Tales from the Coffeeshop by Patroclos
IT HAS BEEN a very exciting and rewarding week for all lunacy fans as Kyproulla’s leading lights were working over-time, in their unyielding struggle to prevent rational thought from poisoning people’s minds.
There was an element of playfulness in the loony contribution made by the other Patroclos – Stavrou – a former Makarios lieutenant and one of the many, current, self-appointed hagiographers of Mak. He spoke about his hero after a memorial service for him in Greece last weekend.
“Nobody was ever loved by the Greek Cypriot people, in all our history, as much as Makarios, and nobody loved Cypriot Hellenism, in its history, as much as Makarios,” Tass News Agency reported Stavrou as saying.
There is indisputable historical evidence to support his first sweeping generalisation (Stavrou has kept the thousands of letters and telegrams, expressing undying love and devotion that were sent to Makarios by the adoring Greek Cypriot people), but the second is really difficult to substantiate, as there are no records of the numbers of cards Mak sent out on Valentine’s Day.
Stavrou’s comment was also insulting to the late presidentes, Spy Kyp and Tassos, as he implied that they did not love us as much as Mak, which is blatantly untrue. How does he know who loved us the most? If he owns a scientific love-meter that gives accurate readings of a leader’s love for Cypriot Hellenism, could he tells us how much comrade presidente loves us?
We are desperate for reassurance because many of us anti-communist, neo-liberals have been feeling unloved since the Ethnarch’s election defeat and we need to know we are wrong to feel this way.
WE HOPE our Turkish Cypriot brothers will not feel rejected now that they know that Mak did not love them like he loved us, but they will take comfort from the knowledge that the first presidente of the Republic, “a legendary figure now, has become a world symbol of freedom and morality,” according to Stavrou.
He also mentioned that the new president of the US, only escaped by a whisker (well about five years and several thousand miles, to be precise) from being called Makarios, as many people in Kenya and other countries of East Africa named their kids after Mak, who was “in exile at the time in Brussels(sic).”
The Tass reporter obviously confused the Seychelles with Brussels, which is a very easy mistake to make, because in Greek they both end in ‘elles’.
“If the Kenyan president of the US Barack Husein Obama was born five years earlier in Nairobi and not in Honolulu, he could also have been named Makarios,” said Stavrou. And if Makarios was born five years later, in Jeddah instead of Panayia, he could have been called Mahmoud.
RETURNING to the loons, regulars will remember last week’s item about Nicos Falas, the illustrious leader of the Karpas co-ordinating committee who had accused the headmistress of the Rizokarpasso gymnasium of inviting the murderer of a Greek Cypriot to the school’s Christmas show.
Falas, must have received the libel writ from the headmistress and reacted by launching a merciless attack on her and the education ministry in the last few days. He slammed the “weird and nationally unacceptable actions of the neo-Cypriot rapprochement supporters and all kinds of Turk-loving and American-inspired” individuals at the school.
In his catalogue of disgustingly unpatriotic actions taking place at the gymnasium, which were included in an announcement he issued a few days ago, Falas, the aesthete, also mentioned a “repugnant artistic episode”. He was referring to the screening of a film “which showed the love affair and marriage of a Turkish Cypriot to a Greek Cypriot.” The big danger was that “this would encourage the enslaved Greeks to have similar relations with settlers from Turkey, who are chasing the girls of the gymnasium every day.”
He also quoted an unnamed mother as reportedly saying, “daughter I would rather you committed suicide than marry a Turk.” What would this mother say if her son was sleeping with a male Turkish settler? What does Patroclos Stavrou think? Would Makarios still love Cypriot Hellenes if they were sleeping with the Turks?
MOUSY-LOOKING Diko deputy and bash-patriotic campaigner against rationality, Zacharias Koulias also joined Falas’ campaign to stop this horrific sleeping with the enemy in the Karpas. The two soul-mates gave a news conference on Friday during which the treacherous behaviour of the school authorities were condemned.
Falas also showed his talent as a theatre critic, railing on about the play staged at the school by a bi-communal group, funded by USAID, which had sparked the fuss. The play, he said, on Friday, “cultivated subjugation, belittling of the collective national identity and encouraged sexual relationships of Greek girls with young settlers.”
Koulias urged the minister to recall the headmistress to the free areas immediately and appoint someone, who will teach the kids to hate the Turks. The ministry will also send chastity belts to the Karpas school for all the girls to wear and the keys will be given to Falas.
THE THEATRE critic who deserves the credit for starting all the fuss about the unpatriotic play is socialist deputy Giorgos Varnavas, who is currently working on a critical analysis of Chekhov’s plays. It was he who exposed the supposedly unpatriotic messages contained in the play Performing the Experience.
He has now turned his attention to another politically incorrect play that is to be staged at Karpas gymnasium, known as Our River. It was written by a Greek playwright and described by his fellow critic Falas as “provocatively unacceptable for Hellenism and pro-Turkish.”
Varnavas was touring the radio stations on Friday morning rubbishing the anti-Greek content of the play. Asked by a radio presenter on Friday if he had seen or read it, the bright-spark Varnavas said, “the script was sent to me by e-mail.” Pushed to give an answer he said, “I looked at some bits of the script.”
IT WAS NOT the only play script he judged without reading. The dim-witted deputy was one of the people who circulated the information that Performing the Experience contained unacceptable phrases like, “I don’t give a shit about my country” and “I don’t give a shit about my ancestors”, which offended his theatrical aesthetics and, of course, his patriotic sentiments.
Another hideous phrase that was supposed to have been in the script was “I don’t give a shit about history”. An apoplectic, violently gesticulating Koulias cited one of the offending phrases at Friday’s news conference to make the point that Karpass School was turning its kids into Turk-loving cowards.
The funny thing is that Performing the Experience does not contain any of the above phrases, but as usual nobody bothered to check. Only in Kyproulla, would semi-literate guys whose combined IQ scores, would just about reach double digits, be given air-time on state TV and radio to speak about a play they have neither read nor seen.
COMMERCE and Industry Minister Antonis Paschalides might not be the smartest kid on the block, but unlike the above-mentioned loons he does not pretend to know everything. In fact he is pretty good at pretending he doesn’t know anything.
His contribution to lunacy week was as gentle and playful as you would expect from a mildly clueless man. On Wednesday he inaugurated a name-and-shame campaign against gas cylinder profiteers – shops that sold the 10kg cylinder above the €8.30 maximum price set by the ministry.
The culprit was Androulla Mini-market in Paphos, which was selling gas cylinders for €9. Maybe I am being irrational, but was a mark-up of €0.70, for a product that lasts a household a couple of months, worth
mentioning, let alone naming and shaming the perpetrator?
A CARING, sensitive government that wanted to protect people would leave the mini-markets of Paphos alone and start naming and shaming the profiteers who are really screwing people. Banks are charging nine and 10 per cent interest on new loans – by far the highest rates in the EU – arbitrarily raising the interest on fixed-interest loans and imposing bank charges for picking up the phone, but is the finance ministry or the Consumers Association naming and shaming them? No, they are too busy naming and shaming Androulla mini-market which is making a staggering super-profit of 70 cents on every gas cylinder it sells.
BANKS could follow the example of desperate car importers who have really been pulling down their pants in order to attract some business. One importer was offering four years free fuel, service, insurance and road tax with every Nissan X-Trail.
Better still, the Ford importer was advertising a buy one get one free offer – buy a Mondeo, worth just over €22,000 and you would also get a two-year-old Fiesta, in perfect condition free. Another promised to replace your car two years later at the same price at which it had been bought.
To their credit car dealers are not expecting the taxpayer to bail them out like all the greedy developers who have been moaning because nothing from the government’s rescue package for the economy would go to them. If developers want to start selling properties they could also announce ‘buy on get one free’ offers, instead of taking the begging bowl to the government.
OUR DEAR friends the cabaret owners were back in the news this week, but their problems are not related to the economic crisis, which is a shame because a ‘buy one get one free’ offer from their establishments would be a mega success.
They are threatening to take dynamic measures in protest against the government’s tough new requirements for granting work permits to artistes. The new requirements – dance school diploma, proof that the woman had earned money as a dancer for the last two years and (this is the best) proof that the woman was a famous dancer in her country or internationally – make it impossible for the owners to find staff.
The general secretary of the Cabaret Owners Association, quite rightly asked: “How necessary are two-year experience and a dance diploma to do pole-dancing?”
It is just as well that interior ministry bureaucrats did not know that the artistes, apart from pole-dancing, also had to sit at tables and converse with customers about a range of issues of public interest, because they would have made a degree in sociology a requirement as well.
CABARET owners may be defending their personal interests, but their primary concern is the national interest.
They know that if they are left with no dancers all their customers would be heading to the sleazy cabarets of the north, having pseudo-sex with pseudo-artistes, who have entered the island through an illegal port of entry, without being checked for sexually transmitted diseases.
This is why one of the dynamic measures they plan to take is blocking the crossing points. An even more effective dynamic measure would be naming and shaming all their customers, who were crossing to the north for pseudo-sex. This would persuade the ministry to scrap its ridiculous new employment requirements in no time.
WE HACKS, have a big responsibility for the high lunacy levels in our country. As if to emphasise the fact, our Journalists Union on Friday issued an announcement informing us that it had set up a ‘Solidarity Fund’ in support of striking journalists at the Tunisian state broadcasting corporation.
Tunisian hacks are striking because their state broadcaster refuses to comply with the provisions stipulated in the official employment agreements; many, despite 10 years employment, were not even granted social insurance cover.
Once they help the Tunisian hacks secure their rights, our union could do something about the dozens of staff employed at our own public broadcaster, for longer than 10 years, without contracts, benefits or social insurance cover.
MEMORIAL services have always been a popular Sunday morning activity for the great and the good of our society, but the CyBC’s decision to hold a memorial service last Sunday for all its deceased former general managers, chairmen and directors was quite unprecedented.
In a way, carrying on brown-nosing the corporation’s head honchos – after they are dead – by staff and middle management, shows an admirable sense of loyalty. General manager, Themis Themistocleous, did a fine a job praising all his predecessors. He also announced that when Kyproulla was finally liberated, the corporation’s transmitter station in occupied Kantara would be named after the corporation’s late general manager Andreas Christofides. And if liberation does not come soon, Themis, would name the most popular sandwich at the RIK canteen after him.
WE WERE waiting for one of the anti-drug campaigners to issue an announcement about the outrage of Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals in last year’s Olympics, smoking marijuana, but we heard nothing. The anti-druggies were in a difficult spot, because if a dope smoker could win eight gold medals in swimming, marijuana cannot be as harmful as they have been telling us.
Or as president Christofias said: ‘?, ????’?? ?? ?????? ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ????..’
