"Buon Giorno!" Welcome to the only newsletter that could grow on you like a humorous fungus, "Only In Italy!"

It's probably my own ethnocentricity: I find two Muslims battling each other to be terrifying, but nuns going at it is freakin' hilarious!

Also funny is the pomposity of the Carabinieri, Guardia di finanza, and all the other paramilitary types. At the Infiorata festival in Noto this year, my girlfriend and I visited a large and colorful outdoor display of Carabiniere uniforms. But a huge bull cop kept stepping in front of us to block our view. Was he worried we'd get some ideas for Halloween? Keep cranking out those newsletters! Amo sopratutto i commenti e le parolacce! Carl R.

Thanks for the message, Carlo.

While the Carabinieri have been widely considered one of the most trusted and competent institutions by Italians, they are also the butt of many funny jokes implying that they were (and still are) stereotypically incompetent and unable to think beyond blind obedience.

Quite frankly, Carlo, their uniforms would not make great costumes because the traditional idea of a Halloween costume is to frighten. The only fear Carabiniere sow is when you're not sure how much of your monthly paycheck will go towards paying for one of their tickets for a burned tail light.

Enjoy the issue, keep writing and Grazie!

Rome - September 26, 2007 - Italy's Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a penalty against a Dominican friar who told police not to "break my balls".

The friar, identified as Giordano G., was convicted last year of insulting officers after they entered his drug rehab community for a night-time check.

Friar Giordano appealed against the March 2006 sentence, pleading with the appeals judges that his words "had no offensive content because the phrase in question has become such a common expletive as to render it innocuous". The judges took a different view, upholding the cleric's earlier conviction for abusing public servants.

Wednesday's sentence clashed with a recent widely publicized ruling from the precedent-setting organ, which pronounced this summer that the word "Vaffanculo", Italy's equivalent of the F-word, was no longer to be considered an insult because it was now so commonly used.

Venice - September 18, 2007 - Venice has decided to ignore its reputation for wedding romance by enforcing a ban on showering newly-weds with rice, in an effort to keep down the city's pigeon population.

Each year more than 1,000 civil marriages are registered at the historic Palazzo Cavalli. But, said the city's police chief Marco Agostini, "throwing rice at the bride and groom brings hordes of pigeons, who then wait around until the next ceremony. The situation has become unbearable."

There are calculated to be 40,000 pigeons in the historic center. Besides the cost of cleaning up droppings, it has been discovered that pigeons are causing dangerous cracks in buildings. Offering them food spiked with contraceptives has produced scant results in cutting their numbers. A city spokeswoman said: "The rice ban was already on the books, but there will be no more turning a blind eye for weddings since it was calculated that every new-born Venetian is lumbered with an annual tax of 275 Euros ($387) to clean up after pigeons."

The mayor, Massimo Cacciari, is also trying to ban the sale of grain to feed pigeons in St Mark's Square, despite opposition from animal rights groups and the sellers themselves, who have refused to move. "The square is not a hen-house and you can't have pigeon's droppings all over the place," Mr Agostini said. "The square is washed and cleaned up weekly, but it's not enough."

Authorities also say that the pigeons are chipping away at the city's marble statues and buildings by pecking at small gaps in the facades to reach for scraps of food that have been blown inside, thus threatening the city's ancient fabric.

Rome - September 12, 2007 - Italy's popular chili pepper peperoncino raises the risk of getting prostate cancer, Italian doctors said Wednesday.

Speaking on European Prostate Awareness Day, the Italian Society of Urology (SUI) warned men not to eat too much peperoncino in the belief that it will spice up their love life.

"Peperoncino is often used as the poor man's "blue pill" but you shouldn't have too much of it if you want to avoid prostate trouble," said SUI President Vincenzo Mirone. "Reckless use, in fact, inflames the gland. It causes prostatitis, which scientific studies have shown is linked to tumors".

Mirone, however, may have blunted the SUI's anti-chili drive by stating that peperoncino "stimulates desire in the male".

Peperoncino, which is believed to have been brought back to Italy by Christopher Columbus, has been celebrated as a boost for potency since ancient times. The belief still plays a large but mainly jocular part in Italian festivals dedicated to the spice.

Peperoncino is liberally used in many Italian dishes, especially in the south, where it adds pep to the region's essentially simple cuisine. One of the Mezzogiorno's most colorful sights is that of strings of red chili peppers hanging out to dry in summer, from windows and balconies, on washing lines, spread out on the hoods of cars, or nailed to trees in the countryside. The longer peppers are preserved in oil and vinegar and often munched straight out of the jar but the smaller ones are much hotter and reserved for cooking.

The hottest of all are the tiny diavoletti, which are indeed "little devils," to be eaten at your peril.

One of Rome's simplest and most popular treats is spaghetti laced with a hot sauce of olive oil, garlic and peperoncino. The biggest chili-head get together is at Diamante, Calabria, in early autumn. Calabria is particularly attached to the pepper and generations of poor Calabrian emigrants have taken it with them worldwide.

Calabria even has a Peperoncino Academy, with local chapters around the world.