My close friend in Milan sent me a cartoon based upon the Santa Costa Concordia episode a year ago, in which a certain Captain Francesco Schettino drove his Carnival cruise ship onto the rocks and immediately took off in a lifeboat. A furious coast guard captain, Gregorio De Falco, tried to talk him back onto his ship, to no avail. “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” (“Get back on board, you dick”) became an Italian meme overnight, and ended up on a lot of T-shirts. (The phrase sometimes appears as “Torni a bordo, cazzo,” meaning much the same thing.)

The actual telephone exchange may be heard here. It boils down to:

“What? Where are you now? Get back on board, you dick. That’s an order!”

Even those who do not read Italian will be able to appreciate this cartoon, applied to a more recent event.