Eleganza d’altri tempi

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hot at the end of an image-harvesting spree through the old city. Miles and miles wandering the old streets, visiting known and unknown places in search of something that strikes the attention. A detail or a panorama, it is always unknown what will trigger the eye or the mind.

After a whole day, tired and not very satisfied of the results, I sought a bit of comfort in the old Grand Café Gambrinus for a good cup of coffee and a Sfogliatella riccia (one of the very few sweets I eat).

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Napoletani (a post in Italian)

I Napoletani sono un popolo d’amore ma, piu’ spesso che no, somigliano a bambini troppo entusiasti.

Se gli dai un dito, si prendono tutta la mano. Poi ci ripensano e si prendono anche il braccio. Poi ci ripensano e ti restituiscono tutto: il braccio, la mano, il dito ed in piu’ ancora una valanga di altre braccia, mani e dita.

Nel frattempo sei defunto, sepolto sotto questa valanga d’amore e se sei fortunato, faranno una statuetta a tua immagine e somiglianza  da mettere nel presepe del prossimo anno…

On a desert island

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ooner or later we all get a question like: “If you were on a desert island, who would you like to have with you?”, or “What are your 10 favourite books you would like to have on a desert island?”.

I was musing about the same lines of the above and asked myself the question: suppose you are stranded on a deserted island for a year, what would be your daily music during those 365 days?

So I dived into my extensive music collection (2300 and spare titles on LP,  EP, 7″ Single, Tape, Cassette, CD and FLAC file) and started to imagine which records I would absolutely not want to miss. That brought me nowhere near the 365 target, by exceeding the 1000.

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SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM…

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e have Spam, Spam, Spam, Bacon, Eggs and Spam.
Spam, Sausages, Spam, Beans and Spam

who has not laughed at the unforgettable Monty Python’s SPAM sketch.

However, the SPAM I’m talking about is no laughing matter. I’m talking about that irritating avalanche of unwanted mails that everyone receives daily in their email Inbox, which in turn threatens to explode by the sheer amount of crap that those criminals (because that is what they are) try to shovel down our throats, predating on the less experienced, or the youngest, or the oldest among us.

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Places of the Heart

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don’t think of myself as a romantic. Not in the classic meaning of the word, anyway. Most people who don’t know me very well might mark me as a disresputable cynic and though I’m not abominably sour or despicably gloomy, I do have an unquestionable dose of black humor that can be perceived as cynical or, also possibly, downright unpleasant, though in general, I am the kindest person you can come across.

I am not a pessimist by nature, either, was it not for the fact that mankind tries very hard and very capably to convince me that there is no hope for the human race of ever becoming a peaceful and civil inhabitant of this planet and therefore worth of my respect.

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Heat-Wave 3

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nd finally we have it! Today it was officially recognized that we are experiencing a heat-wave in the Netherlands.

Not that I’m very pleased about it (I can’t stand temperatures higher than 25-28 C°), but after a series of yearly attempts (see here and here), we finally managed to have one.

I wonder if Mr. Moron (aka President Trump) is still tweeting around that there is no such thing as global warming and that it’s just leftist propaganda.

Who knows, if bullshit is any good against bush fires, then the US could be the only Nation capable of fighting all fires worldwide by sending over just one person.

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Nessuno Dice Libera

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inally back online this blog by Paola, an anesthesiologist in an Italian hospital in the province of Piemonte.

Wonderful stories from a good, compassionate and brave doctor. Usually entertaining, funny and quite often downright moving.

We should have more doctors/people like her in politics as well, so that politicians would finally understand how bad the Italian medical care situation has become and what are the real needs of this sector.

Then again, politicians (especially the Italian kind) do not care about what happens to the people, but only about what happens to the stream of money flowing into their pockets.

Pity, because that Country has been once a beautiful and pleasant place to live.

Connected

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‘m not very fond of live content in general, of this inscrutable and apparently uncontrollable need of the masses to be connected 24/7.

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and the likes have been created for all those people having nothing better to do than telling the world what a great fish’n’chips they are eating, with whom, how richly the booze is flowing (or not) and all that kind of useless information that interests only that part of the human race that has, likewise, nothing constructive to do.

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I CANNOT KNOW WHAT I WOULD BE IF I WAS NOT ME…