Random Friday

First a random WordPress thing: I already had a flag counter (scroll down the sidebar), but now the guys at WP provide a hidden one for everyone! :- D And it even has the world map which is missing from mine (but then I'd have to delete this one and start counting again, so I'm glad to have the inbuilt WP one now!)! ;-) Just follow the instructions by the WP guys and see yours… Mine is slightly different from the "public" one on the sidebar (it's 2 years old, the WP one is brand new) - USA is first, then UK, then India and 4th Italy, which means at this time I get more visits from my (new) Indian friends than the Italians! :-)

Now, today's topic: people I miss from the 20th century! Last weekend I did some cleaning of my paper archives about movies and their stars. Opening the folder that I started back in the 1980s, I was appalled by how many of those stars have fallen and passed away, either in this century or the last. I don't really want to make a list here, but at least 3 died in their twenties (River Phoenix, Brad Renfro, Heath Ledger). The women apparently survived better, including Juliette Lewis and Drew Barrymore who had their fair share of problems.

This goes with the memory of Tim Kelly, Slaughter's guitarist, who was included in the virtual cast of CVE3, which means I keep thinking about him every time his character shows up in the rewrite (a comic relief, by the way. Hope Tim doesn't mind). And I'm not going to dwell on the rest of the music industry (I've been missing Michael Jackson since the 1980s anyway), but you know what I mean.

And then an Italian woman commented on my trilingual reader post on FB, asking if I too loved Brunella Gasperini, which brought us to reminisce our beloved 1980s and I remembered another much missed person, Sturmtruppen creator Bonvi. So, on one side I kind of look forward to join them wherever they are, on the other side, I'm looking for other faces to inspire me – but it's not easy. I've become jaded. I do have people that I admire a lot, but I still miss the people who are gone and wish I could have met them before they passed away. So here's to meeting soon the ones that are still alive! :-)

Now, to more pleasant topics! I watched Lagaan (yeah, busy weekend – drawing, cleaning paper folders and watching a Bollywood movie!). I recognized some faces from Jodhaa Akbar (secondary characters in both), and I'd say it's the same kind of epic historical movie, except it's the 1800s (Victorian era) instead of 1500s. And it's the story of why cricket has become India's national sport. The British officer is as bad as Jason Isaacs was in The Patriot (as far as I can remember, it's been some years, LOL!), so one day I'd love to see the British version of these stories (where the bad guys are either Yankee or Desi, rebellious and cruel with the poor British officer trying to bring peace and civilization to those savages, haha). The British Empire seen from the British Empire, please. That would be fun to compare! :-)

Anyway, Lagaan is pure Bollywood, with dances and struggles and love and sports, so if you like any of this, brace yourself and enjoy this almost-4-hours marathon. I've listened to the soundtrack without the images, and it sounds good too! ;-)

Jumping to other topics – Wednesday I non-celebrated 24 years at DayJob. Next year I'm entitled to a prize, but I won't see it until January 2014. But maybe then I'll get that extra money to go Down Under at last! ;-) That is, if Mr Writing doesn't provide first, of course. But considering my very slow growth, I guess I'll have to rely on darn DayJob for a little longer. Sigh.

My (very intelligent) musings on Daylight Saving Time or The Things That Puzzle Me of These Times: we don't have it yet in Italy (we switch on the last Sunday of March and switch back on the last Sunday of October), but it's made me wonder for a few years now: why spend 8 months out of 12 on that Daylight Saving Time? That's probably because in Italy we call it "ora legale" (literally Legal Time vs Solar Time), so I wonder why we follow only for 4 months a year the natural sun time. Shouldn't it be the opposite (Legal or official time for 8 months and "winter" time for those shorter days of the year)? Is it just me and my awful math skills or my getting lost in translations and adaptations? And what's wrong with keeping the same time the whole year *says the traveler who knows much about jet-lag but is aware most people never leave their hometown so they don't know what it is*?

Did I mention I feel an alien on this planet and don't understand 90% of its population? ;-) There, you got your answer to the above rant! :-D