The Vineyards

Let us pretend for a moment it is still January 1st.

I admit, the more this becomes a self imposed obligation, the less I like it. And the entire 2009 had merely eleven posts: this makes writing this one simple and quick, but also makes it clear how much improvement these vineyards need.

So, in 2009, we had:

January 1st – “I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.”
Nothing fancy here. I needed a quote about the past, found this one by Herb Caen, Pulitzer-winning American columnist. The line was perfect for a moment where past “glories” was all I had.

March 3rd – “The problem with the rat race is even if you win you’re still a rat.”
One of the very rare cases where I knew which title the post should have before writing it, by American actress (and writer and producer) Lily Tomlin. While the post itself has no complaints about my job per se, the whole system bothers me, and that quote expresses that better than I could. Interesting fact: this line and “I think our foreign policy effects the situation” are the two search strings that bring the most users to this site – who then promptly leave because they obviously did not find here what they were looking for. Maybe I should change these titles, perhaps the whole titling scheme.

April 29th – “What were they thinking!?”
A post in Portuguese about trends I consider quite stupid. The line is extremely overused. What I had in mind when I picked it was the Angry Video Game Nerd, who often shouts it in unparalleled frustration in his video reviews of classic games. It has been a long time since I last saw one of his videos, however; they are fun, but he often uses exaggerated comparisons to get his point across, and I just got tired of that. “I’d rather have my eyeballs removed with a rusty fork than have to look at this again!”. A common construction in English, and I will sound elitist but say it bothers me anyway. Did you see “Event Horizon”? A little spoiler: the original crew pulled out their eyes with whatever tools they had because they had seen hell itself. That is justified. So save such exaggerations for when you see hell itself.

May 31st – “The truth is out there.”
So one day while leaving work I met this guy who looked like Hurley, from Lost, and he wanted an old issue of “UFO” magazine, which is published by the company where I work. The X-Files tagline sounded more than fitting. And the story is completely not fun in this description.

June 30th – “Just as well! I think that is close enough!”
From Loom! Too long had Loom gone unquoted. Bobbin, in the middle of the sea, floats his tree trunk near a cyclone blocking his way to the next island. If told to go closer, he says “that is close enough”. A very easy puzzle in the game, far easier than understanding the aversion of high-school girls to their male classmates. Their aversion to me in high-school I understand perfectly nowadays, though.

July 31st – “Go play somewhere else! Goodbye!”
Loom again! The two workers polishing the Scythe refuse to let Bobbin go past the corridor where they are working, for obvious safety reasons. The third time he tries, they lose their patience.

August 23rd – “Me? I’ve got a different problem.”
That is from the “World of cardboard” speech Superman gives when he fights Darkseid. Since I was talking about comics, I thought I should use the most memorable line I know from them (even if it is a cartoon, not a comic). But I knew only the dubbed version (what awful sound capture in that video). When I heard the original, I was tremendously disappointed at the absolute lack of emotion by the voice actor. You are unleashing powers capable of destroying the world, not reading the report to the shareholders about how your company’s growth of 0.2% in the last three quarters.

September 7th – “Sacred cows make the best hamburger.”
A fun line by Mark Twain. This was the hardest post ever to write. The author of soap opera “America”, which I commented (bashed) at length, was rehashing all her previous works in the new “Caminho das Índias” (“Route to India”, roughly). Half the soap opera happened in our neighbor India. Sounded fitting.

October 29th – “Stella! Come on, Stella!”
This one comes from a long chain of associations. The post is about streets with odd names, one of which is “Estela”. So I thought about streets and names and for some reason “A Streetcar Named Desire”, that has a character named “Stella”. After 45 minutes of not finding a better option, that was that.

November 20th – “When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be surprised to learn they’re not it.”
By Bernard Bailey, who probably had nothing to do with Bailey’s Irish Cream because he was an American comics artist. I used the post as an excuse to show off all the cartoons, anime and sentai I could remember, mentioning how I knew not everyone shared my tastes, and concluded by asking why so many people assume I watched and like that one particular Mexican show that they watched and like. “What, you didn’t see it!?”

December 29th – “Eu a matei!”
One of the rare quotes in Portuguese. When Charlie Brown tries to decorate his Christmas tree and the single red ball he hangs makes it fall over. “I killed it!” I could had used the original, but, same as with Superman, I much preferred the local dub. And I will give no links because it has been redubbed here and lost all quality, and I could never find the original on YouTube. I felt personally hurt by the redub. The Christmas post about how mundane life made Christmas lose all its shine last year needed a line from there.

And that was all for 2009. Good luck and enjoy 2010.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.