italian word of the day: spaccacazzi

Spaccacazzi, or in several related modulations as Rompicazzi, Stressacazzi, etc., generally refers to a person that annoys you. More specifically, the Spaccacazzi is distinguishable for his or her nagging persistence in stating, maybe to obtain, maybe just for the sake of talking, useless sentences, or, generally, sentences that go against your sense of what is fair for you to have to listen to.

As for many other words, the applicability of Spaccacazzi is extremely flexible. A person that is a Spaccacazzi today, need not to be tomorrow, although there seems to be some evidence that once spaccacazzi, always spaccacazzi. The main feature, however, is the combined presence of (a) the person being serious/obsessed with a topic that you find irrelavant and (b) a certain mood in you, that makes you particularly intolerant to the topics that the Spaccacazzi is anxious about. 

For a practical example, suppose you are working in your office, and one of your officemates keeps showing up/ sending emails to nag you about the importance of strating a group culture within the coworkers. Or about the importance of being unite in making complaints about the increase in the coffee price. If you are trying to work, the officemate in question is a Spaccacazzi.

There is no sex bias within the group of Spaccacazzi. However, unless extreme circumstances, your parents and your spouse are mostly not Spaccacazzi.

NB. Different from the Spacca- is the Cagacazzi, who is instead a particularly posh person .

italian word of the day: test

Seemingly an English word, “test” in Italy takes a totally different meaning, especially during summer: a “test” takes the only meaning of “personality test”, “ti faccio un test” (i will get you a personality test) is the aka with which women attack their partners under the beach umbrella, particurarly when they are on the very verge of falling asleep.

the “test” is usually  a collection of 10 to 15 multiple choice questions, that promise to be the insight you need on your character. “tests” with more than 20 questions are universally considered uncontrovertibly scientific, test with less than 8 are conclusive proofs about one’s character only if they come up with niceties about the reader.

a very telling example of the discerning power of a “test” is well explained by the following example:

test name: WHAT KIND OF LOVER ARE YOU?

Question sample: how would you imagine your first time making love?

(a) with the man of your life, in a chalet lost in the snow, with the firework and soft music.

(b) with a beautiful stranger, in an elevator, before a business meeting

(c) making love? what is that?

RELATED EXPLANATION: you chose

(a) : THE ROMANTIC

(b) : THE RULE_BREAKER!

(c) : THE LOVELY HAIRHEAD

as you may notice, the insight that a test gives you are of unquestionaly illuminating validity. the most professional trait charactersing it is that by picking an option you would never, ever guess what character you are going to come up.

As we mentioned before, tests are mostly appealing to women, who never lack to submit them to their male partners. this behavior carries a subtle action-reaction intention: i do it to you, then you do it to me.

indeed, it is not unlikely to spot some men patiently ticking the answers of their female companions, waiting to confirm to them that they are indeed romantic, fresh and happy, lovely, etc.

some men, in a moment that alcoholics would refer to as a “moment of clarity”, observed thet tests never say that you are moody, brainless, as interesting as a snail, smelly. but for that, you have your partner, and you don’t even have to pay to a copy!

italian word of the day: “ceretta”

uh la la. “ceretta” is the italian word for wax. during summer, the Italian is caught in a ceretta frenzy. legs, eyebrows, bikini, arms: everything should go. in the Parliament, someone suggested that to inject new capital in the tired italian economy it could be possible to think about setting up a state-owned firm of fine italian tepistry, with all those shiny black hairs that are continously stripped, tweaked, cut. 

both men and women undergo “ceretta”. women are not such an interesting topic, sharing this habit with most of the Foreigner females, but men, oh, men are indeed fascinating.

usually the Italian man that waxes is around his 30s. before that, the -perceived- excess hair is dealt with by means of the Razor. this inconsiderate use causes the awful-to-look-at problem of the ingrown hair. so it takes a considerable amount of self-control to actually book an appointment in a beauty saloon. 

once in the saloon, the Italian man is at the mercy of the estetician. female. so she starts waxing the back and the chest, as the customer asks. but only after having done that, she reckons with the Italian man that the overall effect is distressing: chest and back smooth as a peach, and arms as hairy as a gorilla. not that she did not know in advance: a little price that men have to pay for centuries of dominance. after few minutes of thoughful considerations on what to be done next, here they start again: waxing, stripping, tweaking. 

after al this pain, here he comes in his full glory: the 30-or-so years old Italian with the skin as smooth as a baby’s butt.

italian word of the day: trancio di pizza

the most italian amongst italian words, pizza is a lifestyle that streches from glam restaurants to shabby take away places. you have pizza for dinner, while at lunchtime is more common to get simply a trancio (slice) di pizza.

sliced pizza is conceptually different from pizza, and is usually sold in takeaway-only places, strategically located close to elementary schools, high schools, universities and justice courts. the management tends to be strictly family based: the pater familias, dark-haired, dark-skinned, greasy and eternally stuck in the limbo of his forties, cooks the pizzas and slices them. the wife, short, mustache-endowed, big breasted, serves the customers and attend the cash desk. finally, the emaciated daugther wanders around, gently taking care of the estetics of the pizzas by sticking her fingers on them.

the piazzas themselves differ slightly from the typical pizza that you have for dinner. vaguely reminding of the junk-food downtown Amsterdam, these pizzas are big and thick. the varieties are limited, and the supply follows the demand in a totally elastic way, in the sense that a new unit of a given variety of pizza is produced only when the former unit is completely sold. the golden rule of the pizza al trancio precribes to serve the following varieties* : pizza margherita, pizza al prosciutto e patate, pizza al salamino. the rule also recommends to have each pizza sliced in exactly six parts.

a wide range of customers floats in these places between 12:00 and 14:00. the inflow increases with the arrival of the good season. students nevertheless do not follow a seasonal pattern. the trancio di pizza is eaten with the hands in no more than 5 minutes. as in any business involving italians, there is evidence of strong favoritism towards certain customers rather than others. inside information about the baking time of new pizzas or on-request baking of special varieties is well documented nation-wide. the Foreigner therefore has no other options than to accept the delay with which he will be served, and the voluntary unfortunate smallness of his trancio. all minor details, considering that if he will disregard the trancio and go straight for a real pizza sittinng at a table at lunchtime, he will be totally ripped off. and in any case, anyone knows that real pizza tastes better at night.

*allowing for small regional variations

italian word of the day: vacanza con gli amici

“vacanza” is the italian word for holiday. there are several kinds of vancanza: the “vacanza con gli amici“, the holidays with friends, the “vacanza con il moroso“, the holiday with the boyfriend, and the “vacanza con la famiglia“, the family holiday. each of them bears typical and unmistakable characteristics. chronologically speaking, the holiday with the parents is all over: it comes like the summer: every year. the holiday with friends starts at an early age, and is more discountinous. the holiday with the boyfriend is sporadic.

The first vacanza con gli amici takes place around age 8-10 for all kids, and usually comes in the form of an organized weekly or monthly package including housing, food and some sort of kids’ care taking. the kids are parents-less for the first time, and find it very exciting to engage in outrageously boring activities, such as rudimental forms of tennis, football or handball, hyde and seek, and 1.0.1 hiking. the holidays takes place in some countryside forgotten by God, humans and cars, whose unique traffic light enjoys its highlight of the year exactly when a massive amount of vehicles clogs the tiny streets in the attempt of reaching the treffen-punkt on time to deliver the alternately crying-giggling-overtalkative kid.  during the holidays, no sentimental and no sexual experience takes place, (Italy is not Sweden, in the end). the typical figure, though, is not the overexcited kid, but the crew of under-excited late teens that to fetch up some money volunteered to take care of the kids. among them you would find higly demotivated, tall, slender and pimply heavy metal lover guys, plump and sweaty, over size breasted girls, and maybe some normal people as well. now, if they experience some sentimental or sexual experience is another matter (yes they do!!).

later in life, kids grow up and when they are teens, the vacanza con gli amici becomes more conform to european standards. first guys go with other male friends, maybe hire a little flat at the Riviera, leaving it dirty with since-last-sunday uncleaned dishes and broken and unfulfilled sexual adventures. then the mixed sex holidays take place: not really specatural, once left aside the epical fight for who should clean up the mess and who used whose razor.

italian word of the day: a dopo

“a dopo” is the italian word for “(see you) later”.

as opposed as the Foreigner, when the Italian says a dopo, he does not mean it.

it goes without saying that when the Italian leaves the office, a pub or wherever he is with his friends, his “a dopo” does not imply that he will ever come back. quite possibly, in fact, he does not even remotely plan to come back. this usually causes social numbness in the group. the most sensitive persons, frequently the females, get nervous and worried. some Foreigners feel mocked.

more controversial is the case where the Italian actually takes part in programming a group activity for the future, where “future” spans the short run (tonight) to the long run (tomorrow). in that occasion, it is not infrequent that after having actively suggested options, convinced the others to do something that he preferred rather than something else, amazed everyone by explaining how they all must have done that very thing together and once left the gruop with a reassuring A dopo, he simply won’t show up. obviously, this cute habit poses not few difficulties for the Italian to mingle with the Foreigner. maybe shockingly, among Italians mismatches of this sort don’t take place: it seems that even when the Italians organize something in a group, each reasons as if he was to do that alone.

several reasons have been suggested for explaining this well-documented behavior. the soundest one is rooted in the historical carelessness of the Italian for the Other: maybe illuminating on this, an ancient proverb from Tuscany: If you see your neighbour’s house on fire, bring the water to yours.

italian word of the day: fatalità

“fatalità” is the italian word for fatality. in venice, “fatalità”, pronounced “fataità”, synthetises the approach to life that the Venetians have developed and refined during centuries of high tydes and low tydes. caught in between the unaffectable rythm of the sea (“sei ore sale, sei ore scende“, for six hours it goes up, then the next sixt hours it goes down), and a tiny bridge (without the bridge, Europe would be an island, Voltaire), the Venetians have fought for years to adequate their habits to the increasingly frenetic mittel-european lifestyle. they tried hard to solve problems that required speed and quickness: how to get a woman in labour to the hospital as soon as possible, how to buy a water heater of the right size to bring it up the claustrophobic staircases, how to think before doing something, knowing that there is no opportunity for a second trial.

finding this business of keeping up with the Europeans quite discomfortable and highly superfluous, the Venetians massively fell back in the fataità approch to life.

the stubborn trust of this population in this way of life is simply stunning. i have heard of someone, who had a washing machine broken. he called the plumber, who got there only when all the water had dripped off the machine on the floor (water more, water less). the plumber looked at the machine, kneeled a little, opened the his working bag with a fixed gaze and found out he had not the right screwdriver. he had to get back to his office. it was already friday evening. fataità, he could only get back on monday.

 

italian word of the day: “matrimonio”

“matrimonio” is the italian word for wedding.

weddings in italy are traditionally a big thing. big in the sense that a small wedding has around 80 guests. the wedding rotates not much around the wedding couple, but around that mythical figure of the mother of the bride. the mother of the bride usually opposes the husband-to-be and never lacks a critical word for the in-laws. yet she adores the guys from the catering, that pay her back with a profusion of compliments and inconditional support. the mother of the bride is everywhere in a marriage. you wont have time to make a tired blink that she will be at your  side with a nice word, an encouraging pat and the not so veiled suggestion of truly enjoy yourself (a-ha: third slice of cake? dont fake it, remember that you just love it!)

another interesting character in a marriage is the old-aunt. the old aunt smells. smells terribly, to be honest, of dust and half-evaporated cheesy perfume. she typically wears something in the shades of brown and gray, taking the form of a loose, half sleeves shirt, with golden buttons, and a longer-than-the-knee dull skirt. pre-announced by the smell, she materialises when you are in a dark corner, with no escape, where you were hiding on the verge to light up a cig. and then yes, she kisses you with her simoultaneously dry and drenched lips, engaging in a onw-way conversation. the evolutionarily stable escape-plan that the Italian puts in practice is to leave, sic et simpliciter.

let me briefly mention other essential ingredients in a truly italian matrimonio: the bad weather if the reception is set outside, the warm weather if the guests forecasts cold and dress accordingly, the family hawk, dressed up as a family dog, and the camera. cause if you are invited at a wedding, you can bet that by the end of it you will be asked to “take some pics”. good luck, mr. avedon!

italian word of the day: calendario

“calendario” is the italian word for calendar. in the other countries of the world, calendarios usually display the days of each month, embellished with portraits of nice landscapes, sweet puppets or generic photos. the italian word calendario, though, is associated without exception to an unambiguous booklet of semi-pornographic pictures. the original function of planning instrument has lost in the years its importance, so that now the days of the month usually appear disguised in the background, or in a hyper-small font at the bottom of the page. what matters in a calendario, instead, is that it grants a a full view of all the details of the sheer and intimately naked beauty of the female body. needless to say, calendarios are a hymn to the conception of the woman in the modern society. in some case, several girls take part in the pictures, graciously hinting at the glory that comes when two or more women appear in a man’s mind, but more often, a single lady takes charge of the whole business. then she offers her own body and mind to the public, to the general enjoyment. when asked about the reasons for undertaking such a dramatic task as to pose for 12 shots, most of these women will put forward the arty content of their work. the pictures indeed are so highly artistic that normal clothes would spoil their timeless content: it is a quite established tradition, nowadays, to get rid of the problem of the outfit by taking naked artistic pictures. calendarios are indeed the hier of the great works of our masters, and no one would hesitate to compare the stunning body of the starring ladies to the serene smile of the Monna Lisa. to make the public sensitive to this new and portentous highway to spirituality and art, the major newspaper devote each year several pages to the previews of the coming-soon calendars. their effort is so well engineered and focused that the glimpses of the beauties are among the most higly hit posts.

some people maintain that that of calendarios is a shabby business for perverted people. fortunately enough, the current prime minister, who is known to be a faithful and active presever of this form of beauty, is rumoured to be on the verge of taking some useful actions.

italian word of the day: “elezioni”

“elezioni” is the italian word for Elections.

During “elezioni”, one “vota” or “va a votare” (votes): this means that he dresses up and briskly, possibly with a serious look on his face, he walks down the city main street and enters in triumph the shabby elementary school’s gym that has been designated as the local voting site. There he produces a document and the voting certificate to an annoyed crew of remarkably uninterested and randomly assorted people. These first match him with his own picture in a register they have and then show him the private desk for the actual voting.

 You would be impressed, if you could see, by the stark contrast between the solemn expression of the elector and the carelessness of the staff personell. But i am confident you would excuse the personell, who, when our elector enters the room, have seen at least other two hundreds of similar faces glowing with patriotism while entering the room. You might also be suprised by the contrast between the simplicity of the actual act of voting (a CROSS on a SQUARE) and the reinassance complexity of the operations surrounding it (especially the book of electors, a pre-internet version of Facebook, is huge). Our elector is now out the voting box. He is happy, shining with the serenity of the principled man. And indeed, he made something great, he contributed to the affirmation of democracy, the right to partecipate in the government of the nation.

Yet, look closer. What will be that vote for?