Morreu J.D. Salinger, o eremita das letras

Holden Caulfield, a personagem mais carismática criada pelo escritor norte-americano J.D. Salinger, que morreu na quarta-feira aos 91 anos, queria que, quando morresse, alguém tivesse bom senso suficiente para o lançar num rio ou coisa parecida.

PÚBLICO online. Continua aqui.

More here and here.

Precious Pictures

“When the Lion Roared ...

In celebration of its 85th anniversary, MGM shares stills from a few of the studio’s timeless classics.”, Vanity Fair Magazine, 29 January 2010.

You can see the pictures and read a little text about the context, ideas, trivia... Precious.

My favourite ones are

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Ben-Hur (1959)

Tangerine floors

Do you know those ready-in-2-hours jelly packs? You stir the powder with hot water and stick it in the fridge and 2 hours later, you have your jelly ready? Well, they don’t always need 2 hours to be ready…

Yesterday night, I was making dinner and realized that I have 3 unopened packs of jelly. A dessert in 2 hours? Sure! Easy! I’ve done it before. Well…

I boil the water, put the powdered jelly in a bowl, add the water, mix everything. The smell of tangerine is great, really sweet! “I think I can still eat some after dinner,”, I innocently think. Then, I notice that the Tupperware where I had poured the jelly into was on the kitchen stand where I wanted to continue preparing dinner. So I just thought, very innocently again, “Well, I could move the Tupperware from the kitchen stand to the table and I’ll have more space to continue with my dinner preparations [fish pudding].” (do you see a tragedy coming?) Little did I know.

And so, very carefully, I move the Tupperware to the table. And then, a catastrophe occurs! The bottom part of the Tupperware fell and along dropped 1 l of tangerine jelly on the kitchen floor! Plok!! The floor, once white, was now orange.

The nerves! The panic! My God! I stopped everything I was doing and got down on my knees and started to frantically clean the floor. By the time I got to the jelly near the wall, this one was almost ready/ solid. What a nightmare! (I think I now understand why those jelly wrestlings are so difficult and slipery).

By the end of it, I had jelly on my slippers, socks, trousers, legs, knees, face (!) and coat.

I therefore recommend that jelly manufacturers include a warning on the jelly packs: instead of writing “ready in under 2 hours”, it should read ”ready in under 2 hours on the fridge and in 5 minutes, should it fall on cold ceramic floors”.

I want to wash my sheets

I am tired. All the time.

I have divorced parents and my stepmother is also divorced. Our parents – 4 – have shared custody (of us…?!) and we alternate weekends. One weekend with dad and another with mom, and Monday and Tuesday, so we can have dinner with them.

You can imagine the amount of stuff I have to carry around between the two houses. The good thing about this is that it made me more organised and quicker, but taht's it. Also spending time with my parents, of course, but the energy I put into the constante house swapping is indescribable. My stepbrothers don't feel all the preassure because their mommy drives them to daddy's house, so they don't take the bus!

I do have some clothes over at my mother’s, but some things I have to carry with me: hair brush (having 2 of the same thing is a waste; this rule does not apply to clothes or underwear! or DVD), gloves, umbrella, trousers, t-shirts, sweaters, Tupperwares with my lunch, keys, … a never ending list of things to carry along through Greater Lisbon’s public transportation network.

Other things depend on the weather forecast and of how much will I be comfortable carrying around. These include laptop, camera (usually goes), mp3 player, charger for the just mentioned items, 2 or 3 DVD to watch (just the DVD on those cake boxes, not the individual DVD boxes, I’m not that crazy)… you get the idea. I always carry a book to read during the public transportation "travel period", but the book I am now reading is 400 pages! (I can only imagine what it will be like when I decide to read Bolaño's"2666").

One of the worst things is that I have to pack everything beforehand, usually the night before so that the next day, when I go to work, I already have everything with me and can go straight from work to the house of choice. I have to think about the clothes I have at my mothers' and at my dad's so I can come up with some kind of work apropriate attire and pack the necessary stuff - I am to tired to call them clothes. Socks and underwear, I have at mothers, and some shoes too, but somehow they are never the right ones.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot to mention that my parents live on opposite sides of the city and work is on another side. If it where a clock, dad’s house would be at 12, work at 2 or 3 and mom’s at 7 or 8. And it takes me 1 hour to get from my dad’s house to work and around 45 minutes to my mothers’, whether from dad’s or work. Fuuuuuun!

Lately, we have been swapping them like crazy. I can’t even tell where I have to go when I get off work. After spending 2 weekends with mom – but not the week days! – I came home today to find out that my stepbrothers’ father wants to swap weekends again! Son of a witch with a B! Seriously, only today do people tell me!

You will understand my frustration if you think that yesterday I had to pack everything on my school shoulder bag – wheelie bags are not good – drag it to work, work for 8 hours, drag the bad again for 1 hour to my dads’ and them get here to realise that I was going to spend next weekend at my mothers’. WHERE I JUST CAME FROM!

Now, tomorrow after work, I must pack all my shit again so that on Friday, after work, I can go to my mothers’. Don’t forget all the dragging!!!

I feel I no longer have time to do nice things during the week days. I don’t have time to post nice and funny things on the blog, to take pictures, go to a book store (I get off work at 6, am home by 7 and I still have to cook dinner most nights), my hair is a mess, it seriously needs a hair cut and I can’t remember the last time I washed my sheets. Honest.

I am seriously considering cutting my own hair, which would be disastrous.

New Year’s Eve

I still want to post the Christmas gifts I got, but I still have to either take or find pictures of them. So until then, here are some pictures taken by yours truly on my NYE. Or part of it.

I had a lovely dinner at my godparents house and after, we headed to Belém, for the Midnight Fireworks and Concert. I don’t have any pictures of the firework because I was too busy drinking French champagne and eating 12 raisins all at once. At the stroke of midnight, it starts to rain! Super! I had to prtect my hair from the rain, or I would turn into Diana Ross. Really. I will save you all months of therapy and will not post any pictures of myself, otherwise you would only lok at my freaky hair. Oh well.

GNR’s concert was late, as is usual in this country of mine. People in Belém, in Lisbon, where the concert was held – where getting cold, sleepy and impatient. They could see smoke and lihts on stage, but no band members.

Finally, they appeared! People cheer and clapped. GNR!

They had these cool loop-motion images on the background playing during some songs. The men with bell bottoms… groovy!

After a few maybe 20 minutes of concert, it started to rain. Boo hoo! GNR continued to rock on, even though most of the band members were approaching their 50s (GNR where pretty famous during my parents time, in the 80s-90s).

Cool lights, smoke and music.

The concert ended close to 2 a.m. Then we walked back to the car in the cold. I got home by 3 a.m., to bed by 4.a.m. and the next day I woke up at 1 p.m. Busy bee!

Cover Art

I only have 2 minutes before diner, so this post will be brief.

I just wanted to share with you the amazing cover art from a book I recently read. It called “A Leitora Real” (The Uncommon Reader), by Alan Bennett. I know the pictures are crappy, but I just wanted to show you the detailed engravings on the cover.

The cover has this beautiful engravings, that look like something you would find on an old book.

(front cover)

(front cover - larger)

(back cover)

He also wrote the play which inspired the movie The History Boys (play by the same name).

Still Alive

I have been told, by a friend, that it's been a while since my last post.

And that's true. I am sorry for delaying my postage of things on this blog, but I've been busy having Christmas and New Year celebratrions, reading, sleeping in, so...

But I promise to post something more substantial soon! I want to share my Christmas gifts and New Year photos with you guys. So just hang on for a few more days.