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CATS

Mar 4, 2023 | A COFFEE WITH, A COFFEE WITH

A-mici in città is a focus on cats by Legambiente, which offered an opportunity to survey some data.

The aspect I would like to focus on is this: at the feline registry, the municipality with the highest number of cats per number of inhabitants is the town of Sant’Angelo in Lomellina: more than one cat for every two citizens.

We may say that in these parts cats do particularly well 🙂

In fact, Gravellona even boasts a cat mayor.

I can’t help but immediately think of the cats from the famous “junkyard somewhere in London” … did you guess yet?!

I’m talking about the legendary Jellicle Cats!

There is no need for me to add anything else, is there?

If anything, I should add gratitude to Andrew Lloyd Webber for giving us Cats: a joyously engaging musical, full of vitality, and magically kaleidoscopic.

Wonderful music, stunning costumes and makeup, enchanting choreography.

Source of inspiration: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Elliot.

I still remember my amazement the first time: immediately enraptured by the thought of the three names:

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter.
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

How many names do you have?

Actually we humans have more names too, don’t we?

One of the nicknames I have always used is really the name of one of the characters in Cats.

My husband gave me the musical dvd back in the days when it was not so easy to get this kind of things, and he gave me even more: we saw Cats at the Arcimboldi! Sitting in our seats as the Jellicle Cats peeked out around us, I’m still heart-eyed 🙂

May I invite you to review a small excerpt together?

Now would you tell me about the cats living with you or near you?

SHADOW

Oct 8, 2022 | TECHNOLOGY

Shadow, what is your first thought?

I start by quoting people: Nick.

Then random: motors

Music

Movies

I could go on, more and more, would you like to mention other examples as well?

The world is full of shadows …

I wonder how the choice to call Shadow even a computer that can be accessed remotely came about.

It is is a powerful Windows PC that allows to use any kind of application without buying hardware, which as you know, tends to be obsolete very quickly, as well as expensive.

A faculty that opens up a kind of new and important revolution with respect to the use of technology in our daily lives.

Or do you see it more as another standardization?

The obvious and immediate benefits come in the form of being able to operate at maximum power without having to shell out large sums in equipment purchases.

Also at the level of the environment, the exploitation of certain materials would certainly be reduced, and above all, the need for disposal of many devices would be reduced, since everyone would be able to operate with the available device, simply by connecting.

However, connection may also be the first downside: if it goes off, all work would stop.

The same if the “server” would break.

And again: the conditions at the beginning may appear advantageous, but the costs could rise uncontrollably, as we are unfortunately seeing.

So there is a risk of finding oneself regretting the old PC, perhaps slow but working.

Light, or shadow?

While we decide, something “dark” undoubtedly is the cloud!

I can’t help but think about the scene in which Jason Segel yells at Cameron Diaz, “nobody knows what the cloud is!”

The infamous cloud: a kind of black hole where our data ends up, or a valuable opportunity?

To USerS 🙂 the harsh judgment.

MUSICAL MOCHA

Aug 14, 2022 | MUSIC, WHO CARES

On the fact that the bubbling of coffee rising in the mocha is a pleasant sound we all agree, right?

I report again the chance to download the ringtone.

We have already seen together an alternative use of the mocha for cooking mushrooms.

Do you know of any others?

Following Giuliano Sangiorgi‘s participation at the Locomotive Jazz Festival I saw that the mocha can become a musical instrument!

They are the MOKA Family big band.

They call themselves fourteen crazy musicians who, armed with instruments and musical mokes, shoot thoughtful lyrics to the rhythm of Symphonic Swing’n’Roll in a stage-musical game suspended between reality and imagination.

Sounds like a good saraband to me, the merriment is infectious, don’t you think?

So thinking about the musical mocha, what other object produces a sound that you particularly enjoy?

It could be the sizzle of pancakes, the “sclock” of the cap of a jam jar … here we also go on onomatopoeia and therefore I ask for help with the right words.

Dried fruit at Christmas sclock?

Or is it the cookies under the teeth that crackle?

In The Big Chill for example, the characters make a sheet of aluminum foil musical.

Cate Blanchett in Bandits uses ladle and pots.

And when you throw yourself on the sofa? The noise is muffled and preludes the welcome of comfort that awaits us.

Staying on the relaxation moments but also on the music theme: are you among those who under the roar of the shower water sing?

What do you like to sing?

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TODAY TO EARN YOUR PLACE IN THIS CROWDED WORLD?

Jan 12, 2022 | BOOKS, MOVIES, BOOKS, MOVIES, MUSIC, MUSIC

What have you done today to earn your place in this crowded world?

The character played by John Cusack asks this question to everyone in Utopia.

In naming Utopia my first association of thought is Thomas More.

Among other things, remaining in the field of cinematographic fiction, Thomas More is mentioned in Leonardo’s Cinderella played by Drew Barrymore, for example.

But I discovered that Utopia is also a movie about Australian Aborigines, and seeing the painful trailer let think that situation has stopped at the time as told by Baz Luhrmann.

Utopia however is in any expression of thought.

It is art, as described in this comment, it’s a song by Björk, it is not for The Offspring, it’s even a video game.

Utopia is a controversial Channel 4 series then revised for an Amazon production by an exceptional showrunner: Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl and screenwriter by David Fincher, who appears in three different cameos, and disseminates various Easter eggs.

Utopia thus becomes a graphic novel. Viral …

A weird group of fans in search of this mysterious “comic” to be interpreted by riddles, find themselves catapulted into a reality that prefigures dystopia rather than Utopia.

Comics to tell the truth not really, it is a series of drawings by the artist Joao Ruas: some of the inspirations behind his work are the dawn of mankind, folklore, magical realism, the concept of wabi-sabi (侘寂) and human conflict.

Gillian Flynn, in an interview with the New York Times said: “I think it’s a Rorschach test … It’s a show designed to let you find what you want from it, and have different points of view, which is exactly where we are right now.”

Speaking of points of view, John Cusack, in his first role in a series, plays Kevin Christie … but rather than my Agatha, it is inspired by well-known characters of a completely different genre.

Those who follow him have the opportunity to know how much John has a certain aversion to some of Mr. Christie’s alter egos, which is why it was a cathartic interpretation.

In his interview published by The Guardian in addition to defining himself a kind of Cassandra, he gave me an amazing ending!

Cusack rubs his tired eyes. He drinks from his big tin tankard of coffee. (!) Who knows, he says? “Maybe being outspoken hurts your career… I’m just aware it helps me sleep better at night, knowing that I wasn’t passive during this time.”

After all, isn’t such an awareness already a kind of Utopia for many of us?

How do you see Utopia?

An exceptional admirer saw Utopia like this:

Stephen King writes:
I’m loving UTOPIA, on Amazon Prime. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea, given the times we’re living in, but it has the slow build to full steam that I associate with page-turning novels. Horrifying, violent, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.

And what song goes with the trailer?

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
R.E.M.

But this world, how should it be earned every day in your opinion?

I would rather ask: what have you done today to improve this world?

Even if to tell the truth I would be without answers …

BRUISES AND MUSIC

Dec 20, 2021 | THE X-MAS CAROLS

Bruises and music is the name of the blog that gives us today’s story for the Advent calendar.

In addition to Bruises and music on the blog I found the dose of irony I really like, and in addition to bruises there may also be broken bones, just as in addition to music there may also be stories, dreams, ideas, insights, considerations, random phrases … that is my natural habitat.

In fact, I found myself very well and I liked the particular surprise at the end of the story.

And I immediately immersed myself in the story because the story is here and now, it’s reality, it’s the imperfection of an idealized character, it’s pocket-sized Magic.

Yes, the magic we can perhaps try to aspire to, the restricted magic, the reduced magic, the magic that can contain hope.

Whoever writes is not a bot, whoever writes knows paranoia quite well, whoever reads and is like me, understands, but above all whoever reads will love Hippos for Christmas:

The conveyor belt started with a dull hum, and the first thing he saw coming was a pack of dog diapers. The old man took it reluctantly, turned it around in his hand for a couple of seconds as if he were observing an unknown alien life form and finally slipped it into the box, ready to be packed… go on here.