14 febbraio 2013 Auf wiedersehen pope

14 febbraio 2013 Auf wiedersehen pope

There are a number of failings that can be made when applying for jobs - I see a lot of CVs in my job and the old adage of making a snap decision after a couple of seconds is true. I am a true secca merde (sh1t drier in Italian i.e. one who is pernickety and detail intensive) and will throw CVs out for bad spelling, typos, classic errors like that. Of course, there are more famous examples of how not to apply for jobs. Possibly the most famous is that of Aleksey Vayner who made a video CV that really caught the world's imagination. "Impossible is nothing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_résumé)) showed him playing tennis, bench pressing more than 200 kg and ball room dancing. Douche bag is the term that was used, and I couldn't agree more.
http://www.focus.de/finanzen/karriere/bewerbung/bewerbung-impossible-is-nothing_vid_971.html
However, the sad news is that he died recently (http://gawker.com/5978638/aleksey-vayner-the-yale-grad-with-the-infamous-video-resume-reportedly-dead) - it seems that the Yale Graduate never got the job he wanted at UBS and after multiple legal cases he overdosed the other day.

In a reversal of fortunes, the pope announced that he was to resign. This has sent shockwaves through the church. The pope has come out and said that he is too frail to carry on with the demands of the modern church (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9863747/Pope-Benedict-XVI-resigns-pontiff-too-frail-in-mind-and-body-to-carry-on.html). The pope is foreign, and if the papers are to be believed a notorious junior nazi. There have been very few foreign popes, and very few have abdicated. Doubtless he is super old, and cannot cope with the duties expected of him, in such an age - especially when the church is rapped with paedophile claims.

Corriere della Sera had some apt phrases - << Non ho più le forze, perdonatemi...lo faccio per il bene della Chiesa>>

In Italy noone ever really respected him. The people I know have a great deal of fondness for his predecessor Pope John Paul II (also a foreigner - Polish) but he is the real pope for most of the youngsters that I know and Pope Benedikt has never got close to the kind of respect and love afforded to him.

In reaction to this news, the heavens above have reacted in an appropriate way. Amazingly, lightning hit the Vatican on the day he announced his resignation and a photographer managed to snap it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-21427713 Amazing. And funny.

The selection of a new pope is racked with odd rituals - a boy to put his hand and grab the balls of the pope through a chair with a hole to indicate that it is not a woman, some funny smoke when the pope is chosen, and the whole shenanigans racked in the biggest secrecy - appropriate for the catholic church.

Certainly the old geezer was old. Pictures of him and il presidente Georgio Napolitano showed two very old and frail looking buggers.

And this is in a society of Italy where age is respected above all, and certainly above and beyond ability. Shame that Berlusconi is showing no signs of weakening with age yet.

Looking through the list of popes there are some classic names: Leone, Innocenzo, Urbano, Dionisio (I thought that was god of wine making and raucousness).

The other papa that is significant in Siena is that of the bank - Monte dei Paschi di Siena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_dei_Paschi_di_Siena). This is the oldest bank in the world, being established in 1472 and a major force in Italian banking. I'd never heard of it before I moved there of course. And people in Siena do really call it "Papa di Siena" - the bank has been so so rich that it has single handedly financed much of what has happened in Siena in the past years. Not only does it finance the football team (Serie A, but not so good) and the basketball team (one of the best in Europe, and having won the league in Italy for ever, and basketball, surprisingly, is a big sport here), but also it finances EVERYTHING. Primarily the Palio, which is everything for the senese, but also everything else. Drio, drip, drip and flood, flood, flood - the money of Papa di Siena kept Siena strong, independent and kept out modernisation - both Siena's unique charm and it's fatal flaw.

However, in recent times, like a lot of banks, and like the pope, it looks like these times are at an end. From the same Corriere della Sera <>. What can I say? The national bank is repeatdely bailing out MPS and there are huge question marks over it's future. I see it as good and bad, like I said the way it conducts itself - still as a mediaeval town is it's USP and it's fatal flaw. We shall see what happens.

Adieu.

JJ

14 febbraio 2013 Spitting Image

14 febbraio 2013 Spitting Image

I am not entirely sure which was my first record that I bought. On tape it was a best of summer music collection, from HMV, now sadly defunct, but I think there were several vinyl purcahses before then. The first I think was a birthday present for my sister - it was "Too good to be forgotten" by Amazulu. It stuck in my head and is still there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caV4ii107eY

Wikipedia gives me the answers as ever. It was from 1986. I never knew it was a cover until now. Bofff. INterestingly they appeared on The Young Ones in 1984 - I never knew that!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynArqA1FGgM
Unfortunately that was a terrible bit, whereas some of the appearances on The Young Ones were nothing short of amazing. In fact, let us go now, to a gathering of the elite, or else a list of those who appeared on The Young Ones. Thank you wiki (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh2GcMnLB08):
Madness - twice
Alexei Sale singing Dr Martin Boots
Dexy's Midnight Runners
Motorhead
The Damnèd

1	Demolition	Nine Below Zero	"Eleven Plus Eleven"
2	Oil	Radical Posture (with Alexei Sayle)	"Dr. Martens Boots"
3	Boring	Madness	"House of Fun"
4	Bomb	Dexys Midnight Runners	"Jackie Wilson Said"
5	Interesting	Rip Rig + Panic (with Andrea Oliver)	"You're My Kind of Climate"
6	Flood	no band; a lion tamer appeared to satisfy the BBC's variety criteria, though the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by Tight Fit plays during the segment.
Series 2
1	Bambi	Motörhead	"Ace of Spades"
2	Cash	Ken Bishop's Nice Twelve	"Subterranean Homesick Blues"
3	Nasty	The Damned	"Nasty"
4	Time	Amazulu	"Moonlight Romance"
5	Sick	Madness	"Our House"
6	Summer Holiday	John Otway	"Body Talk"

I thought there was someone like The Cure in there too, but I obviously have it wrong. I remember loving the Telecaster styling in John Otway's Body Talk, and that's about it. I thought that maybe it was Rat in mi kitchen by UB40 - but no. It's a great song though and although on a compo with stuff like "Mirror in the bathroom" by The English Beat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cbUW2EY4KE) it is still a classic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS0fXQN6zrI). I'm not sure why The Beat were called the English Beat - The Mission were called something like The English Mission too. Who knows?

Of course, The Young Ones really moved me, but I was still a little young. The follow up "Bottom" however fell squarely into the right time for me, from 1991-1995 and my (undergraduate) university years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_(TV_series)). Further some of the intro was on Hammersmith roundabout - a very pertinent place about 10 years later in my life! Classic stuff. In fact, recently I watched Guesthouse Paradiso - one of the feature length films from Bottom - still ok in these days, and amusing for me now is the inclusion of a mental Italian couple. Classic.

Anyway, I digress. The first music I bought for myself was a double A-side vinyl single from Spitting Image with Star Trekking on one A-side and Never Met a Nice South African (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZjwCmJrnlY)on the other. Today we woke up to the news that Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend thus helping to reinforce the cliche. There are a couple of exceptions, but they are very and few between, considering the number I have met. And his reaction is not out of sorts, considering his outburst when he got beat during the olys (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/disability-sport/19460868 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2M-SeNMERU). Anyway, sadly I feel vilified.

I'm in the US. Eventually. Should have left Sunday, but Boston got hit by a freak storm and had 25 inches of snow in one night, so our trip on Sunday got delayed. We tried to fly on Monday but this time the 1 inch of snow in Italy knocked us back. Not because it was on the road, but because when we were trying to get from Siena to Florence, the police were testing if the lorries had snow tyres - a) it is obligatory to have snow tyres or carry chains between November and April every year, and b) there had been a lot of snow in the north. They had decided to do this on a single carriage way section of the superstrada and so completely blocked the entire main highway from Siena. So we missed that one and eventually arrived in Boston after three days of trying. Excitingly, there is still plenty of snow around, which is pretty but makes it very difficult to run in the mornings :) Amazingly the river is frozen. I have never seen a frozen river before!

The infrastructure is impressive, on Wednesday night (it had stopped snowing on Saturday morning) they were still shuffling snow from affected regions to the car park near our hotel for storage. Good work Massachusetts.

Meanwhile we reminised today on a cartoon when we were kids of Vicki the Viking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLQz-O5x2g). Three of us in the room are turning 40 this year - scary! I'm sure there should be something that should be done before this classic number is met.

Over n out.

JJ