Renaissance man

According to the lunchtime edition of the state-run news programme TG2, penicillin was discovered by Ian Fleming. Presumably between writing Dr No and From Russia With Love.

Inanity of the body snatchers

Feel like being amused in a scary, flesh-creeping way? That’s right, I’m talking about the Tom Cruise Scientology video. It’s been pulled off Youtube and quite a few sites, but you can still catch it here. (It doesn’t seem to be embeddable or I’d be hosting it myself.)

You need to read the comments to find out what an SP is, but you’ve probably been one all your life and don’t even know it.

Papal bull part two

Well, would you believe it? Ratzinger’s decided that his presence at La Sapienza would be ‘inopportune’. It’s hardly the first time his cowardice desire to avoid conflict has overruled his spiritual, and political, responsibilities. Less than a month ago, he chose not to receive the Dalai Lama for reasons that had very little to do with religious divergence and everything to do with Realpolitik. Who can blame him? It’s what you’d expect from the leader of a tinpot state the size of a football field. Still, since when has ‘inopportune’ been part of the papal lexicon? If Jesus had been more ‘opportune’, just think, he might have avoided the cross and ended up dressed in gem-encrusted frocks and leopard-skin pillbox hats – or something very similar – like his most recent representative. He might have been able to issue diktats on just about everything from stem cell research to civic administration. He might have, but he wasn’t. Never mind. The new man doesn’t do self-sacrifice, or risk, or exposure to conflict, or open discussion. He’s an expert, after all. He’s the pope of fucking everything.

Oh yes. Italian state television devoted over half (16 minutes!) of its news programme (TG1) to this story. As if that weren’t enough, it twisted the facts to suggest that the pope had in some way been prevented from appearing at the event. He chose not to come. Repeat. He chose not to come. How many times does this need saying? He chose not to come.

More papal bull

It’s Ratzinger’s week. Not content with assuming the position (see below), he’s stirred up a hornet’s nest at La Sapienza, Rome and Italy’s largest university. Invited to the inauguration of the academic year (which, typically, takes place months after it’s actually begun) by Rector Guarini, himself currently under investigation for corruption and no doubt eager for a little pontifical indulgence, B16 is going to have to deal with demonstrations and all kinds. Why? Initially, because a group of physics professors pointed out in a letter to la Repubblica that, according to Ratzinger, the church did the right thing with Galileo, which would tend to exclude him from the cradle of rationality and scientific progress that a secular seat of learning such as a state university represents, in theory at least. Since the letter was published, a lot of other people in the university have expressed similar doubts about the need to invite the obscurantist leader of a non-democratic foreign state to its opening day. More power to their elbow, say I.

Naturally, there are those who defend his presence, insisting that not to invite him would be tantamout to censorship. How many times must it be said that censorship means preventing someone from communicating his or her ideas in an absolute sense? It isn’t censorhip if the Daily Mail chooses not to host the writing of Noam Chomsky. It isn’t censorship if the Vatican chooses not to invite Vladimir Luzuria to its Christmas shindig. It’s common sense, editorial policy, institutional policy, whatever. It’s perfectly licit to prefer not to invite a man whose opnions run counter to everything a university should stand for. In any case, the word of Ratzinger hardly goes unheard. The man’s a total media tart, rarely off the TV screen or out of the press, his every querulous fart apparently worthy of national attention.

The amusing thing is that his defenders refer to him as an academic. Of what? Theology? Next year I imagine they’ll be inviting an astrologer or someone who can read the entrails of slaughtered goats on the grounds that these are also rigorous academic disciplines. And talking of cultural pluralism and open-mindedness, which is what Ratzinger’s critics are accused of lacking (hah!), it’s interesting to see that one of Rome’s most historic art cimemas, il Labirinto, is being forced to close because the proprietors of the building want to replace it with something more profitable. And who are the proprietors? That’s right. The Vatican.

Assuming the position

Eggs Benedict celebrated mass yesterday with his back turned to the congregation, something that hasn’t been done since the Second Vatican Council. It might not be that user-friendly in the traditional catholic sense, but hey! it can’t be the first time he’s been bent over a table with his public behind him.

What I’m worth

$3750.00The Cadaver Calculator – Find out how much your body is worth.

Withdrawal

My thanks to the Humor Archives for this (and the photo of Tony Blair on holiday in the post below).

Blair babble

Confirmation that Tony Blair has decided to run Europe while waiting for Eggs Benedict to meet his maker (and I’d love to be there when that happens, assuming it ever does) and free up the Vatican CEO slot came yesterday, with a typically vacuous speech made in Paris to Sarkozy’s UMP party. Its primary aim may have been to arselick, and upstage, Sarkozy (and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bob or two didn’t change hands either – Tony doesn’t come cheap, even to friends), but it also indicated just how wide his political stance is. Basically he’s prepared to boldly go pretty much anywhere that isn’t tainted with socialism, as befits his new part-time job as £500,000-a-year adviser to JP Morgan. Not that Tony likes the words left and right; they’re old hat, uncool, pas chic, or whatever term he now prefers. What Tony likes are words that don’t mean very much at all – touchie-feelie words, buzz words. Words like future and past, as in: “‘Europe is not a question of left or right, but a question of the future or the past, of strength or weakness,” or today and yesterday, as in: “‘It’s about today versus yesterday. Less about politics and more about a state of mind; open as opposed to closed.” I’m not sure to whom this kind of fatuous waffle is supposed to appeal, but it’s a frightening thought that a meretricious warmonger like Blair might actually be allowed to govern the European Union, particularly now that he’s sworn allegiance to a small but irritating non-member state that contributes nothing to the continent but seems to feel it has a right to dictate EU policy.

Family life

The Destruction of the Father is the name of a piece by Louise Bourgeois. She describes it in this way:

This piece is basically a table, the awful, terrifying family dinner table headed by the father who sits and gloats. And the others, the wife, the children, what can they do’? They sit there, in silence. The mother, of course, tries to satisfy the tyrant, her husband… So, in exasperation, we grabbed the man, threw him on the table, dismembered him and proceeded to devour him.

Under the Day

This poem comes from a collection, entitled Creative Accounting, written when the term still had the capacity to amuse or shock. After Enron etc., that’s clearly no longer the case, but it still goes some way towards indicating what the poems are up to.

UNDER THE DAY

In the early light of the morning,

for instance, it remained as a wish to be

companionable and was straightaway

erased and there was the pentimento

which was only a come stain on the sheet

fondly ‘remade’ as a model for future

delight-filled emotional hours in the

company, in the company of admiring

stares where you are smaller than,

hiding behind, what is looked at, more

concealed than what is concealed in your

arms, which is merely restless and

anxious to be gone into the dark,

that silvery mind that reflects your

slightest wish and pushes the tentative

on. Into action and the great claims

made for it and pearly days lit from

an almost notional above and, hanging

over that, the pestering and abuse

and the layers of differently coloured

sand in the bottom become oddly

confused as the lowest levels percolate

up, like wanting it hard and often.

And the vigilantes also prefer this hour.