Out Loud And Proud

Its General Election time in Malta right now...more like Comedy Hour Special. Bring on the popcorn! Its an open house fantasia moviethon which comes with a PG rating to ensure that every infantile can enjoy the show. It comes with intermissions which are wasted on those twisted cynical Floater Voters who'll already have pissed in their pants laughing. (...damn it, my bubblegum pink knickers arent colour-fast!) While two tribes go to
war. Over what? Which party is going to fuk em up the least. There's one leader who looks like he's been used as target practice by the Taliban Slingshot Squad; who has the sauve demeanour of a practiced door-to-door salesman. There's the other leader who looks like he was put through the wash when the label reads DRY CLEAN ONLY; who engages in discussions with the tepid enthusiasm of someone who can't wait to get back to watching his favourite TV channel. He seems somewhat disparaging; not really enjoying the game. He shouldnt be a politician, let alone leader of the opposition. Cos c'mon we all know, at least those of us who can thread beads onto a string without keeling over, politicians are there to play games with our heads. And charge us for it.
The cheek! The balls of it! Oh get real. Dont you know that anyone who runs for political office must be either an idealist on a suicide mission or an upgraded version of the schoolyard bully.

A Society gets the government it deserves. Ho ho, well THATS comforting. I should pack up my toys and retire to an idyllic island in the sun...hey wait! I thought I had. Sod it. My space capsule must have drifted into the wrong dimension.

(disclaimer: images wantonly and unscrupulously stolen from various websites..so screw me!)

Labels: comedy, corruption, Malta, politics

Paraphrasing one of Oscar Wilde’s many cynical observations on human nature, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about. Based on that premise, the Church should make the author of “The Da Vinci Code” honorary Chairman of the Board because he has done more to revive talk about the life of Christ among both believers and disbelievers than the Pope himself. What I find extremely interesting is that Dan Brown’s fictional reappraisal of Christ didn’t involve anything which could remotely be construed as obscene or immoral. As Pamela Hanson observed in one of her recent articles in The Sunday Times, he isn’t being portrayed as a murderer or pedophile or homosexual or philanderer. Were such the case, then the vehement reactions that the book has generated would be warranted and justifiable. But what’s the big deal about Christ possibly being married and having children? All the other Biblical prophets did it. That Christ was half-man half-deity shouldn’t necessarily exclude the possibility of his engaging in sexual relations. After all, the whole pantheon of Greek and Roman man-gods weren’t averse to doing it either. The comparison between the fanciful ideology of the ancient Greeks and modern Christian ideology will undoubtedly raise a hord of hackles because today we understand that the Greek Gods were mythical fabrications of the mind constructed in an attempt to explain the relationship between man and the inexorable forces of nature; between the mysteries of human life and mortality. However, getting down to the bare bones of it (excuse the pun), explaining life, death and the afterlife are three metaphysical preoccupations which lie at the core of both ideologies. Commonalties between Greek mythology and Christian theology aren’t too hard to spot. Its just that one is called theology because its recent and the other is called mythology because its ancient. Since Greek was the language of choice for the writers of the Gospels, it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine that the man-God construct central to ancient Greek culture might have coloured the Gospel writers’ attempts to explain the biggest mystery of all : Christ’s disappearance after burial. With a body never being found, Christ is history’s most sensational unclosed criminal file.

The nature of mortality is defined solely by the reality of death. Alternately, the nature of divinity is defined by the absence of death. Mortality and divinity must therefore be mutually exclusive. However the Greeks didn’t think so, nor it seems did the Gospel writers. So what makes the Greek man-gods fanciful and the gospel authors’ thesis of Christ as the divine mortal credible? Nothing really, besides documented accounts of non-witnesses which historically verify that Christ was a living person who supposedly experienced death and survived it. Convincing enough as credentials for a claim to divinity. But then, according to Christian theology, aren’t all Christians expected to look forward to the same experience? Doesn’t that make all Christians part divine? Granted, Christians have a longer wait to experience resurrection than Christ did, but this is one instance where timing is not of the essence.

If resurrection is to be the common fate of all lesser mortals, then the resurrection of Christ kind of loses its significance. Perhaps the whole event was just God’s greatest presentation of proof that mortals survive death-for greater mortals, immediately; for lesser mortals, eventually. Likewise, Christ’s claim to be the Son of God isn’t incontrovertible evidence of exclusivity in the divinity stakes since the Old Testament is littered with Sons of God. Take King David for example. Lets go the whole hog (no offence intended) and throw in all the children of Israel, and the claim to exclusivity narrows considerably. So if all the Judaic prophets, who were sprung from the Israelite loins of the children of God, got married and had children themselves, what on earth is so shocking about Christ having done the same? Because it wouldn’t have made him unique; The One and Only. And like all the monotheistic religions, Christianity thrives on claims of exclusivity. Jews rest their case solely on the fact that they’re Jewish and therefore they’re always right. That, and the God’s Chosen People award. As for Muslims- well lets not go there. Prophet Muhammed existed after the Risen Christ, making him persona non grata; besides which, he had the audacity to reinforce the Judaic tradition of mortal prophethood.

So what could have persuaded Jews to become followers of Christ when Christ didn’t exactly fit the bill of the anticipated politically empowered Jewish-liberating Messiah. They already had their fair share of miracle-making prophets such as Prophet Ezekiel who resurrected many people during his ministry yet remained soundly rooted in the world of mortals. Jewish converts would have regarded the resurrection of Christ as a sign of the greatness of God rather than proof of the divinity of Christ (which would have ground like sand-paper on their deeply entrenched monotheistic sensibilities). Reference to Christ as the Son of God wouldn’t have meant anything more or less than it did when addressed to other preceding Biblical prophets. I think the early Jewish converts found Christ appealing because he was the closest thing to a truly radical humanitarian reformer/redeemer that they’d seen in centuries. His innovative and enlightened vision of a Loving Merciful God rather than the Angry Vengeful God of the Torah was truly inspiring and irresistible. He also didn’t half kick hypocritical pocket-lining religious authorities in the teeth. Some might suggest that his second coming is overdue.

I suspect it is when Christ’s followers decided (against Christ’s instructions) to spread the word amongst gentiles that things started to get messy. Inasmuch as suggestions of Christ’s exclusive claim to literal divinity must have been played down (if they existed at all in that early period) when attempting to convert Jews, the exact opposite would have been exercised when appealing to pagans to convert. Hype up the demi-god inference of Christ’s mysterious disappearance. Make Christ’s birthday the same day as the birth of the Sun god; make Sunday the day of worship instead of the Sabbath (which Christ honoured) because Sunday was the day of the week which pagans dedicated to their Sun god; lend Mary the mother of Christ some of the aura of the goddess Isis. Hey presto! Pagans convert and they hardly notice any difference. Only the names have changed. In a time when it took a month of Sundays to travel anywhere far beyond one’s immediate vicinity, it would have taken ages before the monotheistic Jewish converts back home got wind of all the modifications being made to their new faith. And, by virtue of the fact that they were now outnumbered, it would have been too late to do anything about the horrible truth of their circumstances: they, the first true believers, were now the heretics.

All humbug? Just another scoop of Da Vinci Code balderdash? Perhaps. But does it matter really whether Christ was a divine being (who was above having sexual relations but not above losing his temper or using racist slurs against gentiles or snapping at his mother). Or whether he was just a mortal being with all the needs and wants of any ordinary human, but given the extraordinary honour of delivering God’s message? Would it change anything about his message of love and sacrifice, or his exemplary goodness which has influenced millions of lives? It really shouldn’t. But it does matter because Christianity is an incarnational faith and without the dogma of Christ’s divinity, there would not be any Vatican Church. Instead, there would be a new reformist Jewish Temple. There would be no Christians but instead enlightened Jewish sectarians. However, isnt that what Christ strove to achieve? If that was not his principle goal and instead his intention was to start a whole new religion, then why during his entire life on earth did he remain a practicing Jew?

Till Christ’s Second Coming, I guess we’ll all have to bite the biscuit and believe what individually makes most sense to us (or doesn’t, since faith often requires the suspension of common sense). In the meantime, when one breaks down the bulk of evidence arguing for Christ’s divinity, it would seem that the strongest case for its validation is the disappearance of his body after the Resurrection. Which reminds me. What happened to Mary Magdalene’s body? It seems she also did a disappearing act after Christ’s last and final show of hands. Did she together with some female companions really run off to France of all places? (I mean, great chefs for sure but so xenophobic! And if they gave Joan of Arc a roasting what’s to say they wouldn’t have given a boatload of foreign women a harder time?) Or did she hang up her proselytizing shoes as soon as Christ left and head off to the hills to spend the rest of her life knitting skull caps? That would be bizarre considering we’re talking about Mary Magdalene, the fiercely loyal devotee, the first person to whom the Risen Christ so lovingly spoke; she whom he designated as the apostle to the apostles. How is it that no-one knows exactly where she died and was buried? Was it in Constantinople or Gethsemane or France, as a variety of sources claim? Frankly I think if Mary Magdalene did do a runner to either protect herself or spread the word or become a recluse, it’s a great shame it wasn’t she who got shipwrecked in Malta instead of St.Paul (as popular myth would have it). Since the Maltese at that time were probably still deeply immersed in the ancient religious worship of the sacred feminine, Mary would have got a right royal welcome. And perhaps the Maltese, great fighters at heart, would then have been the ones to ensure that nothing remotely like the patriarchal misogynistic institution which the Church of Christ soon evolved into would ever have had a chance to take root in Italy. The irony of such a thesis is hilarious.

Perhaps I should write a book about it (fictional of course, with the necessary disclaimer which Sony Pictures has so ludicrously been obliged to include in the Da Vince Code movie; something like:”Names have been changed to protect the innocent and the Undead”). Perhaps by the length of this letter some might sarcastically surmise that the proposed book is a work in progress. I’ll keep you posted.

A while ago (I've been festering in my cave lost track of time),the Prime Minister of Malta Mr. Gonzi (not of Muppets fame but a good lookalike) got really rattled at a recent "Meet the Rabble" gathering. The rabble were grumbling about the recent huge price hikes (fuel surcharge up to 67%-petrol and diesel and gas doubled or tripled-airport tax which is now the highest in Europe if not the world) and he got real miffed. Oh you ungrateful rabbling subjects! He said. Why cant you idiots appreciate all the things I've done for you! He said. Consider, my pea-brained peoples, that because of ME you can now stand in the fast lane at European airport customs instead of in the slow non-EU Citizens lane like before! He said. The rabble went quiet and hung their heads in appropriate catholic remorse. Indeed oh master we have been ungrateful. They said.

What DOES the PM taske us for...idyots? Well it seems so. But aha! he, as a truly democratic leader represents the peeples which makes him IDYOT NUMERO UNO. But a cunning idyot with a whole crew of spin doctors to whitewash his scumbag suit. So we are supposed to be grateful that we dont have to wait in the SLOWWW lane like non-EU plebs (read Ayrabs). Thats assuming we can still afford to get to the bloody EU airports considering the current price of an airline ticket off this rock.

I love trawling through the Sunday Times Travel section (what can i say, I have no life). All the bright sparkly adverts by travel agents: 2 weeks in Croatia!! Full Board at ***** star hotel/daily excursions/flight included/return included...woaah sounds good. reasonable price. until you check the excluded taxes....OHHMYYYGODDD. Yeahwell thats Malta for you right now...con con con..conconconcon..con con (hummed to tune of Pink Panther).

And the bloodiest most ironic thing is that in 2002 I came from the Middle East to settle in pre-EU Malta reckoning, well, I got roots here but also its ideally centrally located (with good view) for me to travel anywhere in Europe and North Africa reasonable cheaply....are you f**kin kidding? now what kind of a crap mean joke is that to play on an unsuspecting intrepid traveller of maltese origins? I cant get off the sodding island now for a weekend break without forking out the better part of a month's salary!

Mr. Goonzi, I dont mind waiting a bit longer in a non-EU airport customs queue along with non-EU Ayrabs and Indians and Chinks and Chooks etc because it cost me almost as much as it did them to get to mainland Europe. I live in the much lauded EUROPEAN Malta but damn that small spread of water separating me from the mainland is sure as hell some damn expensive space!

You're 85% Irish

Congratulations, you're a shining example of an Irish lass. There's hardly anyone more Irish than you! (results from an internet poll)

IRISH PROVERB:
When we drink, we get drunk.
When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin.
When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
So, let's all get drunk, and go to heaven! .

(...beats anything I read in the bloody fookin' Bible!)

Bolting straight out of the Hollywood stables: “Terminator 3.5 cm: The Bugged Version”. Soon to arrive at a comedy venue near you. The plot: Pentagon defence scientists attempt to create an army of cyber insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. Ok, are you wondering when I’m going to call your bluff and holler “Ha! Ha! You Bin Bolloxed!”. Well, don’t hold yer breath. 'Cos this Darpa stuff is actually from a recent BBC News article. "The new scheme is a brainwave of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which is tasked with maintaining the technological superiority of the US military." Brainwave? More like a massive brainwobbly. Geez do these retired rocket scientists spend their breaks having midnight margeritas while watching re-runs of The Fly? "Darpa was founded in 1958 to keep US military technology ahead of Cold War rivals. Its website says it has around 240 personnel and a $2bn (£1.1bn) budget.”

UK MInistry of Silly Walks Landmine Trauma Clinic fully endorse the project. Here's the plan: (1) They bug a bug! Yep, they put a chip in a bug while at the cocoon stage. (Hmm, guess thats a very good example of a "Sleeper". (2) When the chipped and mummified caterpillah turns into a butterfly, it becomes a fully fledged symtex sniffer! A Poo-pooing Entomologyst expert at Oxford Uni MNH said:" "What adult insects want to do is basically reproduce and lay eggs. You would have to rewire the entire brain patterns." Basically, Bollocks to turning bugs into human shield replacements. But wait for the funny part. Darpa tried this out before on wasps and bees and found they acted "unreliably" (they consistently preferred to sniff out a potential shagging mate than a chemical weapons factory...well, wouldnt you?)

And here's the FUNNIEST part: PREVIOUS Darpa schemes:

WWII: A Plan: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. Results: In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air. (ok no animal rights violation there cos kamikaze cat was DEAD when it hit the water and blew up)
WWII: Another Plan: Attach incendiaries to bats. Induce hibernation and drop them from planes. They wake up, fly into factories etc and blow up. Results: Failed to wake from hibernation and fell to death.(After this, the Bat's Compendium of Interpreting Dreams reads: If you dream you're freefalling, you're dead!).

Unfortunately, the Cyber Bug Scheme is doomed to fail since the terrorist bombers got wind of it and came up with their own protection strategy: Easy to apply, odorless maxi-strength cyber-bug repellent. ------------------->

Other Successes from the Darpa Loon Lab: Computer Game: Tactical Iraqi: to teach troops how to decipher Iraqi body language. This idiot-friendly RPG software was commissioned after Bush's stunned Military PR personnel learned from friendly Iraqi interpreters that the "thumbs up" sign (commonly understood by Americans to mean (a) you're doing a great job (b) we wanna be just like you-can we sign up with our thumbprint? (c) can you give us a lift in your cool Humvie cos all our camels have been blown up?) actually meant something quite different in Arabic:

# posted by C.S.Lawrence : 4:50 PM  0 Bitchin' Back

Further to my highly intellectual and insightful analysis (see earlier post) of Bush's motives for going after Iran (after successful rape and pillage campaign in Iraq), some highly engaging campaign posters:


source for some more inspirational Bush campaign posters
my "Give Us This Day Our Daily Gin" quote: If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
“I am the Grim Reaper.” – That’s an odd name. Are you Welsh? – “I am the Grim Reaper. I cometh to collecteth souls” – Hmmm, very archaic way of speaking. You must be from Wales.

I’m currently reading “Cosa Nostra” which traces the history of the Mafia. Yeah, my kinda bedtime reading..why? Cos I'm a chronically violent psychopath ok? Idiot. Anyway, it convincingly demonstrates that the Mafia originated as 19th century Sicilian landowners seeking to monopolize via intimidation the island’s most valuable commodity of the time, that being the lemon orchards. Having found that their methods of “Your Lemons or Your Wife” worked effectively, they expanded into other enterprises, such as imposing and deposing Presidents. It’s a good read. But it’s all bollocks. The Sicilians were simply learning the tricks of the trade from their masters, the Maltese. And adding a touch of their Italian sense of fashion to create what was to become the Mafia’s intimidating signature apparel. Black on black. Not really very original considering that most people of the time wore black with a touch of black: priests, young women, old women, married women, widowed women, dead women….look at recycled Sicilian b&w postcards of quaint villagers in quaint village scenes (best shot in daylight cos you wouldnt be able to see the quaint villagers in a night scene).

Think I’m off my trolley? Yes I am but that’s circumstantial evidence. And doesn’t mean my theory is half-baked. Consider this: the Italian artist Caravaggio was a thug of the highest order with a criminal record to boot…..pure co-incidence that he escaped from the Italian cops by hiding out in Malta? He produced a couple of masterpieces while here so he must have felt securely protected. That his subject matter dealt with gruesome beheadings, suicide notes, rapes of the innocents (you know good ol’ bedtime reading Bible stories) might indicate a heightened sense of tension or just the workings of a criminal mind. But he sold his stuff to the Church so he was in with a bloody good patron.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, what happened to the poverty part of the Three Ecclesiastical Vows? Walk into any Maltese Church and you could easily be forgiven for thinking you’re in the “Found The Treasure” scene from “Indian Jones and The Raiders of The Lost Ark”. Whenever I hear a Catholic missionary TV appeal for more money to build a school in Zimbabwe, I almost throw my popcorn at the screen : why not start by getting your church to sell off some of its frigging solid silver alter candlesticks? Just one auction on e-bay could finance the feeding of a whole small Third World Country. If, quoting Christ, rich people can get to heaven as easily as a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, then the Catholic Church better consider going on a radical diet!

Malta's real religious. Blimey, it got more roadside shrines per square metre than the whole of Rwanda. Or the Vatican for that matter. Overtly hyper-religious. Covertly? Back to Caravaggio.

I recently did a Google search for fellow Maltese Compatriots, Ex-patriates and Exiles (what can I say, I’m a terribly lonely f**ked up excommunicated Catholic part-Maltese sexual deviant) and after typing in “Maltese”, came up with thousands of links to…Cutting Edge Technology? Superlative Services? Competitive Clothing Industries? Oldest Temples in the World? Amazing Siege? World War II? George Cross for Bravery? Forget it! They were almost all links to sites about “MALTESE DOGS”! No, they were not referring to local government. Key phrases like “of good disposition”, “loyal and devoted to the hand that feeds it” were dead give-aways since these are not expressions commonly used to describe local government. Descriptive expressions that are commonly used cannot be aired before kid’s bedtime.

Okayeee. Lets recap. The U.S. invades Iraq because of Saddam's conversion to the euro of Iraq's oil exports in 2000 which threatened the U.S. petrodollar...ooops, sorry, no I mean Saddam was a DESPOT! He had a nasty covert WMD operation which was deviously housed in milk factories. Blanket bombing followed and nothing was ever found. But Bush wasnt going to waste time crying over spilt milk. Ho noo! Onto Plan B-COM-Pleet-ID-yot. He proceeded to hype up the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Destroy Saddam! Flatten Iraq! Find Bin Laden. They find Saddam. They can him. They turn Baghdad into a "How The East Was Won" theme park. They dust for fingerprints but no Bin Laden. They start to help them poor Iraqi sods rebuild Iraq. Lets put out tenders, shall we boys? No? Just give it all to Halliburton as a