THE PRIME MINISTER ON SCHAPELLE CORBY

I feel for the girl.
I think the whole country
feels dragged into this.

BUSH OPPOSES STEM CELL RESEARCH


Each life is a gift—
these children I’ve brought today
are former embryos;

each of us started this way
and life can’t be exploited.


There is no such thing
as a spare embryo.
these kids remind us

each embryo is complete,
genetically intact.


This Bill will cross a
critical ethical line
and will bring about

destruction, dismemberment
of emerging human life.

Maria Full of Grace

‘Maria Full of Grace,’ at Trak cinema, gave us material to discuss over lunch at Grimaldi’s. But I wondered about the film’s immersion in Catholic symbolism:
· Maria swallowed the drugs like receiving the Eucharist
· her job was to strip thorns from roses exported to America
· she got pregnant
· her hands made stylised gestures in front of her body
· the congregation of drug mules on the plane sat or interacted quietly as if in church pews
—and the title of the movie attracted attention to all of this.

Was Maria the novice passing ritual trials to be able to pass into the US? I searched for reviews. (One suggested that Maria symbolised Columbia, stuffed full of drugs yet pregnant with the hope of economic escape.) Unable to find with certainly an intentional symbolic structure to justify it artistically, we decided it was likely the director drew upon everyday images that suffuses this very Catholic South American country.

THE PRIME MINISTER STAYS ON

How long will I stay?
The public are offended
that you ask me this.

Green Hornet and Captain Marvel

I watched bits of Green Hornet and a Captain Marvel DVD. They're retro and a bit cool.
From the superheroes of the ‘fifties, I mostly remember Superman—but Captain Marvel (transforming from his alter ego with a ‘Shazzam!’ cloud-puff) had a regality that Christopher Reeve never conveyed.

Lunchtime haiku

BUSH ON SOCIAL SECURITY

It’s not a trust fund—
there is no pile of money
and there is no trust.

HOW TO WIN

conquer poverty
discard your prejudices
overcome terror

City Mazda

Céline and I went to City Mazda on Port Road — “I thought City Mazda was in the city” — for another valuation, and a look at the cars.

Céline warmed to the Mazda 3, whereas I thought it might be better to buy a Mazda 2 after all. The salesman started putting the hard word on us: “What if I sat you down right now and my boss gave you an offer you couldn’t refuse?” We reared like frightened deer and retired to a nearby Italian restaurant.

John Updike in The New Yorker last November, on the King James Bible: "our language's lone masterpiece produced by committee, at least until this year's 9/11 Commission Report."

Hope is built into being human -- it may be even a lizard-brain instinct: Graham Greene warned that only the reasoning human mind can kill hope.

Bush 2.2 (the Upgrade) as the President of Freedonia in `Duck Soup': "It's too late. I've already paid a month's rent on the battlefield."

The best meaning of life I've got (apart from being terminally averse to taking Jesus as my personal saviour) is that we exist to pass on our genetic material. From my pious parental perspective, I've never quite warmed to the wilfully childless. I'm polite in their company, and don't tell them that their life seems deeply pointless -- but Fitzgerald's words privately come to mind, about those women "lost in the nothingness of heirless beauty"...

What's Christianity with a small `c'? A pick-and-choose religion. I know many Catholics (perhaps they're in the majority) who happily ignore the more inconvenient papal orders/edicts/proclamations/diktats (I'm sure there's more satisfyingly mediaeval words for it) and still call themselves big-C, Communion-compliant Catholics -- despite, for example, the use of those little rubber things. If you take only the best of Catholicism -- its most humane, help-on-the-ground socially-engaged qualities -- it would make astonishingly good sense to no longer call it the Catholic Church but the Catholic Community. Deity go hang. Even I might be converted to that (instead of being requested to fold my arms against the priest during my children's confirmations, mutely indicating that I am a non-papist and unworthy to receive the gifts of the Saviour).

Stay with the love

Advice to a parent deciding whether they keep their child at a smaller Primary school or send him to a larger college: “Stay with the love.”