Hey, you! Mr. Marzipan-man!

Dear Grown-ups,

My mommy is letting me guest write on her blog--well, I mean, I talk and she types. Because I'm only six years old. But I have things to say. Oh boy--do I!

There's a man, a very strange-looking man, who's in charge of Italy. I don't know why, but his face looks like the browned hide of a caramel apple--and not the good kind, but the kind with all sorts of toxic preservatives, the kind a creepy ex-prison-inmate carny serves you with a leer, the kind my mommy won't let me eat. Also, his hair looks very fake--it never moves! I don't think even a cyclone would muss it up. It looks like a bunch of kids from the scuola materna colored it on with pennarelli--and they were 3 year-olds, so they didn't do a very good job, either. And his skin is very tight and pulled across his face, like someone trying to do a Number Two, or maybe someone trying to do a zombie-face. Anyway, he's scary. He'd make a good scarecrow, though I don't think it would be a very nice thing to do to the crows.

I think he must be a very bad man, because it seems like he's always lying. The reason I think he's always lying is because he's always saying things like, "I didn't do it! Everybody's blaming me! It's a plot!" To paraphrase Shakespeare, methinks he doth protest too much (mommy helped me with that one--I've only just started reading Pimpa). The bad man also says things like, "They're all against me! Nobody loves me! Everyone else is doing it! Puritans and moralists, the lot of you!" Exactly like a big baby. I should know because this is how I used to behave--then I turned five.

A bunch of femmine gathered and marched in Florence this past Sunday in protest of the bad, shellac-faced man. I couldn't go because I had homework to do. But even though I'm small, I'd still like my voice to be heard.

The way I see it, my life in Italy could go in one of two directions when I grow up: I can be an empty-headed velina and future member of parliament, or I can use my brain and considerable spark and do something far more interesting with my life. Why on earth would I want to parade my surgically-enhanced poppe and butt-cheeks around on prime-time television when I could be splitting atoms or discovering a cure for cancer or feeding the world's hungry? Why would I want to be groped by a bunch of whisky-swilling, cigar-puffing, withered old buffoons in a private villa when I could be writing my dissertation, or training for the Olympics, or working an honest job? Why be the stiletto-heeled validation an aging, unrepentent reptile needs? I'd like to take this broom and whip the almond-paste-faced man across his mummified ass (my mommy says sometimes nothing less than a good cuss-word will do the job--especially if it's for a worthy cause). Maybe that'd knock some sense of decency into him. Or at least it might get his hair to move.

So here's what I would say to the man who runs Italy if I could, and if he would bother to listen: I may seem small and weak, I may look tomboyish and very un-velina-like, and my boobs might never grow bigger than hard-boiled eggs--but I'd rather be a garden gnome than be one of your lousy showgirls, or ego-stroking party-favors, or Minister of Lingerie or whatever. You're a rotten apple, Mr. Berlusconi. A trickster, a doofus. Someday, I'll take hearty bites out of men like you and spit them out.

But for now I'm gonna go have some cookies....

Bye!

Gemma