A Feast for the Eyes. One of the most beautifully designed animations I've ever seen. Images so spectacularly rich they make your eyes hurt.

L' Infamme Une Femme Takes Temporary Leave. Vacation time, time to catch up with all the movies I never have time to watch. Here are some of the films I saw this week.

A Woman is a Woman

Yes, it's terribly passé and obnoxious, but I always like Godard.



It's really a shame this movie didn't make it to the Oscar.



In all truth, the third movie I watched was Looking for Nemo, but this poster is infinitely more beautiful, isn't it? The Corcovado Cowboy, also known as the Hairy Hungarian, bought a lovely painting appropriating this design last Saturday. We were walking around the busy Benedito Calixto antique fair and then had lunch at the Goethe Institut café. Side comment: I don't want to offend my German readers, but German food, at least of the kind one can find in Brazilian German restaurants, is really quite bland, isn't it? One would think that such a monumental culture would fare better in the pots and pans department.

My Liebeschaft with the Hairy Hungarian, born in Tübingen and raised in München, proceeds as the most peaceful interregnum in my ever tumultous love life. Salsicha alemã na feijoada dá certo! We developed pictures of our trip to S. Francisco Xavier and for the first time in ages, or at least, for the first time since I ditched the Giant Jalapeno for good, my face looked youthful and carefree. It is slightly bogus to leave my HH for two weeks.

Tomorrow I am flying to San Jose via Dallas. I have yet to call the pediatrician to ask what mild sedative I can use to drug the little mermie for the long trip. Yes, shocking, but I still remember the flight attendants of my San Francisco flight pointing at us and going tsk tsk after we landed, after Sofia barely missing bringing down the flight with the mess and fuss she made.

The plan is to stay one week with Sofia's grandparents in Prunedale, check out the California Rodeo (yeehaaw) and then spend the other week in Santa Cruz. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to going to Santa Cruz, visiting my favorite bookstores, walking in Capitola Village and stuffing myself with tofu mayo at the Staff of Life coffeshop.

I've decided not to take my laptop with me so I can buy a new one. I don't know if my mailbox at UOL accumulate all the spam I receive daily without bursting out at the seams. We'll see.

My real estate odyssey continues. After almost two months of bogurific negotiations with two owners I still haven't bought an apartment at the highly coveted Marquês de Valença building. It's unfuckingbelievable how jinxed my life has become as far my property-owning ambitions go. There are time when I really feel like throwing the towel and settle for renovating my own apartment with pergo white pine floors, pastilhas de vidrotil e outras viadices.

Persistence. The HH says. Deep sigh. Let's focus on merrier things.

You know what's really great about taking a vacation? The fact that you don't have to work and can jump headlong in the Lord of the Rings, that is, after you're done telling the 15 stories in Historinhas de Contar, which is one of the most delightful books I've ever had the pleasure of telling to my little Mermie.

While I am gone, make sure you visit my quasi-updated blogroll, to your left. Also, there are some new linguablogs on the block, I've heard.

Not Peter Greenway's greatest movie. But I quite enjoyed it. 8 and 1/2 women is cool, and shows Peter Greenway's at his most Godardesque while trying to be Fellinian. Vivian Wu is great as the Japanese interpreter, but I find the most amazing of these women to be Giaconda, the perpetually pregnant femina.

Riding cathode waves last Thursday. A wide selection of channels showing good movies last Thrusday had me glued to the box until late hours. Put the blame on these flicks:
Children Underground - street kids in Romania
La Piscine - Alain Delon, Romy Schneider and Jane Birkin. Eye-dazzling.
The Straight Story - David Lynch Disneyfied.

Saramago and his translators en la Escuela de Traductores de Toledo

Quote:

Los escritores hacen las literaturas nacionales y los traductores hacen la literatura universal: nos permiten a los que no podemos conocer todas las lenguas que se pueda leer algo escrito en Japón, Rusia, Finlandia...

Los traductores convierten las lenguas en mi propia lengua; por eso seríamos más pobres sin ellos.

Yo he aprendido muchísimo con ellos, he aprendido a leerme, porque a veces se plantean dudas que no sé aclarar.

Todo está claro para mí en lo que escribo, pero no en lo que significa, y tengo que pensarlo varias veces.

Ellos me han dicho que lo que uno escribe en su lengua no es tan fácil de entender

José Saramago

Go Click with Enigmatic Mermaid Digital Exploration Tours.
The Secret Life of Maps and Tales of the Punjab (via plep)
Maritonio (the Brazilian answer to innefectual Consumer Protection Agencies)
David Cronenberg on Spider
Alberto Giacometti
William Burroughs
Etimology of the word brega according to Caetano Veloso
The History of Education and Childhood (amazing link collection)
Social History of Children's Literature
List of Songs inspired by Literature
The Digital Story Bee
Museu da Pessoa
The Peanuts Tarot Deck
Leonardo DaVinci Master Draftsman

Movies. I watched two good films this weekend, the tearjercker El Hijo de la Novia and Jean-Genet-style Madame Satã. The photography in MS is heavily inspired by Arthur Omar's Antropologia da Face Gloriosa. The blown-up images of ectasy can get tiring after one hour and a half, but it's still a worthwhile movie.



more Arthur Omar pictures here