I am in withdrawl. My PDA resolutely refuses to synch with avantgo. I have no news. My brain remains unenlightened by its daily dose of useless knowledge. I had to read a magazine on the toilet this morning. My hands are already beginning to twitch and I am developing a nervous tic. I need my fix.

I will continue to try, but if I'm forced to board the tram to Italian without updated news, I cannot be held responsible for what will happen.

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I believe I've mentioned before that they don't actually want to sell you anything in Italy. Not in the shops, anyway. I've had more than one friend booted from more than one boutique, arms full of clothes that they were ready, willing and able to pay for, because it was time for lunch. Or to go home. Or the owner just wanted to pop out for a quick espresso and a bit of gossip. That's right: the owner. It's not just snooty shopgirls with delusions of grandeur and no commissions who perpetrate this. It's Mr. Proprieter who doesn't want the pasta to get cold as well.

There are, of course, people who do want to sell you something. The Africans who want to sell you books on their homeland or last year's restaurant and bar guide. Failing that, of course, they'll take a hand-out. There are the roving rose selleres who refuse to take no for an answer. If I say no, Buddy, I mean it. Shoving the the whole damn bouquet in my face will NOT make me change my mind. The ones that do take no for an answer are rumored to be using the flowers as a cover for counting customers. These tend to be Italian and have roses that don't look like they were stolen off someone's grave last week. I don't really believe that one, though: this is not Sicily, after all.

Then there are the Chinese pushing scarves, alarm clocks, cigarette lighters in the shape of the Mannekin-Pis (guess where the flame comes out), and various toys that make truly annoying noises. The current fave is a yellow puppet, theoretically a bird, that sticks out his tongue and makes a noise slightly more hellish than fingers on a blackboard. And they work that thing, too-- they're not satisified with the occasional breep. No, they've got to make it squeal once per second, sticking it the face of whatever innocent person is closest. One of these days, one of them is going to get that damn bird shoved so far up their ass its ugly little beak will puncture a lung. Breep breep.

Last but not least, as I was recently reminded, are L. Ron's gang. They seem to have abandoned their tried-and-true method of stopping pedestrians on Via Torino and saying "May I ask you a question?" To which, of course, the only correct answer is "No!" Not as successful as they had hoped, apparently, because they have recently started passing out scientology pamplets. No takers for those, either, at least not that I've seen.

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Lunch with the Orientals yesterday. It was at an Indian restaurant, as the talk was on Vietnam. No, it didn't make sense to me, either.

The food was not too bad, although it was far from the best I've had in Milan, much less elsewhere. The owner was nice though, and they kept the wine coming. Some restaurants we've gone to work on a "one bottle for five people and that's all you're getting" policy, which is on the downright stingy side of hardly enough. Especially if the food is spicy, which this, sadly, certainly was not. I met the chef and told him so, and he offered to make me a vindaloo or something right then and there, but since we'd just finished dessert I declined. The Italians, he said, just don't appreciate spices. Of course, most of the women there were Asian, so I don't know what he was thinking. The Indian place we usually go to tones it down some, but not all the way to bland. Angie and Bruce go there all the time after yoga, though, so I may give it another try sometime, provided I can discuss my meal with the chef first.

Most alarming item at lunch: an almost tasteless lamb "curry" the color of an orange dreamsicle. I swear there was Campbell's Tomato Soup in there somewhere.

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Marco Biagi's funeral was today. I watched a bit on TV, and there was quite a turnout.

Marco Biagi was the assistant to the Minister of Labor, who was responsible, at least in part, for the white paper on the proposed reforms to the labor law. Currently, it is almost impossible to fire someone in Italy, for cause or otherwise. It is also almost impossible to hire someone part time. This means that Italian workers can do jackshit at work as they have, for all intents and purposes, a job for life. Employers find this an unreasonable situation, and try to avoid hiring anyone at all if they can help it. The government wants to change this, in line with EU labor laws, to make it easier to fire someone for cause, which sounds reasonable enough for me, but which the unions view as a clear sign that Satan is alive and well and living in Italy. Probably wearing an expensive suit, designer footwear and smoking a capitalist cigar. As a sign of their displeasure, they've been striking a lot, which is a pain in the ass for your average inhabitant of this fair land, and are calling for a general strike in April, which will be a full-on hemorroidal attack if it actually happens.

On Tuesday, Marco Biagi was shot by two men on a moped as he cycled home from work.

In 1999, Massimo D'Antona, who held the same job as Biagi, was also assasinated. Biagi was his replacement. He was given bodyguards, but they were taken away last fall by the Minister of the Interior, despite the fact that Biagi was recieving death threats. The extra manpower was needed elsewhere to "prevent terrorism" in the wake of Sept. 11th. The Minister of the Interior responded to the assasination with a hasty speech denouncing this dastardly terrorist attack. I don't really need to comment on this, do I?

Both assasinations were committed with the same gun, and both are claimed by the New Red Brigade. The Nuova Br (Brigate Rosse-- they don't capitalize all letters in an acronym, only the first) has stated its intent to create the proper "political-military conditions for a lasting class war."

Nice.

The've also posted their rather stunning manifesto on the web-- even communists must move with the times. The mood in Italy is one of anger and of fear, and I don't blame them. No one, right or left, wants a return to the "years of lead" which, thank God, I missed. I am angry and frightened myself. I mean, look who's running the Ministry of the Interior, for God's sake. Berlusconi and Ciampi have called for dialog, but the unions say nothing doing, that they refuse to bow to terrorism in that way. Never mind the fact that the Br doesn't want more flexible labor laws, and would prefer things to be just as anarchic as possible. They also say they will probably call for a general strike April 5th as planned. (Which ought to be a truly fun day!) What they have done is call for demonstrations in protest of the Br tomorrow, in addition to the demonstrations that have been going on all over Italy since Wednesday. (There was one in Genova, in fact, the day I was there.) I'm sure the Br will be duly persuaded to mend their ways in the face of all this public indignation. In fact, they will probably be so moved that they'll just clamber on their pigs and fly away.