my dearest Might be I spent too much to long hugging the cryostat as I found myself in bed and couldnt remember precisely how and why Ive heard (and tested) that helium makes you speak like Donald Duck but Ive never knew it can cause hallucinations and other kind of sixties style trip related effects: if so I wouldnt have missed the chance. Getting back to the time I used to be a student, which is now quite a long time ago, ah, yeah, before becoming a sad old git, we used to sniff Ether and other rubbish straight from the solvent bottles, that together with alcohol from the Winchester flask, a sort of Winchester club [drink, not sniff.. no point sniffing alcohol even if is 96%], if you wish, but again the main result was feeling a bit dizzy and generally more stupid than before, which took a bit of effort, pretty much as that special flu feeling or something like that. Disappearing from the lab, right after having se up again the microwave delay line was a geniuses move, by the time I was back it was dismantled again, and someone even borrowed a travelling wave tube amplifier, which, I ensure, is a heavy and massive bit of equipment. But the most disconcerting thing was that absolutely no one had even noticed I didnt show up for essentially an entire week: brilliant! Staying in the house of the research assistant is that much fun ehm well, apparently the exciting event of the week is when people bake same bread well, yes exciting good enough Ill be back soon, not that anyone notice if Im at work or not, which is brilliant, as I can spend the day in the pub and I get paid anyway at the end of the month, which is what I called be a professional student the bad thing is, that the pub over here are shite and the beer is even worst, so whats the point going to pub? Theres not even someone to play 3-7 with, for goodness sake, what is the blissful slacker generation up to? However, in during the flu, Ive been illuminated and sort of discovered how to get rid of it, you need two things apparently, a kind of black sausage, I cant remember how it was called, but I guess something like the infinity element, or so, memory faded away with the secret and the other thing was like a metallic-blue box, kind of an engine starter, and all had to go into an intricate system of pipes and junctions and blots and knots but no clockwork. This is surprising as clockworks and the Nabla operator are quite recurrent in my dreams. that is pretty much all I can dream about gradients, the Jacobian matrix, Chebishev polynomials and the Hermittian operator: thats what it gets when the psychedelic flu is on its way, yeah, not bad, even better than bread. [put the book back on the shelve] Being back home have some slight advantages, one of those is that I can access to my book collection, which is not that wide, but still there are a few volumes I bought when I used to read four books per week and have taken dust till those days. Amongst those was La cognizione del dolore by C.E. Gadda (The recognition of sorrow, I guess it should translated like that, or so). I have read ages ago another book by the same author, Il pasticciaccio brutto di via merulana (An awfull mess in merulana road), which was great, but I havent fully appreciated it, which undoubtedly proves I am a full idiot, if you havent guessed it yet. Gadda is probably one of the most under-rated amongst the modern Italian novelist. Can be because of it extremely unusual way of sentencing and the use of many northern dialectal forms. However, I am northern, and it is extremely funny and fluent to read such a sharp and incredibly powerful book taking shape into a pseudo-colloquial form, that actually makes it flow, and Im absolutely loving it for what it matters so much Im pretty much temped to read it again which is something I havent done (to read a book back to back) in ages might be Ill find a copy at the airport bookshop, but are not generally that well furbished, well see in the mean time Im still pretty much into the (auto)bibliography of the (in)famous Italian bandit Renato Vallanzasca, a book called Il Fiore del Male (The Flower of Evil, I dont believe is translated): well, you can tell many things of this man, but if I d only had half of his guts, flipping hell once he managed to evade from the noise and distraction of his prison cells [he didnt missed the bus, surely] and came back to set his partners in crime free he was shot in the head but survived somebodys born a policemen someones born as a bank robber ... talking about colloquialism, underrated northern Italian writer, if there was someone to whom a statue should be erected in each main square of any village (together with nick drake, surely) well thats Guido Gozzano. If in high-schools instead of all this rubbish about neo-realism and bla bla bla which has infested our literature would make pupils read la signorina felicita ovvero la felicita [Miss Felicity hence happiness] not the usual five verses, the same one all the time, il suo buon padre in fama di usuraio, which by himself is purely fantastic) but all if it and his blue eyes, ma azzurri dun azzurro di stoviglia ah god knows how to translated it. Ive always been very proud of my poetry collection, and this is one is one of my favourite together with a rather old edition of Palazzeschis poems, which should be nearly original but I got it nth handed and is almost falling to bits (pretty much as his owner, aging is not a bad thing, aging and having done the bugger all of all bugger alls well, yeah! Great!) clof clop cloc cloppete clocchete cloppete chhhhhhl Oh mia povera fonte malata col male che hai finisce lo sai che uccidi me pure oh my poor fountain /the illness youve got/ one day you know/ will kill me/ as well [pseudo-ritmic in English ] ah well, the glory, a corridor, a branch of cherry and beneath the name of Torquato Tasso but women come and go talking of Michelangelo and if lady do, so can I. [self crowed with cherry branches pretty much as Napolepon] Together with the pleasure of reading Gadda, Gozzano and Palazzeschi, Ive realised I had totally forgotten how nice it was to play in a real band with other people and crank up the amplifier as loud as possible when one of my friend phoned me up and asked me if I wanted to play a gig with him two days after with a single rehearsal I thought he was a mentalist, but, hey, why not, havent played in damned ages in practise the rehearsal was 24 hours long, which was quite amazing, but understandably as apart from one song, on which I had only played the saw before I didnt have any clue on how to play the other ones not the other member of the band secondly the gig in practise was a hi-school garage party for 10 people, so no much worries of making a whole fuck up, just If I had know I would have avoid to travel 300 km with the equipment, however the joy of using my 60s amp as a preamp for that two mule that are the Sovtek MIG-100 and set it all up pretty much to 11 was quite rewarding, also operating the lakes land branded coffee machine for most of the times made me feel 10 year younger at least ten years ago wasnt any better whatsoever but doesnt really matter I have no clue how it sounded outside. I felt as being in a hi-speed-spin centrifuge of a 90 degree washing run still I wished I had a little bit more volume, but is never enough, is it? An anthological and I suppose absolutely planned bugger all: how could have done it without myself? Anyway we had fun and apart from the people who was there, who were there already, who else would have been interested in the show-case? In fact, I dont know how, but they even liked it, we surely did. And by the way, we rose founds for Associazione Plinio Fernando per la Conservazione della Crudelta Umana, which we felt was a quite a worthwhile charity in fact we played tsunami by sonic youth as a cover. And Il ballo del qua qua as well as, but with the kazoo only. The beer was finished by the time which was the only slightly unpleasant thing of the evening, ignoring a phone call from the police and then from the Carabinieri threatening to bring the whole buck in the local jail, which would have possibly been more comfortable that the sofa I spent the night one. Almost surely, to be frank! Getting close to deadline is not scary, is kind of liberation. I can do pretty much what I like because I do not have to care for consequences, is brilliant! Supercar gattigher was my favourite cartoon when I was something year old how about yours? Ive seen a model of the thing in a second hand shop, but, sugar, it was Sunday and it was closed I nearly assaulted the shop well, a Gattigher with all the five cars, Id say in a 1:24/1:32 scale would have been fully worth it Take care Gira lelica romba il motor Stephano [The Journal of Fucked-up Gourmet] http://ilsantuzzari.splinder.com [Stay Indie get Eaten by Squirrels] http://www.eatenbysquirrels.org +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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