Felici Ma Trimoni (karaccuse)

CAPAREZZA

Felici Ma Trimoni

Veniste da me in una chiesa agreste,vi dissi “Fideles adeste,che d’è?”.Voi vi sedeste,mi diceste “Scusi padre,ci sposi,vogliamo dei carusi!”.Esterrefatto misi all’atto che eravate 8/4,e dietro la grata quatto quatto presi nota del peccato fatto.Iniziò lei che c’ha una parlata strana che renderebbe malsana la calma del Dalai Lama,perdiana! “Specchio specchio delle mie brame,sono io la modella che la dà al reame,non tocco cibo da settimane,voglio una torta con l’aspartame”.Il neomarito è un orco,ma ben vestito,per farne un porco squisito gli manca solo il grugnito,capito? “C’ho l’azienda,c’ho l’agenda carica di numeri di vip… ooohh…c’ho l’amante sottostante e mi faccio pippe nel peep-show”.Questi due no no,non li sposo-so è un matrimonio pericoloso-so. Esoso,pomposo,ma fragile che fa “Creek” come Dawson… Come dici?Mi gonfi l’obolo?Beh,un paramento nuovo fa comodo,vi sposerò,ma già so sarete come Remo con Romolo.Vuoi tu donna avere un omino vicino sapendo che non è tanto uno stinco di santo quanto uno stinco di suino?E tu,maiale di fecale corazza,vuoi con te quest’oca che starnazza dilapidando ricchezza in piazza?Già allora ci vidi vidi chiaro,ed ora che vi di vi dichiaro marito e moglie, è meglio uno sparo in fronte o un salto dall’alto del faro ma,dall’altare son più bon con la talere in chiffon,su le mani filles e garçons,everybody just sing that song…


RIT:SIATE FELICI MA TRIMONI (X3)VOI E CODESTI TESTIMONI


Il dì delle nozze vidi più carrozze che nelle fiabe dei Grimm,nella chiesa un dream team di vip ed irritanti drin drin drin drin,fuori più figuranti che in film a tentare il log-in,le campane che din don din,i bicchieri che già cin cin.Passa la limousine,è lui se non erro, l’uomo con la faccia da verro.Gli fa strada una bodyguard che sgomita come Braccio di Ferro.Fiore all’occhiello più pochette, un pò scettico sull’eau de toilette,ha passato la nuit in una suite,ma tete a tete con una soubrette.La sposa sa di tequila della sera prima,taglia la fila,non vuol’essere inquadrata,fa la diva,ha venduto l’esclusiva a novella 2000.Come ciliegina gustosa,chiese la chiesa chiusa come chiosa,riprese da Elisa di Rivombrosa,scollatura scandalosa.Fiori d’arancio nel bouquet,globi oculari nel décolleté,il marito che fissava me ma pensava alle ostriche del buffet.Parlo, ma la banda fa zan zan,nella piazza un gran tran tran,ballano il can can…la messa è finita andate affan…


RIT.


Il sagrato dissacrato dall’uscita dei due Barabba, sugli sposi non solo riso,ma scaglie di tartufo d’Alba,appestati di dopobarba,invitati che “Dopo bamba”,invitate che “Dopo samba!”,fate largo passa la stampa.Lui già punta una bionda tinta che dalla cinta le spunta il tanga,lei saluta la mamma bianca che già le manca il suo conto in banca.Datele due mesi e sarà già stanca perchè corre più di Nelson Piquet e troverà un benestante che le fornirà carburante.Però il suo nome sarà scritto lo stesso tra mille storie di sesso sulle riviste che tengo nel cesso:le battaglie legali,gli alimenti,nuovi pretendenti sull’attenti,matrimoni da favola senza la favola dei felici e contenti.Crollano i nervi come in curva nel derby,ma perchè vi coniugate,a che serve? Mica siete dei verbi! Siete pupi di Cernit,meno credibili di Piggy e Kermit,con amori eterni quanto i vostri volti sui teleschermi.
Rit.

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The Big Kahuna Commandment

And like Moses from Sinai J’accuse descends upon the flock of idolators and worshippers alike bearing the guidelines from the Temple of Reason and House of Mankind. Verily I say to you that no bigger commandment than this must be borne in mind at the moment of truth when you sit in the cabin and are about to mark your vote:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Ok. I’ve cheated. I did not need to visit any temples or watch any burning bushes declaim the ultimate words – I just consulted one of the greatest philosophers to roam the earth. Beyond that there’s always the J’accuse Randomly Generated Codex for the Samurai Warrior of Urban Zen and it reads something like this:

1. Keep Calm and Carry On.

2. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

3. The rules of society are for everybody and that includes many who do not think or believe the same way as you do.

4. Live and let live.

5. Smile. It never hurts.

6. Live according to your tenets. Let others live according to theirs. So long as you don’t step on each others’ toes it will ba AOK. Trust me on this one.

7. Jesus loves you. He loves your neighbour too.

8. Love conquers all.

9. Never, ever underestimate the power of Kinnie (& twistees).

10. Use sunscreen.

There’s more where those came from. Does the list sound superficial? J’accuse would apologise under normal circumstances but we thought we’d try out a post that conforms to the current norm in the divorce debate.

 

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When the dust has settled (I)

I still have to watch Reno Bugeja’s program that aired yesterday and dealt with the aftermath of the referendum but I do think that we can begin to draw conclusions on the effect of the Great Divorce Debate on society as well as on the Maltese corner of the ether. As the referendum results are read out and Malta begins to come to terms with it’s latest snapshot for it’s collective ID card there may be carcades and hooting, there may be strings of Ave Marias and novenas of gratitude elsewhere but things will never be the same.

Beyond divorce

A divorce debate and law tends to be a landmark moment in a nations’ history as documented in this book review.

Of course we have been thinking, speaking and most of all joking about (more about that later) divorce but the first assessment of the aftermath has to be that this Debate was much larger than its original purported subject. Interestingly we managed to reaffirm a trait of our society – it’s inability to think beyond two. There’s black and there’s white, there’s Good and there’s Evil, there’s Us and there’s Them, there’s the Secular and there’s the Confessional. Then there are those with a “sense of humour” and those “without”.

As soon as it became clear that the issue is much wider than the right to remarry then it became time to dig the trenches… and dig them deep. There would have to be a victory of some kind: of good over evil, of one lifestyle over another – and a loss for the idea that somehow two ways of life can coincide. That is why voting YES or NO notwithstanding the apparent  inevitability of the shooting down of the bill by our spineless and unrepresentative parliament is still a matter of life or death. We have confirmed that this nation is destined to be bipartisan.

I hope God has a sense of humour

As the trenches formed the two sides emulated the tried and tested ways of doing politics – the billboards, the half-truths and the mediatic ploys and gimmicks. Nothing new there. We could be tricked into thinking that the individual was more “active” than before because of the flourishing of blogs, communities and pages mostly dedicated to asserting ones position for or against an idea. Then came humour. Again, the biggest effect has been the facility of the spreading of “jokes” and what in Malta passes as “satire”. Josanne Cassar described it as a Survival Kit a concept that unwittingly (or maybe purposefully) implied the need to survive (and be above or extraneous to) the discussion itsel.

Witness Josanne’s other creation: Moviment Tindahalx – a snowball effect of sorts led it to (currently) 3,513 members. Tindahalx (don’t interfere) is again less of an assertion of a position and more of a declaration of detachment – neither here nor there in the bipartisan sphere though ultimately  the ideal platform for roping in those whose first reaction to the ugly word “politics” is “Thanks but no thanks” – until they realise how it also can mean that others are determining your way of life.

I asked Josanne where she wanted to go with Tindahalx and the answer was quite emphatically “nowhere”. Which is unfortunate – because if there ever was a promising platform for gathering that snowball for the critical mass beyond the bipartisan fold then it was in this community. What might have diluted the original message “you take care of your soul and I’ll take care of mine” was the tsunami of humour that followed.

From Divorzistan to Mazzun to the rest the Maltese habit of “nervously dealing with the lighter side of life” spread to the net. I am the firs to click around and have a good laugh or two on these sites. There is also a political element in the humour itself this time round – and mocking the serious side is after all J’accuse’s unofficial motto (castigat ludendo mores). It’s not new though: the fact that it is more easily spread does not make it new. It began with the jokes at the grocer in the eighties (joking about Mintoff , Agatha et al was one way of coping with the sadness of daily life), moved on to email virals and youtube videos in the last two elections/referenda and is now settling in communities on facebook.

Critical Mass

It is easier to see how many followers a facebook page has than to count exactly how many people stepped out of the Zejtun parish church (unliked) last Sunday. Read the MaltaToday report and you’ll see what I mean: the heading mentions a “Mass Walkout” but the article starts with the word “several parishioners”… which will it be?

J’accuse continues to question whether the critical mass for change has been reached? Without intending in any way to minimise the importance of the newfound tools of engagement the question is what will happen when the dust subsides? Has the argument and discussion been provocative enough to provoke the necessary thousands into deciding to use their vote in order to bring about change and reform in the future? Or is this just a passing fad in which laughter has popped up as a temporary panacea for our argumentative colic?

James Debono gave us his interpretation as to why YES will prevail. His argument makes a lot of sense – particularly in the ability of a voting population to react positively in the face of quirky vs common sense. What that also means though is that we have done it before and we will do it again (choose common sense). 1987 and the EU are witness to that. Common sense has given us a confessional government, an opportunist opposition and a general set-up of actual or perceived laws that seem out of synch with the 21st century.

When the dust settles this time round will the critical mass still be there to fight the next battles for change to come about? We’ll just have to wait and see.

“In un paese pieno di coglioni, ci mancano le palle” – j’accuse 2011

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There’s always a first time

Lady Chatterley started blogging on The Malta Chronicle. She’s got some points to set straight about marriage and blogging… not in that particular order.

I wonder whether the same rules apply here and whether I should wait till I’m married before I start blogging.  Well, that may never happen, which would be a real waste.  So here I am.  About to consummate my relationship with the blogosphere and press send.   I didn’t wait for marriage to have sex either.  If I had, I’d be a 37 year old virgin and that’s pretty sad, even Kate Gonzi would probably agree.  I mean, imagine the spots.  Imagine how angry I’d be all the time.

Instead I have a 12 year-old, and I’m only angry some of the time. Like now, because we’re doing Maltese homework and it’s that time of the year, when the horrible word ‘revision’ comes home to roost.

But I’m here to talk about divorce.  I was having a chat with a guy last night on facebook and he gave me the ‘between you and me, I’ll be voting against divorce’ spiel.  I replied with my best ‘each to his own, different strokes for different folks’ all embracing response and tried to sound like I meant it. And yet after I logged off, I couldn’t help but wonder, how someone so bright, so young, so cool and so with it I suppose, could miss the point so ferociously.

You see, what he effectively told me, was that his reservations stemmed from the fact that divorce offered people an exit, which would make people leave marriages with greater alacrity.  So then I gently pointed out that separation offered people a very real and valid exit too, which was also resorted to, with reckless abandon.  So no difference there, right.

Then he said that people would shack up with other people with greater ease, and once again, I came back with more or less the same argument –   that today people are free to leave their original spouses, shack up with new partners, have children outside of wedlock.   It happens all the time.

And if they really want to seal the deal, then they usually try and wrangle an annulment, unless they’re lucky enough to create a domicile in an estranged land.  And if and when that happens, they’re laughing.  Then they can even remarry, which until that point,  was the only thing that differentiated separation from divorce.

So all we are arguing about here is one thing – that  divorce will facilitate re-marriage. Facilitate NOT bring about. That is the only novelty it will bring about.  Divorce will not be the catalyst for marriage breakdown, for children suffering, for depression, mental breakdown. It will not be the cause of anything we don’t already know.  It will just facilitate a remedy which to-date is also available, admittedly from the back, not the front door.

That is basically it.  We’re essentially arguing about exit via a back or a front door, about semantics.  Annulment is divorce by any other name (oh not legally I know that, God forbid!); separation is as heart wrenching and traumatic as it’s twin brother divorce or twin sister annulment; annulment permits remarriage; re marriage is available to the people who want it badly enough via annulment or overseas divorce.  And on and on it goes.  And we’re still talking about it.

And I’m actually blogging about it.  Yes, there’s always a first time.

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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J'accuse: Far from the madding crowd

For my sins I tuned into One TV’s Affari Taghna on Friday night. Bundy’s programme is going through its own apotheosis and will soon be sitting at the Olympian table of Maltese television alongside the other opiates of Maltese thinking. On Friday, Deborah Schembri (likes divorce) and Joyce Cassar (doesn’t like divorce) crossed swords before a scientifically inexact but sufficiently random cross-section of Maltese society. I chose to persevere and ignore the initial twitches in my brain caused by Joyce’s ability to swing from one non sequitur to the next like a metaphorical Tarzan in a jungle of illogical misconceptions.

The Great Divorce Debate has served as the Great Eye Opener in many ways. It may seem offensive to speak in terms of “medieval thinking”, “moving time backwards” or “brains where time stood still”, but the absence of the clear PLPN divide this time round allows us to dissect our national way of thinking as we have not been able to for a very long time. I must confess to finding myself overwhelmed by the sudden overdose of “opinions” on the matter when only a while ago a blog post or article supposedly made as much sound (or was just as conveniently ignored) as the tree falling in the empty forest.

Genesis

Far from the baying hounds and loud noises, you catch glimpses of moments of lucidity in the debate. I have recently come to the conclusion that the reason for the prolonged discussions and misunderstandings on what should be after all the straightforward legislation of a basic right is our inability to distinguish between the secular and the spiritual. In the history of our young nation, two great events compounded the confusion among even the supposedly more intelligent and emotionally detached of our members.

The first event was the period of the Mintoff-Gonzi wars culminating in L-Interdett (Interdiction) and the second was the 1995 Church-State Agreement between Eddie’s and Guido’s PN government and the Roman Catholic Church. The first has left long lasting scars of rancour that inevitably pollute any discussion that involves anything remotely spiritual, and the second has proven to be detrimental to the (crucial) roles of both the Church and the State in our society. At the end of Affari Taghna I could only ask a rhetorical question to the “fathers of the nation”: “Can you see what mess you have left us in?”

For the love of God

There were a couple of reassuring voices on the night though. The first came, surprisingly enough, from Fr Charles Vella. Surprising because of all the controversy that has surrounded the notorious clip in which Fr Vella declaims his lack of fear of divorce. In the full clip, as aired on Bundy’s show, it is clear that Father Vella is stating what every rational human being who participates responsibly in society should be saying. Fr Vella has no problem reconciling his dislike of divorce (as discovered through the words of God and the teachings of the Church) with the civil issue of the availability of divorce. It is men like Charles Vella and the spokesperson for the Catholics − Yes because it is a right (I believe it was Carmel Hili) − who have managed to shed the blinkers inherited by our black and white society.

Father Vella does not favour divorce. No, the Cana movement director was quite clear about that when he appeared on Norman’s show. He is though, a strong enough Catholic not to fear it. He knows what is right and what is wrong according to the tenets and moral principles of his Church and − as he said − he is prepared to fight to the death to protect the principle of marriage. What Father Vella did add is that he cannot countenance the possibility of ramming his tenets down other people’s throats.

Free will is an element common to both the tenets of the faithful and those of the lay. Both have a set of guidelines intended to ensure that the exercise of free will brings about the best in mankind. It may be that my mixed Lasallian and Jesuit upbringing combined with my legal background allows me to appreciate the importance of both situations. A citizen expects to be able to exercise his sovereign free will insofar as he causes no harm to others. A believer is thankful to the Almighty for having created him a free thinker and granted him his time on this earth to choose between right and wrong. The accomplishment of the virtuous citizen − whether lay or faithful − comes with making the right choices: and not with having those choices being made for him.

Movements

Father Vella of the Cana Movement knows that. So do many of those participating in the discussion. Even those lawyers, like André Camilleri and Arthur Galea Salomone who are arraigned on the side of those adamant to oppose the introduction of divorce legislation, find it hard to explain their position when it comes to deciding for others. The NO side can perform verbal somersaults and claim not to be grounding their arguments in religious ethics (on what then? on misreading of scientific studies? on the hushing of the real questions?) but at the end of the day there is little to go on between Galea Salomone’s ultimate aim and that of the preacher on Bundy’s programme whose heart beats for Christ and whose only argument against divorce is that God hates it.

And there we are. As more movements spring up than in a kitsch Monty Python Jerusalem Liberation Front sketch, we are stretching an open and shut case to realms that go far beyond the Kafkesquely absurd. Our political backwater still soldiers on and can only take a breather until “the people have spoken” and then − in the case of a YES vote − the fun will begin. For I cannot wait to see how our “leaders” will squirm out of this one. They do after all represent this motley crew that is our nation.

Cheap flights, cheap votes

Finally, I have had it up to here with this stupid idea that people abroad get some kick out of taking days off and flying to Malta on a “cheap flight” just because the collective leaders of the nation and the people who vote for them every election have their heads stuck so far up where the sun does not shine that they cannot see the absurdity of this exercise.

Last time I was in Malta I got my voting document delivered by a postman. I don’t see why I cannot return that service. Barring any last minute change of heart that can only be provoked by further ridiculous arguments by the NO camp, I will not be taking the flight from Luxembourg to Malta to vote. Make that two of us. That’s two YES votes down the drain because work does not get done on the Friday we would be away and, quite frankly, I’ve had enough of abetting this ridiculous backward way of doing things. Votes in embassies should be the priority of the next movement to crop up in this country.

Free will

How hard can it be? Free will. A vote for divorce means allowing people to choose to start a new life − married − long after their previous marriage has broken down. Is divorce a solution? It was never meant to be one. Divorce is a grown-up and mature acknowledgement that “rien ne va plus”. It is much more mature than the arbitrary denial of the existence of a marriage via “annulment” if you ask me. Maturity, fairness, free will. That’s adult talk isn’t it? I’m hoping that the referendum will prove that there is hope for that yet.

Vote ‘Yes’. It’s a matter of choice.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife

Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

www.akkuza.com freely exercising hard headed will since 2005.

 

This article appeared on yesterday’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.

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