The Vineyards

As most people in my generation, I grew up watching TV, thrown over (or on, or under) a comfortable sofa. Due to a thing or two, I was always rather shy, and always kept my gaze down. As a result, my posture deteriorated over time. A couple of years ago I started taking it seriously and visited a doctor to see what could be done.

The initial treatment was something called "RPG" in Portuguese, which naturally sounds very funny and results in many jokes, but in English should be something like GPR, "Global Postural Reeducation". One session or 45 minutes each week, and a year later the doctor said he did not expect such fast and great progress: I was 80% fixed and should not have any problems with that in the future.

All should be well and good at this point, but it was about to turn into the exact opposite. The doctor said, in order to maintain what GPR had done, and get that last 20%, I should start going to the gym.

There are few places I consider lower than a gym, and one of them is a public men's toilet. Yet, by the doctor's order, I had to go there at least three times a week, each time taking at least one hour. I found it quite amazing that to fix 80% of my problem I needed 45 minutes a week, to maintain it at that point I needed three hours a week.

Untrained and weak and lacking time and any will to do it, it took me a long time to complete the initial schedule, the first twenty days. Last week I finally reached phase two. Two days of that and now I cannot stretch my arms. I am not aching for being tired - on the contrary, I could run a couple miles right now if it was not hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement. I am positively wounded from the exercise - which now takes at least two hours each day, thrice a week. On top of all that, I fear these exercises might make me "big", instead of "healthy", and that I could not tolerate. Of course, they can make me neither big nor healthy if I cannot stretch my arms to do any more exercises.

* * *

Próxima segunda começa a novela "América", que merece ser um fracasso estrondoso, mas não será. Aliás, todas as novelas da Glória Peres merecem ser fracassos estrondosos e não são. "Vejam como eu falo de temas polêmicos e grupos diferenciados!", diz Glória, e lá vem transplante de coração com ciganos, clonagem com muçulmanos, e agora imigração ilegal com peões de rodeio. "Vejam como eu encho lingüiça!", e tome ciganos tocando e dançando, capítulos com três cenas de diálogo e 25 minutos de dança do ventre, e agora eu aposto em várias e diversas demonstrações de controle sobre bois e cavalos pululantes, e música sertaneja. E não esqueçamos o núcleo "gente como a gente", no bairro pobre genérico do Rio de Janeiro (o Andaraí da vez). "Ah, mas se tem peão é em Barretos, e Barretos é em São Paulo!" Ora, Barretos é muito mais próximo do Rio que o Marrocos, eles podem fazer o trajeto de bicicleta em alguns minutos!

Do muito pouco que vi da "Senhora do Destino", gerei a opinião contrária ao mundo todo, de que Nazaré foi a pior grande vilã de novela ever. Quero dizer, enquanto todos acham que ela foi "muito má", eu acho que ela foi uma personagem muito sem graça, forçada. Sua motivação era uma patologia, um distúrbio químico causado por sua infertilidade e as conseqüências disso. Nazaré só era louca. E no fim ficou boazinha e se matou, colocando-se fora do caminho de todo mundo.

Comparemos com Laurinha Figueiroa, cuja nêmesis era outra Maria do Carmo: Laurinha queria destruir a sucateira "porque sim, oras!", tinha muita classe, se vestia bem, e quando morreu ainda deu um jeito de levar junto a orelha da rival e acusá-la de assassinato.

Uma comparação mais próxima, a Laura de "Celebridade" (ora, Lauras são vilãs, Marias do Carmo são sempre mocinhas), tinha duas motivações: vingança (motivo bobo, vá lá) e ganância (agora sim). Era abertamente falsa, cínica, enganava quantos pudesse, era uma estrategista ótima e sabia exatamente o que queria e o que precisava fazer pra chegar lá - inclusive matar o pai, transformar o outro vilão em escravo e outras coisas assim. Morreu desnecessariamente.

Ah, chega de novela.

* * *

Asgaard had two hard disks. The first was a Seagate 160gb, which is where everything is: the system, the swapfile, the documents, and shared and download folders; therefore, lots and lots of reading and writing all the time. The second was a Maxtor 60gb, named "Storehouse", because it sat there holding 59.5gb of anime and manga that needed watching and reading someday; it was never touched.

One of them failed. Guess which. I will give a hint: it is the third of this manufacturer I had fail within a year.

* * *

This country is becoming a communist dictatorship in the exact manner Gramsci envisioned it: the communists disguise as good guys, reach the top by accusing their adversaries of doing exactly what they are guilty of, then slowly cut away liberties with one hand while giving the impression of giving some temporary freedom in other areas with the other hand, so no one notices.

Whenever I talk of politics, however, I regret it. So I will stop at that.

* * *

Midgaard seems to be going somewhere, at last. For some odd reason, systems actually install now. They still do not work, though. One installation of Slackware self-destructed after it locked up trying to load the X server and I had to hit reset. One Ubuntu would not let me reinstall the faulty fonts for the X server, until it, too, self-destructed because of that. The latest Slackware installation liked to throw MySQL up in the air and let it fall and die a few seconds later. Each time, however, I seem to progress a bit more. I think I will have it working eventually.

* * *

Flines rules.

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