donate THEIR BLOOD, so that they could soak an antique Australian flag in that blood. No fucking joke. This finally jumped the shark, and the public told them to go fucking jump (well, those of us with common sense did. Not the media so much). So they rescinded, and instead now run "parades of guilt" through the city, twice a year, where they "mourn for Aboriginal Australia", and shut down the city while they tell us all how guilty we are.

Oh, and they also have inverted red crosses up around the city. Every year. To be "edgy". For "art".

This is all true. Look it up, if you wish. All of it. I'm not just schizoposting, this time.

While it might sound like I live in the Twilight Zone, or in literal Hell, I promise you... Try actually living here.

You thought Williamsburg or the Bay Area were bad? Try transferring that same "aesthetic", mixing it with additional white guilt and even more leftism, and plonking it in a rural environment where it does not fucking belong, and this what you get.

And yes, people here think that this shit is all "muh wholesome Keanu chungus". You should see the backlash you get on social media when you try to call it out. :-/