Genius, funky, playful - this is how all webpages should be:

Il Barone, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, was arrested in Sicily after 23 years on the run. In an ill-fated moment, the don of Cosa Nostra and the future “boss of bosses” was arrested with his son, Sandro, and two other men as they convened in a villa in the outskirts of Palermo.

This is Lo Piccolo a long, long time ago:

Corriere della Sera has a full report about the real-life cinematic feat of Italian police. The report is complete with pictures and information about each of the four mafiosi captured. You can also read an English-language report about the raid here.

As I looked at Lo Piccolo, handcuffed and being taken away in his recent pictures, I couldn’t help but think to myself; wow, this man does not look like a mafia don!. He’s handsome, dignified, and does not easily go down as a personification of all things evil and corrupt. Take a look:

I know what you’re thinking. So maybe he looks a little upset in the last picture, but that is not without good cause. The man’s career is potentially over! I think we should wait some five years and then make a movie about Il Barone. By that time we would know how he escaped jail, cut off antimafia agent Piero Grosso’s balls, and resurrected Cosa Nostra yet again.

Dark sarcasm aside, I am having a difficult time accepting that this handsome, grey-haired (and rich, if I may add) man is going to jail. We can discuss crime and retribution all day and I would still find some room in my intellect to argue against putting Lo Piccolo behind the bars. I might be alright with putting him behind glass walls where we can look at him and ask him questions, though.

We are all evil (and good) and have potential to carry out evil acts. Not all of us do, but we have the natural readiness to be abusive and corrupt. The only difference between us (assuming you’re not Cosa Nostra people) and Lo Piccolo is that he channeled his natural readiness into a career, and a lucrative one at that. Both Lo Piccolo and his son Sandro had Rolex Daytona watches adorning their wrists at the time of the arrest.

To humanize the Lo Piccolos even more, La Corriere della Sera reports that the 32 year old Sandro shouted, in tears, when the Italian police raided the villa: «Ti amo papà!». Just imagine, if this happened in a mafia movie we would have shrugged it away as mere theatrics — sentimental garbage forced by the director on characters that should show no mercy or feelings.

This whole grand plot inspires me that here has never been a more perfect time for a Godfather marathon, a cigarette, and a class in Sicilian.

I have recently become obsessed with classical music to an unprecedented degree. I am very deeply in love with a Carl Orff composition called O Fortuna, which is the title of one of 24 Latin poem collection called Carmina Burana, dating back to the 13th century.

I have always had a profound, at times sinful, attraction to dark moods. By nature, I have a morbid mind and a tendency to appreciate the obscure, the gloomy, and the depressing. Within this context, I am a blink away from worshiping O Fortuna.

O Fortuna (Chorus)

O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,

semper crescis
aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis

nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,

egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis
et inanis,
rota tu volubilis,

status malus,
vana salus
semper dissolubilis,

obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris;

nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris.

Sors salutis
et virtutis
michi nunc contraria,

est affectus
et defectus
semper in angaria.

Hac in hora
sine mora
corde pulsum tangite;

quod per sortem
sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite!

English Translation

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,

ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life

first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;

poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,

you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,

shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;

now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me
in health
and virtue,

driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.

So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;

since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!

Download O Fortuna - Carl Orff here. Everyone weep with me.