Roam Around the World

Correspondence in the local Maltese press regularly treats the reader to heated polemics about the most adequate fashion in which to translate particularly problematic items of new vocabulary. This emphasis is unfortunate, insofar as it serves to needlessly exaggerate the inadequacies of the Maltese language. It is, in fact, a pity that more attention is not paid to those aspects of the national tongue that are so nuanced and exclusive as to present a point of pride. Perhaps the best representative of this select vocabulary is the word “miskin” as when used to describe a pathetic person.

To be exact, this particular meaning of the word is not solely limited to Maltese. Predictably, it contains same shades of significance in Arabic, from which language the word is derived. Less intuitively, the dialectal Sicilian usage of “meschino” (as distinct from the purely Italian word, meaning petty*) also carries the same effect. In all instances, however, the term conveys an understanding a pathos-laden condescension that the English “wretch” does not satisfactorily capture.

In wanting to illuminate the puzzled learner of Maltese though, one could do much worse than direct the enquirer to Roamer’s most recent column. In truth, almost any of this person’s columns would be useful in this respect, but wanting to establish a hierarchy of miskin-ness, it is as well to start from the top. Meanwhile, for connoisseurs of world cinema, the most useful analogue would be the itinerant, hopelessly benevolent and ultimately doomed priest hero of Luis Buñuel’s sadistic masterpiece Nazarin. Indeed, beneath all his Panglossian incoherence is a pitiable core of tragic simple-mindedness.

From his opening sally, Roamer pleads for compassionate mercy in the face of his own inanity:

"(a bit of a roam around if you will forgive the dreadful pun; plenty of other sources for Budget observations and comments)"

It is frankly inconceivable that this pun, which is barely a pun anyway, has only now come to its author’s attention. Indeed, it always seemed more likely that the very pen name was itself an improbably ironic inversion of the column’s indefatigably parochial worldview. As it is, the joke itself is piteous to a degree that only Maltese is able to properly express.

Sure enough, the article proper begins with a stunned awe that lends more than a hint to the startled attitude one might expect of a rabbit caught in headlights. For some unfortunate species, this experience can constitute a transient moment of sensory displacement; for Roamer and his ilk, it is a permanent state of being.

"Ever since God sent the earth spinning on its axis the only person who will be able to stop it spinning will be God. Meanwhile, we must watch in some amazement, at least, and with some degree of horror, or amusement at what is going on around us."

Sure enough, he soon comes to his insular senses after this initially galactic survey. In the course of roaming around the world’s hotspots, which are apparently ordered in importance in direct proportion to their distance from Roamer himself. About Iran, he notes worriedly:

"Nearer than is good for us, Iran continues on its course, a course it denies, to create a nuclear bomb."

Not too close for little skirmishes though:

"Proxy wars may be a better bet until such time as proxy outruns its meaning."

More reassuring for Malta is the ongoing crisis in East Asia, as Roamer explains in this bizarre sentence:

"Further than is bad for us, North Korea's declaration that it carried out a nuclear test, set a tiger among the Bambis in Asia and China the lion-hearted."

From the safety of his bomb-proofed bunker, Roamer does feel emboldened enough to launch the odd fusillade at the real villains of our time. Like his equally humourless British counterpart, Simon Heffer, Roamer presumes that referring to informal politicians in formal terms makes for a devastating putdown. And “Bill” Clinton is spared nothing in this verbal IED:

"William denies the charges [that he did little about the Al-Qaeda threat] even if he could only show, as signs of his determination to come to grips with Al-Qaeda, a few missile attacks lobbed into Afghanistan that served no purpose whatsoever except to give America's enemies heart - this after the destruction of American embassies in East Africa and an attack on an American warship. And we saw him earlier this month, his jaw set and resolute, his eyes glinting as he finger-wagged a reporter this dodgy dodger who dodged the draft and became the commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States."

And with an unwieldy pedagogic lurch forward, he projects his roving beady eye to South America. One eye on his trusty Atlas Four and his fingers flicking through a 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, he courses his pioneering path forward and, largely, downwards:

"To the south of the United States lies Brazil and next to it, Venezuela. They are both in the news for a number of reasons. Brazil, which is 4,000 km by 4,300 km and a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty"

But there is nothing more comforting after almost 2,000 words of roaming (and rambling) around the globe than to return to the homely bosom of Christian issues, namely the decline of the institution of marriage and humanity’s general descent into a moral swamp of Godless iniquity. And after that, a quick anecdote about the time that actor Robert Morley gave an entire speech with his flies undone.

* To be exact, “meschino” did mean “miskin” in its archaic form, although this now remains a largely regional variation.

Di-ving into the Deep End

Much has been made of Malta's recent historic victory over the mighty football titans of Hungary. To put this in some context, consider that Hungary drew 0-0 against Croatia during qualification round for the 2006 World Cup. These results would appear to demonstrate that Malta is, statistically speaking, a superior footballing to even England, which was disastrously, defeated 2-0 by Croatia last weekend. All thanks, it might be added, to the efforts of Marsaxlokk striker Andre' Schembri.
However, as I noted in the comments section of the Lanzarote blog, the achievements of the Maltese national team are as of nothing when compared with the historical ascendancy of Marsaxlokk F.C. The most recent development is that Marsaxlokk have gone top, having defeated the only team that can really compete against them... Marsaxlokk.
Now, I have never subscribed to the fashion of deriding di-ve, which I find somewhat akin to firing Katyushas on a Sisters of Mercy orphanage, but this latest blunder is truly a masterstroke of editorial incompetence:

"Marsaxlokk rose to the top of the table when they beat Marsaxlokk in a kenly contested encounter yesterday."

It is frankly surprising that in addition to the existing squiggly red and green lines that Andrew Borg Cardona relies on so completely to make his I.M.Beck columns sound literate, there isn't also a third variant which signifies "you are complete frigging moron". For the sake of di-ve’s editorial team, one can only hope that the word processing program in the much-awaited Microsoft Vista operating system has been accordingly upgraded.

Sewer and Be Damned

How Anthony Licari fumed indignantly when it was suggested on this site that his writing had all the coherence of that which might be expected of a person under the influence of hallucinogenic substances. Not that it was written by an actual drug user (a useful legalistic distinction, it seems to me); just about as grounded in reason. Indeed, for all the indubitable harm that droppers of acid cause Maltese society, they could rarely be accused of the kind of teeth-grinding tedium and stultifying senselessness that this country’s columnists have inflicted upon their readers.

Back in the day, Licari harrumphed, as is his prerogative, about nameless trolls foaming at the mouth, referring ever so obliquely to Fausto Majjistral and myself. On that occasion, his peculiar brand of writing was so suffused with feverish purpleness and meaningless non sequitirs that it is unlikely that anybody but the people in question had the faintest clue what he was on about. His clumsy attempt at caustic invective thus fell catastrophically flat on that occasion, though I would be lying if I did not say that his words did leave an impression on me. After all, he may have had a point.
Is it my place to question the pronouncements of a person who has studied at three universities, a fact he takes much pride in? Unlike Licari, I am not a lecturer in psycholinguistics (or sociolinguistics and geolinguistics, for that matter), and can therefore not presume to question the state of mind of a person capable of giving form to this sentence:

"Meanwhile, the sick brandy continues to make us smart and reel. For, after all, it was said that I am the coach and I like to react to serious advice with loud, metallic, hysterical laughter while playing the lyre. This continuous laughter by conservativo maximo is getting on the nerves of the Nats."

For those unwilling to read the original article, let me explain. Incidentally, you would not be blamed for the omission, for the piece is most, how shall we say, literarily challenging (ahem). In launching his ruthless excoriation of the Malta Tourism Authority’s recent activities, he begins with a bold and fittingly linguistic sleight of hand. As even the most dull-witted reader will apprehend, the word brand, as in “Brand Malta”, is quite similar to the word brandy. Well, quite similar.
Ok, this next bit is a tricky. Once you have established that the two apparently unrelated words are phonetically (is this right, Anthony?) consonant, you then use one to refer to the other. Thus achieving wit. So, but sick brandy (hic), he means a medicinal cure that makes you reel and, well, er, you get it
Admittedly, that one was hard. Let us try a real easy one next. When you want to make people laugh uncontrollably at your mastery of the humorous idiom, merely use a word to mean the opposite of what you intend. Cynics will object that this device, known as sarcasm, is “the lowest form of wit”. But as any schoolchild can tell you, “wit is the highest form of humour,” and sarcasm gets no wittier than when it is deployed by Malta’s most accomplished geolinguistician:

"Few people would not admit nowadays that tourism is enjoying a lovely nosedive as a result of incompetence, inefficiency and downright pig-headedness."

But Licari is not just about wicked wordplay and verbal mastery. He isn’t pulling his punches when it comes to weighty social and academic issues that dominate the day. Indeed, he is thirsty for scientific rigour and will resolutely refuse to give in to ham-fisted approximation and obtuse generalisations:

"Men of the West seem to be increasingly finding wives and partners in Eastern Europe. No formal scientific study that I know of has attempted to analyse this phenomenon. However, Western newspapers, often for reasons of sensationalism, like to print stories about East European women who have 'tricked' West European men."

He later concludes that these people are little more than “veritable village idiots”, so not a lot mileage there it turns out.
On and on it goes in this eclectic (erratic and incoherent, for the Philistines) vein. Yet, the last paragraph did force a theatrical double-take out of me. And please recall that this is written by a person who took such umbrage at my decidedly restrained characterisation of his excruciating articles:

"Cartoonists are an important element in journalism - even if few of them have actually followed a course in journalism and I don't understand how they are called "journalists". Even less journalistic are cartoonists who have an obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions and with whatever belongs to all things biological and putrid. If you know anyone in this pathetic psychological situation, please be a good Christian and suggest to him/her to visit a psychologist who can identify the origins of such morbidity before moving on to its possible cure."

Coyly, with a cheeky little finger poised over his mouth Austin Powers-style, he is effectively implying that Maurice Tanti Burlò is clinically insane and possibly suffers from faecal fixation. I feel entitled to say this as he does after all invite his reader to nominate candidates with “obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions”.

I’m not certain that Tanti Burlò is actually obsessed with toilet functions (there seem little grounds for such a sensational charge), but if Licari has such a valiant belief in his convictions, as he has indeed previously claimed, perhaps he ought to be that kind Christian and issue his benevolent invitation to Tanti Burlò in his next column. As a psycholinguist, heaven knows that he is considerably more qualified than me to perform the deed. He wouldn't want to appear hypocritical now, would he?

Would You Like Food With Your Salt?

As the Book of Proverbs tells us, “he that has knowledge spares his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted wise: and he that shuts his lips is esteemed a man of understanding”.
As this quote evidences, even the teachings of the Holy Scriptures show us that baby Jesus would appreciate it if, from time to time, such people as would be normally predisposed to brimming over with pointless waffle would only restrain themselves from stating the obvious. Yet for all their Solomonic wisdom, what the assembled busybodies behind the Book of Proverbs potboiler could not have apprehended back in Bible days is that newspapers simply do not write themselves. No indeed, people like Frank Salt write them.
When Salt first began writing his pieces for The Times, people might have been forgiven for wondering how his real estate background could possibly give him the grounds to set forth on whatever tickled his fancy. My own dealings with estate agents have gratefully been circumscribed to their periodical extortion of my earnings and the odd call on my part to complain about a mouldy fridge. If, however, Matthew the estate agent had ever presumed to come round to my flat to share his views on the importance of a prudent fiscal policy for a country's stability, well I'm not sure what I might have done.
If, moreover, he had shouted advice on how to save water through the letterbox while I cowered behind the sofa pretending to be out, things could have taken an ugly turn. After all, just like lawyers, estate agents are at best licensed thieves. You would no more ask an estate agent for energy-saving tips, than you would ask a cat burglar for advice on what locks to install. Sure enough, Matthew (that weedy little creep) never transgressed in the ways described above. But not so Frank Salt.
Having gorged himself to satiety on the easy riches that a profession that even a trained seal could master without much difficulty, Salt has imperiously announced that he has no aspiration to see his fellow countrymen join him in his state of Cheshire cat smugness.

"I know it might sound strange, but one of my worst nightmares is that Malta strikes a lot of oil in our territorial waters, become a very rich country, and then the population will not have to work or want to work, so they sit down and do nothing."

Do nothing but write barely literate columns for the Times that is.
But before the Maltese reader is tempted to cast themselves into deeper penury by furiously flinging their PC out of the closest opening of their windowless hovel, please consider that ceci n'est pas une article, as Magritte himself might have quipped.
Sure enough, a quick scan down the page reveals the horrible truth that Frank Salt is "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate". When the clods at the MTA are not doing a group impersonation of Inspector Clouseau, it transpires they might be taking the advice of this erstwhile camarade de bataille in their bid to civilise the semi-feral Maltese nation.
As is often the case with self-appointed sages, Salt deals with onerous burden of concocting actual solutions with a dizzying hail of rhetorical inquisitiveness:

“Now what will happen when the low-cost airlines start coming to Malta and become very successful? Make no mistake about it, in the future they will be very successful indeed, and so too will Air Malta. What will happen then? Will some of these new tourists be accommodated in the same substandard hotels? Will some of our hotels stay in the same dilapidated condition they are in now? Will these hotel owners say thanks for the tourists and do nothing to rejuvenate and renovate their premises?”

This passage reeks of Salt’s terror at how Malta’s barbaric lumpenproletariat will foul up this golden opportunity. And, as we all know, estate agents are such a delicate breed.
As usual with these wretched columns, the substance is Procol Harum pale and found ferreted away in some apologetic mouse of a paragraph:

“The Malta Tourism Authority has established rules, regulations and standards, and these must all be enforced properly so that when we receive the large increase of tourists that will definitely be coming to Malta and Gozo, they will all be accommodated at a standard they deserve.”

In short, the MTA should do its job, instead of rushing around and overacting like some pantomime dame. But since Salt himself is the "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate", you have to wonder how many of those halcyon days were spent in the shameful indulgence of getting “away with not doing anything”.

Praise Be to Sant

After a few month's break from blogging (about The Times anyway), the time seems ripe to return to the activity. For a start, one can only hope that the private investigators that Anthony Licari was implying he wanted to put on my tail will finally have lost the scent. This particular bloggist has been half way across the planet to ensure that would happen. And so much more has happened in the meantime.
The Fool's Cap has assiduously slipped off the blogrolls of even the most faithful admirers and hateful antagonists. Racial intolerance very much remains a feature of Maltese life, although an unprecedented proliferation of shiny magazines has happily taken people's minds off such depressing matters. Planes continue to crash into New York buildings, but they are now much smaller and piloted by baseball players. The Education Channel still exists, but it unaccountably becomes older with every day that passes. Apparently, the bank in Albert Town was closed down years ago. I wish someone would tell me these things.
But The Times... The Times of Malta remains as ever the last refuge of every mental halfwit that metaphorically wanders into its empty vessels. Ever it was thus.

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It has surely been observed here before that some things are simply beyond mockery. Yet, with every passing Wednesday the preoccupying prospect of that prat Alfred Sant presiding over the proud provinces of Malta as Prime Minister presses upon its proletariat with preoccupying proximity. To read this preceding sentence with anything resembling discernment would necessitate the inevitable conclusion that it was largely nonsense. Any sensible editor would be excused the act of transforming prose (oh God!) based upon such a patently childish ludic concept as that of insisting that all titles begin with the letters "PR" into an improvised game of wastepaper basketball.
For those disposed to believing the most outrageous conspiracy theories, it might be considered that The Times has long been operating on the principle of "give them enough rope". And if Alfred Sant has hanged himself four score and seven times already, let nobody accuse of him not being willing to rush headlong into more punishment.
Before anyone think that this blog’s hiatus has transformed its author into an acolyte of the lazy I.M.Beck habit of relentlessly laying into the same straw man of politics, it should be said that Alfred Sant was quite justified in objecting to a recent vignette depicting him as a purveyor of drainage, or something. The original cartoon, drawn by the spectacularly untalented and unfunny Maurice Tanti Burlò, was crude and stupid. It was also a supremely pathetic attempt at satire at the expense at a person not running country.
But, on the other hand, if you will look for it, as Sant does on a tragic weekly basis, you will get it. Of course, any fool can titter at him for poring over his partly very well-thumbed dictionary for inspiration. Not any fool, however, could foresee that Sant would raid his record collection in his ever more desperate hunt for ideas. So it was that this week’s article, Procol Harum pale, came to be.
With a doleful attempt at distraction he tries to claim that it has not taken him literally a week without sleep to write this article:

“In the past few weeks, I worked closely with the Malta Labour Party's spokesmen on working conditions and on youth affairs, as they finalised draft position papers and plans on these subjects.”

If only, he must have been thinking to himself at the time, you could switch around the letters ‘d’ and ‘p’. But what the hell is a praft dosition? That won’t work. Little does he know that PRAFT stands for Predator/Red Alert Fishing Team (according to Internet acrnomym finders anyway), a theme that could finally compel him to discuss the disgracefully neglected area of Marsaxlokk-related issues. But what with Mintoff’s summer house in Delimara that would not do at all.
Well, much in the way that customers of long-defunct Marsaxlokk video rental outlet Green Dash would wear out the tape of Best of the Best by fast forwarding to the climactic fight scenes, seasoned Sant-watchers have learnt that the fun of his articles lies in scanning ahead to the tenuous substance of his column’s title.
And how much waffle we had to put up with this week. First, some rubbish about globalisation, labour markets and how he used to attend Socialist International meetings. After these reminiscences about his Leninist youth, he gets rather disappointingly to the point:

“When analysts talk about the ‘friction’ of labour markets, as they still do, they refer mainly to the social legislation which protects workers' rights and conditions, and to the role of unions. Such rights and conditions should no longer be printed in bold - they have to be made pale.”

What exactly that means is anybody’s guess. Although, much like Anthony Licari, I have studied at three universities, only one of these institutions has been infested with the revolutionarily disposed left-wingers that spout this sort of socialist mysticism. And those people I avoided like the plague. And on and on he goes about “friction” for several more paragraphs, doubtless disconcerting his “PR” regular.
Yet, if ever there was a case for letting Sant getting to the end of things, that is to be found in his columns. After stringing out a whole article on the back of the weakest imaginable analogy, he breaks the suspense with this wet fart of a conclusion:

“The pressure continues from people who prefer it like this: they come from the corporate world, naturally, but they find supporters from within the centre-right political spectrum. The perspectives they promote remind me of a hit song by a forgotten pop group of the late 1960s, Procul Harum, as they repeatedly call for a whiter shade of pale; for the paleness we have is, in their view, still not enough.”

Prathetic. Absolutely prathetic.