Leave it to the Italians to have a hot Prime Minister. That’s Giorgia Meloni, of course.

She cozied up to Trump for a while, no doubt expecting to play him, but soon found out he’s such a turd it’s useless. When he recently lied saying she begged for a photo with him, she shot back: “There is one thing he should remember. I never beg — and neither does Italy.”

Per Bret Stephens in the Times:

“However much we may disdain him, the president has the rest of us on the hook, as the face and voice of a country that ought to know better. Trump’s angry visage draped between the exterior columns of the Department of Justice? That’s us. His gilded, meretricious redecoration of the White House? That’s us. His repeatedly avowed admiration for Vladimir Putin? That’s us. His laughable claim about having achieved regime change in Tehran? That’s us. His Mafia-like threats against NATO allies? That’s us. His indescribably vain (and pathetically fruitless) effort to affix his name to the Kennedy Center? That’s us. His venal family profiting off his presidency in ways both transparent and tacky? That’s us.

“The same goes for his insult of Meloni, which may be far from the worst of his sins but is also the most emblematic for being at once so utterly unnecessary as well as dementedly self-defeating. That’s us. The same country that freed its slaves, welcomed immigrants, invented airplanes, liberated concentration camps, landed men on the moon and challenged the Soviet Union to tear down this wall now bids to be the global equivalent of the expensively dressed man soiling his pants at a cocktail party.”

Brava, Giorgia.

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IMHO, I hit the jackpot for my ridiculous wordplay from the NYTXW today. I worked with ASSERTS, ETSY (Big name in e-commerce), TAEBO, TOGA, and PONZU (Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine).

Also STATUE was clued with “Pygmalion’s Galatea, for one.” If you’re not familiar with the story, Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with Galatea, a statue he created.

So I came up with the following:

That was quite a bike ride.
Yup. Five hours.
How are you feeling?
ASSERTS.

You come dressed for a workout like that?!
Your message said “bow tie.”
No, you idiot — I said TAE BO!

Plot to corner the market on Japanese citrus-based sauces: PONZU scheme.

Pygmalion (from bedroom, upon hearing the front door open downstairs): Honey, STATUE?
Galatea: Yes, darling. I’ll be right up.

Brutus: Julie-babes. That gorgeous new TOGA is to die for! I’d kill for one like it. Let me take a stab at where you got it — Target?
Caesar: ETSY Brutè.

Here’s Galatea. Yup, I can see it.

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This entry in Met Diary last Sunday is by Sloane Crosley.

Dear Diary:

I was walking past a woman in her 20s who was dressed neatly if blandly in grays and blacks.

She was headed into an office building on 53rd Street, at 9 a.m., and screaming into her phone: “And I said I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s not going in my body unless you unplug it!”

I think about it all the time.

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Craig Griffiths innocently posted the following for the Dull Men’s Club (UK) recently:

“Watching Rhubarb asleep this afternoon, it occurred to me that she has absolutely everything she wants. Food arrives. Walks happen. Comfortable beds are available in several locations. People tell her she’s clever despite there being very little evidence for it. If reincarnation exists, I’d quite like to come back as Rhubarb. Not my actual Rhubarb, obviously. That would create all sorts of complications, given that I’d also be dead.

“But it did get me thinking about death. Not in a gloomy way, just out of curiosity. What do people genuinely believe happens when we die? Do you think that’s the end of it, or that something comes next?”

In the comments section, Russell Davies unloaded with this:

“In my early 40’s, after a long period of celibacy living with an ‘ex’ as a friend, I had the good fortune to come across a reference online to the name of the first real girlfriend I had ever had, who was working as an author in France. I made the decision to contact her, and within a short space of time began a relationship in earnest, of necessity, long distance. I was amazed to have rediscovered her and that we still felt a strong connection. She was in the process of extricating herself from a very unhappy marriage, and was excited to have found her first love again, as was I. Within a month of meeting, however, things took an awful turn. Her husband discovered that he had a rare form of cancer. It was a traumatic experience, as not only had it been a long marriage, but they had had twin boys within the marriage who were at the time seven years old, and it was a huge emotional trauma for the entire family.

“They separated nonetheless, but, understandably, she did not feel able to invite me over as she and the twins were regularly visiting him both at his new home and later in hospital. She was also from a traditional French family, and was horrified at the thought that she would be judged by family and the wider community if I were to be ensconced in the family home. Towards the end, he moved back into their family home, and spent much of his last six months on earth with the children.

“When after eighteen months my girlfriend’s husband was dying, I felt a sense of deep trepidation, as I had a sudden premonition that he was not going to cross over easily. I contacted a friend who is a Tibetan Buddhist lay practitioner, and together we decided to request of a local temple that practice be done by local monks to help him cross over when he died. This indeed took place a month later, when I heard the news that he had lost the struggle with cancer.

“When I eventually moved to France to be with my girlfriend, almost a year later, I walked into an atmosphere heavy with emotion, and I instantly felt a spiritual presence in the building, and what appeared to be a spiritual attachment on everyone in the house. Both my girlfriend and her two children had a very oppressed and negative energy that went well beyond the deep sadness and unprocessed grief which was nevertheless present, and it was a difficult beginning to our living together. However, over the course of the year I spent there, things went from bad to worse.

“Within six weeks of being there, the children expressed that they felt I had wanted to kill their father. There was a huge resentment at my presence in the house, to the point that my girlfriend would not even sleep with me, but set up a bed for me in the office downstairs next to the garage. I felt a very powerful and tangible feeling that the husband was present, and apart from the feeling of this and of being watched, I felt he was emotionally influencing everyone in the house directly.

“I did my best to get on with building a life there, set up an ‘association’ or local business, teaching English and guitar, but despite my best efforts, I was not assimilated into the household, and my girlfriend was quick to anger with me at the smallest things, often flying into an uncontrollable rage and even physically attacking me. In more somber moments, she would cry, and would say that we had killed her husband, and no amount of comforting or talking would move this feeling she had. The atmosphere was tense most of the time, and I sensed a brooding angry presence lurking, a hidden consciousness inhabiting the house which I could not communicate with despite my efforts.

One day, after months of uneasiness, my then girlfriend was roaming the house looking for something with the children, while I was preparing English lessons for my students. Eventually, I decided to ask what she was looking for as she seemed at her wit’s end, and she replied by explaining that the children wished to look at a series of photographs of themselves with their father, taken on their very last trip to a swimming pool. They were on a cd disc. As she finished explaining, I heard a gravelly French voice in my mind, telling me in French that the disc was downstairs. He said that it was on the table, and showed me an image of a spool, and in a way that I cannot explain, showed me where on the spool the disc was. I descended the stairs and sure enough, thirty seconds later, returned clutching the disc. I explained what had happened, and she did not believe me, and repeated several times that she had checked on the table and had looked at every cd, and that the disc had not been there. I assured her that I had indeed heard her husband’s voice, and proceeded to mimic the distinctive voice I had heard, much to her astonishment. She seemed shocked, and admitted that this was exactly what his voice had sounded like, but refused to believe or even consider the idea that I had spoken to him and walked off dismissively.

“On another occasion, I heard the same gravelly voice telling me that if I were to go into the garage, I would see how much he loved his wife. An image was projected into my mind of the corner of the room, and a pile of old newspapers. I followed the voice’s instructions, and sure enough, found a large pile of old newspapers. Taking them down, inside was revealed a set of five oil paintings he had painted of his wife, and when I took them to show her, she was surprised as she had forgotten all about them and had no idea they were still in the house. She tearfully recounted how disappointed he had been when she did not react with the delight he had expected on showing her his tributes to the beauty he saw in her.

“The final and most significant experience was when my girlfriend was staying downstairs with me (she always returned to the former marital bed before sunrise), and I heard slow gentle steps coming down the wooden staircase to the basement where we were. The footsteps then stopped, and there was silence for a few moments. I could clearly see the staircase, yet there was nobody there. Then, suddenly, there was a massive flash of light, as an orb the size of a soccer ball appeared and hung in the air for a couple of seconds, illuminating the entire room before disappearing as rapidly as it had manifested. It had the intense appearance of plasma. I rushed up the stairs, wondering if one of the children had used a camera flash to frighten us. Both children were fast asleep, and I stood for minutes listening to their regular rhythmic breathing, before returning downstairs, reflecting on the fact that the downstairs room was not completely dark, and I had not seen anyone walking downstairs, despite being able to clearly see each step, as the room was partially illuminated by the desktop computer in the corner.

“Only a few minutes passed, and my girlfriend and I were disturbed by loud knocking on the wardrobe next to the bed, which made the wooden chamber of the almost empty internal space resonate loudly. This was followed by even louder, more violent knocking on the thin partition wall next to me, and I knew at that moment that it was the living spirit of the husband who had returned to express his anger at my presence. She said “Russell, I am frightened”, and I proceeded to talk to the spirit, explaining that I was not there to usurp his position as father, and that I had the greatest respect and sympathy for him. The knocks subsided after ten minutes, and my girlfriend went back to sleep, denying that anything at all had taken place the following morning.

“Within 2 months, I had returned to the UK somewhat traumatized, to pick up where I had left off.”

Geez Louise.

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Let’s close with this poem by Faith Shearin called “Retired.”

On the island where I was a child
nearly everyone was retired, their fortunes

already made. Death was around them
the way water was around our streets.

They taught me how to go fishing
without catching fish; the tide’s breath

was marked in notebooks they kept
beneath their pillows. One old lady

fed me chocolates from a tin
until my teeth were stained by greed.

The old do things slowly so I grew used
to grocery store lines

that did not move, cars that stopped
in the middle of the road. One man spent

a whole day helping me bury a squirrel;
we wrote odes and dirges

to the way it once hurried and planned.

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See you next time!