“I edit my posts for a while after they’re posted”

– Jago Noja

went to see this submarine this afternoon, while it was parked in Toffetti street. its name is Toti. Didn’t make that much impression. Maybe I’ll get to photoblog it tomorrow night when it moves to reach the museum. It took four years(!) and 3 millions dollars to get it here from Chioggia, near the mouth of the Po (yes, the cocaine river).
They had to rebuild bridges, cut wires, stop several times just to turn without cutting the submarine into pieces.
It’s a cold-war submarine, made in 1965. Never been in a war or anything. A stupid hipster metal tube of submarine junk meant to spy on Russians and bounded to astonish milano kids for generations.
Not even yellow.

the alleged al-Masri claim for the half-failed attack of yesterday in London contains direct monitions to Italy. Big Time.
“The next blows will strike Rome, Amsterdam and Denmark”, it says, in “unexpected places”. Uff… megalomaniacs…
The claim also points out that “Iraq will be the grave of italian soldiers”.
What an annoying, idiotic, childish, rethoric way of intimidating.
That reminds me the movie “Mediterraneo”, a good Salvatores’ engaging movie about italian soldiers stranded in an island in Greece during WWII. At the beginning of the movie, as they for the first time unload from the launch to inspect the island, the tenent, the educated one of the group, translates reluctantly to the troop what’s written on a wall in large capitals of greek alphabet.
“Greece will be…” “What?” they ask him. “… the grave of italian soldiers! Now let’s go and keep quiet!”

The intimidating language always speaks in the same dreary mood: at the same time disturbing and hilarious. Like when we were kids and suddendly a game companion didn’t want it to be a game anymore. Even if he might be reasonably right in his pretense, and convincingly aggressive, you would feel simultaneously heavy on the stomach and with an irrational desire to laugh at his suddendly serious mug.
But hirony would be vanishing then and the laughs would ruin you, and turn you into his favorite enemy.
Unless you were the aggressive kid yourself. In that case, too bad for you. The other kid thinks you’re very stupid.

I remember when I was a kid, with my sister and brother, marooned on a beach in Corsica without any chance to get into the fresh, inviting waters because of an invasion of hundreds of jellyfishes. They were carried by the waves and wrecking to the shores. Small pink transparent jellyfishes that could burn you. We were scared of getting burned.
We decided to took revenge. Cautiously stepping to the shore line, we picked them up using our sea masks as ladles, and dropped them in a stove made of stones arranged as a tight Stonehenge thrust in the sand. There we transformed the jellyfishes in jam by squeezing them with large rocks. We produced a lot of pinkish jam we just let there to evaporate. Nice kids, uhu?
Our revenge for being forced to stay off the water for an entire day.
As it happens, the next day more jellyfishes arrived, and my father decided to move the camp somewhere else. But the jellyfishes were everywhere along Corsica shores, and our jam strategy was useless.
Why this? I used to ask then. But I don’t remember any useful answer.
Now, this is happening once again. I didn’t expect the Mediterranean to get better anyhow. But maybe I can get an answer this time.
Millions of coelenterates, as the article on Panorama goes, are floating a few meters from Italian shores. Nearly ANY Italian shore. Predators of jellyfishes are a rarity these days (turtles, crustaceans and such), plus, temperatures are too high, as the sea is a broth. Sea storms do not disperse the jellyfishes as they used to. They’re too many.
Bioligists point out that jellyfish reproduction goes on a twelve years cycle, so the invasion thing it’s pretty normal. Still this is a gigantic invasion, and it is not clear the role played by temperature changes.
Only thing obvious is that since June the jellyfish just got bigger, and they’re still there.
The article point out something else. Jellyfishes have actually a new species of predator. Chinese masseurs, that plague Italian shores these days because of some futile vogue in fashion, at the end of the day pick the jellyfishes up not to jam them as we did but to eat them with soy oil.

because he is unable to enjoy life, even if in the last years the quality of his meals, the comfort of the beds where he sleeps, the freshness of his clothes, the ease of the means of transportations he uses got better; because he cannot really be delighted by a richer breakfast or larger house, he is unable to enjoy life, for too much guilty or boredom fills his days.
Even when he realizes anything he can be delighted of these days tomorrow could be gone for good, still he does not really enjoy it.
Yet he remembers few moments of sheer joy in the last years, when he had the sense that what was giving him pleasure or satisfaction he only obtained with his only forces. Recently he tried to renounce to everything he had to force himself in a situation where to be pleased only by things he’d fight for-
This is the hardest job, though, something he is not made for.
Funny, ’cause people consider him an austere strong-willed individual, maybe only a bit confused.

dear sir or madam Al Quaeda,

soon after the London bombings, the Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi addressed the media stating that “we, Italy, as key alley to UK and US in the war of terror, are very likely the next target.”
Right after these clever sentence, on a web site you, notable CIA-set-up Al Qaeda of my boots, allegedly replied that “Rome, city of the infidels, is among the next targets”.
Now, you want to know something? You made it right to post that message on your blog.
If our PM Silvio Berlusconi shows concern about Italy being your next target, he does that because he feels neglected by you and your terroristic attentions.
In fact, one wonders: by neglecting to attack Italy, are you Mr/Mrs Al Qaeda implying that Mr Berlusconi is possibly less important than Aznar or Blair? Are you trying to insult him by not deploying a bomb in one of his largest cities? Do you deliberately do not want to give to his 6 televisions and 10+ newspapers the opportunity to comment dramatically the news, showing him on the front line before some smoking rubble, possibly before the elections, firm and committed to the war of terror against you?
I am sure you do not.

So, respectable CIA-set-up al Qaeda of my boots, thank you for your attention and please, do attack Italy right now, this way Silvio Berlusconi won’t feel neglected. Election day is arriving. Maybe you can give him a phone call so that you two can plan things up a little. You have no idea how good can a phone call do to this man: only today he was saying that he is ready to pull troops out of Iraq, and then he corrected himself by saying that the consideration about Iraq was “merely a hope”, after Mr Bush of my slippers called him on the phone.
So, you see. He is a reasonable man and I’m sure you two will be able to understand each other.

thanks and best regards,
ico, milan

first multi snatch with stupid new digital camera.
a little posterized for posterity.
twas night, twas late and there was nothing to shot in a mile.