Killing Godzilla

Where Godzilla is the Italian public university system, and the killer is the Italian government (or vice versa). That may not make much sense, but truth is stranger than science fiction.

Berlusconi and his yes-men, in this case a yes-woman named Gelmini, are dismantling all things public to favor his/their own private interests. It’s not very complex or secret if you can see through the smog of lies and scandals. The sense of the public good that most governments follow (more or less) is nonsense to our Fearless Leader.

I can almost hear the Filthy Rich, during a break from wild partying (drugs, underage girls, mafia friends, etc.), “Let’s destroy the public school system, the universities, the courts, the public health system, and so on and replace it with our own pseudo-institutional inventions. We’ll just make it all up as we go along; hell, we already control television! Then the suckers will have to pay us directly in blood from cradle to grave.” James Bond villains were never this devious.

Well, the protests have had little effect so far, and the law passed in the House. I have mixed feelings about the whole affair, not because the reactionary cuts and power concentration could have a good side, but because the university was not okay before. There’s no better world to return to. It’s not like cutting a gangrenous leg to save the otherwise healthy patient. The patient was already moribund before the Gelmini gangrene made it critical. So what is there to defend? Godzilla? One’s own little paycheck? Looking forward to retirement like an oasis in the Sahara?

I’ve decided to defend my emotional stability. I can’t live in constant anger over the surrounding twister of injustice. That way they win. It’s hard to find the moving eye, but where else can you go to save yourself?

Here’s a bitter paper one of my students wrote:

University Study: most of the time may not help to build your future.

University study is not the best choice a student can make for his future, because it’s difficult, at this time, to find a university which gives good results after the degree. In fact many new graduates can’t often find a good job which is related to their degree, so the effect, in the society, is the increase of unemployment. Besides, most of the teachers at the university are corrupt, so they don’t give an example of good behavior in the society to their students. They just teach them how to prevail on the other colleagues and to give more importance to the wealth. So bad students easily find an important job which satisfies their aspirations, living their lives in the absolute luxury, and in the case of the doctors, killing innocent people; while the good students probably won’t have a good job, and they spend their life in misery. This is the bad side of university study, where all the rich can have a future and the others should stay at home without wasting years and years behind books which will never repay them.

Happy trials, Martin


Mutt: And now they expect us to be funny?
Jeff: Don’t worry. The expectations are extremely low.
Mutt: Well then, let me tell you about a very mean witch in England who was terrorizing the local population. They finally called a wizard to see what could be done about her. The wizard gave them a potion that would turn the witch into a statue. The townspeople managed to put the potion in the witch's food. When she found out about this, she turned green with rage, but it was too late and the potion worked as expected. The jubilant population had a big celebration and parade, and placed the petrified witch in the park as a public example.
Jeff: I can’t bear to hear the rest.
Mutt: Pretty soon, people discovered that the witch had been frozen in a position that made her a perfect sundial, and started using her to tell the time of day. The custom grew and even today …
Jeff: Here it comes!
Mutt: … people often refer to Mean Green Witch Time.
Jeff: Oowah.