Today, I'm here in Rome at a busy sidewalk café on the Piazza Navona with Umberto Eco. Umberto Eco, as you dear readers will know has written such monumental novels such as In the Name of the Rose, The Island of the Day Before and Focault's Pendulum.

<William Paris> "Good morning, Umberto, can I just say what an honour it is to be interviewing you.  How are you today?"
<Umberto Eco> "Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa..."¹
<W> "Well...errr...I wasn't aware that you had a brother Charles! Do you consider your family to be an inspiration for your excellent education and writings?"
<UE> "Perhaps if the Fitconbobulator² would fit on here, I would be able lift my references from my dissertation³ off of the table.
<W> "Um...yes...well...it is a weighty dissertation.  Moving on...I understand that you tend to eschew the old manner of writing such as a typewriter in a corner and embrace the internet as a tool for your books?  Is that true?"
<UE> "Imagine that Ferdinand de Saussure⁴ and Charles Sanders Pierce⁵ were standing in a locked room together and that they could only speak in symbols and signs. What would they be talking about? Imagine a butterfly with no wings⁶..."
<W> "Ah - uhhh...look! The waitress is here to take our order.  Would you like coffee or tea Prof. Eco?"
<UE> "It is neither ironical nor paradoxical"
<W> "Two coffees please.  I must say Prof. Eco, I can't understand a word you're saying and frankly I don't think you do either."
<UE> "Navremeto razhodih edno kuche po Sofiiskite ulici, to beshe kafiavo I si razmahvashe opashkata."⁷
<W> "What?  WHAT!?! What are you fucking on about? This interview is over you overeducated idiot unless you stop babbling!"
<UE> "OK, finally we have an acephalous system."⁸
<W> "Piss off Umberto, I'm leaving"
<UE> "For me, it has been really touching, perhaps a little narcissistic."
<W> ⁹


Footnotes:
 ¹Ancient French, known as Vulgar Latin translates to: "For the love of God and for the Christian people, and our common salvation, from this day forward, as God will give me the knowledge and the power, I will defend my brother Charles with my help in everything..."
² A reference to a component of the Foucault pendulum: A simple pendulum suspended from a long wire and set into motion along a meridian. The plane of motion appears to turn clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, demonstrating the axial rotation of the earth.
³The dissertation referred to here contains 11,000 hypertext references to Thomas Aquinas - how the hell does this man have time to write 11,000 references!?!?!?!? ELEVEN THOUSAND!!!!!
⁴ &  ⁵ These guys founded Semiotics - I think? Fuck, I don't know. Why the hell are they in a locked room?
⁶ You mean a fucking caterpillar Umberto?
⁷ Middle Medieval Bulgarian translates to: "I once walked a dog in the streets of Sofia, it was a brown dog and wagged its tail."...I give up - this is waaay too transcendental for me!
⁸ Acephalous: without a head - wait, what, why am I still doing these footnotes!
⁹ I need a drink.