Since I was far too lazy to come up with some new pictures, I figured I'd use some old ones of my trip to Italy in 1996. Let me take you on this fantastic voyage of fun, idiocy, and a whole lot of caffeine.

This is a photograph I took by placing my camera into a giant, spherical garbage can. At first you may notice just normal trash, but if you look closer, it appears that someone threw out a small replica statue of David. Also, it looks as if someone got rid of a perfectly good sandwich. Eventually, we took an even closer look...

First, Mark Gasparini's love of a good prosciutto, salami and mozarella sandwich was the catalyst to his irrational actions. Although no one actually saw him take this foodstuff out of the garbage, my secret bowtie camera took this shot of him stuffing it into some orifice of his body. One can only hope that it was his mouth.

And as for the statue of David, it seems that this miniature replica was not all it was cracked up to be:

During the Italy trip, I must say that we saw many cultural differences--one of the biggest being the street signs. I thought that the whole point of signs without words is for them to convey a message without the interference of a language barrier, but I sure as heck didn't understand them. Here's a sampling of just a few:

Here is a picture of one of the signs that I took in or around the Sistine Chapel. Apparently, it is illegal to fall down the stairs anywhere near the Vatican. Either that, or you're not allowed to impersonate the Karate Kid on pointy stairs. As my mom always says, "Stop impersonating the Karate Kid on those pointy stairs, Noah, you might poke your eyeballs out! And then who would take out the garbage? Certainly not me..." Nag, nag, nag...

This sign perplexed me greatly. Can you find me in the picture? I'm that big moron imitating that weird sign. At first I thought it was directions to those wanting to play hide-and-go-seek. But then somebody told me that the World Cup Shotput Finals took place just outside our hotel, and that cleared everything up. At the time I took this picture, I believe I thought it meant that the Ice Capades were in town. Don't I feel foolish?

There I am somewhere in one of the southern regions of Italy, I think. They closed off a small area and put up this sign, apparently there to catch someone's attention. I wondered if perhaps this was some sort of top secret, governmental action to tell the locals something that we American tourists could not understand...

At first, my friends and I dismissed the idea of this secret message and decided that it was just probably one of many silly, puncuation-esque, signs. The possibilities were endless...

It was a mystery that we just had to solve. So, later in the day, I asked a member of the Carabinieri, Italy's military police, if I could take a picture with him. Do you see that dorky smile on my face? That's because right before we took the picture, I reached into his pocket (it's not what you're thinking! you have such dirty minds!) and stole this map....

Our worst fears and first thoughts turned out to be true! Look at what I found:

We continued to find sign after confusing sign:

This one was quite puzzling. I think that this sign was there to tell me that I was standing on a large pile of manure. Of course, we didn't rule out that this might be the pole vaulting area. Either way, that stuff at the bottom of the stick is definitely manure.Why do you think that Italy never does well in that event at the Olympics? There's no human excrement to dig that stick into!	The fire hoses in Italy are apparently very tightly coiled, but why they need a sign saying that is beyond my comprehension. In this picture, the moron in the center has seemingly fallen under the hypnotic spell of this sign. Hopefully, none of you will realize that the zombie-like moron is me. Take me to your leader!

I thought there was a fire. Leave me alone. Now where's that tightly coiled hose?

Later, we noticed the sign on the left:

Since there were three images on this sign, it made it three times harder to completely comprehend it. One my friends thought that the center icon in the picture on the left was a solar system and that this was an entrance to the planetarium, but later admitted he was wrong after we called him an idiot. It was clearly an arrow pointing to the nearest yellow pages--you can see the similarities between the person and the walking fingers. Finally, somene told us that we were standing in the parking lot for the Italian Center for Archery, and we realized how foolish we were for not realizing that in the first place.

Here I am at some sort of Italian construction site. I believe that the signs in blue serve as a warning as to what might happen if one of the workers screws up on the job. The worker on the right--let us call him Mr. Hoffa--was later dismembered, his body parts shipped to Giants Stadium for quite an improper burial. As you can see, Mr. Hoffa is wearing a chastity belt, a tradition kept alive since Midieval times. According to the the signs underneath, other things to look out for are bolts of lightning (especially dangerous for those with chastity belts!) and flying wrecking balls. The bottom three signs apparently indicate that one is not allowed to stand on, pull on, or get hit by a crane on the Eiffel Tower.