Passagem importantíssima do Polzonoff.
"Cátedra urgente que deve ser implementada na USP: Introdução ao Riso I e II, O riso e a imaginação, O riso - Avançado I, II, III e IV. Tudo com possibilidade de mestrado e doutorado, claro. Os cursos serão ministrados nas últimas carteiras das aulas de semiótica, filosofia, teoria da comunicação e sociologia."
Paulo Polzonoff Jr., 4/21/2003
Na bibliografia, que conste a própria lista de disciplinas da USP: Introdução ao Sânscrito VI; Leitura: Teoria e Prática. E por aí vai.
There is something that bothers me each and every time I visit deadmemes.net. Actually, there are dozens of things that bother me about it, but one in particular is particularly (yes, on purpose) bothersome. It is the positioning of the archives. Notice the third box under the title, above the text itself. There you will find the archives for January, February and March, and an empty space. In a few days that space will be filled by the archives for April. And in a month, where will be archives for May be fit? Will the box be increased? That would imply in increasing the other two boxes as well, or risk a very ugly imbalance in the layout. That, or a change of the whole layout. Or of the archives' links themselves. Seeing as each post falls in a category (leisure, work, nc), yet this division is not available for link anywhere except the posts themselves, one possible solution is to replace the monthly listing of archives in the third box with two links: "Archives by month" and "Archives by category". That would halt the monthly increase of one link in the third box, which would eventually ruin the layout, and open space for more links than what currently are there.
In a lost boy, once you get past the complete and absolute lack of everything, there are things to be bothered about as well. One of them is the lack of capital letters, combined with the presence of punctuation in the title. But my main complaint goes to the trouble caused by the messy bold given to differentiate "lost" from "a" and "boy" in "alostboy". Problem is, only "ost" is in bold. So I inevitably think "Al, Original Sound Track, boy" whenever I look at it. So I wonder what movie "Al" would be (no, not A.I., it is Al), and what would be in its soundtrack for a boy to like it so much that he would call himself the Al OST Boy. I have seen strange nicknames in reference to TV shows and manga and bands, but never a soundtrack alone. In any case, since we are at it, lackofspace is annoying, period.
That could lead to the discussion of form vs. content. And I would then proceed to bash concrete poetry, and hopefully find the willpower to extend it to performatic poetry, and haikus, and given time to ferment I would reach "Run, Lola, Run" and pinch it a little, in spite of not having seen it, just because everyone comments so much on how it is done, but I never saw one mention of what it is about (except to explain how it is done). I would have, then, to assume that the Brazilian movie "Amores PossÃveis" is better than "Run, Lola, Run", for having the same form, but also having some story. Not getting in the argument of how it is filmed, camera positioning et al, which I cannot for already mentioned reason, the multiple ending part has been done to Daventry and back in games, if not books, and in movies before Lola. I remember "Wayne's World" had three endings. Of course, it was a joke, and all three very unlikely, but there they were. "Stigmata" had two endings as well, with the bonus that the entire difference was so subtle it could go unnoticed, yet changed the entire meaning of the ending (and maybe of the movie, if the viewer was willing to analyze it and argue with some sofa critics and Catholics).
My real purpose was writing something, or rather, some things about atheism, existance of God(s), agnosticism, religions. It would be the product of the long discussion I witnessed in a very good blog not long ago. But I just lost the will to when I was faced with the problem of having to write in Portuguese to hope reaching those who were part of the discussion (possibility), and at the same time making it unreadable to half of my readers (fact).
By the way, I now declare ASCII art a form of concrete poetry. So mote it be.
(Now you picture me laughining maniacally like Yamazaki [yes, from KoF] at the mention of "So mote it be".)
I finally saw "Fight Club" a few days ago.
I like movies with narration. Or rather, movies where the narrator is the main character. The entire "The Wonder Years" series is like that. "Goodfellas", subject of a previous post, goes into the same list. The very obscure movie "Tales from the Underground" follows the same line, but I think I am the only person in the world who watched that one. Same applies to "Cube" and "Dead Girl". It is very odd that no one ever heard of Dead Girl, since it has Famke Janssen, Teri Hatcher and Val Kilmer in the cast.
Back to "Fight Club", from now on without quotes.
Not yet! First I must mention this. Yesterday, the third ending theme for Inu Yasha played for the first time. The song is awful, unfortunately, but it must be noted Cartoon Network delayed its voice-over ads until the lyrics were over! That was beautiful. Tiny little thing, but it seems to whisper "Yes, we are paying attention, we care.". Of course, that is topped by the gigantic and noisy cake celebrating the channel's 10th year, a frequent visit during the episode itself. "The ending theme is important, but what that character is saying is just secondary." Hmf.
Very well, Fight Club. The majority of "I didn't like it" comments I found on boards around the web are shot down with a "watch it again, it is a lot different the second time". Okay, I will do that eventually, and hopefully in widescreen. Let me say, though, that I liked the movie. I just do not see it as being the greatest movie of all times, and never would I watch it three times a week (as some people claim to, in the boards I read).
I have no big comment to make, to be honest. I found it a bit absurd, the logistics do not fit. And there were far too many men joining the clubs everywhere for it to be feasible. Really, are all men so desperate to punch other (random) men? I promised myself not to use the words "society", "evolution" and "primitive" when talking about this movie, so I will not ask any further rethorical questions. It will prevent me from sounding like a bad writer, too.
In fact, I will drop the subject of Fight Club right here and make a complaint about bad writers.
It is rather irritating that most articles I read have that "Reader's Digest" feel to them. What I am talking about is things that start with...
"The sun was shining brightly as I approached the residence of Ms. Smith. When I arrived, she was already waiting for me by the front door. 'Good morning, mister writer, sir!', she greeted me playfully."
Really, I have seen books starting with that kind of thing. "The sun was shining...", "The sun was setting...". Where do these things come from, and why are they so horrendously overused? Is everyone only able to picture things as in a movie? So to set up the ambiance they need to show the sun setting, then the camera moves down to the road and a car comes speeding from the distance as music gets louder. Cut to interior of car, dialogue. Cut to plot-meaningful event outside of car. That does for some very bad writing and would become an awfully produced movie if turned into one (it is a script anyway).
Mister writer, sir, should go to the nearest library and read lots of Poe and Tolstoi before visiting Ms. Smith. But of course, if he did, he would not visit Ms. Smith afterwards, since he would refuse to write for Reader's Digest. Or RPGDot.com. Gods, the tentacles of amateur writing are long.
And if this Journal was not protected against (most) search bots, I am sure writing "tentacles" and "amateur" here, plus that "hentai" a few posts ago, would grant me many random visits by people looking for anything but what I have here. Too bad LiveJournal does not provide me with the cute service Blogspot offers its users, of knowing where each visitor came from. But I like having a journal.
Maybe this is in tune with Fight Club's ideas, but I came up with this thought earlier today:
About 70% of everything that goes through the internet is related to sex. The other 30% is the stuff nature never meant us to deal with.
Forgive the lack of cohesion in this post. Do not, under any circumstance, attribute to it the name of "flow of consciousness" or any other term forged by the early 20th century Surrealists or those silly Discordians. This post was written in about three hours of comings and goings and breaks for King of Fighters and Inu Yasha and includes thoughts that occurred to me during the past four days and which I should have posted before but did not because I had no will to and I do not like posting little things. I did not just sit here and "let my mind run free". I respect the paper (in the sense of "the support upon which text is written") too much to do that to it.
Speaking of Discordians, from the game "System Shock 2" a quote glued itself inside my head, and I often mumble it when Milu the dog barks for no purpose: "Silence the discord!". I love that quote. But the game itself is a bit problematic. No doubt, it is the scariest thing I ever played, but that is not the problem. The problem is the method used to increase difficulty: just add loads of plenty of handful of lots of big robots and protocol droids that can only effectively be destroyed with armor piercing bullets that are rarer than flying pandas. Two minutes wrenching a maintenance robot each time I have to pass through that important corridor that leads everywhere else is just way too much.
Enough. No more notes for now.
It is very simple: why should I write about the problem with the teacher, about the car, the traffic, if they are all so trivial subjects?
Why should I write about the amazing coincidence involving the song "It must have been love" by Roxette? What is the thrill in it?
What can I add to the subject of war that has not been said already? Ah, okay, this is a good point. But the war started three weeks ago and is probably near its end. Hmm, that is troublesome. But anyway, that is a subject to fill up space.
I was in favor of another war. North Korea. The threat was far more immediate, and the regime was no less brutal - plus it would have the background offered by the latest James Bond movie (by the ripped arm of Loki, who made Miranda Frost the Valkyrie a villain? Cursed be them all!). An attack against North Korea would probably also have support from China and Russia, even if not from France and Germany. The pacifists (who may all die with whoever made Miranda Frost a villain) would not have a whole lot of ground to stand on because Kim Jong Il openly declared months ago to have long range missiles and mass destruction weapons, he withdrew from the anti-nuclear weapons treaty, recent reports show most of the GDP comes from counterfeit money and production and commerce of drugs, and the population is miserable while old man Kim swims in Cabernet with beautiful young Korean girls. Many beautiful young Korean girls.
Therefore, a strike on North Korea would have lots of people smiling, no questions asked. An attack against Iraq, however, had all this problem we saw. Iraq was "cool" for the time being. People being murdered for disagreeing with the dictator, yes; population in deep poverty while dictator's family drinks Crystal champagne, yes; children arrested and kept jailed for years for not joining the youth wing of the one political party, yes; but they were not speaking up. So, attacking Iraq is very wrong.
Afghanistan spoke up, and very loud. Two Boeings, two towers. Everybody heard. The world agreed the Taleban should be destroyed. Still we had the homogeneized pacifists with their "I worry about the innocent young children being killed by the bombs in Kabul". Without planes and towers from Iraq, what did they expect? Old man Kim at least was clear about his intentions; the masses of waste of oxygen carrying waste of paper saying "Stop the war" would be smaller if North Korea had been the target.
To conclude, then: I did not support a waragainstIraqatthatmoment, written all together like that so the meaning gets across and no one thinks I am a blind pacifist. But yes, even knowing about the hidden Texan interests, etc, I believe such a strike would be necessary sooner or later - rather, later than sooner, since the problem was North Korea. Now, because the US attacked Iraq without UN support, the Security Council is hurt and will not allow a resolution about North Korea. Bah.
Note: Every little innocent child killed in Afghanistan means one less possible moviemaker to conjure things like "Road to Kandahar". This alone is reason for me to support massive carpet bombing of Iran, but that is another sphere.
Presented with the opportunity to, I invariably attempt to prove the biological truth can be overcome and humans do not need to sleep for eight hours, straight, each day. For that purpose, I either try to sleep less than eight hours, or try to sleep in segments of time - two hours here, four there. The only purpose of this is proving to myself that I can do it, since I can convince no one of the dubious use of such an habit. In fact, the end result is often so futile that it defeats the entire purpose of trying - all I get from it is the ability to adapt to any timezone with great ease (while people get all annoyed at daylight saving time).
Related to these subjects is a thought I keep watering and nurturing just to see if I can do something about it when I have the chance (and Absolute Control Over Reality - ACOR). The world has a whole lot of wasted potential. Not simply the world, as in "planet Earth and its population". I mean reality. For example, beauty: Nicole Kidman exists, so it is proven it can be achieved. Why, then, do her parallels represent less than 0.5% of the female population? In other words, why is the vast majority of people unnattractive, or downright ugly?
Taking it further, reality could well have an anime theme to it. We should all look like we were drawn by Rumiko Takahashi. In one city, at least - in another city, we would instead look drawn by Clamp (in the North part of this city, in the Card Captor Sakura style; in the South, in the Chobits style). In that small village, like Shin-chan. Over there, El Hazard, and Tenchi Muyo. Down that road, Escaflowne. And it would be perfectly normal to simply "change form" upon arrival in said city - we want no fights over who is prettier, as we want no one feeling cheated because they were born in the Speed Racer city and their muscles feel paralyzed.
Of course, I could derive from that thought the brilliant idea of pursuing, researching and building a gigantic virtual reality network. Then people would get out of their boring lives for some moments and be Van Fanel or Kenshin - and then go back to their boring lives. And my network would be accused of being a spin-off of The Sims Online and of being highly addictive and lead to deaths in Singapore. And it would be filled with Super Sayajins saying "lol stfu". And there would be a very suspicious imbalance between the male and female population - corollary to that, there would be a tremendous lot more homo and bisexual females than males; and inn rooms and other private places would often be scenario to hentai activity, so I would have to say the game is "R" or "PG-13 unless specified". Then I could steal all the money and flee to some place very far off and hidden and try to forget what my cute alternate reality became (even though I knew it would from the start), or I could commit suicide and hope I can have my vengeance on them all in the after-life (or spend said after-life in an anime world, of course).
Returning to the original track: to be honest, I was just thinking of how sillly it is that there is no Shampoo to be found anywhere nearby (Shampoo being the ultra cute purple haired Chinese girl with doubly ultra cute accent). That is a true waste of potential.