there should be a law... II

If you've know me for more than a day you have probably realized that I'm a very annoyable person. Actually, I am the kind of person who deals better with big problems in life that with everyday annoyances. Finding out the company I work for might go bankrupt might concern me to a certain degree, but having someone not reply to my email is a good reason for me to want to murder you. So you get the point.

About a year ago I wrote the "there should be a law"post, where I mentioned there would be more to come, but there wasn't until now. As I sit here after 2 days of total holiday boredom and too much unnecessary eating, I feel that there's no better time to talk about what makes me bitter. So here we go, starting from #8:

There should be a law - the sequel:

8. There should be a law prohibiting people from whistling. Why the f*ck would I want to hear the sound of air coming out of a tiny hole you make with your mouth? Pretty self-explanatory.

9. There should be a law saying that you can only post on Twitter useful links or funny phrases that will add insight or joy to your followers' days. I honestly do not give a crap about where you are, or what you're watching, or how long you took in that bath of yours. You should do us all a favor and drawn if you're one of those people.

10. Repeat after me: they are = they're; their = belongs to them; there = exists or indicates location. Not understanding the difference between those three, specially if you're (notice: not YOUR) from an English-speaking country makes me automatically lose any respect I might have had from you from the start, if any. I believe this is a good way to measure someone's character.

11. There should be a law against the use of the word "blogosfera", which means "blogosphere" in portuguese. To be more accurate, it means "the universe of blogs made in Brazil", which is conceptually annoying, small and country. It's like calling sneakers "fancy shoes". It's just bad. Don't say it. Unless you want me to hit you, and in that case, you should just ask.

12. There should be a law against people in Brazil correcting you for your accurate pronunciation of English. If I know how to say "world" I will not go out of my way to say "WORRRRRRD" (french "r" here) just because that's how you've managed to say it. I will not say "HAAALPH" if it's "Ralph", or "BLOOTOOPHEE" if it's "Bluetooth". YOU get it right, damn it. I've already done my homework.

13. And by the way, it's BeYONcé (emphasis on "yon"), not BeyonCÉ (emphasis on "cé"). Do I have to keep repeating myself??

14. There should be a law against making any kind of hand gestures when posing for a picture. Unless you are Lindsay Lohan or you belong to a respectable gang - small gangs with 10 members or less are not included - , keep your hands and fingers to yourself. It's not cute, don't make me embarrass you in front of pseudo-gang-member friends.

15. There should be a law against touching my computer screen. Unless you plan on murdering me after pointing something out, and then the C.S.I people can come and collect your fingerprint to find out who killed me and catch you afterward, I do not need you to leave any marks on my territory. Yes, this area here, from the edge of my laptop, to about 1 and half feet around it, is mine to use as I please. Be respectful of that and understand that the violation of those 18 inches I require may result in immediate verbal assault in form of very, very dry sarcasm.

(I'm sure there will be more, but for now that's it)

just what i needed

As if this year hadn't been exciting enough, the universe has awarded me with a 3mm kidney stone.

F*ck you, universe. You better run if I see you.

home

Say what you want to say, Indiana is home to me. Indianapolis was a wonderful home during the 7 amazing years I spent there, and a HUGE part of me became a Hoosier. I don't like it when people put their ignorance on display by talking about how much they know about midwestern culture and the "middle american", as if they have actually deeply experienced that culture and place themselves. It's one of those things that really gets on my nerves. But that's another post.

I've been gone for a little over a year and the landscape of the city I have grown to love as my own is going through major changes. The RCA Dome is being imploded tomorrow morning. Its roof was inflated on September 24th, 2008. This video makes me want to cry, and that's one of the moments I realize I'm no longer just Brazilian.



++++++++

UPDATE (Dec 20, 2008):

i'm embarrassed but i must tell

Below is the screen shot of the summary of a lawsuit filed with a Electoral Court in Brazil. The site might be down because the huge number of visits today's incident caused:


"PT, BRAZIL WORKERS PARTY (the President's party!), WANTS TO TAKE TWITTER OFF THE AIR.

The Story
Somebody created a fake profile of Luiziane Lins, one of PT's candidates standing in the election for Mayor of Fortaleza, Ceará. She filed a lawsuit in order to remove the profile from Twitter – which is a legitimate right she has.

But she went beyond.

As if removing that specific profile wasn't enough, she filed a lawsuit in order to TAKE TWITTER OFF THE INTERNET. That's right: the WHOLE site. Something like taking the whole MSN Instant Messenger system down, or even Facebook, Myspace or Orkut because of one fake profile.

Sickening.

To make matters worse, that lawsuit was combined with the lack of "internetical" knowledge of a magistrate, causing what we saw today: an approved order to take TWITTER OFF THE AIR.

The Absurdity

- The lawsuit asked the justice system to take the WHOLE site down, not just one profile;

- They approved such request;

- The Regional Electoral Court of the state of Ceará took off the air a BLOG WHICH SUBJECT MATTER IS TWITTER, not Twitter itself. It's bizarre not only that they actually went forward with the lawsuit request, but they also suspended a BLOG.

- Twitter is not a national site. Because of that, the order of the Court in Ceará will never reach its servers. Just like it happened with Youtube once in Brazil, maybe the "solution" is to determine that EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL INTERNET PROVIDER should remove forwarding service to Twitter's URLs - check out the size of the problem."

Beautiful, huh? Being from here is so fucking embarrassing sometimes.

[this post was translated from this post here, of Imprensa Marrom. I wish you all knew portuguese, because he's brilliant]

+++++++++++++

The imature 13 year-old kid that lives inside of me couldn't be stopped. So here it is:

LOSER!
(she said it, not me)

we're closed

Isn't it terrible that I am in desperate need of a total vacation of this digital life but I just can't turn it completely off? How can a designer survive without being connected to this thing?

I'm going attempt to take it easy for about a week. No blogging, no facebook, no MSN, no flickr - NOTHING but what I absolutely need to do my job. We'll see how long this lasts.

Internet - I fucking despise you sometimes.

iEvil

Got this "gem" from Wired's list The Five Stupidest iPhone 3G Accessories. Number 2 takes the gold in my book for the most environmentally irresponsible, useless, in-your-face-disgusting concept. Shame on you, Miniot.

"This ligneous shell costs nearly as much as the 8GB iPhone -- and rumor has it, it's fashioned from Ents! Optional wood dock sold separately. Seriously we're not making this up.

Grade: Chop down a tree to make an iPhone case? Great, I've got a car that runs on baby-seal blood and bald eagles you might like. Fail."

iWood Heritage takes the cake. As if "regular" iWood wasn't enough, Miniot is able to get their hands on some "very rare woods in small quantities that are only enough to create two or three iWoods." They even have ancient and pre-ice-age (!) wood. Wow. Because, you know, if there's one thing we should be doing with "prehistoric timber harvested from forests buried during the last Ice Age" is making iPhone protectors. RIGHT??



That, of course, comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. Which, by the way, should come with a nice plaque that says I AM OFFICIALLY A F*CKING ASSH*LE.

still, the very cynical side of me

I think it's so ironic that we, girls, are the ones known for dreaming of "Mr. Right" when in reality every other man I meet still firmly believes there actually is a Ms. Right out there just waiting for them.

Would someone please let them know that there is no such thing as a live pin-up-girl? That the whole girl-next-door-book-smart-sexy-stripper type is a product of Hollywood and their fucked-up imagination? Who told men that story and why in the hell do they keep believing that's who they're destined to end up with? I don't know about you, but I quit trying to live up to those standards a looooong time ago.

I wish they would wake up and smell the fucking coffee!

ask me how much I hate carnaval

- How much do you hate carnaval?
- A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.

It starts tomorrow and ends in 4 days.

I wish I could be unconscious in the meantime.

pet peeve

People here call Kanye West "Ke-nny" West.

And Beyoncé is "Bee-yon-say". Like BeyonSAY.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I was watching "What Not To Wear" with Portuguese subtitles and Stacy London was talking about how some guy's pants were all torn out, with a bunch of tears - pronounced |te(ə)r| or (târ). They translated it as "tears", as in that clear salty liquid secreted by the lacrimal glands in our eyes.

WHY LORD, WHY??!!

(and God forbid I try to correct anybody! I have better luck trying to nail my eyelids to the wall!)

there should be a law...

1. There should be a law prohibiting people from using Photoshop filters without appropriate knowledge of design and/or without basic aesthetic common sense. Just because you managed to download a free copy, or because it happens to be in your PC, it doesn't mean you should touch it. The fact that you are on a PC probably means you shouldn't touch it.

2. There should be a law obligating people to check their emails at least twice a day, following by a reply. Each offense should be punished by the removal of one eyeball at a time, because if you don't read e-mails, what's the point of having eyesight?

3. There should be a law against making noises with your mouth while eating. Just because digestion starts at the mouth, doesn't mean that I need to HEAR IT HAPPEN!

4. There should be a law allowing people to knock the shit out of anybody who bumps into you accidentally and does not say "excuse me". No actual physical contact is necessary. Touching my purse, crossing in front of me while I'm looking at a store window or grocery shopping, and standing in front of me while I'm getting off an escalator are all serious offenses that demand serious reprimand. Reprimand should consist of the use of violence.

5. There should be a law prohibiting people (and by people, I mean BRAZILIAN PEOPLE) from clapping when the airplane lands. This might not mean much to you, dear reader, but try taking a flight from Miami to Rio or Sao Paulo and you will know exactly what I'm talking about. I always fly undercover as an American citizen because it brings me to tears to even think that I could be remotely associated with people who would clap during landing. When the flight crew starts passing around the customs form, I always take the one for foreign visitors in Brazil and then I switch it when I get to the ground. What are you clapping for, people? For the pilot's job well done? He probably can't hear you! Are you afraid of flying? Or are you just ghetto as hell? I mean, I'm happy we got there ok and everything, but there's no need for you to express your joy by blatantly showing us all that this is your second time in an airplane and you clearly don't know how to act.

6. There should be a law stopping strangers from looking at you more than once for more than 30 seconds. I understand if you look at me for about half a minute if you've never seen me before. You might be finding me attractive or you might be feeling sorry for me because I look so ugly, but half a minute of UNDIVIDED ATTENTION to me and my beauty or ugliness is more than enough. You even have time to tell your friend so he/she can stare with you. But look at me a second time and I'll have to start acting like a nosy-ignorant-asshole, just for the sake of easier communication between you and I.

7. There should be a law against individuals who go to concerts and sing louder than the artist. If the person doesn't know the lyrics, even worse. If they don't know the words and have no sense of rhythm, that's reason enough for me to get up from my seat and find the security person who will take you to a dark alley and beat you unconscious.

(more to come)

s l o w a n d b a r e l y h e r e

So I have moved to my new apartment and this is now my third week here. I love it so far, everything I would need on a daily basis (besides my job) is pretty much walking distance from here: Target, movie theaters, grocery stores, an Apple store, shopping malls, restaurants (russian, thai, brazilian, japanese, chinese, you name it) - everything right around the corner. But since nothing is perfect in this world of mine, wireless Internet here sucks. I can pick up one open signal if I place 1/3 olf my computer on the edge of the desk that sits in my small and improvised office. I will be posting a photo that displays the fragility of my Internet situation tomorrow from work, because of course, the network at home is not stable enough to wait for all those ENORMOUS PIXELS FROM MY GIGANTIC 500K JPEG PHOTO TO UPLOAD. God damn it, me and all those pixels trying to get online. What the fuck, right?

But of course, the beautiful provider of my very expensive cable TV will also be allowing me to use the Internet comfortably from my very own rented home for the mere price of $30 some dollars a month. What a deal. Thanks Comcast, you rock! I could be out there jogging or spending my hours in the crazy outdoors, but you sure know how to keep me in here and watch my ass get bigger by the minute. Comcast, you... silly... cable provider!

Work has been crazy busy and I haven't had time to do much besides actual work, which totally blows. Hope this trend changes soon.

Here are some things that have been occupying my time or rocking my world: my best friend's home-made lettuce wraps, Paris Hilton in jail, Amy Winehouse, Patty Griffin, new photos and prints I bought from Talbott Street Art Fair, Icy-Hot patch to heal the crazy pain I had on my neck for 3 days after spending the night on a really hard couch, and of course my new 26'' flat screen TV (I had one ridiculously banged up TV that went to the trash before the move. I could only watch really bright shows on it, because the darks were REALLY DARK. Now I can watch shows I really like, instead of shows I pick based on contrast).

I'll be hooking up my new high-speed cable tomorrow, so more to come!

freedom of jeans and the dumb little brazilian girls

This week has been a very good, busy, productive one, but I absolutely need it to be over. I can never make myself go to sleep before at least 2am, and that only adds up to 5 hours of sleep a night at most. Usually by Friday, when ideally someone should have slept 40 hours, I only slept 25, and you can clearly see it by the lack of make-up, the hair in a pony-tail that hasn't even been brushed, and the fact that I usually go out the door looking like I was blindfolded while getting dressed.

One of the things that I absolutely LOVE about the new job is that there is no dress code. My old job did, except for casual Fridays, when we could wear jeans. I had never been a jeans type of girl, and the first time I purchased a pair of jeans that I truly enjoyed wearing was in 2001, when I moved here. In Brazil is very hard to exist if you're bigger than a size 4, so clearly in my country there is a common belief amongst store owners and establishments in the apparel industry that if you're born with big hips and a not so slim waist you're not worth of owning decent clothing, let alone a pair of jeans. I remember growing up, my mom used to have clothes tailored for me and her because there was no way in hell we would find anything half-way presentable to wear, besides sweatpant and t-shirs. I ended up having a pretty sharp wardrobe by the time I was 18, and 80% was custom tailored for me by this lady who used to make sure to rub on my face that my butt was getting bigger by the visit. She would smack my behind and say "Girl, you 'bout to drive some man crazy with that big ol'butt you got!". I, of course, never took that as a compliment, and I used to find extremely annoying the fact that she thought I was too big for her to work with, but I would definately be a great meal for nasty construction workers.

Anyway, it is definitely a more comfortable experience being my size here in this country, because you're not constantly bombarded with the idea that your weight equals to that of 85 skinny brazilian girls combined. That used to bother me A LOT and I'm sure I have passed on a few experiences in the past because I just didn't feel like dealing with the looks of those girls who would stare at me as if they wanted me to realize that they were of a species more evolved than mine.

Now, for all I care, they can eat me because I have finally come to a point in life where I actually feel comfortable with myself enough to know that the size of my hips and the weight of my body is nobody's business but MINE. I would be lying if I said that I wouldn't love to shed some pounds, have a flatter stomach, and an ass that is about a quarter of the current ass I got, but even though it took me a while, I recently realized that somehow I have grown into someone who knows and believes that I'm SO much more than a stupid dress size.

And I wish the same for all those dumb little brazilian girls, while, of course, hoping that they asses reach size 24 by the time they are 30.