Salvu Balzan he flog the new book of him
Buy it and help him make some money, miskin.
This is Charity Monday, so I’m going to be really sweet and kind and do a spot of pro bono advertising for that newspaper editor with the third-class mind, the face like something you’d find beneath a pig’s tail, and the love affair with J Dalli BA (imagine what you could do with ACCA, but let’s not get ourselves started).
Saviour Balzan has written a book about his experiences, the aim being to raise money to pay his libel fines and compensation dues, the most recent being of 18,000 euros.
Why do I get the distinct feeling, even without having read it, that it’s going to trigger off a whole new spate of libel suits?
Semsiela Kotba Socjalisti appears to have folded now that its star authors are otherwise engaged. Glenn Bedingfield is an increasingly bloated and vacant-faced failed restaurateur and ‘wine konnisser’ who has just been put on Labour’s tab again, probably because he ran out of alternative sources of income. And Joseph Muscat is – well, you know, wine-tasting in Asti with his nice friends Elena and Edward, and occasionally takes up his duties as Opposition leader.
So the field is wide open for Saviour Balzan. At least Glenn Bedingfield and Joseph Muscat didn’t try to write their vicious little books in English. The screaming error in the title tells me a great deal about what I can expect to find inside.
Saying it like it is?
No, Saviour, for crying out loud.
TELLING it like it is.
F’gieh kemm hemm.
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Please Daph, for love’s sake – why do you give this sad, sad loser coverage? I never did like this sod, not even during our school years. He was a f**king creep and still is. I cannot fathom how you used to work with this dork through your earlier years.
[Daphne – I never did, Brian. My column used to be faxed in from home, or they would pick up a disk. I hasten to add that this was at Standard Publications, not Media Today.]
I’m sure you’ll feature in there somewhere, Daphne.
Do tell if you’re sent a complimentary copy or invited to the launch.
What I’d like to launch is that fat book at his stupid head (might have switched adjectives there) – can’t possibly miss.
Like they were or as he sees them?
That you are saying him.
Saviour tells on videoblog and says in writing. Tsk.
Many books of high quality were published in Malta recently such as Joseph. M. Brincat’s “Maltese and Other Languages” and Henry Frendo’s “Europe and Empire” and I am happy to say that I have bought and read them.
Balzan’s book will not grace my bookshelves.
Grace? It wil disgrace them.
if you read it, you will catch bad lettuce
Daphne, you’re quite right.
Lawyers acting for Natalino Fenech, Lou Bondi and Peppi Azzopardi will already be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of more lucrative libel suit business coming their way.
Silly Sav’ just can’t help himself.
His jealousy of Nat, Lou and Joe knows no bounds.
99.9999999% of books published in the English language have their titles on the spine, reading from top to bottom.
Anyone who has a good collection of books knows how easy it is to find books on a shelf when they are printed in the English/American style.
The Balzan book unusually follows the French, Italian or Spanish method. So to keep your collection in “normal” order you’d have to place this one upside down….just like the author’s way of thinking.
That’s because he had a particular coconut in mind.
He is competing with Bruno Vespa.
“Out on 25th October.”
So do we take it that it’s not in print yet? Maybe he needs the cash from the pre-orders in order to do that.
I am sure J Dalli will advertise it in Brussels. Is Salvu promising any commission?
Daphne, you’ve been too generous to our literally challenged friend.
The title is not “Saying it like it is”, which would have been bad enough – it’s actually “Saying it as it is” – a direct translation of “nghiduha kif inhi”.
Not being the most adept in the English language, I had to go and check, and it seems to me that the title is perfectly correct.
Fine, so it’s American-English, but still grammatically and idiomatically correct. The fact that it translates literally into Maltese is neither here nor there.
[Daphne – In Malta, we use British English. Not American.]
The book isn’t even published yet – the cover is just a botched Photoshop. The front-cover text is badly centred and the text on the spine is very badly skewed. I guess he is so screwed with the libel suits that he even can’t afford a designer.
Asking for pre-orders is only a way to gauge how many books he might sell.
And of course, I may safely assume that after October 25th the book will sell for €30.00. Pretty pricey seeing that for that price I can get a collectible trilogy set from a respected writer. No way am I going to spend that much to have his face staring at me with that air of superiority.
And it’s pretty rich that he is selling more hogwash to pay for spewing up lies in the first place. Din bhal ta’ Glenn Bedingfield gejja.
I guess that he hasn’t even started writing it yet, or thought about what’s going in it.
Maybe he’s thinking about getting some inspiration from the abhorrent Fifty Shades trilogy to attract that kind of readership.
But this certainly looks like a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures.
We would have had Dal liBA instead of GonziPN – had Salvu had his way.
Please, allow me just this once, Daphne….LOOOOOOL
Good.
So we buy this book to pay for the lies and slander published by MaltaToday.
At 24 euros per copy, Saviour would need to sell about 1000 copies (allowing for cost) to cover the latest libel compensation of 18,000 euros.
On a purely technical note, and irrespective of the contents of Saviour Balzan’s book, it would seem that you are wrong about the book’s title being wrong. Here are the numbers of hits you get from google.com for each of the phrases (if you’re in Malta, you can write google.com/ncr to get there):
“saying it as it is” (actual title): 3.2 bn hits.
“telling it as it is”: 8.83 mn hits.
“saying it like it is” (your wrongly-assumed title): 1.42 bn hits
“telling it like it is” (your suggestion): 258 mn hits.
This means that you are – in the best case – wrong by a factor of (3.2 bn/8.83 mn)=386 (rounded up) (don’t take this calculation too seriously).
(Disclaimer: I acknowledge that this methods strictly speaking measures what is more colloquially common, rather than what is right, and I don’t claim to be an expert in English grammar, but I think the numbers justify Saviour Balzan’s choice of title in this case.)
[Daphne – British English (Malta’s official language) – TELLING it like/as it is. Who cares what the Americans say?]
On a different note (and you don’t need to publish this comment, but I don’t know how else I can reach you), there seems to be a technical problem with your blog: the leading posts that you put in the header with a picture (right now it’s the hamburger one) often lead to a 404 error. If you can’t get this fixed soon, I suggest you stop using this ‘feature’ for a while. When you put a post there, there is no-way anyone can access it (I guess).
[Daphne – I don’t put anything in the header with a picture. The topmost post with a picture goes to the top – that’s automatic. Unless, of course, I decide to stick a post to the front page. If you are getting a 404 error, I would check it out at your end. At my end, it functions on all browers.]
‘Nghiduha kif inhi’ is what Saviour meant to tell us, although all he really told us is a literal translation into English from Maltese.