Crisis, what crisis?
Rodolfo de Angelis’ great 1930s hit explains how to get ourselves out of the mess we’ve got ourselves into.
Tag: italian language
Needed, a ballad for the Olli Rehn empire
Featuring Umberto Eco on Orgasmus, an obscure Restoration Scottish nationalist on London, Mexico’s revolutionary and narco-corridos, and Italian Renaissance bandit- and Camorra-praise poetry, all for the benefit of the European Union’s commissar for provincial affairs.
Help with Milanese?
I’m troubled by a scatological sonnet.
The storks of war
A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.
Catalan language policy: Marxist, Stalinist, Francoist or fascist?
The precedents for, and some possible implications of, the Catalanisation of Barcelona’s cinemas. Plus some crowd-pleasing video of the Quebec language police in action. (Allez! Allez! Allez! And the hell with the economy!) All in somewhat fevered response to an article by Martin Dahms in the Tages-Anzeiger.
Pig / lion / monkey / child wine
A Portuguese menagerie of sozzledness.
Spanish/French shibboleth commemorates the brief reign of Joseph Bonaparte
Why I’m called Trevor
Or rather, how my grandfather seems to have been named after a minor railway station.
Pan di Spagna?
A Sicilian says it ain’t.
The Italians have the all best games
(Even if they can’t make a decent paella.)