Followup: Naple’s Garbage Crisis laid bare

This article goes considerably more into depth than articles posted here, previously.

The rotten heart of Italy: See Naples and die (of the stench)

Southern Italy’s most celebrated city is drowning in refuse, paralysed by corruption and almost bereft of hope. Peter Popham reports on a life-threatening crisis

The city of Naples, Italy’s third biggest, the capital of the south, is caught in a trap of its own devising. And if you drive to the suburb of Pianura where police have been fighting with residents this week, you can get a good idea of the cruelty and fatality of this trap; and why there is a whiff of fear in the city’s air just now, mixed with the stench of putrid rubbish….

Read the entire article

Baked Sheep’s Head

I like lamb (lamb chops, leg of lamb, rack of lamb, etc.) and this particular Icelandic specialty probably doesn’t stink (at least not to an omnivore), but I find it disgusting, so I decided to post it.

I know people who have problems eating meat off the bone, but this is eating meat off the skull. I can’t manage it, Jack. Can’t eat something that’s looking up at me off the plate. This calls to mind the rule of thumb some employ, of not eating anything “with a face.” Pretty much cuts this out.

I have a friend who was an exchange student in Iceland many years ago, and has visited once or twice, since. After one of her visits, she returned with a videotape bearing footage of the “baked sheep’s head experience.” For some reason, this combination of sheep’s head, mashed turnips, and mashed potatoes is sold primarily at the bus station, in a kind of freaky Icelandic variant of the fast-food theme. So, the tape shows her and her party purchasing the goodies, wrapped up in cellophane to go, and then taking it back to the apartment, where one of the guys promptly ate the sheep’s eye, for the camera….

Those Viking-types are still tested-tough.

Photos from Alabama Thunderpussy Open Fire