Buon Culo Natale

AUGURI!

Si Natale è passato ma mi è capitata quest'immagine tra le mani all'improvviso e non volevo essere micragnoso durante le feste.

Ho fatto male?

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

MARLEY’S GHOST.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

Nothing in this book is true.
"Live by the foma* that makes you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
--The Books of Bokonon. 1:5

The Day the World Ended 1 Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me
John.
Jonah – John - if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still, not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.
Listen:
When I was a younger man--two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago.
When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material for a book to be called The Day the World Ended.
The book was to be factual.
The book was to be an account of what important Americans had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
It was to be a Christian book. I was a Christian then. I am a Bokononist now. I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone
to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon. But Bokononism was unknown beyond the gravel beaches and coral knives that ring this little island in the Caribbean Sea, the Republic of San Lorenzo.
We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that brought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended.
Nice, Nice, Very Nice 2
"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person may be a member of your karass."
At another point in The Books of created the checkerboard; God created means that a karass ignores national, familial, and class boundaries.
It is as free-form as an amoeba.
Bokonon he tells us, "Man the karass." By that he institutional, occupational,
In his "Fifty-third Calypso," Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:
Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter
Folly 3
In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist, And a British queen-- All fit together In the same machine. Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice-- So many different people In the same device.
Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person's trying to discover the limits of his karass and the nature of the work God Almighty has had it do. Bokonon simply observes that such investigations are bound to be incomplete.
In the autobiographical section of The Books of Bokanon he writes a parable on the folly of pretending to discover, to understand:
I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be.
And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things."
"Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand."
She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed.
She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

Chi è Sherlock Holmes ?

Quando un personaggio entra nell’immaginario collettivo, la risposta alla domanda di cui sopra é probabilmente una: dipende.

Dopo che il suo creatore lo ha messo al mondo dandone la sua interpretazione, il personaggio cessa di essere solo suo ma viene filtrato dalla personalità di due categorie distinte: il pubblico che se lo gode e gli autori che lo affrontano.

Prendiamo Sherlock. Secondo Conan Doyle il nostro detective ha alcune caratteristiche peculiari: intelletto fuori dal comune, un carattere che lo porta a isolarsi da un mondo che trova spesso troppo lento e noioso per il suo genio e un fisico e capacità combattive da campione. E prima che vi venga un embolo, anche la conoscenza di arti marziali inusuali è nel canone: Sherlock è infatti versato nell’arte del Baritsu, probabilmente lo stesso Bartitsu storicamente esistito in quel di Londra (qua delle immagini di uomini dal baffo importante in pose buffe).

Insomma, un intelletto superiore ma anche una fisicità straordinaria. Per tacere del fatto che è morto e risorto ed ha aiutato diverse volte l’Impero Britannico a non crollare e disinnescato almeno una guerra mondiale. Una vita ricca e molti spunti da cui prendere considerando che è stato protagonista di 56 racconti e 4 romanzi.



Eppure per molti Sherlock Holmes è stato per decenni sinonimo di cappello da caccia (mai indossato nelle storie di Conan Doyle) e modi tutto sommato freddi, l’intelletto sopra la violenza. Prendete le fattezze di Christopher Lee, sir Basil Rathbone o l’eccezionale interpretazione di Jeremy Brett nella serie televisiva degli anni ‘80. Un approccio compassato senza perdere coraggio e prontezza di spirito alla bisogna (in particolare nella serie con Brett protagonista).

Declinazioni che funzionano ottimamente e che sono state riviste e calibrate ai nostri tempi ad esempio nella serie televisiva inglese intitolata Sherlock, in cui Holmes mostra in maniera sfacciata il suo essere un outcast sociale e un mal celato disprezzo per chi non sta dietro al suo cervello lanciato a velocità da proiettile.

Tutto un altro approccio nel film con Robert Downey Jr. che per certi versi tira di nuovo fuori le radici pulp del personaggio preferendo azione, scazzottate e dialoghi brillanti, non lesinando intrighi che minacciano l’Impero e cattivi più grandi della vita stessa.

Anche se il più brillante è per certi versi La vita privata di Sherlock Holmes di Billy Wilder, commedia che sfotte certi miti della versione popolare del personaggio (come il cappello, appunto) dandone una versione leggera e ricca di azione ma ammantata da una certa malinconia. Malinconia che è un altro aspetto Holmesiano, con la sua incapacità di sopportare un mondo più lento del suo cervello e che non disdegnava una sana pera di cocaina. Ad esempio in La soluzione al 7% film basato sul romanzo omonimo di Nicholas Meyer, Holmes è un tossicomane depresso che viene forzato dal vecchio Watson ad andare a Vienna per cercare aiuto presso Freud dove troverà anche intrighi e azione.

Azione e complotti non mancano neppure nelle parodie, come in Clueless che ribalta i ruoli dando la genialità a Watson e rendendo Holmes solo un attore ubriacone assoldato per interpretare uno Sherlock che non esiste. Oppure in Sherlock Holmes’s Smarter Brother, in cui facciamo la conoscenza di Sigerson, fratello più giovane e a suo dire più intelligente di quello famoso. Ed è un altro fratello illegittimo a vestire i panni steampunk del cattivo di Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes della Asylum, in cui il nostro se la deve vedere contro piovre giganti e velociraptor. Quando si dice essere versatili.

Per cui, chi è Holmes? Dipende da molte cose. Dai tempi in cui siamo immersi, dalla sensibilità di chi si gode la storia e ancora di più da quella di chi scrive. Sembra una domanda fine a se stessa ma è tra le più importanti quando si vuole capire e personaggi seriali che fanno ormai parte del nostro immaginario. Tanto più se vi trovate nella condizione di dover raccontare una storia che li vede protagonisti, che si tratti di Holmes, Batman o Topolino. Ci si trova quasi sempre ad avere più domande che risposte in testa e si vorrebbe avere la sicurezza di Holmes nel trovare risposte incontrovertibili.

Children of Dune - Frank Herbert

Muad'Dib's teachings have become the playground of scholastics, of the superstitious and the corrupt. He taught a balanced way of life, a philosophy with which a human can meet problems arising from an ever-changing universe. He said humankind is still evolving, in a process which will never end. He said this evolution moves on changing principles which are known only to eternity. How can corrupted reasoning play with such an essence?
-Words of the Mentat Duncan Idaho

A spot of light appeared on the deep red rug which covered the raw rock of the cave floor. The light glowed without apparent source, having its existence only on the red fabric surface woven of spice fiber. A questing circle about two centimeters in diameter, it moved erratically -- now elongated, now an oval. Encountering the deep green side of a bed, it leaped upward, folded itself across the bed's surface.
Beneath the green covering lay a child with rusty hair, face still round with baby fat, a generous mouth -- a figure lacking the lean sparseness of Fremen tradition, but not as water-fat as an off-worlder. As the light passed across closed eyelids, the small figure stirred. The light winked out.
Now there was only the sound of even breathing and, faint behind it, a reassuring drip-drip-drip of water collecting in a catch basin from the windstill far above the cave.
Again the light appeared in the chamber -- slightly larger, a few lumens brighter. This time there was a suggestion of source and movement to it: a hooded figure filled the arched doorway at the chamber's edge and the light originated there. Once more the light flowed around the chamber, testing, questing. There was a sense of menace in it, a restless dissatisfaction. It avoided the sleeping child, paused on the gridded air inlet at an upper corner, probed a bulge in the green and gold wall hangings which softened the enclosing rock.
Presently the light winked out. The hooded figure moved with a betraying swish of fabric, took up a station at one side of the arched doorway. Anyone aware of the routine here in Sietch Tabr would have suspected at once that this must be Stilgar, Naib of the Sietch, guardian of the orphaned twins who would one day take up the mantle of their father, Paul Muad'Dib. Stilgar often made night inspections of the twins' quarters, always going first to the chamber where Ghanima slept and ending here in the adjoining room, where he could reassure himself that Leto was not threatened.
I'm an old fool, Stilgar thought.
He fingered the cold surface of the light projector before restoring it to the loop in his belt sash. The projector irritated him even while he depended upon it. The thing was a subtle instrument of the Imperium, a device to detect the presence of large living bodies. It had shown only the sleeping children in the royal bedchambers.
Stilgar knew his thoughts and emotions were like the light. He could not still a restless inner projection. Some greater power controlled that movement. It projected him into this moment where he sensed the accumulated peril. Here lay the magnet for dreams of grandeur throughout the known universe. Here lay temporal riches, secular authority and that most powerful of all mystic talismans: the divine authenticity of Muad'Dib's religious bequest. In these twins -- Leto and his sister Ghanima -- an awesome power focused. While they lived, Muad'Dib, though dead, lived in them.
These were not merely nine-year-old children; they were a natural force, objects of veneration and fear. They were the children of Paul Atreides, who had become Muad'Dib, the Mahdi of all the Fremen. Muad'Dib had ignited an explosion of humanity; Fremen had spread from this planet in a jihad, carrying their fervor across the human universe in a wave of religious government whose scope and ubiquitous authority had left its mark on every planet.
Yet these children of Muad'Dib are flesh and blood, Stilgar thought. Two simple thrusts of my knife would still their hearts. Their water would return to the tribe.
His wayward mind fell into turmoil at such a thought.
To kill Muad'Dib's children!
But the years had made him wise in introspection. Stilgar knew the origin of such a terrible thought. It came from the left hand of the damned, not from the right hand of the blessed. The ayat and burhan of Life held few mysteries for him. Once he'd been proud to think of himself as Fremen, to think of the desert as a friend, to name his planet Dune in his thoughts and not Arrakis, as it was marked on all of the Imperial star charts.
How simple things were when our Messiah was only a dream, he thought. By finding our Mahdi we loosed upon the universe countless messianic dreams. Every people subjugated by the jihad now dreams of a leader to come.
Stilgar glanced into the darkened bedchamber.
If my knife liberated all of those people, would they make a messiah of me?

Children of Dune - Frank Herbert

Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert

Excerpts from the Death Cell Interview with Bronso of IX

Q: What led you to take your particular approach to a history of Muad'Dib?

A: Why should I answer your questions?

Q: Because I will preserve your words.

A: Ahhh! The ultimate appeal to a historian!

Q: Will you cooperate then?

A: Why not? But you'll never understand what inspired my Analysis of History. Never. You Priests have too much at stake to ...

Q: Try me.

A: Try you? Well, Again ... why not? I was caught by the shallowness of the common view of this planet which arises from its popular name: Dune. Not Arrakis, notice, but Dune. History is obsessed by Dune as desert, as birthplace of the Fremen. Such history concentrates on the customs which grew out of water scarcity and the fact that Fremen led semi-nomadic lives in stillsuits which recovered most of their body's moisture.

Q: Are these things not true, then?

A: They are surface truth. As well ignore what lies beneath that surface as ... as try to understand my birthplanet, Ix, without exploring how we derived our name from the fact that we are the ninth planet of our sun. No ... no. It is not enough to see Dune as a place of savage storms. It is not enough to talk about the threat posed by the gigantic sandworms.

Q: But such things are crucial to the Arrakeen character!

A: Crucial? Of course. But they produce a one-view planet in the same way that Dune is a one-crop planet because it is the sole and exclusive source of the spice, melange.

Q: Yes. Let us hear you expand on the sacred spice.

A: Sacred! As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the other. It extends life and allows the adept to foresee his future, but it ties him to a cruel addiction and marks his eyes as yours are marked: total blue without any white. Your eyes, your organs of sight, become one thing without contrast, a single view.

Q: Such heresy brought you to this cell!

A: I was brought to this cell by your Priests. As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy.

Q: You are here because you dared to say that Paul Atreides lost something essential to his humanity before he could become Muad'Dib.

A: Not to speak of his losing his father here in the Harkonnen war. Nor the death of Duncan Idaho, who sacrificed himself that Paul and the Lady Jessica could escape.

Q: Your cynicism is duly noted.

A: Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy. But, you see, I'm not really a cynic. I'm just an observer and commentator. I saw true nobility in Paul as he fled into the desert with his pregnant mother. Of course, she was a great asset as well as a burden.

Q: The flaw in your historians is that you'll never leave well enough alone. You see true nobility in the Holy Muad'Dib, but you must append a cynical footnote. It's no wonder that the Bene Gesserit also denounce you.

A: You Priests do well to make common cause with the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. They, too, survive by concealing what they do. But they cannot conceal the fact that the Lady Jessica was a Bene Gesserit-trained adept. You know she trained her son in the sisterhood's ways. My crime was to discuss this as a phenomenon, to expound upon their mental arts and their genetic program. You don't want attention called to the fact that Muad'Dib was the Sisterhood's hoped for captive messiah, that he was their Kwisatz Haderach before he was your prophet.

Q: If I had any doubts about your death sentence, you have dispelled them.

A: I can only die once.

Q: There are deaths and there are deaths.

Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert

Un calcio in bocca fa miracoli - Marco Presta

Sono un vecchiaccio.
Dovrei dire che sono una persona anziana, come mi hanno insegnato i miei genitori per i quali chiunque, anche un infanticida antropofago, arrivato a una certa età meritava rispetto.
La verità, però, è che sono un vecchiaccio.
Mi lavo poco, mi rado una volta alla settimana e giro per il quartiere indossando un cappotto che, dopo la mia prostata, è la cosa più malridotta che mi porto dietro.
Negli ultimi quindici anni mi sono lasciato andare, come fanno certi calciatori quando capiscono che la partita è persa e allora smettono di giocare e cominciano a dare calcioni agli avversari.
Mangio porcherie di tutti i generi, fumo molto, scorreggio in ascensore. Scaracchio per strada, ma solo quando qualcuno mi guarda.
E poi rubo le biro.
Me le infilo in tasca, ci metto un attimo. Ogni tanto organizzo una battuta di caccia per i negozi. Mi piace guardare le facce di cassiere e bottegai, quando non trovano più la loro penna a sfera. Mi piace fissare i loro occhi sbalorditi, mentre controllano se sia caduta in terra, si frugano, si chiedono dove cavolo l'abbiano messa. Nessuno pensa che un oggetto di così scarso valore possa essere rubato. Da me, poi.
Quando torno acasa dal safari, ne ho almneo una decina nella tasca interna della giacca. Alcune hanno il cappuccio di plastica sulla punta d'acciaio, altre il pulsantino metallico, molte mostrano una scritta su un lato inneggiante a un elettrauto o a una ditta di lavori idraulici.
A casa ne ho talmente tante che Victor Hugo potrebbe scriverci dieci volte I Miserabili. Mi piacciono. Naturalmente, non le uso mai. Non ho niente da scrivere. Però di tanto in tanto le provo, vedo se funzionano ancora. Dopo un po' di tempo, l'inchiostro che hanno dentro, la loro anima, si secca. Capita anche a molte persone, se vogliamo. La Bic è la cosa che più di ogni altra mi ricorda l'essere umano. E' capace d'imprese grandiose - compilare schedine vincenti e assegni scoperti -, di azioni mediocrsi - scrivere liste della spesa e biglietti d'auguro - e di crimini orribili - vergare condanne a morte e lettere d'amore.
Mi piacciono pure le ragazze intorno ai vent'anni. Qualche volta, davanti a un bar o a un negozio, ne avvicino una, l'abbraccio, la stringo e la palpo un poco, sento il profumo dei suoi capelli e del suo trucco. Le dico: "Valentina, Valentina mia!" Lei mi guarda e risponde: "Ma cosa fa? Mi ha scambiata per un'altra!" Allora fingo di mortificarmi e mi scuso: "Dio quanto somiglia a mia nipote... mi perdoni... sa, la vista ormai..." Insomma, ve l'ho detto, sono un vecchiaccio.
Armando invece era diverso.


Un calcio in bocca fa miracoli - Marco Presta

Song of Kali - Dan Simmons

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist. Some cities are too wicked to be suffered. Calcutta is such a place. Before Calcutta I would have laughed at such an idea. Before Calcutta I did not believe in evil -- certainly not as a force separate from the actions of men. Before Calcutta I was a fool.
After the Romans had conquered the city of Carthage, they killed the men, sold the women and children into slavery, pulled down the great buildings, broke up the stones, burned the rubble, and salted the earth so that nothing would ever grow there again. That is not enough for Calcutta. Calcutta should be expunged.
Before Calcutta I took part in marches against nuclear weapons. Now I dream of nuclear mushroom clouds rising above a city. I see buildings melting into lakes of glass. I see paved streets flowing like rivers of lava and real rivers boiling away in great gouts of steam. I see human figures dancing like burning insects, like obscene praying mantises sputtering and bursting against a fiery red background of total destruction.
The city is Calcutta. The dreams are not unpleasant. Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist.


Chapter One


"Today everything happens in Calcutta . . . Who should I blame?"
-- Sankha Ghosh


"Don't go, Bobby," said my friend. "It's not worth it."
It was June of 1977, and I had come down to New York from New Hampshire in order to finalize the details of the Calcutta trip with my editor at Harper's. Afterward I decided to drop in to see my friend Abe Bronstein. The modest uptown office building that housed our little literary magazine, Other Voices, looked less than impressive after several hours of looking down on Madison Avenue from the rarefied heights of the suites at Harper's.
Abe was in his cluttered office, alone, working on the autumn issue of Voices. The windows were open, but the air in the room was as stale and moist as the dead cigar that Abe was chewing on. "Don't go to Calcutta, Bobby," Abe said again. "Let someone else do it."
"Abe, it's all set," I said. "We're leaving next week." I hesitated a moment. "They're paying very well and covering all expenses," I added.
"Hnnn," said Abe. He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and frowned at a stack of manuscripts in front of him. From looking at this
sweaty, disheveled little man -- more the picture of an overworked bookie than anything else -- one would never have guessed that he edited one of the more respected "little magazines" in the country. In 1977, Other Voices hadn't eclipsed the old Kenyan Review or caused The Hudson Review undue worry about competition, but we were getting our quarterly issues out to subscribers; five stories that had first appeared in Voices had been chosen for the O'Henry Award anthologies; and Joyce Carol Gates had donated a story to our tenth-anniversary issue. At various times I had been Other Voices assistant editor, poetry editor, and unpaid proofreader. Now, after a year off to think and write in the New Hampshire hills and with a newly issued book of verse to my credit, I was merely a valued contributor. But I still thought of Voices as our magazine. And I still thought of Abe Bronstein as a close friend.
"Why the hell are they sending you, Bobby?" asked Abe.

Song of Kali - Dan Simmons

Presentazione MONO alla Feltrinelli Genova il 30 novembre

Come vi dissi qua, è uscito il decimo numero di Mono, la rivista monotematica senza essere monotona edita da Tunué. Ci trovate una tavola scritta da me e disegnata da Donald Soffritti.

Il numero verrà presentato a Genova presso la libreria Feltrinelli di Via Ceccardi il 30 novembre a partire dalle 18. Ci saranno alcuni autori tra cui Sergio Badino, Francesco D'Ippolito, Giorgia Marras, Matteo Anselmo, Enrico Macchiavello e il sottoscritto. Qui sotto potete ammirarmi mentre stringo tra le mani una copia della rivista.

Si, indosso il cilindro ogni volta che leggo fumetti. Specialmente in bagno.

E' piena di tavole che riescono a raccontare in maniera varia ed eterogenea il tema "diverso" senza cadere in patetismi o banalità. In alcuni casi mi ha fatto pure sganasciare di gusto. Se passate dalla Feltrinelli fate finta di non conoscermi, sono molto timido. Però passateci lo stesso.

Psycho - Robert Bloch

Nel sentire quel rumore improvviso, Norman Bates ebbe un sussulto.
Sembrava che qualcuno stesse battendo alla finestra.
Alzò lo sguardo, rapido, pronto ad alzarsi, e il libro gli scivolò dalle mani nell'ampio grembo. Era solo la pioggia. La pioggia del tardo pomeriggio, che batteva sulla finestra del salotto.
Norman non si era neanche accorto che avesse cominciato a piovere, né che fosse calato il sole. Ma la stanza era buia, adesso, e si allungò per accendere la lampada prima di riprendere la lettura.
Era una di quelle lampade da tavolo vecchio stile, con il paralume di vetro decorato e le frange di cristallo. Sua madre ce l'aveva da sempre, almeno da quanto ricordava lui, e non voleva liberarsene per nessuna ragione. Non che Norman avesse qualcosa da obiettare, a dire il vero; aveva vissuto in quella casa per tutti i quarant'anni della sua vita, e c'era qualcosa di gradevole e rassicurante nell'essere circondato da oggetti familiar. Là dentro tutto era in ordine, e al suo posto; fuori no, era diverso, era lì che cambiavano le cose. E la maggior parte di quei cambiamenti rappresentavano quasi sempre una potenziale minaccia. Mettiamo il caso che avesse trascorso l'intero pomeriggio a passeggiare, per esempio. Si sarebbe potuto trovare in na stradina isolata o in mezzo a qualche pantano, proprio mentre cominciava a piovere. Sarebbe stato costretto a tornarsene a casa al buio, barcollando, bagnato fino alle ossa. Si può anche morire di freddo così, e poi, a chi andrebbe di starsene fuori, di sera? Molto meglio qui in salotto, sotto la lampada, in compagnia di un buon libro.
Quando piegò il capo per riprendere a leggere la luce illuminò il suo volto gonfio, mentre il riflesso si allungava dagli occhiali senza montatura fino a inondare la pelle rosa del cranio, sotto i pochi capelli rossicci.
Davvero un bel libro, non c'era da meravigliarsi che non si fosse accorto del tempo che passava. L'imperso degli Incas, di Victor W. Von Hagen. A Norman non era mai capitato di imbattersi in una così ricca quantità di notizie curiose. Per esempio questa descrizione della cahcua, o danza della vittoria, in cui i guerrieri formano un grande cerchio, muovendosi e contorcendosi come un serpente. Diceva:

Il rullo dei tamburi veniva di norma evocato da quella che una volta era stato il corpo di un nemico, la pelle era stata strappata e tesa al massimo sul ventre per farne un tamburo. Tutto il corpo faceva da cassa armonica, mentre il suono usciva dalla bocca aperta... grottesco, ma efficace.

Norman sorrise, poi si concesse il lusso di un piccolo brivido di soddisfaione. Grottesco ma efficace.. doveva essere proprio così! Scorticare un uomo, probabilmente vivo, e poi tendergli la pelle della pancia per usarla come tamburo! Come facevano, come riuscivano a conservare un cadavere in quel modo, senza che andasse in decomposizione? E più in generale, che tipo di mentalità dovevano avere per arrivare anche solo a concepire un'idea del genere?

Psychi - Robert Bloch.

Dune - Frank Herbert

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan


In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.

The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.

By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow -- hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.

"Is he not small for his age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.

Paul's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."

"So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen."

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach ... well ..."

Within the shadows of his bed, Paul held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals -- the eyes of the old woman -- seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his.

"Sleep well, you sly little rascal," said the old woman. "Tomorrow you'll need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar."

And she was gone, pushing his mother out, closing the door with a solid thump.

Paul lay awake wondering: What's a gom jabbar?

In all the upset during this time of change, the old woman was the strangest thing he had seen.

Your Reverence.

And the way she called his mother Jessica like a common serving wench instead of what she was -- a Bene Gesserit Lady, a duke's concubine and mother of the ducal heir.

Is a gom jabbar something of Arrakis I must know before we go there? he wondered.

He mouthed her strange words: Gom jabbar ... Kwisatz Haderach.

There had been so many things to learn. Arrakis would be a place so different from Caladan that Paul's mind whirled with the new knowledge. Arrakis -- Dune -- Desert Planet.

Thufir Hawat, his father's Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides in fief-complete -- an apparent victory for the Duke Leto. Yet, Hawat had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Leto was popular among the Great Houses of the Landsraad.

"A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful," Hawat had said.

Dune - Frank Herbert

Uomini che si toccano le palle per la scienza!

Palparsi le palle può salvarvi la vita.

Il cancro ai testicoli è tra i più diffusi tra i giovani tra i 18-35 anni, MA è uno di quelli più curabili in caso di diagnosi precoce.

Diagnosi precoce significa palparsi le palle ogni tanto in cerca di tumefazioni, rigonfiamenti, dolori o altro che di norma non si hanno. Il modo corretto per palparvi ve lo spiega la bella dottoressa nel video che trovate più giù, tratto dalla tv inglese Channel 4.


Per quelli che tra voi non sono saltati subito al video, vi dico la mia. Per fortuna a me il cancro è venuto solo al fegato e non ho mai avuto metastasi. Però se già prima avevo l'abitudine di controllarmi i cervelli dello scroto, negli ultimi anni ci do un filo d'attenzione in più.

L'autopalpazione è una cosa molto banale ma sono ragionevolmente sicuro che buona parte dei maschi non lo faccia. Forse è pudore. Forse è paura. Forse è perché appena si accenna a palle e falli, l'uomo medio inizia a fare a chi piscia più lontano e non vuole nemmeno far finta di considerare l'idea che possa avere un disturbo di qualche tipo nella zona dell'ammore.

Col risultato che spesso piccoli problemi come ernie o varicoceli vengono presi sottogamba con conseguenze gravi per fertilità ed erezione.

Se non siete dei perfetti coglioni, fareste bene a palparvi i maroni. E se siete accoppiati, chiedetelo al partner, è un modo come un altro per aumentare la reciproca fiducia.

Il video che vi linko viene dalla televisione inglese e spiega in maniera semplice e senza pudori come palparsi per benino.

Dato che è un video istruttivo la palle vengono mostrate senza censura, altrimenti non avrebbe senso di esistere. Vi direi di fare attenzione ai bambini, ma la realtà è che se siete genitori fareste bene a trovare il modo di parlarne ai vostri figli.

Le bimbe prima o dopo vengono portate dal ginecologo. I maschi bene o male vengono lasciati a se. Una volta c'era la visita di leva in cui si venivano a scoprire disturbi di vario tipo. Ora manco quella. Per cui, pensateci.



Certo, mettere una bella dottoressa con scollatura e scarpa in vernice a palpare un ragazzotto sembra l'attacco di una commedia sexy, ma il video rimane un buon esempio di come informare in maniera semplice e diretta.

Ma caso mai preferiste vedere rugbysti nudi che si toccano le palle in cerca di noduli, potete vedere il video qua sotto. Sempre Tv inglese, sempre informazioni chiare senza troppi pudori.




E ora che avete capito come massaggiarvi il sacchetto pelosetto, andate e toccatevi per benino.

The Dreaming Jewels - Theodore Sturgeon

They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street. He was eight years old then. He'd been doing it for years.
In a way it was a pity. He was a nice kid, a nice-looking kid too, though not particularly outstanding. There were other kids, and teachers, who liked him a little bit, and some who disliked him a little bit; but everyone jumped on him when it got around. His name was Horty -- Horton, that is -- Bluett. Naturally he caught blazes when he got home.
He opened the door as quietly as he could, but they heard him, and hauled him front and center into the living room where he stood flushing, with his head down, one sock around his ankle, and his arms full of books and a catcher's mitt. He was a good catcher, for an eight-year-old. He said, "I was -- "
"We know," said Armand Bluett. Armand was a bony individual with a small mustache and cold wet eyes. He clapped his hands to his forehead and then threw up his arms. "My God, boy, what in Heaven's name made you do a filthy thing like that?" Armand Bluett was not a religious man, but he always talked like that when he clapped his hands to his head, which he did quite often.
Horty did not answer. Mrs. Bluett, whose name was Tonta, sighed and asked for a highball. She did not smoke, and needed a substitute for the smoker's thoughtful match-lit pause when she was at a loss for words. She was so seldom at a loss for words that a fifth of rye lasted her six weeks. She and Armand were not Horton's parents. Horton's parents were upstairs, but the Bluetts did not know it. Horton was allowed to call Armand and Tonta by their first names.
"Might I ask," said Armand icily, "how long you have had this nauseating habit? Or was it an experiment?"
Horty knew they weren't going to make it easy on him. There was the same puckered expression on Armand's face as when he tasted wine and found it unexpectedly good.
"I don't do it much," Horty said, and waited.
"May the Lord have mercy on us for our generosity in taking in this little swine," said Armand, clapping his hands to his head again. Horty let his breath out. Now that was over with. Armand said it every time he was angry. He marched out to mix Tonta a highball.
"Why did you do it, Horty?" Tonta's voice was more gentle only because her vocal cords were more gently shaped than her husband's. Her face showed the same implacable cold.
"Well, I -- just felt like it, I guess." Horty put his books and catcher's mitt down on the footstool.
Tonta turned her face away from him and made an unspellable, retching syllable. Armand strode back in, bearing a tinkling glass.
"Never heard anything like it in my life," he said scornfully. "I suppose it's all over the school?"
"I guess so."
"The children? The teachers too, no doubt. But of course. Anyone say anything to you?"
"Just Dr. Pell." He was the principal. "He said -- said they could ... "
"Speak up!"
Horty had been through it once. Why, why go through it all again? "He said the school could get along without f-filthy savages."
"I can understand how he felt," Tonta put in, smugly.
"And what about the other kids? They say anything?"

The Dreaming Jewels - Theodore Sturgeon

The Aristocrats - Penn Jilette & Paul Provenza

"I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them happy that i did." George Carlin.

Un uomo entra nell'ufficio di un agente teatrale e gli dice:

"Ho messo su un numero con la mia famiglia. Io e mia moglie entriamo in scena, scopiamo come cani, ci ingroppiamo i nostri figli, ci caghiamo in faccia l'un l'altro e finiamo con una pisciata di gruppo sul nostro cane danzante!"

"Non male. Come si intitola, lo spettacolo?"

"Gli Aristocratici!"

Detta così non è divertente. Perchè le barzellette, come tutte le storie, bisogna saperle raccontare. In un certo senso la barzelletta, la battuta, è l'esempio più breve e perfetto di quanto sia importante non solo cosa racconti ma come lo racconti.

The Aristocrats è un documentario che mostra proprio questo. Per un'ottantina di minuti ci viene ripetuta continuamente la stessa barzelletta che vi ho scritto qua sopra. L'unica cosa che non cambia (quasi) mai è la battuta finale "Gli Aristocratici!"

Ogni comico o comica intervistato interpreta però in maniera differente la parte centrale della barzelletta. Alcuni minimizzano la volgarità preferendo situazioni surreali, altri spingono al massimo l'aspetto sessuale. Alcuni ci infilano dentro di tutto: incesto, bestialità, coprofagia, infanticidio.

Perchè come dice di nuovo George Carlin

"There is no legal system in a joke."

Il documentario mostra anche come comici di epoche, formazione e sesso diverso si pongano di fronte alla volgarità. Termini considerati da censura 50 anni fa ora le sentiamo in ogni episodio di South Park. Epiteti razzisti una volta all'ordine del giorno ora possono causare la fine di una carriera. A seconda del pubblico che si ha di fronte e del proprio stile, ogni comico decide come giocarsela.

Ognuno mette del suo nel racconto della barzelletta. Come dice Penn Jilette:

"It's the singer, not the song!"

Magari vi vengono in mente cover orrende di canzoni che amate. Di solito capita così ma è probabile che vi sia capitato almeno una volta di ascoltare una cover che vi piace di più dell'originale. Perchè chi fa la cover in qualche modo riesce a comunicare con voi in maniera più efficace dell'autore originale. A me è capitato con Hurt. La cover di Johnny Cash mi lascia ogni volta con la pelle d'oca. L'originale dei Nine Inch Nails mi lascia sempre indifferente.

Per cui ascoltando i comici che vengono intervistati lungo il video riuscirete a notare il loro stile nonostante la battuta sia la stessa. Ascoltate George Carlin, Eddi Izzard, Gotlieb e Steven Wright. Ognuno di loro la rende diversa, infila nella punteggiatura del racconto parte del proprio stile o delle proprie tematiche. E nel nutrito gruppo di comici di sicuro ne troverete almeno uno che la saprà raccontare nel modo che riesce a far ridere voi, mentre altri vi lasceranno con un'espressione media stampata in faccia. Se non di disgusto e fastidio.

Uno dei comici intervistati dice

"Il tipo di volgarità che il comico inserisce nella barzelletta dice molto della persona che la racconta. Se indulge molto nella bestialità, non lasciategli il cane quando andate in vacanza."

Probabilmente vale anche per chi la barzelletta l'ascolta. La volgarità o meno di determinati termini o temi è strettamente collegata alla morale e al vissuto di ciascuno. E questi possono più o meno variare nel tempo, spinti dalla pressione sociale o da avvenimenti di qualsiasi tipo. Poche settimane dopo l'11 settembre, a una serata di gala di comici, Gilbert Gottfried tent˜ una battuta su voli di linea e bombe. Nessuno rise e dal pubblico si alzò una voce:

"Too soon, man!"

"Troppo presto, amico!"

Gottfried decise di salvarsi raccontando Gli Aristocratici.

In questo senso il documentario se racconta la storia di questa particolare barzelletta, affronta quesiti interessanti e fondamentali non solo per la comicità tutta ma per il racconto in ogni sua forma. Chi decide cosa si possa raccontare e in che modo possa essere raccontato? Cosa rende un racconto pi efficae di un altro? Che cosa è troppo volgare o sacro e perchè dopo un po' non lo è più? Insomma roba interessante e che, a seconda del vostro senso dell'umorismo, fa sganasciare. Se poi siete intenzionati a fare ridere le persone, a prescindere dal vostro mezzo espressivo, sono domande che vi dovete porre prima o poi.

Lo potete vedere a spezzoni su Youtube, partendo dal video qua sotto.

E se come me avete problemi a comprendere l'inglese quando viene parlato a velocità smodata e con accenti e cadenze diverse, potete leggere la sceneggiatura qua.