souvenir epitome of incomprehensibility My lost Venice pen comes to mind. I bought it on my only trip so far to somewhere "foreign" - the United States doesn't count, since as far as culture and language are concerned, U.S. and Canada are pretty much the same - and, sweeping generalizations aside, I really liked that pen. I got it for two euros at a stand near the water after I'd seen it somewhere else for three. The tip was small and very useful for sketching. I still have a sketchbook with doodles of buildings and plants that I saw from one of the bus rides. And a Citroen car "like in one of the Tintin books." They aren't great art, but they're good memory-joggers. Free souvenirs from a cheap souvenir! Plus, the pen's design was gloriously cheesy: near its end was a little pocket of water with a tiny plastic gondola that floated from side to side as you moved the pen. The overall colour was blue and the ink navy. I didn't on a real gondola, but the history teacher who organized the trip bought us all day passes for the Venice ferry. The ferry boats were people's everyday commute, like a bus or metro in Montreal. As I remember they weren't that big, not like what we'd call a ferry in Eastern Canada: they held about as many people as a buses do, maybe forty each. And most of the people inside looked much less impressed than I did. Take a boat every day to work and you probably get bored of it. After all, it's not like I rhapsodize about taking buses. But the ferry pass was a better choice than the gondola, I think: cheaper and easier, and without so the tourist-y typicality. Then again, it's kind of funny to try to deny being a tourist when you are one. "Tourist" isn't a bad word. It's just that sometimes I want to explore more on my own, rather than being marketed to. And then, nevertheless, partake in the buying of goofy pens. At Pompeii, one classmate bought a postcard of the "penises of Pompeii" - a montage of pictures from the art and sculpture there. I forget the Italian word. When I looked it up later, the Italian-English dictionary had no entry for "penis." Dictionary, where are your priorities? How are we supposed to practice safe sex tourism if we don't know the proper terms? Just point or something? That seems a bit rude to me. (Sixteen-year-old virgins of the past would like to know. Only theoretically, of course.) But there is no "I" in pen, and this one did not ejaculate bluely as many pens do, but released its ink in a measured fashion; it was still working about a year later, when it fell out of a backpack pocket (my best guess) and was lost. Even if I couldn't find a way to replace the ink part, I'd like to have kept it just for the gondola thing. 140523 ... e_o_i Ooooh, my memory returns. I think the postcard WAS in English, and the joke was "Penii of Pompeii" - because two "i"s in a row are inherently funny, just like genitalia, I guess. I wonder if they have a postcard like that in Hawaii? ...But ancient Greeks and Romans probably had more naked-people art. 140523 ... e_o_i My aunt, who visited Thursday to Monday last week, has a gluten intolerance so my mother bought her gluten-free bread. I made the two leftover pieces into a sandwich, but it was so crumbly I had to eat it with a fork. 150404 what's it to you? who go blather from