New docs, old tricks

Medical faculties in Italy held their admission exams today, to decide the fortunate few thousand who’ll be working in the country’s hospitals and surgeries five, ten, fifteen years from now, depending on how long it takes them to butter their way to the top. It’s been a fraught few years for would-be doctors, with scandals popping up like mushrooms after rain. Bought exams, entire faculties involved in wholesale corruption, you name it, someone’s done it, in Bari and elsewhere. So the mood this year has been one of general alert. And a good thing too, particularly at the Cattolica university in Rome. This private university happened to notice that an awful lot of candidates, in the words of the Medicine Dean, Paolo Magistrelli, “had applied to do the admission test along with their parents or other members of their family, hoping in this way that their relatives (doctors) would be able to help them answer the questions correctly.”

The number of relatives (doctors): 140. These shining examples of Italy’s professional class were siphoned off to do the entrance test in a separate room. Leaving their unfortunate children to do the test alone.

Family day

Cute, right? She’s Bristol, daughter of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and recently outed as seven months pregnant, which means the birth will coincide neatly with the election. He’s the prospective father. He’s called Levi Johnston, he’s also 17, and, according to his MySpace page, he’s ‘in a relationship’, but says ‘I don’t want kids’. Well, you’re clearly not very bright, Levi. People who don’t want kids don’t fuck the daughter of a gun-totin’ pro-lifer running for VP.

Thanks to Joe My God for the photo.

Ride the Word III

I’ll be reading something from my new collection of stories, The Scent of Cinnamon, at an event called Ride the Word III in London later this month, along with four other fine Salt writers. I’d love to see you there. (You may even be able to get your hands on a copy of the book!) Here’s the information:

Host:	POETRY LONDON
Type:	Music/Arts – Performance

Date:	Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Time:	7:30pm – 9:00pm
Location:	Borders Bookshop
Street:	203-207 Oxford Street
City/Town:	London, United Kingdom
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Description

A mixture of old and new poetry and short stories from 5 Salt authors:

Simon Barraclough (Los Alamos Mon Amour)
Vincent de Souza (Weightless Road)
Isobel Dixon (A Fold in the Map)
Charles Lambert (The Scent of Cinnamon)
Jay Merill (Astral Bodies)

You can see pictures and various other promotional stuff by clicking here.

Orangina? Are they sure?

http://www.youtube.com/v/kHA9Ig7HOGA&hl=en&fs=1
What were the people who made this on? And when will they be handling the Tizer contract? I’m not sure that this makes me thirsty, but there are certainly moments when it makes me laugh. Which can’t be bad.

And listen to the words! Lubricious doesn’t even start to describe it.

Yuri Buenaventura: Ne me quitte pas

http://www.youtube.com/v/hCNqemfACHw&hl=en&fs=1

Radio

I’ve just discovered that Philip K. Dick once shared a house with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan. The same source, an LRB article by Stephen Burt about Dick (3 July 2008), tells me that the SF author believed that radios talked to him. This is remarkably similar to claims made by Spicer that his role as poet was less creator than ‘conveyor of messages’ from outside; that his work was dictated to him from elsewhere. It seems he meant that quite specifically, not the outside as Zeitgeist but as something that could actually be tuned into and received, like a radio. I haven’t looked at Spicer for some time, though I used to love his work, and I’ve read very little Dick, despite enjoying most of the films his work has inspired. But it’s interesting, and slightly spooky, to think of the two men tuning in together when they were both so young. I wonder if what Spicer saw as poetic practice and Dick, in his later years at least, and on the basis of a cursory reading of Burt’s review, seemed to see as LSD-induced paranoia both had their origin in late night conversations about the nature of inspiration in the Bay Area, fuelled by whatever both men were using at the time.

Up Malcolm

Peter Bradshaw’s blog from Venice today, in which he talks of the Tinto Brass-Guccione version of Caligula – a truly awful film – prompted me to go and find some stills from it. I’m not sure if this is actually from the film or was simply taken on set, but it’s too good not to share, especially for those of us who remember Up Pompeii.

One large bus for Boris

Another great design from Threadless T-Shirts. Click on the image for more information.

One small dive for man

Sexual union with Tiger

The Indian artist Maqbool Fida Husain has not been invited to India’s first art fair on the grounds that his work depicts a series of Hindu deities without their clothes on. The lady in the work above is the goddess Durga in sexual union with Tiger, according to a site dedicated to dissing the 93-year-old artist. What makes him even more offensive is that he tends to paint Muslims with all their gear modestly on – next to this shocking portrayal of Durga (who appears to be mounting Tiger) on the site is a painting of the prophet’s daughter Fatima fully clothed (which you can see by visiting the site). Helpfully, the site offers a fairly substantial collection of the offending works, unlike the artist’s official site, which offers reproductions the size of postage stamps. Not content with posting the paintings themselves, the campaign organisers have been busy in a dozen other ways, as you can see from this extract from a letter written to the Kerala government, guilty of having honoured Husain with a prize:

Since the inception of this protest campaign in November 2005, India and various parts of the world are witnessing intense agitations against M. F. Husain. Agitations that include over 1250 formal police complaints, 7 court cases, burning of Husain effigies, citywide strikes, rasta bunds (road blocking), as well as several protest demonstrations in the US and UK. At times, the inaction and passivity of the Indian media and government forced the agitators to lose patience and take a violent turn, as in the case of an attack on the Husain-Doshi art gallery, mob destruction of public property in some cities in India, and public announcements of rewards for maiming or killing M. F. Husain, as well as the closing of the Husain paintings exhibition in Asia House gallery in Oxford Street London after protest demonstrations and a vandal attack.

Nice work, lads. No one can say that maiming and killing aren’t ecumenical.