On Friendship

Mum, this one is for you.

"while friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of."

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

My humble theories on God and free will

First of all, I would like to say that what I am going to write here are nothing but my humble theories about this subject. This is not based on any readings or other people's ideas. It is just stuff that comes to my mind. As a consequence it is all very simple and probably a bit naif.
I believe that God has a plan for His children's lives. I also believe that He does not have a detailed plan all organized and that He is not totally responsible for the completion of that plan.
I am going to try to explain this with two important decisions in a person's life: the choice of a career and marriage. Imagine that God's plans for some man are that he becomes a scientist and marries a good, wise, honest girl that is going to love him for the rest of his days (lucky guy!).
This man may be wise and understand God's cues and do what God planned for him the easiest way.
Or, he may be a fool. He may, for example, prefer a job that pays him a lot of money to a job as a scientist, even though he feels that being a scientist is what really gives him joy and fulfilment. If that is the case, I believe he will face barriers somewhere along his way. He may never get the well-paid job he wants and end up coming back to science (in which case he was lucky) or he may get a job that makes him rich and miserable, because he is not really doing what he loves.
More or less the same applies to the marriage. I do not believe that God wants us to marry a specific person, especially because marriage is an act that involves two wills. But imagine that this same scientist man that was supposed to marry a nice, wise, sensible woman only falls in love with crazy, selfish women and does not even see the nice, wise, sensible girls that God puts in front of him. Then he is in trouble. Either God let's him marry some crazy woman and allows him to be miserable for the rest of his days, or He will pitty the poor guy and somehow create obstacles to his unwise relationships. Or a mix of both, until he learns what he is supposed to do with his life.
So basically I believe that God has a general plan for our lives that would be like a long sunny road, with no holes and with trees, flowers and fountains all along it. But I also believe that we may get away from that road, enter the desert, get lost and never find our way back again.

On Volupty

Dear R., this one is dedicated to you again. I guess I have been in a bit of a teenage mood, recently...

"- Sabes o que é a volúpia?
- Com esse nome deve ser proibido."

(- Do you know what volupty is?
- With that name it must be forbidden.")

Clara Pinto Correia, Ponto Pé de Flor

On Friendship

R., this one is dedicated to you, directly from our teenage years.

"- Não achas estimulante, como ideia, seres apenas muito amiga de um homem?

- Para quê? - perguntou ela."

("- Don't you think it can stimulating, just as an idea, to be only really good friends with a man?

- What for? - she asked.")

Clara Pinto Correia, Ponto Pé de Flor

Wonderwoman's locker room

This came to my mind recently and has been bothering me since then.

Since now there are no telephone booths, where does Wonderwoman transforms?

Vampires and werewolves

By the end of the last book of Stephenie Meyer's vampire saga, I guess I will have to confess that I got kind of addicted to it. Even though I thought the first book was not that good at all and even a bit boring, it gets better, and the reader really start to gets curious about what is going to happen next.
My favourite book was definitely Eclipse, in which Bella (the human main character) had to choose between an astonishing beautiful, cultured, mature and wise vampire and an attractive, teenage, hot tempered and kind of crazy werewolf. Her indecision was interesting to follow. Bella was a wise young girl and she picked the vampire. I know I wouldn't have resisted the werewolf, and I do not want to know what that makes me...

Besides Bella's excessive wisdom, it is easy to see why the series has been such a succes. The books are engaging, filled with adventures and portrait in a symbolic but obvious and almost naif way the challenges of teenage sexuality.

Having said this, I must confess I did not actually read the books. I heard the audiobooks and would not take the time to read them, but they were still entertaining enough to make go over the whole series in a month.

Great things about America IV

When you buy your contacts and you pay $40.00 less than last time. Here they call this economic recession. Too bad it hasn't arrived to my home country yet.