On the 29th of December the Catholic Church remembers Saint David, alias King David, alias The Slingshot Kid.
And as Dave’s my name, I usually have a small celebration – one of my favorite dishes for lunch (I’m the one taking care of the cooking anyway), maybe a few hours spent watching a movie, and a small gift.
Ebooks have been the sort of gifts I give myself these last few years: cheap, varied, and fun.
And no need to wait! Continue reading
“To travel by water and not avoid sea-serpents and dragons,—this is the courage of the fisherman. To travel by land and not avoid the rhinoceros and the tiger,—this is the courage of hunters. When bright blades cross, to look on death as on life,—this is the courage of the hero. To know that failure is fate and that success is opportunity, and to remain fearless in great danger,—this is the courage of the Sage.”
When I was a kid1, the Italian national TV, RAI, featured regularly the original 1930s Popeye the Sailor cartoons. For some mysterious reason, the cartoons were not dubbed, and so we kids simply enjoyed the action and the comedy, missing the word-play and jokes. But we got it all the same.
And indeed, when much later the cartoons were finally dubbed, the dubbing job was so lame, we simply decided the originals were better.
Some of the best originals are now in the public domain, so I put three of the best on a DVD and used them as Christmas-card substitutes for a few kids I know.
And a friend told me she won’t show Popeye cartoons to her kids, because these cartoons are violent and racist, and also encourage smoking, and her boys would grow up as little fascist pipe-smoking punks should she submit them to such a bad influence.
I was basically treated like one peddling spinach-stuffed neo-Nazi propaganda.
Which sort of made me go “Uh?!” and started a long (and in the end, useless) discussion about historical perspective and the fact that kids, being usually smarter than parents often credit them, usually are quite good at telling make-believe, funny violence from real-world, the-hurting-kind violence.
I don’t know anybody that ever got into a fight because of the nefarious influence of Popeye the Sailor.
But the three cartoons, now… Continue reading
For the first time in my almost-50-years of life, Christmas 2016 brought me a gift of food, that is, the classic “Christmas Gift Basket” that is sort of a traditional thing hereabout as a “family gift”.
I mean, I usually get books, music, maybe a scarf or a pair of mittens.
But a food basket?
Never before.
In this case, it was my uncle, that hit me and my brother with a huge selection of fine traditional Italian treats that will cover all our needs for the New Year’s Eve four-course dinner with assorted associated extras. And then we’ll recycle the basket, and use it for our laundry.
Wow.
And it was not the only gift of food we received: there’s a metal box full of home-made cookies that’s been keeping us happy at tea time for days, now. And then we’ll recycle the metal box to store paid bills.
Which gives me a good starting point for a somewhat more serious reflection on this Christmas in particular, and maybe more general things. Continue reading
One last purchase before the festivities, The Pulps by Jess Nevins has been an impulse buy – I was looking for something completely different, and Amazon’s evilothers also bought function revealed to me the existence of a Nevins book I knew nothing about.
The Pulps is a brief history of the pulps, written by a man that can be only described as a research powerhouse. Yes, I’m a fan: I have a few of his titles here on the shelf, and they are part of my go-to reference library on genre fiction, and quite a lot of fun to read (being informative AND fun is not a given, in many essays). Continue reading
And while we were offline, Karavansara reached the 40.000 views in 2016 – which was our original target, and exactly the double of the figure we made in 2013, our first year.
Karavansara is slowly growing, and I think I owe you guys a big
Karavansara 