The Vineyards

Last night was interesting.

There was a big thunderstorm, so Asgaard was off for another two hours again, which has become very rare. It was shut down because in the last thunderstorm I lost one of the two 256 Mb DDR chips in it - I had no intention of losing the second one, given the first is not replaced yet. It impressed me how long WinXP takes to shut down - maybe it is related to it being on for days in a row running a few dozen different programs.

The gates of Asgaard closed, I went for "dinner and a movie" - TV in the kitchen. The movie at the time was "The President's Man". In the first 20 minutes, a group of... something invades a... building and kidnaps the American First Lady, who was in there. Later it is explained what is going on.

They were a group of terrorists ("Movement of Popular Libertation" or something) trying to overthrow the Brazilian government to cause a power shift in the area. Okay then. Like a bunch of guerilla chicanos could take over Brasilia - especially considering they were attacking in Rio de Janeiro. Maybe if they amassed forces from the whole country and invaded both Houses during a session to raise the congressmen's salaries and killed everyone in less than 10 minutes then proceeded to the main building, killed or disabled the other five thousand people in there in 15 minutes and locked everything up tightly enough so the army cannot get in they could have something in their hands - a double-towering building with two bowls in front. That is not exactly what you need to cause a political shift harsh enough in South America. That is probably why they chose to kidnap the wife of the President of the United States (who sounded a lot like Vladimir Putin, "I will not deal with terrorists") in Rio de Janeiro instead. You see, kidnapping someone is big news, especially if the crime occurs in Rio; the government would be happy to hand control over to "Santiago" (the leader of the guerilla of chicanos) to have her returned. Because, obviously, Brazil has no police force at all: whenever something goes wrong, we pray that Washington sends Chuck Norris here to parachute from a B1 bomber (flying at Mach 4) to save the day.

Of course, then we have American marines going after this Santiago guy. In his base in the middle of the jungle, where everyone speaks Spanish. Is that the same group who kidnapped the First Lady? If it is, where did they find a piece of Amazon forest in Rio? Or did they catch a plane back to Manaus while Mr. Norris was returning in his flying parachute to Washington? Why do they speak Spanish? Why do they teach 13 year-old kids "Una manzana, duas manzanas"? Or were they Colombians all along? Maybe they figured taking over Colombia had no effect in the world (which is already proven) and went for something bigger. Either that, or they are part of PSTU. Or PCO. Dear President Putin of the White House, may I get some marines here to wipe out PCdoB, in special that waste of oxygen and protein called Aldo Rebello? Thank you.

After the half a dozen tough marines (who were all in their 20s, tall, handsome, with blue eyes) wiped out that force that was powerful enough to take over Brazil to disrupt the politics of South America, we turned the TV off and went to watch the lightning, now that the storm had gone a bit away. That was among the most beautiful things I ever saw. You do not know a thunderstorm until you see it in the tropics.

Posted by Etienne at February 11, 2003 01:14 PM