PALAVRAS EMPRESTADAS 80

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"Blogging não é escrever, é graffiti com pontuação."
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Proud to be graffiting, in that case.

OS ATLETAS DE ANDRÓMEDA

CARL LEWIS
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FKLDSÇL

Esta fotografia mostra as duas maiores qualidades

de Carl Lewis - rapidez e elegância.

Chamavam-lhe a gazela e nesta fotografia percebe-se

exactamente o porquê desse cognome.

kç

“Life is about timing.”

kçl

Jamais houve corredor mais elegante.

Jamais houve corredor mais versátil também.

A rapidez pode ter sido ultrapassada, mas nunca ninguém foi

tão completo quanto Carl Lewis.

Recordista dos 100 metros, 200 metros, estafetas 4x100 e 4x200

e salto em comprimento, Carl Lewis foi considerado

o desportista do século pelo Comité Olímpico Internacional.

Ganhou 10 medalhas em Jogos Olímpicos, 9 das quais de ouro e

10 medalhas em Campeonatos do Mundo de Atletismo, 8 das quais de ouro.

Em 1984 conseguiu cumprir um sonho - igualar o record de 4 medalhas

de ouro nos mesmos Jogos Olímpicos, conseguido pelo seu conterrâneo

Jesse Owens 48 anos antes, em Berlim.

O seu record do mundo no salto em comprimento

em pista coberta mantém-se até hoje. Assim como o seu record de 65!!!

vitórias consecutivas no salto em comprimento

durante um período de 10 anos.

Quando ainda não havia estrelas do tartan, ele foi o primeiro.

Hoje os meninos dos 100 metros são todos divas da pista.

Carl Lewis não era diva. Era o rei.

É menos bonito do que príncipe, mas mais justo.
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DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 26

The Serial Killer - Part XVII
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We proceed with another female killer, Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, who conspired with her lover, army captain Godin de Sainte-Croix to poison her father Antonine Dreux d'Aubray in 1666 and two of her brothers, Antoine d'Aubray and Francois d'Aubray, in 1670, in order to inherit their estates. There were also rumors that she had poisoned poor people during her visits to hospitals. I can only think that she might have been trying the poison to see if it really worked, before using it on her main victims.

As her predecessor, she appears to have used Tofana poison, whose recipe she seems to have learned from her lover, who had in turn learned it from Exili, an Italian poisoner, his cellmate in the Bastille. In 1675, after her lover died, she fled to England, Germany, and a convent, but was arrested in Liège. She was forced to confess and sentenced to death. On 17 July 1676, she was tortured with the water cure, that is, forced to drink sixteen pints of water. She was then beheaded and her body was burned at the stake. Her trial and the attendant scandal launched the Affair of the Poisons, which saw several French aristocrats charged with poison and witchcraft.

The only thing that makes Marie-Madeleine a candidate to serial killing is her hospital tryouts, but I should note that it takes much more than that to make a serial killer, as I think we all agree upon by now.

MAGIC MOMENTS 206

Tunes for Travelers 11
fkdsf
No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

No more running down the wrong road
fçdsf

Macro Secrets 157

f

Became a fan of Bachelor Buttons

OS ATLETAS DE ANDRÓMEDA

BOLT, USAIN
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-sl.dfçdslf

O famoso gesto de Bolt. Fê-lo pela primeira vez em 2008,

nos Jogos Olímpicos de Pequim, após bater

o record mundial dos 100m.

Os braços apontados para o ar,

como Hércules disparando uma seta.

Não o escolhi a correr, mas a exibir-se,

porque gosto disso nele. É um show-off, mas não em vão.
dkfdsçlf
"There are always limits.

I don't know mine."

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Como uma seta, não como Hércules, mas como Mercúrio, Bolt corre.

O homem corre, e corre bem.

É alto, o que ajuda bastante. Por mais que lhe batam

na velocidade, aquela passada será sempre suficiente

para cobrir a diferença. E fazer uma graaaaande diferença.

O homem é um fenómeno. O que ele corre, é obsceno!

É irreverente. É o melhor e não o esconde.

Dá-se ao luxo de celebrar enquanto ainda está

a poucos centímetros da meta. Que lata!

Faz muito bem. Por enquanto, e por mais alguns anos,

será ele o homem mais rápido do mundo.

Já bateu o record dos 100 m três vezes.

Corre aquilo nuns míseros 9.58 segundos!

O record dos 200 m também é dele - 19.19s.

Um título que faz do seu portador o príncipe absoluto

das pistas de tartan.

Príncipe, não rei. É mais bonito.

jh

MAGIC MOMENTS 205

Tunes for Travelers 10
fkdsf
No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

All aboard - the night train!
fçdsf

Macro Secrets 156

f

There's only one - Venice is the one

DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 25

The Serial Killer - Part XV
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The next killer in this chronicle is another female from Italy who poisoned at least 600 victims in Rome, Naples and Palermo. Her name was Giulia Tofana and she made her assassination carreer in the XVII century. Giulia invented the poison Aqua Tofana, named after her, which she sold to women who wanted to murder their husbands. She was beautiful and liked to hang out with apothecaries, watching while they made their potions and learning to do them by herself. Giulia was sympathetic to the low status of women and most often sold her poison to women trapped in difficult marriages. She became known as a friend to the troubled wife and received many referrals.

When her business was finally revealed to the Papal authorities by a customer, she was so popular that the locals protected her from apprehension. She escaped to a church, where she was granted sanctuary. However, when a rapid rumour, claiming that she had poisoned the water, tore through Rome, the police forced their way into the church and dragged Toffana in for questioning.
Under torture, she confessed to killing 600 men with her poisons in Rome alone between 1633 and 1651, but this cannot be confirmed owing to the torture and the widespread distribution of the poison. She was ultimately executed in Rome. After her death, her body was thrown over the wall of the church that had provided her with sanctuary.

I have a feeling that at least this time, I'm not the only one who sympathizes with our friend Giulia ...

MAGIC MOMENTS 204

So, Goodbye

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lkdfsçl

Whitney Houston não cantava.

Ela fazia muito mais do que isso.

A sua voz era um instrumento extraordinário, não apenas pelo alcance que tinha mas sobretudo pela "inteligência vocal" que a sua portadora detinha. Se Whitney tivesse apenas, e já não seria pouco, a amplitude de voz única que tinha, teria sido apenas mais uma grande cantora. Mas a diferença estava precisamente no controlo que ela era capaz de exercer sobre esse instrumento extraordinário.

Whitney conseguia fazer o que lhe apetecesse com a sua capacidade vocal. E, por isso, ela não cantava. Ela fazia muito mais do que isso. Terá de ser inventada uma palavra para a sua habilidade. E sobretudo, sobretudo, ela não gritava, como muitas outras fazem e depois lhe chamam cantar.

A sua mãe, também cantora, disse uma vez que o mundo ainda não tinha ouvido Whitney cantar realmente. Tinha razão. A sua voz perdeu-se muito antes de ela nos deixar, estragada por drogas, antes de poder atingir o máximo das suas capacidades amadurecidas.

Foi-se o maior rouxinol humano de que há memória.

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PALAVRAS EMPRESTADAS 79

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"As almas de todos os homens são imortais,

mas as almas dos justos são imortais e divinas."

Sócrates

OS ATLETAS DE ANDRÓMEDA

ANDRE AGASSI

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Gosto particularmente desta fotografia, porque a rede da raquete

se reflecte no rosto de Agassi em sombras quadriculadas - homem e raquete

numa osmose perfeita, como se a sua pele fosse feita

do mesmo material do seu instrumento de trabalho.
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"If you don't practice

you don't deserve to win."
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Gostava sobretudo da irreverência,

do facto de não ser fisicamente o típico jogador de ténis,

do ar de rebelde e outsider

que actualmente Nadal lhe "copia".

Gostava das suas emoções à flor da pele, sobretudo,

e de um certo ar de fragilidade ... enganadora.

Agassi não gostava de branco ... e o guarda-roupa do ténis

nunca mais foi o mesmo depois dele, felizmente.

Agassi é considerado o melhor devolvedor de serviços de todos os tempos

e foi o primeiro tenista masculino a ganhar os 4 torneios do Grand Slam

em 3 superfícies diferentes e o primeiro de apenas dois

(curiosamente o segundo foi Nadal) a ter alcançado

o Golden Slam - 4 Grand Slams + Jogos Olímpicos.

lkfdsçlf

Macro Secrets 155

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I don't want to play, I want to Love

PALAVRAS EMPRESTADAS 78

mfds

"I rock you in the morning and roll you in the night"

Whitesnake

MAGIC MOMENTS 203

Tunes for Travelers 9
fkdsf
No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

Guess you better slow your Mustang down
fçdsf

DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 24

The Serial Killer - Part XIV
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JHASKD

Next we have La Quintrala or Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperger, a chilean colonialist who abused and murdered more than 40 of her tenants in the XVII century.

I do love serial killers in skirts. Maybe because we tend to look at them as even more cruel than men, perhaps because women are usually not expected to be violent. There's a certain poetic paradox in a violent woman that attracts me. Not that I would ever be sexually interested in one such specimen. I prefer other things. But we will come to that at some other time.

Catalina was notorious for being a beautiful woman who became an icon of colonial abuse and opression. Her skin was described as snow white, her hair a wonderful red cascade (hence the nickname Quintrala) and her eyes as green as those of a cat. Her beauty was the result of a combination between indian, spanish and german blood. Bishop Francisco González de Salcedo said of her that she had physical atributes "that made her sexually very attractive to men." I always wondered if the bishop himself ever had sinful thoughts with Catalina.

It was also said that Catalina was initiated in witchraft by her aunt and grandmother. The young woman supposedly murdered her own father, by poison prepared by herself, while he was ill. She was never punished for that crime. Her next victim was the daughter of her husband. She had many lovers, some of which she killed. The first one was murdered with a knife, and Catalina blamed a woman slave for the crime. The next one she also stabbed to death, feeling offended with his dismissal because he claimed she was enfatuated with a clergyman. Catalina also cut the left ear of a nobleman and killed a knight.
While her husband was still alive, rumours were spread about terrible things happening in her own lands. Many slaves were murdered and disappeared. A priest warned her about her love life and her cruelties and she tried to murder him. In that same year her tenants rebelled against her and abandoned the lands. Catalina brought them back by force and tried each and every one in a court presided by herself.

For many years she went unharmed and continued her reinship of cruelty and murders, because she was a wealthy member of society and had many known acquaintances in high places. Until at last a secret investigation was initiated concerning the acusations of Bishop Francisco Luis de Salcedo. She was taken away from her property so that her victims could feel safe to tell what had been happening. She was brought to justice and tried in a public court. This took a long time, because of her power and money, and she was set free in the end. She died alone and feared. Her property was for a long time abandoned, for people did not want to have anything to do with anything concerning La Quintrala.

Maybe this was all true, or maybe it was just a product of a certain Bishop's elbow pain for feeling rejected in his interest in the red haired beauty. Or maybe the world at that time was not yet prepared for a woman with any kind of power.

OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

YOSSARIAN
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AS

Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: Joseph Heller

Corpo e Alma: A do romance

Nacionalidade: Arménia (embora se faça passar por Assírio)

Profissão: Capitão do Esquadrão 256 das Forças Militares Aéreas, onde serve como bombardeiro de um B-25

Naturalidade: Incógnita

Habilitações: Confuso. Enganado. Metido numa bela duma alhada. Irónico. Obcecado. Com a mania da perseguição. Hipocondríaco. Em eterno conflito. Consigo. Com os outros. Com o mundo. Com a vida. Com o Artigo 22, que parece persegui-lo faça o que fizer, decida o que decidir. Manipulado. Usado. Desertor.

Filosofia de Vida: "To live forever or die in the attempt."

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= FIM =

Macro Secrets 154

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Now you have the means to mesmerize

MAGIC MOMENTS 202

Tunes for Travelers 8
fkdsf
No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

It always leads me here, lead me to your door
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OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

YODA
çºflºa LÇ

ASK L

Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: George Lucas

Corpo e Alma: Movimento e voz de Frank Oz

Nacionalidade: Desconhecida

Profissão: Mestre Jedi

Naturalidade: Desconhecida

Habilitações: Sábio. Pequeno. Mas grande. Prudente. Paciente. Generoso. Linguista sui generis. Curto e grosso. Não é de muitas palavras, mas as que diz ficam sempre na memória de quem as ouve ... embora trocadas ... Arrebitado. Irónico. Nunca cínico. Exigente. Nunca sádico. Jamais desonesto ou dissimulado, embora engane muito boa gente que o toma por velho e limitado. Grande Mestre Jedi, do coração, da mente, do físico. Inultrapassável. Inigualável. Irrepetível.

Filosofia de Vida: "Do or do not... there is no try."

ºlkçl

DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 23

The Serial Killer - Part XIII
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The next werewolf of our chronicle is Gilles Garnier, a french hermit from the XVI century, known as the "Werewolf of Dole". Gilles was also a child lover, murdering young children and cannibalizing their corpses claiming that he used a magic ointment to transform into a werewolf to make it easier to hunt. This ointment had been given to him by a spectre.

Apparentely it all started because Gilles married and, being unaccustomed to feeding more than just himself, he found it difficult to provide for his wife causing discontent between them. It was then that several children went misteriously missing or were found dead and the authorities of the Franche-Comté province issued an edict encouraging and allowing the people to apprehend and kill the werewolf responsible. One evening a group of workers traveling from a neighboring town came upon what they thought in the dim light to be a wolf but what some recognized as the hermit with the body of a dead child. Soon after Giles Garnier was arrested.
Garnier confessed to have stalked and murdered at least four children between the ages of 9 and 12. In October 1572, his first victim was a 10-year-old girl whom he dragged into a vineyard outside of Dole. He strangled her, removed her clothes, and ate the flesh from her thighs and arms. When he had finished he removed some flesh and took it home to his wife. Weeks later Garnier savagely attacked another girl, biting and clawing her, but was interrupted by passersby and fled. The girl succumbed to her injuries a few days later. In November, Garnier killed a 10-year-old boy, again cannibalizing him by eating from his thighs and belly and tearing off a leg to save for later. Finally, he strangled another boy but was interrupted for the second time by a group of passersby. He had to abandon his prey before he could eat from it.
Garnier was not found guilty of murder, but of “crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft” and was burned at the stake. I find it interesting to note a particular aspect of these cases of lycanthropy - the criminals themselves wanted the world to believe they had some sort of relationship with some kind of supernatural entity. They felt the need to justify their strange preferences with some kind of connection to outside world beings, common to their age. This is a phenomenon that extends all times. I recall that Ted Bundy, one of the most prolific serial killers in America, and one we will be dealing with later, justified his blood lust by blaming pornography magazines and the culture of obscenity that prevailed in the seventies.

Which brings me to two realizations, neither shared by this one who writes you - either they are ashamed of what they did and do not want the world to know the full measure of their desires, or they are cowards seeking for a last, desperate justification, and finding it in the madness of the world that surrounds them.

Macro Secrets 153

fcds^

You don't even see me

PALAVRAS EMPRESTADAS 77

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"This is life, not heaven. You don't have to be perfect."
Francesco Scavullo para Gia Carangi

MAGIC MOMENTS 201

Tunes for Travelers 7
fkdsf
No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

Here I go again on my ownkjhkl
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DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 22

The Serial Killer - Part XII
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Peter liked children. He especially liked to eat them. He consumed 14, none less. I guess when you get the taste of it, it gets hard to quit. I never had the curiosity to try human flesh, myself. I am not a man eater. Nor a man lover, in the global scence. I hate people, every kind of people, so eating them would be, at the least, a paradox, at the most a masochistic experience. And I am certainly not a masochist. A sadist, perhaps. Although I do struggle sometimes with the definition of that concept. But we are not talking about me now.

Peter. Peter Stumpp. A german, born in 1564, nicknamed "The Werewolf of Bedburg of Danvill." The surname Stumpp may have been related to the fact that his left hand was cut off leaving only a stump. Peter was (again) a wealthy farmer and influential member of the rural community. For twenty-five years, Stumpp was allegedly an "insatiable bloodsucker" who gorged on the flesh of goats, lambs, and sheep, as well as men, women, and children. Being threatened with torture he confessed to killing and eating fourteen children, two pregnant women, and their fetuses. One of the fourteen children was his own son, whose brain he was reported to have devoured. Not only was Stumpp accused of being a serial murderer and cannibal, but also of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, who was sentenced to die with him, and he coupled with a distant relative, which was also considered to be incestuous according to the law. In addition to this he confessed to having had intercourse with a succubus sent to him by the Devil. In fact, he confessed to having practiced black magic since he was twelve years old. He also claimed that the Devil himself had given him a magical girdle, which enabled him to metamorphose into "the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws." Removing his belt, he said, made him transform back to his human form.

I do love the richness of the self-description. Serial killers tend to be narcisistic. But that is a subject we will come to again later.

If Peter led a brutal life, his execution was none less one of the most brutal on record: he was put to the wheel, where "flesh was torn from his body", in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been "flayed, raped, and strangled" and were burned alive along with Stumpp's body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp's severed head.
However, just as in the case of the "Blood Countess", it seems Peter might have been wrongly accused. The years in which Stumpp was supposed to have committed most of his crimes (1582-1589) were marked by internal wars in the Electorate of Cologne after the abortive introduction of Protestantism by the former Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg. He had been supported by Adolf, Count of Neuenahr, who was also the lord of Bedburg. Stumpp was most certainly a convert to Protestantism. The war brought the invasion of armies of either side, the assaults by marauding soldiers and eventually an outbreak of the plague. Murder and violence were the rule. When the Protestants were defeated in 1587, Bedburg Castle became the headquarters of Catholic mercenaries under the command of the new lord of Bedburg - Werner, Count of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, who was a staunch Catholic determined to re-establish the Roman faith.
So it is not inconceivable that the werewolf trial was but a barely concealed political trial, with the help of which the new lord of Bedburg planned to bully the Protestants of the territory back into Catholicism. If it had only been just another execution of a werewolf and a couple of witches, as sprang up around this time in various parts of Germany, the attendance of members of the high aristocracy – maybe including the new Archbishop and Elector of Cologne – would be surprising. Furthermore, the trial remained a singular event, nor did the judges refer to the new paradigma of werewolfism (explaining the animal transformation as an infernal delusion).

Werewolf or not, again the interesting part of the story here remains the imagination of those who might have made it up. People always had a fascination in general for the gruesome, the horrid, the unspeakable. Maybe because everyone has a little part inside them which just might be able, if given the right circumstances and motives, to do the gruesome, the horrid, the unspeakable.

OS PERSONAGENS DE ANDRÓMEDA

VITO CORLEONE
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ASK L

Curriculum Vitae
Filiação: Mario Puzo

Corpo e Alma: Marlon Brando

Nacionalidade: Siciliana

Profissão: Padrinho da Máfia

Naturalidade: Corleone - Sicília

Habilitações: Fugitivo. Pequeno criminoso. Desenrascado. Inteligente. Aventureiro. Corajoso. Dono e senhor de uma auto-estima grande. Despachado. Com olho para o negócio. Dominador. Homem de família. Tradicional. Aproveitador. Protector. Resistente. Avô extremoso. Marido presente. Pai exigente. Assassino. De mãos próprias e mandante. Barão. Padrinho de beija-mão. Honrado. Íntegro. Criminoso? Aos seus olhos não.

Filosofia de Vida: "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."

ºlkçl

Macro Secrets 152

fcds^

Odorless, tasteless and colorless

MAGIC MOMENTS 200

Tunes for Travelers 6
fkdsf
No carro, no comboio, no autocarro, no avião, no barco. Façamo-nos às estradas deste mundo, mas que seja com estilo e energia.
fkdsçlf

Hit the road, Jack!

kjhkl