Leave the gun. Take the cannolis

Sunday, September 25, 2005

This morning's earworm: Fire and Ice, by Pat Benetar. Don't ask me why.

   To the left is a mosaic depicting King Roger II receiving the Imperial Diadem from Christ. Found in the church of Santa Maria Dell' Ammiraglio, commonly known as The Martorana, in Palermo. The Martorana is a Greek Orthodox church built in approximately 1140 by George of Antioch, the Admiral of Roger's fleet.

   An interesting day Friday. We booked a bus tour to Palermo, and environs. So far, Ciccio has been taking us around and showing us the sights, but Palermo is halfway around the island. The bus was scheduled to leave from Taormina at 6:00 AM. In order to get there in time we had to leave Mandanici at 5:00 AM. Which meant we had to get up at 4:00 AM. This is becoming a disturbing trend.
   At about 4:45 AM we heard a peculiar roaring sound outside. Thinking it might be a rainstorm, we took a peek outside to see a raging bonfire over beside the church. Two large plastic garbage cans that sit there for public disposal were on fire. We knew the gentleman who lived upstairs was awake, because he was the one who was going to drive us to Taormina on his way to work that morning. Pat alerted him about the fire, as we had no idea how to call the fire department.
   It turns out there is no fire department. Giovanni went out and extinguished the fire himself. As we made our way through the narrow, twisting, hilly streets and alleyways of the town, on our way to the main road down the mountain, we passed two more sets of burning trash cans. Someone was deliberately setting the fires. Later that night we heard the scuttlebutt. Common opinion was that someone who was unhappy about a current street construction project in town had set the fires in protest. Yeah, I know. Stupid.

   So, we're in Palermo, and we have to be back at the bus after lunch by 2:30 PM. By about 3:05 we began to realize that something was not right (we're a quick bunch). The tour guide and the bus driver are running around outside with cell phones glued to their ears. Someone has not returned to the bus.

Here's a conundrum:
   You are onvacation in a foreign country. You have learned enough of the language to order a cup of coffee, and ask where the bathroom is. Otherwise, you are helpless. On  a bus tour of a distant city, your spouse disappears.
   The bus has waited for almost an hour while the guide and the driver scour the area with the help of local police. Finally, the bus has to leave. There are thirty other passengers who must return to their point of embarkation.
   What do you do? Do you stay with the bus, and your only contact who speaks yourlanguage? Or, do you stay behind in the area in which your spouse has gone missing, in an unfamiliar city, in a country whose language you do not speak? What do you do?
   There are no hostages to shoot.


A detail from the above pictured mosaic.

~~Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody
I got some money 'cause I just got paid
I really hope I find someone to talk to
I'm in an awful way~~
   -At least I think that's how it goes.

   I finished my other book: Scatterbrain, by Larry Niven. A collection of short stories, novel excerpts, essays and commentaries, some of it has been rendered erroneous, or irrelevant by new scientific discoveries, or advancements in technology since it was written. Other parts of it are just aimless ramblings; a peek into the mind of the man. Probably only for the dedicated Niven fan.
   I only mention it because it has left me bereft of reading material. In near desperation, I picked up Angels and Demons again. If you recall, I had read about fifteen pages of it and put it down, suffering from an inability to suspend that much disbelief. Hoping that once I got past the introductory material, I would get involved in the "breathless, real-time adventure...[that is] exciting, fast paced, with an unusually high IQ..." (San Francisco Chronicle), I pushed on. After another nineteen pages, I ran out of patience. Extremely poor writing, paired with implausibility piled upon implausibility make it unlikely I will be able to finish this book.