Caricatures

Sorry for the inconsistent posting, and Happy New Years! My last day at Venice was before Christmas, but hopefully 2010 will be characterized by a) more posts or b) no posts at all, because I've gotten a job and I have other things to do.
Speaking of characterizations, somebody has probably already pointed out that Venice is characterized by caricatures. Living ones. Case in point, here is an exchange I overheard between two enviably skinny girls. They were looking at the goods of the guy next to me.
GIRL A- "Cool, compasses for sale!"
GIRL B- "I've, like, never figured out how to use a compass..."
GIRL A- "Whaddya mean?"
GIRL B- "Well, the needle is, like, always moving."
Then there was this old lady on roller skates who seemed to be an abstraction of *something*...
Just what, I'm not sure.
And then we've got the Platonic Ideal of a Chihuahua, a wonderfully grotesque little animal. The noble Ancestral Wolf must be spinning in his grave like a furry horizontal tornado.