Paulo Seabra

Feliz ou infelizmente, acontece-me muitas vezes deixar de gostar de qualquer coisa que em tempos adorei. Filmes, séries, músicas, e neste caso, livros. No meu secundário fizemos uma visita de estudo a Évora a propósito deste livro de Vergílio Ferreira, uma visita que eu adorei ainda que não por motivos minimamente académicos, até porque ainda não tinha lido uma única página disto. Mais tarde, no primeiro ano de universidade decidi comprar e ler Aparição, e fi-lo quase que viciado, abrindo o livro só para ler umas dez ou quinze páginas mas acabando por perder noção do tempo e das páginas. Numa palavra, adorei, e mais tarde quando fui gradualmente desfazendo a minha coleção de livros, este foi um daqueles que sobreviveu quase todas as eliminatórias. Eventualmente foi-se, até que estes dias fiquei com vontade de reler e até de comprar uma cópia nova para a tratar com um certo respeito. Mas ainda bem que não o fiz, porque tendo agora acabado de reler, fico em parte desapontado, e noutra p...

The great philosopher of our time, and maybe of all time too, Norman Gene Macdonald, was fond of having his disciple ask comedians of all stripes where they get their ideas from. It ain't much of a question because nobody knows exactly how to answer it, or if they know they might not be so inclined to tell for many a-reason, a neat one of them being that a thing is often ruined by finding out where it came from. Ibn Taymiyyah considers how creatures who travel through the passage of urine twice should, by virtue of exactly that, be denied any form of pride and arrogance. But that's another story... For now I feel I might as well wallow in pride and arrogance for a lil' while, because the reason for this meandering piece is that I recently took a class I thought might be cool if only the teacher played it in a way that allowed us crazy kids to show off our work and exchange ideas. I often thought, and deliberately told people as some kind of proof, that if the teacher fumble...

I can't say I've ever been a fan of biographies, and biographies of comedians even less so. But being a huge fan of Norm Macdonald compelled me to read this one. Maybe I should have read it way before, certainly before the man died, but what's done is done, I suppose. Regardless, I knew I had to read it, and the final impulse for that was reading a random comment somewhere that consisted of a specific paragraph from the book. I say comment, but it was more of a quote, really... I'll get to that shortly, but for now, what is the book like? Well, first of all it's funny, you can't expect anything less from Norm, but it's also kinda sad, what with him channeling his inner Rodney Dangerfield and pouring on and on about all the losses in his life. Then again, you never know what's true and what ain't, because after all, Based on a True Story ends up being more like a title than a description. What you do get instead is an image, true or false, of a wande...

A long while back I made myself a Reddit account, mostly to try and hopefully get Jordan Peterson's attention over some stuff I wrote. It was a total long shot though, there was always a slim chance he wouldn't read it, and so that's exactly what happened. Who'd have thought, hey?... But anyway, I then decided to write a new post defending what I perceived to be, to my knowledge, his worst point as it relates to religious belief and morality. I got some interaction out of it, but enough to kinda sour my appreciation for the site. One person made the typical edgy comments on religion, as well as some wild claims that apparently didn't require any evidence whereas I couldn't say two plus two equals four without an entire university of science backing me, another person brought up a ton of random stuff I ain't never heard of and also a little beside the point, and a third person thought Jordan's worst point would have been something else to begin with. No ...