Novela

Assisti um tantinho da Caras e Bocas e lembrei porquê eu não assisto novela. Aquele trechinho da garota com câncer, que o tal do Benjamim está rejeitando, é meio irritante. A garota propriamente dita já é tão fraquinha... Da última vez que eu assisti, ela estava chorando desesperadamente - mal, diga-se de passagem - porque sofreu uma mastectomia e falou que o cara não sentia mais atração por ela, e ele não negou. Recado para todos os namorados/companheiros/maridos/amiguinhos/ou-sei-la-o-que-voces-acham-que-sao: nuuunca faça isso. Nunquinha. A não ser, lógico, que você saiba o quão idiota você é. Nesse caso, vá catar coquinho. E o tal de Benjamim é um baita de um idiota - "Oh... eu me apaixonei por ela porque ela era viva e alegre e de bem com a vida... e agora..." E AGORA QUE ELA TÁ COM CÂNCER VOCÊ SE PROVA UM COMPLETO BABACA!
E qual é a do "vamos raspar a sua cabeça porque você vai fazer quimioterapia"? Não dava para esperar ela COMEÇAR o tratamento, perder uns cabelinhos e DAÍ decidir raspar tudo? Também não vejo o porquê de chorar tanto para cortar cabelo. Ca-be-lo. Novidade, minha querida, CABELO CRESCE. Que tal voce parar de chorar, acabar com o cancer, crescer cabelo, botar umas roupinhas mais bonitinhas e achar um cara MENOS babaca que o judeuzinho indeciso? E daí quem sabe escrever um livro sobre a sua grande jornada. E expôr o babaca. E fazer muito dinheiro e mudar para... Copacabana? (Se passa em SP, mas todo mundo fala carioquês...)
Get a grip, woman!
Rggghhh. Novela me deixa com raiva. Por que eu não estava assistindo a Two and a Half Men? Não dá para ficar brava com ELES.

Familiarity

You know one thing that really bothers me? It´s about the whole normal/abnormal thing. It´s when people act like it is the most normal thing in the world to do what they are doing, and I see it as the strangest thing ever, because it´s not on the book.
When I had my intern-thingie last year it was a nightmare. Not a nightmare in the common sense (sure, Anglo didn´t pay for my insurance so I couldn´t touch anything until I finally got one myself, but it was a nice lab-experience and I got to be amazed with several biological processes), but it was the strangest thing not to follow a set of rules. The first month I didn´t manage to find the ones who were in charge of making us do something, so I just stood there and watched as people were jungling petri dishes and long, pointy seringes. I´m shy, I only asked stuff if it was a completely maddening procedure and the researcher was looking prone to answer it. It felt so ridiculous not to know exactly what I should do - well, not knowing what to do at all. And then I finally joined people my age who had the scholarship and insurance and thus power to make an actual experiment, and I got to watch and make notes and listen to the instructor´s guidelines. I knew how to behave, I followed the others and stayed way back whenever there were Bulsen thingies around.
But what really bugs me is that no one else seemed uncomfortable, no one else seemed completely lost. They all acted normally - nothing was a surprise, nothing was unusual. And I thought "How the hell do they do it??" while gaping at graphs and charts filled with Salmonella recognition info. Then some time ago I found myself in a situation that was not unusual, but still unfamiliar, and I acted just as I had seen people do. Nonchalant-ly. Indifferent. And it suited me. It was still fiction, but there was no other way to react. So that got me thinking that perhaps all those people back at the lab (and so many others) were doing just that. Too lazy to figure something else out. Adopting what they had once saw, read or heard about.
When I moved schools, from the mostly traditional to the mostly "cool", it was a shock. I couldn´t find anything, I couldn´t understand why the teachers actually presented themselves as people, with ideas and classes that went further than the rulebook suggested. I couldn´t understand how grades could be improved with some begging, and deadlines postponed with feasable explanations. That had certainly never happened before. And four years later, it still freaks me out sometimes. So how long do you have to be in contact with something until that becomes familiar? Or acceptance has nothing to do with time? I´m pretty sure if I go back to the old school, it won´t feel non-awkward either.

Things are just too damn weeeird. Slowly trying to change the "everything that is not customary is essencially problematic" kind of reasoning. Any suggestions?

My Sister´s Keeper

Okay. I´ve just finished reading the interview with the author in the back of the book, so NOW I´ll finally return it to you, C, and you´ll be able to spread the weeping-leukemia-story joy to the girls.
I don´t really know if I like Jodi Picoult or not. I know she´s got style. I know she has that annoying habit of stopping the narrative just as it´s getting good and inserting some long lost memory (honestly, does that ever happen in real-non-middle-age-crisis life? I don´t think so) and then going back at the story when you´ve already forgotten all about it. I know she can work the first-person narrative so you don´t die of boredom. I know she likes to include all the polemic she can put her hands on. And I specially know she´s a cruel author - and not the Stephenie Meyer they-raped-and-left-her-to-die-in-the-cold-freaking-night sort of cruel, but the 'Making plans is challenging God' sort. And for all of that, I look foward to reading her other books. But the thing about her interview is that she tried to put a reason behind everything, and I mean everything, and that seemed like forcing it. Even if she did quote The Catcher in the Rye. Not everything happens for a purpose. I guess she´s more Freudian and more metaphorical than I´d like.
But then again, if you ignore the interview you can put meaning into the bigger, screaming things. Brian being a firefighter, for example. It´s great because then she can include all the fire and the rescuer wanting-to-be-deep kind of sentences without sounding too bold. But him being the only one who works in the household is already huge. Not only does he have somewhere to escape to whenever Kate´s issues get more complicated, but he also gets the perspective that Sara so irritatingly lacks (that combined with the astronomy factor is pretty fantastic).
Sara is the character that most bothers me. And Jodi Picoult makes me feel guity about it, afterall she is the mother of a dying little girl and that must be excruciating and blablabla. True, she should feel like the world is about to crack over her head, but she also should be a mother to all of her children. She´s so focused on Kate possibly relapsing again that she doesn´t see her husband or Anna or Jesse, and they´re all screaming for her attention, and it might be a little too much for one person, but just add that to the list of unfair things. The whole part where she describes her pregnancy and delivering Anna is just maddening, she treats her not like a baby, but rather like an organic... thing. The only one excited about having another girl is Brian, and even so, when talking about the night she was born, neither of them stood by her side, they all ran to Kate´s hospital room. That, in my non-mother non-sister view, is called neglecting. Reading how she acts and what she thinks, you kinda want to scream and point out the fact that Kate has been fighting leukemia for 13 years, and Sara has been focused on the bad all through them. What´s the point of sacrificing her children, husband and herself just to keep on being miserable?
Other than the leukemia-part, the book also has tons of sibling relationship issues, which looks new to me because as an only child I always picture it romantically. It all sounds much more complicated now: Kate feels like everyone is giving up things for her (which is true, but not her fault), Anna feels like she was only conceived because of her sister and therefore not really wanted for who she was, but what she could give; Jesse feels like he disappointed everyone because he wasn´t a match and can´t do anything for Kate. Everyone feels bad. Come on. (It´s like that House episode, with the Chinese adopted girl and the later biological ones: the adopted felt like she was disposable since they had managed to have children of their own, the biologicals felt they were disposable because they hadn´t been chosen. Everyone felt bad. People are really messy, aren´t they?)
And if you, like me, tend to hate those dying-cancer-guilt, Buy Me, sort of best seller, behold: there´re nice romantic plots parallel to the dying, and nice human characters that will bewilder you. And bewilderment is just too good to be missed.
Julia is on my Wanna Be list right next to vampire Jodi. (unnecessary comment, but she´s greeeeat. how could i not talk about julia this whole time?)
reeead it. scared of the movie. i think they´ll ruin it. AGAIN.

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(pluuuus, see that cover? It´s a movie picture, but it doesn´t scream 'movie picture', it´s watermark-y without the actors´ name on top because it´s a BOOK. It´s cute. If it was this version I wouldn´t have read it. BOOK not trashy soap.)