Well, so much for being excited for Eurovision Song Contest 2024 this month... My instincts warned me that Eurovision 2024 will be bad, and in real life? Just as bad as what I thought, though not in a way that my instincts predicted. Overall, the event, which I watched live on YouTube, gave me a first bad impression. Here's what caused the event to go downhill:

1. The Israel-Palestine war protests outside of Malmö Arena, as a result of Israel's participation. This situation got so bad even Olly Alexander (United Kingdom), Bambie Thug (Ireland), Windows95man (Finland) and several other contestants had to make a joint statement calling out on the EBU over it.
2. Joost Klein's (Netherlands) disqualification from the finals simply because a camerawoman filmed him without his consent. This made Joost Klein pissed. How unfair, given that he's my second favorite to win... Because of this, the Dutch jury representative refused to announce the jury scores in the Grand Final and no one else would replace her.
3. Petra Mede and Malin Åkerman doing questionable things in the shows such as a sexist remark on how people need to be alone and female to win Eurovision (it's actually true because many Eurovision winners are female soloists but mind you that others who are either male or part of a group had won too and not every female soloist would win) and an original musical number glorifying the juries' bias towards Sweden last year and its stereotypical portrayal of Finland for their alternate universe interval act (Kaarija did appear too but at least he made me much better).
4. 22 sets of juries gave 12 points to Switzerland, out of 37 countries. That's more biased of the juries than last year, with 15 sets of juries giving 12 points to Sweden, out of 37. Because of this, both Finland from 2023 and Croatia from 2024 suffered having their talents on keeping the audience engaged going down the drain as both failed to win. Instead, Sweden from 2023 and Switzerland from 2024 won, thanks to the heavy influence of the juries. But I still like 'Tattoo' by Loreen and 'The Code' by Nemo as they are good songs, but I still prefer 'Cha Cha Cha' and 'Rim Tim Tagi Dim'.

Overall, this made Eurovision 2024 the worst Eurovision event of its 60+ year-long history. The Grand Final livestream on YouTube was dislike bombed (as of now, it has 134K likes and 206K dislikes). Initially, I thought everything would roll smoothly, especially given that:

1. The theme design for this event was really artistic and eye-catching.
2. The audience would get indulged with a 360° experience of the performances in the arena.
3. Georgia, Latvia and Ireland had amazing performances which broke their non-qualification streaks.
4. Out of 20 countries whom I wanted to qualify for the grand final, 17 countries did so which is good enough. I would've preferred Belgium, Denmark and Poland over Latvia, Israel and Portugal. Now with the Netherlands disqualified, that 17 became 16.
5. Several performances that got the audience engaged such as Baby Lasagna's "Rim Tim Tagi Dim" (Croatia) and Joost Klein's "Europapa" (Netherlands). For the former, I was literally dancing in my room when Croatia's performance was up, which is saying much!
6. Raiven's performance of "Veronika" (Slovenia), was eye-candy. Her dance moves and her sexy and voluptuous see-through attire says it all! (Well, not helping that she finished in 3rd last place in the grand final and some even questioned her outfit as being a bit too inappropriate...)
7. The humor in the semi-final shows. Even if the musical from Semi-final 2 was bad, at least I did laugh for a bit. Windows95man and Henri Piispanen (both Finland) had guts to break boundaries on what Eurovision performances have in store. One of the hosts even said that she voted for Finland last year, which was really nice to hear.

All flaws aside, even if this event were a disaster, let's hope that future Eurovision events would vastly improve over this year. It's up to the EBU if they want to take initiative on improving their reputation and the continent-wide song contest as a whole.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2024 is starting tomorrow and I'm planning to watch all three shows. They all start at 3AM in my country but I don't care, in fact, I could wake up extremely early to which them all!

May the 4th, also known as Star Wars Day, is coming to the United States soon! Well, it already did for my country. To celebrate, I am making a pixel art design of one of the characters in the Star Wars franchise. Who is it that I'm choosing? Here a hint: the character is female, is not human and has no involvement in any of the 9 main Star Wars movies. As you should know, this is the first time I'm using the auto-publish feature from Newgrounds because if I had published the artwork now, the date and time would've displayed 'May 3, 2024 | 11:XX PM EDT' (XX is any number from 00 to 59). This would look awkward, since I cannot change the time zone to my country's, so it's stuck to the time for several USA states (Eastern Daylight Time). Fair warning: my artwork would contain some mature content involved with my chosen character.

So this had never happened last year when I started my Newgrounds account but... this year, I actually encountered an issue where after I log in to my Newgrounds account by entering my correct Username and Password, I was still asked to enter a 6-digit verification code sent to one of my Apple devices through any email application I have. It first happened a few days ago when I was on my iPhone trying to log in to Newgrounds, and then I was asked to give a 6-digit code as sent through mail. I checked through the Gmail app on my phone but no mail showed up and I ended up having to make desperate guesses to break into my account. Mind you that other than my phone, I had no other devices around me at the time. Now just this afternoon, I tried to log in again and was also asked to enter a 6-digit code. This time, a mail was actually sent to my iPad with the code, allowing me to sign in. If you're reading this post, do let me know if you have also encountered a similar issue like mine, because an issue like this is quite rare.