A Book Of Aphorisms And Quotations

A book Of Aphorisms By Anthony st. john

Anthony st. john Casella postale 38 50041 calenzano fi Italia Telephone and fax: 055-887.32.28 Cellphone: 0335-604.73.81

Never argue with a woman cleaning the house during her premenstrual tension. Never marry a woman for her money. Marry her for the money of her father. 1

Psychoanalysis is an hysterical reaction to history. Journalism is an exaggeration of an exaggeration. Tennis is the boxing match of introverts. The first profession was marriage. preserve the idea of love.

Prostitution was created to

I observe many people who believe in many gods; but, I do not see one god who believes in one person. Better Be Christian at the BBC or you will be beebed by The Beeb. It is not armed force that will bring us to peace; it is the force of argument that will. “My dearest Queen Elizabeth, I wish to tell you something. You do not see it, I know! But there are enormous cracks in the foundations of democracy in the Disunited Kingdom that are causing much unnecessary suffering for many of your subjects.” The Spanish burn out their frustrations. theirs.

The Italians cultivate

How do you un-exist something? Credit must be given to Europe for being so obstinate so long. A museum is a reminder to us of how stupid we are. The tragicomedy of this century is watching startlingly-slow industrialised nations enter the Computer Age. Northamericans express scientifically their apprehend. Europeans express theirs artistically.

slowness

to

Stupidity is a safety measure to prevent the immediate escape of intelligence.

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I have loved and I do love and I will love individual human beings. Yet I loathe mankind. Who needs nuclear bombs when we have nuclear reactors? The only hope we have is that our sons and daughters will be less daft than their fathers and mothers. Yes, silence can be golden. But, it also might serve as the refuge of censors, bureaucrats and twerps. The family is an organisation which—like the police—may disturb you early Sunday morning while you are sound asleep. The Japanese are making real the dreams of Leonardo da Vinci. And the Italians are infuriated! Electronically-controlled church bells ringing on early Sunday morning will be the eternal vendetta of dead priests. A toy is a more sophisticated game. Ernest Hemingway is a bore, but David Leavitt makes him read excitingly. The most popular holy picture in Italy is green and it has a portrait of George Washington upon it. If you want to live serenely with a woman, you must learn to stop urinating on the toilet seat. The mass media cannot be held responsible for the way it tells us what news it tells us, but it is responsible for leaving out what news it has elected to omit. “We are doing something wrong, and we know it!” Is it not strange that we put men who call themselves Napoleon in mental hospitals, but those who claim to be representatives of unseen gods we put in pulpits? The Vietnam veteran is not crazy because he went to Vietnam. He is crazy because he continues to live in the United States. 3

Mass media specialists might quicken up the speed of meanings of words and so dilute the previously recognised significance of them, and lead the way to creating a new vocabulary. Overall, unfortunately, they distort more than they create. Atom bombs are like gods: people who believe in them say they are everywhere; but, no one ever sees them. “The Earth is said to be about 5,000,000,000 years old. We have not found in this time a universal name for a god [spelled backwards: dog!] or even for the measurement of our shoes. The only word I know which has a sense of that pertaining to or affecting the entire world, or all within the world, is the child’s utterance for defecation: pooh-pooh.” “If we want to know our true selves, we must despair of us every day.” We will never be perfect, but we must always seek perfection— even for the hell of it! The British will laugh at Northamericans for their electronic evangelism. But do not laugh at the British for their BBC evangelism. The idea of god and churches have made human wisdom seem foolish. When will human wisdom make god and churches seem foolish? Maybe the only way the Earth might save itself is if it is attacked from Outer Space, and Earthlings are forced to unite together against a common enemy—not themselves. Whenever I meet a very rich person, I ask immediately: “What is the capitalistic system like?” And the immediate response: “Don’t you know?” And I reply: “No, I don’t have enough money to enjoy it.” Then: “Why don’t you work like me and earn some so you can enjoy it.” Becoming old means learning what dose of sentimentality you can swallow.

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I have never met a woman who could clean the bathroom as well as I can. They are always in a hurry to do so many things: raise children, work, cook, clean… DON’T THINK! You might become intelligent. Can you cut off the taste of the food in your mouth using the power of your brain? I have been on this side (capitalism) of the fence for so long that to switch to the other (communism) would be like swapping Christian for Jewish. What would it be like for a Christian to see through the eyes of a Jew? Being true to yourself is like shooting painful bulls-eyes. The biggest business in Italy is not Ferraris or shoes or sweaters. It is Christianity. A nation is developing when the perforation machines—used to divide individual pieces of toilet paper—are maintained. I have never had enough money to say that I might have enjoyed the capitalistic system. Have you? I live nine kilometres from Firenze. It takes twenty minutes to get there by horse and forty-five minutes to get there by bus. I buy three or four eaux de cologne and mix them together when I get home. Italians suffer an oral dyslexia. Certain speakers of Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Provençal, French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, and Rumanian have done two very important things for me in my life: they have kept me in a constant, medium to low-high state of justifiable irritation; and, they have taught me to acquire some degree of patience. Italians are like snow—falling to the ground—that does not stick.

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Italians are the caretakers of the remains of one of the biggest lies in the history of the world. I am a thinker who dreams and a dreamer who thinks. Everybody is my friend! Italians are at their best when they pretend to be happy. There was a time when you took your date out and asked what book your date was reading. Today, you ask your date if he/she has ever read a book! Before coming to Italy, I had always wondered why there are so many saints in Italy. Now I know why. You have to be a saint to live in Italy! In love, in war four things count: you must be awake; you must be afraid; you must have respect; and, you must be assured. Beethoven has “pushed” me more than anyone. Capitalism is not working, but people are swearing to their gods that it is. My economy is simple: All those who have more money than me, are thieves. And, to the rest, I am a thief. People say they took an aspirin for their headaches. Or they had an operation to remove their cancers. Or they had a tooth extracted to cure their toothache. But never have I heard people say they have been cured of their neuroses or psychoses. Have you? Is it not amazing that the same nation that drops napalm on children can drop men on the moon? I snap out at the stupidity of man not because I am anymore intelligent, but because wherever I go for enlightenment, I am laughed at. The mass media reports the news efficiently, elegantly, and fantastically. What it does not report, disturbs me. 6

He/she does not want to be in love. He/she wants to be in sex. I do not want to be published. I want to be immortalised. There are really only two political parties in the world: that of theism (black) and that of atheism (red). Journalists and politicians sleep together in the same bed. But the journalists do not get up on the same side on which they entered the bed—after. Rationalism would be a fantastic philosophy if there were enough rationalists around. “The Northamericans have out-Europed Europe. Old Mother Europe is choking with a feeling of discontent and resentment. She is contemplating the desirable possessions of Northamerica with a strong desire to have them for herself.” Europe is like a one-hundred-year-old on a life support system. Everyone is torn between pulling the plug and facing the inheritance tax music. I have lived in “democratic” Italy for many years, but I have not yet had the liberty to attend a football match. The United States and its allies continue to hang chandeliers of exotic weapons all over the world. Phobias are un-definable reactions to universal insanities. Mother Europe is going through her menopause. We invite those who say they represent a god we have never seen, and beg them to fan crosses over the food we will eat. There is a revolutionary wing in the Roman Catholic Church. After centuries, it is now permitting women to sing Gregorian Chant! English is synthetic and radical.

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I have met many stupid people in my life. Italians are the first to tell me they are proud to be stupid as long as it is Italian stupid. We look to the past with a sense of superiority, and in museums and churches we come upon a spatial existence that bolsters our egos even more. Communism did not work. And capitalism does not, either. Why? What are we doing wrong? Northamericans liberated Italy from the Germans, but they did not liberate Italy from the Italians. Italy is the richest, poorest country in the world. Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain are underdeveloped First World Countries. Are the Germans more dense for building concentration camps, or for continuing to keep them in their memories. There is an imperative in the world for all people to join in a spirit of community. But, there is not enough capital to permit them to do so. The ultimate compliment is this: learned something from it.

I enjoyed your work, and I

Science is twisting mankind’s arm to believe in itself, and religionists are fuming. Without doubt there is no intelligence. Writers are individuals who acquire patience by force. One must measure carefully one’s dosage of irrationality. Rationality is like wine. It can help you to digest; or, it can kill you. Sure I won. But they gave the prize to another.

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Italians are playing Russian roulette with a pistol that has one bullet in a chamber with one-thousand bores. They are convinced they will not be shot, and they have forgot the name of the game they are playing. They are making radios so small you have to blow on them to change the stations. Divorce is better than murder. If you live in Italy for a hundred years and you are not Italian, you will never be made to feel Italian. The easiest place to steal in this world is in a government. And you do not have to carry a gun. Where are the politicians who can walk amongst their people without bodyguards? It is more fun to make history than it is to write about it. Jesus changed water into wine, and Science is changing Jesus into thin air. We would not be here if we could not be. Boy Scouts are shoehorned into the army. There are women who flash their children just as an undercover detective flashes his badge. Europeans are secure of their existences; insecure of theirs.

Northamericans are

An artist does not need a professor. He/she teaches something even when wrong. You do not hear people saying anymore that the world is going to the dogs. Just about everyone knows now this mess is not even fit for them. For the most part, people listen to the music of a song; they do not listen so much to its words. Even French people. If they paid 9

close attention to the words of La Marseillaise, it might become the most detested song in France. I must be getting old. I am starting to listen to what others have to say! Northamericans have been obtuse for more than two-hundred years. Europeans have been obtuse for more than two-thousand years. Europe must unite to save itself. But before it does, it must take vitamins. I do not accept awards—only money. Walk backwards when you are leaving so I may think you are coming home. I am an Inductionist. I analyze from Particulars to the General. I am a P(I)G! Can it be that it is more of a crime to kill an animal which does not think than to kill one which says it can? I agree with Harry Truman: History is bunk! After all, it should not be the goal of mankind to insist upon reviewing its stupidity. Rather, we should seek to do something about the present state of affairs—and now! The Bible and the works of Shakespeare have something in common: theists and Englishmen buy them, but they do not read them even though there are miracles to be found in both of them! Have you ever seen a disabled horse or snake? Italians are always dressed to go to church—but they never go. I am ecstatically delighted to know I am not happy. I’m happy I’m not happy.

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The world is distressed and disabled, and two medicines are being prescribed: the witchcraft of capitalism and the witchcraft of communism. Italian politics is like Italian religion: everyone believes in it—but no one sees it. He thinks with his penis and fornicates with his brain. Boxing is proof not so much that the human race is obtuse as

much as it is proof that the human race wants to be obtuse. Architecture is frozen music. The sad truth of the matter is that Europeans are condemned to become more like Northamericans; and, Northamericans are condemned to become more like Europeans. Italians are like stamps that do not have glue on their backs. They do not stick. The nation that gave us hot dogs with sauerkraut and Beethoven cannot be all that bad. “Unlike the Germans and the Japanese, the Italians have still not “recovered” to some extent from their humiliations born during World War II. And just when Italians need to be healthy and strong to confront those European realities that will come after the turn of the twentieth century, they are weak and confused.” A unified Western Europe is just too sophisticated for a people who have never been able to afford safety to their citizens seated in football stadiums. With all the gods and religions around us, would it not be more honest to say that they have been invented by man? Democracy is more real when the promises of politicians are fulfilled before election day. Which god do you believe in? There are so many of them! The way to a woman’s heart is through her fallopian tubes. 11

Life is so unjust we are forced to do one of three things: Conform, and pretend we are not stealing; steal, and pretend we are not conforming; or, write poetry and conform and steal at the same time! An Italian businessman dreams and then looks for money. A Northamerican businessman gets the money and then dreams. Each hand washes the other and together they shake. Knowledge derived from study and experience can be invested with that which serves to distinguish one thing from others and gives a result or effect that is intended. I have loved women without touching them; and, I have touched women without loving them. Better to love and touch in unison! He said he never had enough money to buy the wife he really wanted. Children are incomplete adults. And we all know what happens to adults. I have six billion friends, but I would not waste one minute with 99% of them. My nation is the world and my nationality is worldly. The coming battles to unite Europe will do more to strengthen socialism than did the two world wars. Little facts can be the origins of big lies especially in the hands of journalists and politicians. Tranquility or Artillery? There are millions of women in the world who want a baby more than they want a husband. And they will fake taking their birth control pills to get their baby. Now I know why Victorian men went away to smoke cigars and drink brandy after dinner. They were being kind. 12

When the family approaches you to ask when you are going “to have a baby,” ask them when they are going to pay for it! He’s as Northamerican as cocaine! Chevrolet…Apple pie…Coca-Cola…Mom…Valium…Librium… Marijuana…Cocaina…JUST SAY “No”!!! He’s not obtuse. He’s frequently ignorant! Do as I say. Don’t do as I do. Larry is a lawyer and a liar. Larry is a liar and a lawyer. Larry is a lying lawyer! No, history does not repeat itself! But human beings can be depended upon to be constantly obtuse. Behind every great woman there is a baffled man. Dumas said: “Next to God no one has created more than Shakespeare.” What about Beethoven? The music of Beethoven has touched me more than the words of any literary genius. Nations are diseases we must find vaccines for. I am jumping for joy that Europe has selected Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for its anthem and not some idiotic Gregorian Chant. The image of a very large wedge. And to think the United States is self-conscious about Europe! Managing change means changing management. The European Union, instead of leading to a utopia of neocapitalism, will be the stimulus for a revival of neo-Marxism. I am a rationalistic empiricist who acts on probabilities.

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My writings need to be published so that they may find their just reality. Why should we not save animals? We cannot save ourselves. One of my passions is to let people know how obtuse they are without telling them. Breast feeding is vital for the mother, for the child, and for humanity. But, above all, it is vivifying for the breast! It stimulates the prosperous growth of the nipples! The Earth is billions of years old. What is “god” waiting for? Simpatico is a word which means that if I stab you in the back you had better not cry, or else I will tell everyone you are not nice. Our Father who art in heaven—STAY THERE! There is not life after death. That is why we have inheritance taxes. All the world is happy Europe is acting out its frustrations on the football field and not on the battlefield. The problem with some countries in Europe is not that they should be worried about entering the twenty-first century; but, that they should be worried about entering the 1960s. Maturity is the ability to resist. They wear their children just as they wear their furs and gold watches. She is the mother of John, Jr. but the husband of John, Sr.. For the world to have peace, we must confirm one and other. But before we confirm others, we must confirm ourselves. We must connect words and ideas with actions.

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Being smart is knowing how ignorant you are. If you want to appear intelligent, tell everyone you think of yourself as being stupid! Children are acting like adults. Adults are acting like children. Italians are geniuses of design and fashion, but they are mentally retarded when it comes to selling and marketing. I’m a capcom! A capitalistic communist. “It does not make sense—and it should not.” Although I am not an idiot, it looks as if I am qualified to do idiotic work only. There is a north-south debate in Western Europe. Are you politically inclined to the black or to the red? Hurry up and decide! My blood is red and my heart beats on the left. “I’m not proud to be a human being, so how can I be proud to be a Northamerican or a Venezuelan or an Italian?” Love goes out the door when money comes in through the window. He spies for the Central Stupidity Agency. He is drunk, rich, over eighty-five, and lives in Switzerland—the perfect place for him. Half the mothers of this world should be arrested for child abuse and not sent chocolates and flowers on Mother’s Day. Northern Europe and Southern Europe are honing their swords. There are two things to learn from university life: excellence is and intelligence is not.

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what

My errors serve me. I do not erase them; I cross them out. I want to see them always. Medicine is the art of poisoning. Do not be confused. He is not so much intelligent as he is. New York is too fast for my body and too slow for my mind. The United States was discovered by Italian journalists fivehundred years after Columbus arrived there. I am a born leader but no one wants to follow me. Italy is one big over-worked liver. I am my best philosopher. I have relieved myself of the idea of a god; but, I cannot extricate myself from the idea of man. Does not a shopping mall or a stadium offer more spatial experience than a church or a synagogue? The purpose of an artist is to tell people just how obtuse they are without offending them. I came to Europe to meet and know intelligent people. Instead, I found out why Northamericans are so ignorant. They are buying books the way they buy sweaters and socks. The colors of the dust covers must blend with the living room furniture and must absorb the colored rays of the television set. I have so little money. The capitalistic system is treating me very badly. They cannot even manage their own families! How can they manage their businesses? Their governments? God is not dead enough.

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Northamericans and Southamericans believe well in what Europe tells them. Psychoanalysis is not much better than voodooism. When will Northamericans wake up to find that they have sown more the seeds of hate and misunderstanding than they have planted seeds of love and understanding? It is not that I am more intelligent than you are. No! I know how stupid I am and I know how to keep quiet about it. If you want to take the war temperatures of the European war bodies, go to their football stadiums. Do you think that an all-powerful, perfect, super-intelligent, preeminently righteous god could create two imbeciles such as you —and me? Violence is not the reason to step out of society to analyse one’s own life situation and then transform it so as to achieve liberation from oppression within. Is not good fortune traditionally a most unpardonable flaw among those who have not thrived? Money is the best birth control in the industrialised world. Something is holding up Europe and it is not the Europeans! People are not as obtuse as they appear to be. They are waiting for something to catalyse them into action. A genius is someone who really understands how stupid he/she is and does not pretend to be self-conscious about it. Of course art should teach and delight. But before it does so it must sell. Old literary agents never die, they just stop reading manuscripts. You do not have to be an economist or political scientist to know that the best birth control device is a high cost of living. 17

“Need we remind you again that it was the Northamericans who first dropped the atom bomb on innocent people?” When you believe in something fervently, you will eventually become imprisoned by it. The more people tell you how happy they are, the more they are sad. Societies that are disciplined to get what they want become dangerous when they do not get what they want. Of course it is not his fault that he is a duke or a prince or a king; but, it is his fault to continue calling himself one. There are people in this world who are proud to be stupid. Can you guess who they are? In Italy the law is equal for everyone except those who squirm under the courtroom’s crucifix. An artist is one who sells big with no effort. An intricately-designed space station is enormously more beautiful than any painting hung over the fireplace. And what is even more attractive is that it has a purpose. Only an idiot would pay millions for a painting he will hang in his living room. “The most widely-used contraceptive device in the world is not the prophylactic or pill. It is inflation.” People do not have babies not because they do not want them; but, because they cannot afford them. My mind is sharp, crisp. But I drift in a sea of chaos. I do not feel lonely. I feel alienated. The streets of Europe are made for horses—not VOLVOS.

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“The crisis of our time is the inability of governments to reconcile the inalienable rights of all individuals to personal development with the necessity to diminish the misery of the masses.” Television commercials constitute a looter’s shopping list. Has anyone correlated the growth of finger nails with life expectancy? “Will someone please tell me why the Queen of England, Elizabeth—perhaps the richest woman in the world—has always an I’ve-just-eaten-a-lemon look on her face?” Getting old means saying out loud what you thought—when young—should be kept quiet. MEMO TO JOB HUNTERS: Until they start paying you, you have every right to be treated as a human being. Science fiction is the hope of finding an enemy that is not human. I do not like it at all. If hunters can hunt animals, why cannot I hunt my mother-inlaw? Art delights and enlightens. I am a word ecologist: Let us change “elevator” to “lift”; let us change “trousers” to “pants”; let us change “labour” to “labor”; and, let us change “Mr.” to “Mr”…et cetera. Please, do not clone my mother-in-law! In New York you ask first what kind of restaurant do you want to eat in. Few men, when they love and/or sex, will slip a rubber sheath over their penises to reduce the geometrically increasing birth rate in the world. But most will do so to buy a sports car.

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Europe in under the political and economical thumb of the United States of America and does not know what to do about it. Europe is fascism with a capital “F.” You can lump diplomats, journalists and lawyers in one group and economists, weather forecasters and astrologists in another. What if it is not what we think it to be? What if it is the opposite of what we think it is to be? Did you kiss your child today. No. I did better than that. I never had one. I loved two Jewish girls in my life. The first told me she could not love me because I was a goy. The second told me she could not love me because I did not have enough money. 31 December 1999!!! Finally, this century of shit is over! Life is a video cassette that can be rewound fast or very fast. One regime, headed by a retired general, gave us Elvis Presley. Another regime, headed by the Queen of England, gave us The Beatles. I am fan of the team which pays my entrance ticket. Padre Pio is not a saint. He is a multinat business. Queen Elizabeth, where do you have your hair done? At the Royal Mint? Queen Elizabeth, who handles your public relations? Gestapo?

The

When they are not dropping bombs on anyone, deep down inside the Northamerican people are fine people. The Italians are the best-dressed bankrupts in the world.

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The question is not whether or not women should be allowed to be soldiers. The question is whether or not men should be allowed to be soldiers. Pettiness is the foundation stone upon which is constructed fortresses of arrogance. Of course you should marry. Who is going to cut your toe nails when you are old and gray? Who cuts Queen Elizabeth’s toe nails? Prince Philip? Modern Italian history reads like exercises in How Not to Do It. Paul McCartney is the Frank Sinatra of the United Kingdom. He is so nice, nobody likes him. All is economics and not politics. Politicians enter government because there is the easiest place to steal. You do not even have to carry a gun. He is a philanthropist. poor.

He robs from the poor to give to the

A purely negative effort is doomed to failure. Anatomy is not destiny. But how we feel about our anatomy can make our destiny. A good song has to do two things for me: bring chills up and down my spine and bring tears to my eyes. Spies have a license to kill and lawyers have a license to lie. Royalty is proof that humanity uses only ten percent of its brain cells. Jesus Christ was “packaged” much better than Karl Marx. A lawyer is someone who has discovered that logic does not exist. Science and technology are out-miracling Jesus Christ. 21

Thoughts are the fingerprints of our minds. The relationship between man and woman is based on the desperate hope that one might be better than the other. A woman knows how to pullulate patience. Marriage is the only battle in which you sleep with the enemy. Dizzy as a fly in a pastry shop. If money does not make you happy you can always give it away. A unified monetary system is not the only thing Europe lacks. It needs shock therapy, too. The Roman Catholic Church says that its priests cannot touch other men or women. So then, they are left to touch themselves. Hitler and Stalin were what their people wanted them to be. Our future is already our past. The football stadium is the anus in which the Central Stupidity Agency sticks its thermometer to take the temperature of the violence of Italian society. Is living with a woman without marrying her worse than living with her married? Of course, if you are not married to her, you cannot divorce her. Then you have to kill her! Will someone please invent a system where numbers do not have to be stapled to the wool of my sweaters when I take them to be cleaned? No one likes Northamericans, but everyone likes $$$. God or money? Money. “I want to dedicate this book to Judith Madden, Majorie Lynam, Lucia Lobo, Rosa Puente, Maria del Pilar, and Maria Luisa Sergio. Without your help I would have had a more enjoyable and more prosperous life.” 22

The stadio is the asshole in which the Central Intelligence Agency inserts the thermometer to check the temperature of the violence of Italian youth. When you are in love with two women, give each of them a pistol and ask them to have a duel. It is so much more fun making history than it is writing or reading about it. Gianni Agnelli did more than anyone else to bring Italy into the European fold. He invented the FIAT. It is such a bad car, Italians were forced to buy foreign cars and communicate with countries beyond their borders. Democracy means that a nation’s hospitals, schools, post offices, transportation systems and theatres and orchestras are more elegant than its jewelry shops, clothes boutiques, banks and ice cream parlours. Italy is committing suicide and the pistol of choice is xenophobia. You are not supposed to enjoy life. You are supposed to survive and try to better things for all individuals. Besides having five or six extra cheap umbrellas in their homes and tend to lend you one when it has begun suddenly to rain, rich people often smell nice, too. The best publicity is bad publicity. imbeciles.

Q.E.D.:

Journalists are

I am a spy. A secret agent. I am 0069. I have a license to love. Should we ground female pilots when they are in the throes of their pre-menstrual tension? Economy is horoscoping with numbers. I like rich people because they often smell fresh.

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Italians are trying awfully hard to be something they are not. She is as faithful as a woman on her honeymoon. Women are the juxtaposition between rationalisation and murder. The Italians do not have so much a problem with English as they have with Italian. Italian is a dead language. Deader than Latin. The rich get richer and the Enron’s get bigger. Three cheers for creative destruction. After two thousand years the Italians are finally learning that a virgin could not give birth to a baby. And that a thirty-three-year old man could not change water into wine, but a middle-aged man from Seattle just might be able to do it. The medium is not the message. The message is that the medium is not divulging all the message. The mother of Leonardo da Vinci put bread crusts dunked in wine into the mouth of her child to help with his teething. Today Florentine mothers pop pills into the mouths of their babies. Italians do not have money to spend on new schools, new transport systems, new hospitals, new irrigation systems…. But they do have money to buy perfumed toilet paper. Marylin Monroe does not exist. Our collective idea of her does. This idea is so perverse, we do not have the courage to admit what it is. Negating this idea, we continue to enlarge the myth about her. The snowball going down the mountain gets bigger and bigger. Marylin Monroe, and others like her, is the realization of the myth to not know the Truth. We expand this myth with the hope of concealing what The Truth is. Do we really do want to know The Truth? It depends. I do what I do because I could not be a great rock n’ roll singer.

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Is it not wonderful that we can commemorate the death of Elvis Presley every 15 August without thinking about the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven! Newspapers are filled every 15 August with stories about Elvis Presley and not the Virgin’s Assumption. Elvis Presley was kind enough to die on the fifteenth of August, the day the Virgin Mary floated into heaven. Silvio Berlusconi robs from the poor to give to the rich. We are progressing! Let’s compose an Ode to Tuna Fish! I have opened the brains of the Italians which I found in their tongues. Italians have micro minds—not macro minds. Italians have taught me the meaning of democracy by taking it away from me. The Italians will learn enough English to do business with Northamericans, but not enough English to do politics with the Northamericans. Italy is the only country in the world where a father can take his son to Mass and Holy communion in the morning, take him to a whore house in the afternoon, and then make him read Marx and Engels in the evening. The United States of America is a great nation—if it is not bombing you! Less journalists; more Truth. Let us thrive on our hypotheses. More sport; less religion. It is so much more fun making history than it is writing about it. 25

Sometimes I wonder if the United States will have enough money to buy enough printing presses to stamp enough money for its needs. I oblige think tanks to leak. When someone calls me on the telephone to ask me to participate in a survey, I tell them I only answer surveys in person. And if someone stops me on the street and asks me to participate in a survey, I tell him or her that I only answer surveys on the telephone. If you were an animal being transported to the slaughter house by train, truck or plane, would you be grateful to those human beings who were fighting to have legislation passed on your behalf limiting the number of hours you could travel? Need is the seed of contrivance. I have consigned my love to the non-intimidating perimeters of my poetry. Think always the worst. If it arrives you are ready. If it doesn’t you have a reason to party. Italian women swear by the tenderness of Mozart’s music. I despise the DisUnited States because it did not give me a chance to be a hero during the Vietnam “War.” The people of the United States are a wonderful lot—if they are not trying to bomb you. Italian politicians are not politicians. They are a species of economists who do not know how to count. Politicians seek a consensus. raise.

Italian politicians seek a pay

When they ask me in the street to participate in a survey, I tell them I take surveys only by telephone; and, when they call

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me asking me to participate in a survey I tell them I take surveys only in person. I survived in Venezuela because I was a war veteran and a native of New York. I have survived in Italy because I was a volunteer in two mental hospitals. Relatives are those individuals who remind you what diseases you will inherit. Northamericans are the best thieves that there are and they steal for the United States. Italians are pretty good thieves and they steal for Swiss banks. One of the benefits of the decline of Roman Catholicism is that cleaning personnel can store their cleaning materials in unused confessional boxes. Will somebody please rip out the typewriter ribbon of Oriana Fallaci’s 1953 manual typewriter? Passionless women mix water with their wine. The journalist is a frustrated writer and the lawyer is a frustrated philosopher. When I served in the United States Army Field Artillery they called me “a loose cannon.” When I served in United States Army Missile Training Battalion they called me “a wayward missile.” In the Islam world, all women want to put a dog leash around the necks of their husbands. But in the Christian world, all men want to put a dog leash around the necks of their wives. Why not a marriage license renewable every five years or so? Relax! The world as we know it has already ended. The world economic system that is now in place gives money to people to do something they don’t want to do so that they may have money to do something they want to do.

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The situation is worse than Thatcher, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Blair, Chirac and Berlusconi ever could imagine. Why do you think we are stuck with these goofballs? The Italian national motto is this: How can we suffer more? He doesn’t accept praise or prizes. Just cash. Don’t be foolish! Be a pessimist. I don’t live in the United States because it is not good enough for me. What is the difference between hard and strong? A hard person is always strong. A strong person knows when to be hard and then soft. The United States of America was the first nation to use coloured toilet paper. The Americans have been obtuse for two-hundred years; the Europeans have been obtuse for two-thousand years. Berlusconi, Hammamet! Berlusconi, Hammamet!! Berlusconi, Hammamet!!! The Americans are a wonderful people—if they aren’t bombing you. Don’t step on the tail of one billion Islamics! I implore you. (Maurizio Costanzo Show, 19 February 1991.) Professor Antinori, I beg you, I implore you, please do not clone my mother-in-law. You don’t study English anymore. You play with it. It is not that the Florentines are living in the Past. If that was only so. No! It is worse. They are prisoners of a Past that does not pertain to them any longer. What poor things they are.

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“Italian politicians” are not politicians. (Politicians seek a consensus.) Rather, they are a species of economists who do not know how to count. One cold Friday in December 2001, I stopped a Parmalat salesman who had been examining the shelves of a Panorama supermarket near my home. I pointed my finger directly in his face and said: “There is a Fiat Panda in your future.” He laughed. We met another couple of times later on, and each time he said: “Professor, there’s a Fiat Panda in my future! There’s a Fiat Panda in my future!! There’s a Fiat Panda in my future!!!” He was kidding with me. On 2 January 2004 I will go to the office of the director of my bank (Banca Toscana) in Calenzano, and I will say to him: “There’s a Fiat Panda in your future!” And I won’t be ribbing him. Why are the Florentines dying of boredom? Or, are they dying of boredom? Maria de Filippi is the husband of Maurizio Costanzo. Certainly! They have to crucify Wanna Marchi! She is so much like Silvio Berlusconi. The two of them are extraordinary salespeople. Both are capable of selling the Colosseo. One of them tricked the Italians with a little box filled with seaweed. (Venial Sin). The other hoodwinked the Italians with a trunk of demagoguery. (Mortal Sin). Let us defend the Marchi family from a Bad that no individual—including Silvio Berlusconi—merits: a political lynching. Yet, let us not absolve Wanna and Stefania their foolhardiness. Cin cin, Florentines!!! You have made a gas chamber out of the cradle of humanism. Gianfranco Fini is incredible! He declared that Benito Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. Today, 21 December 2004, he has rendered homage at the tomb of Yassir Arafat. Who’s pulling the strings of this marionette? Henry Kissinger? With so many bookshops in Firenze, an extraterrestrial might be able to deduce—at first sight—that the Florentines are intelligent. 29

Bye-bye Camp Darby! See you in Albania. Umberto Bossi: The Green Pitbull. Saints and Saintesses of Italy! Unite! Twenty-five more years of Berlusconi!!! Forza—Italia! I am a man decidedly against the relaxation of the breast, and each day—with passion, intelligence and courage—I fight to maintain all breasts as high as they might be, for all women, in this Universe. When they call me at my home and ask me to participate in a survey, I say that I take surveys only in person; and, when they stop me in the middle of the street and ask me to chip in and fill out a survey, I say that I only take surveys on the telephone. Here work turbocapitalists. Don’t cry anymore, italiano! Your Parmalat money is in the Vaticano! The stadium is the asshole into which the Central Stupidity Agency puts the thermometer that controls the temperature of the violence of the Italian society. The Americans are exceptional thieves (The Best!). But, they rob for the United States of America. Instead, the Italians, pretty good crooks, steal for Swiss banks. Is your English or American accent holding you back in your career? Now you can learn English with a pure international enunciation and enjoy the rounds of applause of the international community. The Americans liberated Italy from the Germans, but they didn’t liberate Italy from the Italians. N’est pas? Esso. Sesso. Spesso. Exxon. Sexxon. How do you know when Vittorio Cecchi Gori is lying? His lips move. 30

My dear Italian manager, the epoch of the smooth look is over. Let’s get to work! Now! What is the difference between a dead dog lying in the street and Vittorio Cecchi Gori lying dead in the street? There are skid marks before the dog. Italy is Argentining. Is Italy Venezueling? The Florentines don’t know how to manage a bus line. Quod erat demonstrandum, how can we expect them to be capable of administrating a network of museums? Let us listen to a Florentine football/soccer player before the microphone, immediately after the usual defeat: “We played perfectly…B-U-T…” One of the most frequently used expletives used in Firenze is the following: Nulla! (Nothing!) The Italians continue to believe in God and God continues not to believe in them! An eternal impasse. After centuries and centuries of “culture,” the Florentines still have not learned to regenerate their own race! The Italians continue to understand Northamericans through the 1950s’ films honchoed on them by the United States’ Department of State and Mario & Vittorio Cecchi Gori. The Northamericans are progressivists bending towards Future. The Italians are entrepreneurs leaning backwards in direction of the Past. And it is just right here we can get to focal point of the sado-masochistic relationship between Northamericans and the Italians. Opposites attract. No?

the the the the

The Florentines are so stingy that they buy RESET chewing gum (powermint grains) and, before going to bed, attach it to their bedposts so that they can use it over again the next day.

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The number one selling car colour in Italy is grey—the same colour of Italy’s medieval buildings and the skies over any polluted Italian city. Italian food, without a doubt, is one of the finest in the world. It is also true that Verecolene is the number one selling over-thecounter drug in Italy? Buon appetito? Here is an interesting historical anecdote that pleases me: During the medieval ages Italian mothers dipped the crusts of their freshly baked bread in wine glasses and gave them to their children who were teething. Today, Italian mothers feed their babies antibiotics, cigarette fumes, and little balls of grease sprayed with artificial cheese flavouring. Not only do the Italians not know how to survive, they are incapable of preserving what they have! They are in via di estinzione. Does there exist a muzzle large enough to cover the mouth of Iva Zanicchi? Will someone please put a hood over the head of Maurizio Costanzo and leave it there? Grazie! Is Jessica Rizzo menopausing? Poor thing. Luca di Montezemolo for President of the Presidents! King of the Presidents? Italy is forever placed at the top of the worst lists and at the bottom of those best. Why? Why do Italians insist on being the best when no one else thinks of them as such? Why do subscribers who possess a TIM 335 telephone prefix seem to be always more intelligent and nice? Bye-bye Eli Lilly of Sesto Fiorentino! See you in Switzerland. Why don’t we have to pay for the La Nazione? Is it that bad? The Italians listen to English songs they don’t understand; and, they sing Italian songs that no one else understands. Now even Fausto Bertinotti knows that fascists are imbeciles. 32

Truly, the only consensus Italian politicians reach is that one which raises their salaries. Hit the Vatican where it hurts! In its “rich” boxes! In Italy, you must be rich, or faking it, in order to have a baby. I am the inconvenient tenant in the grand condominium. The Italians are the best-dressed bankrupts in the world. Italy is in a post-tsunami state of mind. Paul Ginsborg is silly! He’s writing a history of Italy instead of a tragedy. The Italian national motto: “How can we suffer?” Children of middle class Chinese families collect books. Italian children collect teddy bears. Cardinal Michele Giordano, Archbishop of Napoli, is my choice for Pope. (1 January 2004.) Italians are great for keeping people in poverty: their own! Even the Italians are beginning to speak badly about the Italians! It’s not impossible to teach Italians foreign languages. useless.

It’s

Note well, Italians! More than one Roman preferred death to exile. Bush II is eliminating Italy’s air pollution problem and the Italians aren’t even grateful to him. I have a great idea! Let’s have a We’re in via di estinzione party. Now!

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My dear fidels and infidels: Please light a candle for the Italian economy. There are more saints and saintesses in Italy than there are VERECOLONE tablets. Will someone please tell me once and for all: Are the Italians poor or stingy? Firenze is a rest home for ostriches. I don’t know where Italian women go for their male hormones, but I am certain they have overdosed on them. I, Anthony St. John, officially declare: Italy is a tragedy. Not a comedy. Gianfranco Cassini and Gianni Morandi: My vote for political altar boys of the year. In Italy, Art serves to channel to some “nowhere” whatever irksomeness is on the horizon. Italians cannot organize a bus route, but they want you to know that they can sort out a world order. The biggest problem Italian football is confronted with, is this: When Italian teams travel abroad, they have to face real antidoping tests. Italians have a sense of themselves. Not an awareness of how they fit in with others. It is not that Florentines are arrogant. No. It is that they spark you to be more haughty than they—if you can! Italy is slow-motioning to tragedy. Italian economists would do Italy and the world a great favour if they put down their Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson textbooks, picked up a Bible, turned to the Ten Commandments, and then referred to Number Seven.

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I want to be rich so that I can tip the waiter or waitress the same amount as the bill. How many people would kill their mothers for the right price? Not saying much about mothers, no? What’s so holy about the Holy Land? Let’s have a The Most Stupid Journalist of the Year contest. Why not? What I find amusing about Christmas and New Year is that people actually sustain the notion that they can be nice for a week after a year of backstabbing! Did it ever occur to you that the human race just might need a swift kick in the ass? Did you ever visualize the human race being generous and compassionate? I admit it. I need psychoanalytical advice. The problem is I just cannot find a psychoanalyst who wants to pay me for my sessions. I could never be a politician. And not because I am modest. It’s just that I would be constantly embarrassed to meet my constituents who were earning less than me. The bigger the problem the easier the solution. You do not have to be ashamed of not knowing something particular. But you better be humiliated for not knowing anything. Modern political philosophy must start out on this premise of Joseph Stalin—a brutal man in a brutal time: The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million men is history. Do something generous for yourself before you might think you could be munificent to others.

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You will never understand your country without seeing it through the eyes of others who live in other nations. I know I would make a great President of the DisUnited States of America because I would bop down the flight of stairs, hooked up to my Air Force One, without looking at my feet or holding on to the handrail. The Italian Bluff is being called. Excessive stupidity caused World War I and World War II. You do not have to possess a PhD from Harvard or Oxford to fathom that. And it will be the cause of World War III. Western civilization is not consuming to possess, it is possessed to consume.

Updated 12 August 2005

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