Cover Letter

to: Vatican HR department

Dear Sir / Madam (Just kidding. No girls allowed. I know!)
It has come to my attention that you have a vacancy in your organisation that you will no doubt be looking to fill. Please find attached my CV, and believe me when I say that not only would I be interested in the position, I think I am uniquely qualified.
Let me first draw your attention to my time spent as the Director of Studies at a language school in Barcelona. (Beautiful churches, by the way. Great job on that!) In that job, I was responsible for managing an unruly group of people from diverse backgrounds whose primary aim seemed to be avoiding a life of responsibility while vainly attempting to convince the unappreciative masses of the necessity of their particular line of work. If herding socially maladjusted semi adults through weekly get-togethers to explain the importance and intricacies of a system that fails to hold up under scrutiny is the sort of experience you require, then I'm your shepherd.
My prior time spent as the vocalist in a touring band has uniquely prepared me for being thrust into the spotlight to receive the unmerited adulation of large groups of people. Granted, my previous experience in taking advantage of such a situation has been solely with consenting adults of the opposite sex, but I think an interview, rather than a letter, is the correct forum to defend and negotiate this choice.
Of course, there are some discrepancies in my experience that you might consider roadblocks. Foremost, I'm not a Catholic, never having been baptised, confirmed, communed or forgiven. True, I am a Jew, but I think we both know who else was, and you guys literally worship the ground he walked on. In a stunning coincidence, (or is it?) I was born on December 25th to a single mother. I'm not saying I'm the messiah, but God Himself's choice to lead His flock? It seems like an apt fit.
There are a host of areas where my personal philosophy diverges from church dogma - homosexuality, birth control, abortion, stoning, and witches to name a few. However, I've been led to believe you are no longer that strict about the stoning and the witches, so maybe we could let some of the other stuff slide too. Again, I believe that in an interview, I could better discuss how to appropriately ignore the word of God when it is convenient to do so, and will be able to provide documentation from your own organisation to back this up.
I understand that I'm not the only candidate for this job, and that you will be looking at people who have spent a lifetime in the church working towards the position. Let me just say that many successful organisations have been revitalised by the injection of some fresh blood at the top, and I believe yours would not be an exception. The Lord, it is said, works in mysterious ways.
Yours faithfully,
Noah

Whose Side Are You On?

Of course it rained today. In the decade i've spent in Barcelona, it has never failed to rain on Carnaval weekend. Considering it's a holiday which, being tied to Easter, moves around the calendar, this is quite a feat. But it was inevitable. Even my shitty weather app, which is wrong enough of the time to completely distrust it but not enough to rely on it for consistently incorrect forecasts, warned me. The sky was filling up with threatening clouds so I decided to forgo my bike and take the subway to work.
We all know that the nineties are back. From rock to hip hop to fashion, the world is partying like it's 1994. Barcelona, being the bad fashion idea capital west of the Urals, reached into the same bag they pulled mullets and poopy pants from a decade ago and produced this.

Not pictured: the smell of stale beer and damp human

These specimens were sitting in the seats across from mine, ready for their Vice don't close-up. But before you assume I'm about to launch into a tirade about their obviously deeply flawed decision making process, take a quick look at this.

This was the woman sitting opposite me who wasn't even trying to hide the contemptuous gaze she would periodically cast their way, then look at me, one eyebrow slightly raised, in complicity. I smiled, amused that I have crossed a definite line in the one-of-us camps that generations have drawn.

The Sentence of the Year

It's only February and I'm convinced we have a clear winner for the best collection of words assembled in 2013. It will be hard to top.
"It's all untrue, except for some things."
This, courtesy of our fearless leader, Mariano Rajoy. The Spanish president was responding (finally) to questions about the financing scandal that has rocked his party, where the treasurer embezzled millions of euros and used them, among other things, to pay under-the-table bonuses to party hacks, including the president. Now we know for sure that none of it happened, except for some of it.
With this genius bit of linguistics, he also accomplished something I never believed possible. He made me feel sorry for Angela Merkel. The German chancellor has been riding over the european economy like the general of a Panzer division, forcing poorer countries to swallow society-choking cuts to their social nets so that the euro remains viable enough to justify producing Mercedes SUV's. She is the least sympathetic German since GODWIN'S LAW ALERT. Yet, I could not help but pity her as she stood on the podium next to Rajoy as he uttered the bestest defence/denial ever. Knowing she would appear in all the photos accompanying the quote, she must have thought "What the fuck am I doing with this clown? Get me the fuck outta here. Schnell!"