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December 22, 2005
Absurd and Vulgar Christmas Special
Some of you decadent westerners, festering as you are in your godless moral decay, may have been labouring under the misapprehension that Our Lord Jesus Christ the Almighty Saviour was born into a humble family in a stable, in fact. Here in holy, marian Poland we know better. As cribs are erected around the country in commemoration of the momentous event it becomes obvious to the disinterested observer that Jesus was in fact born in a palace a wooden one, to be sure, and with traces of straw here and there, but a palatial building nonetheless. Furthermore, if these modern-day cribs are anything to go by, Jesuss birthplace was fully catered, and before the three wise men ever showed up there was a miked-up master of ceremonies on hand to let the people of Bethlehem know what was going down. Best of all for the holy family, they didnt have to make do with plain old gold, frankincense and myrrh a local branch of a multi-national retail chain was happy to sponsor the event, asking only in return that the first thing the Lord saw when He was born unto woman was a poster prominently advertising the local supermarket.
But of course, its all for charity.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2005
Is it considered impolite to check sources?
News comes to me of an article in the Irish Times (Dec 8th) about the plight of Poles in Ireland. It seems that many of the estimated 120,000 emigrants have been lured there by unrealistically optimistic stories about Ireland in the Polish media. (These stories started before Polands referendum on joining the EU, when Ireland was constantly held up as the great success story of the EU the grim 1980s having conveniently been forgotten. President McAleese even graced Poland with a visit days before the referendum.) Much to nobodys surprise, the streets in Ireland are not paved in gold and there is some bad feeling.
But back to the Irish Times article. Its author, Marcella Gajek, sought out some more positive opinions about Ireland and found them issuing from the mouth of Polish roofer Chris Bujak (25) who has been in Ireland for a year and is just doing just fine much better than in his previous 10 years working in Germany.
Those of you less familiar with the Polish language might be interested to learn that buja? means to lie, fib, make up stories. (Bujda means eyewash.) Bujak is a genuine Polish surname and there is no suggestion that the roofer is a spoofer but 14 is a very young age at which to emigrate in search of work.
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2005
Judge Dredski
The view from Gda?sk is not pretty. As Pinter accepts his Nobel prize, Poland slips further into the absurd and the vulgar. Here is a random selection, from memory, so apologies for any small inaccuracies:
Charges of defamation against a journalist were, after lengthy consideration and great tax-payer funded expense, finally dropped. The charges were brought by a prosecutor who felt that the journalist in question had traduced his good name by writing in a court report that the prosecutor had slammed the door upon leaving a courtroom.
Charges of defamation against another journalist have so far not been dropped by yet another prosecutor. This time the injured party felt he had been traduced by a play of words and the typographical layout of a magazine headline which suggested that he was an asshole. That the body of the article presented persuasive evidence that the prosecutor in question is incompetent was not considered worthy of a suit since, presumably, it is true.
Gazeta Wyborcza, the heavy hitting national newspaper, published a special supplement welcoming one and all to Pozna? the day after a march organised by gay and lesbian groups and celebrating equality was beaten off the streets of that same town by the police while fascists chanted pro-Hitler slogans.
And for good measure, in this country famous for overthrowing totalitarianism with a trade union, a court recently found that it was illegal to strike. Why? Because it might cost employers money.
Before you ask, Poland does have a constitution one which presumably forbids torture.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)