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Barilla is offering to send your friends a free "postcard from Italy" with a personalized message from you and a picture of an Italian landmark.

The catch is that the postcards are mailed domestically but, since it's free, who cares? Click here to send one.

Beyond belief, it's starting to become fashionable to visit places for the enjoyment of watching the local menfolk brandish deadly weapons. In Italy, soldiers in body armor were recently deployed to stand vigil around potential terrorist sites. The Financial Times reports that in Rome, where a thousand of them appeared this summer, patrolmen quickly became tourist fodder in their own right.

It's not just in Italy, either. There is almost no other reason to visit the border between North and South Korea than to gaze in admiration at the trigger-happy sentries who mill along the DMZ, and yet each day of the week, coach tourists make the day-trip from Seoul to do just such a thing. (Of course, it doesn't always work out -- in July, one clueless tourist was shot dead by North Korean soldiers after she wandered away from her border resort.)

Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, an emblem for oppression and woe when it was a militarized link between East and West Berlin, is now a tacky tourist ghetto where visitors pose for snapshots with actors dressed in fake army getups. Old-timers are outraged -- there's no museum there to supply context.

And why not? Cops are plentiful, intentionally conspicuous, and above all, free to admire. And often, their style varies as much as the cultures they protect. These days, a locale's demonstrations of defense says as much about its modern society as its cuisine.

Beijing took some heat in the press for sweeping its streets of the homeless before the Olympic circus came to town, but China's government isn't the only one trying to banish the disadvantaged from places where visitors tread.

According to the main Atlanta newspaper, the Journal-Constitution, cops have been trawling the streets this month dressed as tourists, hoping to catch panhandlers in the act of rustling up money. As of last week, 44 beggars have been arrested.

One of the police commanders in town explains that the frequency and intimidating style of local begging has gotten so bad that it's annoying tourists and scaring them away. And because most tourists who feel accosted by beggars don't return to town to testify, the city had to resort to using officers posing as tourists so that there would be someone around to tell it to the judge. The decoys are even rigged with hidden cameras.

Atlanta, which passed an ordinance three years ago that banned verbal panhandling in a restricted downtown area near the Georgia Aquarium, is far from the only city to place limits on begging. In the Peachtree City, beggars can usually get by silently holding a sign that asks for cash. But ask "aggressively" -- the interpretation, like the one for obscenity, is fluid -- and it's a crime.

As the recessed (depressed? repressed?) economy doesn't seem likely to bounce back any time soon and the cost of oil remains high, vacation is the last thing on most people's minds. With the summer nearing its end, hotels and resorts are starting to get a little desperate, offering customers everything from free gas cards to free meals, room upgrades to discount tickets. If you have a little money to spend and feel like getting the hell out of Dodge, this might be the perfect time to do it.

Endless Vacation Rentals is a particularly good site for finding travel deals. Basically a portal for Wyndham, a luxury hotel/resort chain, the site is currently offering some incredible prices for a wide variety of vacation destinations. If you feel like hitting the sand, Endless Vacation will rent you a studio apartment in Daytona that sleeps four and is right on the beach. The price for a week is roughly $350. If your tastes tend to the more exotic, Wyndham offers everything from villas in Italy to cottages in the Cotswolds, all at prices that are surprisingly reasonable. Alternately, if you're in the mood for something a little less expensive and a lot closer to home, Endless Vacations has deals across the country.

While I'm not rolling in the dough, I have to admit that $439 for a week in the Bahamas sounds pretty good...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. His last vacation, which took place on beautiful, sunny Long Island, left something to be desired.