In about 2h30 I am supposed to finally go fetch the damned paperwork. Then all I have to do is call my friend who works in the pulishing company and ask her for the address to send it to. Then I fill the paperwork, find an envelope and a stamp and take it to the nearest mailbox, 150m from here. On Monday it will get to them, and then or the day after they will check it to see if everything is okay. Then for some reason a countdown of 15 days begins. I have no idea why it begins, but it does, just to further bother me. Money is a very complicated issue - I do believe I should just get a lot of it and not have to worry anymore. Really, I mean it: someone should figure out how much I will make throughout my life, and give me the whole sum already. And I would work for free ever after, once I had put that money in some very profitable fund that would give a monthly salary on interest alone.
To conclude, 15 days after they receive the paperwork, hopefully, if the gods are merciful, the sky remains blue, the government remains stupid and I do not decide to become a zen-buddhist monk, the money should be in the bank account by me chosen, to disappear in the endless sea of red where vast shoals of hungry minus signs (Monetarium negativilis) devour any and every defenseless deposit (Monetarium hardworkis). Wheee! But I figured if I revise and proofread four thousand pages I will be able to kill all the minus signs. Now all I need is a publisher willing to revise the Holy Bible! But War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment and Lolita (and The Three Sisters for an extra bonus) would be good enough, too. And I promise to wipe out any stupid name translation, too! After reading about Bilbo Bolseiro who went to Valfenda, where Elrond lives, and after noticing the names in the subtitles in Harry Potter had nothing to do with what they were saying (good thing I do not need to read subtitles except for extra accented speakers) I came to hate even more the translation of names. And to think in Italy they translate even the authors' name! In the name of Alice, who would want to read Luis Carroll or Guilhere Shakespeare of Francisco Bacon, or listen to anything composed by João Sebastião Bach or Ludovico de Beethoven? I make an exception, naturally, to Jorge Caminhante Moita, President of the United States, as long as they do the same and call our President Louis Ignacious "Squid" Smith.
When I grow up I want to read the last chapter of "Ulysses" out loud in front of five thousand people with the exact punctuation given to it by James Joyce. Now accepting donation of extra lungs.
Speaking of which, um pouco de Português porque não faz sentido dizer isso em Inglês.
Olhando o livro de Literatura de minhã irmã, Primeiro Colegial, eis que me trombo com uma conhecida injustamente mui repudiada por meus colegas pré-editores e funcionários públicos: Anarda! Rosa da formosura, Anarda bela / Igualmente se ostenta como a rosa; / Anarda mais que as flores é formosa, / Mais formosa que as flores brilha aquela. Mas o importante é que eu acreditei.
Keep walking.
Oh, of course, prior to oblivion, last night I managed to get my sister to see "One Pound Gospel", from the Rumik World series. I had not seen it for a very long time (The Laughing Target is my favorite, I will have the manga someday). It is so adorable. As we used to say five years ago, "That is the most light anime ever." Some minutes that do not change one's life, and the entire plot revolves about a bit of too much food and two punches in the eye. That is great. Apex of simplicity. And the first time I saw an anime character yell "faito!".
Indeed.
This Journal is far from interesting, is it not? All I have spoken of in the last many days is the book, the paperwork, the car, the Final Fantasy Tactics, and the money. And the worst of all, the one thing that could give it a bit of personality I am fatally unable to do: change the title to "Vineyards". If I used Blogger, I could do it, but then it would be a "blog", not a "Journal", and I refuse to have a "blog".
I dislike blogs in general, with exception of witty ones. In honor of friendship, I read all those depressed authors. The interesting part is two of these three are far more interesting when the authors are indeed depressed. Some people, when less than joyful, act like they have been locked up in Chateau d'If for years. But when not depressed their daily writing is so inocuous it parallels these.
Speaking of which, in the name of Apollo and Tanathos I swear never to post something saying I am depressed and I wonder where I went wrong and I wish I would die. And while in the subject, I swear never to post the lyrics to any song, no matter how fitting it may be at the time. And that reminds me of quiz-tests, about which I make no promises, but I trust your good senses that you will never want to know which Anime Neko or Anime Stereotype or Xena Character I am.
And that train of thought (image that crossed mind: "Magic Train" from Final Fantasy Tactics; I have to finish it before I am swalloed) naturally leads to another kind of blog, although mainly in Portuguese. My friends from USP are free to stay as far away as digitally possible from these, for they WILL hurt your delusional left wing ideals (including that one that claims saying "there are 54 million people in poverty in Brazil" before the elections then "we admit, there are only 28 million" after is perfectly normal).
The major problem in some of those, however, is the strong presence of Catholicism. Rome, from the sword to the cross, the massive mental leveling and domination did not change one bit. And at least in the time of the sword they had more fun gods!
Now that this post slipped across the lane to the other side of the road, I will manuever it back in position: car delayed until tomorrow morning, paperwork delayed until tomorrow afternoon, Final Fantasy Tactics going well (and I keep imagining Agrias with the voice of Ranma - the one thing preventing me from writing fanfic about it just to give her some actual voice is the obviety of such things).
Now taking suggestions on how to destroy the world in one shot (and/or guarantee a post-apocalypse worthy of great sci-fi writers).
| Date: | 2003-01-29 18:45 |
| Subject: | "If you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line." |
| Mood: |
It is a conspiracy, that is for sure.
Yesterday, the one useful thing I did was calling the schoolmate about the paperwork. It will be ready tomorrow. Other than that, I played Final Fantasy Tactics until I could not see the hordes of Chocobos following me anymore. So I went to bed.
Today was a bit more useful. I printed, under a lot of pressure, the 284 pages of the Manual of Standard Crew Operation for Boeing 737-600 to 900. That means printing 142 pages in A5, then organizing them one by one to put them back in the printer to print the other side, and staring at it until it is done to make sure it does not pull two pages at once during the second phase, which has ruined more than a few of my printed manuals before.
The car will not be ready until tomorrow, hopefully, but who knows. So I am stuck home, either way.
And now I took a closer look at my desktop, where I have many .txt files with random information that I may need soon. Windows replaced the Notepad icon, which is used for all the .txt files, with the icon for the Playstation emulator. It is very cute now, my desktop has seven PSX controllers that really stand out.
Given this blatant subliminar message and the fact I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to watch anime with, what else is left for me other than playing more Final Fantasy Tactics?
"All Chocobos get ready, he is coming back!"
It is now 2h40 AM. Today, or yesterday for the puritans, the download of Azure Dreams reached its end.
And the worst of all, I did not touch a single PSX game the entire day!
The only good thing about today was watching The Count of Monte Cristo. However, I trace a parallel with a review I once read of Anna Karenina (the movie, of course): "It feels like someone is ripping pages from the book and showing them to you". There should be a law stating you can never put more than 100 pages into one hour of movie. Then we would have Fatty and Tom Bombadil and his lady whose name in English I do not know but who is obviously far, far more beautiful than Galadriel, Arwen and Eowyn combined (okay, maybe not Eowyn). And no one would ask why in the name of Elbereth Aragorn was carrying exactly four swords the perfect size for hobbits! Of course, there was no mention of Elbereth Gilthoniel in the movies, either.
I should had called the friendly schoolmate who will lend me the paperwork for me to get paid. I should had called him last week, really, but there was no point, since I did not have a car handy. So I decided to call him today, because the car would be ready today and/or I would have someone to drive me there. But the car is not ready today and everyone who could drive me there was busy the whole day while I did not play Final Fantasy Tactics or Valkyrie Profile or Azure Dreams. What a wasted day. The only good points are I caught up with those comics and got two responses for my cute letter about the Rangers.
Never the less, it insistently amazes me, even after over 24 hours, that whenever I move from one point to another, a Chocobo joins my party. I used to get heartbroken, but after expelling the 15th big chicken, it just does not get to me all that much anymore. "What is this I am feeling? I don't want to leave. Is it sadness?" or "I protect you, you protect me. Isn't that it?" or "Return home? I don't have a home. I thought I would stay with you." Heck, you were not with me a few moments ago, I am very sure I did not see you when we left Lionel Castle. Besides, you are level 7 and the enemies we are going to fight are level 27. Considering you are 15 levels under the party average, and we already have one Chocobo, one Black Chocobo and one Red Chocobo (which I did not know existed), all in rather high levels, I am positive we do not need you. And a Chocobo that joined us in the middle of the desert surely cannot be such a good companion.
Okay, I am done, apologies. Now I have to decide if I go to bed and wake up for lunch, or just do my best to stay up for the next six hours until breakfast, then another 18... Hmm. Tough choice to make.
Yesterday was a very good day.
For some silly reason, I woke up at 6h20 AM, very unusual. My father had to be somewhere far at 8h, so everyone was up already. We had breakfast, my father left, my mother went back to bed. I hopped into the shower, and when I came back I was zero zero sleepy. And it was about 7h20 by then, so I decided not to return to bed, which very often fails (it is not uncommon for me to turn left and right in bed for hours nowadays, I wonder what is wrong). And so my one and only problem for the whole day appeared: I had to decide if I would go on playing Final Fantasy Tactics or start Valkyrie Profile.
The morning was spent in Final Fantasy Tactics, as part of the afternoon. I was frustrated after a battle where the main hero (which I called Ainmeal, in homage to the savior of Loures) fights a demi-god character all by himself. Hah! As I said, "after" that battle. Everyone I spoke to and every walkthrough I read say this is among the worst battles in the game. No big deal for me. The problem, as I said, was after that battle: there is another one, which I found a lot more difficult - in spite of what everyone says (I am a fan of swords, mind you; no need to tell me it is much easier with Time Magic and Summon). Having lost, I stopped playing for the day.
Something I have to mention: I am a bit revolted with FFT. Among the myriad of swords and axes and guns and flails, the most powerful weapons for female fighters are the bags and purses that cost a fortune! At least the best armor is not a bikini, but Squaresoft could have lived without that one.
Gaming done, I started writing a long e-mail concerning the situation of Rangers in Temuair. It was sent to the few Rangers that are not the Praetorian Guard of Eduardo the Dull. I only hope they respond. 16 hours already and no response! It was so perfectly written that I am proud of myself and think they should get rid of Eduardo the Dull, Stilgar the Marionette, Erenthar the Null and Kivrin the Pointless just because I traced such a great course of action to drive the masses against them and wrote it so flawlessly and brilliantly. I should start a worldwide political movement against idiocy and pointlessness.
While writing that e-mail, I found a good friend online who pointed me to a great comic which satirizes 8-bit RPG. So I finished writing the e-mail and went to read it. Distasteful at some parts, but very funny overall. After reading lots of it, I was invited to watch Monsters, Inc., which my sister rented. Inocuous, but cute and funny.
By then it was close to 1h AM, so I ate something and tried to read more of the comics, but many days of bad sleep pulled me down. To Dreamland I went.
And today will certainly not be as good a day. It already started bad. Hopefully it will not be anywhere close to January 14th.
Justin diligently tried to help me with my burner problem last night.
Side note first: the inability to read the CD on the CD-ROM was probably caused by the CD itself, not the drive; I tried another CD minutes later and it worked.
Going on. He asked me a few questions, and I was impressed he did not scorn me for having an IDE drive. And he did not tell me he buys DVD-RW drives by the dozen for his Dream Machines, which made me even happier!
My main concern was that everything was working perfectly fine not long ago - late November, if I remember, was when I used the burner the last time. And Nero often seemed to show the burner's buffer as emptying before the main buffer, which led me to imagine it was not holding all the data. If this thing crashed now, I really would not be able to go to Seattle to complain.
After my facts shot down and walked over Justin's theory, I took a wild guess: "Can it be because I have not defragmented since days long past?". And he said "Of course, you goon!" I was really offended at that, because Goon is that thing inside the Black Omen in Chrono Trigger, the big fat yellow guys with wings that have that stupid grin on their faces and say "Hear ye, hear ye" before throwing an attack from their very dumb ears. I hate them. But since Justin is always right about computers, and he did not humilliate me by mentioning any dream machines with Power SCSI 16v Turbo DVD-RWs, I decided to overlook it. "And they are all FAT32, too." He urged me to defrag, convert and reboot. "Do it right now!," he said, "or I will hack into your little Asgaard and wipe out all your episodes of Chobits and your Romulan Dictionary and the pictures of Sailor Moon vintage 1997!"
There I went, then, eyes cast down, to find space and defragment all four partitions, then convert them to NTFS. The process ended at 5h AM, but I could not sleep any minute because I was scared of Justin. After everything was done, I tried burning a CD - and nothing happened. Justin failed.
Rather annoyed, and somewhat rebellious, I took my Ancienteth Booketh ofeth Windowseth Arteth ofeth Troubleshootineth and used the oldest trick in it: uninstalled the drivers for the burner and the IDE, and made WinXP recognize them again. It was only then that the real culprit came to light.
In the event where I replaced the Volcano 5 I had for a Volcano 9, where I lost 256 Mb of DDR RAM that is still not replaced, I also bought a new CD-ROM to replace a faulty one. Both are as generic as can be. So I physically removed the broken one, put the other in its place, and did not touch the drivers. WinXP said "Hey, you have a new piece of hardware here. Hold on, let me set it up for you." and I thought everything was okay. It played audio CDs and ran data CDs.
Back to last night. I removed the drivers for CD-RW and IDE (and I forgot that when IDE is removed it takes HD and CD drivers with it), and rebooted. XP jumped on me: "Hey! Lots of new stuff! Let's see, a VIA IDE controller! And a SeaGate hard drive! Wow! And look at that, an HP burner! And... ooohhh, look at this: this is the famous and rare LG CD-52 GPS Golden EMP of the Noble House of SCV. Let me set it up for you."
And so it ended. After WinXP realized it was mistaken at first by calling my Noble LG CD-52 a generic drive, everything was back to normal and I burned a very hard to find PSX ISO in the usual 5 minutes. Perfect. It is now on its way to Minas Gerais (no relation to Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul), a late thank you for a favor done long ago. One debt paid, but the other is in US currency and this stupid left wing government is managing to put the exchange rate back into critical levels - and obviously is blaming the previous government for it, maneuver they will make use of in the next four years.
Today I tried burning one of those ISO files. No good with Nero. I was quite surprised, assumed it was a format it could not recognize. So I downloaded another burner, with the cute name of "Alcohol 120%". No use. Then I surrendered to the stupid CloneCD of the four buttons. No use again. Before selling my soul to the horrendous CDRWin, I decided to look for info on the errors I was getting.
Interestingly, it is a very common error, judging by the number of mentions to it I found on Google's newsgroup archive. But no one was able to solve it! At least not in English, and I refuse to try my luck with a post where the subject is a single word of twenty letters. All attempts at solving it inevitably point out that the user has a problematic SCSI setup. Even when they do not have a SCSI drive. I do not. I know I just caused a lot of anger in my technophile friends, but I did not buy it myself, and SCSI was stupidly more expensive (with the exchange rate at the time, it meant a lot).
So now I am unable to burn anything at all and no idea why.
Just to make sure, I tried to copy a CD directly. I got a read error from my CD-ROM.
What is going on?
Today was a tremendously frustrating day.
I did finish the book, at last - I wrapped it up today, some things were missing. Then I got a call asking how it was going. "It is done, packed, and ready to ship!", I said. "Oh, great, impressive! You sure are good! But there is another little problem..."
Thing is, since I am not Lorneau Corp., nor Lorneau - Self-employed under registry number NNN, I cannot provide the publisher with the paperwork needed for me to get paid. Therefore, it was arranged for me to use the papers from a friend. And here it begins: I have to call him, figure out where he lives, find a way to go all the way there, and get the stupid papers; I will have to pay him for this, since there is some tax over it (and it can get as high as 15%); and I will make quite a bit less than I imagined for this work, even not counting the tax. Maybe it is fair, in a twisted logic, given I originally had ten days to finish it, but did it in three: "You get paid by the hour: do it quick, receive less!" But I am paid by pages...
Onward. Out of curiosity, I went around looking for prices of things. Problem is, I know too well where to look for prices, both here and in the US. And I was devastated when I realized the Playstation 2 costs R$1,500 here, and U$200 there. That was after noticing the PS1 still costs up to R$500 here. And a damn Genesis can go for R$300! What do these people have in their heads? Maybe they imagine gamers always start on NES, then Genesis, SNES, PSX, N64, and then Dreamcast, XBox, Gamecube, PS2. Associated to that, they think the first two or three are gifts from the gamers' parents; then the gamers start working and buy the next one; then they get promoted and buy another one; so another promotion, and they buy something else! And when they are CEO in their companies they finally purchase a PS2 with TWO controllers, wow! Therefore, they keep the prices untouched for ten years, because that is the ladder every gamer in the universe climbs, no matter when they were born.
So I went looking on that import business. It would be funny if not horrid. To ship an item of U$199,95 to Brazil, they charge U$75. "No, you got me wrong, I just want the product shipped, no need for the gold plate gift box." But now it gets far more interesting.
Here we have a tax over "services and manufactured goods". So I buy something from a store in the US (manufactured good), pay an American company for shipping (service), and then I pay 2-11% of the sum of those values to the Brazilian government. But that is not all!
There is also an import tax, which applies to everything but books and medicines for personal use. And this cute little thing charges... 60%. "60% over product value?", you ask. No. 60% of manufactured good plus shipping plus the tax mentioned above. Yes, I pay the Brazilian government taxes twice for the service of an American company; I pay a tax over another tax, too. Fun, no?
Now we add the last bit of spice: exchange rate of 3.45, today. Anyone care to figure out how much that would be? Do not forget one tax goes on top of the other.
I said too much about this one topic, so I will make the other frustrating things very brief:
A friend was very unkind to me and a bunch of morons with no life are going around taking decisions that affect me without asking me (as is written they must) and I reached a game over screen in all three SNES RPGs I tried to play today.
Okay, that covers it. Now, something good:
I openly declare I have entire ISO images of Playstation games in my hard disk. When you consider the same game costs R$200 here and U$20 there, it is not even such a big crime. When you consider, too, the vast majority of these games is not sold here except by smugglers and/or professional pirates in flea markets, it is almost excusable. And when you, finally, consider three out of four of my attempts at importing anything ended in the endless abyss of customs, where the officials have no shame in saying they make many expensive things "disappear", I feel completely in the blasted flying disgraced right to download these ISO images! Especially seeing as I pay for this stupid DSL of 256k four times more than any American kid pays for a connection of 2 Mb!
Apologies, I said it was something good. Yes. I finally got a PSX emulator to work well enough, and even figured a reasonable keyboard layout (no, I have no joypad, joystick, controller, etc) that allows me to press all of its ten keys without much thinking - but, of course, this game is turn based.
...and it has kept me up until 3h AM. I must be up early tomorrow. Good night, all readers who take pity; and all those responsible for this ridiculous overpricing, may you all freeze in Hell.
Oh, I forgot to mention!
I finished my work, yes, yes. 200 pages of Sociolinguistics, the second most boring thing I have ever read. All that is left now is a final revision, which I will do tomorrow.
Once freed of that, there was that moment of loss of balance, "my whole life was centered on that, what will I do now?". So I went to the living room and browsed through newspapers for the past few days, which I had not touched due to my whole life being centered on that book, tee hee. And I noticed, on the schedule for last Saturday: Goodfellas.
Damn thing is aired three weeks after I rent it. Double bah.
But I am happy: I watched it subtitled (argh, dubs) and without commercial breaks. Seeing Robert De Niro with the same voice as McGyver and He-Man and Captain Kirk and a dozen others in assorted movies is simply not worth it.
"Os meus sonhos bons,
Da minha vida a flor.
Com todos os tons,
Do meu amor..."
Uma estrofe de "Meu Desejo", a versão brasileira de "My Will", primeiro encerramento de Inu Yasha.
Acho essa estrofe linda. Note a rima em ABAB - isso é muito raro hoje em dia, mesmo na so-called "poesia" ("O homem acordou / De uma noite arroxeada / E notou seu estômago / Aberto / Da clavícula ao fêmur / Enquanto a almofada torpe / Cuspia para o céu / E / Então / Eis que / Choveu."
A lua está linda lá fora, atrás de uma fina camada de névoa. Parece efeito de Photoshop: increase Brightness, Equalize, e depois aquele Smart Blur com Radius e Threshold perfeitos. Boa noite, muito boa.
A música continua com
"Peço pro vento te levar
Meu beijo,
E te contar que te amo,
Meu maior desejo."
Não gosto muito dessa estrofe, mas há algo inegavelmente maravilhoso entre elas: a passagem de "amor" pra "peço". A cantora (que acredito ser a dubladora da Phoebe, de Charmed) consegue passar de um verso a outro, subir o tom necessário, como se ele nem estivesse lá, como um riacho que encontra um desnível de dez centímetros, e o barulho que se ouve não é maior que o baque da água do filtro no fundo do copo. É uma das coisas mais simples e adoráveis que conheço, e os dois segundos entre esses versos conseguem englobar tudo aquilo que a pequena queda d'água representa, condensá-lo, comprimí-lo, trazê-lo um degrau acima, e novamente expandí-lo, apliá-lo além de qualquer magnitude alcançada pelo líqüido - e tudo isso logo após uma rima em ABAB.
Ah, se a métrica fosse perfeita, eu morreria feliz por ter ouvido "Meu Desejo", indiferente a todos os puristas que dizem que as músicas de anime, quando nacionalizadas, são, por definição, ruins.
Última nota, eu gosto mais de "Freckles", versão americana de "Sobakasu" (primeiro encerramento, Rurouni Kenshin), do que da original. E de "I am a Pioneer" mais do que "Bokku wa motto Pioneer", Tenchi Universe. Isso é quase um crime, pois as versões americanas de fato são, por definição, ruins:
"She'll always stand up for a friend, she's someone on who to depend. She is the one, she's Sailor Moon. She is the one, Sailor Moon!"
Here it is again, the catching up!
Jan 14th - Definition of a bad day.
Afternoon: we went to the military post to get a copy of the report on the car crash; upon arrival, I realized I had forgotten all my documents at home; no ID, no report. We returned home. As if my shame was not enough, I had to listen to all kinds of lectures.
Late afternoon: I said I did not know how to separata syllables in English, and given an example, it made no sense to me. I asked why it was this way, and not that, which seemed a lot more logical. It was taken as a personal offense.
Evening: as is now standard, things that need replacing break down after 6h PM, when all stores are closing. As I was playing Gunstar Heroes (have to make good use of anger), the screen just went black, and the loud noise made by the Volcano 9 (which runs at up to 5,800 rpm, not 4,800) sitting on top of the Athlon stopped (which is very noticeable). "Blackout", I thought, but every led and light was still on in the rest of the room. So I pressed the Power button on Asgaard. Nothing. The power supply was dead.
Jan 15th - Lunch time: my work arrived. 200 pages of Sociolinguistics. I chose not to touch it on that day. We went out for bowling in the evening. Won one, lost one, broke two nails, and my arm still hurts.
Jan 16th - Woke up early, went to my father's graduation (yes, you heard it right), then took Asgaard to replace the power supply. All done, returned home, set it up, turn it on, all great. Checked e-mail and daily visited sites, all okay. Started working on the book. Three hours to do 10 pages. Meanwhile, one long download finished (total 96 hours, approximately); 9 to go. I went to bed.
Jan 17th - Woke up a little late. Before lunch I got a call from a friend who works for the publisher (she gave me this book). The deadline was moved from the 27th to the 22nd. So right after lunch I started working on the book again, and that was it. From 1h30 to 10h30 PM, minus one hour of break, I reached page 80. Good enough.
Jan 18h - Same thing, work was flowing great. I reached page 147 (out of 200).
Jan 19th - Sunday, so I decided to start working a little later than usual - which resulted in firing up Secret of Mana and playing until 1h30 AM. Oops.
Jan 20th - Today. Woke up, checked e-mail and daily sites, wrote this. Lunch soon; then hopefully finish the book, and if time allows, do a quick full revision again for minute things (space after tables, wrong numbers, bad italics - easy stuff, just needs attention to find).
That should explain my absence.
Give me some more time. Perhaps even later today I may post something of actual content.
For now, my apologies, but just go over there and read what is in it. If you can keep up, it is very interesting - and it will keep all (three) of you occupied while I do not post.
(Hah hah hah.)
| Date: | 2003-01-13 07:39 |
| Subject: | "I have freed hellish forces, and now the price must be paid!" |
| Mood: |
I really do not want to visit "Pousada do Tortinho", or "irme de vacaciones!" to Miami (especially seeing as everyone got the same "numero de promocion 31" just like me). I have no interest in your "CD with 5 million e-mail addresses", not even if your program can "mail efficienty five thousand addresses a second, from any other address, untraceable IP in the header!". And I absolutely will not call "1-800-..." anything to have my e-mail address removed - if your program is so good, you should know better than to mail an address ending with .br.
I want no CDs of progressive rock, alternative rock, indie rock, and I especially do not want anything from any band from Argentina. I will not go to any concert in Buenos Aires, or Barcelona, or Mexico City, or Tijuana - no matter how big a discount you give me. And please believe me when I say I will not do it, not even if I can go with one of the bands in their tour across Chile!
I did not give you my e-mail address when I visited your site, for I never visited it. I have no interest in your potted plants, in your seeds, and not even in your very powerful guaranteed pesticide and herbicide that will solve all my problems. I do not want a new and improved way to water my garden. I need no replacement water register, I do not care if 20% of what comes through the pipe is air.
I do not give a damn if you are mad a Fidel Castro - I already am, so you do not need to convince me of anything. I do not care to know what some American journalist said about the politics in Venezuela - I am much closer to it than he is, I know more about it than he does. I especially do not want these articles in Spanish.
I wholeheartedly affirm I would like to see a corpse covered by flies and cockroaches when the e-mail address for removal from the list is at Hotmail.com. I wholeheartedly affirm I would like to see ten dozen corpses covered by flies, cockroaches, slugs and rats when I see the e-mail address for removal is from a site specialized in filling my mailbox with offers of pousadas, vacaciones, list of addresses, mass mailing software, progressive and alternative and indie rock, shows I would never see in cities I could not reach in less than a month worth of paperwork, plants grown or in any other stage, pesticide and herbicide, watering equipment, water register, articles about Fidel Castro's evil and Venezuela's strike in Portuguese or Spanish or English.
(This Journal absolutely needed a post about spam. And, odd as it may seem, I get very little pornography and body parts enlargement offers.)
Thank you for your attention.
My few readers, pardon the delay in a new post. I will not give any explanation or excuse beyond the simple summary of what happened.
On Jan 8th, on which I went to bed after 4h AM, as my previous post says (and which resulted in waking up for a cold lunch), finally we went to see The Two Towers. I chose the big theatre near here, but my friend, the one with the car, decided to go to the bigger one a bit further. It would start at 9h50 PM there; we arrived at 8h55, and it was sold out. We returned to the mall where I wanted to go first, and its three rooms showing the movie. By then it was 9h10, the last scheduled session was 10h50. All sold out. Annoyed, we bought tickets for the following day, 8h40 PM, and went home.
Jan 9th was a wasted day until 8h20 PM, when we left to the mall - rather late, in my opinion. But somehow we made it there in time (it will probably cost him a fine). In time meaning we found empty seats 10 seconds before the lights were turned off. Unimportant, because the place was great; right distance, right positioning and right height. I was happy to go by having to read the subtitles only for Treebeard and Smeagol - and, of course, when they spoke in Qenia. I refrain from criticizing, there has been enough praising and bashing everywhere. I liked it, I prefer the first movie, I was greatly upset at the unnecessary changes in the story, and even more at the fact they threw the last part of the book into the next movie. Furthermore, I was very sure Gondor appeared in The Two Towers - and I was also very sure the two towers were Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul, for some reason; maybe because I read the second and third books in the same week, I probably confused everything. To conclude, by the gods, the scene with Arwen standing by Aragorn's grave in an abandoned Gondor is one of the most heartshattering things I have ever seen.
My birthday, January 10th. It was interesting to play voleyball under heavy rain. Then the always obvious and no less unwanted small party. Not bad, but I truly dislike being the target of Happy Birthday son; plus the calls throughout the day, far less than previous years (good in one hand, sad in the other). One person online remembered my birthday. Fair, given I never remember theirs. No matter, with each passing year it means less.
A few days ago, after I got The Fellowship of the Ring in DVD, I mentioned to my sister I should ask for the soundtrack in CD, but it would not be fair, given I already had received a gift, albeit early. Yesterday I got not only the Fellowship soundtrack, but also The Two Towers. That was great! I also received a Kero-chan to go with my three Sakura literally sitting on my shelf, among other things. No one found any sheep to add to my collection, though.
I wish this were a serious Journal, or a very funny Journal, but both are far from happening. All in due time, if ever.
I just finished (four hours ago - I stopped writing for a bit, forgive me) seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - for the fourth time. That means 12 hours of my life deposited into the same movie!
Before that, today, I watched Rebel Without a Cause. Not bad, but I expected a bit more from all I heard of it. Misfortune. My greatest problem with it is the whole thing happens in a period of 24 hours. All the actions and feelings shown in the movie do not fit in a single day. Maybe it does not fit in a movie. It would make a lot more sense in a book - but then it would not have James Dean, who is the sole reason for which half of its audience watched it.
Yesterday, before watching LotR for the third time, it was Vertigo. Certainly not a very good film, in spite of Hitchcock. No major suspense, many plot holes. But the ending compensates for all of it. Forgive the minimum spoiler, but that is probably the apex of ironic anti-climax.
Tomorrow, if all goes right, I may finally go watch The Two Towers. Absurd, absurd, I still have not.
On another note, I was called today concerning my little work. There was a small problem I did not mention about me not being a corporation (well...) or a declared autonomous "worker", which was solved. Furthermore, the author decided to do something with the book before the revision, so it will only come to me in another ten days. I now have time to work on an entry for the History contest.
This is absurd, is it not? Two posts saying I am happy. The biggest problem is the lack of quotes for the subject. In each subject so far (few as they may be) I used a quote from somewhere, mainly games, most from Loom (great game). But when I need a quote to express happiness, I can think of none. That probably means all games I play are gloomy - or I cannot remember any happy things (which reminds me, I need to play Day ot the Tentacle again sometime). Or that means I do not play many games - which is far, far more probable.
On the actual subject. A few days ago, I was talking to a friend - whose name is not important right now - and he told me he had just watched "Gangs of New York" (and a funny cultural shock followed when he said it was the first time he went to the movies alone - which I most often do ["Why do you people never invite me anyway!?"]). He commented it was not the best movie by Scorsese, to which I replied I had not seen any Scorsese movies (which I later corrected - I had seen two). The reaction: "Not even Goodfellas!?" No, not even. So I was kindly suggested to watch it ("You absolutely HAVE to watch it!").
FF to last week, and consider I do not have a car right now (someone hit me, did I not post about it? I may, eventually). Another friend wants to go watch Lord of the Rings 2, but he forgot all about the 1st movie. Plus his VCR is out of order (since 1999) and as you guessed he has no DVD player. So he invited me to go to the movies with him, but he asked if he could come over and watch The Fellowship of the Ring here. Okay by me, I can watch that as many times as it takes. But one day he could not, then the next he forgot, then he had no money to rent it... So I decided to rent it myself, since that is the only way I have of seeing The Two Towers anytime soon. But, naturally, all copies were taken - even the dubbed ones! Argh! Who would ever want to see it dubbed!? Oh, curses.
Under those circumstances, and since we had gone all the way to that bloody stupid disgraced hellhole called Blockbuster (all the 80 meters away from home), we decided to rent something else. And, you guessed, I got Goodfellas - and other two movies.
Plus, on the way to the counter, we walked by the shelf with DVD for sale. One last copy of LotR remained - and that was my early birthday gift. Fun, no? If you cannot rent it, just go ahead and buy it. Ah, no. I had wanted to buy it since it came out. And, the cherry on top, it is in widescreen format! I so hate fullscreen, I cannot possibly understand how people may like it - it is the same people who prefer dubbed movies, I am sure. And, as said someone in the Anime-br list, "the same people who buy DVD players and complain they have no RCA output". Oh, wake up, people. And rebel against the stupid 60% tax on imports. Maybe someday you will learn.
Very well. Point is: I now watched Goodfellas, and indeed, it is a good movie, with a great soundtrack (but I still like Age of Innocence a lot more, of course, naturally, obviously - Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder in Victorian costumes - what else does mankind need?). And now I have The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD. But of course nothing is perfect: it has lots of goodies and "featurettes" (gods, I so hate this word), but it does not have any single lonely missing scene. "The scene, the scene, my lower incisors for the scene!"
In spite of that, all is great. And tomorrow I finally get to see Vertigo, and the day after probably The Two Towers. Then the world will be a better place - even if Blockbuster charges my immortal soul for it.
| Music: | Inu Yasha OST - Change the World |
When Asgaard (that is my computer, mind you) fried back in early December, I decided to abandon Win98 and install WinXP. That was not exactly a voluntary choice, mind you, but I came to like XP after all - after the horrendous new visual schemes and colors are removed, it has some great functionality that I surely missed in Win98. But that is not the reason for my current happiness.
Upon installing WinXP, I backed up many things, but I completely forgot to save my list of bookmarks, among other less important things. That was a great loss. In special, I missed my links to a site with all poems for William Butler Yeats, and another with scans to the very first print of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Today I decided to do a quick search and replace part of what I lost. I did not expect much, as I am without time right now and just wanted to see if I could get very lucky. Well, I got very lucky. I found one site with the original two books in a very easy to read html format, and also another site that carries Lewis Carroll's other works, like The Hunting of the Snark.
But I cannot read any of it because I must first finish the Dante I started, and I cannot finish it because I want to write a History entry to the upcoming Dark Ages contest, which I would need to do in two days because I will be so busy proofreading a book (that I would never normally read) until January 20th. That means I will once again not read anything by Lewis Carroll, then school will start again and I will forget it. Just like last year.
I hope the text for proofreading is shorter than I imagine.
Eis que, dias após o início deste ícone da míngua de leitores (quantos são? Dois? - não me importo, escrevo para mim mesmo [e confirmo o que está dito a seguir]), Julio Daio Borges, editor do Digestivo Cultural, vem definir muito bem o que estou fazendo aqui.
"E tivemos a explosão dos blogs. Quer queira quer não, a forma mais comodista de abdicar de qualquer responsabilidade, de qualquer compromisso, parasitando a grande mídia e ainda por cima falando do próprio umbigo. É o individualismo, que não admite mediação, trocas ou relacionamentos - encarcerando o sujeito na cela da imaturidade adolescente. Não é à toa que a internet concentra, por pixel quadrado, o maior número de revoltados-da-boca-pra-fora. Muita gente ainda prefere vociferar na WWW a enfrentar a dura realidade do 'mundo real'."
Heh heh heh.
| Date: | 2003-01-03 17:01 |
| Subject: | "Close your eyes, Bobbin, but keep your ears open! Here descends the Third Shadow." |
| Mood: |
I never said I would write solely in English.
Visto ser agora comum, resolvi comentar a recente posse do novo presidente. A enorme festa, as milhares de camisas vermelhas, e foices e martelos, e gente gritando "Olê-olê-olá". Não assisti à coisa toda - o churrasco estava melhor. Mas acredito ter o direito de dizer que foi um enorme absurdo. De cara, não foi uma festa do povo brasileiro, da democracia: foi uma festa do PT, e simpatizantes marxistas (que em sua maioria jamais leram Marx, não sabem o que Lenin e Stalin fizeram, nem conhecem a real face do povo cubano). Não foi a posse de um novo presidente: foi a celebração de uma conquista pessoal, ampliada pelo fato que se deu em cadeia popular e envolvendo mais de 60 milhões de brasileiros. Quantos desses votaram nas idéias do PT, e quantos votaram no metalúrgico que vem tentando ocupar o cargo nos últimos 20 anos, e cujo maior plano é "mudar tudo isso que está aí"? Aliás, como pode alguém votar nas idéias do PT, que acaba de implementar a "taxa do lixo" e a "taxa de iluminação pública" em São Paulo, e votar contra exatamente o mesmo projeto em Fortaleza?
Todos os candidatos derrotados do PT ao governo dos estados viraram ministros, ao lado de Ciro Gomes, Benedita da Silva, et al. Um médico na Fazenda. Há quem diga que isso durará seis meses e tem como meta acalmar o mercado, mostrando o novo governo como "bonzinho". Não opino. Mas seja como for, pouca coisa podem mudar sem que o dólar suba escandalosamente e a economia despenque. E isso é uma grande faca de dois gumes: se deixarem tudo como está, funcionará, e tentarão levar os méritos; se mudarem, falharão, e culparão o governo anterior. Mas não há problema. Teremos 60 milhões de eleitores decepcionados em quatro anos, talvez menos. Analogia da criança mimada: tanto enche o saco que quer alguma coisa, que é melhor dar logo de uma vez, que ela brinca uns minutos, vê que é chato e não funciona, se cansa e vai embora. Em uns trinta anos sentiremos falta de Fernando Henrique e "tudo isso que está aí". Não? Respondam em 2033.
Imagine the risk I take, studying in USP and writing something like this.
Little problem with this entry. No matter.
In the next one I finally put this Journal to a better use.
| Music: | Escaflowne - Flying Dragon |
Last night I was supposed to copy an important CD, it had to be ready this morning. But I got completely caught up in Temuair - when I left, I wrote that post down there, and went to bed.
Not long later I was woken up and asked for the CD. Of course there was none. Shame on me, hatred on me, disgust on me.
This afternoon, heavy rain. I closed my room's window and went to have a shower. The wind blew the window open. When I came back, there was water everywhere: floor, chair, keyboard... Asgaard flooded. I paid my karmic debt.
Few minutes later I got a call. Offer of free-lance job. Proofread 200-300 pages in 10 days. It is not bad pay, but I hate proofreading, and there is so little time. Well, may Luathas and Fiosachd be with me.
| Music: | Rurouni Kenshin - One Half |
Very well, I will post something clever some other time.
| Music: | Inu Yasha OST - My Will |