Politically Incorrect Ranting about Italy and Italians

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My First Blog Post

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

As I said in my last post, I have recently dealt with some really stupid people. They aren’t ignorant, because an ignorant person has never had the correct information available. A stupid person has the facts, the proof, the research, all in front of them, and they refuse it.

So yeah, a lot of Italians are actually stupid. Probably just as stupid as people in other countries, but after living in a country with a population of 6 million, and being back in Italy with its population of more that 60 million, I feel I am coming in contact with more dumbasses.

Let’s start with my stupid mother-in-law. She believes, like way too many others, that cold air causes you to get sick. She freaks out if you try to leave the house with wet hair, even if it’s 100 degrees outside. She thinks air conditioning, or a breeze, will give you what’s called torcicollo and there is nothing you can say to make her change her mind. When my oldest daughter was 10 and we were visiting the nonni, I had her wash the dishes after dinner, much to the dismay of Nonna. The next day, my daughter was sick with vomiting. My monster-in-law yelled at me and said it was my fault because i made her do the dishes and she must have splashed water on her abdomen, resulting in her getting sick. It was most likely all the crap my kid ate the day before.

So people here would rather die of the heat than risk dying from getting any air blown on them. We were in a large shopping mall once and we saw a kid, about 6, all bundled up with coat, scarf and hat. He was running towards the exit of the mall, and his mother, in a panic, yelled, “Mariooo, don’t run, you might sweat!” It was about 65F out that day. Mario is going to die of heat exhaustion before he is going to die from the cold. To this day, all of us in the family still say, “Mariooo…you might sweat!” whenever we see people all bundled up.

My mother-in-law wears furs, and she can’t wait for the temperature to get really cold so she can show them off, so when Naples hits 70F, they come out. Because, you know, 70 is really fucking cold. She also smokes. A lot. Like two packs a day. And when she would visit us in the last place we lived, and I made her smoke outside, she said smoking outside would give her bronchitis. I was like, here, let me fix that for you: smoking ~~outside~~ would give her bronchitis.

And smoking will be my number 4.

My Second Gripe

Dog shit. It’s EVERYWHERE. I can’t believe that in this very upscale town, with multi-million dollar homes, I have to be careful of dog poop.

I have a dog and she poops. Big surprise. But I clean it up. If we are in our own home and she poops in the yard, we still picked it up. Poop is nasty and it’s full of bacteria. It is so easy to scoop it up in a baggy and then dispose of it, but God no, not an Italian.

For fuck’s sake, if I see 5 dog walkers I can guarantee only one will pick up after their dog. We are in a really nice apartment while we wait to move into our house and I have to take our dog out several times a day. On the property, yet outside the wall, there is a decorative area covered in small stones. It also currently has 6 large turds, in a 2x10ft area. If this property was mine I would block it so people can’t walk their dogs on it.

Yesterday i went for a run and found an abandoned factory. I was pretty cool, though I didn’t go in. I found an open window to peek into so I could see the inside, and what did I find?

Here’s the factory:

And here’s what I saw inside a broken window:

So “responsible” dog walkers are bagging their little turds’ turds, and then throwing the bags into this building!

I met an old farmer walking with his large dog, an Italian Spinone, the other day, and he told me he saw a woman with her dog in the weekly outdoor market that day, who let her dog shit in the middle of the market, and then she walked away. He was upset, and said dogs don’t belong at the market, and if people can’t clean up after them, they shouldn’t have dogs. And he is right.

And yesterday, in an Italian FB group, I actually got into a fight with stupid people about how a raincoat on a dog isn’t going to protect them from viruses or bacteria. I was called an idiot, was told that the rain causes arthritis, and that viruses have nothing to do with people or animals getting sick. When I pointed out that these people are making their dogs sick by letting them walk in other dogs’ shit, they said I didn’t know what I was talking about. Well, their dogs will contract all sorts of stuff, and probably die, and these geniuses will blame it on the cold.

“Dog waste is toxic. It contains bacteria, viruses, parasites and plenty of other components that pollute water systems. Whenever it storms, those nasty things can travel into surrounding bodies of water, which in turn pollute swimming areas, increase the amount algae and weed growth that makes water murky and green, and alter the amount of oxygen and ammonia, thereby killing aquatic wildlife. The EPA even estimates that two days worth of dog poop from about 100 dogs would contribute enough pollution to close a beach and all watershed areas within 20 miles of it. So, do you need to pick up dog poop? Yes.” And use compostable bags that won’t stick around like plastic!

https://www.familyhandyman.com/landscaping/should-you-pick-up-your-dogs-poop/

This leads me to my next rant: abject stupidity.

Top Two Rants: 1

There are two things that are really driving me insane–one fills me with anxiety and the other fills me with rage and disgust.

The first is driving. I FUCKING HATE DRIVING IN ITALY. It is the most stressful thing ever, and to think, I actually live in the “civilized” part of the country. I used to live in a much less progressive part of Italy and it was a lot worse.

I just spent 3 glorious and peaceful years in Scandinavia, where rules are followed and people are calm. Where, when you put on your blinker, people let you enter traffic. Now I’m back in the land of wannabe Formula 1 drivers who see a turn signal as a sign of weakness and/or an indication that they need to speed up to cut you off, because God forbid, anyone get in front of them.

In addition, if you do manage to get in front of them, they will ride your ass so closely, swerving from side to side, periodically swinging into oncoming traffic to see if they can pass. If you are on the autostrada (toll interstate) they will flash their brights at you. On the autostrada the limit is 130kph, but it isn’t unusual to see cars going 160 or more.

The photo below is from today. That woman was on my ass until she could pass, and then she got stuck between me and the truck I was keeping space from.

So if you try to drive at a proper, safe distance, forget about it. Everyone will try to squeeze into any space they think is unnecessary. They have zero concept of safe distances.

I have been trying to tell myself to be relaxed while driving. That I don’t need to be hyper-vigilant. Well, as soon as I tried to relax I almost got hit by someone who decided to take my exit from the right lane, swinging into me as I exited. About 2 hours later I was driving around a roundabout, going left, and the woman coming towards me, ON HER PHONE, was going so fast she screeched her tires sliding into the roundabout.

Yesterday I was being passed on the autostrada and as the asshole passed me, he veered into my lane and I narrowly escaped being side-swiped.

So fuck relaxation. Not in the car. It’s a fucking nightmare out there, especially for someone who’s genetic background and culture has rules and order ingrained in her.

A good point about the Italians that Americans don’t do is use the left lanes for passing. Trucks and semis stay in the right lane unless they pass one another, when they move to the center, then back again (if they are not dicks). Most transport trucks are foreign here, because the autostrada nearest me is a major thoroughfare for the southern part of Europe, from Turkey to Spain.

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