Idle, short, random, and fast, part II

Those who are cross-eyed are constantly calling Venus into question.

Women with small breasts usually have a neat array of champagne cups.

A bakery is a perfect place for ice-skating. Or – maybe better – flour-skating.

We’re in a new Ice Age. Where the fuck is Autumn gone?

Murphy laws should be studied in all Physics departments.

You watch the traffic and you know it’s a Friday.

At times it’s really hard to explain the notion of homonymy to Carabinieri. Other times it’s impossible.

The Lasagna is ready. See you!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Status symbol /Facebook invective/

h 7.30pm – is cooking
h 9.30pm – is eating
h 11.30pm – is taking a leak
h 00.15am – is getting laid
h 0.17am – Good night, world!
h 8.00am – Good morning, world!
h 9.00am – is having breakfast
h 11.00am – is working – what a pain in the ass!
h 12.00am – is going out to buy a sandwich
h 1.30pm – is eating the sandwich

Barbarella: Bon Appétit!

Dick: damn, me not yet!

Goofy: Hey, you’re really cute!

h 5.00pm – Ready to run, hooray! LOL!
h 8.00pm – is leaving tomorrow, byeeeee xxxxx

Popularity: 18% [?]

The names of the stars: Joanna Newsom

Music and poetry have uttered their first cry into this world together, have shared the same crib, sucked from the same bosom and lived in a marriage of true minds for centuries. At least, that’s what we’re told. One grows up and starts thinking that these are truisms implanted into us from a generation of nostalgic losers. That music has always been accompanied by stock lyrics designed to catch the listener’s ear – the more generic the better. That amid the lines of the lyrics of Neapolitan popular music and the best of pop/rock songs you find just the same commonplace, misogynistic junk about loneliness and being left behind. And yet, for Christ’s sake, at times you get such a punch to the gut when the miracle happens.

For me it was Emily by Joanna Newsom. Time stopped. Who the hell is this Mother Goose voice, blurting out about personal kingdoms and river stones and the order of stars and the surface of the water and meteors and door keys? I found myself in an epiphany, wishing to shake off all the kilograms of skin I carry and stand with all my nerves exposed to the air, in the middle of all my past and my present and my future, part of a large net made up of all those who are related to me, and to whom I’m related. Suddenly all the closeness and the distance were straight before me. And so was absence. And gratitude. A bittersweet dream. It must be the fucking strings – I swallow the bait every time.

Really remarkable.

Let us go! Though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
There is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

by hey, stupido gatto!

Popularity: 11% [?]

U(nidentified) F(lying) O(bjects) – Mirah & Tara Jane O’Neil @ Init

Went to see Mirah’s gig at Init in Rome, yesterday.
Notwithstanding the opening act le truc und die maschine tried hard to spoil the evening, I’ve really enjoyed listening to both Tara Jane O’Neil and Mirah. Their music is personal, intimate and soft. Tara Jane O’Neil’s vocals reminded me a bit of certain Cranberries ballads. Mirah is precise and measured. The arrangements were impeccable: one or two electric guitars and drums. Simple, charming and sweet.

In between acts, we went out to smoke a cigarette and chat under a canopy – each time I go to Init it ends up raining cats and dogs. But not only that: mobile phones, too. At Init yesterday there was a flying Motorola. It flew for something like 15 metres, just behind me. Its owner then picked it up and spent the rest of the night speaking desperately to the mobile itself, talking wretchedly through the mobile to somebody, texting the same person (apparently) and – eventually – tossing it around again, crying.

At times you still have energy left to try to explain things. If it doesn’t work, it’s tremendously refreshing to catch anything near you and toss it in the air. You simply erase your dignity, gather all your energy, pick up just anything and use all your strength, aiming at the wall, the floor (this is OK for fragile things like glasses or dishes) or – in cases of extreme embitterment – somebody else. Among the objects that have been flying around my house: forks, plastic bottles of water (full), bottles of red wine (empty), keys, brooms, cigarette packets, books, dishes full of “penne all’arrabbiata”, an iBook.

My mobile can fly, too. Or swim, actually. But that was an accident.

Tara Jane O'Neil

Popularity: 7% [?]