Blame the customer!

A few weeks ago, while walking in the center of my city, I noticed some big billboards - "Buying counterfeit products is against the law". Owh really ... impressive psychology. So, according to the Italian smart-asses who placed the billboards (and implicitly made this imbecile law), it is my fault if I am not asking for the certificate of originality, or however such a thing might be called. Do they punish the one who sells the fake as original? And if they sanction the seller, why not the producer? I just can't wait to see the Carabinieri writing the fines for a zillion Chinese workers producing Adibas and Pansoanic...

Even worse, according to the same way of thinking, nobody is allowed to desire counterfeited products; you want to impress your neighbour with your new fake Panerai - bang, a fine. You can't even want to show off, because it is against the law to buy the counterfeit products. Then why on Earth are they exposing a copy of David in Piaza Signoria and not the original? Why would they keep the original in a museum and let you see a counterfeit product unless you pay for the ticket and visit the museum? Why can they use the copies and the rest of us can't? Well, it is simple - because in Italy common sense logic is mainly in the eye of the beholder;).

Chasing the pigeons

At 3.38 am I am again awake. This time is supposed to be for a noble cause - for two days I've been trying to catch a baby pigeon, too young to survive on his own. He (I can't call him "it") sleeps on a freaking statue and looks so helpless and vulnerable that it breaks my heart. I might be called a sound misanthropist, but I have this weakness for animals in need.

A few years ago I was collecting stray dogs. Then, I changed the country (more than once) and I had to redirect my rescuer instinct toward other species. While having dogs I kept saying that I don't understand people who have birds as pets. What can you see in a bird? Life proved itself to be extremely ironic, so I ran into a sick pigeon and I couldn't help myself. Rather by a miracle than thanks to my actions the pigeon got better and I released him (or her?). Then I ran into another one, with a broken wing. The vet told me to euthanazie him, but I found him a nice spot as a chicken in the country house of a colleague. I know that he is too Buddhist to have made a steak out of my pigeon.

I changed countries again and I started to feed a few cats. No, not stray, but belonging to the neighbour into who's yard my widows were opening. I went home and at my return I found out that one of the cat died (her name was Bagheera, a beautiful blue cat whose tenderness was only equalled by her shyness). I kept feeding the second cat (called Chopper, because he was making the sounds of a helicopter when purring) until I moved out to a different city. The cat stayed where he was used to, our affair was over.

In the new place I kept finding pigeons. Caught by cats and injured, with threads wrapped around their fingers (in case you didn't know - when the thread is well wrapped there the pigeon can't get rid of it anymore. It starts to dig into the flesh until it reaches the bone of the swallen and infected finger(s) and then it separates the finger from the rest of the foot. That's how the bird gets rid of the thread, eventually and if he/she is lucky enough to survive the infection), sick by various diseases (yes, I started to learn their illnesses and the treatments) or in bad condition due to various factors. All went smooth until my dog led me to the first baby pigeon I ever raised.

Fritzy was a male, as I could notice when he grew up. But when Cara (my dog) found him, he was a very pathetic and ugly chicken fallen from the nest. He came with us and lived in a suitcase for a while. He somehow got the idea that Cara and me are his mums so a 3 months long love story between a dog and a pigeon began. Fritzy had as favourite landing spot Cara's back and as favourite sleeping place Cara's tail. Cara was trying to clean him and was quite amazed by the feathers - I've always supected she was expecting her son to have fur. And I was watching them, feeding them and of course cleaning after them.

I named his Fritzy because he seemed to have a sick passion for Rammstein's music and anything resembling German language. He was sitting on top of my laptop as hypnotized and listening to some good metal. Mummy's boy, what can I say...

One day Fritzy flew away through the open window. For two days he sat on the ouside margin of the building and refused to even look at the window. Then, he made a compromise with us - he was coming without any hesitations through the window, going to his corner on the floor, eating all the seeds he could take and then taking a nap on the top shelf of the bookcase. One day we moved out and the story ended abruptly. I didn't want to take him with us and make him a pet - his life was among his own, not near humans and dogs.

During the months spent together I came to realize what a complex creature he is and I was amazed by his social skills and behaviours, by his ability to identify and recognize different persons, by the fact that he managed to signal his moods and communicate some emotions, even if at a very different level. And ever since I love birds and I do the best I can to help them, especially pigeons. So I go now to try to catch this new Fritzy.

Wish me luck.

What is a blog supposed to be about?

Last night at 3 am it seemed like a good idea to get myself a blog. Tonight it looks a bit different and I wouldn't know where to start. They say the first posting is always bad, so I'd better keep it short. And preferably make some sense, but this is the hard part.

Owh well... I peaked into other blogs and I ended up more confused than I started. No scientific method will help me write this thing and make it "my own". Maybe indivduality is over-rated recently... we have the feeling that we are writing unique things but in the end we are just reinventing the wheel. Or maybe it is my own short-coming and I fail to see the personal touch. Hard to say, but the feeling of "what on Earth am I supposed to write here?" is more and more acute.

Probably the complete freedom puzzles me. Or again, being able to write whatever I want, I find it hard to establish a hierarchy of important things and to write about them. I found blogs about food, about politics, about music... Yeah, I might have something to say about each of them and about many others, but I feel no expert into any of these (well, I'm no expert into anything if I think about it well enough). Of course, I am not supposed to be an expert but to have a personal view of the world. And to put this personal view into the net shop-window and wait for others to "buy" my thoughts and give me feedback. Which will, eventually and supposedly, make me a better person, or empty my frustrations in a virtual sack displayed in the eyes of anonymous readers. One out of two, or something else.

I finally know what I want to say. Be it the first of many posts or just the first and the last of a forgotten blog, this matters too little. I have no idea why I've started to write this and what's gonna be in here, but maybe I am taking it too seriously. So I'll treat it as a summer love - not meant to have a meaning or to create strong ties, but to bring in some nice moments of leisure. I am not gonna try too hard to write something meaningful. I will let the meaning come by itself, just like the beauty coming to meet the eye of the beholder.

Good night.