An Epic on a Cellular Level

@ptarmiganmusic (Peter Marting) shared this gem with me. And as I will be leaving Brazil soon (word), it's important I start the transition from travel blog to awesome blog. For instance, this video. Skip to 3:13 for the money-est of money...but the first 3 minutes are more educational and equally great.

Favorite way to kill a mosquito

I've killed many mosquitos here in Curitiba. Probably near 100. It's been a slow process, perfecting my craft, but I've found my favorite, both clean and high in satisfaction. Highest in satisfaction was using a coke bottle as a bat. You could hear the pop when they hit, and the best was when you saw them fly across the room.

However, this tended to have them end up on the walls. Which led to the least satisfactory and worst in cleanliness, hitting them against the wall. Blood spots, black goo. I used to leave their decaying bodies on the wall as scarecrows but I stopped.

But for the last month...you grab them with your fist and slam them down onto the bed. They don't explode, they just die.

And you flick them hard to some place you won't see.

The perfect answer

I don't think I've ever enjoyed an answer more, shit's on the real. From dearcoketalk :

I would consider myself an artist; to be specific, a painter, and attend art school, however I feel like I’m not doing enough. I do what I’m assigned, and truly do feel deeply passionate about the work I produce. There is no question in my mind that this is what I want to pursue for the rest of my life. But the problem is, unless I’m specifically what to do, I find myself too lazy to take the initiative to work on my own. Instead I will peruse the Internet for hours, or spend time viewing the work of other artists. I watch TV shows I don’t even like, and I stay up until I’m exhausted; even if I don’t have anything that is assigned for the next day. I’m one of those girls who loooooves to sleep and yet I push myself to stay awake until 1 or 2 in the morning to wake up at 6 the next day for absolutely no reason.

I suppose the real question here is, is there any way to change ones work ethic? I feel like there is so much I could be doing, but I’m too lazy to take the initiative. I feel psychologically compelled to not do work that I’m not assigned, or without a deadline (and even then I will procrastinate).

I’ve discussed this issue with a friend and she says to consider taking anti-depressent / anti-anxiety medication (or something like that at least) to help me concentrate and get me out of this rut, but I’m a little bit wary of those types of drugs and how they might affect the way I paint, write, and think.

Are pills the only sort of “cure” for laziness? Or is there something that I can do to change myself? Or is it something I was born with and is unfixable?

You’re not depressed. You’re just a spoiled brat. That is to say, you don’t need anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. Not really. Yeah, there is no pill for what you need.

If you insist on a chemical solution, I suppose you could always start smoking crystal meth. That would definitely get you up and buzzing around, but then again it comes with all those side effects.

The next closest thing would be prescription for Ritalin, but add that to all your apathy and art school, and you’d just turn into one big hipster cliche.

Anyways, if it seems like I’m phoning this answer in, it’s because I really don’t care what you do.

That’s pretty much the lesson you need to learn here. Nobody cares what you do. You’re probably a shitty painter anyways, and there’s a legion of infinitely more talented artists already starving in New York. You should just quit now before you waste any more of your parent’s money.

You can consider yourself an artist all day long, but who are you kidding? You’re not one. You’re just a lazy cunt that goes to art school who wouldn’t know a real problem if it knocked you up after a Bright Eyes concert.

If you want a career in the art world, fine — every gallery needs a receptionist — but don’t pretend to be something that you’re not. Writers write. Sculptors sculpt. Painters paint. Real artists have a burning desire to create.

You either do it or you don’t.

Running out the clock

I hit my last week in Curitiba. I quit my job on Friday. I take a bus this weekend or next monday for Indaiatuba, Ana's mothers.

Many times when I've quit a job, those last days you feel like, "hey this place isn't so bad. I'm gonna miss x and x"

And this is sort of happening. It's also not. I'm really anxious to go home, also really anxious to leave for Indaiatuba. But there is a lot here I'm going to miss. Some alunos and my friends. I will really, really miss Bel, Bela, Mari and Dani.

Last night, I went to a BBQ for Melina's bday. It was great. Per typical, the first hour is me just kind of sitting, looking at the food. But the more alcohol, the more conversations happen. And the food. Vinaigrete stuffed into french bread rolls. So much meat, cooked perfectly, and cut into little strips so you have no idea how much you ate, but really i probably took down like 2 steaks on the realz. And add sausages coated in faraffa. I was really happy to have a churrasco before I left - and it's process is wonderful. Contrary to an american bbq where you will eat 2 burgers and a hot dog all at once, I really enjoy the process of eating a little bit at a time over the process of hours - the food constantly bringing people together.

And sitting around the hookah, as people talk to me about my last week. Almost universally, people were so understanding of my trouble learning the language, and so patient as I try and patch together my words (which looks and sounds painful, they come out in different volumes and tones, and are nearly always mispronounced).

I want to come back, get a proper carnaval, see all that I did not. There's so much more to see than Curitiba, and with the way everyone talks shit on the people of Curitiba I have to imagine it'll be a much different experience.

And finally as a really strange cap to the night, I had the longest conversation with a 7 year old precocious little girl. With her father working in England, she spoke perfect english, like no accent - actually, a British accent. And we talked about disney land, and the funny thing, with the british accent you feel a little bit intellectually inferior until she mentions being "pARtickkkulahhhly scared by big thundah mountin". Then you realize, pssh, that rollercoaster is weak sauce.

Sup dudes.

pinochioooogod

I went to the food court today to get some food.

As I walked through the doors, some loud awful music was playing. I looked towards the huge crowd. The song "Elevation" was playing by U2, and a man was having a puppet dance to the song. Puppet dancin to U2 had like, 80 onlookers.

Today

I got off the bus and was walking off the platform when through one of the open something hit me in the chest. I look down and it's a baby shoe, a bootie. Someone had thrown it at me.

Then someone yelled something I didn't understand.

And I was thinking "I just got George Bush'd?"

Someone then touched my arm and started saying things, so I picked up the shoe and handed it to him.

Pretty analogous to my trip in Brazil.

Yours Truly

Yours Truly, wonderfully addressed as http://yourstru.ly , is an awesome Web site. Beautifully themed, focused, and featuring a bunch of gorgeous videos. It makes me want to move to San Francisco and act like I'm a part of something. I have a friend who lives there already, any how. The rest is all sell-your-car, take-out-your-savings, drink-alone.

From Yours Truly, The morning benders:

Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

Don't you dare fall apart

The importance of this activity with others cannot be underestimated. I have 2 bottles of Cab though, and am gonna break my duck and watch as many OC episodes as possible. From the aforementioned Tribes and Castes of India Vol. 1 via the Gutenberg Project

66. Living and eating together.

When the members of the totem-clan who lived together recognised that they owed something to each other, and that the gratification of the instincts and passions of the individual must to a certain degree be restrained if they endangered the lives and security of other members of the clan, they had taken the first step on the long path of moral and social progress. The tie by which they supposed themselves to be united was quite different from those which have constituted a bond of union between the communities who have subsequently lived together in the tribe, the city-state and the country. These have been a common religion, common language, race, or loyalty to a common sovereign; but the real bond has throughout been the common good or the public interest. And the desire for this end on the part of the majority of the members of the community, or the majority of those who were able to express their opinions, though its action was until recently not overt nor direct, and was not recognised, has led to the gradual evolution of the whole fabric of law and moral feeling, in order to govern and control the behaviour and conduct of the individual in his relations with his family, neighbours and fellow-citizens for the public advantage. The members of the totem-clan would have been quite unable to understand either the motives by which they were themselves actuated or the abstract ideas which have united more advanced communities; but they devised an even stronger bond than these, in supposing that they were parts or fractions of one common body or life. This was the more necessary as their natural impulses were uncontrolled by moral feeling. They conceived the bond of union in the concrete form of eating together. As language improved and passing events were recorded in speech and in the mind, the faculty of memory was perhaps concurrently developed. Then man began to realise the[139]insecurity of his life, the dangers and misfortunes to which he was subject, the periodical failure or irregularity of the supply of food, and the imminent risks of death. Memory of the past made him apprehensive for the future, and holding that every event was the result of an act of volition, he began to assume an attitude either of veneration, gratitude, or fear towards the strongest of the beings by whom he thought his destinies were controlled—the sun, moon, sky, wind and rain, the ocean and great rivers, high mountains and trees, and the most important animals of his environment, whether they destroyed or assisted to preserve his life. The ideas of propitiation, atonement and purification were then imparted to the sacrifice, and it became an offering to a god.157 But the primary idea of eating or drinking together as a bond of union was preserved, and can be recognised in religious and social custom to an advanced period of civilisation.

Jude's such a pimp

""Now we are well together, dear, aren't we?" he observed.
"Yes," said she; adding to herself: "Rather mild!"
"How fast I have become!" he was thinking."

Sigh, he's gonna impregnate her.

Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Sigggh. Today something happened where I realized I'm not the saddest person in the world, awwwweeeeeeeee!!! Remember that whole interest rates post I had that lead to a brawl with my brother in the comments section? I do, it's about two posts down, and was more of a miscommunication about what I had a problem with. Anyway, that whole post started because of a class I had with a student who's a banker here, here in Brazil. Today I had another class with him and was about to go all "So what do you think about the Greece bailout, and the problems of Latvia? Fuck the euro, right?" and then, I get to the front desk. And she smiles and is like, what up, and I say "Eu tenho uma aula com xx" and they all cheer because they know how much I suck.

And so she calls up and makes that scrunched up "I am confused face" and tells me to wait.

And then she hands me the headset phone, which is always uncomfortable, and a voice on the other line tells me the dude is no longer working there. Yeesh. Poor guy had already been dumped a few months ago, and he ain't gettin any younger. So I just was like uhh, he, he..u.m. I left for home. No work for me!

------
I had SOOO much food at "China Food" today. I ate until I was keeled over sick and questioned whether this tendency to go from incredibly hungry to gut bustingly full is the best idea. It clearly isn't b/c I had to sleep for like four hours and just woke up and realized another day is gone. Sat-Tues. is Carnaval. I'm guessing I just won't write anything for those days to give you the idea that I'm going crazy with a bunch of naked people, but really am stuck in this god forsaken town.

Sadly I just had a dream I won the lottery for a million dollars and had such precious observations like "With a million dollars I get can an apartment!"

JUDGE BREAD

I cannot go to sleep before 4 a.m. which is all nice, and silly, when I have nighttime committments but when I have to be up at 6 a.m. it is a bit of a bother. Last night for 2 hours I couldn't stop thinking about the time I went to a C-level pro-wrestling circuit match with my bud James Hinz in 3rd great that happened to snag Sgt. Slaughter. Halfway through he invited all the kids in the ring, and in my confused, heroic state I thought for sure we were to wrestle him. As I stretched out on the ropes and hopped up and down I thought "man for man we are weak, but in numbers: WE ARE STRONG" and we were to go all "WOLVERINES!" on him, but it turns out he was just a nice sgt. lettin the kids in the cockpit.

And class is so long when I am that tired but I get home and am finally awake, but I'm like 4 hrs. from the first news stories and my eyes are in no kinda shape to read on my computer, so I just keep checking twitter hoping roger ebert gives me some good one liners.

But today I went to the market and bought some french bread rolls. And the bags had steam on them they were cooked so recently. I was drooling on my long walk home, giddy as a school boy. I ate four rolls already, and there are still 6 more!

But yeah, even though I'm finally awake my room smells so I'm gonna take a nap just to avoid that for a few sweet hours.

Learning something

I imagine that it would be a lonely existence when you can only eat dinner and fraternize with the other sweeper in town.

From The Tribes and Castes of the Central Province of India (Vol. 1):

In the ethnographic description of the people of the Punjab, which forms the Caste chapter of Sir Denzil Ibbetson’s Census Report of 1881, it was pointed out that occupation was the chief basis of the division of castes, and there is no doubt that this is true. Every separate occupation has produced a distinct caste, and the status of the caste depends now mainly or almost entirely on its occupation. The fact that there may be several castes practising such important callings as agriculture or weaving does not invalidate this in any way, and instances of the manner in which such castes have been developed will be given subsequently. If a caste changes its occupation it may, in the course of time, alter its status in a corresponding degree. The important Kāyasth and Gurao castes furnish instances of this. Castes, in fact, tend to rise or fall in social position with the acquisition of land or other forms of wealth or dignity much in the same manner as individuals do nowadays in European countries. Hitherto in India it has not been the individual who has undergone the process; he inherits the social position of the caste in which he is born, and, as a rule, retains it through life without the power of altering it. It is the caste, as a whole, or at least one of its important sections or subcastes, which gradually rises or falls in social position, and the process may extend over generations or even centuries.

Brazil and Interest Rates and FUN!

Today I had class with a banker. His office was 16 flights up, and the elevator was down (see that word play?) Anyways, I get up, tired, panting, and then had a fascinating class where he finally illuminated me on all the Brazilian fiscal policy and it's effect on their consumerism. Now, I don't have any classical knowledge of finance, only personal curiosity. However, I find it in interesting case. Brazil has been growing at a 5% GDP rate like clockwork for years, re-opening the joke "Brazil is always the country of the future." Brazil also has had many bouts with out-of-control inflation in the past. They also have a population that appears to me to be completely ready to buy their fridges, microwaves, cars, etc. This is all very much like China, however, obviously unlike China their economy is not as centrally planned.

The interest rate in Brazil is 8.75%. I asked if this was the bank lending rate or consumer lending rate and I didn't understand what he said, but it wouldn't really matter anyway as I'll get into. So, 8.75 is really high. By the end of the year, he said that it would likely be pushed up to 10%. The main and overriding concern of Brazil's central bank is inflation, as it should be. In fact, the whole country takes it's cues from the inflation rate rather than GDP growth. Workers unions, for instance, have inflation adjusted pay. If they predict 4% inflation, that's what their pay will be adjusted. However, if it turns out it was 6%, they will strike until their pay is fixed.

Anyways, the strange thing isn't really high inflation, that was expected. But the consumer habits in Brazil are quite odd. When I first arrived I was always thrown off by the pay-by-installment plans that were used for almost every item. I looked at shoes and thought R$50 sounds reasonable until you realize it's 50x4. Almost everything is financed, toasters, microwaves, etc. So, many stores are making most profit off of the interest.

The peculiar thing is that the interest rates they are selling these at is huge. I was told it was often at 30%. But, when you have the poor and middle class peoples who want these things: home appliances, electronics, etc. but can't afford them, they go into the store and the salesman make a deal. 'Okay, what can you pay? $20/mo? You pay $20/mo for 72 months and you have yourself a TV." Absurd right? Again, it was explained, that the worst part is that many people are not even aware of the interest rate, they have no idea they are paying 30% on the installments because of 2 factors: 1) Lack of consumer knowledge 2) There didn't really seem to be effective consumer protection laws.

And it's especially worth noting that electronics and many things are much more expensive in Brazil. So adding in the interest rates, on top of the high cost, they are paying so much more for a microwave. Microwaves are like $20 in the US. And mainly, what I couldn't understand is why then paying by credit card would not be more popular, as you could pay it up front and only be paying 13% on the month. And it seemed to me that he was implying it was easier. For the lower classes with little education, they don't understand interest rates, credit cards, etc, but they do understand someone saying that if they pay him $5 a month they can take home the toaster now.

Ultimately, I find it odd that there wouldn't be a greater movement for consumer education. They would have so much more purchasing power if they weren't continually paying for dozens of months at a huge interest rate. But, I suppose I have to wonder if the government even cares, as they already need to restrict this as seen by 10% interest rates, and this lets them do it by merely burdening the poorest classes. Always an easy option.

But it's always worth stepping back and realizing that was a lost decade for much of the western world has been the best of times in the developing world. All of this growth and this, before Brazil has even really begun production of their oil fields.

Also, write in my damn comment box. And, correct me if i'm wrong on things.

Ideas...

I like the thought of eating ice cream with a knife as intimidation. A conversation I had, he preferred to stay anonymous to avoid getting the hobo in trouble. He was serious:

anon: i had a hobo buy me gin yesterday

Ben Magnuson: nice haha

anon: motherfucker gouged me though sonnn. ha. and he was trippin so hard about the cops

Ben Magnuson: obviously

anon: unnecessarily though

Ben Magnuson: he's a hobo dude ain't no shame in hustlin

anon: i went to give him the cash and hes like WHOA COOL IT wait a second and then made me walk with him to the bus stop and do some james bond shit you knwo hand off the money all secretively
anon: then he comes back by and just drops the bottle and keeps walkin hahah

Ben Magnuson: hahaha
Ben Magnuson: haha that's fuckin great.

anon: yeah it was funny. sketch though man his fuckin homie was standin there next to me eatin a pint of ice cream with a knife

Ben Magnuson: hahahahaha
Ben Magnuson: i love this story it keeps getting better

anon: and santa cruz has like a shitload of stabbings. especially downtown. rapes too but i wasnt really trippin on that

Ben Magnuson: hahahahaha

What's on the menu toniiitte??

Today I ordered french bread rolls. Huge deal. See I can pick up meat that is individually wrapped and hanging on a hook no problem. Same with bread. If it's in a basket, I pick it up. Don't even think twice. However, in many of the places I frequent for food nowadays they need me to order the meat and bread from behind a counter. This keeps me from ordering them. But today, I was like, okay, "cinco pão de frances" and she gave me six, originally, and I was like okay. BUT SUCCESS.

I had money for food because Bel lent me some dough for the weekend. This is because yesterday when I was paid, the total was less than my rent. A full month's pay was less than my rent. I was eating one sandwich a day for a week and I was living beyond my means.

But we'll work it out right? Love me.

Went to the store and bought me some:

1 mango

1 avocado

3 tomatoes

3 onions

1 garlic thing

2 limes (should have bought moar)

1 bag of mushroom risotto

2 chicken breasts

1 2 litre of guarana

5 rolls of stuff

ham

cheese

SOOOO super salad? I was thinking avocado, tomato, onion, and then the risotto and making garlic lime chicken. But maybe the mango would be good in the salad too? What do you think?

livejournal entry

My stomach's been hurtin since sunday and today i tried to self diagnose it thru wikipedia, and everyone at work is against meeee.

Which reminds me. Back when I was 7 or so, I was at my mom's friends house. The friend had a kid, a boy. I'm in his room and he has a 2pac poster with the words "me against the world" from his song, you know. And I said "Who is 2pac?" and he told me: "2pac is this rapper, who feels like it's him against the world."

He totally nailed him. Me and 2pac have a lot in common. Stickups. Common life themes. yep.

FebruRAAARRRRRy

Today, I went to school at 7 a.m. I quickly check the room listings, and rush to meet my dudestudent. He's there, we begin. He says : I thought I was doing level 3. I was like "Uhh, welll I'm sure I saw level 2... uhh" and I went to check. And then they told me I was in the wrong room.

heh.
heh.
heh.

:(