F * * K me
go with me a moment to my desk :
I have two ipod with earphones, and two DIFFERENT cables to hook them to the computer. I have an iMac with SIXTEEN cables, usb / firewire / monitor / power / usb hub / firewire hub / external modem / adsl modem / six dvd drives / four hard disk drives / one scanner / three printers / speakers / secondary monitors / digital tablets (2) / four digital cameras with four different types of memory chips (two with extra “adapters”/ four different battery chargers / a big battery power supply (UPS) for when the electricity goes off (300 times a year) and it BEEP BEEPs with the most horrible sound (we took it apart once to try and find the speaker or beeper and throw it out but failed to find it) / two mobile phones with power bricks / a small electric fan to blow on everything / one laptop with a bluetooth wireless keyboard / a table lamp / a 20 gallon woven basket near the computer that is FULL of extra and specialized CABLES (there are FIVE kinds of USB cable and THREE kinds of firewire cables and DOZENS of proprietary cables that are just USB cables with a non-standard connector to the device (bullshit) / under the bed are the boxes the Apple stuff is shipped in cause you have to keep them / in a big folder is the receipts for all this tuff / three pairs of glasses so I can see this stuff / a $50 dollar swivel office chair and a desk made of old scaffolding lumber on two sawhorses. This is all within a space of 3 feet. The electromagnetic field must be immense. The cables drive me mad. One of my worst fears would be to be locked up in a gigantic room filled with electrical cables all in knots and loops and braids of torment and madness….that is hell….or maybe hell is already here……I almost forgot, there are the american cables and the italian cables and the three kinds of adapters to plug the adapters into the sockets of different countries..!!!!
I have been taking digital photographs about five years now. I have no idea where many of them are. They are on hard disk drives, cd’s and dvd’s, magnetic optical disks, ram disks and even a few floppy disks. I have thousands of photos scattered all over four computers and all their drives. I have three or four programs to manage them, each camera comes with a different program...
All my old 35 mm film photos are in one box under the bed.
I use seven small electric power tools to carve stones. My multi-plug on the bench has six slots to plug into. I have to switch and almost always the one I need at the moment is not the one plugged in at the moment. Each one of them has cables. Big stiff euro-cables.
On Pantelleria, everybody takes four hours for lunch.
If you have Pantesce working men doing a job for you, you must give them beer and coffee two times each day.
Italy has had something like 70 governments since 1945.
My drivers license is good only for one year on Pantelleria. I have been here three years now. The test for an Italian license is given only in Italian. I can barely speak it, much less take a complicated test in it.
We have a gigantic troll who lives in a cave (stone house) across the street. He comes out and sits on his little chair and asks everybody who drives by for a cigarette. It is impossible to give him enough cigarettes. We stopped three years ago. He seldom washes himself. He has a gigantic belly. The church brings him food two times each day (but no cigarettes). He curses and yells at everybody. The local children throw rocks at him. He sometimes appears in his doorway with no pants on. He has a gigantic beard and when he is inside the house he watches us sometimes through a crack in his door. You can see his big ugly eyeball.
He scares off about 25 per cent of the visitors who stop by to look at the sculpture I have for sale. I have a sign out front. The island tolerates my sign. I am supposed to have a dozen or so documents saying it is ok. All of them must be obtained in Trapani, which is in Sicily and takes a long boat ride and hotel money and three days for each document.
You can see the sea from my office. In the winter the troll stays indoors mostly. As Spring comes the bird families return to put their bird babies in holes in the trolls cave (stone house). I watch the sea and the bird families. I think I have picked up a few of their songs. As the weather becomes sweeter and the birds sing longer, we also hear in the evening the call of the troll out his eastern door, "amico, una cigereti ?!!!?". He is more or less 80 years old. Our philosophy regarding the troll embraces our certain knowledge that he hears the songs and meditations which we make at the fire. Helps sort out the knots in the cables when we do this also.
