Category: General Silliness

  • Grandma’s wine glasses

    Grandma’s wine glasses

    When my uncle died last year, Valentina and I were offered the old wine glasses my uncle had inherited from my grandmother. They have been in the family since long before I was born, and my guess is that they were bought in the 1930s or 1940s. They’re handmade, blown, faceted with an hexagonal stalk,…

  • Books are so expensive in these times

    Books are so expensive in these times

    Like this one – it looks normal – but apparently isn’t. It does help a bit with the discount. Amazon.com: BlackWind: Charlotte Boyett-Compo: Books

  • Nice fellow

    Nice fellow

    Occasionally there’s something funny on Google Street View, occasionally something scary:

  • Pool sessions

    Pool sessions

    Yesterday I practised rolling in a pool for the first time in over two years. Its the first time for a long while I get some good rolling practise. My focus has been elsewhere, on touring in Sardinia, setting up a business in Venice, getting to know people and places in Venice, in general with…

  • Retrospective

    Retrospective

    A few weeks ago it was the season of looking back, and being a bit slow on the uptake, I’m just about arriving there now. These last two years have seen quite a turn in my life. Two years ago I had a day job, a fairly ‘normal’ life, and just paddled for fun, and…

  • Personality disorder?

    Personality disorder?

    I played a bit with Typealizer which I found at Bonnie’s blog, who had it from Michael Bradley, only the result is a bit ambiguous. I ran the test on the two sites I put the most effort into, and got rather different results.

  • Homosexual necrophilia in the mallard

    This is so weird, some would probably say disturbing, but nature is a weird and sometimes disturbing place. On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. (source: “the duck”…

  • No more war!

    No more war!

    The armistice which became the end to the Great War, the first world war, took effect at 11:11 o’clock on November 11, 1918, exact 90 years ago today. It was the most horrible war the world had ever seen, with carnage on an industrial scale, taking tens of millions of lifes over a period of…

  • The Gondola Blog

    The Gondola Blog

    By chance one day I stumbled over the Gondola Blog by Greg Mohr, who nurtures a burning passion for gondolas. He is, as he states on his blogger profile, a gondola fanatic. There are quite a few gondolas in the USA. One day I visited the Squero Tramontin in Venice, Roberto Tramontin told that there…

  • Video of Berlusconi’s ‘compliment’ to Obama

    Video of Berlusconi’s ‘compliment’ to Obama

    The Guardian has a video of Berlusconi followed by a few interviews with ‘common’ Italians. Video: Italians rage at Silvio Berlusconi’s ‘racist’ Barack Obama comment The Repubblica has another one with clips from many countries. L’abbronzato fa il giro del mondo. The Corriere reports that Obama has called the leaders of all the G7 nations,…

  • Berlusconi compliments Obama on his “tan”

    Berlusconi compliments Obama on his “tan”

    The election of Obama in the USA hasn’t gone down so well within the Italian government. Prime minister Berlusconi literally adored Bush, and apparently aren’t able to hide his disappointment with the election of Obama. While on an official visit in Moscow, Berlusconi answered a question about the election of Obama with a “Barack Obama?…

  • If London Were Like Venice

    If London Were Like Venice

    If London Were Like Venice – Oh! That It Were! – by Signor Somers L. Summers