Author: Marc Alan Di Martino

Mark Twain on New England weather

I’ve been ruffling through my bookshelves, preparing to box up my library (again!) for the impending move. It is at such times that I come across the most interesting passages. The following comes from Mark Twain’s Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales, and I dedicate it to all my New Englander family and friends who have been struggling of late with a snow-shovel.

“If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries – the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold – the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.”

Let’s all get smashed on homeopathic heroin

This weekend the 10:23 Challenge will be held across the world. That’s exciting, because any opportunity to poke a little fun at homeopathy is worth taking. I do it all the time, and the effects are strikingly similar to those of a full bottle of 30C Belladonna. Well, they’re a bit stronger really. Typical side effects include snickering.

I’ve been having a little fun myself on Facebook debating homeopathy with friends. It appears everyone knows it’s pretty much just a huge matzoh ball floating in a sea of schmaltz, but I’ve also heard a few voices claiming it still must not be entirely worthless.

Why? Because millions of people believe it works? Because it’s just a placebo dressed up for a dinner party? It’s true, the placebo effect is unpredictable and – ahem – mysterious, but I can’t see how that would give homeopathy any credit. Riding on coattails and all that. It’s the same as people who defend prayer by saying it makes people feel better. So does masturbation. What’s your point?

Perhaps you’re reading this and asking yourself, “What the hell is homeopathy anyway?” It’s not herbal medicine, if that’s what you were thinking. It’s a bit like taking a magic pill any time something ails you. People lie and tell you it does extraordinary things that science can’t detect or explain. And that it takes a while to begin working, and you can’t expect resuts right away. And so on and so forth. Stories. Anecdotes. People say this, people say that. “Malarial-shaped holes.” Bollocks, in short.

Have a nice weekend.

Killer gnomes!

Remember when you were a kid in the ’80s and your sister had a copy of that gnome book with the weird cover? Well, now gnomes are back, hot on the heels of vampires, zombies and Android Jesus. What’s next, vengeful lawn furniture? Exploding Christmas ornaments?

Before you take homeopathy, watch this video. You can’t even oversdose on this stuff!

via Butterflies and Wheels. Mwah!

Capoeira graffiti

I found this drawing on the wall in Stazione Termini in Rome this afternoon. It was on the stairwell, so I took out my phone and snapped a photo of it. It was too nice not to want to share. Besides, my wife is a capoerista, so I thought she’d appreciate the gesture. (She did.)

Snazzy Italian footwear

Imagine that…

*(I hope the artist doesn’t mind me posting this cartoon. Click on the boot to see more of his/her work.)

Cipollapods!

Have you ever wondered about cephalopods? Well, I present you with the first half-vegetable, half-squid: I’ll call it a cipollapod. Cipolla means “onion” in Italian, of course. I found them swimming in my kitchen cabinet this morning. Instead of throwing them away, I catalogued them. Then I threw them away.

Samuel Menashe Reads at the Harvard Club

On this blog, in addition to my atheistic screeds, I like to keep my readers up to date with stuff I publish elsewhere. Usually this kind of stuff has to make it past editors, so it’s kosher (the kids can read it). Here is a poem of mine that came out in the Winter 2011 issue of Italian Americana. It’s not online so, if you don’t subscribe, this may be your only chance to read it. Like you were going to lose sleep over it.

The bad news is that I had to upload this as an image because WordPress blogs can’t really handle poetry. Neither, apparently, can GoogleDocs. Anyway, click on the image above to read the whole thing. It’s the best I could manage.

Note: Samuel Menashe is a real, living poet. I didn’t make him up. He lives in New York City. In 2004 he was – really! – awarded the “Neglected Masters Award” by the Poetry Foundation. The above poem is based on many true events jumbled by memory and then recorded years later by close attention to music and meter.

What are they saying?

I’m looking for a caption for this cartoon.* If you think you have a good one, post it in the comments! You might find inspiration here. Of course, the winner gets his or her caption inserted in the quotes.

*For the cartoon caption winner, see the cartoon archive.