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i set my alarm for 9am but woke up at 10am to start my day of work. work is hard to get started but easy to get into. around the middle of the day i took a break and had some of the leftover hotpot sitting on my stove. alex wong dropped by unexpectedly, my house thick with the stench of leftovers. after he left i went back to work until almost 7pm. i then lounged around (watching the first half of the gilmore girls), not feeling particularly hungry (the leftover i ate not agreeing with me too well), waiting until the time i could leave my house and get to kendall square at 9pm to met dan and the gang to see city of god. that when renata called me, i had invited her to come in an e-mail i wrote last night, but having heard no reply, i figured she might not be interested or didn't get the message. the truth turned out to be quite the opposite, she really wanted to go, so i was spared a 10 minute walk in the freezing cold to porter square and waited for her to come by house to pick me up. we arrived in kendall square at 9pm, i ran around both stations looking for dan, cymara, and elias, and then went back into the car and waited until it didn't seem likely they'd show up in time, before driving to the theatre (i forgot to check my cellphone, they had actually left me a message). inside i saw joel waiting, which was a surprise, because i didn't think he was on the guest list, and i thought about inviting him but never got around to it. turns out dan had asked him to come as well, and not only was joel there, but his roommate darren and girlfriend tammy were coming to. just as we were about to buy tickets, i realized something awful: i left my wallet at home! i had to get renata to pay for my ticket, and i had to get renata to buy me a cup of tea as well (actually, i had enough quarters in my pocket to buy myself a cup of tea, change i'd saved up to ride the subway). we went in first as joel waited outside for the gang to show up. as the trailers started, joel hurried into the theatre, the rest of our party conspicuously missing. right at the start of the actual movie however, i saw everyone coming in. the movie was long, and i was worried for renata, who, being a school teacher, had to wake up tomorrow morning at 6am. perennially cold, i also saw renata use her coat as a blanket towards the end of the movie. when the movie was over and we were walking out, renata confessed that she had indeed fallen asleep a few minutes during the film, not adapted to a noctural existence. renata paid for parking and then drove me home, the both of us complaining about the cold, she revealing that her kids haven't had recess in so many weeks due to the severe gelidity. she went back home to savor the few hours of sleep before her students ask her why she looks so tired tomorrow; i've got maybe an hour's worth of debugging still left before i can go to bed (i ended up going to bed at 5am, 030128).

how was city of god? are the slums of rio de janiero that violent? children gangs with guns, might equals right, the police are no better than the criminals, this insane microcosm of lawlessness? it was definitely a good movie, kind of long, but i was never bored during the whole time. american ghettos at their worst can't compare to what's depicted in these brazilian slums. what's real, what's fake? there's so many messages to take away from the movie, but it's hard for me to find just one. i like how the narrator, rocket, is an aspirig photographer. anytime photography's involved in a movie, it's easy to assign some higher meaning to photography, and i like movies like that (last one i saw that did that was one hour photo). photography's never just about photography. spoiler alert the fact that rocket uses his camera to infiltrate the inner circle of this criminal world is kind of cool, kind of like during a battle, photographers are off-limits because their documentation of what's going on is important to everyone involved. criminals like to have there photos taken as much as anybody else. and once again, what's one of the scariest things in the world? when you give a child a gun. in that environment, violence is a vicious circle, children grow up emulating the young adults who use violence as a mean to an end, and when the children grow up (sometimes they don't even have to, the gun is a great equalizer), they replace the previous bosses.