WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

No need to argue: everyone knows ZOMBIE of The Cranberries.

I can’t simply call it a song, to me it’s history.
It has recently exceeded one billion views on YouTube and I admit that some are mine.
A deserved success, which closes the circle of the previous song of the year proclamation at the 1995 MTV Awards.
Zombie was shot by Samuel Bayer, who also made the video of “Smells like teen Spirit” to be clear, but more than the undoubted quality, I would linger on the message and on the voice of Dolores O’Riordan.
Unfortunately now the first thing that is mentioned everywhere about her is the circumstance of death, but I would like to talk about life.
Not of her biography in detail, but I would particularly underline how she wrote this piece in a flash, after learning of the tragic death of two kids from a bomb.
Although the episode took place in Ireland in 1993, a specific sadly known context, Dolores has always avoided politicizing.
“In your head, in your head” Dolores repeats it, she invokes, she invites to think, it would seem banal and yet too often it is not.
Hers is a cry to unite, to awaken.
“Violence causes silence.”
I find that Dolores knows how to make this silence speak, she knows how to give voice to pain, she knows how to shout not anger, but the strength to say enough.
Zombie is against violence, against the inability to stop violence.
This song’s our cry against man’s inhumanity to man; and man’s inhumanity to child.”
Dolores O’Riordan

I don’t know about you but as far as I’m concerned, the thought comes loud and clear and settles viscerally.
Her “another mother’s breaking heart” becomes mine.
Her voice, her unique way of singing, constitute the focal point: a catalyst, which allows the message to communicate all its disruptive despair.
Zombie was inspired by a child’s death. His life was taken in the arm’s of his mother. She was shopping in London last year, and there was a bomb planted in a rubbish bin in London and he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and he died. The reason the bomb was planted was because of a political territorial kind of thing that goes on in the North of Ireland and the UK. So the references to 1916 was when a contract was signed, which signed away the 6 counties to England. And it still goes on today: the war, the deaths, and the injustice.”
Dolores O’Riodan

Zombies who see and feel pain, yet do nothing.
Zombies not from horror movies and yet terribly scarier: us.

DALGONA COFFEE

DALGONA COFFEE

While here we demonstrate to be more a people of bakers, expressing ourselves in pizza, bread, and cakes of all kinds, in other countries the Dalgona Coffee Challenge goes crazy: it comes from Korea, where both the quarantine and the challenge started first.
What does Dalgona mean?
The name comes from Korean street food, more precisely a lollipop-shaped snack called and Ppogi. This Ppogi / Dalgona is made with caramelized sugar and baking soda, which gives a spongy texture. The melted sugar is spread in a rounded shape on a plaque. Then made to solidify by affixing molds with designs of various types, to which the classic stick is fixed.
How does it associate with Dalgona coffee? I would say for the creaminess.
The base principle could be associated with the cream that our grandmothers made with the first coffee that came out of the coffee maker and with sugar.
The mixture obtained, in many of the various ways of execution with instant coffee and electric whisks, is placed on top of the cold milk.
Perhaps here we would not associate the final result properly with the name “coffee”, but the appearance is certainly very inviting.
Have you already tried?
If you want to try:
two teaspoons of instant coffee
two of sugar
two of water
and then mix

the “keep calm” version also includes a pinch of cinnamon 🙂

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

I start with Debbie Harry, simply because I particularly like this photo and I hope it can be an inspiration for you too.
I would skip the details of his life more strictly personal and I would speak directly of the mythical times of the CBGB after the meeting with Chris Stein and the creation of Blondie who have characterized the scene since 1974 for a long period full of successes.
Without a doubt, I mention Call Me for the collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, which has become an iconic soundtrack and more generally a piece that evokes an emotional flashback at every listening: new wave, disco music, dance rock.
Debbie stayed with Chris for fifteen years during which they also fought a serious illness together.
A wonderful Heart of glass, but at the same time a strong heart, this is the first thought I have of all about her.
A woman who at fifty-three continues marking history with a first place in the chart that enters Guinness.
A woman who knows how to cross past present and future without distinction, like her portrait made by Andy Wharol with the Amiga 1000 computer.
A woman also celebrated in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who has been able to become a symbol with her ruffled hair and an uncalculated look but framed by her determination.
And his One way or another, deliberately covered with joy as a “survival mechanism”, resounds sadly current, making us reflect once again on the fact that over time, we persist in not treasuring experiences and that we cannot learn from mistakes, getting worse.
Anyway, let’s start from her smile and her intent to restore lightness and take an example, one way or another …

WHEN THE SURPRISE IS BITTER

WHEN THE SURPRISE IS BITTER

Sometimes it is nice to be able to say “ah but someone is still there!” … it’s like a breath, like a proof that hope really dies last, even if the cases of people countercurrent are like rainbows: rare.
So, I suppose that despite the fact they don’t have easy names, I will remember the French lawyers who prepared a lawsuit against EA Sport by equating the FUT mode of the FIFA video game with gambling.
A system very often illusory has been developed with the high risk of creating addiction, which pushes players, generally very young, to spend real money, to buy packages with random content that should contain rare and important players, or options to improve game results: the FUT Fifa Ultimate Team mode.
In fact, a loot box, that is, a virtual consumer object, and not a “surprise” comparable to those of eggs to be clear, as claimed by the company already convened before the United Kingdom Gambling Commission.
So esteem and solidarity with the lawyers, with the hope that they can represent a sort of forerunner for further dutiful cases against other giants that make good and bad weather in various areas.
Also the fact that teenagers profiles are hacked speaks volumes about how much what is acquired within the game has taken on a value that borders on the virtual.
Anyway not even this aspect seems to worry the EA.
Being able to make contact, and to obtain concrete help from customer support, is a challenge as difficult as being able to find the same precious players that some youtubers can easily show off.
So, in spite of the fact that it is theft, in addition to the damage there is the mockery of not being able to play anymore, because nobody cares to protect the legitimate owner of the profile.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to specify that the “surprise” in many cases turns out to be bitter …

CIGARETTES AND COFFEE … NEVER AGAIN?

CIGARETTES AND COFFEE … NEVER AGAIN?

The Swedish model keep going on to seem an example to follow and the mayor of Milan drew inspiration from it by proposing to extend the ban on smoking even in open spaces: at bus stops and for those who are queuing for the use of public services, for reach by 2030 a total ban in any open place.
This announcement, followed by an inevitable aftermath of controversy, comes precisely in the occasion of the fifteenth birthday of the Sirchia law, named after the Minister of Health who proposed it, i.e. the ban on smoking in closed public places, which entered into force on 10 January 2005.
The Higher Institute of Health, taking stock of the statistics originating from that date, reports the following data:
During these fifteen years of application of the anti-smoking law, sales of traditional cigarettes have gone from about 92,822 tons in 2005 to about 67,460 tons in 2018, with a decrease of 27.3%. On the other hand, there was an important surge in sales of shredded tobacco (including pipe tobacco), which in the same period recorded an increase of over 500%.
Beyond the statistics, I am particularly interested in knowing your opinion since, for those who smoke, the cigarette is notoriously consequential to coffee.
As far as I’m concerned, the behaviors of smokers that I observe already contemplate respect: no cigarettes in the presence of children, no cigarettes in the car in the presence of other people, no cigarettes in the homes of others etc.
In the meantime, the new budget law has further raised the amount of minimum excise duties (already increased with the 2019’s budget law) by raising the basic rate of cigarettes to 59.8%, a good bit of a deterrent I would say.
… so, the back and forth through my mind of Seven Nation Army is intended to be no longer behind a cigarette?

Archives

Pin It on Pinterest