sabato 30 aprile 2005

Hermaphrodite! (Foto, Lad)


Posted by Hello
° Speaking of the Villa Borghese hermaphrodite, as you and I were last Thursday while the rain separated us from the rest of the world, and the perfume of the petunias smothered the perfume of the hothouse roses, there in the greenhouse . . . .

§

° For so many centuries the men of the East have forced their women to wear veils, as did many manly men of the West till just a little after Balzac’s adventuresses--picture Guinivere, all peakyhatted.
° Is the veil, as these manly men say, to protect their property from the insolent gaze of other churls?
° Or is the veil just a clumsy sort of beard, to masculinise their wives into softskinned altar boys, just sprouting their first silky lovefur?

° Timetravelling, Giac.

venerdì 29 aprile 2005

Oriental Good Friday (Foto, Coz)


Posted by Hello
° During Carnevale in Athens, I saw an open door and wandered in. No workers, no guards, no tourists. Just me, the Sun, and some forgotten frescoist.
§
° The Eastern Church, lacking an exNazi Patriarch, chose neither to offend Passover nor l'Annunciata, but tactfully postponed Easter this year.
° Timetravelling, Giac.

domenica 24 aprile 2005

Retreat! and Advance? (Foto)


Posted by Hello
Lo Sciocco e, perciò, il Giocoliere siamo in riposo. And why? Because of the new megalomane HP (grazie, Damiano). Not that it's so hard to set up. What's hard is the orderly retreating from the old machine, what to take, what to abandon. Arrivederci, Giac.

mercoledì 13 aprile 2005

Please Surrender (Foto, Coz)


Posted by Hello

Dear Coz,
° I have seen my very first animé, Sky Blue.
° Was it good? Dunno.
° Was it stupendous? Why yes.

§

° I have seen my very first Siamese kickass film, Ong-Bak.
° Was it good? Don’t care.
° Was it tasty? Why yes.

§

° Afterwards I toddled over to Trattoria Coloreproibito, and immediately fell in with Stella and Palla Canestro, from over in the Lake District.
° Stella’s a journalist; she voted for Kerry, so she must be that famous LeftistLeaningLiberalBiasedPress we’re all the time hearing tell of.
° We talked politics for a while, until we’d emptied one whole leg of the bar.
° Then we switched.
° To the other corner, and to linguistics.
° And that worked too, emptied the entire place in no time flat.
° Bimeby we ambled down Memory Lane, which led us, naturally and inevitably, to Piazza Good Old Days, back before VD had earned its PhD.
° We had just stared wistfully at G and barely caught sight of H when young Osvaldo, overhearing and pricking up his ears, asked candidly, "Herpes and hepatitis are the same thing, aren’t they?"
° God bless our Public Health Policy, I thought to myself. Out loud:
° "Not entirely. Hepatitis (A) is a form of chemical tanning administered by eating raw salad at D----’s. Herpes, on the other hand, is the plural of herpee, as in, ‘Did you know you have a herpee on your lower lip?’"
° So, now he knows.

§§§§§

° I scarcely had time to recite, with Evitalike gestures and dramatic emphasis, my Compleat Method of Obtaining Victory by Surrender for Stella’s benefit, but I did give away a free sample.
° The day after last Autumn’s election Stella’s Bushite boss hardly said Good Morning, before he began to rub it in. And you know Kerryites, you know how they will respond to such goading.
° Fulminations, dire predictions, the Evil Eye. (For Stella is a tarotpratitioner in her spare time.)
° While you know perfectly well what the correct response would have been . . . .
° Tic tac tic tac tic tac . . . .

° Exactly.
° Winner: "Well, Kerryite sweetydarling, I reckon our boy showed y’all."
° Loser: "I’ll say, it was like squashing cockroaches, only Kerry hadn’t even got a hard shell. One good thing, nobody will claim the election was rigged this time."
° And no matter how many times the Winner accused the Loser of claiming the 2000 election was rigged, the Loser had only to repeat, with the greatest good cheer, "Exactly, that’s what I’m saying."
° For that is what the word "what" is for.

§

° God could’ve made me quickerwitted than Ann Coulter.
° But in his kindness, he made me dullerwitted than Ann Coulter.
° Deo gratias ago.

° Your dullard Cousin, Giac.

martedì 12 aprile 2005

Dragonslayer! (Foto, Piers)


Dragonslayer! Posted by Hello

Mio dilettissimo figliuolino Piers,
° Ti ho sognato stamattina, all’ore quattro, quando Asia, come di solito, comincia di svegliarsi.
° Stavi morendo, nell’ospedale. Tuo padre, tuo madre, tuo cugino erano presenti.
° Anch’io.
° Questo sogno non mica significa Sorella Morte Sanctissima.
° Significa il legame di parentela fra noi, il legame un po’ trascurato di recente?

° Il giovedì scorso, mentre Panama faceva le fusa "ron ron ron," vidi Dano Bouvier, e poi una quarta ora più tardi, e poi, la terza volta, in Via Franklinia. Non l’avevo visto da tre, quattro anni.
° M’ha fatto ricordare una conversazione, sei anni fa. Eravamo, Dano ed io, nello spogliatoio del nuotatorio. Tu sei stato arrivato a Pope nell’estate precedente.
° Discutevamo quello "M."
° "Che diavolo significherà quello ‘M?’ M. Piers Bellow."
° Ben ti ricordi della risoluzione dell’ indovinello.
° Montagu, dei Montecchi Romeo-Giulietta.

° And when I saw your lettertotheeditor, signed "Montagu P. Bellow," everything that was past became present.

§

° Il bloggare non costa niente. (Letteralmente, blogger.com è servizio gratis di Google.)
° Il bloggare non costa niente, come JacqueSr, come FleiGei, come JugoGrl. Chi potrebbe riconoscerci nel Mondo Bloggo?
° Il tuo coraggio, la tua propria firma nel giornale Popiano, in fondo alla lettera nel sopporto di una cosa tanta impopolare--cioè, nel sopporto dei diritti umani e civili--mi stupisce.
° Perchè non sfruttasti della firma falsa di Bastien? Hai imparato niente nella Scuola di Giac?

° Vado tanto fiero di te, mio coraggioso, mio rettissimo, mio dilettissimo figluolino.

° In gratitudine, Giac.

martedì 5 aprile 2005

Can't Touch This! (Foto, Julja)


Can't Touch This! (Foto, Julja) Posted by Hello

Dear Julja,
° If Catullus was nonplussed at the sight of a beautiful youth walking in the marketplace in company with an auctioneer,

Cum puero bello praeconem qui uidet esse,
quid credat, nisi se uendere discupere?

--is there any wonder that I was stupefied by Torvaldo last Saturday morning in the dressing room of the natatorium? Torvaldo, from head to toe the spitting image of what Praxiteles would’ve sculpted, had he had sufficient skill.
° For Torvaldo smiled and winked at one and all, then turned his back to the gross specimens of degenerated masculinity--o, the hairy porky beasts!--that regarded him with hostile envy, and, facing me, he bent over, stretching to touch his hands flat to the floor.
° So that they too, the hairy porky beasts, had the opportunity to ponder his new tattoo, in threeinchhigh blackink Gothic majuscules across the small of the back, just at the waistline of his paleblue bikerlength speedo:

DEAL WITH THIS!

° Timetravelling, Giac.