In which html tags are abused
- I don't like the soccer fan, because he has a strange defect: he cannot understand why you are not a fan yourself, and he insists on talking to you as if you were. (...) It isn't that he doesn't care a fig that I don't care a fig. It's that he can't conceive that anyone could exist and not care a fig. (...) He has no notion of the diversity, the variety, the incomparability of the various possible worlds.
Eco, Umberto. How not to talk about soccer. How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays (1994)
I bought this book in English not only because I don't think I'd be able to read it in the original Italian (that one was free of charge for you, Chatte du Mal), nor because I love this man to bits, but because it was the only readable (and cheap) thing I could find to entertain myself in that Town Lost From God's Hand while most of our little expedition was on the hospital due food poisoning.
At first, we thought it was because of the dry law that every single restaurant and fonda was closed by 10 pm in a Saturday night, but the doctor told us that's the way it is: "Even if we are listed as a city in the maps, even if we have lots of tourists, we are a small town in our hearts", he said while blood samples were being taken. Cute, innit? Well, the point is that, the night before, since we had no idea and they were hungry (I had eaten some sweets in the afternoon), they ended up buying pre-processed sandwiches in a (small too, of course) self-service store and heating them in the (small) microwave oven at the hotel.
Worse thing? We checked the caducity date, it was at least two weeks from that day, and yet the ham was apparently rotten.
After the doctor left the room, one of them said "You know? Now that I think about it, I think the ham did smell funny." If he hadn't been in so obvious pain I would had hit him. _._
I have a lot of things to catch up with, so I'll tell you about the good part of the trip later. o.o/~