Grow up

It's really very sad to realise that my ingenuity keeps me believing in things that really don't exist so that I feel like the worst fool when I'm confronted with reality.

For me, East Timor, the newest country in the world, was an example of bravery and courage. They fought Indonesia invasion for 25 years and then they became a country in their own right. Of course I only know this because East Timor was a former Portuguese colony and it was on the news all the time. I remember one day, 15 years ago or so, a Portuguese TV channel did a story on East Timor freedom fighters. Many of them lived with their families and children hidden in the mountains. The reporters followed them at night, they were going some place and for some reason they could not make any noise, maybe because Indonesian troops were patrolling the area, I don't know. What I do remember is that at some point a little boy trips and falls into a hole on the floor. Her mother runs to him, helps him to get out of the hole and you see her talking to the boy, taking her finger to her lips and urging him to be quiet, not to cry, so that nobody hears them. The little boy holds his tears and doesn't cry. An old men sees that and turns to the camera, smiles and gives the thumbs up, as if he's saying "we're going to make it". And they did make it.

Or so I thought. The latest reports I've read by journalists that have recently been to the country talk about a country devastated by corruption, inefficiency, lack of money or money obscenely spent in unimportant things. It turns out that the people of East Timor are not as united as was thought, they have different ethnicities and fight each other or don't get along and politicians don't give a shit and buy expensive cars and use money from abroad to invest in mobile phone companies. It is expected that a new country faces the deepest problems but these are problems cause by sheer disrespect and corruption.

I am the most stupid person in the world. Also the saddest.

There are consequences of breaking the heart of a murderous bastard

The two best movies of female vengeance of recent times are undoubtedly Kill Bill Vol II and Lady V. They are two very different films, if it wasn't for the fact that they are dealing with the same theme: female vengeance.

Incidentally, or perhaps crucially, both women are mothers and this plays a central role in the plot, their characters and ultimately to the deeper "message" of both movies.

Both Geum-ja and the Bride, gain a long-lost daughter in their quest for revenge. Both of them get reborn from this act, and reinvent themselves as something different. In the extremely poignant end credits of Kill Bill, Uma Thurman is credited for playing the Bride AKA Beatrix Kiddo AKA Black Mumba AKA Mommy. This last role is the one that the Bride chooses to hold on to the most, and is the one that defines her. In the end of Lady V, Geum-ja wants to give her daughter back to her adopted parents not because she doesn't love her, but because she feels she is not worthy of this relationship that has so much to give her. On the contrary her daughter disagrees and 'forgives' her, in way helping her being reborn.



Motherhood therefore, is not the end of the road for the two female protagonists. Instead it is what defines them and ultimately redeems them from the horrible acts that they both did. I think that the message of these two movies, perhaps more clearly demonstrated in Lady V, is that revenge is a self-indulgent pointless act and the only redemption that can be achieved is if you are loved. Pure unconditional love is only a result of a mother-daughter relationship, that's why women (who can also be murderous bastards) can be saved by their daughters' love.

Men, in short, do not stand a chance.
Neither does Medea who killed her only chance of redemption.
Oh, well...

The Python strike again

True to themselves, the Monty Python have set up their own youtube channel with plenty of their videos, which can now be watched properly in high quality. Instead of engaging in stupid anti-piracy wars in the hopes of getting more money, which would ultimately harm viewers and people who genuinely like a certain artist or artists, the Python have decided to share their own work for free. One has got to admire them even more for this.

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MontyPython

Go, Python.

Stick it to the man

"Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can't win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you're just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don't know the Man. He's everywhere. In the White House... down the hall... Ms. Mullins, she's the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he's burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock 'n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don't waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome 'cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!"

Dewey Finn, School of Rock

With this amazing quote, Dewey Finn aka Mr. S aka Jack-Fuck her gently-Black summarizes the fundamental human need to defy authority. School of rock, which theoretically sounds such a naff-seen it before kind of movie (inspirational teacher with unconventional methods helps stuck up/shy rich kids to find themselves through - dah - music) is actually amazing. And not least because of Jack Black who is perfect in the role of wannabe-stuck in the past-loser rocker who creates a school band to compete in the battle of the bands, delivers lines like the above with amazing poise.

I guess what really makes SoR so much better than all other movies of a similar kind, is that it is so honest and because it manages to find space for optimism (through art and creativity) within the most pessimist of situations-loserism.
Viva la loser, then!

Ghost in the machine

“If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well”
Villiers de L'Isle Adam, L'Eve future

There are so many movies, books that deal with the quintessential philosophical questions, that of the relationship between the body and the mind/soul.
Some do it greatly (ghost in the shell, blade runner/do androids dream of electric sheep, the first matrix, never let me go, brave new world etc) some others not so well (I, Robot). It's not that they fail tragically, but they just don't have the subtlety and the depth of the ones I just mentioned.

The idea that life, soul can spark from an empty shell, that consciousness in people stems from material cell connections in our brain is old. I guess what makes it timeless in a sense that it will always create interest and debates is at the source of our existential questions as human beings: what am I? Where do my feelings come from? Does it necessarily mean that if my feelings are not real, then I can suppress them better? Do I have a role in life?

Even more interestingly, this questions are, I think, ultimately unanswerable. The 'evidence' provided, feelings, is part of the debate itself and in the end the only thing one can rely on, in order to make a decision about all this, is one's intuitions.

Intuitions that are a kind of feelings in any case.

Where is the love?

In our normal day to day lives people close to us do not constantly show us their appreciation. Much as we love each other we usually just get along, each of us minding our own business.

But there are some days that change that, and birthdays as such days.

Birthdays are great not because we get many gifts (although that helps!)

Birthdays are great not only because we get to indulge and go out and not work for the day.

Birthdays are great because this is the one day that people in your life make a point in telling you that they love you, that they are thinking of you, that they are there for you. It is the day that people call you from afar, send you gifts or throw a party for you.

And that feels nice.

Yes we can!

I am very emotional today and in a sense I didn't expect that.
The elections are not in my country and I am not black, but Barack Obama's win was, I think, overwhelming.

In times like ours, when Chomsky quotes Thycidides, saying: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must", it is amazing to have someone make you believe that you don't have to suffer just because you must. In a country whose first 16 presidents (as a journalist on TV put it yesterday) 'could have owned Obama' (as a slave), for this country to elect him, it's amazing.

People and especially young people do not believe in politics, this is no news. Cynicism is our weapon of choice. Before the war against Iraq started, I had another optimism crisis, mainly because of the demonstrations in London. I was reading about it, I was getting interested, in short I believed that this time, arbitrary power would not stand. But I was wrong.

This time, I feel optimistic again because I believe in this man who smiles so sincerely and says he wants to close Guantanamo. I really hope he does what he promises.

Can we?

After the longest, tightest and most interesting campaigns in recent history, this time tomorrow we will definately know.

We will know whether the world is ready for a black American president.
We will know whether people are willing to take a chance.
We will know whether inspirational rhetoric matters.
We will know whether it is an unforgivable sin to be educated, eloquent and polite.
We will also know whether pitbulls with an appetite for hunting are appreciated.
We will know whether patriotism can be measured.
We will know whether Nam veterans stand a chance (and therefore Oliver stone should make some more movies for them).

But most of all we will know, whether people can accept and respect the other man's right to be different.