Amy Winehouse: Too Young To Die

I told in one of my previous posts I saw a book about people who died young. And I wove my respects to them.

Now it's time for another tribute. Now is time to salute Emy Winehouse.

Yes, Amy, you were young, too young to die.

Sometimes it may seem opportunistic, but no. I actually was already a big fan of Amy before she died.

I love rock, but also like a lot of other styles. I like music, like good music, without distinctions and labels.



Enjoy Amy means before to enjoy all a vast musical legacy left by countless masters.

I always heard the divas of jazz. Who never heard? But, music, like sports and advices, is to be experienced. A sport is to be practiced, a council is to be lived and a song is to be heard.

I heard a lot of divas of jazz. I say it is not easy, because we are not accustomed to strive to establish our ears and learn to enjoy something that is excellent, but requires skill and effort.

Try to listen, for example, Aretha Franklin. It is not easy. It's harsh, is smooth, it is bitter. But it is perfect.

Thus, we are striving and learning to enjoy what the world has as best to offer. So when we are accustomed with divas' sing, instinctively know when we hear one.

Amy was so.

Forget the looks, forget the hype, forget the drugs and forget about awards and video clips. Concentrate only on the sound.

My wife and I spent long hours traveling across the country listening to this all, but learn to feel a particular fondness for Amy Winehouse. Your music helped make it less harsh our long and tiring hours on the road. I personally, when alone, preferring to put the song "Love is a losing game" to repeat endlessly. His voice was softer hard times and the heat more bearable. I never tired of hearing it, and as for Amy, I knew she was still alive, but dangerously pushing her luck.

I know, we know, we all know that we expected more from her. We expected, optimistic, that all would be ended well and that we would have her for many years. But we underestimated the fragility of life, human frailty. We have seen in real time the sinking of a young woman as we have seen a reallity show, believing that everything was nothing more than another marketing ploy, a balcony over the media, another factoid to keep her in evidence in the spotlight. But we deceive ourselves.

We lost Amy and now is late for any consideration. We do not end up with drugs, we will not save the world and will always remember her untimely death as more a matter of disappointment with this way of life jerk in which people live today, based on a consumerist, superficial and destructive culture. Disappointment, without further consideration, because, of course, nothing will change.

So it remains salute her, recognizing that she lived as a true diva and certain that their songs will be with us for a very long time, because they shine as works of excellence. It certainly will be with me for long time, I have no doubt.

Amy, I salute you.

Now, you are eternal.

Rock seventies

Yesterday I had the opportunity to buy a DVD in Americanas Stores here in Ribeirão Preto, in Santa Ursula Mall. I say this because I write this blog not only to the world, but for me too, to after a few years I can remember I had a life like any other, and not only labor and sorrow. Yesterday, just to confirm, I did not suffer one bit. It was a normal day.

I bought a DVD with 70s rock. There were big names of which I had heard and even knew a few songs, but never seen on video.

Black Sabbath, who had heard something.

Kiss, that I love, with the classic "Rock and roll all night".

Deep Purple, I've seen live in Goiânia.

Slade, with "Cum on feel the noize", that I had heard  long time ago.

Grand Funk Railroad, who had never heard nor seen.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, with the classic "Sweet Home Alabama", which I love, had seen the video and knew the lyrics perfectly.

T. Rex, who I had heard talking about, but never seen nor heard.

MC5, ditto.

David Bowie, who knew the legendary in '70s, but only heard and saw in the '80s, and a little bore, by the way.

Suzi Quatro, I knew nothing.

Alice Cooper, like Bowie, but way cooler.

Peter Frampton, that I love, with "Show me the way."

Talking Heads, with their typical nonsense over the '80s to '70s.

And finally Ramones, who knew in the '80s.

You know what? I thought the look of  everyone the cornier thing  in the world, but in same time the most authentic thing in the world, while the most chic thing in the world.

And the sound?

Kiss is a show, it's fantastic and are eternal.

I loved Lynyrd review, and as the backing vocals are beautiful!

Black Sabbath is really a classic, as well as Deep Purple with their basic guitars.

I loved the old fashioned Slade. The singer looks like a werewolf. But it's a nice guy, singing a lot and music is very great. It is shocking to see the mismatch between powerful sound and  naive and innocent visual. What a deal! I loved Slade!

And I loved listening to Frampton again. Since my seven, eight years I've heard their music. They are in everywhere. He sold millions, broke all sales records at the time and was "the guy". Then disappeared from the scene. He was a legend.

I see Rick Sambora from Bon Jovi and remember that weird tube, the talk box, and no denying it: rock inspired by Frampton, and the best. No extremes of Radicalism, of Puritanism, of Satanism. Only a good sound to take a road, to enjoy the energy and lift the mood. Rock's it.

Long Live Peter Frampton.

Advices

I read a lot. I always read.

I come from a family of simple people. I had no parents with a lot of instruction. As I grew older, I learn more from books than by the teachings of others. Of course, the books are written by people, so I learned things with people, but not directly.

The books are then as my advisors. And I am a dedicated student. Always have been.

But giving advice is one thing. Following a advice is another.

Someone saying that you must do this or that is correct, but does not mean it will be easy for one who accepts the advice. Being disciplined with our learning is a hard work.

A lot of work.

Now, for exemple, I am struggling with my backup. This is the third or fourth time I talk about backups in this blog. This backup bothers me and scares me.

It is not simply a matter of paranoia. It's a safety issue. Preserving our data is a security issue. As I said in previous post, we can not live without our computers, and if they lose, we lose part of our lives together.

Moreover, how can I do anything productive today that does not involve the computer? Try to think in something that is a task and does not involve internet, technology, computers?

It's hard.

So how can I venture to do something knowing that I can not finish it and see everything lost for any problem? This is unacceptable. I've been through this before and I know that when it comes to computing, it is better to do nothing than to do something and then lose everything by not having a copy of what was done. This blog is  evidence that even a simple post that is lost while typing is an inestimable loss. There is no contesting the urgency of saving volatile digital data.

In any case, this awareness that I need digital security is a awareness that is part of a greater consciousness that tells me I have security not only digital, but in all aspects of my life. Physical security, financial security, emotional security, all sorts of security.

No, I'm not a coward. Not so. It is that I am too old to ignore the risks of the world. I do not fear losing my safety, but even so I stand waiting my security go, in any aspect of my life. Living is just this: keep yourself whole until  we can, until our last breath.

Then there is another problem. In so far as I know I need to take care of my safety and do not care, I can not fool me. Here is not the story of self-deception. I know I'm being careless with something in my life and it is foolish to think that I'm lucky and nothing will happen to me. If I careless of my safety, I worry.

But I can not worry. Worry does not solve anything. Worry is like fever we feel when we are deseased. It signals something wrong with us. The solution is then not continue worrying, but to uproot the causes of our worry.

But back to the advices. How do I know that any advice is useless and counterproductive?

I know because I read, I studied Dale Carnegie and his book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living."

That's the problem. I am a disciplined student. I read, I learned and now I apply what I learned in my life.

Coincidentally, I read a sentence in those days, a Chinese saying: "Think of the best, prepare for the worst and move on."

It is the same teaching, the same lesson, the same warning.

Then I have a degree in business administration. Get a common manual of administration and will see the famous SWOT method. What says the method? Go, get out your strengths, leverage them. Take your weaknesses, minimize them. Analyze opportunities and external threats and it is ready, you already have a diagnosis for their strategic planning. SWOT is easy to recommend. Minimize weaknesses, not so.

But things only happen to others.

Two days ago landed the last American space shuttle, Atlantis, on his last trip, and last of all U.S. space shuttle project. It was with relief that we saw a big project end well with a soft landing and no explosions. Who does not remember the Challenger and Columbia?

Now, Norway account their dead, just the quiet, peaceful and rich Norway. Not that we are alarmists. Is that bad things happen to everyone, even to good people, even with the peaceful people.

So, it is best to follow some advice and minimize our risk to we can maximize our potential? Yes, of course, except that everything is too much work, too much work to be taken seriously. We run the risk of fail, because there are too many threats, vulnerabilities and other risks too. Is it really worth all this effort?

I do not know, but I feel that there is something that still does not fit. Is missing a balance in all these advices. I smell something missing but I can not define.

I have thought about moving amoebae, but it is still early to draw conclusions.

Wait ...

Nice to meet you, I'm your intranet ...

Hello, nice to meet you, I'm your intranet ...

With a sweet smile, so it presents to the world my personal intranet. It sounds chic and sophisticated?

As well, an intranet?

Oh, that's a nerd thing. Ah, this is also something of a writer.

Yes, I have a small intranet, a site of my own, where I put in order a lot of things. My intranet is a strong competitor against this blog, because not everything I write I have interest in disclosing to the world immediately. Rather, the idea cooking on low heat over the months on my personal PC, to then go have a presence in the online world.

It is the evolution of concepts. First, we write with paper and pencil, then with pen, then with typewriters, and then we went to the computer. On the computer, we start from DOS Edit (at least I start ...) to Notepad, then to the World, then to Internet pages. So everything must end in an HTML format in somewhere site. And when it got cool and we want to do something more beautiful and definitive, we use PDF files. This is the cycle.

Thus, people typically use the World doc files to keep your things more or less organized, but nothing like an intranet controlled by the Front Page to be really professional.

Now, to the facts.

My intranet gives me some work. It is important, but it takes time and requires some mental effort to be organized.

She is not versatile in terms of organization such as Outlook, which we have explained here, but it allows a clearly very important.

I have a routine of life, and I also have a routine in front of my computer.

We can not live without the internet. So often we sit in front of the PC and then open our browsers, for news of the world in general. Today, for example, the main story is about the terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway.

Then we go to any other sites. I, in particular, use Microsoft Internet Explorer. He has a favorite links bar. My favorites sites are arranged in sequence in my window. First, I enter the site of UOL, to read news. Then go to Google and read more news. Then take a look at Orkut, and Facebook.

This is where that enter the intranet.

I could spend hours browsing through thousands of interesting pages, but what my duties and obligations?

They are forgotten in Outlook, which is not an application for the internet. So what I thought? I thought about using my intranet as a reminder to take care of my things in Outlook. So, after seeing my favorite sites, I go from the Facebook link to my intranet link.



My intranet just gives me the warning: take care of your routines, open Outlook, do a backup, consider the millions of pending little tasks  that promised to yourself realize.

And finally, when I'm not happy with something on my intranet, just one click and add or edit a page directly to the Front Page.

This is a good routine.

Then, there is this blog. But no matter. What matters is that we can not live without computers, we can no longer live navigating as if we were live a thousand years and we can not miss the millions of resources that provide us with all these technologies. If I can be more efficient and responsible with use of my time through technology, that is.

My intranet, then, is there, ready to remember everything.

Gradually, we know her better.

Recycling and the power of ignorance

In my green agenda I listed my second  item through which I could contribute to a better world, for a world more environmentally tolerable. My item 2 says only: agenda printed on recycled paper. What I mean by that?

My green agenda, as paradoxical as it seems, is not made with recycled paper. So that was my first idea. I should think of the trees, in nature, on air quality. I thought my next diaries, notebooks, paper should be made with recycled paper. So I would save the world from destruction.

Does this make sense? Does. If I spend the rest of my life using paper made ​​from other recycled paper, I will spare many trees, which will remain alive oxygenating the planet.


But why only recycle paper? Why not recycle all that I am able to consume, and it is possible to be recycled?

Recycling is a great idea. She is a great idea because it refers to a natural process that is already running by nature since a billion years. In nature, recycling matches the buzzword of Lavoisier, that nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.

But look! Pay attention!

Who was Lavoisier?



He, see Wikipedia, is considered the father of modern chemistry. It was he who coined the buzzword of "nothing is created ...". However, only did so after much study. Now, many buzzwords are coined by countless people, with or without much study. So what's the merit of Lavoisier?

His merit is that his buzzword was correct. Today, with over two hundred years of research in chemistry and physics and other sciences of nature, his statement remains as an unquestionable truth. So what can we say of Lavoisier? That was a lucky person? That was a genius?

Well, here's what Wikipedia says:

Joseph-Louis Lagrange, an important mathematician, a contemporary of Lavoisier said: "A century will not suffice to produce a head equal to that brought down in a second."

Lagrange was and still is considered a genius. So we have a genius talking about another.

But look better. Lagrange states that Lavoisier was a genius of those who come around once every century or more. Mankind has to wait ages to get a head that can be made to fall in one second.

Why Lagrange said that?

Because in fact the head of Lavoisier fell into a second, guillotined during the French Revolution. Let's see what Wikipedia says:

He (Lavoisier) lived at the time they began the French Revolution, when the Third Estate (peasants, burghers and merchants) would take the power of France.

He was killed by it, because it was so poorly regarded by the people, who thought that, being of a noble family, Lavoisier, also participated in the corrupt system full of taxes on society.

He was beheaded after a summary trial on May 8, 1794.

Then, Lagrange was right. Just one second of ignorance by losing centuries of work from the nature and  decades of tireless and genial human effort.

I'm condemning the French Revolution? No.

But I'm making a connection between this text and the previous one, which I quote disbelief in humanity, quoted by João Ubaldo Ribeiro.

"The dog bites the hand that feeds him," the saying goes. How is it possible to feed hopes in a  humanity that plow their best heads?

If so, have hope in humanity is an exercise in faith.

But look a little more! This saying, "Dog bites the hand that feeds him," I know a popular saying, but from where? From what mouth it was delivered? From which culture emerged? I do not know, but I went on Google.

Try it you too. It is a thankless task. But if you're smart, you will read another, as instructive as this. You will read, as a comedy, that "the noblest of dogs is the hot dog: it feeds the hand that bites."

It seems a joke, but it is not.

So, we do not fear the collapse of the planet due to lack of paper. We can always resort to recycling, this clever mechanism that allows us to use something ad infinitum. And do not worry, because Lavoisier taught us that nothing is lost. You may want more and more with your consumerist impulse, because as much as you want, will not be able to consume all that is offered, because the universe is greater than your greed. See! There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on Earth! Farte yourself, because we can recycle!

And do not bite the hand that feeds you: always praise Lavoisier, our genius that, more nobly than just a hot dog, fed us with his wisdom, though he had to pay with his head and his life for the opportunity to serve the  ignorant mob.

The power of ignorance scares me, but then again maybe Lavoisier is the answer: a day, who knows, over the next centuries, because geniuses are rare and time-consuming things, a genius who will examine the nature of ignorance and be able to recycle human minds. And then, become ignorant in nobles, and some light will shine for humanity in the millennia to come.

For now, defend yourself!

Beware the guillotine! It is much more dangerous and imminent that the lack of oxygen and trees for our dear agendas.

Beware the power of ignorance.

Disbelief in humanity

There are chances that draw the attention for not seem chances, but meaningful coincidences. These days, one of those coincidences occurred to me. And it seems to me significant.

On the one hand, I and my ruminations. On the other, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, the famous Brazilian writer. The intersection: disbelief in humanity.

But how did this intersection? Then, what is the significance of it? Finally: what consequences?

I am a person who likes to read and write. So whenever I can, I follow the literary national, international scene, finally, I like literature. I like so much that in 2010 I was in Paraty city, near Rio de Janeiro, to participate in the FLIP, the Book Fair of Paraty. However this year I did not go. Could not: appointments, important tasks, life changing, other concerns. But I could have gone. There not seemed, however, so  interesting the names of guests. Lie: I did not get time to see the names. My ignorance: I do not read anything about modern literature. No time. Summary: I did not go.

 

But the news I read. And one of them caught my attention. João Ubaldo Ribeiro, who I knew that was and is a great Brazilian writer, Immortal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, but whose books I do not have any and never read them. João Ubaldo Ribeiro had already his supposed texts widely disseminated on the Internet. Who has not received an email with the text "Wanted manpower to build a country," with those powerful statements, that we, brazilians, are a smart people and here the thing is hopeless?

Until then I did not know that the text "Wanted ..." was not his. I read the text about ten years ago, but I thought it quite hard and honest.

And then, the news of FLIP corroborate this my impression about João Ubaldo, that, despite I knowing nothing about his literature, I had him as a person, a citizen very wise and fearless in his statements. After he assess the Brazilian people as sly trickster, he was going now with this: the pessimism in the face of humanity.

 

This was a big chest, great courage, great honesty.

But it went no beyond this simply reading, this simple statement released by all the newspapers and magazines across the country.

What the hell, a phrase taken from its context can mean something quite different from what it really means in context. So, to not take John Ubaldo like a gritty guy based only on a short text and a line of impact, I decided to research some more.

I found via Google that the text "Wanted manpower to..." is not his, as he confirmed on one occasion some time ago. If the text is not his, that's fine. The text itself is not the problem. The problem is an intellectual, a national figure to say what nobody wanna say, but in deep down everyone knows. There is not the issue of the Brazilian trickery that is the question here, but the courage to say it and criticize it.

Yes, because it is easy to criticize politicians. Difficult is to call rascal a common housewife. This requires honesty and courage.

But João Ubaldo did not do it.

So, left the phrase about the pessimism in relation to humanity. Pessimism in what context?

 

I did not found the video recordings with his speech on FLIP, but I found the transcript. In fact, he was brave. It was even a hard phrase to say, but he said and took the credit for it.

But he is neither the first nor the most famous, nor the last of the pessimists. Then, why this his statement was so important?

It was important because this is not what is expected of a Brazilian, even more now, with the economic fervor. But, even more, it was important becausein this same day, I came to a painfully similar conclusion, by other ways and by other reasons.

I and João Ubaldo Ribeiro have some power over the destinies of the world? He maybe, I certainly do not.

So what does it matter if am I or not pessimistic about humanity?

And then, what does it matter to the rest of the world?

Oh, the hypocrisy! Ah, the famous and bloody cognitive dissonance!

I need to talk more about it all...

Another anniversary

I'm celebrating my 41º anniversary. What about this?

First and foremost, is that, despite everything, I'm surviving. Despite what?

Despite the lack of perspective, the lack of options, of hopelessness and pessimism that usually accompanies me.

It's all right. The important thing is to survive. One more year.

I remember having celebrated my 34 years on this blog, seven years ago. What has changed since then?

Much superficial things has changed, I admit, but deep down, I do not changed much. If I changed, it was to worse. I am now an older, more bitter and more pessimistic than it was seven years ago, and I do not see any solution in sight.

So, Viva my forty-one years, and that I continue to live long. That I live a long, up to one hundred years, until two hundred years, until a thousand years. That I live forever, if possible.

Come on that life is a difficult and bitter thing, but better alive than dead.

After all, I am still a curious person, and the world always surprises me. Fascinates me the infinite stupidity, the tenacity, ingenuity and weirdness of the world. If I am not an actor in the world, I am at least a good spectator.

I want to live a lot yet, watching this eternal wallowing and this flow of tears that never ceases and further deepens the valley already so dark and dreary.

Viva my little 41 years, and that come another one, a hundred, a thousand more.

I do not get tired of living.