Horse Sense

All the seats on the bus are free and he has to sit next to you. Why? That's right, I'm talking about Austin Sammut. Happy as you go, you're turning the pages of The Times towards the latest instalment of the Wizard of Id and a happy half hour on the wordwheel. Maybe even a quick look at which famous people were born and died on the day. Yi Sun-sin, the famous Korean admiral, born today? Wonders never cease!
And what's on Prime tonight? Ah, Keeping Up Appearances. That program will literally never cease to be rip-roaringly funny. Which is just as well, as people from Cape Town to Kowloon must have had to watch the damn thing more than a thousand times over the last ten years.
And so on and so forth.
But then that wretched Austin Sammut had to ruin it all. His column on Tuesday, mostly about scratched pavements, believe it or not, was partially redeemed by this snippet, which has something ever so slightly Beckettesque about it:

"I had one relief. There was no horse excrement around. A miracle indeed."

He had one relief, ladies and gentlemen. If you listen very carefully, you may just be able to make out the sound of a bead of sweat sliding down his clammy face. A miracle indeed!
And on and on and on he drones. Next, as you wish you could whisked away by death's munificent grace, he begins to bang on about rubbish, like some kind of pantomime mother-in-law:

"The latter council cannot even keep garbage away from our capital city's noble street corners (I wrote to them about this months ago and have been totally ignored) - but perhaps that's the wardens, and, again, more later. Explanations from all and sundry would be most welcome. I have seen excrement bags under the backsides of horses all over Europe, but why not here?"

Or to put in other way:

"I told about her about the state of that road. It shouldn't be allowed, I tell you. I told 'er about that road before, it wants cleaning. What are the neighbours going to think? Oooh me back. Been to the doctor. No good. Says it's psychosomething, bloody cheek. Mind you, I told 'er about the road, you should have seen it last Sunday, covered in rubbish it was. It's no skin off my nose, but what are the neighbours going to think? And them horses. Without the bags. It's a disgrace. Mess all over the shop. What are the neighbours going to think? I can't see what she ever saw in 'im."

The column is written from beginning to end in this bumbling, but ultimately hard to dislike, fashion. Who could be so stony-hearted as to fail to fall about laughing at Sammut's low comedy depiction of street wardens' antics? In my mind's eye, all the action he describes has been speeded up in the style of a Keystone Kops comedy, with Sammut playing an irrepressible Harold Lloyd-type character, one moment being pounced on by a street warden, the next he is running along the street holding a bucket under a horse's soiled bottom, and some day perhaps he'll be hanging off one of the clock faces of Mosta Cathedral.

Turning Over a New Leaf

I imagine that I was not the only one affected by Blogger's lapse into crapness over the weekend, so I have taken the opportunity to toy with a new layout. A company of web designers has charged me a reasonable fee of Lm1,500 for a look that I find both fresh and sober. They have given me their solemn word that it is completely original work, and I for one do not intend to doubt them. Readers may rest assured, however, that the content will remain as stale and repetitive as ever.

You Must be Kidding

It is said that parents should refrain from arguing before their children, lest this demonstration of domestic friction be interpreted as a compromise of authority. It was, therefore, distressing to see a squabble about child welfare, which has been as unseemly as it has been achingly dull, continued in Sunday’s issue of The Times. Dr Ruth Farrugia has elected herself as the referee of this arcane dispute between Frank Muscat and Bryan Magro, former chair of the Children's Board and policy co-ordinator in the Ministry of the Family and Social Solidarity respectively. Meanwhile, Frank Muscat also parries blows directed at him with another letter to the paper, which succeeds, and doubtless precedes, many others.
There is not much one can contribute on the specific subject of the controversy and it would only be a most foolhardy individual that would dare to trade blows with these world-class bores. And anyway, who could rival the death kiss stolidity of prose like that of Dr. Farrugia? But Farrugia is guilty not only of being a crushing bore, but also of subjecting the rest of the world to what evidently constituted the aridity of her day-to-day being.
It is quite possible there may still be some people who believe that the halls of power are populated by canny horse-traders, underhanded brokers and mercurial exponents of the elite. So how upsetting will it be for this people when they discover that the only persons in those hallowed halls are in the fact dreary drones whose very physical existence is only justified by the next deadline for the next monotonous ream of bureaucratic insignificance? Which is fine, of course. The world needs filers and clerks and data entry goons, for where would we be without them. But like Gogol’s Akaki Akakievich, they must surely realise that any attempt to rise from within the ranks of the meaningless scribe will certainly result in metaphysical annihilation.
But what do we have here? Instead allowing one pile of red-tape literature be subsumed by the next generation of similarly needless reports, Farrugia gives it an airing which it neither deserves nor needs. And she is not the only guilty of this. How often must lazy, ignorant ministers and MPs regurgitate the content of committee findings and parliamentary speeches under the pretence of being original or, Christ Almighty forbid, vaguely interesting? They take us for fool, and they are probably right to do so. They also take the editors of The Times for fools, which they are wrong to do. They are wrong as the editors of The Times are not mere fools, but half-witted dullard mildew of the very lowest order.
If one were so keen to read the written cretinism of the lumpen buffoons that vacate the chambers of the pompously named Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity, a visit to its website would fully suffice, one would have imagined. It is there that one can read such fatuous observations as this:

"Children are our most valuable natural resource. Moreover, research has amply demonstrated that the first few years of children’s lives are crucial in their development. This knowledge has inspired the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity to develop further this important building block of social policy."

That children are Malta’s most valuable natural resource is a sentiment of nauseating pointlessness. It is also false, of course. As Bishop Nikol Cauchi would be able to tell you, modern Maltese children are utterly stupid and unable to hold a pencil the right way up. They are also among the laziest, fattest and greediest in the world. It is hard to take any consolation from the fact that young people with these attributes will probably not possess the mental or physical faculties to commit crime. Though since future policeman will also probably be afflicted with similar gastric gigantism, we may well be looking forward to some amusing street chases in the years to come.
So, we have the dull and idiotically written websites, but we must still have this rubbish pushed under our noses by Farrugia and her boneheaded ilk? Is there any reason that cruelty to Times readers should be considered any less despicable than cruelty to children?

Fully Booked

As though in some kind of spiritual communion with Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi, Noemi Zarb opens her article in Saturday’s paper the metonymic theme, ironically enough, of judging books by their cover:

"Show me the books you have at home and I'll tell you all about your personality!"

To her credit, the impudence of the boast is a couple of notches lower in arrogance than Cauchi’s dogmatic creed, which he barks at the reader without a by-your-leave.

"Tell me what you read, and I tell you what you are."

Yet, how rich is the irony of the amount of whimsical tripe that will be churned out by the bucket load for this godforsaken UNESCO day of the book that everybody seems so excited about. Zarb’s contribution is a vomit-inducing flight of fairy dust whimsy that doesn’t fail, as is customary in this sort of article, to patronise, insult and irritate almost anybody who has ever deemed to pick up a book and read it.
As is also habitual in this variety of giddy literary appreciation, no concession is made for level-headed reasoning. Keen to assume a virtually Apollonic status of wisdom, no book can ever be dismissed by Zarb:

“Each and every [book is] intoxicating in [its] own special way.”

There should be a more eloquent way of putting this but, what absolute rubbish. Unless she has found some method of distilling the pages of Paulo Coelho into a low-grade variant of moonshine, she would have to do better than her twee childhood reminiscences to support that grand claim. Of course, given that Zarb’s writing suggests that she might be exactly the sort cotton-brained sap that goes weak at the knees at the very sound of the name Coelho, or some other such pseudo-profound Latinate crud, it is not to be excluded that she actually believes her own premise.
Like her bishoply precursor, Zarb eventually comes around to the sermon portion of her lesson. J.K. Rowling will doubtless be delighted, therefore, to hear that Zarb thinks that all the illiterate children of Malta need to turn into charismatic bookworms like herself is to read more “gripping fantasy”, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel. Next thing you know, this skittish gomeril will probably be wanting to send boys to school in flowery bonnets:

“If you want children to keep on turning the page to see what happens next, then the pulse must start racing as admiration and loathing tingle the blood.”

This quaint image of children’s reading proclivities is so farcically Victorian that it tips two-footedly into fantasy itself.
So kids, hasn’t this been a great week for reading (and writing)? You’ve had the words of a Tweedledum look-alike, Nikol Cauchi, and now the candy-floss blithering of an escapee from a Don Bluth film. If that doesn’t stop you reading, nothing will.

Bishop to Book Five

Apologies for the interruption in the regular service, but with the demands of academia being what they are, work has kept me away from the ribaldry that is reading The Times. Even for one such as myself, who has studied at three universities, the pressures of writing even half-decent academic copy does not come easy.

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The authority of Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi is immediately evident from the austere, ultramontanist severity of his face. But quite how he thinks his gilt crucifixes and collection of porphyry cameos of the Virgin Mary give him the authority to lecture me on my reading habits is beyond me. Wringing his porky, episcopal fingers, he appears to wonder whether the book in its current form will even last to the end of his days. Amidst feverish visions of incarnadining hosts he has seen the future, and it resembles a nightmarish enactment of Fahrenheit 451, the flames of hell burning away at the wafer-thin leaves of civilisation that keep us from the edge of madness:

"Yet, in this electronic age, where computers and the internet have become so widely used, some people inevitably ask whether it is anachronistic to talk about books and other printed material."

Words that most people will have read on precious, flammable paper. But what vice-bound human folly could be at the source of such lascivious abandon of the written word, one is almost compelled to ask.

"The use of free time is one of the most pressing problems confronting people today. There are so many forms of amusement in which people can indulge, that many may doubt whether reading continues to be a popular pastime in the same way it was before."

Being a bishop, Cauchi will of course be profoundly alive to the dangers that an excess of free time will leave one open to. But can he really be writing in the Times of Malta when he ascribes the reason for this assumed decline in reading hours to the difficulties of free time? (Not the lack of it, mind. The ecclesiastical scamp!). But for all his years of dabbling in the dark arts of popery, he is quite unable to bumble into irony. Speaking of the reading habits of his compatriots:

"... it seems the majority are content to have a look at their favourite daily newspaper"

Well, I suppose if Jesus Christ was content to be nailed to cross for our sins, then that sentence could just about stand. Sure enough, the implied rebuke of that statement portends a sermon on the wholesomeness of literary indulgence, as long it is of the right type:

"Some books are capable of doing more harm than good while others should only be taken on by those who are knowledgeable about a particular subject. So selection is important."

If anyone had been so naïve to venture into this article with the belief that it would not be deadened by the heavy hand of monkish prescription, that line would pretty have much killed all residual hope. Patronisingly, he affects an avuncular concern for the reader’s ability to read Milton and Shakespeare.

“But for lighter every day purposes a number of shorter books and booklets are available on a range of subjects that are educational and escapist.”

Booklets? Everyday purposes? A range of subjects? Who exactly does this man think he is talking to? As if Malta doesn’t have enough bishops who always talk as though in conversation with the mentally subnormal, Cauchi contrives to effortlessly insult those very few who will have bothered to read his article all the way through. I really don’t think that “content” is the word he should have used back there.

If CMB Falls, Does He Make a Sound?

Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici's columns are not an experience that anyone should be submitted to. This man is the literary equivalent of Ryvita, except not as good for you. His voice is dull, his face is dull, his very existence is dull. But by God, can there be anything on this earth more crushingly tedious than one of his articles. I would quite rather read the instruction manual for a bipolar junction transistor than plough through this dross, which anyone whose read this far might be contemplating reading:

"Private international law is a specialised segment within our legal system. It is triggered when Malta's courts of law are asked to consider lawsuits where issues before it affect some event, transaction or situation that is closely linked to a foreign judicial system and therefore necessitates recourse to foreign legal systems. This is better defined by our jurists as 'the rules voluntarily chosen by a given state for the decision of cases which have a foreign complexion'."

Well, then why did you write a definition, if you were going to give us a better anyway? God, why are you so bloodly bloodly boring?
Ok, so why read the article, the disinterested browser would ask themselves were they to visit this page. Why indeed, I reply. Even more pertinently, why was this dreary article ever written; doubtless by some unfortunate minion of the credited gentleman, I might add. I understand that there may well be certain individuals, whose drab temperament would probably see them better suited to taking residence under a mossy stone, that could find interest in prose so flat that it's practically inside out. But in a newspaper, I ask?
If only I could find solace in the attitude that today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper. For a start, Maltese people don't often eat fish and chips. And when they do it is not from a newspaper, but off a china plate and with a silver spoon. But can you imagine what writing this insipid could do to any food that touches it? It doesn't bear thinking about.
It's a good thing I'm writing this in the evening, so this wretch has only managed to ruin a handful of hours of my day.

Sharpwitted Shooters

Like any good reader of the The Times, I like a titter from time to time. As a result, my heart rose while going through the letters in Monday's edition. There were not one, but two letters under the title "Camouflaged Humour". The first was a sensible letter from Roger M. Flett in Munxar:

"While I often reel at their side-splitting joke of adding "and Conservationists" to the name of the hunters' federation, I seem to have suffered a complete sense-of-humour failure over the federation secretary Lino Farrugia's "tongue in cheek" quip, that hunters might want to use gloves to pick up shot birds. I am sorry, Aldo Azzopardi (March 29), but try as I may, I just can't see anything funny in a shot bird - with or without gloves."

Pretty straightforward really; a letter to complain about someone complaining that a newspaper had unfairly represented a facetious remark. With one letter in, one would imagine that the editor would be satisfied, but of course that would mean foregoing the words George Debono, of Sliema:

"Surely The Times should have realised that the mere mention of picking up a blood-spattered dead bird, with or without gloves on, is a seriously funny matter which causes hilarious laughter in hunting circles - as pointed out Aldo E. Azzopardi!
Where indeed is The Times' sense of humour?"

Now, I fear that this correspondent's grasp of wit may be too subtle or too crude for me to fully understand what it is that he intends with his remarks. The answer may be divined by means of inductive intuition. The original joke about picking up dead birds with gloves is not one of the funniest I've heard. There was quite a good one I knew once about a swearing parrot, but I'm quite sure that it didn't die. Meanwhile, the prospect of a Maltese hunter contracting a possibly fatal disease is not particularly amusing, though I admit it is slightly heartwarming.
Of course, anyone who has taken even a cursory interest in the humour of Maltese hunters will be familiar with what passes for bon mots amidst their circles. The usual sort of thing about blowing birds to bits, and so on.
So, if we accept that nobody could rationally believe that the original quip was actually funny, subsequent reaction of Times journalists notwithstanding, it is far from clear what George Debono is trying to say. It is likely that in the mould of so many that have gone before him, he has deployed the withering power of sarcasm in his cause. However, what that says for his ability to pass judgement on humour is another matter. So, perhaps before he asks people to locate their senses of humour, he should in fact establish that he has one himself.