I guess this is what "adding insult to injury" looks like

So I had a fire. I get evicted, because the landlord wants to renew the flat and cannot do it with me in it. I am having serious trouble, due to my rather precarious employment status, in finding anywhere to stay in London. But at least my grotesquely long suspension from FA is finished. So I send them a short story - Amethyst Phoenix' birthday fic Why? - and the third chapter of my Schnoogle fic The Quest for Cleo Malfoy. The chapter gets sent back for supposed grammatical issues that neither I nor my talented beta (take a bow, kikei) can see. We do our best to revise the damn thing. (Meanwhile Why? seems to have completely vanished, even though I have their automatic reception note for it.) I send it this morning. Have you ever had the feeling that someone really, really does not like you? FA is apparently having some sort of crisis, and most pages, including the submissions page, are not accessible.

And people wonder I get fat. Given the amount of frustration I have suffered, the wonder is that I should not get fatter.

You couldn't make it up dept. no.17: this has to be a fake

If you were a right wing conspiracy theorist, these days your targets of choice would include agnostic left-wing clergymen, especially Anglicans. You might also have it in for gays, and suspect them of being in the habit of backing each other up - Isaiah Berlin, who was no right-winger, had a nice name for this habit of homosexual associationg: the "homintern". And you might also have it in for Freemasonry, that nefarious association of shadowy financial powers and anti-Christian theorists. So.... how about a homosexual Anglican clergyman who just happens to be the head of the whole Freemason cult in Freemasonry's own ancient homeland, Scotland?

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1940462005

Personally, when I read this, I laughed my head off. It is too perfect a story. It only misses the Jews to make it complete.

Don't ask me what I mean by it, or whether I take any of that stuff seriously. I do not approve either of Freemasonry or of homosexual Anglican ministers. And as far as I am concerned, the one is quite fit to join the other. But I hope nobody will ever think that I would find any of the conspiracy theories involved any more than hilarious.

Villlains of the world no.4: and don't tell me I am partial to Catholics and priests

From today's Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian newspaper.

LUCCA - Altar cloths, chasubles, ancient pews and kneelers, collections of stuff and calyxes. The parishioners of Vetriano, Colognora di Pescaia, and Celle di Puccini, three villages in the district of Lucca, did not know that they had, in their churches, a rather valuable artistic treasury. Stolen. 70-year-old Monsignor Giuseppe Ghilarducci, a canon of St. Martin's Cathedral, director of the diocesan archives and of the Cathedral Museum of Lucca, not to mention parish priest in the three parishes, is now under house arrest under the charge of receiving stolen goods. He is said to have seized hundreds of valuable antiques stolen from other churches all over Italy, which have been found in the cleric's own house and the parishes where he served.

The carabinieri (military police force) of Florence's art protection squad have raided the canon's dwellings and the parish churches, finding hundreds of works of art originating from churches. The provenance of most objects cannot be clearly established, but two calyxes were found to have been stolen from Rome and Terni, a small marble altar comes from Naples, and a Giovanni Marracci canvas from the sixteen hundreds, representing the "Virgin of the Rescue", comes from the church of Gello di Pescaglia, from which it had vanished.

Questioned by the investigating magistrate, Monsignor Ghilarducci said that he is an art lover and that he purchased the objects in good faith. Detectives are checking his bank records and his recorded dealings with arts and antiques merchangs, in particular five dealers from Florence and Lucca who regularly dealt with him.

FPB adds: even supposing for a minute that his story is true, one ought to remember that a priest makes a vow of poverty. Something has gone wrong with that vow, if this man, even with the post of a Canon and a number of other jobs, can afford to buy antiques on such a scale.