Next stop: the Vatican?

Now that the Middle East issue has been resolved and nothing bad will ever happen there again, we’re now learning about the REAL problem the US faces: the Pope.

On Monday, The Free Press reported that in the wake of the Pope’s annual address to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps in January, in which he criticized states seeking conflict around the globe, the Department of Defense invited Cardinal Christophe Pierre for a meeting. At the time, Pierre was serving as Pope Leo’s personal envoy to the United States.
The Pentagon requesting a meeting with a Vatican official is “unprecedented,” according to the report.
According to Vatican and U.S. officials who were briefed on the meeting and spoke to the publication, the Pentagon criticized the Pope’s statements in January, interpreting them as hostile attacks on Trump’s policies. […]
In the wake of the meeting, the Pope reportedly refused Trump’s invitation to attend the nation’s 250th anniversary events.
Instead of spending July 4th in the U.S., the Pope will instead visit Lampedusa, a small Mediterranean island that has become an entry point for African migrants attempting to reach Europe.
A Vatican official speaking to The Free Press said the Pope has no plans to visit the U.S. while Trump is in office.
“The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration,” the official reportedly said.

The most fascinating detail I’ve read about Mushroom Cock’s latest international diplomatic headache is that that one of the goons snapping at the Pope in this meeting apparently invoked the Avignon papacy, or the period when Philip IV of France was feuding with the Roman mob, culminating in him kind of imposing a French Pope on them who relocated the papacy to Avignon, before a later one took it back to Rome and the Avignon mob elected their own Pope. I presume the implied threat was that if Leo didn’t stop being a bitch to Trump, the latter would designate his own (probably supplied by FIFA), which would be ironic on a number of levels, but personally I’m actually impressed that someone in this regime has even heard of the Avignon papacy, let alone what it was. I generally don’t expect much historical awareness (especially about 14th century France) from American governments, but I expect it even less than usual from the current one, so I do have to acknowledge it this time, however grudgingly…

War is over? (If Israel wants it)

TL;DR: the cunt basically caved in. Per the Graun:

According to state media, Iran will only accept the war’s conclusion once details are finalised in line with a 10-point peace plan reportedly submitted to the White House via Pakistani intermediaries.
The list of 10 points, published by Iranianstate media, include a number of conditions the US has rejected in the past. The plan requires:

* The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran.
* Continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz.
* US military withdrawal from the Middle East.
* An end to attacks on Iran and its allies.
* The release of frozen Iranian assets.
* A UN security council resolution making any deal binding.

In the version released in Farsi, Iran also included the phrase “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear program. But for reasons that remain unclear, that phrase was missing in English versions shared by Iranian diplomats to journalists.

All of this still has to be negotiated and agreed to, of course, but the mere fact that President Robert E. Lee called this “workable” suggests he’s generally cool with it. I think the main sticking point will be Israel, who expanded the conflict into Lebanon just for the hell of it; Bibi apparently said he welcomes the ceasefire but insists upon leaving Lebanon out of it. I have a feeling Israel will treat this alleged ceasefire like they did the one in Gaza, i.e. the people there can go to hell and Israel can do whatever the fuck it wants.

Anyway, that might be Armageddon staved off for another couple of weeks. Possibly. If Netanyahu can keep his hand off it for long enough. I don’t have any more words for this whole debacle.

Happy fingers!

So I’ve been meaning to do this for, well, ages. Way back in the dim dark past of December ’24, I put up a poster for The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. with the comment that I’d review it eventually as part of the Century of Cinema thing I was doing. Then that project fell by the wayside without me doing said review, and I’ve dithered over it ever since. But now here it is… courtesy of Franz Planer.

Now, I was unfamiliar with this gentleman until a week or so ago, when one of the various film-related accounts I see on Bluesky acknowledged it was his birthday:

Hang on… Alraune AND 5000 Fingers? One of the most important films in my personal history AND one of the most baffling things ever to come from Golden Age Hollywood? He did both of those? A quick bit of research ensued, obviously, and I discovered that Franz (or Frank) had quite a career in pre-Nazi Europe and then Hollywood. And then, just a day or two ago, I read an article about a new biography of Audrey Hepburn, which noted how many of her friends in Hollywood were European emigres like her, and specifically mentioned Planer as one of them. I took that as a sign that I needed to watch 5000 Fingers again at last. I shall review Alraune (which I’ve also been meaning to rewatch) soon, too.

Anyway, like I said, this is one of the strangest films that Hollywood ever produced, and it was also one of its most notorious bombs, a little too out there for 1953 audiences (reportedly, preview audiences started walking out just 15 minutes into the show). Accounts of the production indicate it was even weirder, and alas that the earlier version seems to have been destroyed… it went massively over-budget, straining the already frosty relationship between producer Stanley Kramer (who I still can’t believe had this thing to his credit) and Columbia owner Harry Cohn, nearly half the musical numbers were cut, and its author, one Theodore Geisel (yes, Dr. Seuss himself), was left so aghast by the entire thing he rarely spoke of it again.

But now here we are, over 70 years since it first crawled into cinemas. We’re a bit more used to this sort of thing now. And yet it hasn’t got any less strange in that time; when I last watched it back in the oughts I was impressed by its bizarreness, and I was just as impressed tonight if not more so. And I don’t think it’s the sort of strangeness that can be dismissed as “surrealism”. I think it’s because it’s live action, not animated, that makes it seem so bizarre; I think it might’ve been more “acceptable” in cartoon form. But these are actual people in those spaces, and even if the sets were enhanced by matte paintings or models or whatever, those spaces look enormous. And empty for the most part. I thought about Giorgio de Chirico more than once.

And I was also struck by just how large Hans Conried’s performance is as the title villain. Apparently his performance style always inclined that way, but he really goes big, far more than any of the other actors. Mind you, when you’re wearing these costumes…

…how do you play “small” in gear like that? This was delightful to revisit, and I only wish now that they’d held off making it for another year or two so they could’ve done it in Cinemascope. Imagine seeing the whole of that piano monster in widescreen…

How’s that war going, by the way?

Oh.

Yeah, this is authentic Mushroom Cock on Truth Social yesterday, that’s my own screenshot of it. I haven’t had anything useful to say about the Iran bullshit, which has become even more bullshit by Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz and complicating the world’s oil supply, etc. And Trump has been making this particular threat for a while but never actually carrying it out, so who knows if he’ll do it this time either… I think it’s the, ah, particular phraseology employed in this post that’s attracting people’s attention now. I’m so drained by the entire thing I can barely even get that bothered by this, though. I feel like I should at least mention it here, but I don’t really have anything much to say about it. Anyway, there it is. Iran’s not exactly losing the war while Cuntface is pretty much losing the plot, and I don’t how to make that state of affairs less shit…

…and I have even less idea how to answer those questions, which are very good ones whose answers are almost certainly very bad. Remember that brief period when Biden was running the show and we didn’t need to be afraid when we got up each day of what Krasnov might do or say that day? No, me neither. But daily business persists regardless of him, doesn’t it, and so on we all go anyway…

Product placement

I’ve seen a few people commenting on this:

…a tweet from the US Department of Homeland Security marking the occasion of Easter with a picture of whatisname on the cross and the text from Luke 23:46 with a crucifix above it. And there is indeed much that could be said about this, particularly the inappropriateness of a US government department ignoring the whole church & state separation thing to the fact that the current regime likely wouldn’t even let their putative saviour into the US to begin with, but it was cartoonist Tom Tomorrow who pointed out on Bluesky the most… interesting thing about it; namely, the way the crucifix above the text was placed right over the Lord’s crotch. And… yeah, there it be. I don’t really know what else to say about it.

Be strong for you surely gonna die

I’ve stuck the odd dub tune in a mix before, but I’ve meant to do a whole mix of the stuff for a while now. So here it is.

    1. Sly & The Revolutionaries, Marijuana
    2. Joe Gibbs, Satta Amassa Gana Version
    3. Keith Hudson, Black Heart
    4. Scientist, Dub Bible
    5. Yabby You, Anti-Christ Dub
    6. King Tubby & Soul Syndicate, Great Stone
    7. Lee Perry & The Upsetters, Drum Rock
    8. Abyssinians, Jah Loves Dub
    9. Tommy McCook, The Gorgon of Dubs & Horns
    10. Keith Hudson, Be Good Dub
    11. Black Ark Players, Guidance
    12. The Upsetters, Rejoicing Skank
    13. Prince Jammy, Jammin’ for Survival
    14. Gregory Isaacs, Leggo Beast
    15. Johnnie Clarke, Drums of Africa
    16. Treasure Isle All-Stars, Arabian Dub
    17. Lee Perry, Such is Dub

But which faith?

J. Divans has a new book:

This is the story of the First Bitch’s journey from atheism to Catholicism. Apparently there’s one slight problem, though, which is that the lovely cover art actually depicts a Methodist church. Apparently it is from somewhere in JD’s native Appalachia, but it is… not of his religion. I wouldn’t have known had someone else not mentioned it online, admittedly; I did do a quick Google search which suggests Catholics are less than one percent  of the Appalachian populachian, so it may just have been awfully difficult to find an actually Catholic structure… but surely there’s at least one? Something else for Pope Leo to snipe at him about, I suppose…

Yes

I suspect we’re all feeling at least a bit like this at the moment. How the fuck is it only the end of March? What the Christ else can still go wrong in the remaining three-quarters of this year? Or should I not ask in case I jinx things? Probably the latter. Sigh.