Gluemeat

Hitler and Stalin were posessed by the devil and Harry Potter needs an exorcism.  That’s the gist of the Vatican’s top exorcism guru chief Father Gabriele Amorth.
Father Amorth is Pope Benedict XVI’s top “caster out of demons” and spoke about these issues during an interview on Vatican Radio.  He suggested that the amplitude of the atrocities both men carried out is proof enough of demonic possession.
But not only Hitler was under ol’ Beezebub’s thumb; the whole Nazi party was:

“Of course the Devil exists and he can not only possess a single person but also groups and entire populations. I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed.”

Hm, entire populations, eh?  Suddenly, my hometown is starting to make sense to me.

As for Harry Potter, well, we all know how much the Vatican loves the idea of children reading escapist novels, but Father Amorth is convinced that Satan’s got it good on Harry’s person; Harry’s fictional person.

“Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil.”

I bet he hopes Voldemort kills Harry in the last novel.

I don’t want to come off as, you know, a dingaling, but doesn’t saying that a guy like Hitler was possessed by Satan kind of absolves the man from his crimes?  You know, to the degree that he wasn’t in full control of himself?

What’s the message we should be getting here?

One more thing: at least Father Amorth seems to understand the amplitude of certain events, unlike other folks.

“But our citizens must understand this storm has disrupted the capacity to make gasoline and distribute gasoline.”

- George W. Bush on August 31, 2005, flubbing through a script at his first press conference since Katrina hit (video).

And the Vatican takes another giant step back to the Middle Ages:

A Vatican official has said the Catholic church will excommunicate a medical team who performed Colombia’s first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl, who was eight weeks pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

The Columbian cardinal who came up with this brilliant show of compassion has said that even lawmakers who make these acts possible should be put up for exclusion from the Church for making this “abomniable crime” possible.

What about the abomniable crime of a child being raped and empregnated by a family member? But no, it’s so bloody important to defend these backwards principles, there’s no time to properly defend the victim, whose life will be scarred with not only the memory of being raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who had been abusing her since she was seven, but of having gone through with the abortion process. Nah, we wouldn’t want that to rest on our collective consciousness now. It’s too insignificant.

So I guess we need to congratulate the stepfather for not using a prophylactic, right?

Joseph Stefano, motion picture writer and the man credited for scripting the big twist in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, passed away in California, after a heart attack at the age of 84.

One of his earliest jobs in the industry was serving as a supervisory writer and producer for The Outer Limits back in in 1963, helping to set the eerie tone of the show. He got his big break with Hitchcock by writing the screenplay adapatation of Psycho, and is credited with adding crucial elements to the story, such as Marion Crane’s fugitive background in the film, so as to make her early death all the more shocking. As he noted:

“Killing the leading lady in the first 20 minutes had never been done before.”

He went on to write other horror and suspense flicks such as the much-emulated Eye of the Cat, Snowbeast, and The Kindred, and even scripted an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as for the modern rebirth of The Outer Limits. He was consulted for Gus Van Sant’s re-make of Psycho and wrote the made-for-TV movie Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Via Cryptomundo

Couple of days ago, I mentioned the upcoming passage of The Field Register to Quebec City’s Rouje this Friday and how anxious I am to see how the band turns out live. Lucky me, they won’t be alone. Accompanying them on the establishment’s stage will be another homegrown wonder: Below The Sea.

It’s a side-project of Quebec City mainstay Pascal Asselin (the man behind Millimetrik), Patrick Lacharité and Victor Meyer. Below The Sea has been putting out dreamy instrumental music for the past six years. We’re talking post-rock ambiances where melancholy is at its prime. In fact, the band has even called their work as “la recherche d’un état mélancolique inatteignable”. Or, if you prefer, the search for an unattainable melancholy state. But it isn’t “melancholy as a party pooper” sound. They create lush, misty arrangements which somewhat recall Ulrich Schnauss (who actually collaborates on a track) in his more emphatic moments. The shimmering aspects eeking through the surface, like diffused sunlight through the ocean, prevent the music from bringing you down, and actually seem to empower a blissful daze which enamours the imagination.

Don’t miss them this Friday if you’re in Quebec City.

Ceremonies
Polaroids
Slow Walkers
We Waved Goodbye & Stared
Tropic of Cancer

www.belowthesea.ca 

“But last year, when there were two hurricanes, and I got a new roof, I paid my part. My private insurance company paid the other part. The federal government and taxpayers paid no part.”

- TV pundit and Floridian Fred Barnes, on August 29, 2005, suggesting that people in New Orleans shouldn’t expect to be bailed out with taxpayer money because they should have known better than to live below sea level.

So, not that it’s my intention to exclude anyone here, I have to write up a quick article specifically for the Progressive Bloggers community. So if you’re a prog blog reader or member, I’m your Frank Sinatra and you’re my obscure audience to whom I say: “This one’s for you.”

Many Some A bunch A couple of you may remember coming to this place with a slightly different URL and a wholly different title.  A little something called “Tasteful Future.”  Ring a bell?  If not, just keep scrolling down and move on, soldier.

“Of course brothers hafta be, you know, protective. Except for mine. I gotta be protective of him. Ugh, yeah. He’s married, three kids, but his wife is just a control freak.”

- CNN correspondant Kyra Phillips unknowingly speaking into a live mic during CNN’s broadcast of US President Bush’s Katrina speech in New Orleans.

If you remember the movie The Yes Men, this will probably hit you in the right spot: on a public forum shared with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, Andy Bichlbaum, one of the two Yes Men, posed as Assistant Deputy Secretary Rene Oswin of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and announced that they would re-open closed public housing to New Orleans’ poorest, many of whom are still embroiled in getting their lives back together in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Said he, in his Oswin guise:

“Today, it is my great pleasure to announce to you that HUD is reversing our policy. From now on, and beginning at all Orleans parish housing communities, our policy will no longer be to destroy much-needed housing, but to do all in our power to make it work.”

Apparently, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has targeted public housing areas and have marked them for replacement by mixed income homes to, as quoted in the article, “produce safer neighborhoods and better lives.”

How can this be in bad taste if it exposes a reality which is in far worse taste: deliberately keeping people out of homes to build one which will generate more revenue?