Rare Word

"ABRUPTIVE CELERATION OF ALL DERVISHES CARRYING BIBUGGISH PYRITES VIA TURMAND HIGHLY RECOMMENDED." (Memoirs Found In a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem, p.62, 1973). This is the second time I read the word "pyrites" in the literature (in the first occasion I've read it in the title of a book written by a Brazilian schizoid writer). A word so rare, that it should return some gold to the perpetrator.

[ Zero 7 - Passing By ]

Singing Head

WOW!
UPDATE 05/22: Is it a perpetual playlist? Or the music industry put a spell on it, making it round in an eternal recurrence movement?

[ The Jimi Hendrix Experience - One Rainy Wish ]

American Politics Archeology

Robert Drew's Primary (1960) is an example of Americana cinema verité. The ones who are not political junkies will bash it as a great waste of time, but still it deserves some attention span. Using technologies new for the time - portable cameras and sync audio - Drew shows the critical points in 1960 Democratic primary in Wisconsin, between Senator Hubert Humphrey and Senator Kennedy (Nixon is just shadowy referred). Focusing in the urban constituencies, Kennedy anticipatedly conquers the hearth of the swing state. On the other side, Humphrey directs too much his chautauquan chanting towards the folksy people. Remarkable the scenes in which Draw capture the feet of the registered voters inside the ballots choosing the candidate for the party's nomination. Kennedy addressing a sort of Manifest Destiny is another great moment.

Things To Come

David Fenech has quoted a "song" by Wesley Willis: I like audioblogging is fucking good a lot. You can really jam harder like a magicist. Right on brother. About 93300 people like audioblogging is fucking good. AUDIOBLOGGING IS FUCKING GOOD!!! The music industry notwithstanding, their gonna sail. Oh, they will.

[ The Notwist - One With The Freaks ]

Spongy Road Trip

If you can't afford the Miles and Jack Wine Tour in real life, you can try doing it through Google Maps application. Take the push-pins path and get all the add-on information in the info-popups. Probably you don't have a Chateau Cheval Blanc bottle to toast the special occasion, but you can get along with that old Piriquita though. For the braves, Los Olvidos Cafe is charging $29.00/per person (plus tax) for the SIDEWAYS Menu.

[ Interpol - PDA ]

Music From Aether

Introducing to the feint of heart my candid playlist in Webjay... Oh, Lord, in the very day I've promised never touch a keyboard again You'd showed me some outstanding MP3 blogs! How to turn away and ignore this, this and this?

[New Folk Implosion - Releast]

Godspeed, Herr Knopper!

Knoppix is a Debian Linux you can burn into a CD and boot it over any computer. A work of art kittened by a Teutonic guy named Klaus Knopper. Knoppix is really a smart and sophisticated piece of art. Inside it, the guy has packed all KDE and a whole wurlitzer of wonderful open source software, like GIMP, Open Office and the cave of wonders, KStars, your personal desktop Planetarium (I'm tracking Orion now, eh). Thanks a lot, Mr. Knopper. May the Force be with you against the cipayos patent holders!

[ Rolfe Kent - Chasing The Golfers ]

Sincere Toast

Sincere Toast
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

Mauricio and Nando toasting with the genuine Zubrowka. Oooh, Zubrowka, as expressed by Suw Charman.

Odd Couple

Odd Couple
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

Me and Teca in "A Polonesa" (Hilario de Gouveia Street, 116, Rio). Why not? look the word "jibble" in the sub-title of this blog...

The Peirogi

The Peirogi
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

The peirogi. Not the Hungarian, but the Polish one.

The Czekoladowy

The Czekoladowy
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

The Souffle Czekoladowy, one of the most delicious deserts I've eaten in all my life. Basically, it is an airy chocolate mousse.

The Hunting Party

The Hunting Party
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

The after-effect posers showing a genuine satisfaction in "A Polonesa". The waiter, standing strategically in the center, was the proof of our repletion. From left to right: Mauricio, Maria, "DCMOUSINHO", Nando and Teca, my wife.

The Gefildt

The Gefildt
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

The primo piatto in a polish restaurant in Rio: a Gefildt Fish. This restaurant, called simply "A Polonesa" (The Polish Girl), is a must. Very impressive experience for a Slavian offspring.

Taskbar of Hell

taskbar
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

Roland Piquepaille disserts about Durl, the new del.icio.us search tool that has the ability to bear things away from their usual places. In my case, I went from Roland Piquepaille to Alexandre B A Villares, non stop. Great displacements, great discoveries. Speaking of which, Napster ATTENS AP2P has discovered my taskbar. Good grief. Scare the hell out of me.

Mister Szantó, Look and See

I've recently seen András Szantó, director of National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, define culture as something "sensitive to surprising the observer". Surprisingly, he said that Internet was not conferred to such quality. I know that Szantó is a defender of the gate keepers' culture, but say that the Internet is incapable of surprising someone is a crime of, well, lese culture. It is not by chance that the word "serendipity", coined by Horace Walpole in the 18th century, has been gaining scale since the Internet advent! Kublai Khan yesterday and Google Suggest today (by the way, thank you LazyWeb! Some days ago, looking for information about WindowBlinds, I almost lost my head trying to find in plain Google the name of that hatful of graphic software called devianART; my memory were insisting in remember just the prefix "dev" and the word "art". After that ordeal, a thing came into my mind: Why does search algorithms are so dependent of complete words if the mind usually works through fragments?). Please, Mr. Szantó, don't blame me for being an iconoclast! I'm just a poor mortal suffering from "loss of forgetfulness". Iconoclast and, thanks god, atheist. Quoting my new hero, Marshall Sahlins, There is a sure, one word solution to all the world's current problems: Atheism. I'm sure that the great American anthropologist would love Mr. Gruff, OBJECTIVE: Christian Ministries' mascot.

[ Ltj Bukem - Unconditional Love ]

Copy Me If You Can

Hey, MPAA, RIAA, FCC: learn with the Easterners! The Chinese language has two different words for copy, as remind us Alexander Stille in his superb "The Future of the Past". Fang Zhipin is closer to what we, Westerners, would call a reproduction, a cheap copy of something. Fu Zhipin, by the other hand, is a very high quality copy, almost perfect, as good as the original. Few people know, for instance, that the Emperor Qin's Terra-cotta Army that travels around the world is one of the second kind. Marshall Sahlins, in "Waiting for Foucault, Still", tells a likewise story, about the shrine of Ise that is unchanged since the 7th century, better said, has been rebuilt with the same ancient instruments and same materials. For us, it is Ise re-created; for them, it is the same old Ise. Under those same criteria, how long Tinturn Abbey would be considered... Tinturn Abbey? Or a last U2 MP3 rip with a super dupe kbps, a Fu Zhipin U2 copy? This is s good patisserie for thought.

[ Tom McRae - Stronger Than Dirt ]

Ukraine Is Not Here

Where is Lech Walesa? Do you remember him? He is now in Kiev, among the demonstrators in Independence Square. Yushchenko and the National Salvation Committee have given the last ultimatum. Even those who desire a Kofi break are not in the dark side of the force. Le Sabot Post-Modern goes beyond the obvious coverings. I know some brothers here are giving a shit to Ukraine. It's a pity. In that case I suggest to them two links: Astronomy of the Brazilian Flag and Landscapes from Brazil, by Alex Uchôa.

[ Bebel Gilberto - Aganju ]

My Favorite Things

Following the steps of Yoz Grahame, I'm posting more on del.icio.us than here. In fact, I'm plenty adicted to that social bookmark engine. Totally hooked.

[ American Music Club - Home ]

BitTerrorism

Reuters had spread a note asserting that "BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet". Somebody made a fact checking about this? Anyway, Suprnova should take the burden of a part of that traffic, because it is offering trackers of manuals like "US Army FM 5 250 Explosives and Demolitions" and "Atomic Bomb - An Introduction to Nuclear Physics". Where those requests are coming from? Iran?

[ The Futureheads - Hounds Of Love ]

Chimp Evolution

Chimp won. Ok. Hail Chimp! No sour grapes. I've rooted, obviously, for Kerry, but I don't mind. Who are us, poor Brazilian liberals, to know what the best is for US? I’ve been following reds and blues opinions, and I've noticed that all of them have been sold a bill of goods. Sure, Hiawatha Bray, from Boston Globe, pushed a little too hard, but I also don't think that US citizens are losing the American Dream. Many liberals are quoting Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" as a way to explain that the defeat were due a moral values confrontation. Hey, the Scopes trial is history now, people! (Strange that the new sally of the creationists is coming from technogeek gurus, as George Gilder, while the best evolutionist rebuttal came from National Geographic Magazine, a supposedly conservative outlet.) The reality is much more complex than red neck counties and latte drinkers strongholds, and the liberals are wrong if they play the Manicheism game. Against all odds, David Brooks, from The New York Times, has shot a principled view: In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues. Yes, the reality is definitely not black and white or red and blue.
UPDATE: Jim Lindgren, from The Volokh Conspiracy, remembers that John Scopes based his teachings on George Hunter's "Civic Biology" (1914), a book about eugenics and white genetic superiority. Go figure.

[ Paul Westerberg - Looking Up In Heaven ]