Just a little cast of characters

April 17th, 2006 yo amigos (regazzi)- so that is the extent of my italian vocabulary, in the parnthesis, which is pretty sad considering that i have been here for about a month and a half. ok maybe not the extent, but seeing as the other italian words i know (cow, sheep, lime mortar, olive oil enema (?)) will be of no use in a real italian conversation, i might as well say that i still dont know the language. aannyyways, i have been here for 40 days so far and have been written nothing in those 40 days. booo. so now i have to try to summarize a month and half at spannocchia. here. which is: IMPOSSIBLE. but i shall try. here is a short list of characters:

1) Davide is the animal supervisor. he is new. he started a week before we (the interns) came. to davide, everything is 'little' or 'mini.' he calls the new baby calf "little beef," the odd little silver bus that he drives "mini-bus," and whenever he wants us to remind him of something, he says "you remember me to..." we never correct davide, though. in fact, we now say 'little beef', 'mini bus', and 'remember me' in broken ital-english accents. davide, as we just found out, is also a 'gamer.' he likes playing this one game (i forget the name) in which his role is a farmer. only on this farm, he is raising unicorns and velociraptors. yeaaaa, i know. davide also looks like the little, mini italian budda. oh, and davide loves camo. oh, and i love davide.

2) Riccio. the absent-minded, curly haired manager of the farm who can only be described as thinking "on not just one plane, but several" as carrie likes to say. he is absolutely crazy. he is never on time. and the only one that can make him smile continually is lapo.

short intermission

3) lapo. riccios "pecore," or sheep (but really its his dog). lapo does look like a sheep, though. riccio calls lapo his special friend, somtimes his superfriend. but its funny because lapo never responds to riccios call. riccio will call and lapo just remains seated on the doorstep of pulcinelli. the one that riccio likes most doesnt even listen to him. go figure.

ok back to

2) riccio. yes, he also likes frank zappa. 4) lord lambton. kicked out of british parliment in the 70s after he was photographed in bed smoking weed with two hookers. lord lambton fled to tuscany and has not gone back to england since.

5) sam. lord lambtons grandson. sam was working in sovicille for a month. one day sam happened upon spannocchia. how? no one knows. oh sam, you had so much potential. but sam, we should have known... youre just a boooring british ass.

6) angelina. you are still my favorite lamb, even though you are really an angelino.

7) abbey road patrick pulcinelli. a few fridays ago, on st. patricks day, we were cleaning capanonne, a house on the property that is right across from the sheeps pasture. midway through the day davide runs up and tells us that a sheep is giving birth in pasture. whaatt? we all run over and quietly peer over a 5 ft stone wall, finding the sheep and fixing our eyes on her for the next half hour. amazing. simply amazing. after a half hour exactly a lamb just popped out. and it was abdorable. after 4 minutes it was clean. after 10 minutes it was standing and walking. and after 12 minutes it was drinking milk. pretty much our equivalent of a year and a half in about 12 minutes. as for the name- we had been playing music all morning, mostly 90s HIIITS. but when the lamb was born, the beatles' "abbey road" played in the background. it was also st patricks day. and the uniform last name for tutti gli animali is pulcinelli. hence 'Abbey Road Patrick Pulcinelli.'

8) the index game. now this is not a character but deserves to be. the game consists of a brilliant set of roommates only speaking to each other through index cards for one whole day. or until the salad course at dinner. what one might get out of this game: i) a cramped hand ii) an ode to a moon book iii) a fucking AWESOME decoration for an already spiffily decorated room.

a few excerpts from our indexes: Index #3- Carmella (referring to a dream she had the night before): "...We start to move quickly and practically run through a door (my sister was going first) and before we knew it we were practically sprinting (or starting to sprint) through the Horses! The shitty part was that these were no ordinary Horses. They were all sorts of Alice in Ital-Wonderland variations. At one point I felt crazy b/c I thought I could hear their thoughts. Yeah. CRAZY. And the Horses had freak'n dread locks and skinny braids and long hair and skinny mean faces and they sooo did not want us there."

Index #4- Me: It is about 10:50 and I have just chased your card #2 over the electric fence, into the trees and through the bush. but fret not, it has been retrieved. i thought i would share, as well, how to round up 20 wild, hungry pigs. ...step 3- In one graceful, fitful movement, throw up bucket of food for pigs to see, scream out a short 'Maiali, Do, Do, Do,' whip around and begin the nervous dash back to the pig pen, all the while holding the food bucket above your head and throwing out small amounts of food to keep the pigs interested. ps. try not to get mauled in the process.

Index #7- Carmella: I just got a lesson on pigs and castration methods. Pig Sex PSA?????? Index #8- Sarah: Just so you know... kate just called you a jack-ass. What are you going to do about it? Love, Sarah.

wait? sarah??? how did you get into the index game? iiinfiltrator. Index #10.8- Carmella: Ok, i need a little break to trim my fingernails. should i put on the eye goggles? protective eyewear? SAFETY GOGGLES! thaats what i was looking for by way of wordage!

9) moon book. so the moon book is not a character either, but also deserves a description. the moon book is awesome and is currently being sent across the atlantic. mid-way through the index game i began to feel a bit nostalgic for moon book and wrote this short poem. thank you, carmella, for putting up with my obsession (or many obsessions, at that).

Index #10 Ode to Moon Book-

Oh moon book- I miss thee.

I know I recieved you for my 18th birthday, but I love you just as much as the 10 year old you were intended for.

I look at the moon now and am lost without you- your witty facts at a glance and spiffy pictures.

Your never-ending knowledge on the big cheese in the sky.

What about the man in the moon and the rabbit, though?

You never mentioned them, did you?

But- I shall not be mad, for surely my eyes have misled me, and not your pages.

OH, oh, my moon book: How I would love to visit the moon through you again.

I will just have to wait for you to come.

In the meantime, I will blindly look at the moon, wishing you were here to explain.

Blindly I will look- Until you arrive...

----- so i think i have given you all a pretty accurate little summary of life here at spannochia. but if you cant seem to understand, here it is: spannocchia rocks. im never leaving. forever i will stay.

hope everyone is well. send me updates. and i will do the same (and i can promise that they will make more sense). oh, and pictures aaaare to come soon.