Satira del homicidio romantico por amor…or ending the hangover for good.

For all of you who have overindulged during the holiday…a little something from Leonardo Alenza.

You’re all going to die….

Remember this? From the Independent in March 2000:

“Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.”

Ha ha ha…

I’ve been snowed in for three years running…

What about this prediction from the 1982 book Fact or Fantasy (World of Tomorrow):

“From the way in which the Earth moves around the Sun, we have some ideas of the kind of weather that both we and our descendants are going to suffer or enjoy…in general, summers will be less warm and winters more severe. Meteorologists expect the next century to be mostly cold, but the weather should improve in about 150 years time!”

Oh well, that’s nearer reality than this article that ran in the French weekly l’Express back in 1962:

“By the year 2000 all food will be completely synthetic. Agriculture and fisheries will have become superfluous. The world’s population will by then have increased fourfold but will have stabilized. Sea water and ordinary rocks will yield all the necessary metals. Disease, as well as famine, will have been eliminated; and universal hygienic inspection and control will have been introduced. The problems of energy production will by then be completely resolved.”

People and predictions, eh? Especially those scientists…

What about the article in the April 30, 1899 edition of the Chicago Tribune? “Population Close to ‘Standing Room Only’” was its title.

“If the population of the United States continues to increase at the rate that has prevailed during the last twenty years in the year 2000 it will reach so great a density there will be room for an average of only one person to an acre in the vast area.”

Oh dear, tell me more Obi-Wan…the article concludes:

“Deductions must be chiefly speculative, but all that have been made public by the weightier minds turn to the restriction of immigration as the most logical method of imposing a check on an advancement that is fast growing menacing…”

Menacing…sound familiar to you?

Silent Horror…

For your entertainment. See HERE for the top 10 Under Appreciated Silent Horror Films.

They don’t make ‘em like that anymore!!

Halloween…and that tapping on my door

Today, of course, is All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), also known as All Saints’ Eve (so good we named it twice).

It’s a day in part derived from the Gaelic festival of Samhain, celebrating the end of summer, the lighter half of the year, and the onset of the darker half of the year, winter – Summer births, winter deaths. It is a time when the very fabric separating us from the unseen otherworld becomes so thin that the dead are able to reach back into this world of the living. In the ancient festival of Samhain, in Ireland, it was customary to hollow out turnips, carving a face on them to create lanterns that would frighten off the dangerous spirits…

But today irritating little monsters  children appear on the twilit streets, their faces hidden by plastic masks as they go door to door, calling: “Trick or Treat!”, their raucous yells putting the fear of God up little old ladies who live alone. Neither parents or kids have any real understanding of the history behind their dressing up – the pagan implications, the appeasement of the dead, the spirits moving into this world from the otherworld.

Nor I suspect do they have much comprehension of the Christian meaning behind All Hallows: the celebration on first November honoring all the Christian saints, both known and unknown…the spiritual communion between the living and those who have died in a state of grace to face purification in purgatory or their arrival in heaven.

Across Europe people visit the graves of deceased relatives and friends with flowers or lighted candles. The day coincides with “Día de los Inocentes“, the first day celebrating “Dia de los Muertos”, the day of the dead. “Día de los Inocentes” is for the children who have died, honoring their spirits and praying for their continued peace in the otherworld…

So parents, one and all, be aware what little Jonnie is about in the dark, in the night, all bundled up in his coat and scarf: he’s inviting the spirits from the otherworld into this one, perhaps; and as he and his friends scream “Trick or Treat” at some palpitating pensioner, ask yourself:

“What is that shape moving just now in the shadows behind them?”

BARBIE DOLL has her 50th birthday this year……

Mum’s giant boobs suffocated boyfriend…

I just couldn’t resist this one:

“BUSTY Claire Smedley’s boyfriend nearly DIED when she suffocated him with her enormous boobs during sex.

“The mum-of-three, who has 40LL breasts, panicked when she lifted them up to find her lover Steven had stopped breathing.”

What a way to go!! See the story HERE.

Shirt-lifters and Pope Benedict XVI…

Old news this, but I thought I’d vomit up some commentary – as I do, periodically. First, to those of you easily offended, best eff off now. You know what old Peedeel can be like when he gets the bit between his teeth.

So, you’ve been warned.

Remain at your peril.

To begin I’d like to state the obvious: there’s nothing stranger than people! The media, the Blogosphere, even the local pub is a hotbed of gossip, of accusation, of condemnation of poor old Pope Ben…but why?

Yes, yes, yes, we’ve all heard the tales of shirt-lifting priests and cover-ups. A situation that has led to no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury recently suggesting the Irish Catholic Church has ‘lost all credibility’ due to their paedophile priests. And the allegation that in 2007 while still a lowly Cardinal, Thomas Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, issued a “secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church’s interests ahead of child safety…”

Why should anyone be surprised that Ratzinger – an ex-member of the Hitler Jugend (yes, membership was compulsory in Germany), an ultra-conservative Catholic, ‘enforcer’ of Pope John Paul II in everything but name, and head of the powerful “Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith”, the department of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and matters of faith – would act in any way differently from the way he has acted?

Ratzinger may well have followed the teachings of Christ – you know? Being a Christian and all that. “Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone”, “turn the other cheek”, and various other pronouncements of forgiveness. Perhaps, naively, he thought these monsters in their bible-black guise of priests were simply misguided, had slipped temporarily from grace, and would now return to the straight and narrow?

Today, of course, as Pope he is Christ’s Vicar on earth. His words are spoken on behalf of Christ. The Catholic Church maintains that he is “preserved from even the possibility of error” in his many decisions and pronouncements. Consequently he is not answerable to any civil authority. He is a head of state, as well as leader of the Catholic faith. Catholic dogma gives him Christ-like characteristics – in part we must come to see him as semi-divine: Christ made flesh. And if you think my concept of God incarnate a tad strong, see HERE I’m not alone in this view.

Yes, the “word turned flesh”. So how could Pope Ben do anything other than forgive? The devil offered temptations and weak souls faltered, strayed from the path. They confessed and repented, forgiveness must follow…

Mustn’t it?

On the other hand, he could have adopted the stance of the leader of the Church in Germany who ‘denounced past failures and mistakes in the Church’s handling of complaints of child rape and other abuse. The Church in the country of the Pope’s birth is in crisis after dozens of people came forward alleging that they were abused as minors by priests.

“Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg said that news of sexual and physical abuse by priests left the Church with sadness, horror and shame. He said that clerics failed to help victims by a “wrongly intended desire to protect the Church’s reputation” and called on the Church to face this painful reality. He added: “Wounds were inflicted that are hardly curable.”’

So Pope Ben might have cared a little less about an institution and a lot more about the souls of his “flock”. Might have, but didn’t. For here we see an example of “corporate religion” in action: the importance is “the singer not the song”; the imposing edifice of the Roman Catholic Church seen as an entity in its own right – somehow independent of the hoards of Catholic faithful, who assume secondary importance in these affairs of their Church – and of the Church’s leader.

In-effin-credible, in’it?

Seen one of these before…?

The Rats in the Walls

“It was a twilit grotto of enormous height, stretching away farther than any eye could see; a subterraneous world of limitless mystery and horrible suggestion. There were buildings and other architectural remains—in one terrified glance I saw a weird pattern of tumuli, a savage circle of monoliths, a low-domed Roman ruin, a sprawling Saxon pile, and an early English edifice of wood but all these were dwarfed by the ghoulish spectacle presented by the general surface of the ground.”

From The Rats in the Walls by H P Lovecraft.

Where Once Poe Walked

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a spectre glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery’s secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.

H. P. Lovecraft