Ria Bacon: editor & writer

Linguist with wanderlust,
From the hills of New Guinea to the halls of the Sorbonne,
From the beaches of Bassam to the fields of Friesland,
From the catacombs of Rome to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.
From the heather of the Veluwe to the dust of Dakar ...

Currently resident in the Land of Sea with a small tribe of kids and Mr B.

FYI

Stet means "Let it stand" and is used by editors to indicate that the original text should be left untouched.

...in Arcadia ego is a pun on a painting by Poussin.

Contact

Ria[dot]Bacon[at]gmail.com

Copyright

Creative Commons License

Stet in a cloud

Ria fotografia

Photo Galleries

Gallery One

Ria Galleria

Now hear dis!

Stet is a proud member of


    expatriate

Last exit for Italy

Someone once wrote that war was composed of long periods of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That pretty much sums up my trip north from Rome to Friesland. The moments of terror came when an overloaded and swaying lorry suddenly swung out in front of me to overtake another slow-moving lorry. I can

Continue reading Last exit for Italy

August 11th, 2005 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Leaving this place, Photos, Roma o morta | 7 comments

7 comments to Last exit for Italy

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Girl-on-girl housework

There’s an ad campaign in Italy at the moment for endermology treatment that looks as if you iron away your cellulite.

I like the picture because I can imagine it embodies a doubly erotic fantasy for many men.I love the levitating table, but close up, the endermologicky machine looks

Continue reading Girl-on-girl housework

June 15th, 2005 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Photos | 9 comments

9 comments to Girl-on-girl housework

  • Ria
    June 17, 2005 at 3:45 pm · Reply

    But you have such flawless skin, Zinnia, your pores! And you’re so cellulite-free and perky. The figure of of (help me here)

    ach, lost it

  • Zinnia Cyclamen
    June 17, 2005 at 1:46 pm · Reply

    Eek! Scary and alien! As are beauty salons in general, to me anyway, as I’m one of the scruffiest and least glamorous people I know (hope I’m not shattering any illusions here!!).

  • Zinnia Cyclamen
    June 21, 2005 at 8:40 am · Reply

    eh?? Junoesque is more like it!! But hey, of course, this is cyberspace… so, let’s think waist-length blonde hair, green eyes, skin/cellulite/perkiness exactly as you describe, abs flat as a dinner table, all muscles toned to perfection, tallish, long legs… ah, the dreams, the dreams!

  • kenju
    June 16, 2005 at 12:30 pm · Reply

    I am so glad I decided to post about my screen name and let people know I am not Japanese; not that it matters a whole lot, but you might picture me differently now!

  • kenju
    June 15, 2005 at 11:57 pm · Reply

    I have always wondered if Endermologie is a scam or if it really helps. Sure looks like something out of aliens’ minds, to me.

  • kenju
    June 16, 2005 at 7:34 pm · Reply

    I just realized I didn’t answer your question this a.m. Yes, my childhood memories are somewhat more acute now, while more recent happenings are forgotten! I do find that thinking about them before I post brings back more detail than I realized I remembered. Every time I read someone else’s memories, it reminds me of things I had forgotten (or thought I had).

    When I go back home for school reunions, however, people tell about things that happened in school and I have no memory of them at all.It is odd.

  • rachie
    June 15, 2005 at 6:26 pm · Reply

    Jesus. It does truly look as if it’s designed to eat your brain.

    I could learn to love my cellulite. Really.

  • kenju
    June 16, 2005 at 12:28 pm · Reply

    Ria, thank you so much for offering to help with photos. As soon as I have time to go through the box of old ones and find the ones I want, I may take you up on it. A few other people have also offered; my problem is that being so very computer illiterate, I don’t know most of the terminology – and I am useless at finding files, etc.

    I suppose I need to hire a “geek” to help teach me all this important stuff!

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Tits ‘n’ bums, kids ‘n’ mums

The city council has put up extra billboards to host the thousands of posters for the forthcoming regional elections. The regular billboards are overloaded with dozens of posters stuck on top of each other by the busy glue boys working under cover of darkness. In their hyperactive haste they seem to drip as much glue on

Continue reading Tits ‘n’ bums, kids ‘n’ mums

February 23rd, 2005 | Tags: , , , | Category: Photos, Politricks, Roma o morta | 12 comments

12 comments to Tits ‘n’ bums, kids ‘n’ mums

  • romanwanderer
    February 24, 2005 at 7:08 pm · Reply

    Benetton has toned it down, the original
    designer was fired or left for other ventures, I forget the story.
    Yeah, they had this huge in a Piazza in Milan with a newborn baby still attached to his mother, still covered in….well, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  • Ria
    February 23, 2005 at 7:27 pm · Reply

    I don’t think the cultural relativism argument is valid, romanwanderer. The Telecom Italia ad is an example of sloppy design and crude exploitation – period.

  • romanwanderer
    February 23, 2005 at 7:00 pm · Reply

    Kenju, ads have been that way in Italy for as long as I can remember.
    There’s also a difference between the way people dress in the summer in the US and in Italy.
    Which doesn’t make it right, but it’s not as sexually related as it would be in the US.

  • Mathieu
    February 23, 2005 at 12:18 pm · Reply

    Oh, I remember all those Intimissimi ads last year when I used to go to Torino regularly.

    France has a lot of lingerie ads, but these were ALL OVER the place.

  • Alex
    February 24, 2005 at 7:41 pm · Reply

    romanwanderer – I forgot about the add you mention. In the ad I was on about, the baby was not attached – just smiling at you from between this huge pair of naked breasts. The creativity might be admired, but as for the taste…well… However, I don’t think it raised many Italian eyebrows. Their view of these things is vastly different from that of UK dwellers and those from over the pond. In a way, I suppose it is good to not get all hot about the collar about these things.

  • Ria
    February 24, 2005 at 8:58 pm · Reply

    The 1991 ad in question did in fact cause such a strong reaction in the UK, France and Italy that Benetton removed it in all three countries.

    Trivia fact: Ex-Benetton Creative Director, photographer Oliviero Toscani’s father took the famous shot of the dead Mussolini and his mistress strung up like chickens.

  • Zinnia Cyclamen
    February 23, 2005 at 4:58 pm · Reply

    The message I get is ‘don’t buy stuff from these morons’.

    Very interesting reading your post while Riverbend’s words about the current position of young women in Baghdad are still ricocheting around in my head. I’m sure there are links to be made and parallels to be drawn, but I don’t think I could do it without being trite.

  • kenju
    February 23, 2005 at 5:01 pm · Reply

    These ads tell me that, as always, sex sells. I guess it doesn’t matter what country the ads originate from either, does it? Apparently, all ad men/women are alike. I wonder what all those images say to our children, who are trying to make sense of the world every day. I shudder to think what the world will be like in another 50 years.

  • Jane
    February 23, 2005 at 1:51 pm · Reply

    This is really terrible. It sounds as if Italy is still viewing women as meat for sale, to exploit as men want to. What in the world has a naked women got to do with faster cable? Well.. I guess it does get you to these porno sites much faster!? But if the election posters are anything to go by I guess I can understand the commercial adds! Subservient women… . But I am confused because Italian women are too aggressive to play that part I suspect. Hence the high rates of divorce perhaps.

    Great piece of writing. I really enjoyed this.

  • Alex
    February 23, 2005 at 9:32 pm · Reply

    Yes, I’ve noticed the ads here too. Two have particularly stuck in my mind and both are from a few years back. First, there was a Benetton ad with either a black horse on top of a white horse or vice versa. Then there was this amazing ad for a children’s wear chain – Pre Natal, I think. Anyway, it was this smiling baby staring out from between two large naked breasts. It was on the side of buses and trams, just about everywhere. I tried to imagine just how long an ad campaign of this type would have lasted in the UK………..

  • Sigmund, Carl and Alfred
    February 23, 2005 at 4:28 pm · Reply

    Your wrap up, “Get a basic education” to “Take care of sick people” is an interesting observation.

    Less has changed than we thought.

  • Ria
    February 23, 2005 at 7:44 pm · Reply

    Zinnia, I was struck too by the parallels with Riverbend’s posts. In that respect, Telecom Italia is the lesser of two evils.

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>